One Ordinary Life Extraordinary Grace

Imagine sitting in the cockpit of a jet fighter descending to the rolling, moving flight deck of a super carrier at sea. You have 600 feet of flight deck to thread the eye of the needle and land safely. Ten thousand times ten thousand this dangerous drama has been repeated in the history of American carrier aviation. It is simply extraordinary. This drama at sea if viewed through the proper lens can have great spiritual significance for your life. Imagine that the flight deck represents your safe haven in life, the place you return to again and again for meaning and stability. The flight deck is also the catapult for every new mission in life but here's the hook; God script for your life written by His own hand is better than any script you could write for yourself. Without God's script engaging your life, the bolters and wave-offs in your life's vocation will be frequent and the safe traps upon His flight deck few. For me to say to you, "Choose God's script," is far too simple and simplistic. Discovering God's script for your life is much more complex and often counterintuitive against the powers of human reasoning. Nevertheless, it is only His script for your life that will lead you through the eye of the needle to reach the blessed end of God's script for your dreams. Life, your life, is a great drama. Take the chance and live without God's script and you will bolter again and again with the imminent danger of ditching your plane into the angry sea. God alone threads the needle reframing your life until He brings you safely aboard His celestial flight deck turning every ordinary life into something truly extraordinary. I have written this little book from my heart to yours via real life vignettes spread across the spectrum of my own ordinary life demonstrating that the grace of God is alive, active and at work. If God above can touch my ordinary life with His extraordinary grace as I wander about in the midst of eight billion souls strolling across planet earth and keep me on the narrow path of His vocation chosen for me, will He not do the same for you? Most certainly true. You're approaching the flight deck. Flaps down. Tailhook down. Call the Ball! Trapped! You have safely landed on the celestial flight deck of God's grace ready for a new extraordinary mission in your ordinary life. Discover God's script for you. To God be all the glory.

Imagine sitting in the cockpit of a jet fighter descending to the rolling, moving flight deck of a super carrier at sea. You have 600 feet of flight deck to thread the eye of the needle and land safely. Ten thousand times ten thousand this dangerous drama has been repeated in the history of American carrier aviation. It is simply extraordinary. This drama at sea if viewed through the proper lens can have great spiritual significance for your life. Imagine that the flight deck represents your safe haven in life, the place you return to again and again for meaning and stability. The flight deck is also the catapult for every new mission in life but here's the hook; God script for your life written by His own hand is better than any script you could write for yourself. Without God's script engaging your life, the bolters and wave-offs in your life's vocation will be frequent and the safe traps upon His flight deck few. For me to say to you, "Choose God's script," is far too simple and simplistic. Discovering God's script for your life is much more complex and often counterintuitive against the powers of human reasoning. Nevertheless, it is only His script for your life that will lead you through the eye of the needle to reach the blessed end of God's script for your dreams. Life, your life, is a great drama. Take the chance and live without God's script and you will bolter again and again with the imminent danger of ditching your plane into the angry sea. God alone threads the needle reframing your life until He brings you safely aboard His celestial flight deck turning every ordinary life into something truly extraordinary. I have written this little book from my heart to yours via real life vignettes spread across the spectrum of my own ordinary life demonstrating that the grace of God is alive, active and at work. If God above can touch my ordinary life with His extraordinary grace as I wander about in the midst of eight billion souls strolling across planet eart

A deeply personal introduction to the biblical theology and spirituality of Opus Dei by the bestselling Catholic author Scott Hahn. To conspiracy theorists, Opus Dei is a highly secretive and powerful international organization. To its members, however, Opus Dei is a spiritual path, a way of incorporating the teachings of Jesus into everyday life. In Ordinary Work, Extraordinary Grace, Scott Hahn, a member of Opus Dei, describes the organization’s founding, its mission, and its profound influence on his life. Hahn recounts the invaluable part Opus Dei played in his conversion from Evangelical Christianity to Catholicism and explains why its teachings remain at the center of his life. Through stories about his job, his marriage, his role as a parent, and his community activities, Hahn shows how Opus Dei’s spirituality enriches the meaning of daily tasks and transforms ordinary relationships. He offers inspiring insights for reconciling spiritual and material goals, discussing topics ranging from ambition, workaholism, friendship, and sex, to the place of prayer and sacrifice in Christianity today. Engaging and enlightening, Ordinary Work, Extraordinary Grace is at once a moving personal story and an inspiring work of contemporary spirituality.

An intensely personal chronicle of one's journey of faith furnishes an introduction to the biblical theology, spirituality, history, mission, and influence of Opus Dei, recalling the organization's role in the author's conversion from evangelical Christianity to Catholicism and its continuing influence on every aspect of his life and spiritual quest. 25,000 first printing.

Radical. Crazy. Transformative and restless. Every word we read these days seems to suggest there’s a “next-best-thing,” if only we would change our comfortable, compromising lives. In fact, the greatest fear most Christians have is boredom—the sense that they are missing out on the radical life Jesus promised. One thing is certain. No one wants to be “ordinary.” Yet pastor and author Michael Horton believes that our attempts to measure our spiritual growth by our experiences, constantly seeking after the next big breakthrough, have left many Christians disillusioned and disappointed. There’s nothing wrong with an energetic faith; the danger is that we can burn ourselves out on restless anxieties and unrealistic expectations. What’s needed is not another program or a fresh approach to spiritual growth; it’s a renewed appreciation for the commonplace. Far from a call to low expectations and passivity, Horton invites readers to recover their sense of joy in the ordinary. He provides a guide to a sustainable discipleship that happens over the long haul—not a quick fix that leaves readers empty with unfulfilled promises. Convicting and ultimately empowering, Ordinary is not a call to do less; it’s an invitation to experience the elusive joy of the ordinary Christian life.

Looking back at a tragic event that occurred during his thirteenth year, Frank Drum explores how a complicated web of secrets, adultery, and betrayal shattered his Methodist family and their small 1961 Minnesota community.

God’s extraordinary grace is hard to grasp—but made easier to understand through stories of God’s people. Gary Chapman and Chris Fabry search the Scriptures for examples of God’s grace in the lives of those named in Jesus’ lineage, but what they find are people with faults, foibles, and sins, just like the rest of us. So obviously, grace is not about doing everything exactly right. It is a gift . . . an astonishing gift given by God. In Extraordinary Grace, you will hear the call of grace; laugh because of grace; apply grace; be overtaken by grace; and know the extraordinary grace that comes from loving Jesus. Chapter studies, for individuals or groups, will help you to find examples of extraordinary grace reflected in the lineage of Jesus.

Present reality is transfigured when it encounters another world in this one, disseminating the miraculous in the ordinary every day to effect a process of limitless transformation and possibility. Here is living witness to the bounty of a God who is alive and ever-present in the universe and infinitely available to all, Christian or not. In all his grandeur he appears to the most ordinary, not just the giants of the faith, in his commitment of inextricability from the human race whom he calls beloved. Cross-pollinating the here and now with the extraordinary God of the Old and New Testaments, this chronicle marries memoir and academic research effortlessly. The capacity of God to do absolutely anything at any time for anyone without blowing his own trumpet, both masks and marks the power and extent of his love to improve human circumstances. Over a lifetime of difficulties, dreams, visions, miracles, and doctoral research on God as love itself, the author joins Job whose response to God after a prolonged encounter is, “I know that you can do anything, and no one can stop you” (Job 42:1).