Looking for “a place to belong”? Find it in God’s love! Shared Blessings provides 90 devotional readings from female writers, guaranteed to provide a spiritual boost. This new compilation focuses on God’s kindness and all the good things He provides. Entries from writers past and present provide encouragement to see God at work in daily life, jobs, friendships, and family. With well-known contributors like Sheila Walsh, Thelma Wells, Wanda E. Brunstetter, Hannah Whitall Smith, and Frances Ridley Havergal, Shared Blessings also includes heartfelt entries from women of the Circle of Friends Ministry based in Ohio’s Amish country.

A tried-and-tested resource for the renewal of the local church. Faced with the unsustainability of many inherited patterns of church, the temptation may be to fall into despondency rather than seeking to regenerate patterns of mission and ministry. This book is the result of a two-year research project aimed at enabling local churches to regain a sense of confidence through exploring God's blessing and how that might be shared with the communities they serve. In Part One, Robin Greenwood explores the meaning of blessing and the power of face-to-face group conversations to transform church congregations. Part Two of the book contains outlines for five guided conversations for change on the theme of blessing. Part Three contains case study material of how this material has been used in different contexts, including for Mission Action Planning (MAP).

How are emerging generations making meaning in their lives? This team of eight scholars and ministry leaders from across the denominational spectrum formed Co.lab.inq, a collective learning laboratory focused on open-ended inquiry, to explore this question. Together they interviewed over 200 people under 40 in search of the lessons they might teach us about belonging, adversity, legacy - and faith. Through collaborative storytelling conversations focused on truth-seeking and meaning-making, Sue Pizor Yoder and her co-authors illustrate the complex and varied ways Millennials and Gen Z are navigating life and crafting their stories. What do younger Americans have to say about belonging? Where do they find meaning? What challenges are they facing--and how do they confront them? How do they envision their legacies? Pizor Yoder and her colleagues were surprised to find that in addition to these questions, their conversation partners also wanted to talk about faith--even when they didn't identify with any religious tradition. The narratives these authors uncover offer both critique and blessing for society and the church.

New York Times best-selling author Immaculée Ilibagiza teaches readers how to pray the rosary of the seven sorrows for greater wisdom, strength, and forgiveness. In this new book by New York Times best-selling author Immaculée Ilibagiza, readers will rediscover this important message from Mary. Mary wanted the whole world to know the seven sorrows rosary, and Immaculée not only shares it, but explains Mary’s specific teachings for how to pray it, as well as offers the promises attached to the prayers. The Rosary of the Seven Sorrows dates back to the Middle Ages, but it gained new popularity following the sightings of the Blessed Virgin Mary that occurred in the 1980s in Kibeho, Rwanda. During these sightings, which were validated by the Vatican, Mary asked that this special rosary be introduced to the world. It was spread widely to thousands of people, who then taught it to thousands of others. Immaculée also reveals incredible real-life stories from people who have been healed through this prayer. These miracles include healing of addictions, healing of “incurable” illnesses, including stage 4 pancreatic cancer and infertility, and more. Besides those miracles, there are many other everyday blessings to be had, including inner peace, healthier marriages, happier careers, and more. Mary said, “Help me, my children, to spread this blessing, this prayer. I will reward those who do.”

This book explores the link between Paul's belief that Jesus is Israel's Messiah, and his interpretation of the Abrahamic Land Promise in Galatians. Countering claims that Paul replaces the Promised Land with the gift of the Spirit or salvation, Esau McCaulley argues that Paul expands this inheritance to include the whole earth; believing that, as the seed of Abraham and David, Jesus is entitled to the entire world as his inheritance and kingdom. McCaulley argues that scholars have neglected Paul's expanded interpretation of the inheritance of the earth, rarely appreciate the role that messianism plays in Galatians, and fail to acknowledge that Second Temple authors often portrayed royal and messianic figures as God's means of fulfilling the promises made to Abraham and Israel, via the establishment of kingdoms. Through a comparison of texts from the Pseudepigrapha, apocrypha, and the Dead Sea Scrolls with Galatians 3:1–4:7, 5:21, McCaulley argues Paul's interpretation of Jesus's death is a manifestation of Second Temple messianism because it ends the covenant curses outlined in Deuteronomy and begins the restoration of the inheritance to Abraham's offspring through the establishment of Jesus's worldwide kingdom; he concludes that Paul's interpretation of the Abrahamic inheritance is inseparable from his belief that Jesus is Israel's Messiah.

Did you awaken one day to your spiritual nature and wonder how you got there? The flower grows from a seed in the physical ground, pushes up toward the sunlight, growing a stem and leaves that reach for the light, and suddenly it blooms! It is a beautiful bloom that is nothing like the stem, leaves, seed and ground it came from. A friend asked if the flower is as surprised when it blooms as we are when we suddenly step into the light of our spirituality. Would you like to explore your own development, mirrored to you by the deeper meaning of the Bible events and stories? The Bible gives us a clear pathway, a highway, not a confusing tangle of byways that lead nowhere. This is what Isaiah was telling us in Chapter 40:3. In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. Navigating the Bible through metaphysics leads you book by book, chapter by chapter, and sometimes verse by verse on that highway of psychological development, from infancy to the gates of spirituality that open into the Gospels. There Jesus leads us forward with the example of his life and teachings showing us the kingdom of heaven. The Apostle Paul sees the Christ nature in each of us and endeavors to live it every day. Then we reach the book of Revelation. We trod the final steps to the New Jerusalem, the Christ consciousness, where we shed all earthly limitation and are totally prepared for God to return us to our true home.

This study examines an indigenous phenomenon of the Hindu devotees of Jesus Christ and their response to the gospel through an empirical case study conducted in Varanasi, India. It analyzes their religious beliefs and social belonging and addresses the ensuing questions from a historical, theological, and missiological perspective. The data reveals that the respondents profess faith in Jesus Christ; however, most remain unbaptized and insist on their Hindu identity. Hence, a heuristic model for a contextualized baptism as Guru-diksha is proposed. The emergent church among Hindu devotees should be considered, from the perspective of world Christianity, as a disparate form of belonging while remaining within one's community of birth. The insistence on a visible church and a distinct community of Christ's followers is contested because the devotees should construct their contextual ecclesiology, since it is an indigenous discovery of the Christian faith. Thus, the "Christian" label for the adherents is dispensable while retaining their socio-ethnic Hindu identity. Christian mission should discontinue extraction and assimilation; instead, missional praxis should be within the given sociocultural structures, recognizing their idiosyncrasies as legitimate in God's eyes and in need of transformation, like any human culture.

Explores the role and significance of the saints in Christians' lives today. While examining the lives of specific saints like Martin de Porres, Therese de Lisieux, and Mother Teresa, McCarthy especially focuses on such topics as the veneration of martyrs, realism and hagiography, science and miracles, images and pilgrimage, and why the saints continue to captivate Christians and inspire devotion.