Respected Bible teacher Warren Wiersbe defines the essence of worship and discusses the key issues surrounding this often controversial topic within the church.

The doctrine and history of the 7 Sacraments. Covers Indulgences and Sacramentals. Topics include the Scriptural background of the Sacraments, their institution by Christ, essential requirements for receiving them, their effects in the soul, etc.

Though Christians the world over make yearly preparations for Lent, there s a conspicuous lack of good books for that other great spiritual season: Advent. All the same, this four-week period leading up to Christmas is making a comeback as growing numbers reject shopping-mall frenzy and examine the deeper meaning of the season. Ecumenical in scope, these fifty devotions invite the reader to contemplate the great themes of Christmas and the significance that the coming of Jesus has for each of us not only during Advent, but every day. Whether dipped into at leisure or used on a daily basis, Watch for the Light gives the phrase holiday preparations new depth and meaning. Includes writings by Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt, Sylvia Plath, J. B. Phillips, Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster, Henri Nouwen, Bernard of Clairvaux, Kathleen Norris, Meister Eckhart, St. Thomas Aquinas, Karl Rahner, Isaac Penington, Madeleine L Engle, Alfred Delp, Loretta Ross-Gotta, William Stringfellow, J. Heinrich Arnold, Edith Stein, Philip Britts, Jane Kenyon, John Howard Yoder, Emmy Arnold, Karl Barth, Oscar Romero, William Willimon, Johann Christoph Arnold, Gail Godwin, Leonardo Boff, G. M. Hopkins, Evelyn Underhill, Dorothy Day, Brennan Manning, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Romano Guardini, Annie Dillard, Martin Luther, St. John Chrysostom, Giovanni Papini, Dorothee Soelle, C. S. Lewis, Gustavo Gutierrez, Philip Yancey, J. T. Clement, Thomas Merton, Eberhard Arnold, Ernesto Cardenal, T. S. Eliot, John Donne, Gian Carlo Menotti and Jurgen Moltmann."

Since 1917, when three Portuguese shepherd children received apparitions of the Virgin Mary, the Child Jesus, and Saint Joseph, Fatima has been the destination of many millions of pilgrim visitors. The apparitions occurred at a time of great turmoil in the history of mankind: The Great War was in its third year, and Russia was in the throes of revolution that would lead to Communism taking hold. The so-called "Third Secret" of Fatima foretold the assassination attempt on the Pope, Saint John Paul II in 1981. These events may have passed, but the message of Fatima is eternal: prayer and penance form the path to salvation. This book tells the Fatima story and provides insights into the lives of the seers. It gives the locations of the places of worship and interest in the Sanctuary and nearby villages, and provides information on the Programmes, Mass times, and practical essentials when visiting Portugal. There is a small book of Devotions featuring the Rosary, the Mass, and prayers and songs associated with Fatima. Several trips to the surrounding area include abbeys, castles, The Eucharistc Miracle at Santarem, and the shrine in the fishing town of Nazare. The Convent of Carmel in the historic city of Coimbra, home to Sister Lucia for many years, is visited. Lisbon, the Estoril coast and the palaces of Sintra and Mafra are also included. The book is illustrated in full colour with maps and plans. This is an essential tool to enable you to make the most of what will be a deeply spiritual, personal experience.

The message of the kingdom of God: an ecology of equality and peace, and an economy of justice. Hope from beyond, sent to the present, is what Advent asks us to reckon with. Hope consists of God’s jump leads sent from the future through time and space, wired right into our present pains, panics, and predicaments. How can the light of Christ illuminate this present darkness? This book engages with two great Christmas hymns: the Magnificat and Benedictus. It is also rooted in poets, prophets and the theology and devotional writing of the black theologian and mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., Howard Thurman. Using the lectio divina approach to passages drawn from Isaiah and Luke, An Advent Manifesto is an invitation to pray and practise that most ancient Advent prayer, ‘Come, Lord Jesus, come.’

The Divine Liturgy of Saint James is the eucharistic rite of the ancient Church of Jerusalem and the most ancient extant liturgy of the Eastern Church. In recent decades, the frequency of its use has increased throughout the Orthodox Church. This service book offers for the first time a parallel Church Slavonic-English text, suitable for use by clergy and servers. It also contains the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts of the Holy Apostle James, which is rarely served today but has been preserved in part in a few Greek manuscripts and in full in several Georgian sources. An introduction by Dr Vitaly Permiakov, a specialist in the Jerusalem liturgy, presents the provenance and integrity of both ancient Liturgical services.

Pastor, writer, and host of the popular television broadcast Hour of Power, Bobby Schuller shows readers how to be refreshed, renewed, and restored when they feel weak, out of sync, and lost. Now in trade paper. Each week, on his Hour of Power television broadcast, Bobby Schuller leads more than a million people in saying aloud the "Creed of the Beloved." This simple statement of faith has become a powerful way to rekindle a fire deep within believers, reminding them that they are not what they do, what they have, or what people say about them. Instead, they are the beloved of God. By living out this creed, Christians discover the energy and motivation to do great things with and for God. In this inspiring yet utterly practical new book, Schuller brings this life-altering truth to readers everywhere. You Are Beloved reveals the secret to the restoration we need amid our striving, hurrying, and worrying lives. Only by resting in God's boundless and unconditional love are we able to experience fully the blessings God intends for us. You Are Beloved shows how.

Before the charismatic John Duval Gluck, Jr. came along, letters from New York City children to Santa Claus were destroyed, unopened, by the U.S. Post Office. Gluck saw an opportunity, and created the Santa Claus Association. The effort delighted the public, and for 15 years money and gifts flowed to the only group authorized to answer Santa's mail. Gluck became a Jazz Age celebrity, rubbing shoulders with the era's movie stars and politicians, and even planned to erect a vast Santa Claus monument in the center of Manhattan - until Gotham's crusading charity commissioner discovered some dark secrets in Santa's workshop. The rise and fall of the Santa Claus Association is a caper both heartwarming and hardboiled, involving stolen art, phony Boy Scouts, a kidnapping, pursuit by the FBI, a Coney Island bullfight, and above all, the thrills and dangers of a wild imagination. It's also the larger story of how Christmas became the extravagant holiday we celebrate today, from Santa's early beginnings in New York to the country's first citywide Christmas tree and Macy's first grand holiday parade.The Santa Claus Man is a holiday tale with a dark underbelly, and an essential read for lovers of Christmas stories, true crime, and New York City history.

William Law is best remembered today for his Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. To those interested in his spirituality, however, other works have greater impact, in particular The Spirit of Prayer and The Spirit of Love, which are considered the finest and most appealing. In the years in which they were written, his vision had reached its fullest and most characteristic development, and his literary power was at its height. It is in these books that the profound influence of Jacob Boehme can be most clearly seen. His great synthesis of the mystical outpourings and orthodox Christian theology, provide an English spiritual classic. Law's understanding and interpretation of mysticism was more original than traditional, being dynamic and creative. He believed in the life of God working from within, and the flame of divine love being a link with and an understanding of God. He conceived that mysticism was a matter of life, that relied on willing rather than knowing, and that ultimately rested on trust in God. Despite holding no official position he was widely regarded in his own time and later as a spiritual guide, and his trilogy The Spirit of Prayer, The Spirit of Love and The Way to Divine Knowledge was the mature expression of his theology and religion.

Lent is not about giving up or taking up, but a radical opening up: the opening up of our lives to God's transformative kingdom. That is the challenge Trystan Owain Hughes sets in Opening Our Lives. Through practical daily devotions he calls on us to open our eyes to God's presence, our ears to his call, our hearts to his love, our ways to his will, our actions to his compassion and our pain to his peace.

What does it mean for music to be considered local in contemporary Christian communities, and who shapes this meaning? Through what musical processes have religious beliefs and practices once 'foreign' become 'indigenous'? How does using indigenous musical practices aid in the growth of local Christian religious practices and beliefs? How are musical constructions of the local intertwined with regional, national or transnational religious influences and cosmopolitanisms? Making Congregational Music Local in Christian Communities Worldwide explores the ways that congregational music-making is integral to how communities around the world understand what it means to be 'local' and 'Christian'. Showing how locality is produced, negotiated, and performed through music-making, this book draws on case studies from every continent that integrate insights from anthropology, ethnomusicology, cultural geography, mission studies, and practical theology. Four sections explore a central aspect of the production of locality through congregational music-making, addressing the role of historical trends, cultural and political power, diverging values, and translocal influences in defining what it means to be 'local' and 'Christian'. This book contends that examining musical processes of localization can lead scholars to new understandings of the meaning and power of Christian belief and practice.

Introduction by Ronald F. Thiemann Foreword by Elaine Pagels By a founder of the Centering Prayer movement Originally a Wit Lecture by one of today's key spiritual writers, this is a reflection on contemplative prayer, the search for happiness, and our need to explore the inner world. The search for God, Keating says, is also the search for ourselves, but our self-consciousness gets in the way. He takes the unique angle of the contemplative journey as "divine therapy" for the illness of the human condition, a method for opening up to our own wounded unconscious. As we move into a global culture, he says, this process of letting go of attachments and of self-centeredness is more important than ever. A work of beauty and clarity, The Human Condition - - draws from a wide range of classic and modern spiritual sources, as well as from solid common sense - explains how God is the only true security and how divine love is the full affirmation of who we are - shows how even a life of action needs contemplation and the practice of the presence of God

A gift edition of Daily Prayer For All Seasons, with a bonded leather cover, two ribbon bookmarks, gilded edges, a presentation page, and shrink-wrapped in gift box. People in all kinds of religious traditions, including Judaism and Christianity, have been marking time with prayer for almost as long as we've divided the day into hours. "Praying the hours," as it's called, has always reminded us that God walks with us throughout each day; "praying the hours" is also a way that the community of faith comes together, whether we're united all in one place or scattered like raindrops. In the Episcopal Church, the Book of Common Prayer offers beautiful services for morning, noon, evening, and nighttime in a section called "The Daily Office" (pp 35-146). Daily Prayer for All Seasons offers a variation on that theme, where a complete service covers one or two pages, thereby eliminating the need to shuffle prayer books and hymnals. Daily Prayer for All Seasons works for individuals, small groups, and/or congregations. This prayer book presents a variety of images of God, uses inclusive and expansive language for and about God, and presents a rich variety of language, including poetry, meditation, and prayers from the broader community of faith.