Showing results by narrator "William Sarris" in All Categories

In a culture that views absolute truth as a fixture of the past, it is necessary to have a deeper explanation of the hope available to us in Jesus. If this explanation is indeed plausible and the Bible is true, then the implications for how we live are nothing short of profound!

Here's a book that should accompany every copy of God's Word! It's small but packed with helpful information on the Christian faith, promising insight for believers and seekers of any age or background. 

When a perfect storm of personal, professional, and natural disaster threw Mike Mantel into a dark night of the soul, he embarked on a journey through his own life and around the world to rediscover God's presence through the diverse body of Christ. In Thirsting for Living Water, Mantel invites listeners to join him on this adventure and open their eyes to their own stories of God's faithfulness.

Much of the contemporary discussion of the Jesus tradition has focused on aspects of oral performance, storytelling, and social memory, on the premise that the practice of communal reading of written texts was a phenomenon documented no earlier than the second century CE. Brian J. Wright overturns that premise by examining evidence that demonstrates communal reading events in the first century. 

This collection of booklets on Cultivating Biblical Godliness covers topics that are essential to life as a follower of Christ. Each book in this bundle aims to address a wide variety of people and situations, while discussing the fundamentals of Christianity. In this collection the following topics are discussed and explained in order to practice spirituality and cultivate biblical godliness in addition to facing common struggles 

In Ephesians 5:16, the apostle Paul instructs Christians to redeem "the time, because the days are evil." Author Ryan McGraw says that "how you use your time measures the quality of your life." But how can you manage your time in order to serve the Lord and the church well? In this pamphlet, you will learn what the Bible has to say about the gospel foundation for time management and how to apply its instruction so that you redeem the time in a God-honoring way.  

What is a Christian? This is a truly vital question because never-ending happiness or everlasting horror hinges upon understanding the correct, biblical answer to it. Yet few questions have provoked so much confusion. Ryan McGraw lays out what it means to be a Christian in terms of what one believes, what one experiences, and what one does a full-orbed Christianity of head, heart, and hands.

We all worry. Although many of our worries are never realized, we continue to live with daily anxiety, constantly fearing the present and the future - things that are or things that never will be. In How Can I Stop Worrying?, Gerald M. Bilkes examines God's gracious path for trading anxiety for a deep peace through Jesus Christ that can fortify and guard us, regardless of our circumstances, in a way that brings glory to God. 

"Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend," Proverbs 27:17 tells us. God uses Christian friendships to help His children grow in grace and stay true to Christ. But our 21st century Western culture values individualism, busyness, and selfishness qualities that do not encourage deep, long-lasting, satisfying friendships. 

Meeting people from other religions is an incredible blessing and a unique challenge. As Christians, what do we need to know about their beliefs to effectively interact with them? And how can we share about Jesus with sensitivity for someone's relationship to their current faith? A compilation from some of today's top religion scholars, The Popular Handbook of World Religions is a clear and insightful guide to understanding and conversing with followers of the world's major belief systems. 

There are plenty of reasons to criticize, judge, and even walk away from the church. Many of us have been hurt and rejected. We may see church as insular and irrelevant. Despite this, Kevin Makins believes that the church still matters - perhaps more than ever. If you've been burned or burned out by the church, if you've been silenced or misunderstood, if you've left or never even joined in the first place, this candid, hopeful audiobook is your invitation to consider what you miss out on when you give up on church - and what the church misses out on when it gives up on you.

Are you a shadow Christian? Shadow Christians are people who work in the margins, in the shadows created by the spotlight shining on others. We often think they - we - are insignificant. But here’s the good news: God chooses and uses shadow Christians.   

A Human-Shaped God approaches the humanlike accounts of God in the Old Testament as the starting places for theology and uses them to build a picture of the divine. This understanding of God is then brought into conversation with traditional conceptions that depict God as a being who knows everything that happens, is at every place at the same time, is constant and unchanging, and does not ultimately have material form. 

Taking stock of our fragmented political landscape, Michael Patrick Lynch delivers a trenchant philosophical take on digital culture and its tendency to make us into dogmatic know-it-alls. The internet - where most shared news stories are not even read by the person posting them - has contributed to the rampant spread of "intellectual arrogance". In this culture, we have come to think that we have nothing to learn from one another; we are rewarded for emotional outrage over reflective thought; and we glorify a defensive rejection of those different from us.  

Charles offers new insight into the evolution of the gun rights movement and how politicians responded to anti-gun control hardliners. He examines in detail how the National Rifle Association reinvented itself as well as how other advocacy groups challenged the NRA's political monopoly. Offering a deep dive into the politicization of gun rights, Vote Gun reveals the origins of the acrimonious divisions that persist to this day.

Many of the central concerns of the twenty-first century—racial inequity, white supremacy movements, greater inclusiveness of diverse peoples—are rooted in facing and overcoming prejudices, both common and hidden. Another great challenge—the role of wealth and innovation in solving the climate crisis—is also riddled with disabling prejudices about how corporations work, and about the rights and needs of consumers and world citizens. In his twenty-first book, Bruce Piasecki argues that a set of five recurring prejudices, from 1900 to 2020, have held up real progress on climate action.

The first Christmas sermon preserved in church history was preached by St. John Chrysostom in AD 386, in which he declared, "Behold a new and wonderful mystery!" In this volume, the Christian literary writers of the Chrysostom Society reflect on Advent and Christmastide as a bright and meaningful season of anticipation and glory. Through forty-two readings from the first Sunday of Advent through Epiphany, contributors prepare us in watchful waiting for the coming of Jesus.

This audiobook teaches listeners why infant baptism is an essential practice for the Church. Ultimately, Reformed churches baptize infants because this practice heralds God’s glorious covenant promises. This visible proclamation of God’s word is a God-given means to cultivate biblical godliness in the Church, in parenting, and in the lives of our children. Ryan M. McGraw takes us beyond the question of whether infant baptism is right and shows us what difference it actually makes.

How much equality does democracy need to survive? Political thinkers have wrestled with that question for millennia. Aldo Schiavone guides us through historical thickets, from the first democracy to the present day, seeking solutions to the enduring tension between democracy and inequality. Turning from antiquity to the modern world, Schiavone shows how the American and the French revolutions attempted to settle old debates, introducing a new way of thinking about equality.

What does a scrappy church look like? Let's take a look together.