When Life and Beliefs Collide
When Life and Beliefs Collide

Author: Carolyn Custis James

Publisher: Zondervan

Published: 2010-02-23

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0310864674

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In Praise of When Life and Beliefs Collide.Sooner or later, life’s difficulties bring every Christian woman to God’s doorstep with questions too personal to ignore. “Why does God let me go through such painful circumstances?” “Why does he seem indifferent to my prayers?” We’re tired of spiritual pie in the sky. We want authentic, God-as-he-really-is faith—the kind that holds us together when our world is falling apart and equips us to offer strength and hope to others.When Life and Beliefs Collide raises a long-overdue call for us to think seriously about what we believe about God. With passion, brilliance, and eloquence, Carolyn Custis James weaves stories of contemporary women with episodes from the life of Mary of Bethany to illustrate the practical benefits of knowing God deeply. Examining the misperceptions and abuses that discourage women from pursuing a deeper understanding of God, this insightful book demonstrates how practical and down to earth knowing God can be.“This outstanding book offers the best demonstration that everyone needs theology, the best expository account of Mary and Martha, and the best trajectory for women’s ministry in modern North America that I have yet read.” —James I. Packer“Thoughtful, scholarly, and motivating . . . should inspire and encourage women for years to come.” —Joni Eareckson Tada“You will not think the same way, nor hopefully be the same, after reading this thought-provoking book.” —Vonette Zachary Bright“. . . affirms women in their calling, chosen-ness, and gifting, and makes us know we are cherished and planned for.” —Jill Briscoe

When Faith and Decisions Collide
When Faith and Decisions Collide

Author: Dan Schaeffer

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781572931640

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Few things seem to press more on the minds of Christians than the search for God's will for their lives: Where is God leading me, how can I know, and what are the signs? As he cites the various methods people use for finding answers to these questions, along with the disappointment and disillusionment many have suffered, author Dan Schaeffer examines this subject from a new vantage point. "We will look at the will of God as a journey, rather than a destination; something to walk in, rather than just seek out." An insightful, inspiring, and healing examination of an ever-popular subject.

Half the Church
Half the Church

Author: Carolyn Custis James

Publisher: Zondervan

Published: 2011-04-19

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 0310555876

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Women comprise at least half the world, and usually more than half the church, but so often Christian teaching to women either fails to move beyond a discussion of roles or assumes a particular economic situation or stage of life. This all but shuts women out from contributing to God’s kingdom as they were designed to do. Furthermore, the plight of women in the Majority World demands a Christian response, a holistic embrace of all that God calls women and men to be in his world. The loudest voices speaking into women’s lives in the twenty-first century thus far come from either fundamentalist Islam or radical feminism. And neither can be allowed to carry the day. The Bible contains the highest possible view of women and invests women’s lives with cosmic significance regardless of their age, stage of life, social status, or culture. Carolyn Custis James unpacks three transformative themes the Bible presents to women that raise the bar for women and calls them to join their brothers in advancing God’s gracious kingdom on earth. These new images of what can be in Christ free women to embrace the life God gives them, no matter what happens. Carolyn encourages readers with a positive, kingdom approach to the changes, challenges, and opportunities facing women throughout the world today.

Malestrom
Malestrom

Author: Carolyn Custis James

Publisher: Zondervan

Published: 2015-06-02

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0310586259

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Updated and expanded—with a new foreword by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne—Malestrom provides a redemptive vision of biblical manhood and a way through the treacherous seas of patriarchy. Like the danger of a maelstrom in the open seas, a relentless force threatens our culture, swirling with hidden currents that distorts God's image of personhood. This book reveals how the malestrom is one of the Enemy's single most successful strategies. Its victories are flashed before us every day in the headlines as men lose sight of who God created them to be. It has consumed the evangelical church that stoops to offering toxic "manly" solutions to the wrongs it perceives in society and distracts from the rich potential God has entrusted to his sons. Digging deeply into the stories of men in the Bible who subverted cultural hierarchies, Carolyn Custis James shows us how countercultural God's design for men really is. Through personal story, biblical commentary, and cultural analysis, Custis James: Makes a strong case for the unbiblical nature of patriarchy. Illuminates the sociology of marginalization and cultural gender roles. Takes a close biblical look at Jesus and what his character and humanity means to the men of the church today. Malestrom offers what we so desperately need—a biblical, global, timeless vision of godly personhood that is big enough to encompass the diversity of men's lives and strong enough to withstand the crises they face. "It is one thing to critique the abuses of a domineering masculinity and lament the religious and societal consequences, but Carolyn Custis James takes the next crucial step and offers us a better path forward. For those asking, "What now?" Malestrom serves as a sure-footed guide." —Kristin Kobes Du Mez

The Gospel of Ruth
The Gospel of Ruth

Author: Carolyn Custis James

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2011-01-07

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0310330858

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Traditionally, the Book of Ruth is viewed as a beautiful love story between Ruth and Boaz. But if you dig deeper, you'll find startling revelations---that God makes much of broken lives, he calls men and women to serve him together, and he's counting on his daughters to build his kingdom. Now in softcover.

When Ways of Life Collide
When Ways of Life Collide

Author: Paul M. Sniderman

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009-02-02

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1400829585

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In 2004, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was brutally murdered on a busy Amsterdam street. His killer was Mohammed Bouyeri, a twenty-six-year-old Dutch Moroccan offended by van Gogh's controversial film about Muslim suppression of women. The Dutch government had funded separate schools, housing projects, broadcast media, and community organizations for Muslim immigrants, all under the umbrella of multiculturalism. But the reality of terrorism and radicalization of Muslim immigrants has shattered that dream. In this arresting book, Paul Sniderman and Louk Hagendoorn demonstrate that there are deep conflicts of values in the Netherlands. In the eyes of the Dutch, for example, Muslims oppress women, treating them as inferior to men. In the eyes of Muslim immigrants, Western Europeans deny women the respect they deserve. Western Europe has become a cultural conflict zone. Two ways of life are colliding. Sniderman and Hagendoorn show how identity politics contributed to this crisis. The very policies meant to persuade majority and minority that they are part of the same society strengthened their view that they belong to different societies. At the deepest level, the authors' findings suggest, the issue that government and citizens need to be concerned about is not a conflict of values but a clash of fundamental loyalties.

When Values Collide
When Values Collide

Author: Joseph P. Chinnici

Publisher: Orbis Books

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1570758735

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Historian Joseph Chinnici served as provincial superior of the Franciscan Friars in California when the order was touched by clergy sexual abuse, several years before it became a national scandal. Blending a historian's skill and dispassion with his own very relevant experiences in a fraught atmosphere, he provides a rare look at what happened then and what must happen now, to re-establish confidence and trust. "If Catholics are to learn from this mess and set forth on the path of healing and renewal, they would do well to pay close attention to Father Chinnici's astute analysis and evaluation of the greatest challenge to Romanc Catholicism in decades, if not centuries." -R. Scott Appleby, University of Notre Dame "There is no better analysis of church leadership and the sexual abuse scandals....Chinnici's [study] is theologically grounded, psychologically informed, and thoroughly pastoral." -Donald Cozzens, author, the Changing Face of the Priesthood "No one is better qualified to draw enduring lessons from the clergy sexual abuse crisis than Joseph Chinnici. Priest, historian, and administrator, he offers his own knowledge and experience to help the Church restore the shattered bonds of trust. This book is an important contribution toward healing." -James M. O'Toole, Boston College "In my estimation, [this] is a great contribution to the Church's reflection on sexual abuse scandals in the Church. The experience of Father Chinnici, as a Provincial Minister of the Franciscan Friars, and his reflections based on his Franciscan heritage are a most valuable insight into the challenges of leadership in these times." -Most Reverend John F. Kinney, Bishop of St. Cloud

Finding God in the Margins
Finding God in the Margins

Author: Carolyn Custis James

Publisher: Lexham Press

Published: 2018-02-24

Total Pages: 85

ISBN-13: 1683590813

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The ancient book of Ruth speaks into today's world with astonishing relevance. In four short episodes, readers encounter refugees, undocumented immigrants, poverty, hunger, women's rights, male power and privilege, discrimination, and injustice. In Finding God in the Margins, Carolyn Custis James reveals how the book of Ruth is about God, the questions that surface when life falls apart, and how God reaches into the margins and chooses two totally marginalized women who, in the eyes of the patriarchal culture, are zeros. Against the backdrop of disturbing issues in today's world, this bracing narrative puts on display a radical gospel way of living together as human beings that shouts the Kingdom of God, foreshadows Jesus' gospel, and raises the bar for men and women, then and now.

Midnight Jesus
Midnight Jesus

Author: Jamie Blaine

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Published: 2015-10-13

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 0718032969

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It’s three a.m. in the side yard of a shack in the worst part of town. I’ve got a dirty-faced baby on my hip and there’s a pit bull standing on the septic tank in the next yard over barking his head off. My patient sits on the hood of her ex-husband’s low rider smoking a cigarette and dumpingher pills into a mud hole by the right front tire. Airbrushed across the hood of the car is a cross-eyed Jesus with open arms. She lays her hand on top of his as the still-hot engine ticks. Throughtears she pleads, “Help me Jesus, please.” The dog is silent. Sirens approach. “Just breathe,” I tell her. “Everything’s gonna be all right.” The baby fidgets, resting her head against me, staring up into my eyes. I raise one finger and she holds it tight. I fumble for the words again. “Just breathe.” Midnight Jesus shares fascinating, bizarre, and sometimes humorous true-life stories of everyday people looking for hope in their darkest hours. Poignant and unpretentious, Jamie paints beauty where at times it seems none exists—from skating rinks and bars, late-night highways and lonely apartments, broken churches and rundown trailer parks, jail cells, bridge rails, ERs, psych wards, and that place over the levee where God laughs and walks through the cool dark night.

When Hope and Fear Collide
When Hope and Fear Collide

Author: Arthur Levine

Publisher: Jossey-Bass

Published: 1998-02-27

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13:

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In his classic book "When Dreams and Heroes Died" Arthur Levine changed the way college students in America were perceived. Now he turns his vision to the college student of the 1990s to give a penetrating look at today's generation of college students and their return to activism and social engagement.