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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Christianity > Christian religious experience > General
Everyday Practices for a World Gone Mad
We live in soul-scorching times. The 24-7 onslaught of contemporary
life--with its never-ending feed of global tragedies and shrieking
demands for our attention, to say nothing of the ordinary pressures of
work, family, friends, and community--has left us ragged, wrung-out,
and emptied.
In his life-changing new book, John Eldredge distills a lifetime's
wisdom about healing into a series of practical, ready-to-implement
practices for putting yourself back together. These simple steps will
enable you to begin recovery, help you focus on what matters most,
disengage from the tragedies of this broken world, and discover the
restorative power of beauty. The practices include:
- the one-minute pause
- benevolent detachment
- practicing kindness,
- getting outside, and
- stepping back from technology
The practices explained here are ready for the taking. You don't need
abandon your life to get it back. You can restore it here and now. And
you will never be the same.
John Eldredge is a bestselling author, a counselor, and a teacher. He
is also president of Ransomed Heart, a ministry devoted to helping
people discover the heart of God, recover their own hearts in God's
love, and learn to live in God's kingdom. John and his wife, Stasi,
live near Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Squarely challenging a culture obsessed with success, an acclaimed
philosopher argues that failure is vital to a life well lived,
curing us of arrogance and self-deception and engendering humility
instead. Our obsession with success is hard to overlook. Everywhere
we compete, rank, and measure. Yet this relentless drive to be the
best blinds us to something vitally important: the need to be
humble in the face of life's challenges. Costica Bradatan mounts
his case for failure through the stories of four historical figures
who led lives of impact and meaning-and assiduously courted
failure. Their struggles show that engaging with our limitations
can be not just therapeutic but transformative. In Praise of
Failure explores several arenas of failure, from the social and
political to the spiritual and biological. It begins by examining
the defiant choices of the French mystic Simone Weil, who, in
sympathy with exploited workers, took up factory jobs that her
frail body could not sustain. From there we turn to Mahatma Gandhi,
whose punishing quest for purity drove him to ever more extreme
acts of self-abnegation. Next we meet the self-styled loser E. M.
Cioran, who deliberately turned his back on social acceptability,
and Yukio Mishima, who reveled in a distinctly Japanese
preoccupation with the noble failure, before looking to Seneca to
tease out the ingredients of a good life. Gleefully breaching the
boundaries between argument and storytelling, scholarship and
spiritual quest, Bradatan concludes that while success can make us
shallow, our failures can lead us to humbler, more attentive, and
better lived lives. We can do without success, but we are much
poorer without the gifts of failure.
40 Days with the Holy Spirit will inspire you to encounter God in
fresh and surprising ways. You'll develop stronger spiritual
muscles as you breathe, read, reflect, and pray-all with an eye to
cultivating a relationship with the least familiar member of the
Trinity. The book is interactive, offering the opportunity to write
and pray each day; intelligent, rooted in a rigorous study of
scripture, from Genesis to Revelation; and inviting, with 40
insightful, well-planned 20-30 minute daily exercises; and
prayerful, with 40 original prayers that capture each day's insight
into the deep, spiritual work of the Holy Spirit.
A coming-of-age travel memoir that probes thorny spiritual
questions while taking the reader on a wild ride from the deep
American South to the Middle East, Europe, and the Far East. Once
the golden girl of her Arkansas town, Natalie finds herself
squeezed under small town shame and rejection after being kicked
out of church for getting a divorce. It's a hard fall off of a
sanctimonious high horse, and religious fundamentalism has left her
feeling broken and stuck. But she can't shake the 'wanderlust woes'
that have plagued her since childhood, so she runs away to the
Middle East. As a mostly-sheltered Southerner, she struggles to
adapt but is determined to be 'at home' in the world. Her journey
is more than a pilgrimage, it's a peregrination: a one-way ticket
to elsewhere in search of the place of her own resurrection. Within
these pages is a suspenseful adventure filled with love, loss,
laughter, tears, and a little bit of scandalous behavior, but at
the heart of it, Natalie walks squarely into the unknown to
confront the secret matters of the soul that we wrestle with at
night.
A-Z of Wellbeing is an accessible introduction to help you attend
to your own wellbeing and live out your own alphabet of peace. It
presents twenty-six words of wellness to help you discover new
practices, connect with God, and share wellbeing with others. Each
topic includes: * Connect the word to a biblical theme * Learn a
new habit to practise * Get active sharing the habit with others *
Take Notice of a personal story * Give back with questions and
further resources By sharing the words that were helpful in her own
journey of recovery from breakdown, Ruth Rice gently encourages us
to find our own toolkit of words and habits that will help us
maintain our own wellbeing. Content Benefits: Ruth Rice helps us to
find a language that enables us to speak honestly and live
healthily together around the area of mental and emotional health.
* 26 words of wellbeing are unpacked with insights and practical
application * Uses the five ways of wellbeing from the New
Economics Foundation * Understands wellbeing within the framework
of God's character, practical habits and community reality *
Enables us to understand wellbeing as a life long journey rather
than a quick fix * Encourages us to find our own alphabet of
wellbeing that works for us * Enables us to speak, live and share
wellbeing * Suitable for anyone who wants to attend to their
wellbeing * Helpful for anyone who wants to understand and come
alongside someone who is struggling with their wellbeing
Not every Christian needs to go to seminary, but there are certain teachings of the Bible that every Christian should know. Whether you're a relatively new believer in Jesus or a mature Christian looking for a better understanding of basics of the faith, Christian Beliefs is for you.
This readable guide to twenty basic Christian beliefs condenses Wayne Grudem's award-winning book Systematic Theology, prized by pastors and teachers everywhere. He and his son, pastor Elliot Grudem, have boiled down the essentials of theology for everyday Christians and made them both clear and applicable to life. Each brief chapter concludes with questions for personal review or group discussion.
In this revised and updated edition of Christian Beliefs, you will learn about:
- The Bible and its authority for our lives
- The characteristics of God
- The importance of prayer
- Angels and the reality of spiritual warfare
- What it means that we are created in the image of God
- What God has done for us in Christ
- The purpose of the church
- What will happen when Christ returns
- The biblical understanding of heaven
- And much more
Christian Beliefs is the ideal book for every Christian who wants a solid foundation for understanding the most basic and essential teachings of the Bible.
This book will teach you how to take hope in God because of how God restored, vindicated, and made His name great in the lives of people like Job, Joseph, and Abraham. It will give you the encouragement you need to believe that God can work the same power in your life.
You have faced challenges—financial, emotional, physical, relational, ministerial, and business. It is often in the midst of these tests, trials, and difficulties that God prepares you to move into a new season of expansion. Even though the circumstances feel uncomfortable and victory may be hard to see, you will recuperate from devastation and not a moment of it will be wasted. Take comfort in knowing God will remember and vindicate every tear you’ve cried and will restore to you more than what the enemy stole and the locust ate.
Breaking open fresh revelations from the Psalms and Proverbs and examining snapshots of the lives of Gideon, Joseph, Abraham, and Job, You Shall Recover All will encourage you to know that through the tests and trials you thought had come to diminish you, God is actually turning them around for your good and preparing you for greatness. It may be tempting to give up hope or throw in the towel, but do not give in to discouragement, hopelessness, depression, doubt, or defeat. Despite what you see, God is still on the throne.
There is hope for you and your world. What the enemy means for bad, God turns around for your good. For all that you’ve pressed through and endured, let God put a new level of honor on your life. He will take you from least to greatest, and you shall recover all!
Exodus is the Rosetta stone for unlocking the Old Testament and the
thread of redemption throughout Scripture. The exodus served as the
primary model of God’s idea of redemption, not just in the Old
Testament but even in the New, where it is used as one of the keys to
understanding the meaning of the cross of Christ. Over six sessions,
participants in this Bible study will walk through the first 15
chapters of Exodus. You’ll relive the experience as God hears the cries
of His people and responds by sending a deliverer, ultimately giving us
a pattern for recognizing His work in the world. (6 sessions)
Session Topics:
• Problem
• Deliverer
• Discouragement
• Deliverance
• Redemption
• Worship
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