LITMIR.BIZ

What if we changed the face of evangelism? In a time when so many have a negative perception of evangelism, what if a new model was entirely biblical, loaded with skills, and more effective? Soul Whisperer shifts the emphasis from «telling» to a «drawing» paradigm. It develops biblically the pattern of Jesus, who did not give static presentations but rather customized his words to each hearer. By learning his ways, our words, too, can have pinpointed impact! Christians will discover how to draw out first, in order to read their friends and discern the relevant appeal of the gospel. In this way, the style is far more dynamic. It adapts! Understanding the non-believer's unique starting point will determine a distinct path. By creating a conversation about spiritual influence and what is involved in faith formation, this book charts ways for Christians to go deeper in evangelistic relationships. Most importantly, Soul Whisperer infuses skills that will shape a more Christ-likened missional disciple.

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Teaching on the sanctification of Christians using the difficult word perfection has been part of Christian spirituality through the centuries. The Fathers spoke of it and Augustine particularly contributed his penetrating analysis of human motivation in terms of love. Medieval theologians such as Bernard and Thomas Aquinas developed the tradition and wrote of levels or «degrees» of «perfection» in love. However, the doctrine has not fared so well among Protestants. John Wesley was the one major Protestant leader who tried to blend this ancient tradition of Christian «perfection» with the Reformation proclamation of justification by grace through faith.
This book seeks to develop Wesley's synthesis of patristic and Reformation theology in order to consider how Christian «perfection» can be expressed in a more nuanced way in today's culture. Noble examines what basis may be found for Wesley's understanding of sanctification in the central doctrines of the church, particularly the atonement, the doctrine of Christ, and the most comprehensive of all Christian doctrines, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. What he sets out is a fully trinitarian theology of holiness.

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This book is a vital resource for intervention programs, educators, social workers, counselors, psychotherapists, pastoral counselors, and survivors of intimate violence and their families. It gives the reader access to the inner emotions and psychological mechanisms of survivors of intimate violence in collective cultures that work to hold them captive in violent relationships. The author integrates the psychological developmental theories of Heinz Kohut and Erik Erikson with social, cultural, and religious aspects to demonstrate the collusive power of what she calls the orienting system (psychosocial and religious cultural force) in the formation of a female sense of self, to investigate the peculiar range of responses of females to intimate violence. Using theoretical and empirical research, the author claims that the demeanor and functionality of the female survivor of intimate violence is an adaptation that enables her to retain her socially prescribed roles, which she appropriates as a social identity and sense of self. A surprising aspect of this work is the transformative power of religion, also resourced in the orienting system, in transforming the psychic hold of survivors to cathected self-objects, to self-images that approximate a self in healthy relationship with God. Consequently the energies and investment released can be redirected to cohere in self-identities that can optimize drive, thrive and relationality.

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God's Fingerprints seeks to show why Christianity is the only rational faith system appropriate to the universe we inhabit. The super-person of God the Holy Trinity alone will suffice.
Starting from scientific tools that we all may use, and constraints to which we all are subject, God's Fingerprints moves to the very simple evidence of everyone's experience, arriving at the question of our origins, possible religious and philosophical views we may adopt, and the central questions of truth and morals.

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Every individual has a story–painful or happy–and the story will only be complete and meaningful when shared with others willing to listen to it. These are the stories of several people who embarked on a journey toward healing from abortion, adoption, abuse (sexual and spousal), anger, bullying, cutting, infertility, divorce, grief, people pleasing, and fear, as well as people struggling to break the chains of psychological colonialism/neocolonialism and to survive as orphans. This book contains a wealth of knowledge on how transformation of life can take place using Narrative Counseling. Most of the stories shared in this book are personal to many of the authors. Some share their journey of struggling with hopeless situations to where they regained hope through counseling using the Narrative approach. Others, such as the orphaned children, found relief in just having someone sit with them to listen to their daily struggles of living an orphaned life. In this book you will find a place where these stories will somehow intersect with your own story. Take a chance, read, and you will find a glimmer of hope in these stories.

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What is it to confess the Christian faith, and what is the status of formal confessions of faith? How far does the context inform the content of the confession? These questions are addressed in Part One, with reference to the Reformed tradition in general, and to its English and Welsh Dissenting strand in particular. In an adverse political context the Dissenters' plea for toleration under the law was eventually granted. The question of tolerance remains alive in our very different context, and in addition we face the challenge of confessing and commending the faith in an intellectual environment in which many question Christianity's relevance and rebut traditional defenses of it.
In Part Two it is recognized that Christian confessing is an ecclesial, not simply an individual, calling, and that the one confessing church catholic is visibly divided over doctrine and practice. Suggestions for ameliorating this situation are offered, though the final resolution may be a matter for the eschaton. Until then Christians are called to witness faithfully and to live hopefully as citizens of heaven. In an epilogue the challenges and pitfalls of systematic theology as a discipline involving both confession and commendation are explored.

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Catherine Booth's achievements–as a revivalist, social reformer, champion of women's rights, and, with her husband William Booth, co-founder of The Salvation Army–were widely recognized in her lifetime. However, Catherine Booth's life and work has since been largely neglected. This neglect has extended to her theological ideas, even though they were critical to the formation of Salvationism, the spirituality of the movement she cofounded. This book examines the implicit theology that undergirds Catherine Booth's Salvationist spirituality and reveals the ethical concerns at the heart of her soteriology and the integral relationship between the social and evangelical aspects of Christian mission in her thought. Catherine Booth emerges as a significant figure from the Victorian era, a British theologian and church leader with a rare if not unique intellectual and theological perspective: that of a woman.

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God's Creative Gift is an in-depth study for the creative Christian. It is intended for both professional and lay artists, for the casual crafter and hobbyist, and for those in both sacred and secular settings. It is for those who see things where others do not and for those whose imaginations cannot be confined by religious dogma and tradition. It is for musicians, singers, painters, sculptors, dancers, dramatists, writers, poets, carvers, weavers, film editors, photographers, filmmakers, architects, designers–anyone who finds inspiration in creativity.
Focusing on the creative spirit within, it is designed to help you draw your inspiration from a Deeper Source. It is deeply rooted in Scripture–for the creative Christian must enter into the Word of God on a regular basis in order to know the choreographer of her steps, the crafter of her designs, the author and perfecter of her faith, and the sculptor of her creative heart, soul, mind, and body. And to know Him intimately.

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Liturgical Elements for Reformed Worship is a series of four liturgical resources: three consisting of liturgical elements for Years A, B, and C of the Revised Common Lectionary, and a fourth, the first such resource to support the implementation of Year D: A Quadrennial Supplement to the Revised Common Lectionary (Cascade Books). Each volume consists of a Call to Worship, Opening Prayer, Call to Confession, Prayer of Confession, and Declaration of Forgiveness, with Years A-C including additional elements (A Prayer in Preparation for Worship, The Offering, Prayer of Dedication, and a Blessing) suitable for Presbyterian, Reformed, and other Protestant worship. Each of these practical volumes is intended for use by pastors, liturgists, and other planners and leaders of worship.

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Humans are lovers, and yet a good deal of pedagogical theory, Christian or otherwise, assumes an anthropology at odds with human nature, fixed in a model of humans as «thinking things.» Turning to Augustine, or at least Augustine in conversation with Aquinas, Martin Heidegger, the overlooked Jesuit thinker Bernard Lonergan, and the important contemporary Charles Taylor, this book provides a normative vision for Christian higher education. A phenomenological reappropriation of human subjectivity reveals an authentic order to love, even when damaged by sin, and loves, made authentic by grace, allow the intellectually, morally, and religiously converted person to attain an integral unity. Properly understanding the integral relation between love and the fullness of human life overcomes the split between intellectual and moral formation, allowing transformed subjects–authentic lovers–to live, seek, and work towards the values of a certain kind of cosmopolitanism. Christian universities exist to make cosmopolitans, properly understood, namely, those persons capable of living authentically. In other words, this text gives a full-orbed account of human flourishing, rooted in a phenomenological account of the human as basis for the mission of the university.

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