This is a book of poems written over many years and inspired by sermons, friends, family, Bible verses, and circumstances. They review the thoughts from sermons, they teach the lessons from the Bible, and they reach out to those who are hurting and are distressed by things that happen to them. The poems are meant to bring comfort, insight, challenge, blessing, guidance, and information to readers.
The inspirational sermons of the old Negro preachers are set down as poetry in this collection -- a classic for more than forty years, frequently dramatized, recorded, and anthologized. Mr. Johnson tells in his preface of hearing these same themes treated by famous preachers in his youth; some of the sermons are still current, and like the spirituals they have taken a significant place in black folk art. In transmuting their essence into original and moving poetry, the author has also ensured the survival of a great oral tradition. Book jacket.
The Christian gospel, says Brueggemann, is too easily preached and heard. Too often technical reason and excessive religious certitude reduce the gospel to coercive, debilitating pietisms that mask the text's meaning and freeze the hearers heart. With skill and imagination, Brueggemann demonstrates how the preacher can engage in daring speech?differently voiced and therefore differently heard. This speech, as suggested by the Bible itself, is "poetic" speech, enabling the preacher to forge communion in the midst of alienation, bring healing out of guilt, and empower the hearer for "missional imagination." As an alternative to theological/homiletical discourse that is moralistic, pietistic or scholastic, Brueggemann proposes preaching that is artistic, poetic, and dramatic. The basis for the 1989 Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale Divinity School, Finally Comes the Poet is a unique and transforming guide for powerful preaching.
Shares uplifting advice about the virtues of forgiveness, offering strategic and biblically based advice on how to achieve peace and personal fulfillment by letting go of past wrongs.
Only two weeks from his crucifixion, Jesus has stopped in Bethlehem. He has returned to visit someone important—the innkeeper who made a place for Mary and Joseph the night he was born. But his greater purpose in coming is to pay a debt. What did it cost to house the Son of God? John Piper shares a tale of what might have been through the story-poem of an innkeeper whose life was forever altered by the arrival of the Son of God. Ponder the sacrifice that was made that night. Celebrate Jesus's birth and the power of his resurrection. And encounter the hope his life gives you for today—and for eternity. This imaginative story has been redesigned and makes a great gift for families.
Our Father, help us grow in understanding of your great love for us. May our thoughts, our words, and our actions every day express this love, wherever it may be. God, be merciful to us and bless us, look on us with kindness, so that the whole world may know your will, so that all nations may know your salvation. May all the people praise you, O God. We pray in Jesuss name. Amen.
In this dynamic collection of poems, Drew Jackson explores the first eight chapters of Luke's Gospel. These are declarative poems, faithfully proclaiming the gospel story in all its liberative power. Here the gospel is the "fresh words / that speak of / things impossible." This powerful poetry helps us hear the hum of deliverance—against all hope—that's been in the gospel all along.
Poems of Poetry By: Dorothy Elizabeth West Poems of Poetry: Memories of Life in Poems was composed while drawing on the author’s memories. Her memories span from a time when she felt poor and disadvantaged to the moment she looked toward heaven and realized that God truly does exist. Her poems discuss love, loss, and hope. Her poems convey her deep, sincere love of poetry.
To truly understand God's Word, we must know both what it says (content) and how it says it (form). This accessible guide features over 250 alphabetically arranged entries explaining common literary forms found in the Bible. Each entry contains a succinct definition, helpful illustrations, and a representative list of passages where that particular literary form is present. More than merely a dictionary, this indispensable resource will help Bible readers better understand the underlying structure of Scripture—giving a clearer shape and deeper meaning to each and every page of God's Word.
Lee Brock was born in Lamesa, Texas, in October 1923. His parents were cotton farmers on the plains of Texas where he learned about hard work, wind, windmills, horses, cattle and the beauty of nature. In school he learned to express his thoughts about his life in poems. He was saved, baptized, and called to preach in a revival at Seminole, Texas, in 1938, and a spiritual element was added to his poetry. Thus began a lifetime of poetry writing from the perspective of a cowboy preacher. Lee graduated from high school in Hermleigh, Texas in 1941 and was ordained to preach on December 7, 1941-the same day that Pearl Harbor was attacked. He enrolled in Wayland Baptist College in January 1942. There he met Frances Patterson, and they married eighteen months later. He attended Baylor University for two years before graduating from Howard Payne University in 1947. He pastored churches in Rockdale and Thorndale while going to school and after graduation moved on the field at Mountain Home, Texas. It was ranch country and the cowboy helped the local ranchers with their work while he ministered to their spiritual needs as pastor. But in 1952 under the leadership of the Lord he moved to Camas, Washington to start a new church. As a bi-vocational pastor, he helped the people move from Sunday meeting in a Seven Day Adventist Church (who meet on Saturdays) to having a nice building on the outskirts of town. Several leaders in the Northwest Baptist Convention today came from that church. Lee's ministry stretched over fifty years and across pastorates in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, Williams Lake, British Columbia, The Dalles, Oregon, Goldendale, Washington and Rufus, Oregon. People were blessed by his leadership, his loving spirit, and, of course, his poetry.
