When You Love a Prodigal
When You Love a Prodigal

Author: Judy Douglass

Publisher: Baker Books

Published: 2019-09-17

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1493420089

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Loving a prodigal is a long and desperate journey, filled with fear, worry, anger, self- recrimination. You wait for the phone call--will it be from jail or the hospital? You plead with your loved one. You search for help. You feel the shame. You cry out to God, "How long, Lord?" Author Judy Douglass knows these lovers of prodigals well. She is one herself and has created a large and growing community with others. When You Love a Prodigal is a collection of 90 essays--90 days of perspective on what God offers to you as you love your prodigal. At the end of each brief essay, response questions will help you process how God intends to use the wilderness journey to mold your spiritual life. You can work through it day by day, or you can read it straight through. Judy has traveled this road with her own prodigal--reading, learning, praying, and seeking God. Over and over he continued to give her wisdom, he sustained her, he covered her with grace, and he filled her with hope. May you, too, be strengthened and filled with hope as together you discover how God will take you through your own valley.

The Prodigal God
The Prodigal God

Author: Timothy Keller

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2008-10-30

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 9780525950790

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The New York Times bestselling author of The Prodigal Prophet uncovers the essential message of Jesus, locked inside his most familiar parable. Newsweek called renowned minister Timothy Keller "a C.S. Lewis for the twenty-first century" in a feature on his first book, The Reason for God. In that book, he offered a rational explanation of why we should believe in God. Now, in The Prodigal God, Keller takes his trademark intellectual approach to understanding Christianity and uses the parable of the prodigal son to reveal an unexpected message of hope and salvation. Within that parable Jesus reveals God's prodigal grace toward both the irreligious and the moralistic. This book will challenge both the devout and skeptics to see Christianity in a whole new way.

What's So Amazing About Grace? Revised and Updated
What's So Amazing About Grace? Revised and Updated

Author: Philip Yancey

Publisher: Zondervan

Published: 2023-10-03

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0310367816

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OVER TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD! It's the most powerful force in the universe, our only hope for love and forgiveness, and a foretaste of eternal life: amazing, radical, life-changing grace. Millions of lives have been changed by award-winning author Philip Yancey's startling exploration of grace at street level. Grace is the one thing the world can't duplicate, the healing force we need, and the key to transforming a broken world. In this revised and updated edition of his personal and provocative book, Yancey offers true portraits of grace's life-changing power. These stories, set in the midst of life's stark realities, evoke such questions as: If grace is God's love for the undeserving, how do I get it? How well are we dispensing grace to a world that knows far more of strife and unforgiveness than it does of mercy? Can grace make a difference in the midst of such atrocities as the Nazi holocaust, and how can it withstand the brutality of hate? With powerful stories, rich theology, and practical suggestions, Yancey challenges us to become living answers to a world that desperately needs to know, What's So Amazing About Grace?

The Return of the Prodigal Son
The Return of the Prodigal Son

Author: Henri J. M. Nouwen

Publisher: Image

Published: 2013-11-20

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 0804152128

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With over a million copies sold, this classic work is essential reading for all who ask, “Where has my struggle led me?” A chance encounter with a reproduction of Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son catapulted Henri Nouwen on an unforgettable spiritual adventure. Here he shares the deeply personal and resonant meditation that led him to discover the place within where God has chosen to dwell. As Nouwen reflects on Rembrandt’s painting in light of his own life journey, he evokes a powerful drama of the classic parable in a rich, captivating way that is sure to reverberate in the hearts of readers. Nouwen probes the several movements of the parable: the younger son’s return, the father’s restoration of sonship, the elder son’s resentfulness, and the father’s compassion. The themes of homecoming, affirmation, and reconciliation will be newly discovered by all who have known loneliness, dejection, jealousy, or anger. The challenge to love as God loves, and to be loved as God’s beloved, will be seen as the ultimate revelation of the parable known to Christians throughout time, and is here represented with a vigor and power fresh for our times.

The Perfect Gift
The Perfect Gift

Author: Amy A. Kass

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2002-08-12

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 9780253215420

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The Perfect Gift aims to cultivate and enlighten our philanthropic imagination. It addresses us all as present and future philanthropists-as human beings who give, serve, and seek to promote the well-being of others. It suggests that we are continually confronted with choices about giving, and offers literary selections intended to help us reflect more seriously on these choices.Editor Amy A. Kass has gathered an intriguing and inspiring collection of readings from many cultures, genres, and time periods. Classical literature, philosophy, and religion are well represented, but so are contemporary and popular writing. The Perfect Gift draws from the works of Aristotle, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, C. S. Lewis, Alexis de Tocqueville, Martin Luther King, P. G. Wodehouse, and Shel Silverstein, among others. Kass's thoughtful introductions guide reflection on when, why, how, to whom, and what we should give.

Prayers for Prodigals
Prayers for Prodigals

Author: James Banks

Publisher: Our Daily Bread Publishing

Published: 2011-04-01

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1572935391

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When you’re the parent of a prodigal, you know you can never pray enough. But how do you persevere when you’re tired and discouraged? Prayers for Prodigals offers encouragement for parents to “come boldly before the throne of grace” and intercede daily for their children through a series of inspirational prayers. The book also includes fourteen brief meditations, which are drawn from Scripture and the writer’s and others’ personal experiences with prodigal children, such as Ruth and Billy Graham and Monica, the mother of Augustine. This unique book inspires parents in a sustained, daily prayer effort for their prodigal children.

Gifts of Passage
Gifts of Passage

Author: Amy Hollingsworth

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Published: 2009-08-31

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1418576166

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Not all gifts are tangible. After suffering the loss of her father while writing her bestselling debut book, Amy Hollingsworth began to search for the meaning behind his dying moments. What she found was a simple truth at the heart of overcoming the deepest grief: the dying leave gifts. With deeply moving stories of how others discovered the gifts their loved ones left behind, this book will gently encourage you to anticipate and uncover your own. Weaving together the warm intimacy of Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie and the straightforward honesty of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, Amy Hollingsworth adds her hopeful voice to the literature of life and the life beyond. The result is a collection of stories that gives the reader myriad ways to identify their own pain and healing and is an intriguing journey for any and all readers fascinated by this brief overlap of heaven and earth. From the bestselling author of The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers.

God-Given Gifts and Talents
God-Given Gifts and Talents

Author: Samuel Lartey

Publisher: Booktango

Published: 2013-06-10

Total Pages: 73

ISBN-13: 1468932128

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"All around you, there are people who are hurting, people who need your love and people who need your encouragement. Let God use your gifts and talents to bless them". "God gives each of us our own unique gifts. It is our responsibility to recognize these gifts, nurture them and utilize them to live up to our full potential. By looking around and inside of you, you will soon recognize what you can do best. It may be creative, intellectual, artistic abilities or strength of character. God gives these abilities to enable you to succeed in life but it's entirely up to you to put them to work". One may ask why it is so common to see many gifted people unsuccessful in spite of their profound abilities. Of course, there is not a single person who has inherited a gold or oil field who would like to live in poverty. But however unfortunate it may seem, most people with heavenly resources (gifts and talents) are not effectively using them and that explains why they are not successful yet. In our world today, many people are of the notion that because gifts and talents are called "Grace," there is no need to put your abilities to work; just sit and wait patiently for your time and season. In this book, I try to demystify this myth. I beg to differ: gifts do not grow by themselves; gifts have to be developed. Sir Winston Churchill said, "To every person there comes in their lifetime that special moment when you are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to you and your talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds you unprepared or unqualified for work which could have been your finest hour."

Gifts from Friends We've Yet to Meet
Gifts from Friends We've Yet to Meet

Author: Virginia Herbers

Publisher: Liturgical Press

Published: 2021-10-25

Total Pages: 104

ISBN-13: 0814666698

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What does it mean to be anonymous in the gospels? Isn’t God the one who calls us by name and knows us even before we are born? In Gifts from Friends We’ve Yet to Meet, Virginia Herbers introduces readers to nameless gospel characters, each of whom provides us with a story, a journey, and a gift. Reflecting on experiences in her own life, Herbers journeys through these gospel stories, inviting us to reflect on seemingly insignificant encounters in our own lives. Who are the “anonymous figures” who have played a critical role for each of us? How do the experiences of the nameless gospel characters continue to reach and teach us today? Can it be that their anonymity allows their experience to be both individual and universal? In each of these anonymous characters, Herbers introduces us to dear friends we just haven’t met yet. And each of their ages-old encounters with Jesus contains a gift for all of us today.

Gifts for Your Seasons
Gifts for Your Seasons

Author: Pauline Oxley

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2022-01-14

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 166411680X

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"Gifts for your Seasons" is an insightful and inspirational book full of personal reflective thoughts and experiences, that have been helpful in dealing with the various seasons we all go through in life. These seasons include success, healing, parenting, self-worth, contentment, faith, love and peace. The human experience is one that is full of ups and downs, good days and not so good ones. These are seasons which the author addresses to help cope with the uncertainties of life. "Gifts for your Seasons" is a book that encourages the reader to consider the contribution that can be made through essentials that enrich the varying seasons of life and make a difference to you, your family and community. They are designed to fit in well with who you are and your personality. These gifts are applicable to the present times that we are living in. It is evident that not all gifts come ready wrapped in material things, so there are a variety of intangible gifts to suit every age, background, and abilities. Identifying the gifts as God-given gifts helps to navigate the way that leads to fulfilment and satisfaction in life. Within the book you will find reference to Biblical characters, along with the narratives of others whose lives have been truly inspirational.