Grace is God's all-reaching, never-ending, game-changing love for you and me. In this series, Jorge Acevedo and Wes Olds examine God's Word and discover how grace works in our lives and in our world. A Grace-Full Life seeks to answer the questions: In what ways is God an ever-present God?, Why does God want to have a personal relationship with me?, How can I fully experience and respond to God's grace?, How can I die well surrounded by God's grace?. Themes include: Prevenient grace: God's wooing or drawing grace Justifying grace: God's saving grace Sanctifying grace: God's grace that makes us more like Jesus Glorifying grace: God's grace that welcomes us to eternity Additional components for a four-week study include a comprehensive leader guide and a DVD featuring authors and pastors Jorge Acevedo and Wes Olds.
In Shame-Less Lives, Grace-Full Congregations, author Karen McClintock invites readers to become shame-less, so they can assist others in a congregational system to find a life of joy and grace. McClintock explores shame as a theological and psychological emotion, defining it as "a feeling of unworthiness in the sight of God or significant others." While guilt says, "I made a mistake," shame says,"I am a mistake," she explains. With skilled storytelling and gentle humor, McClintock takes readers on a journey in which we learn to recognize the many forms shame takes and explore and heal the shame of our own upbringing, particularly the shame-laden messages within our own religious teachings and practices. She illustrates the ways shame-laden leaders interact with congregations and ways congregational shame influences clergy and laity within the system. She shows us how to recognize shame in the behavior of other leaders and clergy around us, to reduce shame-reinforcing theology, and to provide alternative messages of hope and healing. She also guides us in liberating others from their shame, be they friends, colleagues, or people in a congregation where we worship and serve. McClintock advises readers that eradicating shame may take a few weeks, months, years, or a lifetime. This book is not written so that we can be free of all shame. It is written so we can become shame-less by acknowledging old patterns and consciously changing them, because shame-less leaders create shame-less congregations.
Identity theft is said to be the number one crime in the world, so we do everything we can to protect our identity from theft. To lose our identity to a thief is a devastating thought. The first act of identity theft occurred in the Garden of Eden. This incident affected every human ever born. Losing our identity, not knowing who we really are, is like spending our lives groping in the dark, searching for a light to help us discover ourselves. Everyone has been exposed to some set of rules to live by with the promise of self-discovery. People spend their entire lives in the endless pursuit of "who am I really?" "why am I here?" and "what is the purpose of life?" Then when we encounter a difficulty, we ask ourselves "was that God, the devil, or me?" Always trying to earn or qualify ourselves as good enough for God, we're never really sure if it worked, but we sure are working ourselves to death trying. There cannot be true peace or rest in living this way. Our identity crisis affects our passions, or what we do in our lives, our businesses, and our occupations. There is a discovery of the truth that will absolutely transform your life. It will open your eyes, inspire your God-given talent, and ignite your passion. When my eyes were opened to this truth in 2008, I experienced joy and genuine peace like I never really knew existed, except maybe in a dream. This truth so radically changed the way I thought, which only the unconditional love and great grace of God can do. This book is dedicated to those who have struggled with life because of identity theft. If we don't know who we really are, then we won't know just how priceless, accepted, and loved we really are. I have written this book with great excitement to share this life we all have been looking for and just how fulfilling our businesses and occupations can be, fulfill your passions-a gift from God, your redemption is complete in Christ Jesus. Let the journey to freedom begin today.
Grace is God's all-reaching, never-ending, game-changing love for you and me. In this series, Jorge Acevedo and Wes Olds examine God's Word and discover how grace works in our lives and in our world. A Grace-Full Life seeks to answer the questions: In what ways is God an ever-present God?, Why does God want to have a personal relationship with me?, How can I fully experience and respond to God's grace?, How can I die well surrounded by God's grace?. Themes include: Prevenient grace: God's wooing or drawing grace Justifying grace: God's saving grace Sanctifying grace: God's grace that makes us more like Jesus Glorifying grace: God's grace that welcomes us to eternity The Leader Guide contains everything needed to guide a group through the four-week study including session plans and discussion questions, as well as multiple format options.
Makes accessible to modern readers the 17th-century rhetorics of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1677) and Bernard Lamy (1640–1715) Hobbes’ A Briefe of the Art of Rhetorique, the first English translation of Aristotle’s rhetoric, reflects Hobbes’ sense of rhetoric as a central instrument of self-defense in an increasingly fractious Commonwealth. In its approach to rhetoric, which Hobbes defines as “that Faculty by which wee understand what will serve our turne, concerning any subject, to winne beliefe in the hearer,” the Briefe looks forward to Hobbes’ great political works De Cive and Leviathan. Published anonymously in France as De l’art de parler, Lamy’s rhetoric was translated immediately into English as The Art of Speaking. Lamy’s long association with the Port Royalists made his works especially attractive to English readers because Port Royalists were engaged in a vicious quarrel with the Jesuits during the last half of the 17th century.
