Shaped by God


Book Description

God wants your heart... The Psalms are in a category of their own. They are not just commanding; they are contagious. And they can change us. Tears, affliction, shame, regret, grief, anger, discouragement, turmoil...we hear all these cries, we feel their overflow, and we see that all these things happen in relation to our totally sovereign God.




Shaped by God


Book Description

Forty-nine short inspirational stories offer encouragement to people who find themselves facing struggles, being tempered and crafted into the image of God through challenging circumstances. Beautiful gift book, previously published as On the Anvil.




A Human-Shaped God


Book Description

A Human-Shaped God approaches the humanlike accounts of God in the Old Testament as the starting places for theology and uses them to build a picture of the divine. This understanding of God is then brought into conversation with traditional conceptions that depict God as a being who knows everything that happens, is at every place at the same time, is constant and unchanging, and does not ultimately have material form. But instead of pitting the Old Testament's humanlike view of God against traditional theology and assuming that only one of these understandings is correct, A Human-Shaped God posits that theologians should embrace both of these constructions simultaneously. This is a new way of theological inquiry that embraces both the humanlike characteristics of God and the transcendence of God in traditional theology. By seeing and understanding the humanlike depictions of God in the Old Testament and by using the rich language of traditional theology together in tandem, the reader acquires a much deeper and meaningful understanding of God.




The God-Shaped Brain


Book Description

What you believe about God actually changes your brain. Psychiatrist Tim Jennings unveils how our brains and bodies thrive when we have a healthy understanding of who God is. This expanded edition now includes a study guide to help you discover how neuroscience and Scripture come together to bring healing and transformation to our lives.




God-Shaped Hole


Book Description

"God-Shaped Hole will change you as a reader, writer and human. It is rare books like this one that remind me why I fell in love with the written word."—Colleen Hoover When I was twelve, a fortune teller told me that my one true love would die young and leave me all alone... It's a dark prediction, but Beatrice Jordan never really believed in true love anyway. So, no harm done. She's accepted her lot in life: living in Los Angeles as an artist, not letting herself get too attached to anyone. It's not perfect, but nothing is. Until fate intervenes. It's a simple personal ad: "I am seeking a friend for the end of the world..." Eleven little words that change Beatrice's life irrevocably. Because they lead her to Jacob Grace, an unpredictable writer looking for something he can't name. Both of their worlds shift that day and what follows is a love story unlike any other; brimming with creativity and passion, as two lost souls find themselves in each other. From hole-in-the-wall record stores to late night phone calls, together, Beatrice and Jacob transcend the loneliness of their lives. But dark realities and secrets soon rise to the surface, as does Beatrice's fear of an inescapable fate. Despite it all, this is a story of real love: the kind that breaks you and remakes you, the kind that changes you forever. The kind of love worth having, even if it's short lived, even if you know you might lose it. God Shaped Hole is a brand new kind of love story, introducing dreamers to a quintessentially raw romance and inspires everyone to live and love as vividly as possible—the perfect book club or beach read for fans of The Girl He Used to Know by Tracey Garvis Graves, In Five Years by Rebecca Serle, and More Than Words by Jill Santopolo. Praise for God-Shaped Hole: "This generation's Love Story."—Kirkus "If Holden Caulfield were a twenty-seven-year-old woman living in LA, this is the book he'd write, or read. It's very fast and very funny, and at its core it's that rarest of things—a truly convincing love story."—Dave Eggers "With wit and humor, the author brings these characters and their quirky, artsy friends alive. Bottom Line: You'll dig it"—People




The Scars That Have Shaped Me


Book Description

21 surgeries by age 13. Years in the hospital. Verbal and physical bullying from schoolmates. Multiple miscarriages as a young wife. The death of a child. A debilitating progressive disease. Riveting pain. Abandonment. Unwanted divorce... Vaneetha begged God for grace that would deliver her. But God offered something better: his sustaining grace.




Shaped By God's Heart


Book Description

Discover the tools to create a new kind of church and move from merely surviving to thriving. Drawing on an extensive two-year field study of 200 churches from a variety of denominations and geographic regions, Milfred Minatrea--a missiologist, urban strategist and practioner in minister--presents the best practices for re-energizing Christian spirituality in a congregational setting. He provides readers with the tools for assessing their congregation’s position on the continuum between maintenance and mission and for determining the actions that will move them toward becoming a missional community. He also outlines key strategies that successful churches have used to become relevant in a postmodern society without losing what is distinctly Christian in their spiritual practices. Milfred Minatrea (Irving, TX) is Director of the Missional Church Center for the Baptist General Convention of Texas.




The God-Shaped Heart


Book Description

The key to spiritual and emotional health is to grasp the truth of God's transforming love for us and then let that reality influence our own hearts and relationships. It seems simple, but we are experts at complicating simple things. Instead of living lives characterized by love we find ourselves trapped in cycles of shame, violence, and addiction that steal our joy and keep us from loving others--so much so that, by all indications, Christians are living no differently than anyone else when it comes to abuse rates, use of pornography, alcohol and drug addiction, and more. Christian psychiatrist Dr. Timothy Jennings wants to release us from this prison. With powerful illustrations from case studies and from Scripture, Jennings shows believers who are stuck in addiction, violence, fear, and broken relationships how to experience true freedom through God's transforming love to experience greater health, fulfillment, and well-being.




Gospel Shaped Worship Leader's Guide


Book Description

Leader's Guide for the Worship track of Gospel Shaped Church from The Gospel Coalition, exploring how a church should be a worshipping community. Gospel Shaped Church is a curriculum from The Gospel Coalition that will help whole congregations pause and think carefully and prayerfully about the kind of church they are called to be. This seven-week whole-church curriculum explores what it means to be a worshiping community. The Leader's Guide contains everything you need to lead this flexible course. Christians are people who have discovered that the one true object of our worship is the God who has revealed himself in and through Jesus Christ. For most believers, worship is what happens for an hour on Sunday morning as we sing and pray together. But the Bible reveals a much bigger vision for what worship really is and how it should shape our lives. So what exactly is worship? What should we be doing when we meet together for “church” on Sundays? And how does that connect with what we do the rest of the week? As we search the scriptures together we will discover that true worship is more than this-it is to encompass the whole of life. This engaging and flexible resource will challenge us to worship God every day of the week, with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. This flexible resource will train your whole church through teaching, preaching, daily reading and small-group Bible study and discussion-or any combination of those elements. The overall aim is that your church will embark on a journey to discover the kind of people they should be as they are shaped by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Works alongside the Gospel Shaped Worship DVD and the Gospel Shaped Worship Handbook for use by church members.




Shaped by the Word


Book Description

This book explores the role that scripture plays in spiritual formation. Mulholland examines obstacles often encountered in spiritual reading and introduces a new approach to reading that will enliven the scriptures. He also compares informational reading (reading to be informed) with formational reading (reading to be spiritually formed). Readers are released to God's initiative, allowing the scripture to form a spiritual life inside themselves.