An Honest Salvation

Doubt is a still small voice, best heard in desperate hours when we are alone. You and I know these hours: the ones when you come to your place of prayer in troubled times and are helpless to speak. The need or pain that drives you to pray becomes more than you can speak, but you reach toward God, doing your best to find the words for your sorrow. You stay, struggling until your emotions are spent. There is no miracle and God does not answer; but your pain is less and you have a good cry. You tell yourself it is time to wait on God and you watch to see what God will do, as you turn back to your life among men. Days become weeks and a solution forms. You do not see the place of your prayer in the outcome. The things you asked for do not fit the result, so you trust that God knows best and ignore the voice of doubt that is trying to save you.

A Study Guide and a Teacher’s Manual Gospel Principles was written both as a personal study guide and as a teacher’s manual. As you study it, seeking the Spirit of the Lord, you can grow in your understanding and testimony of God the Father, Jesus Christand His Atonement, and the Restoration of the gospel. You can find answers to life’s questions, gain an assurance of your purpose and self-worth, and face personal and family challenges with faith.

Your friend just left his wife. You catch your child posting something inappropriate on the Internet. Someone in your small group is depressed. A relative was just diagnosed with an incurable disease. When those you know experience trouble, you want to offer real hope and help from God's Word. Using case studies and concrete examples, Michael ...

We are saved by faith when we trust that Jesus died for our sins. This is the gospel, or so we are taught. But what is faith? And does this accurately summarize the gospel? Because faith is frequently misunderstood and the climax of the gospel misidentified, the gospel's full power remains untapped. While offering a fresh proposal for what faith means within a biblical theology of salvation, Matthew Bates presses the church toward a new precision: we are saved solely by allegiance to Jesus the king. Instead of faith alone, Christians must speak about salvation by allegiance alone. The book includes discussion questions for students, pastors, and church groups and a foreword by Scot McKnight.

Paul Washer escorts readers through a biblical overview of the good news about Jesus. Presenting passage after passage from the Bible, Washer describes the holy character of God, the human problem of sin, and the divine solution found in Jesus's redemptive life, death, and resurrection for all who repent and believe. If you are interested in knowing the basic claims of the gospel or know someone exploring the truths of Christ, this succinct treatment of the greatest news the world has ever heard is just what you need.

It is true that mankind itself has probably always been characterized with the main desire to determine just what spiritual truth really is. For centuries and centuries, highly educated philosophers and religious men alike have always stood toe-to-toe, disagreeing on spiritual truth. Since they cannot all be right, this would strongly indicate that education, religious persuasion, or even intelligence has little to do with our discovery of the real spiritual truth. For if these things were truly critical, then obviously, the spiritual/intellectual giants of history would have agreed on spiritual truth long ago. In this work, author Ted Even endeavors to show that the disagreeing intellectuals/skeptics of the past only serves to reinforce Christ's radical statement about our need to just become like little children in order to discover the spiritual truth and that literally everyone has the same opportunity to enter the kingdom of heaven on that basis. However, while super-intelligence or big degrees may not be necessary, the discovery of spiritual truth does require just one very reasonable quality of heart which little children have always possessed. Find out just what this basic quality of heart is as you continue your search for spiritual truth within this simple to understand work which only leaves the real spiritual truth left standing.

Most contemporary Christians acknowledge the doctrine of hell, but they’d rather not think about how God punishes the wicked. The authors of Four Views on Hell meet this subject head-on with different views on what the Scriptures say. Is hell to be understood literally as a place of eternal smoke and flames? Or are such images simply metaphors for a real but different form of punishment? Is there such a thing as “conditional immortality,” in which God annihilates the souls of the wicked rather than punishing them endlessly? Is there a Purgatory, and if so, how does it fit into the picture? The interactive Counterpoints forum allows the reader to see the four views on hell—literal, metaphorical, conditional, and purgatorial—in interaction with each other. Each view in turn is presented, critiqued, and defended. This evenhanded approach is ideal for comparing and contrasting views in order to form a personal conclusion about one of Christianity’s key doctrines. The Counterpoints series provides a forum for comparison and critique of different views on issues important to Christians. Counterpoints books address two categories: Church Life and Bible and Theology. Complete your library with other books in the Counterpoints series.

If we're honest, most of us feel bored, distracted, or discouraged in prayer. We look for resources to give us the "right" words or teach us the "right" technique and are disappointed when they don't seem to help. What we fail to realize is that prayer isn't a place for us to be good or right, and it isn't a place for us to perform or prove our worth. It's a place for us to be honest, present, and known--a place for us to offer ourselves and receive God. Spiritual formation experts Kyle Strobel and John Coe want to show you what you've been missing when it comes to prayer. In this down-to-earth book, they show you how to fearlessly draw near to a holy God, pray without ceasing (and without posturing), and delight in the experience of being fully known and fully loved. Each chapter ends with prayer projects or practices to help you see a difference in your prayer life, starting now.