A personal retreat. We've never needed it more. We run from one place to the next--from meetings and appointments to our kid's soccer practice, from class to work to choir rehearsal, from the grocery store to small group--and then drop into bed later than we hoped, exhausted and dreading the morning. We want to slow down but don't know how and don't really believe that we can. And often, the idea of a personal retreat--time for solitude and silence--makes us feel as anxious as all our frenzied rushing. What in the world would we do with an hour, an afternoon or (gulp ) a whole day of solitude with God? But what is the cost of our frantic pace? What are we missing by not slowing down for reflection and meditation on Scripture? What kind of toll does our anxious running take on those around us--and, even more deeply, on our own soul? In Resting Place, retreat speaker Jane Rubietta addresses soul matters with retreat topics such as dealing with our fear of abandonment, wrestling with discontent, overcoming our attempts to control others and fulfilling our deep desire to be loved. These retreats help us enter Psalm 23 rest, a place of true rest and trust in our loving, gentle Shepherd. Full of quotes to contemplate, Scripture to meditate on, questions, prayer and journaling ideas, and ideas for creativity, Jane Rubietta leads us to and through times of silence and solitude that will follow us into our everyday world as we learn to allow Jesus to guide, comfort and restore us. Come to the Shepherd, and find the true rest your soul is longing for.

Rediscovering the role God designed for the church in mission is a critical issue facing the missions movement today. That role is to glorify God by planting churches among every tongue, tribe, and nation. Planting churches amid unreached peoples is a complex process. It calls forth every ministry gift and the contribution of every believer. Imagine a businessman, a construction worker, a schoolteacher, and an engineer all working together to support the development of a local church amongst an unreached people group in another part of the world. Most Christians will not leave home and go elsewhere to minister. If they are to participate in God's global mission, they must be affirmed, developed and released right where they live, in the context of their local church. This book shows how churches can become centers of mission vision and implementation and so accomplish God's design for the local church.

Let's give ourselves an A for effort. We keep our minds so preoccupied with work projects that we act and think on autopilot. We keep our kids so occupied with activities that they need day planners before grade school. We keep our schedules so full with church meetings and housekeeping and even entertaining that down-time sounds like a mortal sin. When we fail to rest we do more than burn ourselves out. We misunderstand the God who calls us to rest--who created us to be people of rest. Let's face it: our rest needs work. Sabbath recalls our creation, and with it God's satisfaction with us as he made us, without our hurried wrangling and harried worrying. It also recalls God's deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, and with it God's ability to do completely what we cannot complete in ourselves. Sabbath keeping reminds us that we are free to rest each week. Eighteen months in Tel Aviv, Israel, where a weekly sabbath is built into the culture, began Lynne M. Baab's twenty-five-year embrace of a rhythm of rest--as a stay-at-home mom, as a professional writer working out of her home and as a minister of the gospel. With collected insights from sabbath keepers of all ages and backgrounds, Sabbath Keeping offers a practical and hopeful guidebook that encourages all of us to slow down and enjoy our relationship with the God of the universe.

Underlying Exodus in its priestly redaction is a pilgrimage. Smith's new book starts by reviewing pilgrimage shrines, feasts and practices in ancient Israel. Next, it examines the two pilgrimage journeys in Exodus. In Exodus 1-15 Moses journeys to Mount Sinai, experiences God and receives his commission. In Exodus 16-40, Moses and the people together journey to Mount Sinai for the people's experience of God and their commission. Between lies Exodus 15, the fulcrum-point of the book: vv. 1-12 look back and vv. 13-18 look forward to Israel's journey to Sinai. Finally, the different meanings of torah in the book of Exodus are contrasted, and the book concludes with a consideration of Exodus's larger place in the Pentateuch.>

Faith and Place takes knowledge of place as a basis for thinking about the relationship between religious belief and our embodied life.
Recent epistemology of religion has appealed to various secular analogues for religious belief - especially analogues drawn from sense perception and scientific theory construction. These approaches tend to overlook the close connection between religious belief and our moral, aesthetic and otherwise engaged relationship to the material world. By taking knowledge of place as a starting point for religious epistemology, Mark Wynn aims to throw into clearer focus the embodied, action-orienting, perception-structuring, and affect-infused character of religious understanding.
This innovative study understands the religious significance of a site in terms of i. its capacity to stand for some encompassing truth about human life; ii. its conservation of historical meanings, where these meanings make a practical claim upon those located at the place at later times; and iii. its directing of the believer's attention to a sacred meaning, through enacted appropriation of the site.
Wynn proposes that the notion of 'God' functions like the notion of a 'genius loci', where the relevant locus is the sum of material reality. He argues that knowledge of God consists in part in a storied and sensuous appreciation of the significance of particular places.

Winner of a Christianity Today 2005 Book Award Baptism. The Lord's Supper. We recognize these church practices. But do we really grasp their meaning and place in Christian worship? Is our neglect of them hindering our communion with Christ? Are we missing the real drama of our salvation? Often the object of debate, the sacraments are likewise neglected and superficially understood. Leonard Vander Zee makes a compelling case that these problems can be overcome when we see the connection between Baptism and the Lord's Supper and the continuing ministry of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God. Founding his discussion in biblical teaching reaching back to the creation narrative and forward to the teaching of Jesus and the apostle Paul, Vander Zee sees the Christ-centered celebration of these sacraments as essential to the renewal of the church. A reappropriation of Baptism and the Eucharist, especially in the evangelical church, holds great promise for healing the rift between the natural and the spiritual, the personal and social, the head and the heart, and between the body of believers and our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us and now lives to make intercessions for us. InChrist, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, Vander Zee not only opens up a Christ-centered approach to the sacraments but also provides guidance on the practical matters that face pastors and parishioners in the pursuit of a renewed and authentic Christian worship.

This examination of primary texts of the Lutheran Confessions gathers together pertinent references for the discussion of worship in the Lutheran Church.

Decision making begins with a willingness to submit your intentions to God's perfect will and humbly follow His direction and understanding the impact of consequences in your decision making! The daily decisions that you make today will determine what kind of impact you will make tomorrow. The key to making better decisions is to educate yourself, make adjustments necessary, let your decisions be based on a solid foundation and take proper precaution. This book can help you understand decision making process and help you develop in moving forward in your journey of life and also makes the principles in the Bible relevant to everyday living.

In this compelling book, Mark Stibbe argues that God wants to use Christians to speak prophetically into the lives of unbelievers, waking them up to the fact that Jesus is alive and he knows their every thought, word and action. There are many biblical examples of God's people using prophecy in their witness to unbelievers. Jesus used prophecy in His ministry to seekers. After Pentecost, God gave the gift of prophecy to believers as one resource among many in their witness to the world. Furthermore, Christians today receive prophecies for those who don't know Christ, often with immediate and life-changing effects. This book contains many such testimonies.