Christianity Today Award of Merit
Meditations on Why Life is Worth Living
We aren't always honest about how difficult normal human life is.
For the majority of people, sorrow, despair, anxiety, and mental illness are everyday experiences. While we have made tremendous advancements in therapy and psychiatry, the burden of living still comes down ...
The constraints of the spiritual life, practiced in community, are what set us free. Practicing spiritual disciplines can seem difficult, especially when we undertake them as isolated individuals. But we were never meant to practice them alone.
Jared Patrick Boyd reveals how the constraints practiced in Christian community shape us into the way of Christ. He re-anchors the ...
"The unexamined life is not worth living." —Socrates What is life all about? What are we here for? Is there any meaning or purpose to our existence? Thinkers throughout the centuries have pondered these questions. While the distractions of the modern world prevent many from grappling seriously with such matters, the truth is that humans cannot live without meaning any more than ...
We're being formed by our devices. Today's digital technologies are designed to captivate our attention and encroach on our boundaries, shaping how we relate to time and space, to ourselves and others, even to God. Our natural longing for relationship makes us vulnerable to the "industrializing" effects of social media. While we enjoy the benefits of digital tech, many of us feel ...
Some books on how to read the Bible are academically informative, but their rationality can make God seem distant. Other books are spiritually vibrant but provide few tools that truly help God's people read the Bible better. Readers need a guide that combines the academic with the spiritual—that integrates textual analysis with the illuminating and transformational work of the Holy ...
Recovering the Practice of Lament
The church desperately needs to recover the practice of lament. But what exactly are we asking for?
The call for lament echoes throughout the pages of Scripture. This ever-present genre shaped the lives of ancient communities, and it should shape the practices of churches today. And yet contemporary Christian communities often don't ...
What does it mean to be human? What is a person? Where did we come from?
Many answers have been offered throughout history in response to these perennial questions, including those from biological, anthropological, sociological, political, and theological approaches. And yet the questions remain.
Philosopher Joshua Rasmussen offers his own step-by-step examination into ...
Christianity Today Book Award—Marriage and Family
Half of Christian high school students walk away from their faith after graduation. But parental involvement is the most influential predictor of a child's spirituality throughout their lives. How do we parent our kids in ways that lead to lasting faith?
Sarah Cowan Johnson unpacks how parents ...
You have gifts! And you are a gift to the world around you. Because every human is fearfully and wonderfully made, each one of us has something to offer to the world. But we have not always identified or developed our gifts well, nor deployed them effectively. Don Everts explores the gifts God has given every person and what new research reveals about the difference those gifts ...
World Guild Award Winner
As the renowned scholar Thomas Oden noted, "No subject of Christian teaching is more prone to fanaticism and novelty and subjectivism than that of the Holy Spirit." The Bible's own metaphors for the Spirit are as elusive as they are evocative—wind, oil, flame, water, dove—making pneumatology a mysterious study. But shying away from ...