God Is on Your Side, How Jesus Is for You When Everything Seems Against You

Have you ever wondered if God is on your side? If he’s really for you?

It’s easy to answer “Yes!” when life is going well. It’s harder to believe when your marriage is imploding, your child is in the hospital, or a close friend betrays you.

Respected pastor and author Joshua Ryan Butler invites you to discover that, even when God feels like an aloof observer of your pain, he is right beside you, shielding and guiding you in ways you can't imagine.

This book is for those haunted by a nagging sense that God is indifferent or disappointed in them. Tracing key moments in the life of Jesus from the gospel of John, Butler helps us see:

• How God is present even when he seems silent
• Why God's love is not deterred by doubt or sin
• How to experience Jesus in a fresh way
• How to overcome guilt, insecurity, and shame

Butler helps us see that our greatest comfort is not what we've done to win God's love, but all that God's love has done to win us. There is no truth more transforming than this: God is on your side.

This issue of Veterinary Clinics of North America: Small Animal Practice, with Editors Drs. Tisha Harper and Ryan Butler, focuses on Hip Dysplasia. Article topics include: Etiopathogenesis of hip dysplasia, incidence and genetics; Clinical signs and physical examination findings; Diagnostic imaging; OFA and PennHip Treatments; Medical management of hip dysplasia; Surgical management of hip dysplasia; Pain management - Hip Denervation; Juvenile Pubic Symphysiodesis;Triple pelvic osteotomy (TPO), and double pelvic osteotomy (DPO); Total Hip Replacement; Femoral Head and Neck Excision; The role of physical therapy for dogs with hip dysplasia.

Is God lost? Many of us feel that way. It's as if God's gone missing, out in the universe somewhere-and we must pick up the hunt, following any trail of breadcrumbs he may have left to go out and find him. We speak of "searching for God," "exploring spirituality," and "finding faith." But what if we have it backward? What if God is the one pursuing us? What if our job is not to go out and find God, but simply to stop running and hiding? Not to earn God's love, but to receive it? Not to turn on the light, but to step out of the shadows? Jesus reveals a God on the prowl, pursuing us, hunting down his world for reconciliation. And the question we're left with is not whether we've pursued hard enough, searched long enough, or jumped high enough . . . The question is, "Do we want to be found?"

How can a loving God send people to hell? Isn't it arrogant to believe Jesus is the only way to God? What is up with holy war in the Old Testament?

Many of us fear God has some skeletons in the closet. Hell, judgment, and holy war are hot topics for the Christian faith that have a way of igniting fierce debate far and wide. These hard questions leave many wondering whether God is really good and can truly be trusted.

"The Skeletons in God's Closet" confronts our popular caricatures of these difficult topics with the beauty and power of the real thing. Josh Butler reveals that these subjects are consistent with, rather than contradictory to, the goodness of God. He explores Scripture to reveal the plotlines that make sense of these tough topics in light of God's goodness. From fresh angles, Josh deals powerfully with such difficult passages as:

The Lake of FireLazarus and the Rich ManThe Slaughter of Canaanites in the Old Testament

Ultimately, "The Skeletons in God's Close "uses our toughest questions to provoke paradigm shifts in how we understand our faith as a whole. It pulls the "skeletons out of God's closet" to reveal they were never really skeletons at all.