Download or read book My Imaginary Jesus written by Matt Mikalatos and published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2012-03-19 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Matt Mikalatos liked Jesus a lot. In fact, he couldn’t believe how much they had in common. They shared the same likes, dislikes, beliefs, and opinions. (Though Jesus did have better hair.) So imagine Matt’s astonishment when he finds out that the guy he knows as Jesus . . . isn’t. He’s an Imaginary Jesus: a comfortable, convenient imitation Matt has created in his own image. The real Jesus is still out there somewhere . . . and Matt is determined to find him. In this hilarious, fast-paced, sort-of-true story hailed as “Monty Python meets C. S. Lewis,” Matt embarks on an incredible chase to find the real Jesus and ask him the one question that his Imaginary Jesus has never been able to answer. It’s a wild spiritual adventure like nothing you’ve ever read before . . . and it might bring you face-to-face with an imposter in your own life. This new edition now contains a discussion guide, an interview with the author, and other bonus features! (Previously published as Imaginary Jesus.)
Download or read book My Almost Certainly Real Imaginary Jesus written by Kelly Barth and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My Almost Certainly Real Imaginary Jesus shows just how easy it can be for a young homosexual to fall headlong into fundamentalism, venturing into the very heart of enemy territory and the church's false promises of altar calls and sexual cures. Barth particularly addresses the disconnect between the radical and very human Jesus of history and the church's supernatural savior.
Download or read book Imaginary Friend written by Stephen Chbosky and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 830 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Instant New York Times Bestseller One of Fall 2019's Best Books (People, EW, Lithub, Vox, Washington Post, and more) A young boy is haunted by a voice in his head in this acclaimed epic of literary horror from the author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Christopher is seven years old.Christopher is the new kid in town.Christopher has an imaginary friend. We can swallow our fear or let our fear swallow us. Single mother Kate Reese is on the run. Determined to improve life for her and her son, Christopher, she flees an abusive relationship in the middle of the night with her child. Together, they find themselves drawn to the tight-knit community of Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. It's as far off the beaten track as they can get. Just one highway in, one highway out. At first, it seems like the perfect place to finally settle down. Then Christopher vanishes. For six long days, no one can find him. Until Christopher emerges from the woods at the edge of town, unharmed but not unchanged. He returns with a voice in his head only he can hear, with a mission only he can complete: Build a treehouse in the woods by Christmas, or his mother and everyone in the town will never be the same again. Twenty years ago, Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower made readers everywhere feel infinite. Now, Chbosky has returned with an epic work of literary horror, years in the making, whose grand scale and rich emotion redefine the genre. Read it with the lights on.
Download or read book Night of the Living Dead Christian written by Matt Mikalatos and published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-09-16 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does a transformed life actually look like? In his follow-up to the critically acclaimed Imaginary Jesus, Matt Mikalatos tackles this question in an entertaining and thought-provoking way—with MONSTERS!!! While Christians claim to experience Christ’s resurrection power, we sometimes act like werewolves who can’t control our base desires. Or zombies, experiencing a resurrection that is 90 percent shambling death and 10 percent life. Or vampires, satiating ourselves at the expense of others. But through it all we long to stop being monsters and become truly human—the way Christ intended. We just can’t seem to figure out how. Night of the Living Dead Christian is the story of Luther, a werewolf on the run, whose inner beast has driven him dangerously close to losing everything that matters. Desperate to conquer his dark side, Luther joins forces with Matt to find someone who can help. Yet their time is running out. A powerful and mysterious man is on their trail, determined to kill the wolf at all costs . . . By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Night of the Living Dead Christian is a spiritual allegory that boldly explores the monstrous underpinnings of our nature and tackles head-on the question of how we can ever hope to become truly transformed.
Download or read book How God Becomes Real written by T.M. Luhrmann and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-26 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hard work required to make God real, how it changes the people who do it, and why it helps explain the enduring power of faith How do gods and spirits come to feel vividly real to people—as if they were standing right next to them? Humans tend to see supernatural agents everywhere, as the cognitive science of religion has shown. But it isn’t easy to maintain a sense that there are invisible spirits who care about you. In How God Becomes Real, acclaimed anthropologist and scholar of religion T. M. Luhrmann argues that people must work incredibly hard to make gods real and that this effort—by changing the people who do it and giving them the benefits they seek from invisible others—helps to explain the enduring power of faith. Drawing on ethnographic studies of evangelical Christians, pagans, magicians, Zoroastrians, Black Catholics, Santeria initiates, and newly orthodox Jews, Luhrmann notes that none of these people behave as if gods and spirits are simply there. Rather, these worshippers make strenuous efforts to create a world in which invisible others matter and can become intensely present and real. The faithful accomplish this through detailed stories, absorption, the cultivation of inner senses, belief in a porous mind, strong sensory experiences, prayer, and other practices. Along the way, Luhrmann shows why faith is harder than belief, why prayer is a metacognitive activity like therapy, why becoming religious is like getting engrossed in a book, and much more. A fascinating account of why religious practices are more powerful than religious beliefs, How God Becomes Real suggests that faith is resilient not because it provides intuitions about gods and spirits—but because it changes the faithful in profound ways.
Download or read book Good News for a Change written by Matt Mikalatos and published by NavPress. This book was released on 2018 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagine an atheist sending you regular prayer requests. Or your coworker grabbing you by the arm and asking you to stay late at work to talk about God just a bit longer. When Jesus talked about the Good News, people ran to him. We should expect the same response. Good News for a Change is about working together with Jesus to share the gospel in ways unique to each person's situation. You will enjoy evangelism because it is a fun, deeply personal, community and person-oriented way to connect with people. You'll be energized and focused on helping people discover why Jesus is good news for them.
Download or read book Conversations with God for Teens written by Neale Donald Walsch and published by Hampton Roads Publishing. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Suppose you could ask God any question and get an answer. What would it be? Young people all over the world have been asking those questions. So Neale Donald Walsch, author of the internationally bestselling Conversations with God series had another conversation. Conversations with God for Teens is a simple, clear, straight-to-the-point dialogue that answers teens questions about God, money, sex, love, and more. Conversations with God for Teens reads like a rap session at a church youth group, where teenagers discuss everything they ever wanted to know about life but were too afraid to ask God. Walsch acts as the verbal conduit, showing teenagers how easy it is to converse with the divine. When Claudia, age 16, from Perth, Australia, asks, "Why can't I just have sex with everybody? What's the big deal?", the answer God offers her is: "Nothing you do will ever be okay with everybody. 'Everybody' is a large word. The real question is can you have sex and have it be okay with you?" There's no doubt that the casual question-and-answer format will help make God feel welcoming and accessible to teens. Conversations with God for Teens is the perfect gift purchase for parents, grandparents, and anyone else who wants to provide accessible spiritual content for the teen(s) in their lives.
Download or read book Nobody Left Out written by Michael Murray and published by . This book was released on 2020-11-12 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Jesus walked this earth, he spent time with the messes. A lonely thief. An unwelcome dinner guest. A death-row criminal facing his final hours on earth. What do all of these people have in common? They all faced the messiness of life. Some made the mess themselves. Some were thrown headfirst into a mess through no fault of their own. Then something changed. It wasn't that they suddenly became unmessy. But they each came face to face with Jesus, and he invited them to be part of God's story. He didn't leave them out. This 40-day devotional looks at eight encounters Jesus had with messy, broken people. In short, daily readings, you'll explore each story and see how Jesus met each person in their mess. The eight stories we'll be walking through together are: Jesus Meets The Lonely Thief Jesus Meets The Know-It-All Jesus Meets The Unwelcome Dinner Guest Jesus Meets The Woman Who Was Exploited Jesus Meets The Sick Woman & The Dead Girl Jesus Meets The Blind Man With Perfect Vision Jesus Sees The Invisible Widow Jesus Meets The Honest Criminal Whether you've been following Jesus your whole life or have never cracked open a Bible, Nobody Left Out: Jesus Meets the Messes will remind you that God's love is big enough for everyone.... He doesn't want anyone left out!
Download or read book Imaginary Jesus written by Matt Mikalatos and published by BarnaBooks. This book was released on 2010 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A quirky cast of characters are involved in a quest to find the real Jesus, uncovering a multitude of fakes in modern-day America and ancient Judea.
Download or read book Into the Fray written by Matt Mikalatos and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the earliest days of the Christian church, the gospel spread out from Jerusalem in a burst of incredible stories. A man who could calm a stormy sea with a word, who healed the lame and the blind, who raised the ire of the religious leaders, and who even raised people from the dead. Compare this organic, even entertaining, method of spreading the Good News to how we are often encouraged to evangelize today, with clever arguments and our defenses already up in anticipation of rebuttal. Somewhere along the way, we've lost the plot to the greatest story ever told. Now Matt Mikalatos invites us back into God's story, both to find our place in it and to rediscover the wonder that the apostles saw in their listeners as they told the story of Jesus, the Messiah they knew personally and loved fiercely. As they lose themselves in modern retellings of the events of the book of Acts, readers will find that sharing the story is easier and more rewarding than they ever imagined.
Download or read book The First Time We Saw Him written by Matt Mikalatos and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2014-06-10 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scripture tells us that the words of Jesus made people uncomfortable, confused, angry, repentant, worshipful, and riotous. Today, we read the words of Christ in a steady, even tone and find ourselves wondering if maybe we're missing something. Could it be that we've lost the emotional power of Jesus's words simply because we're too familiar with them? With incredible insight into the surprising and unsettling aspects of Jesus's parables and life, Matt Mikalatos reimagines familiar stories and parables in a modern-day setting, bringing alive for the contemporary reader all the controversy and conflict inherent in the originals. These emotional, sometimes humorous, and jaw-dropping retellings include the stories of the prodigal son, the good Samaritan, the lost coin, the feeding of the 5,000, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and more, asking provocative questions like What would be the modern equivalent of Jesus letting a "sinful woman" wash his feet? Who would be the hero of "The Good Samaritan"? How would Jesus tell the parable of the lost sheep in a city like Portland?
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 Jesus Calling My First Bible Storybook written by Sarah Young and published by Tommy Nelson. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jesus Calling® Bible stories with Jesus Calling devotions are now available for toddlers! Jesus Calling My First Bible Storybook includes simple Bible stories accompanied by short messages of Jesus’ love for children. Delightful art makes this a perfect companion to Jesus Calling for Little Ones. You already know and love the Jesus Calling® brand, and the new Jesus Calling My First Bible Storybook is the perfect way to introduce your littlest ones to the Bible and to Jesus and His love. You and your family will enjoy this Bible storybook night after night.
Download or read book Reliving the Passion written by Walter Wangerin, Jr. and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 1992 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These imaginary reenactments follow the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus from the time the chief priests plotted to kill Him to His glorious resurrection from the dead, allowing readers to re-experience the Passion--or perhaps see it fully for the first time.
Download or read book Meant for Good Bible Study Guide written by Megan Fate Marshman and published by HarperChristian Resources. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most-underlined verse in the Bible, Jeremiah 29:11, says that God has a good plan for you—a plan to give you a hope and a future. Are you ready to believe it? Do you think you can really trust God's plan for your life—no matter what your life looks like right now? In this six-session video Bible study (DVD/video streaming not included), dynamic Bible teacher Megan Fate Marshman will take you through an engaging exploration of the significance of Jeremiah 29:11-14. Through interactive Bible study exercises, you will discover how to stop discounting yourself from a hopeful future, start living in active dependence on God, and find your way to the good plan He has for you. In this beloved passage of Scripture, Megan reveals how to trust God in your daily life and, more importantly, how to trust God's definition of good above your own. You will discover: Your not-enoughness is exactly enough for God, and that in fact, you have everything you need to take that first step into the life God has for you. How to stop counting yourself out because Jesus never has. God is up to something really good, and He's inviting you to join Him. How to hear and respond to God's voice, and intentionally grow a personal, intimate relationship with Him. How to defeat anxiety, trust God with all you're carrying and worrying about, and experience a life of freedom in relying on God daily. Designed for use with the Meant for Good Video Study available on DVD or streaming video, sold separately.
Download or read book Finding God in a Galaxy Far Far Away written by Timothy Paul Jones and published by Multnomah. This book was released on 2010-06-30 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nothing in Your Life Is Ordinary Your present world isn’t supposed to be this small. You were made for something much bigger. And no, you don’t have to be an astronaut, or even a Star Wars fan, to live it. Finding God in a Galaxy Far, Far Away is not about space travel, or even a movie. It’s about rediscovering your sense of wonder—something we adults have successfully squelched from our everyday lives. But God never meant it to be that way. Timothy Jones, by way of an astounding, eye-opening study of the spiritual parallels found in the Star Wars saga, will make you a kid again. You’ll be marveling at the mysterious, laughing anew at life’s “coincidences,” and remembering above all the Creator for which you were made. May the True Force Be with You Remember when Star Wars first captured your imagination? How your longing for adventure propelled you to distant worlds and transformed you into a Jedi knight faster than you could say, “Luke, I am your father”? This same longing, once sparked by John Williams’s triumphant score and fanned by Darth Vader’s sweeping black cape, is your ticket to life’s greatest adventure. Join Timothy Paul Jones on an astounding, eye-opening exploration of the spiritual themes in the Star Wars saga and the truth will become clear: Like young Luke Skywalker, you were also made for more—much more. Rediscover awe. Revel in the wonder of every moment. And pursue all you were meant to be. It is your destiny. "The Force is strong with this one. I could not recommend it more." Joshua Griffin, Editor/Owner, TheForce.Net Manager, Purpose Driven Youth Ministry “If you own a lightsaber—or a Bible—you’re sure to benefit from reading his book.” Kevin Miller, author and reviewer HollywoodJesus.com “‘Awe-some’ reading that both delights and challenges us. A fun and thoughtful book for Christians who consider and enjoy popular culture and media.” Robert W. Pazmino Valeria Stone Professor of Christian Education, Andover Newton Theological School Story Behind the Book “The night I first saw Star Wars from the backseat of my parents’ Ford Pinto was the first night I experienced awe. It sent me on a quest that continues today. There is, in every one of us, a longing to touch ‘the forever,’ to sense the magnitude of the vastness in which we live. This universal longing explains why we ride roller coasters and tell scary stories. This universal longing for awe also explains why, after nearly thirty years, the popularity of the Star Wars saga shows no sign of subsiding. I wrote this book to inspire readers to relish awe and wonder because God did not only create us to long for awe, but also to live in it!” —Timothy Jones
Download or read book How to Destroy Western Civilization and Other Topics written by Peter Kreeft, Ph.D. and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2021-03-18 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Kreeft presents a series of brilliant essays about many of the problems that undermine our Western civilization, along with ways to address them. "These essays are not new proposals or solutions to today's problems," he says. "They are old. They have been tried, and have worked. They have made people happy and good. That is what makes them so radical and so unusual today." In his witty, readable style, Kreeft implores us to gather wisdom and preserve it, as the monks did in the Middle Ages. He offers relevant philosophical precepts, divided into various categories, that can be collected and remembered in order to guide us and future generations in the days ahead. Kreeft emphasizes that the most necessary thing to save our civilization is to have children. If we don't have children, our civilization will cease to exist. The "unmentionable elephant in the room", he tells us, is sex, properly understood. Religious liberty is being attacked in the name of "sexual liberty", in other words, abortion. Kreeft encourages us to fight back—with joy and confidence—with the one weapon that will win the future: children.
