Reenacting The Way Of Jesus

The way of Jesus means that despite our tears and scars, we can become vessels of divine light. A young man loses his wife while their baby escapes without injury. In abject grief he reaches out to a friend for solace. What words of comfort are even possible? How can Jesus repair and renew these lives in this world? Author Bruce Chilton begins in the everyday. He shows how following Jesus not only repairs shattered lives, but renews them. While no broken life is ever simply reassembled and although there is no magic going back to the pristine, repair and renewal will empower us to truly live and love again. But our path requires something from us--mindful practice of Jesus' teachings about the soul, spirit, kingdom, insight, forgiveness, mercy, and glory.

A way of sacrifice. A way of failure. A way on the margins. A way of holiness. All of these ways prepared the "way of the Lord" that became incarnate and complete in Jesus. But somewhere along the line, have we lost the way? In The Jesus Way Eugene Peterson continues his conversation in spiritual theology, considering all the ways that Jesus is the Way compared to the distorted ways the American church today has chosen to follow. BJ Arguing that the way Jesus leads and the way we follow are symbiotic, Peterson begins with a study of how the ways of those who came before Christ - Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, Isaiah of Jerusalem, and Isaiah of the Exile - revealed and prepared the "way of the Lord" that became complete in Jesus. He then challenges the ways of the contemporary American church, showing in stark relief how what we have chosen to focus on - consumerism, celebrity, charisma, and so forth - obliterates what is unique in the Jesus way.

Examining how materialism and consumerism have made their way into the church, a teaching pastor and author of Jesus of Suburbia reveals how Christians can more effectively demonstrate Christ's presence and how the church can cooperate with Jesus in the world in which they live. Original.

In Story-Shaped Worship Robbie Castleman attempts nothing less than to uncover the fundamental shape of worship. Right worship doesn't require a traditionalist return to earlier forms of church, she argues, but a fresh response to God in light of the revealed patterns of worship we find in the Bible and church history.

Do we have the wrong map for the Christian life? Life's inconveniences, disappointments, and trials can leave us confused, cynical, and eventually bitter. But the apostle Paul traces out the path of dying and rising with Jesus—what Paul Miller calls the “J-Curve”—as the normal Christian life. The J-Curve maps the ups and downs of daily life onto the story of Jesus. It grounds our journeys not in some abstract idea but in union with Christ and his work of love. Understanding our lives in light of the J-Curve roots our hope, centers our love, and tethers our faith to Christ.

Who is Jesus? Christians have been arguing about the answer to that question since there have been Christians, and it seems unlikely that they're going to agree on an answer anytime soon. Mark Osler, always a bit uncomfortable in church, was never able to find a Jesus that seemed real to himâ€"until he put Jesus on trial. Drawing on his training as a federal prosecutor and professor of law, he and a group of friends staged the trial of Jesus for their church, as though it were happening in the modern American criminal justice system. The event was so powerful that before long Osler received invitations to take it on the road. Each time he served as Christ's prosecutor, the story of Jesus opened up to him a bit more. Prosecuting Jesus follows Osler in this extraordinary journey of discovering himself by discovering Jesus. Juxtaposing things we rarely put together, like the passion of Christ and our ideas about capital punishment, Osler explores an active engagement between Jesus and our contemporary law and culture.

A revolutionary love movement is circling the globe. Broken lives are being transformed and the love of Jesus is being gossiped into the most remote regions of the planet. However, in the West, the church is in decline. The brand image is broken. Christianity is not seen as radical or revolutionary and some of those who claim to be “Christian,” seem to bear little resemblance to the life and teachings of Jesus. Through national and international engagement in Christian ministry, Paul Kroeker has witnessed this development firsthand. He has come to realize that “Though we thought we were rich, we are really poor, and though we thought they were poor, the international church has the riches we need to live the abundant life Jesus describes” (inspired by Revelation 3:14-22). In the Way of Jesus takes readers on a journey of renewed hope found in the person of Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. Through personal anecdotes and biblical insights, Kroeker lays out the path of discipleship that leads to an intimate relationship with Jesus: “When someone has been with Jesus, their love becomes authentic and compelling. They eagerly share what Jesus has done for them. Their joy is infectious. They are an open book—evidence of God’s love and forgiveness. Their love for one another becomes extraordinary and reveals the good news of the Kingdom of God. Brand image and reality are one and the same. This alone will lead to the awakening of the church in the West, allowing for a new tide of God’s redeeming love to move across our nation and heal our land.” In the way of Jesus you become a disciple who will love, live and serve like him. Love, Live, Serve like Jesus.

The instant New York Times bestseller interpreting the controversial long-lost gospel The recently unearthed Gospel of Judas is a source of fascination for biblical scholars and lay Christians alike. Now two leading experts on the Gnostic gospels tackle the important questions posed by its discovery, including: How could any Christian imagine Judas to be Jesus' favorite? And what kind of vision of God does the author offer? Working from Karen L. King's brilliant new translation, Elaine Pagels and King provide the context necessary for considering its meaning. Reading Judas plunges into the heart of Christianity itself and will stand as the definitive look at the gospel for years to come.

Winner of the 2021 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Winner of the 2022 Rosenthal Family Foundation Award Finalist for the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction • Finalist for the 2022 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel • Finalist for the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize • Finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction One of NPR's Best Books of the Year • A Publishers Weekly and Library Journal Best Book of the Year in Fiction • A Kirkus Reviews Best Fictional Family of the Year • A Booklist Top Ten Book-Group Book of the Year • A Goodreads Choice Awards Best Debut Novel Nominee From an award-winning storyteller comes a stunning debut novel about a New Mexican family’s extraordinary year of love and sacrifice. "Masterly…Quade has created a world bristling with compassion and humanity. The characters and the challenges they face are wholly realized and moving; their journeys span a wide spectrum of emotion and it is impossible not to root for [them]." —Alexandra Chang, New York Times Book Review It’s Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans for personal redemption. With weeks to go until her due date, tough, ebullient Angel has fled her mother’s house, setting her life on a startling new path. Vivid, tender, funny, and beautifully rendered, The Five Wounds spans the baby’s first year as five generations of the Padilla family converge: Amadeo’s mother, Yolanda, reeling from a recent discovery; Angel’s mother, Marissa, whom Angel isn’t speaking to; and disapproving Tíve, Yolanda’s uncle and keeper of the family’s history. Each brings expectations that Amadeo, who often solves his problems with a beer in his hand, doesn’t think he can live up to. The Five Wounds is a miraculous debut novel from a writer whose stories have been hailed as “legitimate masterpieces” (New York Times). Kirstin Valdez Quade conjures characters that will linger long after the final page, bringing to life their struggles to parent children they may not be equipped to save.