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The God of the Bible is emotional. Many Christians don't want to associate emotions with God. Emotions feel irrational, and the idea of God experiencing hate, anger, and jealousy can be confusing and problematic. And yet the Bible is full of stories where God expresses deep emotion. Christians are often left wondering how to reconcile the tension of an all-powerful God expressing seemingly uncontrollable feelings. If God is hateful and angry at humanity, is he a God worth believing in?In The Emotions of God, biblical scholar David Lamb examines seven divine emotions--hate, anger, jealousy, sorrow, joy, compassion, and love--and argues that it is not only good that God is emotional but also that we as his image-bearers can express emotions in such a way that reflects his goodness to the world. With discussion questions and suggestions for application, Lamb challenges his readers to journey with him into a rich study of the stories surrounding God's emotions so that we might better know God and reflect the beauty of emotion to the world.

Life is difficult, and daily we must decide whether to life cautiously or courageously. God calls us to live at our best, to pursue righteousness, and to sustain a drive toward excellence. This guide will help you discover your destiny--and show you the resources God has given you to fullfill it.

Habits form us more than we form them. Though we yearn for the freedom of the gospel, we remain anxious people shackled by our screens and exhausted by our routines. The answer is a rule of life that aligns our habits with our beliefs. Justin Earley provides doable, life-giving practices to find freedom and rest for your soul.

In these stormy times, voices from all fronts call for change. But what kind of revolution brings true freedom to both society and the human soul?Cultural observer Os Guinness explores the nature of revolutionary faith, contrasting between secular revolutions such as the French Revolution and the faith-led revolution of ancient Israel. He argues that the story of Exodus is the highest, richest, and deepest vision for freedom in human history. It serves as the master story of human freedom and provides the greatest sustained critique of the abuse of power. His contrast between "Paris" and "Sinai" offers a framework for discerning between two kinds of revolution and their different views of human nature, equality, and liberty. Drawing on the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, Guinness develops Exodus as the Magna Carta of humanity, with a constructive vision of a morally responsible society of independent free people who are covenanted to each other and to justice, peace, stability, and the common good of the community. This is the model from the past that charts our path to the future."There are two revolutionary faiths bidding to take the world forward," Guinness writes. "There is no choice facing America and the West that is more urgent and consequential than the choice between Sinai and Paris. Will the coming generation return to faith in God and to humility, or continue to trust in the all sufficiency of Enlightenment reason, punditry, and technocracy? Will its politics be led by principles or by power?" While Guinness cannot predict our ultimate fate, he warns that we must recognize the crisis of our time and debate the issues openly. As individuals and as a people, we must choose between the revolutions, between faith in God and faith in Reason alone, between freedom and despotism, and between life and death.

Reconnect Your Church provides a practical, road-tested vision and process to equip church leaders to reinvigorate their churchHow can churches stay healthy and dynamic over the long-term? What's needed to avoid or reverse church stagnation and decline?While some churches are vibrant and growing, many more are struggling, especially after Covid. The congregation might be declining and ageing, there's little success in reaching out to with the gospel, and more time is spent on inward facing problems than loving God and loving others. But the potential that could be released is huge.David Brown draws on his experience revitalising a church in central Paris to offer a vision and a process for church revitalisation, with a focus on UK and European contexts. Whether you are church planting, in a well-established and thriving church, or looking to turn around a church in decline, Brown provides biblically grounded wisdom along with change management principles for long-term health.When we reapply God's priorities to the church, we unleash new life and energy in following Christ in community.

Fundraising can be one of the most stressful parts of ministry. Budget needs are daunting, prospects seem limited, and the cycle is unending. How do we get off of the treadmill of crisis-driven fundraising to more sustainable ministry funding?Professional fundraiser Brad Layland revolutionizes fundraising and transforms it into a relational process where donors truly become partners in ministry. With decades of expertise in leading multimillion-dollar capital campaigns and working with major donors, he offers a more strategic and personalized yet less labor-intensive approach. Practical insights include ten essential elements of a case and four key steps that lead up to making an ask. Ultimately, fundraising is best done in community, and this book will help you develop a community of people who enjoy giving and want your organization to succeed.Fundraising can become a life-giving, energizing experience of developing partners who fuel your ministry's vision. Discover how you can become fully funded and accomplish the work that God has given you to do.

Times of transition, especially in midlife or later life, are ideal moments for recalibrating our priorities and habits. Ken Boa and Jenny Abel give us the practical tools and eternal perspective needed to evaluate our God-given gifts, skills, wisdom, resources, and opportunities in order to live meaningfully now and into the future.

Recognising veiled allusions to the Old Testament in the four Gospels has long contributed to our understanding of the Gospels message.Nicholas Lunn takes the investigation of allusion a significant step further in The Gospels Through Old Testament Eyes. He explores allusions not just in isolated verses, but rather occurring throughout whole passages, demonstrating that many Gospel episodes interact with specific Old Testament accounts through an extended sequence of allusions. Furthermore, his examination is not restricted to episodes presented by a single Gospel, but includes allusions distributed across two or more Gospel treatments of the same event.In The Gospels Through Old Testament Eyes, Lunn offers a series of self-contained studies that bring to light allusions, many of them previously unnoted, that affirm the intricate interweaving of New Testament texts with those of the Old. This volume will greatly enhance your appreciation of the Gospels' presentation of Jesus's life and ministry. It will inform and equip scholars, pastors, preachers, Bible teachers and readers to appreciate new depths in the Gospels.

An exposition of the prophet Amos, in which his call to relevant faith is championed.

52 Self-paced devotionals for use after the short term missions experience.

Ground-breaking, encyclopaedic study of the first-century Christian missionary expansion, in two volumes. In 1902 Adolf von Harnack published his famous work, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries. A century later, Eckhard Schnabel has returned to examine the first century of missionary expansion in his Early Christian Mission. Patient in its sifting of evidence, careful in its judgments and far-reaching in its scope, it is both a ground-breaking and encyclopaedic work. Here is a vast and detailed panorama of the missionary impulse, activity and strategy of the early church. How is it that a first-generation Jewish messianic movement undertook a mission to the pagan world and rapidly achieved a momentum that would have a lasting and significant impact on world history? This momentous question has surprisingly eluded the concentrated focus of historians and New Testament scholars. Perhaps it is because the story of early Christian mission encompasses so much of the history of early Christianity. And to tell that history is to traverse a broad spectrum of issues in contemporary New Testament studies, all of which have been investigated in specialized depth, though frequently unconnected to a unified picture. On the other hand, as Schnabel comments, those who have attempted to paint 'the portrait of early Christian missions' have 'often painted with brush strokes too broad'. As a result, an 'undifferentiated picture of early Christian mission' is widely held. In this monumental study, Eckhard Schnabel gives us both a unified and detailed picture of the rise and growth of early Christian mission. He begins with a search for a missionary impulse in the Old Testament and Second Temple Judaism. He then weighs the evidence for a mission of Jesus to Gentiles. But the centre of focus is the apostolic missionary activity as it is related in Acts, Paul's letters and the rest of the New Testament. Here is a study that seeks to describe all the evidence relevant to the missionary strategy and tactics of the early church, to explain the theological dimensions of the early Christian mission, and to integrate the numerous studies published in the last decades into a synthetic overall picture. Schnabel's detailed and immensely informed analysis will reward careful reading and reflection, and form a solid basis for a new understanding of the rise of Christianity and the nature of Christian mission - both then and now.

How can Christians effectively engage today's world while staying true to Scripture? Calling us to listen well to both the Word and the world, John Stott shows how Christianity can preserve its authentic identity and remain relevant to current realities. With the God's Word for Today series, pastor Tim Chester has updated Stott's classic book The Contemporary Christian and made it accessible to new generations of readers. In The World, Stott presents four major aspects of the church's mission-God's assignment to infiltrate the world and share the good news. How do we understand the uniqueness of Christ in a pluralistic world? What is the biblical basis for mission? What is the relationship between evangelism and social responsibility? And what can we learn about mission from the life and work of Jesus? Each chapter includes questions for reflection or discussion. The Christianity of the Bible is not a safe, escapist religion but an explosive force pulling us into the world to witness and serve. This book equips individuals and churches to join the mission that flows from the heart of God.

Chocolate bunnies, colored eggs, and baskets are a lot of fun, but is that really what this season is all about? Messy Easter offers your church a tool to bring together people of all ages and stages of faith for a unique come-as-you-are experience of creativity, celebration, and hospitality. These three once-a-month sessions help us learn more about Lent, Holy Week, and Easter in an excitedly messy way!

What are Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany really about? This complete church resource brings together people of all ages and stages of faith, allowing them to experience a creative and fun-filled Christian community.

We love to share good news with the world-a great restaurant, a coveted promotion, a new baby-and that makes us evangelists for many things. So why don't we do the same with Jesus? Simply put, talking about Jesus is awkward. Yet when we brave the awkwardness, we see God work. Beau Crosetto helps us move out of our comfort zones and beyond the awkwardness to share the life-transforming power of God with others.

All over the world, women and girls face troubles such as starvation, displacement, illiteracy, sexual exploitation and abuse. Kay Marshall Strom and Michele Rickett traveled to interview girls and to partner with ministries helping females in the most difficult places in the world. These pages hold those girls' stories of deep pain and suffering, inspiring courage, and incredible hope.

Alister McGrath argues that Christian thought has a vital role in engaging the public sphere. By setting the gospel in the tradition of theological reflection, Christian faith and the ability to engage with human experience are enriched.

What difference am I making with my life? Whitney Kuniholm, president of Scripture Union/USA, addresses this fundamental question through the lens of fifty brief reflections from the book of Acts. The experiences of the first Christians show us that God has an essential mission for all of his people.

Opening our eyes to the persistent controversies that followed Jesus throughout his public ministry, John Stott explains why the tension-filled social exchanges depicted in the Gospels provide us with a key to the heart of Christian doctrine.

Grow your brain! James Emery White presents a well-written, accessible approach to the importance of the mind in a Christian framework and the use of the Christian mind in the world. This accessible approach will help you put your mind to use in the world as it was intended by our Creator and includes reading lists and resources for learning.

Christianity Today Book Award Winner Outreach Magazine Resource of the YearWe want to save the world-and we have a dizzying array of worthy causes to pursue.But passionate enthusiasm can quickly give way to disillusionment, compassion fatigue or empty slacktivism. As we move from awareness to mobilization, we bump up against the complexities of global problems-and liking Facebook pages only goes so far.Veteran activist Tyler Wigg-Stevenson identifies the practical and spiritual pitfalls that threaten much of today's cause-driven Christianity. He casts an alternate vision for doing good based on the liberating truth that only God can save the world. Wigg-Stevenson's own pilgrimage from causes to calling shows how to ground an enduring, kingdom-oriented activism in the stillness of vocation rather than in the anxiety of the world's brokenness.The world is not ours to save. And that's okay. Discover why.

Drawing on exhaustive research, practical experience and decades of teaching marketplace theology, Richard Goossen and R. Paul Stevens present a theologically robust vision of Christian entrepreneurship for leaders who would seek to ground their calling in the mission of the triune God.

2014 Outreach Magazine Resource of the YearSlavery didn't end in 1833, when William Wilberforce's decades-long campaign finally resulted in the Slavery Abolition Act. It didn't end in 1863, when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It didn't end in 1949, when the United Nations declared trafficking "incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person." The sad truth is, slavery never ended. It just went underground, where it continues to exploit powerless men, women and children in horrific ways throughout the world.Now for the good news: you have power.In Refuse to Do Nothing, "Abolitionist Mamas" Shayne Moore and Kimberly Yim share their stories of coming to terms with the power available to them in their normal, everyday lives toilluminate the shadows where those who traffic in people hidecompel corporations to fight slavery in how their products are mademotivate politicians to fight for human dignitymobilize friends and strangers alike to fight slavery at home and throughout the worldSlavery doesn't end without a fight. But get to know Shayne and Kimberly and their abolitionist friends, and you'll find the power God grants to all who fight for the powerless, and the joy awaiting those who refuse to do nothing.

James Choung narrates this imaginative dialogue between three friends who attempt to come to terms with Christianity's loss of cultural capital, tectonic shifts in spiritual temperament from one generation to the next and the persisting feeling that God is summoning them to an embodied faith despite everything.

Outreach Magazine Resource of the YearSometimes we get so caught up in the power of Jesus shouting from the cross, "It is finished!" that we forget that Jesus started something. What Jesus started was a movement that began small, with intimate conversations designed to build disciples into apostles who would go out in the world and seed it with God's kingdom vision. That movement grew rapidly and spread wide as people recognized the truth in it and gave their lives to the power of it. That movement is still happening today, and we are called to play our part in it.

Modern-day abolitionist York Moore vividly describes the cause of global justice as the great dream of God. Unpacking the biblical account of the last things, Moore makes connections between the end-time work of Jesus and our own efforts at justice. Whenever a new well is dug or a sex trafficker brought to justice, we see the dream taking hold.