Open And Unafraid

"A book you will want to read and read again." -- Eugene Peterson Afterword by Bono. How can we find a more transparent, resilient, and fearless life of faith? The book of Psalms has been central to God's people for millennia, across all walks of life and cultural contexts. In reading it, we discover that we are never alone in our joys, sorrows, angers, doubts, praises, or thanksgivings. In it, we learn about prayer and poetry, honesty and community, justice and enemies, life and death, nations and creation. Open and Unafraid shows us how to read the psalms in a fresh, life-giving way, and so access the bottomless resources for life that they provide. "David Taylor’s take is 'open and unafraid' alright. He really goes there, exposing himself before God in the most beautiful way. He might have called the book Naked, because if you don’t find your own self feeling a little exposed here, it might be time to take some armor off." -- Bono, from the Afterword "A book that you will want to read and read again, and yet again, in order to discover the wisdom of the Psalms that shows us how to walk in the life-giving way of Jesus." -- Eugene Peterson, from the Foreword "A winsome, accessible entry into the Book of Psalms…Connects the poetry of the psalms to real-life wonders and struggles." -- Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary "Taylor reads these biblical prayers with Dr. Seuss, rappers, and other poets, along with theologians and the daily news....Guides readers in tracing out patterns of holy speech that have the potential for healing our hearts and our communities." -- Ellen F. Davis, Duke Divinity School "I have always loved the psalms--for their defiant devotion, their deep joy, and their brutal yet beautiful honesty. And after reading this fantastic book about them, I love them even more." -- Matt Redman, worship leader and song writer "In these fraught and fearsome days, we need the psalms more than ever. And we need more faithful artists and thinkers like David Taylor to mine the infinite gifts the psalms offer across the ages." -- Karen Swallow Prior, author of Fierce Convictions

Jesus died with a psalm on his lips. For millennia, humans have been shaped by the Psalms. And before the Nazis banned him from publishing, German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer published this book on the Psalms. What comfort is found in the Psalter? What praise, and what challenge? What threat? In the pages of Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible, discover the richness this book of Scripture held for Bonhoeffer, and learn to pray psalms along with Christ. First published in 1940, this classic reveals how the Psalms are essential to the life of the believer and offers Bonhoeffer's reflections on psalms of thanksgiving, suffering, guilt, praise, and lament. Now with an introduction by Walter Brueggemann and excerpts from the Psalms, Bonhoeffer's timeless work offers contemporary readers ancient wisdom and resources for the living of these days. Includes a biographical sketch of Bonhoeffer written by his friend and biographer Eberhard Bethge.

Learn how to face and overcome the fears we feel about loneliness, illness, financial insecurity, disappointing others, failure, insignificance, and aging “A thoughtful, literate, faith-filled guide to reclaiming our minds and our lives.”—John Ortberg, senior pastor of Menlo Church and author of I’d Like You More If You Were More Like Me You’d be hard-pressed to overstate the extent to which fear, anxiety, and worry permeate our lives today. Fear wreaks havoc on our relationships and communities. It leads us into making bad decisions. It holds us back from the very pursuits that promise fulfillment and joy. As the senior pastor of a large, diverse church in America’s heartland, Adam Hamilton has seen the cost of fear up close. When he surveyed his congregation on how fear affects them, 2,400 people responded—and what they said was eye-opening. Eighty percent admitted to living with moderate or significant levels of fear. Unafraid is Hamilton's insightful and impassioned response. Drawing on recent research, inspiring real-life examples, and fresh biblical insight, Hamilton uses a mixture of facts and faith to help readers understand and counter fears related to such outsize perils as death and illness, as well as the everyday anxieties all of us encounter. He invites us to: Face our fears with a bias of hope Examine our fears in light of the facts Attack our anxieties with action Release our cares to God Writing with generosity and intelligence, Hamilton shows how believer and unbeliever alike can develop sustaining spiritual practices and embrace Jesus’s recurring counsel: “Do not be afraid.” For anyone struggling with fear or wondering how families and communities can thrive in troubled times, Unafraid offers an informed and inspiring message full of practical solutions.

How do the arts in worship form individuals and communities? Every choice of art in worship opens up and closes down possibilities for the formation of our humanity. Every practice of music, every decision about language, every use of our bodies, every approach to visual media or church buildings forms our desires, shapes our imaginations, habituates our emotional instincts, and reconfigures our identity as Christians in contextually meaningful ways, generating thereby a sense of the triune God and of our place in the world. Glimpses of the New Creation argues that the arts form us in worship by bringing us into intentional and intensive participation in the aesthetic aspect of our humanity—that is, our physical, emotional, imaginative, and metaphorical capacities. In so doing they invite the people of God to be conformed to Christ and to participate in the praise of Christ and in the praise of creation, which by the Spirit’s power raises its peculiar voice to the Father in heaven, for the sake of the world that God so loves.

In her deeply affecting, vividly written memoir, Rosemary L. Bray describes with remarkable frankness growing up poor in Chicago in the 1960s, and her childhood shaped by welfare, the Roman Catholic Church, and the civil rights movement. Bray writes poignantly of her lasting dread of the cold and the dark that characterized her years of poverty; of her mother's extraordinary strength and resourcefulness; and of the system that miraculously enabled her mother to scrape together enough to keep the children fed and clothed. Bray's parents, held together by their ambitions for their children and painfully divided by their poverty, punctuate young Rosemary's nights with their violent fights and define her days with their struggles. This powerful, ultimately inspiring book is a moving testimony of the history Bray overcame, and the racial obstacles she continues to see in her children's way.

Celebrate a vulnerable and open life by overcoming your fear of criticism and start living the life God intended. ​ Fear of criticism has turned into a massive epidemic harder than ever to overcome. It prevents people from speaking up; it's why most people struggle to make decisions; it's why we're uncomfortable with vulnerability and openness; and it's why so many are unable to meet their full potential. But it doesn't have to be that way. Through the Bible story of King David dancing naked in the streets while his distant, guarded, and critical wife watches from a window, Naked and Unafraid provides a visual contrast of these two characters that sheds light on the way we all approach life and explains how the fear of criticism impacts our lives much more than we realize or are willing to admit. God didn't create us to live guarded, isolated lives. Our greatest fulfillment isn't found in the window. It's found in the street. Everything in our lives, including our relationships, our work, our emotional and spiritual health, gets better in a place of openness and vulnerability. But that doesn't mean it's easy. . . because it's not. Vulnerability is risky. Exposure is scary. Naked and Unafraid pushes readers to: Find the courage to not let criticism control or determine who they are and what they do. Stop living in the shallow end of relationships and experience the rewards that true vulnerability can bring. Abandon smallness and live the life they were born to live. Discover how the fear of criticism diminishes in direct proportion to understanding it. Reject the limitations and inhibitions of "window living," so they can experience the freedom and rewards of "street life." Confront their own worst critic that counts them out of what God has included them in. God will help you move away from window watching, and toward street dancing. Know who He says you are, and live in that freedom!

Think of your local church. Without art--music, song, dance, etc.--it would be a much poorer place. But if protestants have any vision for the arts, it tends to be a thin one. This unique book is an attempt to contribute to a robust, expansive vision for the church and the arts. Its specific aim is to show how the many parts of the landscape of church and art hold together. You can think of it as a kind of helicopter flyover, but one with expert pilots. The guides include the likes of Eugene Peterson, Lauren Winner, Jeremy Begbie, Andy Crouch, and John Witvliet, helping to inspire readers and empower pastor-leaders with a vision of the church and the arts that is compelling, far-seeing, and profoundly transformative.

In The Art of Healing Prayer, Charles Ringma and Mary Dickau invite us to enter the realm of God’s curative love to aid those seeking the wholeness of Christ. Implicit in this invitation is the understanding that we have opened up our own lives to God’s healing grace. For this is a costly ministry, in which precious time and resources will be required of us as we pray biblically, imaginatively and sensitively for someone who may be on a very difficult journey to restoration. Although often carried out behind the scenes of much of the Church’s activity, the healing ministry is one of joy and transformation. A person released from long-standing inner woundedness – from the prison of reaction, bitterness, self-pity, self-protection and fear – is one who can grow to inhabit new wide spaces of love and forgiveness. In turn, they may become a source of goodness and healing, as the ‘magic’ of God’s grace results in eddies of life-giving love for others.