Living Religions

Christians are supposed to represent Christ to the world. But according to the latest report card, something has gone terribly wrong. Using descriptions like "hypocritical," "insensitive," and "judgmental," young Americans share an impression of Christians that's nothing short of . . . unChristian.

Nowhere was the vitality of Jesus more visible than in His love - compassionate, honest, powerful, humble, and sacrificial. Get to know Jesus, observe His life and His love as they unfold in the gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Combined with author Paul Miller’s own life stories, Love Walked Among Us will encourage you to imitate Jesus’ way of loving people in your relationships and community. Become more like Jesus and grow in your relationship with God.

In Beauty Will Save the World, Brian Zahnd presents the argument that this loss of beauty as a principal value has been disastrous for Western culture, and especially for the church. The full message of the beauty of the Gospel has been replaced by our desires to satisfy our material needs, to empirically prove our faith, and to establish political power in our world - the exact same things that Christ was tempted with and rejected in the wilderness.

In Holy in Christ, Andrew Murray delves deeper into God's plan for his children. Using scripture to illuminate God's call to holiness, Murray offers listeners insight into the purpose of eternity and all that we have to live for here on Earth. Profound and inspiring, Holy in Christ is truly a gift to believers seeking a deeper relationship with Christ.

Few subjects are as compelling-or as endlessly variable-as love and marriage. The Bible is filled with references to husbands and wives, from the story of Adam and Eve to advice in the New Testament, each open to interpretation. In The Meaning of Marriage, Timothy Keller, pastor of New York's Redeemer Presbyterian Church and bestselling author of The Reason for God, uses the scriptures as his guide to show readers what God's call to marriage is, and why this is such a powerful call.

An expert on youth and youth culture, McKee shares his own heart-rending story and offers a sobering glimpse into the rapidly changing world of bullies, bystanders, and the bullied while providing helpful ways to connect with these kids, open doors of dialogue, and give them the encouragement they need and the validation they're searching for...too often in all the wrong places.

In This Beautiful Truth, Sarah Clarkson shares her own encounters with beauty in the midst of her decade-long struggle with mental illness, depression, and doubt. In a voice both vulnerable and reflective, she paints a compelling picture of the God who reaches out to us in a real and powerful way through the "taste and see" goodness of what he has made and what he continues to create amid our darkness. "To recognize and trust God's gift in pain," she writes, "empowers us to create and love as powerful witnesses to God's healing love in a hopeless world."

Fear is the primary reason we fail to share the gospel with our friends, family, and coworkers. We're afraid of looking weird or out of touch. We're afraid we won't have the right answers to their questions. We're afraid that if they reject the gospel, they're really rejecting us. We don't want to make things awkward or strain our relationships. So we say nothing because our discomfort feels bigger than our loved ones' ultimate destination if they remain outside of the body of Christ. We know it's not, but it's just so hard to get over our fear.

Anyone can start a race, but it takes planning and training to finish it. A good long-distance runner knows the importance of planning his race. As he passes the starting line, he is already considering how he will cross the finish line. As he takes his first easy step, he has planned how he will take his last grueling step. As a Christian man, you are already running the race of life. You are not competing against other people but against the deadly enemies of the world, the flesh, and the devil. How do you plan to maintain your pace throughout this race?

Many know the heroic story of Jim Elliot’s violent death in 1956, killed by a primitive Ecuadorian tribe he was seeking to reach. Many also know the prolific legacy of Elisabeth Elliot, whose influence on generations of believers through print and broadcast testimony continues to resonate. What many don’t know is the remarkable story of how these two stalwart personalities - single-mindedly devoted to pursuing God’s will for their young lives, certain their future callings would require them to sacrifice forever the blessings of marriage - found their hearts intertwined.

We've all tried to think our way out of bad habits and unhealthy thought patterns, only to find ourselves stuck with an out-of-control mind and off-track daily life. Pastor and New York Times best-selling author Craig Groeschel understands deeply this daily battle against self-doubt and negative thinking, and in this powerful new book, he reveals the strategies he's discovered to change your mind and your life for the long-term.

Read in a single voice with subtle background music, the NIV Listener’s Audio Bible features Max McLean’s skillful, engaging, but never over-dramatized style reading the entire text of the Bible. This audio Bible will bring God’s Word to life during your personal and family devotion times, group Bible study, or during your weekday commute. Listen to just 13 minutes a day and you’ll get through the entire Bible in a year!

Many Christians find themselves mired in past regrets or future fears, but the name of God itself reminds readers that God wants them to live in the present. The more readers understand and apply God’s I AM statements from the Old and New Testaments, the more they will realize God’s peace and joy. Then they will be free to live, serve, and know God more richly in the present tense—which is just where He wants them to be.

As God allows us to understand the mystery and marvel of brain science, we have the exciting opportunity to reexamine our assumptions about human behavior. Perhaps nowhere does this impact our lives more profoundly than when we think about raising children - especially teenagers. Where parents often see a sweet boy or girl who has morphed into an incomprehensible bundle of hormones and angst, what we really ought to be seeing is an amazing young adult whose brain is under heavy construction.

Today's neurological research has placed habit at the center of human behavior; we are what we do repetitively. What would happen if we applied the same kind of daily dedication to faith? Could faith become a habit, a given-automatic? With vulnerable storytelling and insightful readings of both Old and New Testament passages, Jen Pollock Michel invites the convinced and the curious into a 40-day Bible listening experience. Vividly translating ancient truths for a secular age, Michel highlights how the biblical text invites us to see, know, live, love, and obey.

Our obsession with bigger and faster is spinning us out of control. We move through the week breathless and bustling, just trying to keep up while longing to slow down. But real life happens in the small moments, the kind we find on Tuesday, the most ordinary day of the week.

The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus' most inspiring and challenging description of the Christian counterculture. John Stott's teaching on this timeless text shows how its value system, ethical standard, religious devotion, and network of relationships clearly distinguish it from both the nominal church and the secular world. In this volume, Stott's The Message of the Sermon on the Mount is condensed into brief readings, suitable for daily use, that take us passage by passage through the scripture text.

In a penetrating and forthright style, Edward M. Bounds offers stimulating advice to Christian servants. "The preaching that kills may have insight and grasp of principles, may be scholarly and critical in taste, may have every minutia of the derivation and grammar of the letter....and yet may be like a frost, a killing frost. Preaching which kills is prayerless preaching. Without prayer, the preacher creates death, and not life.

Men are so busy doing so many different things. When not working, their free time is often full of the trivial or sinful. But what society and church so desperately need are men who embrace all that God created them to be, who long to follow God without limits and meet the needs of those around them without hesitation. To get there, we need what Pastor James MacDonald calls "radical surgery" - a deep, probing exploration and reparation of all that it means to be a man.

At the hidden center of man's being is the dwelling place of the triune God. It is such a private, intimate place that no one can intrude but Christ, and even he will enter only through an invitation of faith. Once the Spirit enters the core of the believer's heart and establishes residence there, man becomes a true child of God. But baptism, confirmation, receiving the sacraments, church membership, etc., mean nothing unless God has truly inhabited the soul.