Everyone, unfortunately, will see his or herself described in the pages of this booklet, as all of our sins are traceable to these seven roots: Pride, Covetousness (Avarice), Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy and Sloth. The Seven Capital Sins explains the true nature, degrees, acts and relationships between these seven vices, and it gives the remedies and safeguards against them.
Fulton Sheen correlated the Seven Last Words from the Cross with these Seven Capital Sins and shows how when we make God the enemy, we can never be sure that we have won the day. When God is our ally, as He was on the Cross, we can be sure that the victory is ours.
Drawing on centuries of wisdom from the Christian ethical tradition, this book takes readers on a journey of self-examination, exploring why our hearts are captivated by glittery but false substitutes for true human goodness and happiness. The first edition sold 35,000 copies and was a C. S. Lewis Book Prize award winner. Now updated and revised throughout, the second edition includes a new chapter on grace and growth through the spiritual disciplines. Questions for discussion and study are included at the end of each chapter.
This volume offers a fresh consideration of role played by the enduring tradition of the seven deadly sins in Western culture, showing its continuing post-mediaeval influence even after the supposed turning-point of the Protestant Reformation. It enhances our understanding of the multiple uses and meanings of the sins tradition.
Assessment and solution for seven commonobstacles to building small groups.It’s one thing to start a small group ministry. It’s another tokeep the groups in your church healthy and headed in thesame direction. Whatever your church’s approach maybe—whether it is a church with groups or of groups—sooner or later, as a leader, you’ll need to do sometroubleshooting. That’s when the expert, to-the-pointguidance in this book will prove its worth.The beauty of this book lies in its unique diagnosticprocess. It allows you to assess, diagnose, and correctseven common “deadly sins” that can drain the life fromyour church’s small group ministry.In The Seven Deadly Sins of Small Group Ministry, whatwould take you years to learn through trial and error isdistilled into some of the most useful information you canfind. Drawing on the knowledge they’ve gleaned fromworking inside Willow Creek Community Church, fromconsulting with hundreds of churches, and fromconducting conferences and seminars worldwide, smallgroup experts Bill Donahue and Russ Robinson furnishyou with proven, real-life solutions to the toughestproblems in your small group ministry. This is not theory—it is hands-on material you can read and apply today.
The Christian life is a war and one of your most lethal enemies hangs its helmet inside your heart. This infernal, internal enemy is sin, which even after new birth continues to reside in every believer. As followers of Jesus, we’ve been given a simple mission regarding sin: search and destroy. Put it to death. But in the words of Cornelius Plantinga Jr., “sin has a thousand faces.” It is one thing to oppose sin in principle, quite another to actually do the bloody work of crucifying specific sin patterns in our lives. Sometimes these patterns are difficult to detect. Always they fight back, tooth and nail, mounting vehement resistance in counter-maneuvers of a variety and complexity that would send General Schwarzkopf’s mind spinning like a tilt-a-whirl. The most famous faces of sin are the Seven Deadly Sins: pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust. Not merely corrupting vices in themselves, these seven are gateway sins leading to countless others. They are the leading undercover operatives for the world, the flesh, and the devil—that evil complex of powers arrayed against our souls. And while we may recognize these sins by their names, we are often misled by the subtlety of their methods and ways. These sins are masters of disguise, adept at masking their true nature in charades of harmlessness, acceptability, and fun. In Hit List, Brian Hedges helps us take aim at the seven deadly sins by providing detailed dossiers for each one and equipping us with rich gospel resources for replacing vice with the virtue of Christ.
Until recently little has been known about Evagrius of Pontus. His work on the eight evil thoughts was widely influential in the development of the idea of the Seven Deadly Sins in the Western Spiritual tradition. But those who followed him, from Cassian to Augustine, were more concerned with attributing guilt, and thought in a forensic way. This was very unlike the thought of Evagrius who concerned himself with questions about how to deal with evil thoughts and temptations in a healing way. Each chapter deals with one of the Thoughts, giving the contemporary background, the biblical and theological background, the teaching of Evagrius and what came after, and its relevance for us today.
