Can I Know What To Believe

Your youth group is like no other-so a cookie-cutter curriculum just won't do. With a single book you have the basics for 15 complete sessions-and you can put it all together in a way that works for you. Each topic has been developed by ministry experts to be teen-relevant and spiritually enriching. Each five-session book also includes a 14-point plan for customizing your program, a selection of ice breakers, thought provokers, reproducible handouts, and an encouraging how-to article from well-known youth ministry experts! Can I Know What to Believe? Beliefs to Beware Of--Strategic Answers about Cults ( Understand doctrines of Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Scientology, and Unification Church and how they differ from biblical Christianity. Contrast the Bible with the New Age Movement, witchcraft and more. Prepare teens to stand firm in their faith.) They're Not Like Us--What Different Churches Believe (Answer questions concerning what other churches believe. Explores differences between Protestants and Catholics and an overview of various mainline denominations. Discover the common heritage of the universal church.) Your Bible's Alive--How to Get Friendly with God's Book (Brings teens face-to-face with God's Word. Clear up misconceptions about Scripture and show how various Bible characters and incidents are related, gives practical tips for understanding the Bible.) Features: 400+ options for full customization 15 sessions with reproducible resources

How is it that a person will know that Jesus's teaching is from God the Father? Jesus promised, through the Holy Spirit, to give that knowledge to those that do the will of God the Father, at least are desirous to do it. This book offers all the details.

Maybe Christianity is actually true. Maybe it is what believers say it is. But at least two problems make the thoughtful person hesitate. First, there are so many other options. How could one possibly make one's way through them to anything like a rational and confident conclusion? Second, why do so many people choose to be Christian in the face of so many reasons not to be Christian? Yes, many people grow up in Christian homes and in societies, but many more do not. Yet Christianity has become the most popular religion in the world. Why? This book begins by taking on the initial challenge as it outlines a process: how to think about religion in a responsible way, rather than settling for such soft vagaries as "faith" and "feeling". It then clears away a number of misunderstandings from the basic story of the Christian religion, misunderstandings that combine to domesticate this startling narrative and thus to repel reasonable people who might otherwise be intrigued. The second half of the book then looks at Christian commitment positively and negatively. Why do two billion find this religion to be persuasive, thus making it the most popular "explanation of everything" in human history? At the same time, how does Christianity respond to the fact that so many people find it utterly implausible, especially because so many Christians insist that theirs is the only way to God and because of the problem of evil that seems to undercut everything Christianity asserts? Grounded in scholarship but never ponderous, Can I Believe? refuses to dodge the hard questions as it welcomes the intelligent inquirer to give Christianity at least one good look.

This book is intended to help you live your life, and to shed some light on your own values and ethics, if you don’t believe in God. More than just a primer on Humanism, but not quite a full-blown treatise on philosophy, it offers some answers to those crucial questions Socrates asked: What is true? And how shall we live our lives? Those of us who don’t believe in the supernatural sometimes struggle to understand how we can ground ourselves ethically, and how to find truth, meaning, purpose and joy. This book offers ideas about how to know, without depending on Holy Scriptures or guidance from a deity, what it means to lead a good and ethical life. “Humanism is a value system whose time has come: a positive philosophy for the surging proportion of the world’s population who indicate ‘None’ as their religion but seek meaning, morality, and purpose in their lives. Michael Werner’s statement of Humanism is clear, effective, and graceful, just right for our times.” Steven Pinker, professor of psychology, Harvard University author, “The Better Angels of Our Nature” and “How the Mind Works.” “Mike Werner captures the depth and breadth of Humanism in his latest work. He shows us what love, reason, imagination and science can have in common. In doing so, he demonstrates what we all have to live for, strive for, and believe in.” Roy Speckhardt, executive director, American Humanist Association “Outstanding and a must read for everyone who takes life seriously.” Rev. William R. Murry, former president, Meadville Lombard Theological School, University of Chicago

Have you ever thought there is more than what religion teaches? Have you ever had experiences that you couldn’t explain? Jaxx Wilde experienced hauntings, voices and attacks that no one could explain, or stop. Horror movies pale in comparison to some of the paranormal attacks he and those close to him experienced. With his religious beliefs not working he decided to dive into the dark forces to find answers. This is a simple story of a search for truth that goes from religion to the depths of hell and back. Jaxx’s quest takes him on a mind-blowing journey through sex, drugs, organized crime, and satanic cults before finally coming to spiritual truths revealed through supernatural forces from the light side.

“An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger.” —Booklist (starred review) “Astonishing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Printz Honor Book A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017 A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017 A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017 An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds’s electrifying novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother. A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer A tool for RULE Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES. And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if Will gets off that elevator. Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.

Expand your mind with this amazing book of incredible information about our weird and wonderful world. Dive into a world of fascinating facts and cool comparisons about our world, from the very bottom of the ocean – which is as deep as 29 Empire State buildings – to the planets of the solar system, and everything in between! Do you know which flower is taller than a human? Or how many Earths could fit inside Jupiter? Or if it is true that we only use 10% of our brains? Whatever the topic, this fact-tastic compendium will uncover the story behind the weirdest wonders of our world – from intriguing animals and astounding nature, to the mysteries of science, history, geography, the human body, and more! I Can’t Believe It! is stuffed full of fantastic facts, cool visual comparison, and myth-busting true-or-false questions. You truly won’t believe what you’re reading! A compilation of favorite stories from the four best-selling DK titles It Can't Be True!, True or False?, Strange but True, and It Can't Be True! 2, this is the ultimate companion for any fact-hungry child.

Many people today believe that Christianity will not stand up to a scientific or intellectual investigation, and that science has all the answers. Such an attitude shows an ignorance of the wealth of available philosophical arguments and scientific information that Dr. Seber taps into in this book. Initially, he shows that mathematics and science are limited in what they can prove in spite of modern advances. He then summarizes his material using basic questions as ten chapter headings: Does God exist, is there a spiritual dimension, do we have free will, is the Bible reliable, who is Jesus, do miracles occur, why does God allow suffering and evil, is Christianity a blessing or a curse to society, what about evolution, and how can we get to know God? The reader may have other questions and a number are considered within each chapter, such as problems with philosophical materialism and atheism. He draws his material from many sources including statistics, physics, cosmology, genetics, philosophy, history, biochemistry, theology, psychology, archaeology, and biology. Comparatively, new subjects like epigenetics, chaos theory, and quantum mechanics, that many people are not aware of, are brought into the picture. These topics change our thinking about reality.