That may be bad news for America, but it can be good news for the church. What's needed now, in shifting times, is neither a doubling-down on the status quo nor a pullback into isolation. Instead, we need a church that speaks to social and political issues with a bigger vision in mind: that of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As Christianity seems increasingly strange, and even subversive, to our culture, we have the opportunity to reclaim the freakishness of the gospel, which is what gives it its power in the first place.   We seek the kingdom of God, before everything else. We connect that kingdom agenda to the culture around us, both by speaking it to the world and by showing it in our churches. As we do so, we remember our mission to oppose demons, not to demonize opponents. As we advocate for human dignity, for religious liberty, for family stability, let's do so as those with a prophetic word that turns everything upside down.   The signs of the times tell us we are in for days our parents and grandparents never knew. But that's no call for panic or surrender or outrage. Jesus is alive. Let's act like it. Let's follow him, onward to the future.

    In this remarkable New York Times bestseller, Joel Osteen offers unique insights and encouragement that will help readers overcome every obstacle in their lives.

    . . and he’s dead set on destroying all you hold dear and keeping you from experiencing abundant life in Christ. What’s more, his approach to disrupting your life and discrediting your faith isn’t general or generic, not a one-size-fits-all. It’s specific. Personalized. Targeted.   So this book is your chance to strike back. With prayer. With a weapon that really works. Each chapter will guide you in crafting prayer strategies that hit the enemy where it hurts, letting him know you’re on to him and that you won’t back down. Because with every new strategy you build, you’re turning the fiercest battles of life into precise strikes against him and his handiwork, each one infused with the power of God’s Spirit.  New York Times bestselling author Priscilla Shirer, widely known for her international speaking, teaching, and writing ministries, brings her new role from the 2015 film War Room into the real lives of today’s women, addressing the topics that affect them most: renewing their passion , refocusing their identity , negotiating family strife, dealing with relentless regrets , navigating impossible schedules , succeeding against temptation , weathering their worst fears , uprooting bitterness , and more. Each chapter exposes the enemy’s cruel, crafty intentions in all kinds of these areas, then equips and encourages you to write out your own personalized prayer strategies on tear-out sheets you can post and pray over yourself and your loved ones on a regular basis.  Fervent is a hands-on, knees-down, don’t-give-up action guide to practical, purposeful praying.

    Purity rings, purity pledges, and purity balls came with a dangerous message: girls are potential sexual “stumbling blocks” for boys and men, and any expression of a girl’s sexuality could reflect the corruption of her character. This message traumatized many girls—resulting in anxiety, fear, and experiences that mimicked the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—and trapped them in a cycle of shame. This is the sex education Linda Kay Klein grew up with. Fearing being marked a Jezebel, Klein broke up with her high school boyfriend because she thought God told her to, and took pregnancy tests though she was a virgin, terrified that any sexual activity would be punished with an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. When the youth pastor of her church was convicted of sexual enticement of a twelve-year-old girl, Klein began to question the purity-based sexual ethic. She contacted young women she knew, asking if they were coping with the same shame-induced issues she was. These intimate conversations developed into a twelve-year quest that took her across the country and into the lives of women raised in similar religious communities—a journey that facilitated her own healing and led her to churches that are seeking a new way to reconcile sexuality and spirituality. Sexual shame is by no means confined to evangelical culture; Pure is a powerful wake-up call about our society’s subjugation of women.

    In this volume, popular author Walter Brueggemann writes that the Sabbath is not simply about keeping rules but rather about becoming a whole person and restoring a whole society. Importantly, Brueggemann speaks to a 24/7 society of consumption, a society in which we live to achieve, accomplish, perform, and possess. We want more, own more, use more, eat more, and drink more. Keeping the Sabbath allows us to break this restless cycle and focus on what is truly important: God, other people, all life. Brueggemann offers a transformative vision of the wholeness God intends, giving world-weary Christians a glimpse of a more fulfilling and simpler life through Sabbath observance.

    Definitely not "for women only." +

    The core message has hit home with over 5 million people as it focuses on the need to "feel" loved. This need is felt by married and singles alike. Dr. Chapman now tackles the unique circumstances that singles face, and integrates how the same five love languages apply in their relationships. For example, in a business environment, when and how is physical touch appropriate? Take the love language test included.

    Uncommon Ground gathers an array of perspectives from people thinking deeply and working daily to live with humility, patience, and tolerance in our time.Contributors include:LecraeTish Harrison WarrenKristen Deede JohnsonClaude Richard AlexanderShirley HoogstraSara GrovesRudy CarrascoTrillia NewbellTom LinWarren KinghornProviding varied and enlightening approaches to reaching faithfully across deep and often painful differences, Uncommon Ground shows us how live with confidence, joy, and hope in a complex and fragmented age.

    Yet there is hardly a more neglected topic among Christians. In this much-needed book, a New Testament scholar and a cross-cultural missionary explore all thirty passages in the New Testament that deal with the conscience, showing how your conscience impacts virtually every aspect of life, ministry, and missions. As you come to see your conscience as a gift from God and learn how to calibrate it under the lordship of Jesus Christ, you will not only experience the freedom of a clear conscience but also discover how to lovingly interact with those who hold different convictions.

    He was beaten and tortured by the sheriff and state police. But through it all he returned good for evil, love for hate, progress for prejudice and brought hope to black and white alike. The story of John Perkins is no ordinary story. Rather, it is a gripping portrayal of what happens when faith thrusts a person into the midst of a struggle against racism, oppression and injustice. It is about the costs of discipleship--the jailings, the floggings, the despair, the sacrifice. And it is about the transforming work of faith that allowed John to respond to such overwhelming indignities with miraculous compassion, vision and hope.

    That was the moment... I understood. Really understood. Crisis, change, all the myriad upheavals that blister the spirit and leave us groping– they aren't voices simply of pain but also of creativity. And if we would only listen, we might hear such times beckoning us to a season of waiting, to the place of fertile emptiness.Blending her own experiences with an intimate grasp of contemplative spirituality, Sue Monk Kidd relates the passionate and moving tale of her spiritual crisis at midlife, when life seemed to have lost meaning and how her longing for hasty escape from the pain yielded to a discipline of "active waiting." Comparing her experience to the formative processes inside a chrysalis on a wintry tree branch, Kidd reflects on the fact that the soul is often symbolized as a butterfly. The simple cocoon, a living parable of waiting, becomes an icon of hope for the transformation that the author sought. Kidd charts her re–ascent from the depths and offers a new understanding of the passage away from the self, which is based upon others' expectations, to the true self of God's unfolding intention. Her wise, inspiring book helps those in doubt and crisis recognize the opportunity to "dismantle old masks and patterns and unfold a deeper, more authentic self."

    And the answer to that question is at once less and more than what you are hoping for.Christians love the idea that self-expression is the essence of a beautiful person, but that's a lie, too. With trademark humor and no nonsense practicality, Rachel Jankovic explains the fake story of the Self, starting with the inventions of a supremely ugly man named Sartre (rhymes with "blart"). And we--men and women, young and old--have bought his lie of the Best Self, with terrible results.Thankfully, that's not the end of our story, You Who: Why You Matter and How to Deal with It takes the identity question into the nitty gritty details of everyday life. Here's the first clue: Stop looking inside, and start planting flags of everyday faithfulness. In Christianity, the self is always a tool and never a destination.

     His starting point is moral intuition—the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right. He blends his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain. He then examines the origins of morality, overturning the view that evolution made us fundamentally selfish creatures. But rather than arguing that we are innately altruistic, he makes a more subtle claim—that we are fundamentally groupish. It is our groupishness, he explains, that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations. In a stunning final chapter on ideology and civility, Haidt shows what each side is right about, and why we need the insights of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation.

    Even our vacations have a panicky, task-like edge to them. "If I only had more time," is the mantra of our age. But is this the real problem?Widely acclaimed author Mark Buchanan states that what we've really lost is "the rest of God-the rest God bestows and, with it, that part of himself we can know only through stillness." Stillness as a virtue is a foreign concept in our society, but there is wisdom in God's own rhythm of work and rest. Sabbath is elixir and antidote. It is a gift for our sanity and wholeness--to prolong our lives, to enrich our relationships, to increase our fruitfulness, to make our joy complete. Jesus practiced Sabbath among those who had turned it into a dismal thing, a day for murmuring and finger-wagging, and he reminded them of the day's true purpose: liberation-to heal, to feed, to rescue, to celebrate, to lavish and relish life abundant.The gift of Sabbath is essential to our full humanity and faith, says Buchanan. Far from being some starched and dour day only to be endured, Sabbath is a day wide and bright, brimming with laughter, enough to lend beauty to all our other days. Readers will be changed forever by this pivotal book."It seems very unsabbath-like to describe a book about Sabbath with the adverb 'urgently'--but we urgently need this book. Mark Buchanan shows us that our busyness is killing us--killin us--and that Sabbath is our best cure, our best path for rest and reverence and discipleship."--LAUREN WINNER, Best-selling author of Girl Meets God and Mudhouse Sabbath"With the easiness of long intimacy and a very deft hand, Buchanan here braids together into one gracious and sustaining strand the beauty of Sabbath, the wisdom of its keeping, and the generosity of God in gifting us with it. These pages are not just a blessing, they are a psalm that cries out to be joyfully engaged."--PHYLLIS TICKLE, Religion editor (ret.) Publishers Weekly and compiler of The Divine Hours

    He proposes that by opening ourselves to others, those we perceive as weak, different, or inferior, we can achieve true personal and societal freedom.