Download or read book Gift and Task written by Walter Brueggemann and published by Presbyterian Publishing Corp. This book was released on 2017-09-01 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The God whom we meet in Scripture is one who gives generous gifts in the wonder of creation, in the miracle of emancipation and reconciliation, and in the surprise of transformation. We are invited to receive those abundant gifts on a daily basis, with a posture of anticipation, awe, and gratitude. In response, we accept the worthy task of daily discipleship. Gift and Task is an original collection of 365 devotions by best-selling author Walter Brueggemann, providing the opportunity to consider in critical ways the cost and joy of discipleship. Perfect for daily use, this book begins with the First Sunday of Advent and provides insightful reflection and thought-provoking commentary on the Scriptures for each day of the year. Brueggemann guides disciples with wisdom and encouragement for our never-ending walk along God's challenging, grace-filled path throughout the Christian year.

Download or read book Abundant Gifts written by Diane Eble and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This daybook devotional leads readers through the year with five entries for each week--personal stories for daily inspiration.

Download or read book The Gratitude Path written by Kent Millard and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2015-08-18 with total page 75 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Gratitude Path is a five-session study designed for use by churches, leadership teams, and small groups. This step-by-step guide helps congregations grow in generosity by focusing on gratitude for God’s blessings. Chapters conclude with questions for personal reflection and devotion. The book includes a 12-step plan for pastors and other leaders to successfully conduct their own Gratitude Campaign in a church of any size or denomination. If you have ever cringed at the thought of the annual giving campaign, this is the book for you. With practical instruction for conducting a gratitude campaign, it will not only bring about positive stewardship but may very well shift the culture of your community to walk and live that path of gratitude. --Carolyn Scanlan-Holmes, Senior Minister, Avon Christian Church, Avon, IN This is a practical and accessible tool for developing generous givers, and an invitation into relationship with our bounteous God. --Bruce R. Ough, Bishop of the Minnesota Conference, UMC Kent Millard has helped countless other pastors and congregations conduct ‘Gratitude Campaigns’ with spectacular results. With this book his plan is now available to everyone. I hope many church leaders read and follow this pathway to improved stewardship. --Michael J. Coyner, Bishop of the Indiana Conference, UMC This wonderful resource helps us move stewardship from fundraising to an experience of God's transforming grace. --Rob Fuquay, Senior Pastor, St Lukes UMC, Indianapolis, IN The first five chapters of The Gratitude Path are spiritually energizing, personal, and thoughtfully devotional. Pastors could preach sermons based on each one of them. Chapter six is a pivotal organizational chapter for pastors and lay leaders. Here, Millard outlines his Gratitude Campaign step by step. This is a resource that we are happy to recommend to congregations. --Bill Enright, Senior Fellow, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Indiana University This book demonstrates how to develop an attitude of gratitude in each facet of the local church. Every leader in our church will read this book. --Jacob Williams, Jr., Senior Pastor, First Valparaiso UMC, Valparaiso, IN

Download or read book From Fear To Love Lenten Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son written by Henri J. M. Nouwen and published by Creative Communications. This book was released on 2002 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Desire for God and the Things of God written by Wyndy Corbin Reuschling and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2012-09-21 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many Christians, spirituality and ethics are in separate mental and experiential compartments. Spirituality may be understood as an inner experience, while ethics is focused on decisions or positions on issues. Both of these views reduce spirituality and morality in Christian faith and practice, and ignore the centrality of desire for God and the things of God as key focal points for spiritual and moral formation. These aspects of Christian formation must be located in their scriptural and theological contexts in order to understand more fully what God desires for human life. This focus on desire provides content and context to Christian spirituality and morality. We are drawn outward to focus on God and the good of others while we learn to embody virtues, such as compassion, courage, self-control, gratitude, humility, and hope. Practices are crucial ways by which we learn to incarnate our ultimate desire of love for God and for what God desires in the pursuit of justice and goodness for all creation. In so doing, practices enable us to more fully integrate spiritual and moral growth in the processes of our desire for God and the things of God.

Download or read book One Thousand Gifts written by Ann Voskamp and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this beautiful edition of Ann Voskamp's New York Times bestseller, One Thousand Gifts, Voskamp invites you into her grace-bathed life of farming, parenting, and writing. Here you will discover a way of seeing ordinary amazing grace, a way of living that is fully alive, and a way of becoming present to God that brings deep, lasting joy.

Download or read book Life in the Vine written by Rebekah Francisco Rojcewicz and published by Liturgy Training Publications. This book was released on 2021-01-06 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, intended to serve as a companion to The Good Shepherd and the Child: A Joyful Journey, documents the years of work of catechists with children ages six to twelve in the Level 2 atrium. The book draws on the richest mysteries of our faith as recalled with the younger child (ages three to six), and how these mysteries unfold and expand for the older child.

Download or read book Grateful written by Diana Butler Bass and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Wilbur Award-winning book Grateful is now available in paperback and with an updated subtitle. If gratitude is good, why is it so hard to do? In Grateful, Diana Butler Bass untangles our conflicting understandings of gratitude and sets the table for a renewed practice of giving thanks. We know that gratitude is good, but many of us find it hard to sustain a meaningful life of gratefulness. Four out of five Americans report feeling gratitude on a regular basis, but those private feelings seem disconnected from larger concerns of our public lives. In Grateful, cultural observer and theologian Diana Butler Bass takes on this “gratitude gap” and offers up surprising, relevant, and powerful insights to practice gratitude. Bass, author of the award-winning Grounded and ten other books on spirituality and culture, explores the transformative, subversive power of gratitude for our personal lives and in communities. Using her trademark blend of historical research, spiritual insights, and timely cultural observation, she shows how we can overcome this gap and make change in our own lives and in the world. With honest stories and heartrending examples from history and her own life, Bass reclaims gratitude as a path to greater connection with god, with others, with the world, and even with our own souls. It’s time to embrace a more radical practice of gratitude—the virtue that heals us and helps us thrive.

Download or read book The Gift of Friendship written by Dawn Camp and published by Revell. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether next door or in the next time zone, our friends provide some of our most important relationships. We cherish time spent with them, endure time spent apart, and look forward to the next time we can have coffee or rush to greet them as they walk toward our door. And nothing warms our hearts like reading stories of true friendship. Collecting over fifty true stories from some of today's best writers, Dawn Camp offers readers a chance to sit back and experience the gift of friendship. With its beautiful photographs and poignant prose, this collection is a great gift for a dear friend and the perfect pick-me-up any time you need a boost. Contributors include Crystal Paine, Liz Curtis Higgs, Tsh Oxenreider, Myquillyn Smith, Jennifer Dukes Lee, Lisa-Jo Baker, Jessica Turner, Lysa TerKeurst, Bonnie Gray, Holley Gerth, Renee Swope, and many more.

Download or read book Grateful Caretakers of God s Many Gifts written by Joseph M. Champlin and published by Liturgical Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The message of stewardship invites us to give our time, talent, and treasure in gratitude for our abundant blessings. Fostering grateful caretakers in parishes is an ongoing task that requires vision, courage, and trust. In Grateful Caretakers of God's Many Gifts, the first major revision of Fr. Joseph Champlin's ground-breaking sacrificial giving program, Father Champlin continues to encourage the sharing of treasure, time, and talent--transforming parishioners into grateful caretakers of God's many gifts. Grateful Caretakers of God's Many Gifts provides a theological and biblical basis for stewardship and gives detailed guidance for sharing time, talent, and treasure. It also offers the history, foundational principles, and implementation steps for sacrificial giving, a form of stewardship. The manual likewise provides a wealth of material for sustaining and strengthening grateful caretaking in a parish on a long-term basis. Finally, it offers practical suggestions on a number of special issues in stewardship including accountability, annual renewals, customized direct deposit of Sunday offerings, planned giving and parish stewardship councils, and training our youth to share. Father Champlin shows that the sacrificial giving process effectively supports grateful caretakers of God's gifts: people in the parish willing to share significantly their time, talent, and treasure for the Church and the world. It has been proven in practice, is biblically and theologically sound, actively involves lay persons, touches the hearts of parishioners, is uncomplicated and inexpensive to implement, produces impressive short-term results, and provides long-term possibilities. Grateful Caretakers ofGod's Many Gifts builds on Father Champlin's original sacrificial giving publications in both the theory and practice of how to motivate parishioners to become active stewards of their faith. It has on-going value for those concerned about fostering grateful caretaking in a parish.

Download or read book Gratitude Daily Doses of God s Abundance written by Craig Childress Johnson and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2017-02-22 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ItÕs been said, ÒI wonÕt remember what you did, or what you said. I will remember how you made me feel.Ó We live in our feelings. How we feel colors all our life experiences, good or bad. How is it one person will embrace something with rapturous delight while another experiences the same thing with absolute life sapping dread? How have I sat through intense turbulence on airplanes planning my funeral while others around me sleep soundly? Attitudes we bring to an experience in life will determine if itÕs one of catharsis or deadening fear. Attitude is everything in life. Life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I respond to it. When gratitude becomes the dominant emotion in our universe of feelings, we move from states of discontent, anger, frustrated perfectionism, even depression towards serenity, acceptance, peace, tranquility, well being. With gratitude, everything becomes a gift to be celebrated, a bonus. Daily doses of gratitude might even help you find your own hidden treasure.

Download or read book The Gift of Wonder written by Christine Aroney-Sine and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can you imagine a God who dances with shouts of joy, laughs when you laugh, loves to play, and invites us to join the fun? In this book Christine Sine invites us to pay attention to childlike characteristics that have the power to reshape us, with fresh spiritual practices that engage all our senses and help us embrace the wonder and joy that God intends for us.

Download or read book Plastic Donuts written by Jeff Anderson and published by Multnomah. This book was released on 2013-05-21 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once you see your gifts from God’s perspective, your giving will never be the same. When she was a toddler, Jeff Anderson’s daughter opened his eyes to how delighted God is with our gifts. She brought him a plastic donut from her play kitchen, and he was surprised by the intensity of his reaction. His delight in receiving this simple gift—and his daughter’s joy in giving it—led him to dig deeper. Anderson would not rest until he found the scriptural connection between our gifts and God’s heart. Plastic Donuts removes the awkwardness and uncertainty that often accompany discussions about giving. Now you can think differently—and biblically—about what and how you give. Your gifts can capture God’s attention and connect you more intimately with His heart. Plastic Donuts brings everyone—leaders and followers, teachers and learners—onto the same page.

Download or read book Gratitude written by Peter J. Leithart and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cultural story of gifts given and received.

Download or read book Invitations to Abundance written by Alicia J Akins and published by Harvest House Publishers. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do the feasts of the Bible reveal about our place in today’s tired world? In short, everything. From Genesis through Revelation, redemptive history is captured through feasts. Through them, God calls his people to commemorate mercy, delight in grace, and commune with him and with each other. In the process, he proves he doesn’t ration his rich, soul-satisfying love toward us but instead lets it overflow. Invitations to Abundance brings to life the festivities described in the Bible and illuminates how relevant they remain in a modern world defined by isolation and disillusionment. When your heart needs encouragement, these wondrous celebrations remind you why, where, and how you can find security, unity, and hope. Each chapter seats us at a unique feast from Scripture—from the well known to the less familiar—and considers how you can respond worshipfully as a partaker of these celebrations. Invitations to Abundance shows you how to reciprocate God’s initiating kindness and what it means to live knowing God’s table is spread before you.

Download or read book Philosophical Perspectives on Existential Gratitude written by Joshua Lee Harris and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-03-23 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Existential gratitude-gratitude for one's very existence or life as a whole-is pervasive across the most influential human, cultural and religious traditions. Weaving together analytic and continental, as well as non-western and historical philosophical perspectives, this volume explores the nexus of gratitude, existence and God as an inter-subjective phenomenon for the first time. A team of leading scholars introduce existential gratitude as a perennially and characteristically human phenomenon, central to the distinctive life of our species. Attention is given to the conditions under which existence itself might be construed as having a gift-like or otherwise gratitude-inducing character. Drawing on a diversity of perspectives, chapters mark out new territory in philosophical inquiry, addressing whether and in what sense we ought to be grateful for our very existence. By analysing gratitude, this collection makes a novel contribution to the discourse on moral emotions, phenomenology, anti-natalism and theology.

Download or read book Spiritual Disciplines Handbook written by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adele Calhoun's Spiritual Disciplines Handbook has become a standard for those who want to expand their knowledge of spiritual practices. Now this beloved resource has been revised throughout and expanded to include thirteen new disciplines along with a new preface by the author, giving us practical guidance in our continuing journey toward intimacy with Christ.