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Nearly everyone wants God to bless them. That is why Christian hymns such as «There Shall Be Showers of Blessing» are so well-known. This same promise of God is also based on a specific Bible verse, Ezekiel 34:26. The purpose of this book, There Will Be Showers of Blessing, is to explore God's promise of showers of blessing in its biblical setting and to apply God's promises to his people in the twenty-first century. By doing so, the reader will learn about four specific blessings that God, as the Shepherd of his people, wants to give to those who trust in his love and power. And, once we are all wet and overwhelmed by God's blessings, Christians will discover that they are to extend those four blessings to the people around them. This book also describes the nature of a blessing so people will understand why God's blessings are so special and miraculous.

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Jerusalem, 2002: the height of the second intifada. Kobi Benami is a middle-aged psychologist whose life is in shambles. His wife has thrown him out for his casual philandering; his daughter refuses to speak to him; and the new clinic director has placed him on probation for his indifferent work habits.  At this desperate juncture, Kobi gets a new patient, Israela, whose story is full of uncanny biblical references, and whose powerful and enigmatic husband, Y, may or may not exist. Israela hasn't seen Y in months, but she is being stalked by his prophet-like emissaries who span a wide spectrum of Israeli society–Orthodox to secular, right-wing settlers to left-wing urban elites–united only in their harsh condemnation of Israela, fierce devotion to Y, and connection to The Outstretched Arm, a sinister organization purported to be run by Y.  As Kobi becomes ensnared in a surreal encounter with the anthropomorphized story of ancient Israel, and increasingly preoccupied with questions about the nature and existence of Y, he is forced to confront his own dysfunctional life patterns, his family's tragic past, and the endless war that rages around him.

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Classical Christian theologies came to expression at a time when the universe seemed relatively fixed and unchanging. The otherworldly spiritual instincts of many religions reflected a static, vertical, and hierarchical understanding of the natural world. Today, however, especially because of developments in the sciences, it appears that the universe is still coming into being. The writings offered in this book reflect their author's belief that if the universe is unfinished, new thoughts about God and all the traditional theological topics are essential to make sense of it all. John Haught argues that the universe is best understood according to the metaphor of drama rather than design. This means that the most important question in science and theology today is not whether the intricate complexity of life points to a deity, or even how God acts in nature, but whether the cosmic drama as a whole carries a meaning.
Unfortunately, the devotional life of most religious people on our planet still presupposes an essentially immobile universe. Christian instruction, for example, continues to nurture an otherworldly piety that estranges nature unnecessarily from God. The readings in this book, however, suggest that the ancient Abrahamic hope for the coming of God from out of the future may now become the foundation of a scientifically up-to-date theology of nature that affirms divine transcendence without robbing nature of its significance.

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This book studies kingship with reference to the Johannine Jesus. Postcolonialism leads us to an avenue from which to read this Gospel in the more complex and wider context of the hybridized Jewish and Greco-Roman worlds of the Roman Empire in the first century CE. This provides a new perspective on the kingship of the Johannine Jesus, whose kingly identity is characterized by hybridized christological titles. For the Johannine readers in the first century, who were exploited, oppressed, yet at odds with both the colonizer and the colonized in the Roman Empire, this Gospel was deemed to reveal his identity. Using many christological titles, it presented Jesus as the universal king going beyond the Jewish Messiah(s) and the Roman emperors and also as the decolonizer who came to «his own» world to liberate his people from the darkness. In this respect, the ideology of the Johannine emphasizes that love, peace, freedom, service of the center for the margins, and forgiveness are the ruling forces in the new world where Jesus reigns as king. Raising an awareness of these ideologies, John's gospel asks readers to overcome the conflicting world shrouded in darkness, thenceforth entering the new Johannine world.

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Jim Meagher's world as a young man in the Irish-American neighborhood of Riverdale, New York, in the 1950s was a familiar and comfortable one, defined by family, church, school, and friendship. But was there something more to experience from life that could only be found outside those friendly confines? What if he could be a great man, with power and influence and riches?
Life would soon take him beyond Riverdale–far beyond it–and teach him valuable lessons about duty, honor, and responsibility. Along the way, laughter and love would also be companions as Jim Meagher discovered the new world awaiting him beyond Brush Avenue–and also discovered that power and influence and riches are not always what a young man wants or needs. \

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Everyday Holiness presents the spiritual journey to and with Christ as possible, noble, challenging, and rewarding. It describes the many aspects of holiness and how it is essential to our growth in Christ. Holiness is the most important developmental area in life and the greatest goal to which we can aspire. The Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales wrote: «All of us can attain Christian virtue and holiness no matter in what condition of life we live and no matter what our life's work may be.» This book should be read slowly, prayerfully, and seriously. It invites us to ponder the meaning of life and how holiness benefits every aspect of our church, our society, and ourselves. Because all good things lead to God, the book infuses a deeper meaning into the ordinary circumstances of daily life, thus showing how holiness is not a static reality but a dynamic force that transforms every aspect of our day. The book is replete with concrete examples and practical illustrations that show how living holiness is possible today. Indeed, holiness is our greatest need, deepest joy, and hardest challenge. Everyday Holiness is for everyone who wants to love God more and serve him better.

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The pastor who seeks to preach expositionally through Psalms faces a daunting task, for the sermon series would take several years to complete and many of the sermons would seem repetitious because of similar psalms. To respond to this challenge the author has used the book theology method to analyze the Book of Psalms into twenty-eight theological themes, providing the preacher with material for approximately a one-year series on the book. Each chapter includes a list of applicable theological propositions that can be preached or taught to contemporary audiences. Then the chapter concludes by linking the topic to New Testament passages. This monograph contains over seventy tables, mainly charting the Hebrew terms used for a particular theme. Careful textual and exegetical notes provide guidance for translation and interpretation of many verses. Furthermore, relevant Hebrew word studies inform theological understanding. Backing up the analysis are numerous references to Psalm commentaries, both classical and contemporary.

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Eli Washington Caruthers's unpublished manuscript, American Slavery and the Immediate Duty of Southern Slaveholders, is the arresting and authentic alternative to the nineteenth-century hermeneutics that supported slavery. On the basis of Exodus 10.3–"Let my people go that they may serve me"–Caruthers argued that God was acting in history against all slavery. Unlike arguments guided largely by the New Testament, Caruthers believed that the Exodus text was a privileged passage to which all thinking on slavery must conform. As the most extensive development of the Exodus text within the field of antislavery literature, Caruthers's manuscript is an invaluable primary source. It is especially relevant to historians' current appraisal of the biblical sanction for slavery in nineteenth-century America because it does not correspond to characterizations of antislavery literature as biblically weak. To the contrary, an analysis of Caruthers's manuscript reveals a thoroughly reasoned biblical argument unlike any other produced during the nineteenth century against the hermeneutics supporting slavery.

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И ведь Это [Произведение] – напоминание Тебе и Твоему народу,и Вы будете спрошены!Когда он пришел к ним с Нашими знамениями,они над ним рассмеялись.[сура 43 Аз-Зухруф, аят 43 (44),46 (47)]Не над Аллахом разве, Его знамениями и Его посланником вы издевались?Не извиняйтесь! Вы оказались неверными, после своей веры![сура Ат-Тауба, аят 66 (65),67 (66)]

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It's the most important subject in Christianity. It reveals who God is, how God works, how we mature as followers of Jesus, and how we are to conduct ourselves in this sinful world. The subject is suffering. To explore it biblically and inspirationally is to identify the basic elements of a responsible Christian theology that's more than a set of pious abstractions. This subject forces us close to where we hurt, doubt, believe, and relate to our neighbors.
God suffers, Jesus cries. The tears of God are the deepest meaning of our history. God's «problem» is not that God is not able to do certain things, but that God loves. The cross of Jesus was in God's heart before it appeared on Golgatha. The pain of God is the healing of humanity. The cross, the worst of human doing and the best of divine revelation, clarifies that we must die to really live. We must share in the sufferings of Jesus.

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