Limping With God

When we look to the Bible for role models in our daily discipleship, we tend to think of Noah's obedience and David's bravery. Limping With God: Jacob and the Old Testament Guide to Messy Discipleship posits that we can also look to Jacob. Jacob seems to be anything but a model disciple, though we can learn a lot from his journey. He's a trickster, liar, and selfishly ambitious man who fathers children with four women and leads a dysfunctional family rife with jealousy and backstabbing. But Jacob is also Israel, the namesake of the Old Testament community of God, chosen and blessed. As such, this sinner-saint, who limps along with the Lord, burdened by weakness and beset by problems, is the mirror image of all of us who follow Jesus. In Jacob's life we see our lives, our struggles, our failures, and most especially the God who loves us and chooses us as his own. As we explore his bio, from his wrangling in the womb with Esau to his death as an old man in Egypt, we will learn more about ourselves and the God who is with us and for us in Jesus the Messiah. From the author: "I have entitled this book Limping With God instead of Walking With God or Running With God, not because there would be anything wrong with those metaphors, but because, as Jacob limped away from his famous wrestling match with God, so we all get by on bum hips and bad knees. Following Jesus, we gimp our way down the dark and slippery paths of life. As we do, we discover, ironically, that the longer we follow him, the weaker we become, and the more we lean on our Lord. Finally, at our most mature, our eyes are opened to realize that we've never run or walked or even limped a single day of our lives. "We've been on Christ's shoulders the entire time."

Reading the Old Testament can seem like exploring an old, mysterious mansion, packed with of all sorts of strange rooms. The creation room, vast and sublime. The exodus room, with hardhearted pharaohs and dried-up seas. The war room, with bloody swords and crumbling walls. The tabernacle room, with smoking altars and dark inner sanctums. What does this odd and ancient world have to do with us, who are modern followers of Jesus? As it turns out, everything! Every chapter in the Old Testament, in a variety of ways, tells the story that culminates in Jesus the Messiah. What Christians today call the Old Testament is what Jesus and the earliest believers simply called the Scriptures. That was their Bible. From its pages, they taught about the Messiah's divine nature, his priestly work, his ministry of salvation. The Christ Key will reintroduce readers to these old books as ever-fresh, ever-new testimonies of Jesus. By the end, you will see even Leviticus as a book of grace and mercy, and you will hear in the Psalms the resounding voice of Christ.

Put your flawed foot forward. Pick up most leadership books and you’ll find strategies for leveraging your power and minimizing your areas of weakness. But think about the leaders whose names have gone down in history. Most of them were so messed up that, if they were looking for work today, no executive placement service would give them the time of day. God’s criteria for choosing leaders runs counter to the conventional wisdom. Our culture equates strength with effectiveness, but God favors leaders who know the value of brokenness. In Leading With a Limp, you’ll discover what makes flawed leaders so successful. They’re not preoccupied with protecting their image, they are undaunted by chaos and complexity, they are ready to risk failure in moving an organization from what is to what should be. God chooses leaders who aren’t deceived by the myths of power and control, but who realize that God’s power is found in brokenness. If you are a leader–or if you have been making excuses to avoid leading–find out how you can take full advantage of your weakness. A limping leader is the person God uses to accomplish amazing things. To go deeper, check out the Leading With a Limp Workbook.

In The Magnificent Defeat, Frederick Buechner examines what it means to follow Christ, the lessons of Christmas and Easter, the miracles of grace, and "the magnificent defeat" of the human soul of God.

After the unexpected, accidental death of his three-year-old son, Jason Jones went on a long, painful journey to make sense of how God could have let this happen to his son and best friend, Jacob, and to their family. And he struggled intensely with his faith after everything he thought about God disintegrated on June 12, 2011. In Limping But Blessed, Jones explores struggling with faith and belief, dealing with his depression and grief, and searching for hope in a hopeless situation. The book includes tales of his darkest days, correspondence he had with Christian theologians, and what heÕs done to preserve his sonÕs legacy. At some point in each of our lives, something goes terribly wrong, and our faith is shaken to the core. This book is the story of one manÕs journey through the darkest time of life searching for answers and a grueling attempt to find a sliver of hope to keep holding on.Ê

“Scot and Laura do an amazing job of teaching us what a good church looks like.” —Beth Moore What is the way forward for the church? Tragically, in recent years, Christians have gotten used to revelations of abuses of many kinds in our most respected churches—from Willow Creek to Harvest, from Southern Baptist pastors to Sovereign Grace churches. Respected author and theologian Scot McKnight and former Willow Creek member Laura Barringer wrote this book to paint a pathway forward for the church. We need a better way. The sad truth is that churches of all shapes and sizes are susceptible to abuses of power, sexual abuse, and spiritual abuse. Abuses occur most frequently when Christians neglect to create a culture that resists abuse and promotes healing, safety, and spiritual growth. How do we keep these devastating events from repeating themselves? We need a map to get us from where we are today to where we ought to be as the body of Christ. That map is in a mysterious and beautiful little Hebrew word in Scripture that we translate “good,” the word tov. In this book, McKnight and Barringer explore the concept of tov—unpacking its richness and how it can help Christians and churches rise up to fulfill their true calling as imitators of Jesus.

The story of Jacob's life portrays victories as well as failures. Jacob's journeys are some of the most intriguing life journeys in all of Scripture, for in these journeys Jacob experienced several revelations from God. Through these revelations Jacob learned to follow God--to hear His word and obey. With a conscious intention of breaking down the artificial walls of time and prestige, F. B. Meyer introduces us to the real man behind the mystique. He portrays Jacob as completely human--with the temptations, frailty and failures common to all of us. "The Bible," Meyer says, "does not hesitate to tell us the very worst about its heroes; that we may better magnify the grace of God...." In biographical style, Meyer's comforting words will help you discover the numerous passages of Scripture where God calls himself "the God of Jacob." The author seems to take speical delight in this paradoxical title, which links God's holy nature and protective strength with the frailties and weaknesses of Jacob and all mankind. After reading Jacob: Wrestling with God, you should have little doubt that God can do for all of us what He has done for Jacob if only we are willing to make a complete surrender to God and seek the fullness of His spirit.

The stories of Scripture are for everyone. No exceptions. Emmy Kegler has a complicated relationship with the Bible. As a queer woman who grew up in both conservative Evangelical and progressive Protestant churches, she knows too well how Scripture can be used to wound and exclude. And yet, the stories of Scripture continue to captivate and inspire her--both as a person of faith and as a pastor to a congregation. So she set out to fall in love with the Bible, wrestling with the stories inside, where she met a God who continues to seek us out--appearing again and again as a voice, a presence, and a promise. Whenever we are pushed to the edges, our voices silenced, or our stories dismissed, God goes out after us--seeking us until we are found again. And God is seeking out those whose voices we too quickly silence and dismiss, too. Because God's story is a story of welcome and acceptance for everyone--no exceptions. Kegler shows us that even when we feel like lost and dusty coins--rusted from others' indifference, misspent and misused--God picks up a broom and sweeps every corner of creation to find us.