Living Religions

Thubten Chodron’s illuminating explication of Togmay Zangpo’s revered text, The Thirty-Seven Practices of Bodhisattvas, doesn’t just explain its profound meaning; in dozens of passages she lets her students and colleagues share first-person stories of the ways that its teachings have changed their lives. Some bear witness to dramatic transformations.

This fast-paced, inspirational narrative reveals how God used one man of great courage, discipline, and humility to bring countless souls to Christ. God’s accomplishments through George Whitefield are to this day virtually unparalleled. In an era when many ministers were timid and apologetic in their preaching, he preached the gospel with aggressive zeal and undaunted courage. In the wake of his fearless preaching, revival swept across the British Isles, and the Great Awakening transformed the American colonies.

The sermon on the mount is full of sweet variety. It is a piece of spiritual needlework that is worked throughout with various colors. This is both useful and pleasant. In this portion of Holy Scripture, you have a synopsis of the Christian religion.

In this landmark work of emerging African American womanist theology, Delores Williams finds in the biblical figure of Hagar-mother of Ishmael, cast into the desert by Abraham and Sarah, but protected by God - a prototype for the struggle of African-American women. African slave, homeless exile, surrogate mother, Hagar's story provides an image of survival and defiance appropriate to black women today.

Do you feel discouraged, even defeated, in your battle against habitual sin? Elyse Fitzpatrick delves into the heart of the problem: deep down, we're all idol worshippers who put our loves, desires, and expectations in God's place - and then suffer the consequences of our misplaced affections. Yet God loves his people and can use even our messy lives and struggles for his glory. Fitzpatrick shows us how to better search and know our hearts, long for our gracious Savior, and resist and crush our false gods. Included are questions for further thought.

Written for anyone who wants to develop a deeper more meaningful relationship with God, Mansions of the Heart offers a step-by-step guide through a spiritual formation road map based on Teresa of Avila's Seven Mansions. The book includes a Mapping Tool that will help you discern your place on your spiritual journey and offers church leaders a process for helping church members to grow into spiritual maturity.

We live in a 24/7 culture of endless productivity, workaholism, distraction, burnout, and anxiety-a way of life to which we've sadly grown accustomed. This tired system of "life" ultimately destroys our souls, our bodies, our relationships, our society, and the rest of God's creation. The whole world grows exhausted because humanity has forgotten to enter into God's rest. Combining creative storytelling, pastoral sensitivity, practical insight, and relevant academic research, Subversive Sabbath offers a unique invitation to personal Sabbath-keeping.

Living Beyond Offense explores Jesus's teachings about forgiveness—what it is, what it costs, and what you gain when you put it into practice. Blending theology, Scripture, and pieces of her own life story, Yana Conner writes not as a blameless expert but as a fellow traveler on the forgiveness journey. Forgiveness is hard work, but you can learn to trust again! Despite the pain you've experienced, you will find ideas and encouragement for rooting yourself in God's trustworthiness and living in shalom once more.

To have found God and still to pursue Him is a paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religious person, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux stated this holy paradox in a musical four-line poem.

Bruising is needed so that reeds may know they are reeds, not oaks. Reeds need to be bruised because of the pride in our nature, the removal of which lets us live by mercy and faith. It is a difficult thing to bring a dull heart to cry for mercy. Our hearts, like malefactors, until they are beaten from all sides, never naturally cry for mercy from the Judge. But this bruising makes us set a high price upon Christ. It makes us more thankful and more fruitful in our lives.

Prayer is the key that unlocks all the storehouses of God’s infinite grace and power. All that God is, and all that God has, is at the disposal of prayer; but we must use the key. Prayer can do anything that God can do, and since God can do anything, prayer is omnipotent. No one can stand against the person who knows how to pray, who meets all the conditions of prevailing prayer, and who really prays, and if they are willing to pay the price. The price is prayer, much prayer, much real prayer, prayer in the Holy Spirit.

Every man was once a boy. And every little boy has dreams, big dreams: dreams of being the hero, of beating the bad guys, of doing daring feats and rescuing the damsel in distress. Every little girl has dreams, too: of being rescued by her prince and swept up into a great adventure, knowing that she is the beauty.

It is indifference that leaves people alone and allows them to go their own way. It is love, tender love, that warns them and raises the cry of alarm. The cry of “Fire! Fire!” at midnight might sometimes rudely, harshly, and unpleasantly startle a person out of his sleep, but who would complain if that cry was the means of saving his life? The words except you repent, you will all likewise perish might at first seem stern and severe, but they are words of love, and they could be the means of delivering precious souls from hell.

Physician Ed Wheat has helped thousands of couples improve their love lives and build happier marriages. In Love Life for Every Married Couple, he'll help you improve your marriage through sharing, touching, appreciating, and focusing healing attention on your mate. Answering physical, psychological, and stress-related questions in a Christian context, Dr. Wheat demonstrates how to bring your feelings of love back to life.

Proof: The Bible is Supernatural...If someone claimed that the Declaration of Independence is a brilliant document, all we need to do is study the Declaration itself to draw our own conclusion. Similarly, all we need to do is read the pages of the Bible to determine if it is indeed supernatural. The New Testament claims that the Old Testament is loaded with fuzzy pictures that are actually pictures of Jesus Christ

UnClobber reexamines what the Bible says (and does not say) about homosexuality in such a way that breathes fresh life into outdated and inaccurate assumptions and interpretations.

Can two women love the same man and still get along? Absolutely! Annie Chapman believes that a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law can become friends - even close friends. However, this connectedness often takes years to develop. Now that journey can be a joyful one! Offering practical advice and biblical wisdom, this book helps mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law nurture their relationships.

In these stormy times, loud voices from all fronts call for revolution and change. But what kind of revolution brings true freedom to both society and the human soul? Cultural observer Os Guinness explores the nature of revolutionary faith, contrasting between secular revolutions such as the French Revolution and the faith-led revolution of ancient Israel.

Although this is a small book, yet it presents you with matters of the greatest and most weighty concern, even with a discourse of life and death to eternity. It reveals and clarifies, by the Scriptures of God, that the time is at hand when there will be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust – even of the bodies of both, from the graves where they are, or will be, at the start of that day.

Repentance is not optional. It is not left to our choice whether or not we will repent, but it is an indispensable command. God has enacted a law in the High Court of heaven that no sinner will be saved except the repenting sinner, and he will not break his own law. No one can willfully continue in sin and expect to be covered by the blood of Christ. Even if all the angels stood before God and begged for the life of an unrepenting person, God would not grant it.