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In stirring verse and essays, Katy Bowser Hutson chronicles her battle with breast cancer and the complications of faith amid such a fight. Accentuated by the art of Jodi Hays, Katy's words lead us through the realization of cancer, the experience of chemotherapy and a mastectomy, relentless rounds of radiation, the uncertainty of ongoing treatment, and what comes after survival. She writes in resistance to sickness, of wrestling toward beauty: Cancer is an overgrowth, a kudzu: Tangling and strangling legitimate life. Chemo is a killing, a burning out: Burning down to ashy carbon, indiscriminately But cancer, did you know that I am a poet?Through it all, she shows what it means to struggle in a battered body and to pray to a God who is near to the broken. Join her in this consideration of mortality and witness her persisting trust in God's unseen ways.

What could be more important than knowing our faithful, triumphant, all-surpassing God? This five-session Bible study, based on J. I. Packer's bestselling classic Knowing God, explores the character and actions of God throughout Scripture, encouraging us to deepen our understanding, trust, and worship in response.

Have you ever daydreamed when trying to listen to God, or stumbled when speaking to him? In real prayer, head, heart, and hands go together. This book from J. I. Packer and Carolyn Nystrom leads us through different moods of praying, challenging and inspiring us to pray by pointing us to a clearer realization of God and his character.

This twenty-two-session guide takes readers through the essential truths of Packer's classic Knowing God as part of the fiftieth anniversary of the book. Individuals can stretch their understanding and allow the material to change their lives. Small groups can see God more clearly through rich and transforming discussions.

"Why are you still sad about that?"It takes time and space to grieve well, but often our culture doesn't afford us these things. Drawing from her own experience with grief, Natasha Smith invites us into a reflection on what it means to grieve and how to cling to hope even in our darkest moments. Instead of providing quick-fix solutions, this book creates space for us to take time to just sit and grieve, learn, and heal in healthy ways.In Can You Just Sit with Me? Smith provides personal stories, biblical reflections, relevant research, practical tools, and prayers that point us to God, who always sits with us in our grief. Whether we are grieving a loss or supporting a friend who is grieving, this book reminds us that every loss is worthy of the space and grace to grieve.

What does it take to have a spiritually vibrant household? Original research from the Barna Group and Lutheran Hour Ministries shows that some of the healthiest homes extend beyond the nuclear family. Don Everts shows how these households practice spirituality, hospitality, and community that make them delightful places to live and thrive.

The constraints of the spiritual life, practiced in community, are what set us free. Practicing spiritual disciplines can seem difficult, especially when we undertake them as isolated individuals. But we were never meant to practice them alone.Jared Patrick Boyd reveals how the constraints practiced in Christian community shape us into the way of Christ. He re-anchors the practices of constraint within the ascetic tradition of monasticism, religious orders, and the early church fathers. Boyd writes, "The constraints of a rule of life are what make life together, lived for one another, possible. A rule of life is not meant to be primarily personal, but communal. It's not primarily meant to guide my life. It is meant to describe our way of life together." Constraint is the practice of learning to pay deeper attention to the things in our inner world that prevent us from progressing in the school of love.Discover a deep conversation on freedom and constraint with six core practices of constraint that can form in us a greater freedom to be and become people who love as God loves. Enter into this vision with your local community (in small groups, church leadership teams, or families), and learn to make greater room to experience the love of God.

Being human is complicated! Our bodies, intellects and emotions are all God-given gifts, but we so often find them in varying states of disorder. How then, can we become the full bearers of God's image that we were made to be? In response to this profound question, Ros Clarke helpfully outlines what the Bible has to say about the nature of humanity. Addressing our status as created beings; our purpose in God's world; our nature as body and soul; and our fall away from God, Human unpacks questions around the issues of identity, sexuality and gender. It then turns to Christ's example as the perfect human, and considers Jesus' teaching about each of us being loved, valued and redeemed. A teaching that remains foundational for all discussions around important topics like inclusivity, disability and race.Written with both humour and pastoral concern, and including a study guide to aid personal reflection and group discussion, this book will help you consider afresh what it means to be a human.

How do we bring meaning to our work, instead of being defined by what we do? "Corporate mystic" Barry Rowan invites us to see our work as a chance to serve God by contributing to a better society. With forty short chapters, this book beckons us into a connection with God that will infuse our lives, our offices, and our world with meaning.

Discipleship without mission is discipleship without Christ.The church often lacks maturity and missional impact because discipleship is at its periphery. In order to get discipleship to the center, leaders need a locally rooted, culturally contextual discipleship pathway to tether disciples who are disciplemakers to the neighborhood or network around them.Pastor and discipler E. K. Strawser shows that when discipleship becomes central to your leadership and community, then discipleship becomes central to congregational mission and cultural renewal. Centering Discipleship is a gutsy practice-based guidebook for leaders who are doing the hard work of re-imagining and re-structuring their churches and communities to turn spectators into missional, mature followers of Jesus.

Have you lost your footing in church? Or has the church lost its footing?Many of us feel unsteady, disoriented, even crushed after an endless string of scandals within the walls of a place meant to offer compassion and safety. Others feel forced to draw back or distance ourselves from the church. All the while, our instincts tell us this is not what Jesus wanted for his people. But what did he intend?After four decades of ministry, Anglican bishop Todd Hunter is no stranger to betrayal and pain in the church. Still, he has hope. He believes more than ever that Jesus is who the world needs and that Jesus has plans for his followers. In What Jesus Intended, Hunter offers a vision for emerging from the rubble of bad religion and rebuilding faith among a community of sincere believers. By unpacking the purposes of Jesus, we can expose twisted, toxic religion for what it is and embrace the true aims of the gospel.Come for a fresh hearing of Jesus--one that offers us the healing and goodness we've always longed for.

Crises around race have put the church in a reactive, defensive posture, but Jesus wants more. He wants Christians to play offense by discipling people into a new humanity that pushes beyond mere diversity so that the church becomes the aroma of Christ to our culture and gains ground against the demonic foothold of racism in all its forms.

Pentecost is one of the most misunderstood days on the church calendar. In this Fullness of Time volume, Emilio Alvarez offers us a rich biblical and theological introduction to the day of Pentecost and sets it in its liturgical context--not only in the Protestant tradition but also in Catholic, Orthodox, and Pentecostal expressions.

Want to unleash the "remarkable" in your team? This guide from experienced leaders will both inspire and equip your team to move from floundering to flourishing. Filled with practical examples, reflection questions, diagnostic tools, and group activities, this resource lays out the practical action plan you need to build an unbreakable team.

Heaven is multiethnic, "a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language." But in this diverse community shouldn't have to wait until eternity to begin! It can be a reality now. Here, the authors give biblical warrant for such a community and show how multiethnic churches provide a unique apologetic for the gospel.

The pandemic changed the world on a global scale. Not only was it devastating in terms of loss of life, it also revealed deep layers of anxiety and brokenness throughout society. Mental exhaustion, economic disparities, and escalating divisions now mark our times.But award-winning author Chris Rice sees the challenges of our day as a historic opportunity for renewal and fresh growth. As he examines eight interrelated crises exposed by the pandemic era, he provides pathways for followers of Christ to bring transformation and healing to their lives and communities. Covering topics ranging from a burnout society and a dangerous bipolar world order to our own divided selves, Rice helps readers to understand this emerging world that will reshape our lives for decades to come.Drawing from his work across divides domestically and around the world, and writing with vulnerability and honesty about his own failings, he sets forth transformative practices that can move us toward social healing and spiritual renewal.

A well-known challenge of Jesus to his followers is to become like little children. Lacy Finn Borgo considers this invitation to childlike faith and explores seven different ways of welcoming the child within. Offering wisdom from years of experience as a spiritual director, Borgo explores practices to welcome and enliven your childhood self.

Jesus knows you.Do you want to know Him?In this 365-day devotional, Catherine Campbell invites you to spend a year focusing daily on the life, teachings and ministry of Jesus Christ. Warmly written and firmly rooted in Scripture, Consider Him offers personal stories, anecdotes and narrative biblical retellings to draw our minds and hearts closer to Him. Catherine also seeks to spur our reflection into action with entries that feature opportunities not just to be listeners of the Word, but doers of it as well.Whether you are beginning, renewing or deepening your relationship with Jesus, let Consider Him guide you towards the author and perfecter of our faith.

Church planting is in vogue, yet there is a paucity of sustained biblical and theological reflection on the topic.Key voices are practitioners and planters themselves - here is the biblical theology that the missiological practice of our day has been crying out for.John Valentine explores the Bible's 'how' and 'why' for starting new churches and revitalizing old ones - in this robust and comprehensive biblical theological look at one aspect of the mission of God.

Hyper-individualism and consumerism are failing to satisfy our hunger for meaning. We face an identity crisis in which real community is increasingly hard to find. The culture wars have been painful and polarising and have proved a poor way to agree any kind of moral standards. Is it even possible to find a vision for goodness that can bring us together?Rumours of a Better Country addresses our hunger for justice and a better way of living by awakening our moral imagination to the potential of a trusting community. Drawing on ancient wisdom and looking through the lens of daily reality, it shows how trust and trustworthiness must be the foundation for any kind of meaningful freedom.Through the questions and mysteries of the 'Café Now and Not Yet', readers will experience chance encounters with Palestinians in a pub in communist Czechoslovakia, appreciate an intriguing sculpture from Romania and hear post-communist Ukrainians struggling to imagine a better life. Each of these encounters provides a real-life context for a rich and provocative journey into the heart of goodness and why it matters.

In her book Embracing Rhythms of Work and Rest, Ruth Haley Barton explores the gift of sabbath. This journal offers selected wisdom from the book, blank spaces for written responses, and fifty-two prompts to launch divine dialogue as you intentionally develop the habit of pausing to reflect.

We can't ignore color, class, or culture. Instead, we must engage race with a different posture. Responding to ongoing problems of prejudice and injustice, the original seven sayings of the gracist now become eight in this revised and expanded edition that revives the biblical model for showing special grace to those on the margins.

How do we make the most of the time we have? In our harried modern world, Os Guinness calls us to consequential living, restructuring our notion of history as linear and purposeful, not as cyclical or meaningless. We can seek to serve God's intentions for our generation and discern our call for this moment in history.

For most people, sorrow, anxiety, and mental illness are everyday experiences. The burden of living comes down to mundane choices that we each must make--like the daily choice to get out of bed. In this deeply personal essay, Alan Noble considers how carrying on amid great suffering is a powerful witness to the goodness of life, and of God.

Chris Chrisman, a young Christian, goes to college only to have his world turned upside down. On campus he finds the challenges to his faith -- both intellectual and personal -- almost more than he can bear. Then he meets Bill Seipel and Bob Wong. Together, the three young men, two of them Christians and the other a self-styled atheist, forge a common bond in the quest for truth. In the process they confront some of the dominant ideologies of the secular university. Weaving the story of Chris's first year on campus with separate expository chapters on such forces as individualism, pluralism, relativism and privatization, James Sire offers a helpful apologetic for those who are searching for truth in a postmodern world. He identifies no fewer than six types of relativism, from "All religions boil down to the same thing" and "It's true for you; it's not true for me" to "God does not exist; naturalism is true." Then in down-to-earth language Sire helps readers to think through these and other complex issues.

Beloved Christian musician Rich Mullins lived his life with abandon for God. An accident cut his life short in 1997, but his songs and ragamuffin spirit continue to teach many. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition of his devotional biography shares reflections from friends and family and an afterword by Rich's brother David Mullins.