Showing results for "Preserving" in Bibles & Bible Study

The text in The Rest of The Story: A Closer Look at Familiar Passages is like someone pulling the curtain back so you can see the movie that’s been playing for quite some time on the big screen. While it’s been there all along, you just didn’t have the capacity to take it all in because it was under wraps, disguised. Within book, Doug Greenwold “pulls back the curtain” to help expose wisdom and insights that have been staring us in the face for centuries.

This book contextually restores twelve of Luke’s most “familiar” passages, e.g., return to Nazareth, Simon, the leper, the paralytic, the calling of Levi, the demoniac, Jairus, the bleeding woman, etc., in an engaging narrative story-telling format. In doing so, paradigm challenging insights (with pastoral applications) reveal themselves from passages we thought we knew and understood. Each chapter challenges the listener with open-ended, probing, rabbinic-type questions to draw out appropriate heart, mind and soul issues for transformational reflection and journaling.

Jesus’ parable of the “Good Samaritan” is both widely known and frequently cited. In today’s idiom we sometimes say of another who performs a good deed, “My goodness, you certainly were a good Samaritan to that person.” Many of our states have “Good Samaritan” laws to encourage people to respond in emergency situations without the fear of legal liability.

Zechariah and Elizabeth: Persistent Faith in a Faithful God resets the familiar Luke 1 story of Zechariah and Elizabeth back into its original contextual setting. This enables the listener to experience the fuller story as if we were neighbors of Zechariah and Elizabeth. In so doing, it allows 21st century westernized hearts and minds to connect with the first century Middle Eastern mindset that Luke assumes we would have understood.

As the father of a son with special needs, I’ve long been drawn to Jesus’ encounter with a paralytic in Luke 5. When previously pondering this encounter, I always did so from Jesus’ perspective. Until recently, I never viewed this remarkable event from the perspective of the paralytic’s four friends. Approaching this encounter from that viewpoint gave rise to this new eight-chapter book.