Broken And Beloved

It’s okay to admit that you’re not okay. This is true because Jesus died so brokenness does not have to define you. In Broken and Beloved, Sammy Rhodes takes you on a deep dive into the Gospel of John, showing that God meets us in our brokenness and in our desire to be loved. And what we find is that God not only loves us, He calls us His beloved. In Broken and Beloved, you’ll discover your need for God and how He walks with you how to break free from shame, loneliness, depression, and pride how to wait on the Lord and trust that, in the joys and pains of life, Jesus is with you—weeping and rejoicing beside you

Two of the greatest fears in life come in the form of questions we often ask ourselves but rarely say out loud: “Am I okay?” and “Do you love me?” The answer the Gospel gives us is both surprising and just what we need to hear: “No, you are not okay, and, yes, I love you.” Jesus holds these two truths about us together, and this is the good news we desperately need.

Broken vows and broken dreams.All Sara Parker ever wanted was to marry the love of her life. A love that completed her and would provide her with years of laughter and happy memories. That all changed the night she walked in on her spineless, cheating husband. As her dreams crumble before her eyes, she takes the last shred of hope and moves three states away. With nothing but her wounded past and the keys to her grandparents' house on Lake St. James, she slowly begins the process of starting over.Taking a waitressing job at Hooters is a short-term solution to her long list of financial needs. Just when she fears that her past failures will haunt her forever, she winds up drawing the short straw on an already long shift. But it's the shift of a lifetime when Matt Hamilton looks her way.Broken heart and broken hopes.Growing up in a loving family, Lieutenant Matthew Hamilton knew the meaning of commitment. When he met that special someone, he recognized it and went all in, exposing every inch of his big heart. But that someone drove a nail in his chest when she walked out, shattering his hope and everything he believed about love.Returning from Afghanistan should have been a time for healing instead of sorting through the wreckage of his life. When nothing softened the jagged edges of his heart, Matt turned to yet another meaningless hookup for the only relief he could trust. Then Sara stepped up to his table and everything changed.

Sharon Thornton gives pastoral theology new ears that hear the true depth and breadth of suffering. She dares to look beyond the accepted perspectives of pastoral theology to discern a new vision of hope made possible by the cross. Thornton brings pastoral theology into conversation with public theology, reading them from the perspective of the cross. When interpreted from its political standpoint, the cross offers new and challenging pastoral perspectives on the complex experiences of modern life. The cross of Christ names suffering for what it is, giving us a means of radically critiquing all attempts to camouflage, minimize, or distort the truth of pain. Sharing her experiences of ministering to those anguished by poverty and oppression, Thornton brings to light the external forces that contribute both directly and indirectly to human brokenness. And, through these same stories and the work of a faith community modeling alternative practices in pastoral care, she shows us that there is hope for healing.

When Nouwen was asked by a secular Jewish friend to explain his faith in simple language, he responded with "Life of the Beloved, " which shows that all people, believers and nonbelievers, are beloved by God unconditionally.

Divorce. Abandonment. Abuse. These are just some of the many traumatic issues modern women face. Often, such devastating events leave them feeling worthless and unloved. Their self-esteem plummets-many never fully recover and live life convinced they will never be loved again. Public speaker and Bible study author Paula L. McDonald understands. Over the course of her eventful life, she has endured the pressures of adoption and divorce. She survived two life-threatening tumors, the loss of a lung, and a near-death experience. At times she wanted to give up-but through it all, God never allowed her to quit. Beloved Not Broken is an eight-week Bible study program for women in which McDonald skillfully weaves her own stories of God's grace with those of the amazing women found in the Bible. McDonald, too, has experienced the pain of feeling unloved and broken...only to have her heart healed by divine love. The perfect Bible study companion for individuals or small groups, this testimony reminds women that they are precious beings loved more than they can ever fully comprehend. Learn to accept who you are right now-and find yourself growing ever closer to God and the strength only he can give.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past. Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Sethe works at beating back the past, but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly in her memory and in the lives of those around her. When a mysterious teenage girl arrives, calling herself Beloved, Sethe’s terrible secret explodes into the present. Combining the visionary power of legend with the unassailable truth of history, Morrison’s unforgettable novel is one of the great and enduring works of American literature.

In the final year before his death, Nouwen began to write an account of the death of his friend Adam, a severely handicapped young man. Through this story, Nouwen found a new way to tell God's story and the story of all human creatures, broken and yet beloved.