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Advanced Writers and Speakers Association's Golden Scroll Merit
Award 12th Annual Outreach Resource of the Year Recommendation Our
culture is frantic with worry. We stress over circumstances we
can't control, we talk about what's keeping us up at night and we
wring our hands over the fate of disadvantaged people all over the
world, almost as if to show we care and that we have big things to
care about. Worry is part of our culture, an expectation of
responsible people. And sadly, Christians are no different. But we
are called to live and think differently from the worried world
around us. The fact is, worry is sin, but we don't seem to take it
seriously. It is a spiritual problem, which ultimately cannot be
overcome with sheer willpower-its solution is rooted entirely in
who God is. How can we live life abundantly, with joy, as God has
called us to do, when we're consumed by anxiety? We are commanded
not to worry, not only in the well-known words of Jesus recorded in
Matthew 6, but also throughout the Old Testament and the epistles
to the church. The Bible makes it clear that the future belongs
only to God, who rules and is not subject to the limitations of
time. To live with joy and contentment, trusting God with the
present and the future, is a countercultural feat that can be
accomplished only through him. Challenging the idolatrous
underpinnings of worry, former Christianity Today executive Amy
Simpson encourages us to root our faith in who God is, not in our
own will power. We don't often give much thought to why worry
offends God, but indulging anxiety binds us to mere possibilities
and blinds us to the truth. Correctly understanding the theology of
worry is critical to true transformation. This is a book not just
for people who worry; this is a call to the church to turn its eyes
from the things of earth and fix its eyes on the author and
completer of our faith.
The 2014 Christianity Today Book Award Winner (Her.meneutics)
Winner of a 2013 Leadership Journal Book Award ("Our Very Short
List" in "The Leader's Outer Life" category) Mental illness is the
sort of thing we don't like to talk about. It doesn't reduce nicely
to simple solutions and happy outcomes. So instead, too often we
reduce people who are mentally ill to caricatures and ghosts, and
simply pretend they don't exist. They do exist, however--statistics
suggest that one in four people suffer from some kind of mental
illness. And then there's their friends and family members, who
bear their own scars and anxious thoughts, and who see no safe
place to talk about the impact of mental illness on their lives and
their loved ones. Many of these people are sitting in churches week
after week, suffering in stigmatized silence. InTroubled Minds Amy
Simpson, whose family knows the trauma and bewilderment of mental
illness, reminds us that people with mental illness are our
neighbors and our brothers and sisters in Christ, and she shows us
the path to loving them well and becoming a church that loves God
with whole hearts and whole souls, with the strength we have and
with minds that are whole as well as minds that are troubled.
Christians often hear the idea that following Jesus means that we
should be living a life of full satisfaction. How many of us
actually experience that kind of life? Amy Simpson wants to debunk
this satisfaction myth in the church. After forty years of walking
with Jesus, she writes, "I am deeply unsatisfied not only with my
ability to reflect Jesus, but also with the very quality of my
intimacy with him. I strongly suspect that the abyss of my nature
has not been entirely satisfied by Jesus." Hers is a freeing
confession for us all. Simpson explains that our very
unsatisfaction indicates a longing for God, and understanding those
longings can bring us closer to relationship with him. And that is
where true spiritual health and vitality reside. Read on to
discover anew what it truly means to be satisfied in Christ.
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