Common Sense and an Uncommon God


Book Description




Curiosities and (Un)common Sense from the Bible


Book Description

The Bible. You've heard of it, yes? Maybe something about David and Goliath or Noah’s ark, or a baby in a manger? What if I told you there was tons of stuff in the Bible that you’ve never heard about? Things like talking donkeys, self-conscious magicians, and kings who think they’re cows. The Bible is a curious book full of deeply flawed people and a God who refuses to give up on them. Don’t believe me? Look for yourself. In these 60 devotions, we examine these unique stories, the circumstances and biblical truth around them, and what they reveal about the heart of God.




Conversations with God for Teens


Book Description

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.




Uncommon Sense


Book Description

In eighteen lively chapters, Andrew Pessin examines the most unusual ideas from the ancient Greeks and contemporary thinkers, how they have influenced the course of Western thought, and why, despite being so odd, they just might be correct. -Time is an illusion. -Your thoughts do not exist inside your head. -There is no physical world -And more!




Uncommon Sense


Book Description

"... the flames of freedom are dying. We cry that Washington has failed us, but that is not where the blame lies. With our rights, We the People were given the duty to maintain them. We the People are the problem. And We the People are the solution. Our republic will be restored not through political revolution, but through a revolution of the soul-- not as we point fingers upward, but as we turn inward. In an age of blame, this is uncommon sense. And it's precisely what America needs to rekindle her light" -- Cover, p. [4]




God of Sense and Traditions of Non-Sense


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One hundred taxis lined up on Church Street in Oslo on November 26, 1942, deployed in order to round up the city's Jews and send them to Auschwitz. This reality anchors God of Sense and Traditions of Non-Sense: it is theology from a Holocaust perspective. The brash Elihu excoriating Job for his insistence that he is owed an explanation for the calamities that have befallen him. This is the book's opening salvo. Job speaking of a God of sense, Elihu and Job's three friends inaugurating a tradition of non-sense: this is the existential and theological predicament. The problem of finite suffering in this life addressed in the theological tradition with the prospect of infinite, endless suffering, in this book described as a key element in Traditions of Non-Sense. Back to the millions of Jews, among them 188 women and 42 children from Oslo, deported, gassed, and cremated--in God of Sense this is not seen as a problem that defeats belief, but as the reality that demands a religious and theological account of human existence.




Irresistible


Book Description

A fresh look at the earliest Christian movement reveals what made the new faith so compelling...and what we need to change today to make it so again. Once upon a time there was a version of the Christian faith that was practically irresistible. After all, what could be more so than the gospel that Jesus ushered in? Why, then, isn't it the same with Christianity today? Author and pastor Andy Stanley is deeply concerned with the present-day church and its future. He believes that many of the solutions to our issues can be found by investigating our roots. In Irresistible, Andy chronicles what made the early Jesus Movement so compelling, resilient, and irresistible by answering these questions: What did first-century Christians know that we don't—about God's Word, about their lives, about love? What did they do that we're not doing? What makes Christianity so resistible in today's culture? What needs to change in order to repeat the growth our faith had at its beginning? Many people who leave or disparage the faith cite reasons that have less to do with Jesus than with the conduct of his followers. It's time to hit pause and consider the faith modeled by our first-century brothers and sisters who had no official Bible, no status, and little chance of survival. It's time to embrace the version of faith that initiated—against all human odds—a chain of events resulting in the most significant and extensive cultural transformation the world has ever seen. This is a version of Christianity we must remember and re-embrace if we want to be salt and light in an increasingly savorless and dark world.




The Uncommon Common Sense of Conquering Yourself


Book Description

When we get irritated, mad, emotional, resentful, furious, upset, hateful, etc., the adrenaline, norepinephrine, and dopaminepowerful hormones that are part of the human bodyacute stress response system are secreted into the bloodstream. They affect our body by stimulating the heart rate, shrinking blood vessels, and expanding our trachea and bronchia, inflating and deflating our lungs during high stress or exciting circumstances, all of which work to upsurge blood flow to the muscles and oxygen to the lungs. When these hormones are forwarded into the bloodstream from the adrenal glands located on top of the kidneys (about three inches or 7.6 cm in length), at least one of the electrons from the atoms that form the cells of every organ of our body is replaced by one electron of these hormones, amplifying our energy and turning it more capable of executing (in a microsecond) reactions not commonly done under normal conditions. These natural self-doping boosters are reserved for the defense department. These reactions may cause us to run faster, jump higher, scream louder, or take higher risks, putting our life or the life of others in danger by acting irrationally, having incontrollable body reactions designed to defend ourselves as part of our defense mechanism system. The ideal response to our problems is to deal with them with objectivity without any emotional attachments to them in that way to avoid all the reactions that cause illnesses and complications to ourselves.




A Better Story


Book Description

The architects of the sexual revolution won over the popular imagination because they knew the power of story. They drew together radical new ideologies, often complex and hard to grasp, and melded them into the simpler structure of narrative. Crucially, they cast narratives that appealed to the moral instincts of ordinary, decent people. This moral vision overwhelmed the church and silenced its faltering apologists. The author argues that if Christians still believe they have have good news in the sphere of sexual ethics, then two big tasks lie ahead. Our first priority is to work out what has gone so badly wrong, both in our understanding and application of what the Bible teaches and the way we have presented our case to the non-churched. And then we must offer a better story, one that fires the imagination with such force that people will say, 'I want that to be true.' This book offers a confident, biblically rooted moral vision which needs to be shared with prayer and courage.




Touched By God


Book Description

A year of daily devotionals organized under 52 different weekly themes. A theme index is included, as well as a complete list of scripture references given both alphabetically and in Bible order.