Download or read book If Grace Is So Amazing Why Don t We Like It written by Donald McCullough and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 2005-03-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound . . . or is it? Grace set to music is one thing, but what about grace itself? What about grace as an idea, an act, a force? Grace upsets the natural balance, turning the law of cause and effect on its head. Our instinctive reaction is to pull back from grace. Rather than recognizing our unworthiness to receive this completely undeserved gift from God, we want to believe that, on balance, something in our lives merits the good that comes our way, that we deserve whatever gifts we receive. And if we find it difficult to accept grace for ourselves, how much more unwilling are we to have it handed to others? When someone gets off the hook too easily, aren't we uncomfortable? A miscarriage of justice, we think. That's not fair! But real Christian faith requires that we accept and embrace this radical thing called grace. It’s not about being fair: God’s grace will turn your world upside down¾ if you let it.

Download or read book If Grace Is So Amazing Why Don t We Like It written by Donald McCullough and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 2009-01-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound . . . or is it? Grace set to music is one thing, but what about grace itself? What about grace as an idea, an act, a force? Grace upsets the natural balance, turning the law of cause and effect on its head. Our instinctive reaction is to pull back from grace. Rather than recognizing our unworthiness to receive this completely undeserved gift from God, we want to believe that, on balance, something in our lives merits the good that comes our way, that we deserve whatever gifts we receive. And if we find it difficult to accept grace for ourselves, how much more unwilling are we to have it handed to others? When someone gets off the hook too easily, aren't we uncomfortable? A miscarriage of justice, we think. That's not fair! But real Christian faith requires that we accept and embrace this radical thing called grace. It’s not about being fair: God’s grace will turn your world upside down¾ if you let it.

Download or read book What s So Amazing About Grace Revised and Updated written by Philip Yancey and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2023-10-03 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: OVER TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD! It's the most powerful force in the universe, our only hope for love and forgiveness, and a foretaste of eternal life: amazing, radical, life-changing grace. Millions of lives have been changed by award-winning author Philip Yancey's startling exploration of grace at street level. Grace is the one thing the world can't duplicate, the healing force we need, and the key to transforming a broken world. In this revised and updated edition of his personal and provocative book, Yancey offers true portraits of grace's life-changing power. These stories, set in the midst of life's stark realities, evoke such questions as: If grace is God's love for the undeserving, how do I get it? How well are we dispensing grace to a world that knows far more of strife and unforgiveness than it does of mercy? Can grace make a difference in the midst of such atrocities as the Nazi holocaust, and how can it withstand the brutality of hate? With powerful stories, rich theology, and practical suggestions, Yancey challenges us to become living answers to a world that desperately needs to know, What's So Amazing About Grace?

Download or read book Grace written by Philip Yancey and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stunningly innovative visual edition of the award-winning What's so amazing about grace? by bestselling author Philip Yancey. This visual edition takes the text of the Gold Medallion Award-winning original and illustrates its themes and message with provocative full-color photography and illustrations. You'll 'experience grace' as you interact with its engaging visual content.

Download or read book Grace Looks Amazing on You written by Amy Seiffert and published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if today is the perfect time to notice God’s grace in one another? Women are so often weighed down by comparison, anxiety, and fear that the idea that grace could look amazing on them feels unbelievable. But all around us are flashes of grace, shining examples of God’s love. Amy Seiffert says it’s the everyday moments that Jesus shines through: making time for a friend even when your to-do list is pages long; apologizing to your neighbor when you don’t want to admit you are wrong; opening the Bible when your soul feels hollow and empty. Making the choice to accept God’s limitless love no matter what and reflecting it back to the world around you—friend, that’s when His grace looks amazing on you. A perfect gift to affirm and encourage any woman, Grace Looks Amazing on You is a timeless Christian message packed with personal story and reflection, Scripture, and deep biblical truth. This 100-day devotional will help you change your perspective so you can confidently radiate the grace of Christ.

Download or read book Grace Not Perfection Bible Study Guide written by Emily Ley and published by HarperChristian Resources. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn to let go of your daily toil towards perfection and fall into the lasting freedom of God's grace. As a wife, new mother, business owner, and designer, Emily Ley reached a point when she suddenly realized she couldn't do it all. She needed to simplify her life, organize her days, and prioritize her priorities. She realized that she had been holding herself to a standard of perfection, when what God was really calling her to do was accept the welcoming embrace of his grace. In this four-session video-based study (DVD/video streaming sold separately), Emily—author of A Simplified Life­—describes the journey that led to her pursuing a life that allowed her to breathe, laugh, and grow. Along the way, she'll take you and your group through strategies to simplify your lives. Because God so abundantly pours out grace on us, we can surely extend grace to ourselves! This message is for anyone who has been trying to do it all…only to feel like you're burning out. Learn to find joy, acceptance, and clarity in the midst of life's beautiful messes. Sessions include: Let Go of the Perfect Life Surrender Control Build True Community Live in God’s Grace Designed for use with the Grace, Not Perfection Video Study (sold separately).

Download or read book If Grace Is True written by Philip Gulley and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2004-11-23 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues the theological stance that all people will be saved through God's grace, offering a message of hope that explains how Christians can reconcile a love for non-Christian people.

Download or read book Future Grace Revised Edition written by John Piper and published by Multnomah. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore this stunning quality of God’s grace: It never ends! In this revision of a foundational work, John Piper reveals how grace is not only God’s undeserved gift to us in the past, but also God’s power to make good happen for us today, tomorrow, and forever. True life for the follower of Jesus really is a moment-by-moment trust that God is dependable and fulfills his promises. This is living by faith in future grace, which provides God's mercy, provision, and wisdom—everything we need—to accomplish his good plans for us. In Future Grace, chapter by chapter—one for each day of the month—Piper reveals how cherishing the promises of God helps break the power of persistent sin issues like anxiety, despondency, greed, lust, bitterness, impatience, pride, misplaced shame, and more. Ultimate joy, peace, and hope in life and death are found in a confident, continual awareness of the reality of future grace.

Download or read book One Way Love written by Tullian Tchividjian and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tchividjian is convinced our exhausted world needs a fresh encounter with God's inexhaustible grace: His one-way love.

Download or read book Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart written by J. D. Greear and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “If there were a Guinness Book of World Records entry for ‘amount of times having prayed the sinner’s prayer,’ I’m pretty sure I’d be a top contender,” says pastor and author J. D. Greear. He struggled for many years to gain an assurance of salvation and eventually learned he was not alone. “Lack of assurance” is epidemic among evangelical Christians. In Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart, J. D. shows that faulty ways of present- ing the gospel are a leading source of the confusion. Our presentations may not be heretical, but they are sometimes misleading. The idea of “asking Jesus into your heart” or “giving your life to Jesus” often gives false assurance to those who are not saved—and keeps those who genuinely are saved from fully embracing that reality. Greear unpacks the doctrine of assurance, showing that salvation is a posture we take to the promise of God in Christ, a posture that begins at a certain point and is maintained for the rest of our lives. He also answers the tough questions about assurance: What exactly is faith? What is repentance? Why are there so many warnings that seem to imply we can lose our salvation? Such issues are handled with respect to the theological rigors they require, but Greear never loses his pastoral sensitivity or a communication technique that makes this message teachable to a wide audience from teens to adults.

Download or read book Jesus Religion written by Jefferson Bethke and published by HarperChristian + ORM. This book was released on 2013-10-14 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abandon dead, dry, religious rule-keeping and embrace the promise of being truly known and deeply loved. Jefferson Bethke burst into the cultural conversation with a passionate, provocative poem titled "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus." The 4-minute video became an overnight sensation, with 7 million YouTube views in its first 48 hours (and 23+ million in a year). Bethke's message clearly struck a chord with believers and nonbelievers alike, triggering an avalanche of responses running the gamut from encouraged to enraged. In his New York Times bestseller Jesus > Religion, Bethke unpacks similar contrasts that he drew in the poem--highlighting the difference between teeth gritting and grace, law and love, performance and peace, despair, and hope. With refreshing candor, he delves into the motivation behind his message, beginning with the unvarnished tale of his own plunge from the pinnacle of a works-based, fake-smile existence that sapped his strength and led him down a path of destructive behavior. Along the way, Bethke gives you the tools you need to: Humbly and prayerfully open your mind Understand Jesus for all that he is View the church from a brand-new perspective Bethke is quick to acknowledge that he's not a pastor or theologian, but simply an ordinary, twenty-something who cried out for a life greater than the one for which he had settled. On this journey, Bethke discovered the real Jesus, who beckoned him with love beyond the props of false religion. Praise for Jesus > Religion: "Jeff's book will make you stop and listen to a voice in your heart that may have been drowned out by the noise of religion. Listen to that voice, then follow it--right to the feet of Jesus." --Bob Goff, author of New York Times bestsellers Love Does and Everybody, Always "The book you hold in your hands is Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz meets C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity meets Augustine's Confessions. This book is going to awaken an entire generation to Jesus and His grace." --Derwin L. Gray, lead pastor of Transformation Church, author of Limitless Life: Breaking Free from the Labels That Hold You Back

Download or read book Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade written by John Newton and published by Wildside Press LLC. This book was released on 2022-05-16 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 18th century essay on the evils of slavery and human trafficking, by a member of the British clergy, remains as powerful today as when it was first published. It begins: The nature and effects of that unhappy and disgraceful branch of commerce, which has long been maintained on the Coast of Africa, with the sole, and professed design of purchasing our fellow-creatures, in order to supply our West-India islands and the American colonies, when they were ours, with Slaves; is now generally understood. So much light has been thrown upon the subject, by many able pens; and so many respectable persons have already engaged to use their utmost influence, for the suppression of a traffic, which contradicts the feelings of humanity; that it is hoped, this stain of our National character will soon be wiped out.

Download or read book Grace Is Greater written by Kyle Idleman and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The writer of the letter to the Hebrews said, "See to it that no one misses the grace of God." Over the centuries much ink has been spilled on the subject of grace. Yet perhaps nothing is as hard to explain as God's grace. It doesn't make sense. It's not fair. It can't possibly cover over what I've done. The best way--perhaps the only real way--to understand it is to experience it. But too often in our churches we're not getting grace across and grace is not experienced. Bestselling author and pastor Kyle Idleman wants everyone to experience the grace of God. Through the powerful medium of story, Grace Is Greater leads readers past their hang-ups toward an understanding of grace that is bigger than our mistakes, our failures, our desire for revenge, and our seemingly impossible situations. No sin is so great, no bitterness so deep that God's grace cannot transform the heart and rewrite the story. Perfect for individuals and also for small groups and church-wide studies, Grace Is Greater will help readers truly grasp God's grace, even if the Christians around them have failed to live it.

Download or read book The Scandal of Forgiveness written by Philip Yancey and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the true depth of what forgiveness is, what it demands of you, and how it sets you free. Forgiveness offers an alternative to an endless cycle of resentment and revenge that we often see in this world, but it can be difficult to understand its true power without first understanding God’s scandalous grace and forgiveness of us. In The Scandal of Forgiveness—an adaptation of the bestselling book What’s So Amazing About Grace?—author Philip Yancey will take you on an exploration of forgiveness and its clear connection to the gospel. You’ll learn how: Forgiveness is more powerful than getting even. The idea of forgiveness shatters the “eye for an eye” logic of the world. To see and shed the illusions surrounding grace and forgiveness. To accept the full impact of grace and what it means to be a grace-full Christian. The Scandal of Forgiveness reveals how you can adopt the forgiveness the world is searching for. You’ll learn how to authentically forgive and grow closer in your relationship with God

Download or read book The Discipline of Grace written by Jerry Bridges and published by NavPress. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God's Role and Our Role in the Pursuit of Holiness You are never beyond the reach of God's grace. Neither are you ever beyond the need of God's grace. Without grace we'd never come to Christ. But being a Christian is more than just coming to Christ, it's about growing and becoming more like Jesus. This pursuit of holiness is hard work, and as we enter into this discipline, we sometimes lose sight of grace. Jerry Bridges helps us steer clear of this disastrous distraction, offering a clear and thorough explanation of the gospel and what it means to the believer. Explore how the same grace that brings us to Christ also grows us in Christ. Includes full study guide (which was previously sold as a stand-alone discussion guide, ISBN 9781576839904).

Download or read book Where the Light Fell written by Philip Yancey and published by Convergent Books. This book was released on 2023-03-14 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this searing meditation on the bonds of family and the allure of extremist faith, one of today’s most celebrated Christian writers recounts his unexpected journey from a strict fundamentalist upbringing to a life of compassion and grace—a revelatory memoir that “invites comparison to Hillbilly Elegy” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). “Searing, heartrending . . . This stunning tale reminds us that the only way to keep living is to ask God for the impossible: love, forgiveness, and hope.”—Kate Bowler, New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason Raised by an impoverished widow who earned room and board as a Bible teacher in 1950s Atlanta, Philip Yancey and his brother, Marshall, found ways to venture out beyond the confines of their eight-foot-wide trailer. But when Yancey was in college, he uncovered a shocking secret about his father’s death—a secret that began to illuminate the motivations that drove his mother to extreme, often hostile religious convictions and a belief that her sons had been ordained for a divine cause. Searching for answers, Yancey dives into his family origins, taking us on an evocative journey from the backwoods of the Bible Belt to the bustling streets of Philadelphia; from trailer parks to church sanctuaries; from family oddballs to fire-and-brimstone preachers and childhood awakenings through nature, music, and literature. In time, the weight of religious and family pressure sent both sons on opposite paths—one toward healing from the impact of what he calls a “toxic faith,” the other into a self-destructive spiral. Where the Light Fell is a gripping family narrative set against a turbulent time in post–World War II America, shaped by the collision of Southern fundamentalism with the mounting pressures of the civil rights movement and Sixties-era forces of social change. In piecing together his fragmented personal history and his search for redemption, Yancey gives testament to the enduring power of our hunger for truth and the possibility of faith rooted in grace instead of fear. “I truly believe this is the one book I was put on earth to write,” says Yancey. “So many of the strands from my childhood—racial hostility, political division, culture wars—have resurfaced in modern form. Looking back points me forward.”

Download or read book When the Bottom Drops Out written by Robert Bugh and published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-10-12 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nobody is immune to disappointment. Unfortunately, at some point all of us will face that horrific moment when the bottom completely drops out of out of our life, leaving us broken, devastated, and desperately searching for God’s grace. Pastor and theologian Robert Bugh has experienced unthinkable pain and disappointment firsthand, having lost both his wife and his best friend to cancer within a year and a half of each other. Though devastating, Bugh’s tragedy also brought him into a stronger, deeper relationship with God. When the Bottom Drops Out chronicles Rob’s journey from loss to restoration and shows readers how to find and hold tightly to Christ through even the most painful episodes of life. Bugh’s story is proof positive that while pain and disappointment are an unavoidable part of life, God is nonetheless faithful, holding us close at all times and in all circumstances.