The Road Away From God

It's no easy journey disentangling the good news of the gospel from the toxic theologies that have rendered Jesus unrecognizable. It's no wonder the church has sent many walking. In The Road Away from God, Jonathan Martin reimagines Luke's story of two disillusioned disciples walking the Emmaus road away from the holy city where they had watched their hope die a gruesome death right before their eyes. For anyone who is feeling their faith unravel, reckoning with religious trauma, or walking the long road of deconstruction, Martin speaks compassionate hope into the journey of today's disillusioned disciples, revealing that the resurrected Christ is profoundly present with them--even on what seems to be the road away from God. With "a pastor's heart and poet's touch," as Rachel Held Evans once wrote of Martin, this is a book to help you feel seen in your spiritual journey and all its complexities, and to find resurrection even where you least expect it.

Neal Randall Steinberg was born on August 28, 1986. He died on May 26, 2013. This is the story of his life, as told by his father, Dr. Mark Steinberg. As seen through his father's eyes, Neal's story is filled with joy and accomplishments, pride and deep love, sorrow and tragedy. The worth of a life is not measured by its longevity, for we all pass away like flowers in a field. And death ends a physical life, not a relationship. When God Takes Away tells the touching story of Neal Steinberg-his brilliance and loneliness, his family and those to whom he mattered, his development as a young star with so much promise, and, ultimately his decline into drug addiction. It is the story of a father's profound love for his son, the close bond they shared despite conflicts, and the helplessness of losing a child. More than the personal story of a family and its tragedies, When God Takes Away is a handbook for living with the realities of loss, a universal experience that everyone must endure. Revealing the depth of his personal despair and speaking from his decades of professional experience as a clinical neuropsychologist, Dr. Steinberg candidly discloses how loss affects our most core emotional and spiritual foundations. He bares his soul to connect with the reader's soul and share how losses reflect our capacities to attach emotionally with other beings and how to let go when it is time to do so. When God Takes Away is a compassionate and uplifting guide to dealing with the inevitability of loss and its integration into what really matters in your life. Steinberg tackles the difficult issues of mortality and relationship loss, as well as the seldom addressed realities of losing body functions, possessions, opportunities, and innocence. How each of us accepts and copes with loss reflects a developmental underpinning of how we learned to form emotional attachments and how we deal with trauma. Steinberg explores these truths with meaningful and practical explanations, bridging the psychological impact of loss with emotional comfort and coping tools. Living is intertwined with losing. How can we face loss without succumbing to weakness, hopelessness, and a losing attitude? When God Takes Away is a beacon in the darkness. This book shows how to cultivate and exercise determination, perseverance, and hope while maintaining an identity and security that neither resides in nor depends upon the gifts and possessions that are, in reality, temporary. If you are ready to give up your hurt and the stubbornness of sorrow, this book will light the path toward living with loss and surrender.

Eliminate the Spiritual Distance between You and God Do you feel far from God? Perhaps you desire nearness, but you end up filling your calendar instead of communing with the Savior. Wayman Ming Jr. will show you how daily interruptions are divine opportunities to evaluate your life and close the spiritual gap between you and God. If you have become too comfortable in the daily practice of your faith, or you are on a quest to go deeper, this book will help you draw near to your Creator and pursue His heart with passion as you · identify and remove obstacles in finding God · deepen your roots of daily prayer and devotion · find peace and hope in God's presence amid trials · develop spiritual rhythms with the Holy Spirit · hunger for personal revival and spiritual awakening in our culture God is reforming how we think and act as followers of His Son. The Holy Spirit will empower your full pursuit of what matters most and help you align your life with His plans--for your good! "While God's 'interruptions' in our lives often do not make sense to us, He desires that we seek Him in all circumstances: good, bad and ugly. Nearer to God challenges us to see these interruptions as invitations to a closer walk with God."--Pastor Samuel Rodriguez, president, National Hispanic Christian Leadership

The Christian life isn't always a walk in the park. Children of Christian parents do die. Christian businessmen do lose their jobs. And husbands of Christian wives do cheat. Being a Christian doesn't protect you from the tough punches life throws. Taking fourteen strategies from the biblical account of the Israelite journey, Walking with God on the Road You Never Wanted to Travel offers real hope to those on an unexpected, difficult journey. For forty years the Israelites wandered through a devastating wilderness, suffering many losses, and yet learning some timeless lessons. These lessons, presented here as strategies for modern believers, are simply stated, clearly explained, and beautifully illustrated with dramatic and inspiring stories.

God Has a Name is a simple yet profound guide to understanding God in a new light--focusing on what God says about himself. This one shift has the potential to radically alter how you relate to God, not as a doctrine, but as a relational being who responds to you in an elastic, back-and-forth way. In God Has a Name, John Mark Comer takes you line by line through Exodus 34:6-8--Yahweh's self-revelation on Mount Sinai, one of the most quoted passages in the Bible. Along the way, Comer addresses some of the most profound questions he came across as he studied these noted lines in Exodus, including: Why do we feel this gap between us and God? Could it be that a lot of what we think about God is wrong? Not all wrong, but wrong enough to mess up how we relate to him? What if our "God" is really a projection of our own identity, ideas, and desires? What if the real God is different, but far better than we could ever imagine? No matter where you are in your spiritual journey, the act of learning who God is just might surprise you--and change everything.

The president of New York University offers a love letter to America’s most beloved sport and a tribute to its underlying spirituality. For more than a decade, John Sexton has taught a wildly popular New York University course about two seemingly very different things: religion and baseball. Yet Sexton argues that one is actually a pathway to the other. Baseball as a Road to God is about touching that something that lies beyond logical understanding. Sexton illuminates the surprisingly large number of mutual concepts shared between baseball and religion: faith, doubt, conversion, miracles, and even sacredness among many others. Structured like a game and filled with riveting accounts of baseball’s most historic moments, Baseball as Road to God will enthrall baseball fans whatever their religious beliefs may be. In thought-provoking, beautifully rendered prose, Sexton elegantly demonstrates that baseball is more than a game, or even a national pastime: It can be a road to enlightenment.

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.

A profound exploration of how to hold on to hope when our unchanging faith collides with a changing culture, from two respected Christian storytellers and thought leaders. “Offers neither spin control nor image maintenance for the evangelical tribe, but genuine hope.”—Russell Moore, president of ERLC As the pressures of health warnings, economic turmoil, and partisan politics continue to rise, the influence of gospel-focused Christians seems to be waning. In the public square and popular opinion, we are losing our voice right when it’s needed most for Christ’s glory and the common good. But there’s another story unfolding too—if you know where to look. In Gospelbound, Collin Hansen and Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra counter these growing fears with a robust message of resolute hope for anyone hungry for good news. Join them in exploring profound stories of Christians who are quietly changing the world in the name of Jesus—from the wild world of digital media to the stories of ancient saints and unsung contemporary activists on the frontiers of justice and mercy. Discover how, in these dark times, the light of Jesus shines even brighter. You haven’t heard the whole story. And that’s good news.