Beginning your journey to freedom that lasts. This welcome book is your first step on a wonderful journey to freedom from life-dominating sins! It introduces you to the Freedom That Lasts program and lets you know what to expect from the classes, discussion times, and exercises. You will probably find this program different from any you have experienced before. This program will show you that Jesus Christ is the only source of freedom and that through him you can win life's battles. As you journey through the program you may become weary and suffer setbacks, but in the end you will win your battle if you will allow Jesus Christ to develop his character in you. So get started immediately, and let's see what God can do! - Back cover.
Picking up on the monastic tradition of creating a "rule of life" that allows for regular space for the practice of spiritual disciplines, Ruth Haley Barton takes you more deeply into understanding seven key spiritual disciplines along with practical ideas for weaving them into everyday life.
Winner of the René Wellek Prize Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Millions, and The Sydney Morning Herald This Life offers a profoundly inspiring basis for transforming our lives, demonstrating that our commitment to freedom and democracy should lead us beyond both religion and capitalism. Philosopher Martin Hägglund argues that we need to cultivate not a religious faith in eternity but a secular faith devoted to our finite life together. He shows that all spiritual questions of freedom are inseparable from economic and material conditions: what matters is how we treat one another in this life and what we do with our time. Engaging with great philosophers from Aristotle to Hegel and Marx, literary writers from Dante to Proust and Knausgaard, political economists from Mill to Keynes and Hayek, and religious thinkers from Augustine to Kierkegaard and Martin Luther King, Jr., Hägglund points the way to an emancipated life.
Childhood sexual abuse (or child sexual abuse/CSA) is not only an assault on the body—it is an assault on the mind and on the spirit. It is an insult to the victim’s integrity, her self-esteem, his very being. Besides imposing a significantly higher risk of conditions like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), sexual exploitation, intimate partner violence, suicidality, substance abuse, and learning & educational difficulties, the most devastating consequence of childhood sexual abuse is shame. Freedom at Last will help victims of this form of abuse recover from all aspects of this extreme shame and its damaging after-effects. Not only does shame from CSA cause a multitude of problems, but this very same shame stands in the way of a victim’s ability to recover and heal. Victims often struggle with shame’s correlation with dissociation, difficulty forming relationships, emotional barriers to disclosing abuse and seeking help, and a lasting negative effect on victim’s sense of self. In this groundbreaking book, leading psychologist Dr. Beverly Engel reveals the truth about how CSA affects victims, dispels common myths surrounding this type of abuse, explains the nuances behind the emotion of shame, and teaches readers how to develop more self-awareness about how shame has manifested in their lives along with powerful and effective shame-reduction strategies. Freedom at Last offers effective strategies for not only healing the negative effects of abuse-related shame, but also to help overcome the shame that keeps survivors from seeking help. Using the most recent research along with her 35-year career working with victims of child sexual abuse, Dr. Engel provides a blueprint for readers and their loved ones to overcome the debilitating effects of shame, including strategies for emotional release, encouragement to free themselves from their secrets, teaching self-forgiveness, eliminating shame-causing behaviors, and removing shame from unhealthy behaviors and attitudes.
The presidency of George W. Bush has polarized the church-state debate as never before. The Far Right has been emboldened to use religion to govern, while the Far Left has redoubled its efforts to evict religion from public life entirely. Fewer people on the Right seem to respect the church-state separation, and fewer people on the Left seem to respect religion itself--still less its free exercise in any situation that is not absolutely private. In The Last Freedom, Joseph Viteritti argues that there is a basic tension between religion and democracy because religion often rejects compromise as a matter of principle while democracy requires compromise to thrive. In this readable, original, and provocative book, Viteritti argues that Americans must guard against debasing politics with either antireligious bigotry or religious zealotry. Drawing on politics, history, and law, he defines a new approach to the church-state question that protects the religious and the secular alike. Challenging much conventional opinion, Viteritti argues that the courts have failed to adequately protect religious minorities, that the rights of the religious are under greater threat than those of the secular, and that democracy exacts greater compromises and sacrifices from the religious than it does from the secular. He takes up a wide range of controversies, including the pledge of allegiance, school prayer, school vouchers, evolution, abortion, stem-cell research, gay marriage, and religious displays on public property. A fresh and surprising approach to the church-state question, The Last Freedom is squarely aimed at the wide center of the public that is frustrated with the extremes of both the Left and the Right.
Your Invitation Awaits… You’ve tried harder. You’ve been more intentional. You’ve done everything “right.” In your search for meaning and purpose, you’ve placed your hope in many different things—only to find yourself at a turning point, quietly asking, Is this it? Is this all there is? If the direction of your life is leading you away from peace, contentment, and true fulfillment, Emily Lex has some great news to share with you: God is offering you a better way. A way of real rest. A way of quiet confidence. A way to free yourself from expectations. A way to become the person he created you to be. A way to learn his unforced rhythms of grace. Do you breathe a sigh of hope when you hear this holy and gentle invitation from Jesus? “Come to me… Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” If so, then you are ready to accept his offer to recover and renew your life. Start your journey today.
Taking one day at a time. This journal is a companion volume to the Freedom That Lasts Student Manual. While the student manual guides you in the discipleship process of overcoming life-dominating sins, the journal keeps you on track and helps you record the milestones of victory along the way. Your journal encourages daily progress and helps you stay clear-headed and accountable while you pursue lasting freedom from addictive behaviors and stubborn habits. When you have completed the Freedom That Lasts program, you will look back at your journal and marvel at your progress through God's grace. You will see clearly that Jesus Christ is the only source of freedom that lasts. - Back cover.
M. Robert Mulholland Jr. fleshes out a carefully worded definition of spiritual formation that encompasses the dynamics of a vital Christian life and counters our culture's tendency to trivialize, methodize and privatize spirituality. Now revised and expanded by Ruth Haley Barton with a new foreword, practices and study guide.
