This powerful and timeless love story centres on a woman who knows nothing but betrayal. Having being sold into prostitution as a child, Angel survives with hatred towards herself and the men that use her. But then fate delivers Michael Hosea, a farmer who believes God wants Angel to be his wife. Encountering a love unlike anything she has ever experienced, and facing demons that seem unsurmountable, Angel runs from her new life, and the man she doesn't think she deserves.
Three complete sessions for Lent, Holy Week and Easter, together with a wealth of activities to extend the range of excitingly messy activities for your Messy Church - creative prayers, games, food crafts, and ideas for organising an Easter trail. Craft templates and a session planning grid are included. Messy Church is a way of being church, for families and others.
Prayer is at the heart of BRF's work, and this special illustrated anniversary collection is a celebration of prayer for BRF's centenary year. It can be used in a range of different settings, from individual devotions to corporate worship. Including sections on prayers of preparation, seasonal prayers, and themed prayers for special times and hard times, it is the perfect daily companion to resource your spiritual journey.
Lent is traditionally a time of repentance, fasting and prayer as we prepare to celebrate our salvation at Easter. Through daily readings and reflections from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day, Amy Scott Robinson explores different biblical images of repentance, sin, forgiveness and grace, bringing them together in Holy Week as a lens through which to view Christ's work of reconciliation on the cross.
On this journey from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day, you are invited to become a pilgrim with Brother Ramon. Each day there is the opportunity to stop and reflect on the gospel story, drawing insight from the experiences of those who were there during the events of the first Easter, finding inspiration and strength for the greater journey of our lives. Suffering and glory are intermingled in real human experience in this book, which is designed for personal and group use.
Discover the life-changing habit of daily Bible reading. Over the last three decades, millions of people around the world have been introduced to Christianity through Alpha, a series of sessions exploring the Christian faith pioneered by Nicky Gumbel. Through the simple format of a shared meal, a short talk and a group discussion on particular aspects of faith, many participants have encountered Jesus, accepted him as their saviour and become part of the church family.
Jesus promised, "Seek and you will find!" Do you long for a transforming encounter with the living God? Jesus assures us that those willing to become seekers will find what their hearts most deeply desire. Profoundly influenced by his long friendship with Dallas Willard, and his experience guiding people through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius for the last thirty years, Trevor Hudson offers you a practical tool kit for your seeking journey.
In the Gospel of Mark's account of the Passion narrative, Jesus calls out from the cross 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?' which is the Aramaic for 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' - the first line of Psalm 22. It's an anguished expression - traditionally ascribed to King David - of defeat, failure, abandonment and despair. This series of reflections, written for Lent and Holy Week 2023 by the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, ponders the significance of these words.
The Vanishing reveals the plight and possible extinction of Christian communities across Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine after 2,000 years in their historical homeland. Some of the countries that first nurtured and characterized Christianity - along the North African Coast, on the Euphrates and across the Middle East and Arabia - are the ones in which it is likely to first go extinct. Christians are already vanishing.
Mima is very sick, and just thinking about it makes Julian very sad and very angry. Julian is worried about Mima and wonders if God can hear her or if God cares. So Mima explains to Julian that God loves us and that God can be trusted―even when we are sad or angry. This gentle story of a grandmother's love for her granddaughter incorporates the timeless wisdom of Julian of Norwich: because of God's great love for us, all will be well.
Do you ever find yourself thinking, 'I'm not enough, and I'm never going to be. And I know I'm not supposed to say this, but God's not enough for me either.' Whether or not we attend church, deep down we wonder if the biblical story of faith is really enough for the complexity of the world in which we live. We fill our lives with other things, hoping that maybe the next experience or accomplishment will complete us. Yet with every goal we reach, we still feel discouraged and anxious.
In this short Christian introduction to identity, Andrew explores and examines different ways we can discover who we are. Blending his personal story with careful Bible teaching and genuine cultural awareness, this is a book to get conversations going and help us all understand our best identity. With questions for discussion and reflection, and an application exercise to end the book, Finding Your Best Identity is a practical and profound introduction to some of the biggest questions we face.
A powerful new Lent course for Bible study groups and individuals, based on the Oscar-nominated 2021 film West Side Story. Popular author, and former Catholic nun, Lavinia Byrne and Jane McBride, a Northern Irish Protestant, present an interactive course that reflects on the Lenten experience of the Gospels alongside some of the key themes of this much-loved musical tale of immigration, segregation, love found and lost, betrayal, repentance, and tragedy leading to new resolve.
Do you know who you are? In Following in His Footsteps, Naomi Smyth takes you on a journey where you can know who you are by knowing the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As you hunger for Christ, his nature becomes your nature. As you journey with Christ, new adventures will start to unfold. As you listen to the whispers of The Holy Spirit he will guide you and lead you into new adventures. So what is your destiny? Enjoy finding this out from the one who knows you better than anyone.
Am I Beautiful? fights back against the beauty myth and calls on women to reclaim their body image and recognise their true value, so that they can be the culture-making, injustice-fighting, Christ-reflecting women they were created to be.
We live in an unprecedented time that has threatened to upend our daily rhythms, our work, our homes - even our faith. More than ever, we need books like Reflections on the Sunday Gospel to stir us to hope, to comfort, to peace. We need to remember what we live for and how good God is. These reflections - published in English for the first time, drawn both from homilies given by Pope Francis and readings from the Fathers of the Church, including Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome, and Saint Ambrose.
Many Christians are nervous about politics - isn't the political world murky and sleazy, a den of deceit and backstairs deals? At the same time, the image of Christians in politics isn't great either - often seen as judgemental hypocrites, intolerant and hateful control freaks... shouldn't this mean that faith and politics should be kept firmly apart? Farron and Friends explore and defend why Christianity and politics should and must work together.
Prayer is the source of Jesus's most astonishing miracles and the subject of Jesus' most audacious promises, and yet, most people - even most Bible-believing Christians - find prayer to be boring, obligatory, disappointing, confusing, or, most often, all of the above. If you've ever felt this way, Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools is your invitation to trade your conceptions and misconceptions about prayer for prayer in its purest form: a vital, sustaining, powerful connection with God.
In this insightful study, Steve Motyer explores a number of key biblical texts to unpack The Message of the Second Coming. Examining passages from both the Old and New Testaments, he demonstrates that Jesus Christ is the core of the biblical worldview, the climax of the biblical message, the cornerstone of biblical theology and the centrepiece of authentic biblical faith for the twenty-first century. A new volume in the trusted the Bible Speaks Today series of commentaries.
This book of daily Bible readings and reflections for Advent and Christmas is based around spiritual insights gleaned from some of the best-loved poets of the past - T.S. Eliot, George Herbert, Tennyson and Auden, among others. While they come from different ages and backgrounds, they wrestled with the same questions that we do, about God, love, hope, and suffering. This book is not a literary study of their work, but a quest to see what they can tell us about life and faith today.
Parenting teens has its challenges. They are pulling away from us, growing in independence and making decisions with bigger consequences. It can be easy to think we are less influential in their lives, particularly when it comes to faith. But that is not true. Parents remain the significant spiritual influencer in a teen’s life, and they need us to help them navigate the world and faith together. This book will help all parents, carers, grandparents and others involved in teens’ everyday lives.
If discipleship is about connecting more deeply with God and connecting God with the whole of life, we’re looking at a lifelong process that requires long-term skills rather than short-term courses. The Celtic and Desert Christians, drawing on Old and New Testament practices, modelled how to do this through the practice of living by a Way of Life. In this updated edition, Followers of the Way explores how we can look to Celtic Christianity to inspire authentic Christian discipleship today.
Helps us to grapple with the question: ‘Why is it better for me to forgive someone and take on the cost of that forgiveness myself?’ The matter of forgiveness has a huge impact not just on a religious level but on social and cultural levels too, in terms of how we deal with the people, and problems, in our lives.
Jesus often spoke words and flung insults that followers then and now have found difficult, to say the least. Levine sheds vital light on understanding these by exploring how these sayings sounded to those who first heard them. She reveals Jewish modes of expression, humour and the long tradition of Jewish insults and what they mean, and how we might interpret these sayings today within a gospel of love and reconciliation.
Samuel Wells in conversation with a stellar group of theologians, pastors and practitioners from Britain and America, sharing their wisdom on the church and the challenges and opportunities facing it
Kosuke Koyama's writing most notably in his famous Three mile an Hour God acts as an antidote for todays preoccupation with speed, size and the spectacular - "God walks slowly because He is love." Here missiologist Ben Aldous explores how Koyama's theology encourages an approach to mission which truly reflects the rhythm, pace, vision and surrender of Christ.
Inspired by the psalms Psalms for the City is a beautifully illustrated book of poetry that offers comfort, inspiration and encouragement for the heart and soul, as John-Paul Flintoff puts into vibrant, captivating and sometimes heart-wrenching words the pockets of peace he has found in the midst of the non-stop noise and colourful chaos of the city. Includes his own hand-drawn illustrations to accompany the poems.