The Great American Backslide And Our Silent Partnership With Darkness

Change is accelerating and the world of 2023 is unrecognizable from the world that existed just five years ago. In a very subtle and incremental manner, American society has been transformed from what once was the world's premiere super-power, a country that was exalted as an example of freedom, justice, morality, and liberty, into a divided group of many tribes, cultures, and political and special interest groups often lacking a moral compass. We go with the loudest tribe fitting our basic ideals or choose to go it alone. And when we try to avoid the many tribes of destruction, we often tend to adopt the idol of the god of self. Community and unity are being left to die a slow, painful death. America's true north has become obscured because we decided to forego God as the light for our path. This has allowed us to quickly forget the race worth running as well as those foundational values that once comprised what we stood for as a country. But how did we get here and how can the trend of moral decay and divisiveness be reversed? The Great American Backslide came about as a result of not just understanding that our natural tendency as humans is to be selfish and sinful, but knowing we are being given substantial assistance by the dominion of darkness. This book will take us through an analysis of biblical, secular, and non-secular explanations of the existence of evil; how it induces cultural paradigm shifts aimed to ultimately separate us from God; how evil leverages our emotions, our brain chemistry, and our sinful human nature to manipulate subtle and incremental compromises of truth; how evil sustains itself and creates ever-increasing moral decay leading to further evil through a cycle of depravity; and how we can go about living in opposition to evil influences upon our world.

A young five-year-old boy needs glasses. This boy loves orange. He wears orange shirts, shorts, and shoes. The boy is having problems in school, reading and seeing what the teacher writes on the board. His mom takes him to the eye doctor to get his eyes checked. The young boy is scared and apprehensive. This book describes his experience at the doctor's office using his words. He finds out that he needs glasses but doesn't want to wear glasses because he will look different. In the end, he finds a pair of glasses that make him feel cool and wants to wear his glasses.

A compassionate, shame-free guide for your darkest days “A one-of-a-kind book . . . to read for yourself or give to a struggling friend or loved one without the fear that depression and suicidal thoughts will be minimized, medicalized or over-spiritualized.”—Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church What happens when loving Jesus doesn’t cure you of depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts? You might be crushed by shame over your mental illness, only to be told by well-meaning Christians to “choose joy” and “pray more.” So you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. As darkness lingers and color drains from your world, you’re left wondering if God has abandoned you. You just want a way out. But there’s hope. In I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die, Sarah J. Robinson offers a healthy, practical, and shame-free guide for Christians struggling with mental illness. With unflinching honesty, Sarah shares her story of battling depression and fighting to stay alive despite toxic theology that made her afraid to seek help outside the church. Pairing her own story with scriptural insights, mental health research, and simple practices, Sarah helps you reconnect with the God who is present in our deepest anguish and discover that you are worth everything it takes to get better. Beautifully written and full of hard-won wisdom, I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die offers a path toward a rich, hope-filled life in Christ, even when healing doesn’t look like what you expect.

The Scary House on Cadbury Lane is a short story packed with twists and turns that most do not see coming. It’s the boys versus the girls. The story is about a group of young kids that enjoy playing pranks and enjoy scaring their friends. But beware, things are not always as they seem, and the scary house on Cadbury Lane may prove to be hiding a secret or two.

In the early 19th century, Blair Harvey comes to Exeter with a degree from Oxford, and high hopes of forging a career in the legal profession. But a brush at Exeter Fair with an Irish prostitute pricks his conscience, and he seeks spiritual refuge with Dr. Percy Brougham, a high Church Anglican who is flirting with Roman Catholicism. Blair sets his sights on Brougham's independently minded daughter Susannah. They marry, and when Brougham dies of apoplexy, Blair inherits the family fortune. He sets up a thriving shipping business in Teignmouth, and for a while assumes the role of a paterfamilias and patron of the arts. But when he witnesses the wreck of a ship off the Devon coast and is begged to lead the local people in prayer for the shipwrecked sailors, he is conscience-stricken, and undergoes an extraordinary conversion to Christianity. Obedient to the precepts of the Plymouth Brethren, Blair sells house and home in order to set himself up as the leader of a little community of Believers on the edge of Dartmoor, where he embraces a life of hardship and poverty. But as the years pass, Blair's rigid adherence to the exclusivist teachings of the Plymouth Brethren destroys his family, his prosperity and his peace of mind, and turns him into a figure of grotesque tragedy.

Every human life is made up of the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the vital and the deadening. How you think about this rhythm of moods makes all the difference. Our lives are filled with emotional tunnels: the loss of a loved one or end of a relationship, aging and illness, career disappointments or just an ongoing sense of dissatisfaction with life. Society tends to view these “dark nights” in clinical terms as obstacles to be overcome as quickly as possible. But Moore shows how honoring these periods of fragility as periods of incubation and positive opportunities to delve the soul’s deepest needs can provide healing and a new understanding of life’s meaning. Dark Nights of the Soul presents these metaphoric dark nights not as the enemy, but as times of transition, occasions to restore yourself, and transforming rites of passage, revealing an uplifting and inspiring new outlook on such topics as: • The healing power of melancholy • The sexual dark night and the mysteries of matrimony • Finding solace during illness and in aging • Anxiety, anger, and temporary Insanities • Linking creativity, spirituality, and emotional struggles • Finding meaning and beauty in the darkness