The visionary behind the million-strong IF:Gathering challenges you to exercise your God-given power to shift negative thinking patterns and take back control of your thoughts and emotions.Are your thoughts holding you captive? I’ll never be good enough. Other people have better lives than I do. God couldn’t really love me. Jennie Allen knows what it’s like to swirl in a spiral of destructive thoughts, but she also knows we don’t have to stay stuck in toxic thinking patterns. As she discovered in her own life, God built a way for us to escape that downward spiral. Freedom comes when we refuse to be victims to our thoughts and realize we have already been equipped with power from God to fight and win the war for our minds. In Get Out of Your Head, Jennie inspires and equips us to transform our emotions, our outlook, and even our circumstances by taking control of our thoughts. Our enemy is determined to get in our heads to make us feel helpless, overwhelmed, and incapable of making a difference for the kingdom of God. But when we submit our minds to Christ, the promises and goodness of God flood our lives in remarkable ways. It starts in your head. And from there, the possibilities are endless.

    Similarly American Christianity has devolved into its own mindless, diversionary, and celebrity-driven superficiality. Because humans are created in God's image with spiritual, intellectual, creative, moral, and relational capacities, we long for more, yet the true seeker faces the lose-lose alternatives of a soul-numbing culture and a vacuous Christianity-lite. The renaissance we need in both faith and culture will originate in a deep spiritual renewal that restores God's image in us and creates a new breed of culturally savvy, thoughtful creatives who rekindle the spiritual, intellectual, and creative legacy of Christians as enrichers of culture.

    Follow Chase's spiritual journey in the footsteps of Francis, and then begin one of your own through the pilgrim's guide included in this book.

    Every week yet another incident involving racial tension splashes across headlines and dominates our news feeds. But it's not easy to unpack the origins of these tensions, and perhaps we wonder whether any of these issues really has anything to do with us. Ken Wytsma, founder of the Justice Conference, understands these questions. He has gone through his own journey of understanding the underpinnings of inequality and privilege. In this timely, insightful book Wytsma unpacks what we need to know to be grounded in conversations about today's race-related issues. And he helps us come to a deeper understanding of both the origins of these issues and the reconciling role we are called to play as witnesses of the gospel. Inequality and privilege are real. The Myth of Equality opens our eyes to realities we may have never realized were present in our society and world. And we will be changed for the better as a result.

    Racism is truly our nation's original sin."It's time we right this unacceptable wrong," says bestselling author and leading Christian activist Jim Wallis. Fifty years ago, Wallis was driven away from his faith by a white church that considered dealing with racism to be taboo. His participation in the civil rights movement brought him back when he discovered a faith that commands racial justice. Yet as recent tragedies confirm, we continue to suffer from the legacy of racism. The old patterns of white privilege are colliding with the changing demographics of a diverse nation. The church has been slow to respond, and Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour of the week.In America's Original Sin, Wallis offers a prophetic and deeply personal call to action in overcoming the racism so ingrained in American society. He speaks candidly to Christians--particularly white Christians--urging them to cross a new bridge toward racial justice and healing.Whenever divided cultures and gridlocked power structures fail to end systemic sin, faith communities can help lead the way to grassroots change. Probing yet positive, biblically rooted yet highly practical, this book shows people of faith how they can work together to overcome the embedded racism in America, galvanizing a movement to cross the bridge to a multiracial church and a new America.

    Terrorism. Hate crimes. In a world where racism is far from dead, is unity amidst diversities even remotely possible?Sharing from his own experiences growing up in the segregated South, pastor John Piper thoughtfully exposes the unremitting problem of racism. Instead of turning finally to organizations, education, famous personalities, or government programs to address racial strife, Piper reveals the definitive source of hope--teaching how the good news about Jesus Christ actively undermines the sins that feed racial strife, and leads to a many-colored and many-cultured kingdom of God.Learn to pursue ethnic harmony from a biblical perspective, and to relate to real people different from yourself, as you take part in the bloodline of Jesus that is comprised of "every tongue, tribe, and nation."

    But sometimes I wonder if He is really kind— really deeply always kind. Is He? Christians love to talk about how God is in control, but that’s harder to grasp when things aren’t going like you thought they would, when your life looks quite different than you imagined. For centuries, God’s people have been building altars to Him—to remind themselves and the people around them of His work. His goodness. His kindness. Stacks of stones. Altars. Temples. Cathedrals. Why? Because they believed God and wanted to remember Him. In the back of my mind, God reminds me that He is the same trustworthy God—the One who always finishes the stories he starts. And this is my story—of wrestling with our God who gives a limp and a blessing. A God who is always kind even when my circumstances feel the opposite. God is who He says He is. He is kinder than you imagine. In a world where it is easy to forget who He is, we will not. We will remember God.

    Specifically, we don’t understand evil—what it is, how it works, and why it so routinely and effortlessly ruins our lives.In How Evil Works , veteran newsman and bestselling author David Kupelian takes a fresh and insightful look at this ancient subject. Diving into the most electrifying news stories of the day—from terrorism and school violence to high-profile sex scandals and dysfunctional Hollywood celebrities—Kupelian explores the secret world of seduction, corruption, and daily temptations in everyday life, demonstrating his uncanny knack for breaking down complex, elusive, and intimidating topics.Kupelian shows that once we really understand “how evil works”—not just in the headline-making disasters and crimes that dominate the news, but also in our own lives—evil loses much of its power, and the way out becomes more clear. And that’s precisely why this book bears a powerful message of genuine hope.

    Spreading from academia into mainstream media, the suggestion that diversity of doctrine in the early church led to many competing orthodoxies is indicative of today's postmodern relativism. Authors K�stenberger and Kruger engage Ehrman and others in this polemic against a dogged adherence to popular ideals of diversity.K�stenberger and Kruger's accessible and careful scholarship not only counters the Bauer Thesis using its own terms, but also engages overlooked evidence from the New Testament. Their conclusions are drawn from analysis of the evidence of unity in the New Testament, the formation and closing of the canon, and the methodology and integrity of the recording and distribution of religious texts within the early church.

    It’s more than just a personal relationship with God or a source of moral teaching.Christianity is a picture of reality.It explains why the world is the way it is. When the pieces of this puzzle are properly assembled, we see the big picture clearly. Christianity is a true story of how the world began, why the world is the way it is, what role humans play in the drama, and how all the plotlines of the story are resolved in the end.In The Story of Reality, best-selling author and host of Stand to Reason, Gregory Koukl, explains the five words that form the narrative backbone of the Christian story. He identifies the most important things that happen in the story in the order they take place:GodManJesusCrossResurrectionOur story begins with God. He created everything, but something went terribly wrong. So God initiated a rescue plan and entered the world that he had made by becoming like us in Jesus Christ. Jesus saved us from the wrongness in ourselves and in the world through his death on a cross. And how people respond to what he did will determine what their future will be at the final event of history: the resurrection.If you are already a Christian, this is your story. Do you know it? If you are not a Christian, this is still your story, because it explains the world in a way that nothing else will. It is a true story—the real story behind every other story we hear.

    We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

    With a simple yet penetrating style, Zacharias uses rich illustrations to celebrate the power of Jesus Christ to transform lives. Jesus Among Other Gods contrasts the truth of Jesus with founders of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, strengthening believers and compelling them to share their faith with our post-modern world.

    Yet in other ways he was a most ordinary man-often gripped by destructive passion, rocked by personal tragedy, and motivated by political gain. Yet, he is the one character the Bible describes as a "man after God's own heart." In this first volume of the "Great Lives" series Charles Swindoll shows how David proved his love for God many times over in an extraordinary life that left an enduring legacy of faith.

    In a vivid re-creation of Mary Magdalene's life story, Margaret George convincingly captures this renowned woman's voice as she moves from girlhood to womanhood, becomes part of the circle of disciples, and comes to grips with the divine.While grounded in biblical scholarship and secular research, Mary, Called Magdalene ultimately transcends both history and fiction to become a "diary of a soul."

    This history of the Underground Church reflects the continuing struggle in many parts of the world today.