You long for a deeper walk with God but you seem to be missing out on that daily intimacy that you desire. What is standing in your way? Holiness is a concept that many believers do not fully grasp and therefore cannot live out daily. Yet God makes it very clear and simple. So, if the lack of holiness is blocking your intimate relationship with God, begin now to understand holiness, hear God’s call to holiness, and practically live out a holy life. Embraced by Holiness is a focused six-week study that allows you to interact with specific Scripture passages. Be encouraged to take a guided, deep, and consistent look at Scripture for biblical principles dealing with holiness. And, after five weekly lessons, you will have the life-changing opportunity to experience practically and personally these principles at work in your everyday life.

Preceded by three introductory essays and a chronology of major events in black religious history from 1618 to 1991, this A-Z encyclopedia includes three types of entries: * Biographical sketches of 773 African American religious leaders * 341 entries on African American denominations and religious organizations (including white churches with significant black memberships and educational institutions) * Topical articles on important aspects of African American religious life (e.g., African American Christians during the Colonial Era, Music in the African American Church)

“We will always obey our Lord at all costs.” This is the opposite of the spirit of lawlessness, which despises authority and cultivates chaos, division, and destruction. And there is no doubt that lawless and unrighteous acts are on the rise throughout this country. In a time when unholiness is rampant in our homes, schools, communities, churches, and abroad, there are alarming concerns about these escalating acts. If we’re not students of God’s word, growing in his grace and love as believers, we can find ourselves vulnerable to the rise of unholiness because it can distort our minds, heart, and attitude. It’s important that God’s children are on the front line in pursuing God’s most divine nature of holiness and living as intentional followers of Christ. Because make no mistake: God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not pleased with all the unholy practices saturating our lives. They are calling believers to intercede in the gap and bridge God’s holiness in people’s lives! As devout Christians, we are needed more than ever because an intense battle of spiritual warfare is spreading where evil is trying to take over, and we cannot allow this to happen.

Living a holy life in an unholy world can seem a formidable challenge. Through daily renewal in the Word of God, A Woman's Guide to Personal Holiness offers a Scriptural blueprint for holy living. This topical workbook Bible study contains 12 weekly lessons that take women through the Old and New Testaments with a personal challenge for a Christlike lifestyle.

At one time there was a great deal of interest in the topic of holiness—but not so much anymore. Theological wrangling and impossible legalism has left many in the church frustrated and confused, with part of that confusion arising from idealism in the pulpit that rang hollow in the lives and experiences of ordinary believers. But what if there was significant help from God in the enterprise of living a morally triumphant life, where habitual sinning was not inevitable, and where the development of godly character was possible and found through a maturing relationship with God and growth in the Christian life? The apostle Paul certainly thought so. In Help for Holiness, author and senior pastor Paul F. Evans revisits the topic of holiness and explores Paul’s admonition that believers shouldn’t seek more rules (legalism) nor give in to moral pessimism that says we cannot help but sin every day in word, thought, and deed. Instead, through morally transformative justification and regeneration, followed by a commitment to the crucifixion of the old life in the death of Christ, we can be raised to new life, which, through ongoing surrender to the Spirit, can in fact produce the conduct and character God is looking for. In this postmodern world, we do not need to abandon an emphasis on righteous and holy living—God really has made a provision for us to succeed morally. Holiness was started by grace, and God will complete it in us by grace through the Spirit!

According to Willis, confusion about God's holiness is due to the mistake of treating transcendence and immanence as opposites and subsuming holiness almost exclusively under God's transcendence. To correct this view, Willis begins with the cross and resurrection, where the transcending One is freely immanent to fulfill God's covenanting purposes. God, says Willis, is not so much "the wholly other" as "the Holy Other" who confronts us as purifying love. Willis looks in detail at several facets of holiness--love, simplicity, communion, beauty. He shows that when we recognize beauty to be an essential aspect of holiness, we can better reconsider frequently given definitions of the glory and the sovereignty of God and can better understand something of the awe-filled love that this beauty inspires. Finally, Willis explores how the holiness of God provides the basis for the life of Christian faith and hope in today's world. --From publisher's description.

Richard Valantasis brings us a guide to the spiritual life for the smart seeker who wants to be fully attuned to God, interactive with other believers, connected to the wider world in which humans live, engaged with the physical universe, committed to service to the poor and disenfranchised, and, finally, postmodern. Adopting a literary device first used in the fourth century by the Desert Father Evagrios Pontikos, Richard Valantasis offers a "century" of spiritual texts—a hundred short essays from 800 to 900 words—on a hundred spiritual themes. Believing that "tradition is the action of the Holy Spirit making available the wisdom of the past in a new idiom and a time," Valantasis moves from the premodern spiritual world of the Christian tradition to the postmodern realities of our current world, and back again. Sample entries - Conversion - Sanctification - Incarnate Living - Discernment - Divine Indwelling - Union with God - Ennui - Progress - Holy Dying - Habitual Prayer - Thorns and Impediments - Praying the Bodies - Spiritual Direction - Emotional Ecology - Seeing Double - The Body Transparent - Temptation - Consolations - The Devil - Visions of Deification - Humility>