Résultats lu par "Lyle Blaker" dans Toutes les catégories

It is as much our interest as it is our duty to be awakened out of our pleasant but most pernicious drowsiness. Troubles will be so much more sinking and intolerable if they take us by surprise. Just as expectation spoils earthly comforts by sucking out much of its sweetness beforehand so that we find less in it when we come to the actual enjoyment, so the expectation of suffering eases much of the dread and terror by accustoming our thoughts beforehand and making preparation for them.

The book includes stories of the people and workings of luxury fashion, from New York, London, Paris, Milan—and in the rapidly growing markets of China.

In The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy, Michael Mandelbaum offers a new framework for understanding the evolution of the foreign policy of the United States. He divides that evolution into four distinct periods, with each defined by the consistent increase in American power relative to other countries. His history of the four periods features engaging accounts of the major events and important personalities in the foreign policy of each era.

Why do we buy what we buy, vote the way we vote, eat what we eat, and say what we say? Why do we have the friends we have, and work and play as we do? It's our choice? Yes, but there are forces, often unseen, that shape every decision we make and every action we take. These hidden, life-shaping values and ideas are not promoted through organized religions or rival philosophies but fostered by cultural habits, lifestyles and the institutional structures of society. 

Scars on the Land is the first comprehensive history of American slavery to examine how the environment fundamentally formed enslaved people's lives and how slavery remade the Southern landscape. Over two centuries, from the establishment of slavery in the Chesapeake to the Civil War, one simple calculation had profound consequences: Rather than measuring productivity based on outputs per acre, Southern planters sought to maximize how much labor they could extract from their enslaved workforce.

Are you for Christ or are you against him? You know you are either one or the other, for he says so. We learn in Matthew 12:30 in the words of Jesus himself: He that is not with me is against me. Everyone is either with Jesus wholeheartedly, confessedly, and openly, or else they are against Jesus. Which are you? For Christ or against him?

Praying should be as urgent and necessary to us as breathing—yet all too often we're bored by it, distracted from it, or uncertain of its purpose. Yet we have many reasons to be excited about prayer. It is the glue that bonds our hearts to the Lord. God commands us to pray, and he graciously answers our prayers. As we pour out our hearts to him, we and the world around us will be changed. Informative, encouraging, and practical, this brief book will serve as a primer for pastors, elders, study groups, and Christians who seek encouragement and instruction on prayer and its blessings.

Did you know you can read Jesus's Sermon on the Mount in about eighteen minutes? Yet packed into this short talk are more life-changing and startlingly original teachings than anywhere else in Scripture. Drawing from decades of study, Dr. Robert Jeffress breaks down Jesus's most well-known (yet least-followed) teachings about happiness, faith, relationships, sex, reconciliation, prayer, money, and more. He shows how we often misunderstand and misapply these verses and unpacks exactly what Jesus was teaching us about our own hearts and minds.

What is the nature, calling, and work of local church leadership? Pastor and seminary professor David Mathis considers the elder qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 not only as prerequisites but as daily necessities to carry out joyfully. This accessible guide aims to serve current and aspiring pastors and elders, as well as church members who want to know the expectations for their leaders and how to pray for them.

Reconciling the existence of God and evil has been a long-standing conundrum in Christian theology, yet a philosophical approach—rather than a theological one—dominates the discussion. Turning to the Bible's grand storyline, Scott Christensen examines how sin, evil, corruption, and death fit into the broad outlines of redemptive history. He argues that God's ultimate end in creation is to magnify his glory to his image-bearers, most notably by defeating evil through the atoning work of Christ.

How does worship work? How exactly does liturgical formation shape us? What are the dynamics of such transformation? In the second of James K. A. Smith's three-volume theology of culture, the author expands and deepens his analysis of cultural liturgies and Christian worship he developed in his well-received Desiring the Kingdom. He helps us understand and appreciate the bodily basis of habit formation and how liturgical formation—both "secular" and Christian—affects our fundamental orientation to the world.

The American church is at a critical crossroads. Our witness has been compromised, our numbers are down, and our reputation has been sullied, due largely to our own faults and fears. The church's ethnocentrism, consumerism, and syncretism have blurred the lines between discipleship and partisanship. Pastor Eric Costanzo, missiologist Daniel Yang, and nonprofit leader Matthew Soerens find that for the church to return to health, we must decenter ourselves from our American idols and recenter on the undeniable, inalienable core reality of the global, transcultural kingdom of God.

R. D. Hooker, Jr. was a combat soldier and leader in five wars. He then served as a senior Pentagon advisor and as a White House staff member in four different administrations. At the time of his retirement from the military in 2010, he was the most decorated colonel in the US Army. Beginning with his enlistment at eighteen in 1975, this memoir chronicles his experiences in the post-Vietnam Army as a young paratrooper, as a West Point cadet, and as a combatant in the many military conflicts which followed. 

The Christ many preach and write about is not the real Christ. The Christ of many Evangelical, Protestant, and Catholic churches today is not the actual Christ Jesus who once walked this earth and whom men saw and studied and knew—the Christ who was the incarnate Word of God and the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Conflict is inevitable, but peace, especially among Christians, is essential. When conflict turns into peace, frustration becomes clarity and turmoil becomes unity. When conflict turns into peace, God is glorified. But how do we find peace without ignoring our problems? How do we pursue unity without compromising on our principles? The Path of a Peacemaker offers a simple, proven path to a lifestyle of peace. It guides you through an examination of your own personal story, identifying the origins of your hopes and fears.

We love God. We love our country. What does it look like to love each properly and well? National tensions are at a record high. People on all points in the political spectrum care deeply about their country, although they differ wildly in their opinions about what it looks like to serve that...

When student Tim Journeyman first wrote to family friend Dr. Paul Woodson, he didn't know it would start a fifteen-year mentorship that would shape his life and Christian faith. Within their candid letters are words of real-world wisdom—from a "senior saint" to a "junior saint"—covering various areas of living, from the theological to the everyday. Written as fictional correspondence between two men at different stages of life and faith, the novel Letters Along the Way provides important biblical perspectives.

Leadership is not static. Instead, authority in projects shifts dynamically between project managers, individual team members, and sub-teams, depending on the situation. Leadership may be exercised through a vertical, horizontal, shared, or distributed leadership approach. However, balanced leadership ensures the best suitable approach is used in any given situation. Based on an award-winning global program of research studies, Balanced Leadership is a thorough investigation of balanced leadership in projects. 

"God’s attitude toward His Son is unutterable love, but He gave that Son up to die for you and me. God’s attitude toward the believer is to give him eternal life, regardless of what his past has been. God’s attitude toward those who will not believe is to leave them to the perdition they so madly choose. What will you choose today: life or death? People decide that question in a few minutes; decide it for all eternity. God help you to decide it right.

In The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89, Edmund S. Morgan shows how the challenge of British taxation started Americans on a search for constitutional principles to protect their freedom, and eventually led to the Revolution. By demonstrating that the founding fathers' political philosophy was not grounded in theory, but rather grew out of their own immediate needs, Morgan paints a vivid portrait of how the founders' own experiences shaped their passionate convictions, and these in turn were incorporated into the Constitution and other governmental documents.