Today's standard for morality is whatever is right in your own eyes. The world is experiencing moral decline, cultural shifts away from God, and hostility toward the things of God.
Through engaging stories and dynamic teaching, evangelist and prayer leader Joe Oden reveals the secret to every spiritual awakening in history: passionate prayers and humble hearts from believers willing to partner with the Holy Spirit. In this book you will learn how to
- develop a lifestyle of consistent, powerful prayer
- implement biblical and historical principles of revival
- cultivate personal habits that birth spiritual awakening
- release God's power to shift the atmosphere and shake the nations
God wants every believer to pray for regional, national, and global awakening. It's time to kneel humbly, rise bravely, and move boldly to see sweeping cultural revolution, signs, wonders, and deliverance-and the salvation of millions of souls that causes even skeptics to be in awe of God.
God's face is always shining toward us. Our God is not asleep, nor indifferent. But we don't always experience this nearness or the depth of how beloved we truly are-especially if we have experienced neglect, betrayal, or indifference in our formative human relationships.
Drawing from the deep well of Scripture, attachment theory, and her own personal story, Summer Joy Gross invites you to experience Emmanuel, God-with-us, as the One whose love toward you is secure and unchanging. She teaches you simple, repeatable practices grounded in biblical teaching and our rich and ancient church traditions that will equip you day-by-day to build a secure attachment with the God who holds you in a sure hand.
Because when you are rooted in God's nearness in the ordinary moments, you can rest in God in the midst of life's storms.
John Pavlovitz has inspired millions to keep boldly loving both neighbors and strangers throughout the years of Trump's hate-mongering campaign and presidency and continues to be a voice of sanity and urgency when so much is still at stake.
It's a scary time for America, with rights for women and transgender people being rolled back, the truth about Black history and experience being silenced, and unrestricted gun violence on the rise. People who value inclusion, compassion, and the common good are understandably anxious and angry-but we can't give up hope. We need motivation to keep fighting for justice.
This inspiring volume features Pavlovitz's most important writing from the past several years alongside brand-new essays to provide the encouragement, stamina, and direction we need to keep going, even when things feel bleak.
Many people are aware of the injustices Black Americans have suffered over the centuries but feel powerless when it comes to repairing the harm done.
The inequality remains even after laws and policies have been corrected. Calculating and implementing financial reparations will require large-scale government action, which can feel out of reach or overwhelming for the average person. Robert Turner provides an accessible guide for individuals and groups wanting to influence significant institutional action while also acting on their own to repair the effects of racial injustice in our communities, churches, and spheres of influence. Dividing into categories of individual, social, institutional, and spiritual repair, Turner offers the longest list of reparations currently published, with more than one hundred actions listeners can begin practicing and advocating for to help balance economic injustice, undo hurtful decisions from decades past, and rally public support for bold and principled legislation.
What do you do when life knocks you down? When you have to get up-day in and day out-and be strong for others while inside you're fighting deep emotional battles? When days, weeks, even months go by, and God still seems silent?
In the wake of her husband's deep betrayal and abandonment, bestselling author Courtney Joseph found herself drowning in fear, shame, and grief-and clinging to a God who seemed to have left, too. Now opening up about this dark season, she shows how to rise up after a heart-crushing struggle, cling to the promises in God's Word, and move forward stronger than before. Sharing the hard-fought lessons she learned, she helps you hold on to your faith when life wounds you; stand back up-and keep standing-after being knocked down; overcome discouragement and disillusionment; heal your hurts and let go; recover from loss and grief; and find enough strength, joy, rest, and peace for each day.
This dark valley will end. Here is the infusion of hope you need to rise, live well, and walk with the King.
You Said Yes to Jesus . . . Now What?
Committing your life to Jesus Christ is a thrilling experience filled with hope, purpose, and possibility. But for many new Christians, saying yes to Jesus is quickly followed by an enormous and weighty question: What do I do now?
Ten Essentials for New Christians provides you as a new believer with clear and enriching next steps in your walk with the Lord. As authors Stan Jantz and Bruce Bickel tell the story about God's love, they help you understand the life God wants you to live, both before God and with others. Far from being a dry instruction manual or rigid formula, Ten Essentials for New Christians is a casual and engaging conversation about God's profound love and its bearing on your life.
Whether you are brand new to the faith or recently decided to make a more earnest commitment to living in Christlikeness, you will find encouragement and direction in this straightforward guide. Like a new tree freshly planted, your faith will grow stronger as your roots sink deep into the soil of God's abundant love.
Being close to God means communicating with him-telling him what is on our hearts in prayer and hearing, and understanding what he is saying to us. But how do we hear God's voice? How can we be sure that what we think we hear is not our own subconscious? What role does the Bible play? What if what God says to us is not clear?
The key, says bestselling author Dallas Willard, is to focus not so much on individual actions and decisions as on building our personal relationship with our Creator. In this beloved classic, which now includes a foreword by James Bryan Smith, you'll gain rich spiritual insight into how we can hear God's voice clearly and develop an intimate partnership with him in the work of his kingdom.
The world has changed. The changes around us present daunting challenges to the church, and we minister in places we have never been in before. But there are no one-size-fits-all solutions because every church needs to attend to its specific situation and calling. We need to listen for not only what to do but also what not to do. In a world screaming in a thousand directions for our focus, it's essential for us to become attentive to God, our congregation, and our community.
Kevin Ford and Jim Singleton call for attentive churches with attentive leaders who can discern cultural and organizational change and pivot accordingly. Healthy transformation starts with a posture of attention. We need to see what God is already doing in our midst: in our own soul, in our people, and in the communities and culture around us. Chapters explore key questions that attentive leaders ask and offer case studies of attentive churches that have navigated the issues and transitions facing them. As we practice habits of attention, God leads us through the highs and lows of change into the exciting adventure of being on mission with him.
On the front lines of a clash of religions
US-born Protestant evangelicalism has gone global to the extent that many of us might be unaware of. This book tells the story of Americans' colossal mobilization to proclaim Christianity "to the ends of the Earth," a movement that triumphed in the Global South, challenged the Vatican, then turned east in full force after 9/11 to spread the Gospel among Muslims. When the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq set off a wave of anti-American attacks and made the field too dangerous for US missionaries, thousands of preachers, particularly from Latin America, were mobilized to finish the task.
In Soul by Soul, journalist Adriana Carranca follows the pilgrimage of a missionary family from Brazil, the world's largest Catholic country, to Afghanistan, where terror attacks against and killings of Christians have become increasingly common. Carranca brings us on a journey through the underground passages of the global evangelical movement as it clashes with the full force of militant Islamic groups in the Middle East, where contemporary religious wars are being fought, soul by soul.
Give yourself permission to slow down.
Jodi Grubbs did not give herself permission for too long, falling headlong into the endless rush and exhaustion of hustle culture. After leaving her childhood home on the island of Bonaire in the Caribbean, she had assumed the rapid pace and stress of city living in the States. Soon she realized God was bidding her to a return to the 'island time' of her past.
In time Jodi found sanctuary and ways to care for her soul by making space for God, others, and herself. Evoking the contentment she once had in the gentle rhythms of Bonaire, she learned of another path: a path away from burnout and toward restoration. And she invites you, too, to grasp a sustainable approach to life anchored by the forced pauses of spiritual practices and an openhandedness before God. Each chapter offers slow-living shifts to help you put the concepts into practice. Begin to rest and let go of the need to keep up, as you learn to live slowly.
According to Joseph Smith, in September of 1823 an angel appeared to him and directed him to a hill near his home. Buried there Smith found a box containing a stack of thin metal sheets, gold in color and covered with what appeared to be ancient engravings. Exactly four years later, the angel instructed Smith to translate the plates into English. When the text was published, a new religion was born. The plates have had a long and active life, and the question of their reality has hovered over them from the beginning. Months before the Book of Mormon was published, newspapers began reporting on the discovery of a Golden Bible. Within a few years, over a hundred articles had appeared. Critics denounced Smith as a charlatan for claiming to have a wondrous object that he refused to show while believers countered by pointing to witnesses who said they saw the plates. Two hundred years later, the mystery of the gold plates remains. In this book, renowned historian of Mormonism Richard Lyman Bushman offers a cultural history of the gold plates. Bushman examines how the plates have been imagined by both believers and critics—and by treasure-seekers, novelists, artists, scholars, and others—from Smith's first encounter with them to the present. Why have they been remembered, and how have they been used? And why do they remain objects of fascination to this day? By examining these questions, Bushman sheds new light on Mormon history and the role of enchantment in the modern world.
They were as troubled as we, our ancestors, those who came before us, and all for the very same reasons: fear of illness, a broken heart, fights in the family, the threat of another war. Corrupt politicians walked their stage, and natural disasters appeared without warning. And yet they came through, carrying us within them, through the grief and struggle, through the personal pain and the public chaos, finding their way with love and faith, not giving in to despair but walking upright until their last step was taken. My culture does not honor the ancestors as a quaint spirituality of the past but as a living source of strength for the present. They did it and so will we.
In the same voice that has comforted and challenged countless readers through his daily social media posts, Choctaw elder and Episcopal priest Steven Charleston offers words of hard-won hope, rooted in daily conversations with the Spirit. Every day Charleston spends time in prayer. Every day he writes down what he hears from the Spirit. In Ladder to the Light he shares what he has heard with the rest of us and adds thoughtful reflection to help guide us to the light.
Native America knows something about cultivating resilience and resisting darkness. For all who yearn for hope, this is a book of comfort, truth, and challenge in a time of anguish and fear.
