LITMIR.BIZ

Have you ever questioned your purpose in the stage and location of life you are in currently? Do you ever wonder if you are making a difference, or if you are even on the path that God intended? Does it seem like others around you are experiencing a faith adventure or a mission experience that you are missing out on? We don't have to travel to far corners of the world to be on mission. This book is an invitation and exploration to open your heart and eyes to experience the mission he has for you right in the community you are in. Understand your Mission My Town.

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When Baker yearns for something more, she discovers that the Christian message answers the deep yearning within each of us to resolve human suffering. Baker's conversion is not a blinding-light epiphany, but a process spanning years of agonizing conflict, echoing twenty centuries of misunderstanding between Christians and Jews. Living in the same city as her chagrined parents, she is forced to process difficulties related to family dynamics, group loyalty, and identity politics. Readers will be emboldened by Baker's decision to follow Christ at the risk of rupturing ties with family and community. Her book will appeal to all who seek God's guidance in making difficult life decisions. This book is a must-read for Christians who wish to engage with their Jewish friends. The Jewish mindset is tenderly revealed, showing why so many Jews bristle at the mere mention of Jesus.

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We are now becoming numbed by the outrageous events taking place within the political arena of our country. Throughout our nation, the division between factions continues to hold firm. The issue of how movement toward reconciliation can occur has become ever more pressing. Nothing short of our democracy is at stake. This book looks to the writings of the nineteenth-century Danish religious philosopher Soren Kierkegaard as a resource for thinking in fresh ways about how the divine power of creative transformation is at work in the world. Through divinity's empowering of our practices in relating to others, democracy can be resurrected to a new, healthy life. Six important themes from Kierkegaard's thought are used to do a comparative examination of Donald Trump together with his world and Kierkegaard and his world. The story of this standoff–between one of the world's most famous and well-publicized figures and one of the world's greatest thinkers–constitutes a compelling investigation and presents quite a contrast. Uncovered in the storytelling process of Kierkegaard trumping Trump are the «Sweet 16»: sixteen ways in which resurrection can be practiced in people's lives and help to restore our democracy to a fuller and more vibrant version of itself.

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In this important book of Quaker spirituality, Jim Newby writes about his spiritual journey and the ways he has sought to navigate an increasingly complex world and understand his purpose in it. A lifelong Quaker, Newby seeks to discern the primary ways in which he has grown spiritually, which are divided into the following parts: turning inward, community and relationship, pain and growth, path of a seeker, and affirmations. Each chapter within these parts concludes with queries to encourage readers to reflect upon their own spiritual journeys. Readers may find what Newby writes humorous, or his writing may provoke tears, questions, and challenges to one's beliefs. Humor and tears, questions and spiritual challenges, are all of God, for to grow in Spirit encompasses all the feelings and emotions through which we pass in this life. In the words of Newby's late friend and author, Malcolm Muggeridge, «Every happening great and small is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.» These reflections are Newby's attempt to get the message.

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Post-Christendom, Christian leaders and preachers in North America struggle to respond to anxiety and despair about the future of the church. Declining participation, fewer resources, decreased influence, and confusion about pastoral and ecclesial identity lead to fear for the survival of the institutional church. Preaching must speak to the despair and confusion faced by congregations today, as well as cast a hopeful vision for an uncertain future. This book argues that preachers can change the narrative of the church post-Christendom, by urging an exit from Christendom ecclesiology and promoting the construction of an identity that embraces vulnerability and incarnation instead of power and permanence. Counterintuitively, failure, decrease, and marginalization constitute good news for the church. Through wide-ranging conversation partners including postcolonial theory and theology, social science, systematic theology, and homiletic literature, this book engages preachers and scholars who seek to reimagine both gospel and ecclesial identity in order to bring new life to communities in despair. Preachers participate in a process of metamorphosis, in which the church's self-understanding is transformed into a vulnerable, incarnate community that leaves behind the character of Christendom.

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Scripture testifies that in the work of Jesus Christ the power of Satan, sin, and death has been broken. Yet on and on the ages roll, and wars rage, humans destroy one another and themselves, and natural evils such as earthquakes and tsunamis occur. We seem to suffer what J. H. Bavinck calls «the great delay,» still awaiting Christ's final victory.
In this illuminating survey of the book of Revelation, Bavinck examines the status of the church and the world in the times of the end but before the «final finish.» Bavinck suggests the church is based on its mission to show the way of God and share his good news in the world. This mission occurs in a world claimed by Christ's victory, but still marked by the demonic and human hubris. Revelation is a literature that discloses the church's perennial challenges in a time claimed and won by Christ, yet still resistant to his lordship. The book peels back the veil to expose a battle not only on earth, but in the heavens, and assures the sometimes faltering church that it is not forgotten and Christ's victory is certain.
Bavinck centers his account of Revelation in its chapter 12, the strange woman who is crowned and yet haunted and hunted, driven to the edge of civilization. He sees in this woman, the bearer of a child, a figure of the church that bears its child and Lord, Jesus Christ. Like the woman, the church in these times between the times, is both crowned as God's royalty and often scorned by the world.

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Surveys have shown that only about 10 to 30 percent of modern-day Christians have ever read through the entire Bible, much less extensively studied it. Instead, most rely on their church for the majority of their understanding of the teachings of Jesus. Exclusively relying on one institution for such vital information can be dangerous, yet this seems to be a trend in our society. Beware of Hypocrisy was written to explain why this trend is dangerous, and to encourage Christians to study the New Testament, especially the Gospels, themselves.
After almost two thousand years of making assumptions and inventing doctrines, churches have subtly changed, over time, the teachings of Jesus into something different from what is presented in the Scriptures. This will be demonstrated by analyzing the teachings of Jesus regarding a given topic as presented in the Bible, and then contrasting it with what churches teach and do regarding the subject.
The book concludes with encouragement from hope in the Word of the Lord. In addition, techniques for studying the Bible are presented, along with recommendations on Bible translations, online Bibles, and Bible apps.

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Laughter is important because we cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh, and this is true of our relationship with God. Having a sense of humor is essential for maturity in faith and holiness. Unfortunately, humor and the role that laughter plays in life and spirituality have often been neglected and the aim of Laughter and the Grace of God is to restore laughter to its central place in Christian spirituality and theology. It examines the role of laughter in Scripture and finds it in unexpected places including the story of Abraham and the formation of the covenant and the tragedy of Job. There is laughter in the incarnation, the resurrection, and even the crucifixion. Jesus is the great Laugh-maker. Thomas Aquinas spoke of the sin of having too little laughter as well as the danger of having too much, while Martin Luther said, «If you're not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don't want to go there.» Laughter is nothing less than a participation in the life and love of God.

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Everyone has experienced pain. No one is immune from loss and suffering. With all of the evil in this world, how can anyone rationally believe in a good and loving God? People who believe in God experience intense evil, yet they still retain their faith, claiming that God helps them in times of need. Still others claim that this same evil is proof that God does not exist; that if God were real, he would limit the suffering. If you have ever thought that it seems that things should be a certain way, that you are inclined toward believing, or not believing, in God because of the existence of evil, you are part of the conversation of the abductive problem of evil. This book does more than just explore what modern philosophers on both sides of the aisle have claimed about God and evil. It also illuminates an intricate world that is crafted for people having free will, for people who make moral choices. For it is within the realm of this intricate world that we may find the answers we seek.

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Perhaps Charles Wesley's two volumes of Funeral Hymns (1746 and 1759), plus a few poems left in manuscript form, are the least known of his poetical corpus. They are a treasury, however, of his views on the importance of women in eighteenth-century England as examples of how to live the Christian life. Entries in his MS Journal indicate an extremely positive relationship with women who are his coequals in mission and in the Methodist societies, and much of the work depended on them. Furthermore, Charles wrote numerous poems about women, often occasioned by death, which lift up individual women as models for the community at large and the church. The intent of this volume is not to present a historical survey of these women or their historical place per se in the early Methodist movement, rather the primary goal is to discover a literature that helps us to see the values which women had in the early Methodist movement and how those values were acknowledged, recorded, and fostered or encouraged by Charles Wesley, particularly in his poetry. The title, May She Have a Word with You, suggests there is a need today to hear of these women's exemplary words, deeds, and lives as a whole.

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