What is God trying to do through your skin and bones? Spiritual director Tara Owens invites you to listen to your thoughts about your body in a way that draws you closer to God, calling you to explore how your spirituality is intimately tied to your physicality. Your body is not an inconvenience—it is a place where you can meet the Holy in a new way.
Finding God in the Body turns inward to examine the human condition, meeting personal suffering with heartfelt insight and transformative practice. It steers clear of the wishful thinking, unfounded beliefs, and cynicism that define much of the spirituality genre. Ben Riggs leaves no stone unturned, addressing each stage of the journey as he explores the space between fundamentalism and atheism to uncover a spirituality that resonates with the modern, Western mind. Then he binds that view to an actionable path of self-analysis, prayer, and meditation, which introduce the reader to the God of the body. This book is a much-needed addition to the corpus of spiritual literature, and a must-read for all modern seekers. ____________________________ "In Finding God in the Body, Ben Riggs shows us the possibility of experiencing God as an intimate, intensely personal, and deeply affecting presence. Within our bodily awareness, in the immediacy of the present moment, we can behold God's mind, His love, and His glory throughout the universe. And in doing so we can experience true salvation and find our own place within the infinity of divine reality. This is a most remarkable, unusual, profound book that is certain to transform the spiritual lives of all who read it." Dr. Reginald Ray, author of Touching Enlightenment: Finding Realization in the Body and Indestructible Truth
An editor of ABC News describes his own spiritual journey that led him, as a man of science, to his own answers about God and Jesus, and encourages others to confront their own questions of faith to further the search for God.
Your body is the place where heaven and earth meet. The greatest spiritual achievement is not transcending the body but joining body and spirit together. But to do this, you must break through assumptions that draw boundaries around the Infinite and wake up to the body as the site of holiness itself. This groundbreaking book is the first comprehensive treatment of the body in Jewish spiritual practice and an essential guide to the sacred. With meditation practices, physical exercises, visualizations and sacred text, you will learn how to experience the presence of the Divine in, and through, your body. And by cultivating an embodied spiritual practice, you will transform everyday activities--eating, walking, breathing, washing--into moments of deep spiritual realization, uniting sacred and sensual, mystical and mundane.
Find spiritual strength for healing in the wisdom of Jewish tradition. The teachings and wisdom of Jewish tradition can provide comfort and inspiration to help you maintain personal balance and family harmony amid the fear, pain and chaos of illness.
Growing out of two decades of teaching and practice, Finding God Again: Spirituality for Adults addresses, in an experiential and pastoral way, the need to re-envision God as we grow from an adolescent to adult spirituality. John Shea, a renowned pastoral counselor and teacher, shows how we can lose touch with religion, spirituality, and a belief in God because of times when our image of God is too narrow, unreal, or inadequate to make sense of our experience. Shea uses real life stories to illustrate and offer a life-changing challenge to leave behind the Superego God of childhood in favor of a Living God we can relate to as adults. By showing the reader how to revisit God as an adult, Shea provides the motivation and method to embrace a Living God and claim the independence and responsibility that accompany genuine adulthood.
Scientists are now discovering ways that our bodies are designed to connect with God. Award-winning journalist Rob Moll explores the fascinating ways in which our brains and bodies interact with God and spiritual realities, using neuroscience to show how our brains actually change and adapt when engaged in spiritual practices.
"'Science Mike' draws on his personal experience to tell the unlikely story of how science led him back to faith. Among other revelations, we learn what brain scans reveal about what happens when we pray, how fundamentalism affects the psyche, and how God is revealed not only in scripture, but in the night sky, in subatomic particles, and in us"--Dust jacket flap.
Inspired by 1 Thessalonians 5:23, this new book from Pastor David Stine focuses on the three parts of your being—the spirit, the soul, and the body—and shows how you can experience a balanced and more fulfilled life when you take care of all three. Pastor David Stine was the head of a growing church in the nation’s capital. He was seeing exponential church growth and reaching hearts and minds for God. But inside, he felt spiritually dry. He was burnt out. His health suffered, and his preaching became uninspired. Then, one day he read 1 Thessalonians 5:23 in a way he never had before. The verse, he now saw, clearly indicated that were three parts to the human self—the spirit, the soul, and the physical body. He had only been focusing on one part and realized his life was seriously out of balance with the way God intended. As soon as Pastor Stine began to focus on his emotional well-being and physical health in addition to his spiritual fitness, everything changed. He began to see that all three elements are interconnected and necessary for a vibrant Christian life. Divided into three sections, The Whole Life is a practical guide to leading an empowered and balanced life. The Spiritual Formation section discusses the importance of Prayer, the need to read scripture regularly, and the necessity of having a God-sized dream to guide you. The Soul Care section covers your mind, your emotions, and your desires, while the Body Health sections discusses nutrition, exercise, and rest. In each section, Pastor Stine helps you identify where you are thriving and where you are depriving yourself so that you can achieve a healthy whole body and, in turn, a whole life. Providing practical and inspiring ways to feed and nurture yourself, Pastor Stine guides you to discover how you, too, can have a whole, balanced life in Christ.
The traces of God can be found in the most unexpected places--an Atlanta slum, a pod of whales off the coast of Alaska, the prisons of Peru and Chile, the plays of Shakespeare, a health club in Chicago--yet many Christians have not only missed seeing God, they’ve overlooked opportunities to make him visible to those most in need of hope. In this enlightening book author Philip Yancey serves as an insightful tour guide for those willing to look beyond the obvious, pointing out glimpses of the eternal where few might think to look. Whether finding God among the newspaper headlines, within the church, or on the job, Yancey delves deeply into the commonplace and surfaces with rich spiritual insight. Finding God in Unexpected Places takes readers from Ground Zero to the Horn of Africa, and each stop along the way reveals footprints of God, touches of his truth and grace that prompt readers to search deeper within their own lives for glimpses of transcendence.