Blazing Trails For Jesus

Bear! Ken whispered the word as he stopped hiking. Ken and I were on the Foothills Trail and a mother bear with three cubs was thirty feet in front of us. We stood motionless, frozen in fear. What should we do? Of course we prepared for every scenario and had read hiking manuals about what to do, but here we were facing a real mother bear. She noticed us and then barked a few times as she bounced up and down ever so slightly. Yes, bears can make a barking noise. We stood quietly and hoped prayerfully and expectantly that she would not charge. Finally, she slowly walked into the mountain laurel. We had encountered a mother bear and come away unharmed. Those few minutes seemed like forever and the fear had drained us. It took several minutes for us to move forward, but we did. This marked our memories and we tell it from time to time for humor and to remember the hike. As we told this story and more men joined our hikes other amazing events happened. Over the course of eighteen years there was the shattering water bottle, the miraculous and mesmerizing night with fireflies, the fall over rocks, the slide down a huge boulder, the persistent and annoying skunk, the embarrassing underwear and the turkey surprise to name a few. We enjoyed the stories so much that I wrote them down and realized each had a truth embedded. The events are contained in six chapters that convey formative categories of the Christian life. They are Christian Beginnings, Community, Growth, Responsibility, Living, and Christian Celebration. The bear encounter illustrates a biblical truth about dealing with fear. Our first day atop Springer Mountain my water bottle shattered into pieces. I was sprayed with water. This story serves as an analogy to the waters of baptism and the beginning of our faith journey. The other twenty eight stories convey various essential teachings. One illustrates faith as a gift, another the power of leadership. There is the story of temptation, the story of healing, one o

Reading the books of the Law, the Pentateuch, in their original context is the crucial prerequisite for reading their citation and use in later interpretation, including the New Testament writings, argues Ben Witherington III. Here, he offers pastors, teachers, and students an accessible commentary on the Pentateuch, as well as a reasoned consideration of how these books were heard and read in early Christianity. By reading "forward and backward," Witherington advances the scholarly discussion of intertextuality and opens a new avenue for biblical theology.

Charles Spurgeon once said that just as every road in England leads to London, so every text in Scripture contains a path to Christ. But there's still a chance of going the wrong way, blazing misleading trails where none previously existed. How can we be sure that we're reading our road map correctly? Dennis Johnson shows us that there are established routes we can trust. Guiding us along the network of trails in the Old and New Testaments, he points to the signs and markers that help us to identify roads to Christ. He surveys the Bible's sweeping story that makes up the lay of the land and explores different landmarks-the central motifs in Scripture that give us our bearings as we seek out Jesus. Our sermons, Bible studies, and personal devotions will be transformed as we navigate Scripture in light of its central purpose: to draw us in faith and love to our Prophet, Priest, and King. Book jacket.

The internationally renowned novel about the life and death of Jesus Christ. Hailed as a masterpiece by critics worldwide, The Last Temptation of Christ is a monumental reinterpretation of the Gospels that brilliantly fleshes out Christ’s Passion. This literary rendering of the life of Jesus Christ has courted controversy since its publication by depicting a Christ far more human than the one seen in the Bible. He is a figure who is gloriously divine but earthy and human, a man like any other—subject to fear, doubt, and pain. In elegant, thoughtful prose Nikos Kazantzakis, one of the greats of modern literature, follows this Jesus as he struggles to live out God’s will for him, powerfully suggesting that it was Christ’s ultimate triumph over his flawed humanity, when he gave up the temptation to run from the cross and willingly laid down his life for mankind, that truly made him the venerable redeemer of men. “Spiritual dynamite.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A searing, soaring, shocking novel.” —Time

Comprehensive update of the leading Christian ethics textbook of the 21st century Ever since its original publication in 2003, Glen Stassen and David Gushee's Kingdom Ethics has offered students, pastors, and other readers an outstanding framework for Christian ethical thought, one that is solidly rooted in Scripture, especially Jesus's teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. This substantially revised edition of Kingdom Ethics features enhanced and updated treatments of all major contemporary ethical issues. David Gushee's revisions include updated data and examples, a more global perspective, more gender-inclusive language, a clearer focus on methodology, discussion questions added