Rejection. It’s a horrible feeling that you don’t quite match up, that you’re forever falling short, that you’ll never live up to others’ expectations. We’ve all faced it, whether it’s being last-pick for the softball team at school, being overlooked for a promotion at work, or being excluded from a group of friends. Sometimes the rejection runs even deeper. Feelings of loneliness and inadequacy are hard to handle. The good news is there’s a remedy. It’s in Jesus Christ, who faced the ultimate rejection and therefore knows how it feels. In bearing our sins, He was rejected by the Father and by us, His own creation, as well. He knows how it hurts. Because He faced that pain, we no longer need to. He’s planned another life for us, a life of acceptance in His family and freedom from rejection. Let go of the shame and enjoy the Father’s embrace today.
Your Darkest Moment Isn’t Your Destiny In a frightening world, it’s tempting to question the promises of God. Yet one word rings out in Scripture as a call to God’s people: stand. From Moses at the Red Sea to Jesus with His disciples, stand is the call to believe God and hold fast to His promises. In Stand, Marian Jordan Ellis explores what it looks like to be faithful in a crumbling world. She addresses questions like these: How do Christian leaders share God’s good news in a culture that wants to silence their voices? How do parents hold on to hope when their children are more in love with the world than with Jesus? How do Christians battle the voices of shame and insecurity? Stand looks at the stories of real people—from Scripture and from today—who chose to stand firm and “win life.” Jesus promises that the evil of this present world is not our future reality. Stand offers inspiration and practical tools to stand in your faith, your convictions, and your trust in a God who never fails.
The goal of this book is to define and explain the archetypal pattern of redemption that underlies our whole notion of resolution in literature and to demonstrate, through multiple examples, that successful literature--poems and stories that have shown endurance or popularity--uses this pattern in specific ways. This theory should help readers to interpret both particular works of literature and the general notion of literature. The pattern of redemption employed here, in its ideal form, involves the sacrifice of an innocent redeemer to save something that has been lost. Because this pattern of redemption is typically associated with Christianity, this book can be taken as proposing a Christian theory of criticism. Current textbooks on literary criticism and theory cover a range of perspectives, such as Marxism, feminism, multiculturalism, reader response, and queer theory, but they invariably ignore the field of Christian criticism. Therefore, this book may be most useful as a supplementary text for courses in literary criticism that might include a Christian perspective. At the same time, however, the terms and methodology proposed here are not exclusive to or dependant on Christian beliefs, so readers of all types may find this approach useful. The greatest strength of this book is its application of the theory to numerous examples from a wide range of genres and periods of literature, testing the theory on classical and Shakespearean works such as the Iliad and Odyssey, Hamlet and Coriolanus; best sellers such as The Lord of the Rings, Le Petit Prince, Valley of the Dolls, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; horror stories such as Frankenstein; postcolonial novels such as Things Fall Apart and The Kite Runner; and lyric poems. Consequently, even readers who are skeptical of the assumptions used here should find the many concrete examples thought-provoking.
Is it really possible to succeed in life despite the damaging effects of fatherlessness?Steve Saucer, founder and pastor of Restoration Church of Jesus Christ shares an intimate view of his life's journey, from youth to adulthood, offering honest insight from the heart of a fatherless son.If you're searching for concrete answers, get comfortable and get ready! You'll find The Fatherless Son to be a textbook, a handbook and a guidebook to anyone struggling to make sense of their "now" in the context of their past.Prepare to dive deep and begin healing!
Chicago’s only professional wizard is about to have a very bad day in the latest novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Dresden Files... As Winter Knight to the Queen of Air and Darkness, Harry Dresden never knows what the scheming Mab might want him to do. Usually, it’s something awful. Mab has traded Harry’s skills to pay off a debt. And now he must help a group of villains led by Harry’s most despised enemy, Nicodemus Archleone, to break into a high-security vault so that they can then access a vault in the Nevernever. Problem is, the vault belongs to Hades, Lord of the freaking Underworld. And Dresden is dead certain that Nicodemus has no intention of allowing any of his crew to survive the experience. Dresden’s always been tricky, but he’s going to have to up his backstabbing game to survive this mess...
Come walk with Lisa as she takes you on a journey from death to life. Her testimony of how she was delivered from a life of addiction and trauma will inspire you to seek a deeper relationship with God. Why I Tried to Die will grip you from the beginning through the end. Lisa's courageous transparency throughout the pages of this book reveal the glory of God and His redemptive healing and restorative powers. It is a must- read for all who are currently going through or dealing with trauma from the past. You will not be disappointed. -MB Busch President, Heartbeat of Heaven Ministries Lisa invites the reader on a journey. This journey is the story of her life, full of hopelessness, tragedy and trauma. Yet, in the midst of the most difficult and hopeless of moments, she encountered the living God who repositioned her with a hope and a future. No life is beyond the reach of a loving God, and Lisa's story is a great reminder of this truth. -Pastor Ruth Hendrickson, Ruth Hendrickson Ministries A riveting page-turner! Lisa's story is one of how heartbreaking trauma kept her world from being safe. But, God had other plans! In the most surprising of places, He set her free. Her trust, resiliency and transformation are a testimony of God's power that speaks profound truth. -Mary Whitman Ortiz, Founder, Limitless Intimacy When reading Why I Tried to Die, I instantly was able to connect to the author. Her ability to capture and articulate her story to the reader was simply amazing. As someone who dealt with abuse for many years, I was able to identify with what Lisa described. As an author myself, I understand firsthand how difficult it is to not only keep the reader intrigued, but also create an imagery for the reader to experience. Lisa was able to do that as well. I believe that this book will not only transform lives, but also change the minds and stereotypes that have been in place. The author is an amazing woman, and I am blessed to have her in my life. -Veronica Dixon Co-Pastor, Elevated Life in Christ Community Church What comes through for me in Why I Tried to Die is Lisa's amazing courage and resilience. I read her words but cannot fathom how she endured persistent childhood trauma in her home, the shuttling back and forth to foster homes and a different school every year, and exposure at such an early age to drugs, alcohol, sex and sexual abuse. On several occasions, I have had the privilege of hearing Lisa eloquently summarize her life's journey, but the book captures what a ten-minute talk cannot-the depth of the harm she experienced and her battle to overcome the pain and trauma against all odds. Speaking with her before her initial talk, I had no clue that she was so horribly mistreated by too many for so long. Lisa is truly a remarkable woman. Her work is an inspiration to all who read it that even the most inhuman challenges can be overcome with faith and the love of life as expressed by her devotion to her children. -Robert K. Reed Executive Deputy Attorney General for Special Initiatives Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General
A century after Appomattox, the civil rights movement won full citizenship for black Americans in the South. It should not have been necessary: by 1870 those rights were set in the Constitution. This is the story of the terrorist campaign that took them away. Nicholas Lemann opens his extraordinary new book with a riveting account of the horrific events of Easter 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana, where a white militia of Confederate veterans-turned-vigilantes attacked the black community there and massacred hundreds of people in a gruesome killing spree. This was the start of an insurgency that changed the course of American history: for the next few years white Southern Democrats waged a campaign of political terrorism aiming to overturn the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and challenge President Grant'ssupport for the emergent structures of black political power. The remorseless strategy of well-financed "White Line" organizations was to create chaos and keep blacks from voting out of fear for their lives and livelihoods. Redemption is the first book to describe in uncompromising detail this organized racial violence, which reached its apogee in Mississippi in 1875. Lemann bases his devastating account on a wealth of military records, congressional investigations, memoirs, press reports, and the invaluable papers of Adelbert Ames, the war hero from Maine who was Mississippi's governor at the time. When Ames pleaded with Grant for federal troops who could thwart the white terrorists violently disrupting Republican political activities, Grant wavered, and the result was a bloody, corrupt election in which Mississippi was "redeemed"—that is, returned to white control. Redemption makes clear that this is what led to the death of Reconstruction—and of the rights encoded in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. We are still living with the consequences.
Political constitutions are compromises with injustice. What makes the U.S. Constitution legitimate is Americans’ faith that the constitutional system can be made “a more perfect union.” Balkin argues that the American constitutional project is based in hope and a narrative of shared redemption, and its destiny is still over the horizon.
