Download or read book With written by Skye Jethani and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2011-08-22 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With explores the narrative of the Bible to show that we were created to be with God, and that restoring this connection is his mission. Instead of life over, under, from, or even for God, what leads us into freedom and restoration is life with God. Why are American Christians, who have more access to biblical teaching than any other people in history, failing to experience the freedom of the Christian life? Why are pastors, those closest to the work and ministry, burning out at an alarming rate? Why do many church members, who give large amounts of their time and wealth to Christ and his kingdom, secretly question the legitimacy of their efforts? And why are spiritual seekers dismissing the validity of the Christian message? Is it possible we’ve misunderstood the call of the Christian life? A life lived in rich communion with God cultivates faith, hope, and love in a way that transforms both us and the broken world we inhabit. In With, you’ll find: illustrations of concepts in the book to aid understanding; recommendations for how to practice communion with God, including three helpful practices; and a discussion guide for use when continuing the conversation with others in small groups. Endorsements: If we've grown weary of Christianity, if we find most any local church uninspiring, maybe the problem lies not in the Christian faith or these faithful bodies, but in our own disgruntled hearts. In With, Skye Jethani tenderly unmasks the clichéd posturing that too often masquerades as genuine communion with Christ. More importantly, he takes readers to the humble place they must occupy--in prayer, studying Scripture, with the Church--if faith, hope, and love are to truly mark our lives. -James H. Gilmore, author, The Experience Economy It doesn’t matter, as old theologians were rumored to argue, how many angels can dance on a pinhead. But it does matter which preposition governs your faith--over, after, against, for, from, under, with. Who knew what huge worlds turn on such tiny words? Who knew what theological riches were laced into the bones of grammar? Skye has done a great service to the church. In prose elegant and clear, with insights keen and deep, he shows how everything changes with just one word: With. It’s a book I want my whole church to read. -Mark Buchanan, author of Spiritual Rhythm Who knew that a preposition had so much influence? Skye's book will challenge the way that you think about God and faith, digging deep into our motivations and heart issues. You can't read this book and not see yourself and others differently! -Margaret Feinberg, author of Scouting the Divine and Hungry for God

Download or read book Who is Your Covering written by Frank A Viola and published by . This book was released on 2002-08-01 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Reimagining the Bible written by Howard Schwartz and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1998 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays from Schwartz's previously published work exploring how each successive phase of Jewish literature has drawn upon and reimagined previous ones and arguing that there is a continuity in Jewish Literature which extends from the biblical era to our own times.

Download or read book God Is Here written by Toba Spitzer and published by St. Martin's Essentials. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Toba Spitzer's God Is Here is a transformative exploration of the idea of God, offering new paths to experiencing the realm of the sacred. Most of us are hungry for a system of meaning to make sense of our lives, yet traditional religion too often leaves those seeking spiritual sustenance unsatisfied. Rabbi Toba Spitzer understands this problem firsthand, and knows that too often it is traditional ideas of the deity—he's too big, too impersonal, and too unbelievable—that get in the way. In God Is Here, Spitzer argues that whether we believe in God or fervently disbelieve, what we are actually disagreeing about is not God at all, but a metaphor of a Big Powerful Person that limits our understanding and our spiritual lives. Going back to the earliest sources for Judaism as well as Christianity, Spitzer discovers in the Hebrew Bible a rich and varied palette of metaphors for the divine—including Water, Voice, Fire, Rock, Cloud, and even the process of Becoming. She addresses how we can access these ancient metaphors, as well as those drawn from rabbinic tradition and modern science, to experience holiness in our daily lives and to guide us in challenging times. In the section on water, for instance, she looks at the myriad ways water flows through the Biblical stories of the Israelites and emerges as a powerful metaphor for the divine in the Prophets and Psalms. She invites us to explore what it might mean to “drink from God,” or to experience godly justice as something that “rains down” and “flows like a river.” Each chapter contains insights from the Bible and teachings from Judaism and other spiritual traditions, accompanied by suggestions for practice to bring alive each of the God metaphors. Rabbi Toba Spitzer has helped many people satisfy their spiritual hunger. With God Is Here she will inspire you to find new and perhaps surprising ways of encountering the divine, right where you are.

Download or read book Reimagining Church written by Frank Viola and published by David C Cook. This book was released on 2012-12-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author Frank Viola gives readers language for all they knew was missing in their modern church experience. He believes that many of today's congregations have shifted from God's original intent for the church. As a prominent leader of the house church movement, Frank is at the forefront of a revolution sweeping through the body of Christ. A change that is challenging the spiritual status quo and redefining the very nature of church. A movement inspired by the divine design for authenticity community. A fresh concept rooted in ancient history and in God Himself. Join Frank as he shares God's original intent for the church, where the body of Christ is an organic, living, breathing organism. A church that is free of convention, formed by spiritual intimacy, and unbound by four walls.

Download or read book Reimagining the Bible written by Howard Schwartz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-15 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reimagining the Bible collects a dozen essays by Howard Schwartz. Together the essays present a coherent theory of the way in which each successive phase of Jewish literature has drawn upon and reimagined the previous ones. The book is organized into four sections: The Ancient Models; The Folk Tradition; Mythic Echoes; Modern Jewish Literature and the Ancient Models. Within these divisions, each of the essays focuses on a specific genre, ranging from Torah and Aggadah to Kabbalah, fairy tales, and the modern Yiddish stories of S.Y. Agnon and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Arguing the important thesis that there is a continuity in Jewish literature which extends from the Biblical era to our own times, over a period of more than 3,000 years, this collection also serves as a guide to the history of that literature, and to the genres it comprises.

Download or read book How the Bible Actually Works written by Peter Enns and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Controversial evangelical Bible scholar, popular blogger and podcast host of The Bible for Normal People, and author of The Bible Tells Me So and The Sin of Certainty explains that the Bible is not an instruction manual or rule book but a powerful learning tool that nurtures our spiritual growth by refusing to provide us with easy answers but instead forces us to acquire wisdom. For many Christians, the Bible is a how-to manual filled with literal truths about belief that must be strictly followed. But the Bible is not static, Peter Enns argues. It does not hold easy answers to the perplexing questions and issues that confront us in our daily lives. Rather, the Bible is a dynamic instrument for study that not only offers an abundance of insights but provokes us to find our own answers to spiritual questions, cultivating God’s wisdom within us. “The Bible becomes a confusing mess when we expect it to function as a rulebook for faith. But when we allow the Bible to determine our expectations, we see that Wisdom, not answers, is the Bible’s true subject matter,” writes Enns. This distinction, he points out, is important because when we come to the Bible expecting it to be a textbook intended by God to give us unwavering certainty about our faith, we are actually creating problems for ourselves. The Bible, in other words, really isn’t the problem; having the wrong expectation is what interferes with our reading. Rather than considering the Bible as an ancient book weighed down with problems, flaws, and contradictions that must be defended by modern readers, Enns offers a vision of the holy scriptures as an inspired and empowering resource to help us better understand how to live as a person of faith today. How the Bible Actually Works makes clear that there is no one right way to read the Bible. Moving us beyond the damaging idea that “being right” is the most important measure of faith, Enns’s freeing approach to Bible study helps us to instead focus on pursuing enlightenment and building our relationship with God—which is exactly what the Bible was designed to do.

Download or read book Mouth of the Donkey written by Laura Duhan-Kaplan and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2021-05-13 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hebrew Bible is filled with animals. Snakes and ravens share meals with people; donkeys and sheep work alongside us; eagles and lions inspire us; locusts warn us. How should we read their stories? What can they teach us about ecology, spirituality, and ethics? Author Laura Duhan-Kaplan explores these questions, weaving together biology, Kabbalah, rabbinic midrash, Indigenous wisdom, modern literary methods, and personal experiences. She re-imagines Jacob's sheep as family, Balaam's donkey as a spiritual director, Eve's snake as a misguided helper. Finally, Rabbi Laura invites metaphorical eagles, locusts, and mother bears to help us see anew, confront human violence, and raise children who live peacefully on the land.

Download or read book Law and the Bible written by Robert F. Cochran and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bible is full of law. Yet too often, Christians either pick and choose verses out of context to bolster existing positions, or assume that any moral judgment the Bible expresses should become the law of the land. Law and the Bible asks: What inspired light does the Bible shed on Christians’ participation in contemporary legal systems? It concludes that more often than not the Bible overturns our faulty assumptions and skewed commitments rather than bolsters them. In the process, God gives us greater insight into what all of life, including law, should be. Each chapter is cowritten by a legal professional and a theologian, and focuses on a key aspect of the biblical witness concerning civil or positive law--that is, law that human societies create to order their communities, implementing and enforcing it through civil government. A foundational text for legal professionals, law and prelaw students, and all who want to think in a faithfully Christian way about law and their relationship to it.

Download or read book Reimagining the Bible for Today written by Bert Dicou and published by SCM Press. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This textbook seeks to reclaim the bible for a Christianity that is open to society and keen on participating in conversation about today's major issues.

Download or read book Transforming Bible Study written by Walter Wink and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2009-08-01 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both participants and leader will be transformed through this revolutionary approach to group Bible study. Far-reaching in its concept and implications, this innovative group-encounter method makes particular use of split-brain theory, emphasizing the province of the brain's right hemisphere -- synthesis, imagination, feeling, etc. It also blends biblical form criticism and Jungian psychology with a zealously inquisitive spirit. Wink does well to integrate the social with the personal, as well as the relevance of a scripture passage in its original cultural context with its relevance to our contemporary context. Numerous examples and exercises are given, along with helpful appendices. If you are involved in clergy or lay study groups, teaching a church class, or conducting a prison ministry, Wink's study will open the door to a radically new understanding of the Bible. In the end, the transformation of study methods will lead to the transformation of participants.

Download or read book Refuge Reimagined written by Mark R. Glanville and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The global crisis of forced displacement is growing every year. At the same time, Western Christians' sympathy toward refugees is increasingly overshadowed by concerns about personal and national security, economics, and culture. We urgently need a perspective that understands both Scripture and current political realities and that can be applied at the levels of the church, the nation, and the globe. In Refuge Reimagined, Mark R. Glanville and Luke Glanville offer a new approach to compassion for displaced people: a biblical ethic of kinship. God's people, they argue, are consistently called to extend kinship—a mutual responsibility and solidarity—to those who are marginalized and without a home. Drawing on their respective expertise in Old Testament studies and international relations, the two brothers engage a range of disciplines to demonstrate how this ethic is consistently conveyed throughout the Bible and can be practically embodied today. Glanville and Glanville apply the kinship ethic to issues such as the current mission of the church, national identity and sovereignty, and possibilities for a cooperative global response to the refugee crisis. Challenging the fear-based ethic that often motivates Christian approaches, they envision a more generous, creative, and hopeful way forward. Refuge Reimagined will equip students, activists, and anyone interested in refugee issues to understand the biblical model for communities and how it can transform our world.

Download or read book Corporal Punishment in the Bible written by William J. Webb and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2011-07-11 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William J. Webb defuses misguided readings of biblical passages that call for the corporal punishment of children, slaves and wrongdoers. Setting these passages in their ancient cultural context, Webb reaffirms the importance of reading Scripture with God?s redemptive movement in mind.

Download or read book Reimagining God written by Johanna W. H. Van Wijk-Bos and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Johanna van Wijk-Bos examines alternatives to the dominant male language associated with God in the Bible. Focusing primarily on the Hebrew Bible.

Download or read book Eve written by Wm. Paul Young and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the twenty-five-million-copy bestseller The Shack comes a captivating new novel destined to be one of the most talked-about books of the decade. Eve is a bold, unprecedented exploration of the Creation narrative, true to the original texts and centuries of scholarship—yet with breathtaking discoveries that challenge traditional beliefs about who we are and how we’re made. Eve opens a refreshing conversation about the equality of men and women within the context of our beginnings, helping us see each other as our Creator does—complete, unique, and not constrained by cultural rules or limitations. When a shipping container washes ashore on an island between our world and the next, John the Collector finds a young woman inside—broken, frozen, and barely alive. With the aid of Healers and Scholars, John oversees her recovery and soon discovers that her genetic code connects her to every known race. No one would guess what her survival will mean… No one but Eve, Mother of the Living, who calls her “daughter” and invites her to witness the truth about her own story—indeed, the truth about us all. As The Shack awakened readers to a personal, non-religious understanding of God, Eve will free us from faulty interpretations that have corrupted human relationships since the Garden of Eden. Thoroughly researched and exquisitely written, Eve is a masterpiece that will inspire readers for generations to come.

Download or read book Reimagining Hagar written by Nyasha Junior and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reimagining Hagar illustrates that while interpretations of Hagar as Black are not frequent within the entire history of her interpretation, such interpretations are part of strategies to emphasize elements of Hagar's story in order to associate or disassociate her from particular groups. It considers how interpreters engage markers of difference, including gender, ethnicity, status and their intersections in their portrayals of Hagar. Nyasha Junior offers a reception history that examines interpretations of Hagar with a focus on interpretations of Hagar as a Black woman. Reception history within biblical studies considers the use, impact, and influence of biblical texts and looks at a necessarily small number of points within the long history of the transmission of biblical texts. This volume covers a limited selection of interpretations over time that is not intended to be a representative sample of interpretations of Hagar. It is beyond the scope of this book to offer a comprehensive collection of interpretations of Hagar throughout the history of biblical interpretation or in popular culture. Junior argues for the African presence in biblical texts; identifies and responds to White supremacist interpretations; offers cultural-historical interpretation that attends to the history of biblical interpretation within Black communities; and provides ideological criticism that uses the African-American context as a reading strategy. Reimagining Hagar offers a history of interpretation, but also expands beyond interpretation among Black communities to consider how various interpreters have identified Hagar as Black.

Download or read book Bible and Film written by Matthew S. Rindge and published by The Basics. This book was released on 2021 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bible and Film: The Basics is a concise, accessible, and illuminating introduction to the study of Bible and Film. The book introduces non-specialists to the essential content in Bible and Film, and to some of the most common and important methods Bible and Film scholars use. Questions asked throughout the book include: How do films (re)interpret and illuminate biblical texts? How do films appropriate, reconfigure, and transform biblical texts? How does a film's treatment of biblical texts help interpret and illuminate the film? This book examines various types of interplay between film and the Bible. The theme of 'Bible on film' is explored through Hebrew Bible epics including The Prince of Egypt and Noah, and Jesus films such as The Last Temptation of Christ and Son of Man. The theme 'Bible in film' is analyzed through films including Mary Magdalene, Magnolia, Pulp Fiction, and The Book of Eli. Films that 'reimagine the Bible' include Ex Machina, mother!, and The Tree of Life; unusual Jesus figures in Pan's Labyrinth, Dogville, and Donnie Darko are also explored. 'Film as Bible' considers films such as To the Wonder, Silence, and Parasite. A conclusion examines television shows such as Dekalog, The West Wing, The Handmaid's Tale, and God on Trial. With a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading throughout, this book is an ideal starting point for anyone seeking a full introduction to religion and film, bible and film, bible and popular culture, and theology and film.