Reaching for Heaven chronicles Rebecca Browder's struggle with the Proteus syndrome, a condition that involves atypical growth of the bones, skin, head, and a variety of other symptoms. Rebecca is dedicated to learning as much as she can and to sharing a positive outlook on life through her faith in her Savior, Jesus Christ. She has learned to overcome overwhelming obstacles because of her malformation and medial disabilities manifested by the Proteus syndrome.

Rebecca seeks to reach out to others who may be struggling with a disability or with a challenging life. By letting people know that they are not alone, Rebecca believes she is fulfilling God's purpose for her. She believes that God doesn't take anything away from us to make us sad or hurt us, but rather to make us stronger so that we can reach out to others and treat them with loving kindness.

Rebecca's story is one of strength, challenges, and the understanding that God has something better in store for her. It has been challenging for her to go from being able to walk to being bed bound, but she understands that sometimes we have to accept the hardest things in life in order to receive better things in the future. Our faith and trust in God can carry us through our difficulties.

It seems that government wants to invade every part of our lives: our workplace, our religion, even our families. And now our debt As a small businessman, I am appalled at the spending deficit, year after year. Don't our people in Congress know that even the interest on our national debt is a backbreaking load on our economy? Perhaps we have too many lawyers roaming the Hallowed Halls and too few responsible businessmen.

The awful specter of death overwhelmed me. Never again would I hear her bubbly laughter as she jumped into my lap to hug me. Never again would she delight us with her little-girl antics. I begged God to spare her. I confessed every sin I could remember. It was not to be. In His infinite wisdom, God took her home. Oh, Susan.

I consider the Bible to be the most practical book ever written. It teaches us how to live in a world that seems to consider honesty and integrity to be a fault. It teaches purity in a world where chastity is pictured as unnatural. It promotes self-sacrificial friendliness to a grasping, self-seeking world. It teaches us to live peaceably, and finally, it can prepare us for eternity.

""Sacred Journeys" is a totally fascinating book, raw with spiritual emotion and sexual frankness. I recommend that everyone read it."
--"Rev. Elder Troy Perry, Founder, Metropolitan Community Church"

"Paul Whiting tells his story in his own unique and engaging way, without apologies. He is a truth teller, a gifted preacher, an interpreter of the Word. "Sacred Journeys" is a valuable resource for every library."
--"Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson, Metropolitan Community Church"

"While gays and lesbians have gained acceptance among many Christians, the same is not true within conservative churches. Paul Whiting's writings will be of great interest to evangelicals going through experiences similar to his."
--"Andrew Shackleton, Evangelical Fellowship, United Kingdom"

Meyer's spirited and moving account of the life of King David follows the progress of David from humble shepherd to glorious king of Israel and Judah. The story of David's life and rise from modest beginnings is one of the most celebrated in the Old Testament tradition. This book is an attempt by F. B. Meyer to tell the story of David with a sequential and lively narrative, with the Bible as a source. Meyer's account is readable, colorful and thoroughly rooted in the authentic Biblical canon. We first see David as a bright, courageous young lad, who ascends from obscurity to fame and renown by fighting and defeating the great Goliath. Not merely a great leader, David takes to authoring a great series of sacred songs and hymns celebrating life and the Lord. His wise leadership, which increased the influence of Judaism and its interpretation of God, led David to become one of the most important figures in the Holy Bible.

Puppet, Protestant partisan, or Erasmian humanist: which, if any, was Thomas Cranmer? Although he was a key participant in the changes to English life brought about by the Reformation, his reticent nature and lack of extensive personal writings have left a vacuum. For the first time this book examines little-used manuscript sources to reconstruct Cranmer's personal and theological development.

The Life and Doctrine of Saint Catherine of Genoa is a biography of the fifteenth century Catholic visionary saint, Caterina Fieschi Adorno, who combined a seemingly limitless intense mystical devotion to Christ with a sweet, humble and obedient nature, and who is noted for her selfless ministrations to the poor and sick. This version of her Life and teachings was translated into English in 1873, from an Italian text largely produced by the spiritual director of her later years, Father Marabotto. This volume also contains her Spiritual dialogue between the soul, the body, self-love, the spirit, humanity, and the Lord God and Treatise on Purgatory .

This book is about my life. The only redemption I got was when God took me into His arms and set me upon a solid foundation. To say that God cannot help me because I am too messed up and bad is not true. If God could reach down and pull me out of the slime pit I spent time living in, He can do the same for you. There is no mountain high enough or no valley low enough that the arm of the Lord cannot reach.

This book is about walking on a path of destructive choices, all the while not realizing in the midst of rebellion and selfishness there was a merciful God standing by and waiting for me to call out to Him.

I can say I am saved and on my way to heaven, and that is true. The ultimate aim is to inspire and encourage folks who are finding it difficult to believe that their lives can change. If one person is helped by my story, then I have succeeded in what I set out to do.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

Few thinkers have been as influential as Augustine of Hippo. His writings, such as Confessions and City of God, have left an indelible mark on Western Christianity. He has become so synonymous with Christianity in the West that we easily forget he was a man of two cultures: African and Greco-Roman. The mixture of African Christianity and Greco-Roman rhetoric and philosophy gave his theology and ministry a unique potency in the cultural ferment of the late Roman empire. Augustine experienced what Latino/a theology calls mestizaje, which means being of a mixed background. Cuban American historian and theologian Justo Gonzalez looks at the life and legacy of Augustine from the perspective of his own Latino heritage and finds in the bishop of Hippo a remarkable resource for the church today. The mestizo Augustine can serve as a lens by which to see afresh not only the history of Christianity but also our own culturally diverse world.

This book offers a study of the cosmogonic works by Fr. Angelo Zottoli S.J., a Jesuit missionary who has received relatively little attention by modern scholars, but who deserves a special recognition for his theological and philosophical ideas. More generally, the book aims to shed light on the importance of cosmogony in the cross-cultural and interdisciplinary environment of Xujiahui, the area in modern Shanghai where Zottoli flourished. It shows how through Zottoli's teaching and sermons he was able to reimagine his own cosmogonic ideas, his personality, and his relationship with local Chinese converts. Among Zottoli's most famous students was Ma Xiangbo ( 1840-1939) and Zottoli played a crucial role in Ma's intellectual formation. A wider familiarity with Zottoli's works is not only interesting in and of itself, but also paves the way to future studies on the complex and multifaceted relationship between European missionaries and Chinese students in Shanghai during the nineteenth century.

Forging Freedom is the first full-length biography of Cerf Berr of Medelsheim (1726-1793), the formidable eighteenth-century emancipator of the French Jews. His early business providing forage for thousands of horses of the French military garrisoned in Alsace grew into a huge military supply business that earned him the profound respect of French Kings Louis XV and XVI. After receiving his French naturalization papers from Louis XVI as a reward for his service to the French Crown, Cerf Berr worked tirelessly on behalf of his Ashkenazi co-religionists to win their political emancipation in France on September 27, 1791.