During our chaotic times, discover five forgotten values that can spark internal growth and help us reconcile our Christian faith with the complexities of race, sexuality, and social justice. Most believers live in the state of "being a Christian" without ever being deeply formed by Christ. Our pace is too frenetic to be in union with God, and we don't know how to quiet our hearts and minds to be present. Our emotions are unhealthy and compartmentalized.

We long for a good life, a beautiful life, a kind life. But clearly that’s not the world we live in. How did we lose goodness, kindness, and beauty? And more important, how do we get them back into our lives? These are the two questions crying out in our streets, homes, churches, and from deep within our souls. Pastor and author Rich Villodas is convinced that only Jesus offers a way of being human that is both strong and tender enough to tear down the walls of hostility we experience daily.

We all live at the mercy of our ideas, and nowhere is this more true than our ideas about God. The problem is many of our ideas about God are wrong. Not all wrong, but wrong enough to form our souls in detrimental and disheartening ways. God Has a Name is a simple yet profound guide to understanding God in a new light--focusing on what God says about himself in the Bible. This one shift has the potential to radically alter how you relate to God, not as a doctrine, but as a relational being who responds to you in an elastic, back-and-forth way.

In Garden City, popular pastor and speaker John Mark Comer gives a surprisingly countercultural take on the typical "spiritual" answer of the church. Comer explores Scripture to discover God's original intent for how we are meant to spend our time, reshaping how you view and do your work, rest, and life.

This book offers a brief introduction to the Acts of the Apostles. Acts is a substantial book, sitting right in the middle of the New Testament, looking back to the four Gospels and ahead to the mission of the early church. It provides a framework for our understanding of the letters; but it does more than that. It offers a sophisticated and nuanced view of what it means to think of the gospel of Jesus, Israel's Messiah, going out into the world over which Israel's Messiah claims the status of Lord.

Logos Book of the Year. Meetings can sap our energy, rupture community and thoroughly demoralize us. They can go on forever with no resolution. Or they can rush along without consensus just to "get through the agenda." What if there was another way? Church boards and other Christian leadership teams have long relied on models adapted from the business world. Ruth Haley Barton, president of the Transforming Center, helps teams transition to a much more suitable model—the spiritual community that discerns God's will together.

Logos Book Award. Do you long for a deep, fundamental change in your life with God? Do you desire a greater intimacy with God? Do you wonder how you might truly live your life as God created you to live it? Spiritual disciplines are activities that open us to God's transforming love and the changes that only God can bring about in our lives. Picking up on the monastic tradition of creating a "rule of life" that allows for regular space for the practice of the spiritual disciplines, this book takes you more deeply into understanding seven key disciplines along with practical ideas for weaving them into everyday life.

Simply Christian walks the listener through the Christian faith step by step and question by question. With simple yet exciting and accessible prose, Wright challenges skeptics by offering explanations for even the toughest doubt-filled dilemmas, leaving believers with a reason for renewed faith. For anyone who wants to travel beyond the controversies that can obscure what the Christian faith really stands for, this simple book is the perfect vehicle for that journey.

Are you tired of feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and empty during the holiday season? Instead of getting caught up in the hustle and bustle, are you ready to slow down, catch your breath, and rediscover the true beauty of Christmas? This captivating collection of readings explores the intersection where the ancient context meets the present moment. Pastor AJ Sherrill invites you into an experience designed to renew your mind, reawaken your heart, rekindle your awe, and restore your body.

Drawing from his extensive teachings on spiritual formation, Willard illuminates the timeless wisdom contained within each parable, revealing their profound relevance to contemporary life. With clarity and depth, he guides readers through the subversive messages embedded within these seemingly simple stories, urging us to break free from the grip of worldly values and embrace the radical teachings of Jesus. The Scandal of the Kingdom is not just a book—it's a call to action.

Racism is not about hate and ignorance. It's about greed. And it always has been. Black Christian historian Malcolm Foley explores this idea in The Anti-Greed Gospel, showing how the desire for power and money—what some call "racial capitalism"—causes violence and exploitation. Foley reviews the history of racial violence in the United States and connects the killings of modern-day Black Americans to the history of lynching in America.

How can time with God be a source of peace in a loud and distracting world? In Beholding, spiritual director and poet Strahan Coleman invites listeners to discover the joy of being with God, not just working for Him. As they inhabit the art of resting in God’s presence, prayer becomes not only a place of seeking, but becoming.

Christians today are hungry for authentic spiritual experiences, yet all too often they don't have the knowledge of or relationship with the Holy Spirit that is the key to a fully alive spirituality. In The Familiar Stranger, pastor and author Tyler Staton draws on Scripture, tradition, and spiritual practices to help you step into a genuine relationship with the Holy Spirit.

What does it mean to be human? This timeless question proves critical as we seek to understand our purpose, identity, and significance. Amidst the many voices clamoring to shape our understanding of humanity, the Bible reveals important truths related to our human identity and vocation that are critical to the flourishing of all of creation. Carmen Joy Imes seeks to recover the theologically rich message of the creation narratives starting in the book of Genesis as they illuminate what it means to be human.

We are at war. Not with a foreign government or domestic terrorists or a creepy new artificial intelligence hell-bent on taking over the world. No, it’s a war we feel deep inside our own chests: we are at war with lies. The problem isn’t so much that we tell lies but that we live them. We let them into our bodies, and they sabotage our peace.

During our chaotic times, discover five forgotten values that can spark internal growth and help us reconcile our Christian faith with the complexities of race, sexuality, and social justice. Most believers live in the state of "being a Christian" without ever being deeply formed by Christ. Our pace is too frenetic to be in union with God, and we don't know how to quiet our hearts and minds to be present. Our emotions are unhealthy and compartmentalized.

We long for a good life, a beautiful life, a kind life. But clearly that’s not the world we live in. How did we lose goodness, kindness, and beauty? And more important, how do we get them back into our lives? These are the two questions crying out in our streets, homes, churches, and from deep within our souls. Pastor and author Rich Villodas is convinced that only Jesus offers a way of being human that is both strong and tender enough to tear down the walls of hostility we experience daily.

Many Christians today divide ancient Jewish and Christian literature into two categories: what is in the Bible and what is not. The Christian East, however, has traditionally described a third category considered beneficial for Christians to listen to in the home: “apocrypha.” These texts, from the centuries before and after the Incarnation of Jesus Christ—beyond even the larger canons of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Old Testaments—reveal to us the religious world and theological framework of the apostles and early Church Fathers.

It may surprise you to know that the majority of non-Christians are not hostile to the faith or looking for a fight. In fact, most are open and even curious about spiritual matters. Yet evangelism training and apologetic resources are often geared toward knowing what to say to hardcore atheists and evolutionists, who make up less than ten percent of the unchurched population. If you're ready to have respectful and fruitful spiritual conversations with your spiritually curious friends, neighbors, and family members, Mark Matlock offers this research-based approach.

Dallas Willard, one of today's most brilliant Christian thinkers and the author of The Divine Conspiracy ( Christianity Today's 1999 Book of the Year), presents a way of living that enables ordinary men and women to enjoy the fruit of the Christian life.

We lead our spiritual lives in relationship with others. A faithful community gives us opportunities for worship, sharing burdens, confessing faults, offering forgiveness, and celebrating life. Wherever he went, Henri Nouwen created such communities, and within them, he offered spiritual direction. Available as an audiobook for the first time ever, Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith is part of “The Nouwen Trilogy.” These convenient audio sessions let you adopt Nouwen as your personal spiritual director.

Masterminded by Michael Christensen, PhD, and Rebecca Laird, MA, DMin, The Nouwen Trilogy compiles Nouwen’s unpublished homilies, interviews, classes, and speeches, as well as excerpts from his published writings. Available as an audiobook for the first time ever, Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit is part of this trilogy. These convenient audio sessions move you through the five classical stages of spiritual development: Awakening, Purgation, Illumination, Dark Night, and Unification.

The Wisdom of the Desert was one of Thomas Merton's favorites among his own books, surely because he had hoped to spend his last years as a hermit. The personal tones of the translations and the blend of reverence and humor so characteristic of him show how deeply Merton identified with the legendary authors of these sayings and parables, the fourth-century Christian fathers who sought solitude and contemplation in the deserts of the Near East.

At one of the lowest points in Henri Nouwen’s life, he gave a series of lectures on the importance of following Jesus in an age of anxiety. Drawn from those talks, this new work reveals what sustained Nouwen to remain faithful to the teachings of Jesus and led him to become an icon of compassion and vulnerability. Here, he writes eloquently about calling and purpose, fear and hope. And he explains why - with so many choices available to the 21st-century seeker - the greatest reward for those looking for spiritual direction is rediscovering Jesus’ teaching on love.

Being close to God means communicating with him—telling him what is on our hearts in prayer and hearing, and understanding what he is saying to us. But how do we hear God's voice? How can we be sure that what we think we hear is not our own subconscious? What role does the Bible play? What if what God says to us is not clear? The key, says bestselling author Dallas Willard, is to focus not so much on individual actions and decisions as on building our personal relationship with our Creator.

In Garden City, popular pastor and speaker John Mark Comer gives a surprisingly countercultural take on the typical "spiritual" answer of the church. Comer explores Scripture to discover God's original intent for how we are meant to spend our time, reshaping how you view and do your work, rest, and life.

"Sixty years ago I found myself distracted," Eugene Peterson writes. "A chasm had developed between the way I was preaching from the pulpit and my deepest convictions on what it meant to be a pastor."

And so began Peterson's journey to live and teach a life of congruence - congruence between preaching and living, between what we do and the way we do it, between what is written in scripture and how we live out that truth.

Nothing captures the biblical foundation for this journey better than Peterson's teachings over his 29 years as a pastor.

Surrender to the Only Perfectly Trustworthy Love In our self-reliant era, most of us recoil from the concept of surrendering to a power or authority outside ourselves. But surrender need not be seen as threatening, especially when the One to whom we surrender is the epitome of goodness and love. God doesn't want his people to respond to him out of fear or obligation. Rather, he invites us to enter into an authentic relationship of intimacy and devotion. And so God calls us to move beyond mere obedience—by surrendering to love. In this profound book, David G.

This book offers a brief introduction to the Acts of the Apostles. Acts is a substantial book, sitting right in the middle of the New Testament, looking back to the four Gospels and ahead to the mission of the early church. It provides a framework for our understanding of the letters; but it does more than that. It offers a sophisticated and nuanced view of what it means to think of the gospel of Jesus, Israel's Messiah, going out into the world over which Israel's Messiah claims the status of Lord.

In Searching for Enough, Staton draws on ancient and modern insights to introduce us, as if for the first time, to Jesus' disciple Thomas: history's most notorious skeptic. Like Thomas, we're caught between two unsatisfying stories: We want to believe in God but can't reconcile his presence with our circumstances and internal struggles. But what if there's a better story than shame? What if there's redemption so complete that there's nothing left to hide? What if there's a God who can heal your resentments, fears, and loneliness in such a profound way that you feel whole?