If God Is For Us

If the Bible were a mountain range, it is said, Romans 8 would be its highest peak. I can say after reading this study that Trillia Newbell is a sure-footed mountain guide that will help you climb this great passage and get some of its best breathtaking views of God and our salvation in Christ. I highly recommend this volume! -Tim Keller, cofounder, Redeemer City to City What would change if you really understood all that God has done and is doing for you? Sure we know in our head that God is for us, that there’s great hope in his relationship with us and salvation for us, but sometimes these truths can be hard to believe in the midst of exhaustion, busyness, and a world of spiritual and physical opposition. If God Is For Us is a devotional Bible Study on Romans 8 designed to cement in your soul the great truths of our salvation and an understanding for how the Holy Spirit guides our new life in the Spirit, all found in this beloved chapter of Scripture. Why just the one chapter? The simple answer: there’s so much there! It’s no wonder that so many Christians list Romans among their favorite books of the Bible and Romans 8 as their favorite in the book. Romans is packed with profound truth after profound truth which are then followed up with life-changing promise after life-changing promise. In this 6-week study, Trillia Newbell will walk you through Romans 8 and help you cement deep inside yourself the scandalous truths of our great salvation, our inheritance, the assurance of our faith, and ultimately the love of our good Father. Each week will include: 5 daily readings out of Romans A devotional for each daily reading Questions for reflection and study If you’ve experienced the comfort of Romans 8 before, but want to plant it more deeply in your person this is the Bible Study for you. And it’s great for individual or group settings. If you’re ready to live a life that shouts: “God is for me, who can be against me,” let’s get started today.

Thou Shalt Not Be Horrible. Imagine for a moment what the world might look like if we as people of faith, morality, and conscience actually aspired to this mantra. What if we were fully burdened to create a world that was more loving and equitable than when we arrived? What if we invited one another to share in wide-open, fearless, spiritual communities truly marked by compassion and interdependence? What if we daily challenged ourselves to live a faith that simply made us better humans? John Pavlovitz explores how we can embody this kinder kind of spirituality where we humbly examine our belief system to understand how it might compel us to act in less-than-loving ways toward others. This simple phrase, "Thou Shalt Not Be Horrible," could help us practice what we preach by creating a world where: spiritual community provides a sense of belonging where all people are received as we are; the most important question we ask of a religious belief is not Is it true? but rather, is it helpful? it is morally impossible to pledge complete allegiance to both Jesus and America simultaneously; the way we treat others is the most tangible and meaningful expression of our belief system. In If God Is Love, Don't Be a Jerk, John Pavlovitz examines the bedrock ideas of our religion: the existence of hell, the utility of prayer, the way we treat LGBTQ people, the value of anger, and other doctrines to help all of us take a good, honest look at how the beliefs we hold can shape our relationships with God and our fellow humans—and to make sure that love has the last, loudest word.

Suffering is, in the end, God’s invitation to trust him. “As he did in his best-selling book, Heaven, Randy Alcorn delves deep into a profound subject, and through compelling stories, provocative questions and answers, and keen biblical understanding, he brings assurance and hope to all.” –Publishers Weekly Every one of us will experience suffering. You may be in such a time now. We see the presence of evil in the headlines every day. It all raises questions about God—Why would an all-good and all-powerful God create a world full of evil and suffering? How can there be a God if suffering and evil exist? Atheists such as Richard Dawkins and even former believers like Bart Ehrman answer the question simply: The existence of suffering and evil proves there is no God. But in this illuminating book, best-selling author Randy Alcorn challenges the logic of disbelief, and brings a fresh, hopeful, and thoroughly biblical insight to the issues these important questions raise. Alcorn offers insights from his conversations with men and women whose lives have been torn apart by suffering, and yet whose faith in God burns brighter than ever. He reveals the big picture of who God is and what God is doing in the world—now and forever. And he shows the beauty of God’s sovereignty—how it ultimately triumphs over suffering and evil in our lives and the world around us.

"In every era, the scope of pain, suffering, and death in the world and its peoples has provoked profound and perplexing questions. Attempts to reconcile such experiences with a benevolent God only further complicate the questions and confusions that arise out of suffering. If God is for us : Christian perspectives on God and suffering illustrates a profound tradition of struggling - both personally and theologically - to interpret, reflect on, and find meaning in the midst of hardship. Through biblical, theological, and philosophical resources, Schaab explores a broad range of both ancient and modern Christian interpretations of personal, communal, and systemic suffering." -- Cover.

The encouragement we crave—when we’re most in need Out of the deepest hurts of the human condition, Randy Alcorn brings into clear focus our most pressing questions about evil and suffering—including those that wrench our souls when we or someone we love is victimized by evil or assaulted by disease. He faces these questions with seasoned sensitivity, skillful insight, and a heart of compassion. He dodges none of the difficulties, and never lapses into platitudes, hand-wringing, or oversimplification. On this troubling but inescapable topic, you’ll find frank acknowledgment of the inherent limitations that set humanity apart from the God who has none. There’s also generous, real encouragement that brings God nearer in our understanding when we need His comfort the most. And amid our heavy doubts and swirling confusion on this topic, Randy Alcorn points us ultimately toward Jesus as “the only answer bigger than the questions.”

The rise of the Christian Right took many writers and literary critics by surprise, trained as we were to think that religions waned as societies became modern. In If God Meant to Interfere, Christopher Douglas shows that American writers struggled to understand and respond to this new social and political force. Religiously inflected literature since the 1970s must be understood in the context of this unforeseen resurgence of conservative Christianity, he argues, a resurgence that realigned the literary and cultural fields. Among the writers Douglas considers are Marilynne Robinson, Barbara Kingsolver, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, Ishmael Reed, N. Scott Momaday, Gloria Anzaldúa, Philip Roth, Carl Sagan, and Dan Brown. Their fictions engaged a wide range of topics: religious conspiracies, faith and wonder, slavery and imperialism, evolution and extraterrestrial contact, alternate histories and ancestral spiritualities. But this is only part of the story. Liberal-leaning literary writers responding to the resurgence were sometimes confused by the Christian Right’s strange entanglement with the contemporary paradigms of multiculturalism and postmodernism —leading to complex emergent phenomena that Douglas terms "Christian multiculturalism" and "Christian postmodernism." Ultimately, If God Meant to Interfere shows the value of listening to our literature for its sometimes subterranean attention to the religious and social upheavals going on around it.

Scripture reveals a God who meets us where we are, not where we pretend to be. No More Faking Fine is your invitation to get honest with God through the life-giving language of lament. If you've ever been given empty clichés during challenging times, you know how painful it is to be misunderstood by well-meaning people. When life hurts, we often feel pressure--from others and ourselves--to keep it together, suck it up, or pray it away. But Scripture reveals a God who lovingly invites us to give honest voice to our emotions when life hits hard. For most of her life, Esther Fleece Allen believed she could bypass the painful emotions of her broken past by shutting them down altogether. She was known as an achiever and an overcomer on the fast track to success. But in silencing her pain, she robbed herself of the opportunity to be healed. Maybe you've done the same. Esther's journey into healing began when she discovered that God has given us a real-world way to deal with raw emotions and an alternative to the coping mechanisms that end up causing more pain. It's called lament--the gut-level, honest prayer that God never ignores, never silences, and never wastes. No More Faking Fine is your permission to lament, taking you on a journey down the unexpected pathway to true intimacy with God. Drawing from careful biblical study and hard-won insight, Esther reveals how to use God's own language to come closer to him as he leads us through our pain to the light on the other side, teaching you that: We are robbing ourselves of a divine mystery and a divine intimacy when we pretend to have it all together God does not expect us to be perfect; instead, he meets us where we are There is hope beyond your heartache, disappointment, and grief Like Esther, you'll soon find that when one person stops faking fine, it gives everyone else permission to do the same.

David Brenner is one of America's best-known and best-loved comedians and author of bestselling humor book Soft Pretzels with Mustard. Now he brings his fans a hilarious look at the ups and downs of traveling. If God Wanted Us to Travel . . . is packed with outrageous observations, hilarious anecdotes and timely tips.