Download or read book Finding God Within written by Ray Leonardini and published by Lantern Books. This book was released on 2016-10-01 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nearly a decade, Ray Leonardini has been visiting the incarcerated in Folsom State Prison and other correctional facilities, where he has been teaching and facilitating contemplative prayer—the contemporary manifestation of the ancient Christian meditative tradition. In Finding God Within, Leonardini demonstrates the extraordinary power of contemplative (or centering) prayer in transforming the lives of prisoners, and offers insightful analyses of biblical passages that show the power of prayer, faith, and surrender to ease addiction, stress, and despair. Filled with testimonies of prisoners who have been helped by centering prayer, Finding God Within is an essential introduction to contemplative prayer for people of all faiths engaged in prison ministry.
Download or read book Finding God in Prison written by Jack Berryman and published by . This book was released on 2012-11-20 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a series of stories, bible studies and testimonies of men who have found God in prison and who have been able to give up their criminal lifestyle.
Download or read book Tony Evans Book of Illustrations written by Tony Evans and published by Moody Publishers. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Picture this: it’s Saturday afternoon, and you’re putting the finishing touches on tomorrow’s sermon. You’ve been thinking, researching, and praying about this message all week, and thankfully, feel prepared. That is, except for one small detail—you aren’t sure how to begin. For more than 30 years, Tony Evans has been connecting with audiences around the world. Now his tools are available for you. Don’t leave your listeners to connect the dots. Let Tony Evans’ Book of Illustrations help you illustrate your point in a way they can’t forget.
Download or read book Finding God in My Loneliness written by Lydia Brownback and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2017-02-14 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Young or old, single or married, male or female—at some point in life, we're all confronted with loneliness. We try to fill the void or change our circumstances so we no longer feel the pain. But what if our pangs of loneliness are meant to point us to something greater? Looking at various aspects of loneliness, Lydia Brownback reminds us of God's power to redeem our loneliness and use it in our lives to draw us to himself. Ultimately, she helps us see that even when we feel misunderstood, forsaken, or abandoned, we're never really alone. God is always with us, and only he can meet all of our needs in Christ Jesus.
Download or read book Refuge in Hell written by Lemmert, Ronald, D. and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on 2018-08-23 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Without romanticizing the prisoners in his stories, the author--who served for many years as the Catholic chaplain at Sing Sing prison--humanizes them, offers a compelling picture of the reality of an oppressive criminal justice system, and describes the challenge and joy of proclaiming the gospel in such an environment.
Download or read book Free on the Inside written by Sr Greta Ronningen and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Free On the Inside is a spiritual classic. Written from a deep Christian faith and a passionate love for Jesus, it offers hope and concrete guidance for how to survive a season of incarceration with your soul not only preserved but transformed. This book describes how a prison cell can become a monastic cell, how imprisonment can be a time of spiritual rehabilitation, and how those who are incarcerated have a sacred lineage with prisoners in the Bible who found God within their captivity. Sr. Greta Ronningen offers a spiritual path for those imprisoned. She shows how the traumatic roots of destructive behavior can be healed; how wrongs can be forgiven; how broken relationships can be restored; and how prayer and spiritual practice can transform a prison sentence into an encounter with God. With Sr. Greta's compassionate heart and skillful guidance, one can discover how even jails are holy ground.
Download or read book Finding God Within written by Ray Leonardini and published by . This book was released on 2022-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thoughtful and moving guide on the many benefits of contemplative prayer and meditation taught and guided in a prison setting. For over a decade, Ray Leonardini has been visiting the incarcerated in Folsom State Prison and other correctional facilities, where he has been teaching and facilitating contemplative prayer--the contemporary manifestation of the ancient Christian meditative tradition. In Finding God Within: Contemplative Prayer for Prisoners, Leonardini demonstrates the extraordinary power of contemplative, or centering, prayer in transforming the lives of prisoners. Leonardini offers insightful analysis of biblical passages that show the power of prayer, faith, and surrender to ease addiction, stress, and despair. Finding God Within is an essential introduction to contemplative prayer for people of all faiths engaged in prison ministry and interested in exploring contemplative prayer mediation. This new edition includes a new chapter on The Welcoming Prayer, a new foreword and afterword, and a chapter on the documentary based on this book. It replaces the previous edition (9781590565513) published in 2016.
Download or read book Doing Time with God Stories of Healing and Hope in Our Prisons written by MR Bill Dyer and published by . This book was released on 2013-09-30 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: True crime stories provide the foundation of this prison memoir. Bill Dyer was robbed and shot at an ATM. In Doing Time with God, you go into prison with him and other victims of violence to meet with convicted felons who will be facing their worst and greatest realizations, before they are released. Nothing is predictable when victims and offenders come together and share their stories of the true crimes that have devastated their lives...and reshaped them. Victim-survivors remember their losses and feel their pain; Offenders come face-to-face with the hurt they have caused, and open wounds from their own past. Walls of defensiveness and fear are knocked down by empathy and compassion, vulnerability and tears. Raw emotions flow. The way to peace is often intense, turbulent, and heartbreaking. Even when it's not pretty, the journey is beautiful in its honesty... miraculous in the way it unfolds...divine in how it transforms lives. This Amazing Process Opens the Heart, Touches the Soul, and Renews the Mind
Download or read book Down in the Chapel written by Joshua Dubler and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2013-08-13 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold and provocative interpretation of one of the most religiously vibrant places in America—a state penitentiary Baraka, Al, Teddy, and Sayyid—four black men from South Philadelphia, two Christian and two Muslim—are serving life sentences at Pennsylvania's maximum-security Graterford Prison. All of them work in Graterford's chapel, a place that is at once a sanctuary for religious contemplation and an arena for disputing the workings of God and man. Day in, day out, everything is, in its twisted way, rather ordinary. And then one of them disappears. Down in the Chapel tells the story of one week at Graterford Prison. We learn how the men at Graterford pass their time, care for themselves, and commune with their makers. We observe a variety of Muslims, Protestants, Catholics, and others, at prayer and in study and song. And we listen in as an interloping scholar of religion tries to make sense of it all. When prisoners turn to God, they are often scorned as con artists who fake their piety, or pitied as wretches who cling to faith because faith is all they have left. Joshua Dubler goes beyond these stereotypes to show the religious life of a prison in all its complexity. One part prison procedural, one part philosophical investigation, Down in the Chapel explores the many uses prisoners make of their religions and weighs the circumstances that make these uses possible. Gritty and visceral, meditative and searching, it is an essential study of American religion in the age of mass incarceration.
Download or read book God in Captivity written by Tanya Erzen and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eye-opening account of how and why evangelical Christian ministries are flourishing in prisons across the United States It is by now well known that the United States’ incarceration rate is the highest in the world. What is not broadly understood is how cash-strapped and overcrowded state and federal prisons are increasingly relying on religious organizations to provide educational and mental health services and to help maintain order. And these religious organizations are overwhelmingly run by nondenominational Protestant Christians who see prisoners as captive audiences. Some twenty thousand of these Evangelical Christian volunteers now run educational programs in over three hundred US prisons, jails, and detention centers. Prison seminary programs are flourishing in states as diverse as Texas and Tennessee, California and Illinois, and almost half of the federal prisons operate or are developing faith-based residential programs. Tanya Erzen gained inside access to many of these programs, spending time with prisoners, wardens, and members of faith-based ministries in six states, at both male and female penitentiaries, to better understand both the nature of these ministries and their effects. What she discovered raises questions about how these ministries and the people who live in prison grapple with the meaning of punishment and redemption, as well as what legal and ethical issues emerge when conservative Christians are the main and sometimes only outside forces in a prison system that no longer offers even the pretense of rehabilitation. Yet Erzen also shows how prison ministries make undeniably positive impacts on the lives of many prisoners: men and women who have no hope of ever leaving prison can achieve personal growth, a sense of community, and a degree of liberation within the confines of their cells. With both empathy and a critical eye, God in Captivity grapples with the questions of how faith-based programs serve the punitive regime of the prison, becoming a method of control behind bars even as prisoners use them as a lifeline for self-transformation and dignity.
Download or read book Finding God Within written by Raymond Leonardini and published by . This book was released on 2012-11-28 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Most people understand "prayer" to be asking God for various favors - health, safety, forgiveness, wisdom, or to express gratitude for gifts received. We learn to talk to God at an early age. As we grow older, and our lives become impossibly more complicated, we wonder: why doesn't God answer my prayers? Why does God feel so far away from me? Many prisoners doubt any connection with God, and believe that God has forgotten them. Often traditional religious practices seem equally distant and empty. Contemplative Prayer is an entirely different approach to God and prayer. It is based on God speaking to us. All the techniques of this prayer focus on learning to "listen" to the Silence of God, letting go of past images of God, and getting beyond the negative judgments about our relationship with God. It is a direct and intimate route to the Divine, and a turbo-charged path to personal transformation."
Download or read book Finding God in the Movies written by Catherine M. Barsotti and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2004-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experience God in the movies! A valuable resource guide examining over thirty films and their theological impact. Excellent for film buffs and church leaders alike.
Download or read book Prison Ministry written by Lennie Spitale and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 2002 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Empowering any pastor, educator, or lay leader in doing effective prison ministry by providing a thorough inside-out view of prison life.
Download or read book Jail House Religion written by Stephen Canup and published by . This book was released on 2017-07-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After being on top of the world with an office on Park Avenue, Stephen Canup lost it all and found himself homeless and incarcerated. Jail-House Religion is his true life story of God's redeeming love and grace. "Jail-House Religion", a term we have all heard and often made fun of, can be "the real thing" and not just "a cheap imitation". Stephen Canup knows first-hand how real and lasting a true relationship with Jesus can be. Jesus found Stephen in prison - broken, bound, battered, betrayed and busted. But Jesus saved him and changed him forever. This is his story."Jail-House Religion"-How many times have we heard that phrase? It's usually in a mocking way. Is it the "real thing" or a "cheap imitation"? Can someone really find God in a jail or prison? Is God close enough to sinners there to hear their sincere cry? Can a person really be heard by Him if they commit, or re-dedicate, their hearts to walk with Christ? Can He actually use a convict, who turns his life around, to advance the cause of His Kingdom?Having once been incarcerated for nearly three years, Stephen knows first-hand what "society" says and thinks about prisoners - they call them misfits, outcasts and career criminals. For the most part, they despise prisoners. Society thinks they are worthless, dangerous and not capable of changing their ways. But many people have been "imprisoned" in the free world by their own bad choices even though they may have never been actually "incarcerated". When someone is as low as they can go, and think that the only "light at the end of the tunnel" is a train headed their way, what do they do? When they finally wake up one day and realize they are sick and tired of being in bondage because of our own stupid actions, wrong decisions and addictions, to whom do they turn? Isn't this the best time to cry out to God?God always runs to welcome truly repentant sinners! Stephen's story is very much like "the prodigal son" in Luke 15!
Download or read book God s Prison Gang written by Walter Wagner and published by Fleming H. Revell Company. This book was released on 1977 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the gripping behind-the-scenes accounts of the lives and crimes of men and women who met God in lonely prison cells.
Download or read book Free on the Inside written by Greta Ronningen and published by . This book was released on 2022-06 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Finding God at Harvard written by Kelly K. Monroe and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 1997-09-18 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kelly Monroe presents forty-two compelling testimonies from faculty members, former students, and orators at Harvard University whose reflections explode the myth that Christian faith cannot survive a rigorous intellectual environment.
