An inspiring personal story of redemption, second chances, and the transformative power within us all, from the founder and CEO of the nonprofit charity: water. At 28 years old, Scott Harrison had it all. A top nightclub promoter in New York City, his life was an endless cycle of drugs, booze, models - repeat. But 10 years in, desperately unhappy and morally bankrupt, he asked himself, "What would the exact opposite of my life look like?" Walking away from everything, Harrison spent the next 16 months on a hospital ship in West Africa and discovered his true calling. In 2006, with no money and less than no experience, Harrison founded charity: water. Today, his organization has raised over $300 million to bring clean drinking water to more than 8.2 million people around the globe.In Thirst, Harrison recounts the twists and turns that built charity: water into one of the most trusted and admired nonprofits in the world. Renowned for its 100% donation model, bold storytelling, imaginative branding, and radical commitment to transparency, charity: water has disrupted how social entrepreneurs work while inspiring millions of people to join its mission of bringing clean water to everyone on the planet within our lifetime.In the tradition of such bestselling books as Shoe Dog and Mountains Beyond Mountains, Thirst is a riveting account of how to build a better charity, a better business, a better life - and a gritty tale that proves it's never too late to make a change.100% of the author's net proceeds from Thirst will go to fund charity: water projects around the world.
Currency
|
9781524762841
|
Hardcover
Everybody Always
By Goff, Bob
What if we stopped avoiding the difficult people in our lives and committed to simply loving everybody? What happens when we give away love like were made of it? In Everybody, Always, Bob Goffs joyful New York Times bestselling follow-up to Love Does, youll discover the secret to living without fear, constraint, or worry.
Bob teaches us that the path toward the outsized, unfettered, liberated existence we all long for is found in one simple truth: love people, even the difficult ones, without distinction and without limits.
In Everybody, Always, Bob shows us the simple truths about life that have the power to shift our mindset forever:
Jesus uses our blind spots to reveal himself to us
Its easy to love kind, lovely, humble people, but you have to tackle fear in order to love people who are difficult
What we do with our love will become the conversations we have with God
Dark and scary places are filled with beautiful people who need our unconditional love
Extravagant love has extraordinary power to change lives, including our own
Driven by Bobs trademark storytelling, this book reveals the wisdom Bob learned--often the hard way--about what it means to love without inhibition, insecurity, or restriction. From finding the right friends to discovering the upside of failure, Everybody, Always points the way to embodying love by doing the unexpected, the intimidating, the seemingly impossible.
Whether losing his shoes while skydiving solo or befriending a Ugandan witch doctor, Bob steps into life with a no-limits embrace of others that is as infectious as it is extraordinarily ordinary. Everybody, Always reveals how we can do the same.
Thomas Nelson
|
9780718078133
|
Paperback
Finding Truth
By Pearcey, Nancy
Don't Think, Just Believe? That's the mantra in many circles today--whether the church, the classroom, the campus, or the voting booth. Time for a Reality Check Nancy Pearcey, bestselling and critically acclaimed author, offers fresh tools to break free from presumed certainties and test them against reality. In Finding Truth, she explains five powerful principles that penetrate to the core of any worldview--secular or religious--to uncover its deepest motivations and weigh its claims. A former agnostic, Pearcey demonstrates that a robust Christian worldview matches reality--that it is not only true but attractive, granting higher dignity to the human person than any alternative. Finding Truth displays Pearcey's well-earned reputation for clear and cogent writing.
David C. Cook
|
9780781413084
|
Hardcover
Overcomer
By Fabry, Chris
Life changes overnight for coach John Harrison when his high school basketball team and state championship dreams are crushed under the weight of unexpected news. When the largest manufacturing plant shuts down and hundreds of families leave their town, John questions how he and his family will face an uncertain future. After reluctantly agreeing to coach cross-country, John and his wife, Amy, meet an aspiring athlete who's pushing her limits on a journey toward discovery. Inspired by the words and prayers of a newfound friend, John becomes the least likely coach helping the least likely runner attempt the impossible in the biggest race of the year.
Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
|
9781496438621
|
Paperback
There Is More
By Houston, Brian
Founder and Global Senior Pastor of Hillsong Church and author of LIVE LOVE LEAD shows how, with God's power, you can believe and achieve a life that exceeds every earthly expectation. When you surrender control and follow God's guidance, you become empowered and equipped to do the impossible, reach higher, and go further than you could have ever imagined--giving Him all the glory.By building our lives around godly principles, surrounding ourselves with wisdom, and living for a cause greater than ourselves, we can effectively live out God's purposes and have an enduring impact. As Brian Houston has personally discovered, when we depend on Jesus as the source for our identity, our lives can be a lasting legacy that maximize the gifts He has given each of us as unique individuals.
WaterBrook
|
9780735290617
|
Hardcover
20 Ways to Make Every Day Better
By Meyer, Joyce
#1 New York Times bestselling author Joyce Meyer shares powerful, practical ways to experience a new level of joy and excitement about life every day. The traffic is backed up, the kids are screaming, and the car is making a funny noise again. Any one of these challenges can test our temperament and rob us of joy. Our impulse is to write today off and hope for a better tomorrow. However, this creates a hard pattern to break. One terrible day easily turns into many-and soon we're living a life far from what God has in mind for us. A new, transforming sense of excitement, happiness, and contentment in our lives is possible when we pursue God's goodness each day. In 20 WAYS TO MAKE EVERY DAY BETTER, Joyce Meyer shares biblical illustrations, actionable advice, uplifting stories, and the encouragement we need to start enjoying the life God created for us.
Faithwords
|
9781455560028
|
Hardcover
Live the Let-Go Life
By Prince, Joseph
Letting your problems go into the hands of the One who created the universe is the most powerful thing you can do to live carefree and joyful. You are acknowledging that you cannot--but He can--and you are stepping aside so that His supply can flow into every area of your life. God wants you to live at peace. He wants to see you enjoying life. In LIVE THE LET-GO LIFE, Joseph Prince unveils God's plan for how you can experience the permanent, stable, and aggressive peace that passes all human understanding. You will find out how you can keep your heart from being troubled as you receive fresh revelations of how Jesus' finished work at Calvary enables you to live by the unforced rhythms of grace and truly embrace a "let-go" life--free from stress, worry, and anxiety!.
FaithWords
|
9781455561339
|
Hardcover
The Templars
By Jones, Dan
"Dan Jones is an entertainer, but also a bona fide historian. Seldom does one find serious scholarship so easy to read." - The Times, Book of the YearA New York Times bestseller, this major new history of the knights Templar is "a fresh, muscular and compelling history of the ultimate military-religious crusading order, combining sensible scholarship with narrative swagger" - Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Jerusalem A faltering war in the middle east. A band of elite warriors determined to fight to the death to protect Christianity's holiest sites. A global financial network unaccountable to any government. A sinister plot founded on a web of lies.Jerusalem 1119. A small group of knights seeking a purpose in the violent aftermath of the First Crusade decides to set up a new order. These are the first Knights Templar, a band of elite warriors prepared to give their lives to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Over the next two hundred years, the Templars would become the most powerful religious order of the medieval world. Their legend has inspired fervent speculation ever since. In this groundbreaking narrative history, Dan Jones tells the true story of the Templars for the first time in a generation, drawing on extensive original sources to build a gripping account of these Christian holy warriors whose heroism and alleged depravity have been shrouded in myth. The Templars were protected by the pope and sworn to strict vows of celibacy. They fought the forces of Islam in hand-to-hand combat on the sun-baked hills where Jesus lived and died, finding their nemesis in Saladin, who vowed to drive all Christians from the lands of Islam. Experts at channeling money across borders, they established the medieval world's largest and most innovative banking network and waged private wars against anyone who threatened their interests.Then, as they faced setbacks at the hands of the ruthless Mamluk sultan Baybars and were forced to retreat to their stronghold in Cyprus, a vindictive and cash-strapped King of France set his sights on their fortune. His administrators quietly mounted a damning case against the Templars, built on deliberate lies and false testimony. On Friday October 13, 1307, hundreds of brothers were arrested, imprisoned and tortured, and the order was disbanded amid lurid accusations of sexual misconduct and heresy. They were tried by the Pope in secret proceedings and their last master was brutally tortured and burned at the stake. But were they heretics or victims of a ruthlessly repressive state? Dan Jones goes back to the sources tobring their dramatic tale, so relevant to our own times, to life in a book that is at once authoritative and compulsively readable.
Viking
|
9780525428305
|
Hardcover
The C. S. Lewis Signature Classics
By Lewis, C S
The C. S. Lewis Signature Classics
HarperOne
|
9780062572554
|
Hardcover
Lies We Believe About God
By Young, Wm Paul
From the author of the twenty million plus copy bestselling novel The Shack and the New York Times bestsellers Cross Roads and Eve comes a compelling, conversational exploration of the wrong-headed ideas we sometimes have and share about God.Wm. Paul Young has been called a heretic for the ways he vividly portrays God's love through his novels. Here he shares twenty-eight commonly uttered and sometimes seemingly innocuous things we say about God. Paul exposes these as lies that keep us from having a full, loving relationship with our Creator. With personal anecdotes and sharing the compassion readers felt from the "Papa" portrayed in The Shack - now a major film starring Sam Worthington and Octavia Spencer - Paul encourages readers to think anew about important issues including sin, religion, hell, politics, identity, creation, human rights, and helping us discover God's deep and abiding love.
Simon & Schuster
|
9781501101397
|
Hardcover
Unseen
By Hagerty, Sara
Every heart longs to be seen and understood. Yet most of our lives is unwitnessed. We spend our days working, driving, parenting. We sometimes spend whole seasons feeling unnoticed and unappreciated. So how do we find contentment when we feel so hidden? In Unseen, Sara Hagerty suggests that this is exactly what God intended. He is the only One who truly knows us. He is the only One who understands the value of the unseen in our lives. When this truth seeps into our souls, we realize that only when we hide ourselves in God can we give ourselves to others in true freedom - and know the joy of a deeper relationship with the God who sees us. Our culture applauds what we can produce, what we can show, what we can upload to social media. Only when we give all of ourselves to God - unedited, abandoned, apparently wasteful in its lack of productivity - can we live out who God created us to be.
Zondervan
|
9780310339977
|
Hardcover
He Chose the Nails
By Lucado, Max
Linger on the hill of Calvary. Rub a finger on the timber and press the nail into your hand. Taste the tinge of cheap wine and feel the scrape of a thorn on your brow. Touch the velvet dirt, moist with the blood of God. Allow the tools of torture to tell their story. Listen as they tell you what God did to win your heart.
Thomas Nelson
|
9780718085070
|
Paperback
The Last Hour
By Tsarfati, Amir
Avoiding sensationalism and date-speculating, respected Bible teacher Amir Tsarfati uses his unique perspective as an Israeli Christian to lead you through a fascinating modern-day description of God's plan for the end of the world.Grounded from start to finish in Scripture, the book reveals how the Rapture, the imminent rise of the Antichrist, and the tragic horrors of the Great Tribulation will play out in our world today. He also helps you understand the roles--and fates--of Russia, Iran, Syria, Turkey, the European Union, the United States of America, and Israel in the end times, showing just how biblical prophecies are being fulfilled in our time. But above all, he offers hope that in the midst of chaos and horror, God is ultimately in control, and those who belong to him will be safe with him.
Chosen Books
|
9780800799120
|
Paperback
How God Hauled Me Kicking and Screaming Into the Catholic Church
By Lowry, Kevin
A preacher's kid at a Catholic university, Kevin Lowry settled into a double major in beer and billiards soon followed by uncomfortable run-ins with pious students, failing grades, increasing anxiety, a missing night and the startling realization that some fellow students actually attended Mass the morning after a party instead of sleeping it off.After getting kicked out, Kevin got his act together, got the MBA, and also got the girl. Meanwhile God was working, drawing him to the inevitable conclusion that Catholicism was all true despite his objections.Kevin Lowry's journey to Catholicism is fascinating, often funny, and demonstrates God's unfailing, patient love for all of us.
Our Sunday Visitor
|
9781612788401
|
Print book
Costly Grace
By Schenck, Robert
A leading American evangelical minister - whom public figures long turned to for guidance in faith and politics - recounts his three conversions, from childhood Jewish roots to Christianity, from a pure faith to a highly politicized one, and from the religious right to the simplicity of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.Rob Schenck's extraordinary life has been at the center of the intersection between evangelical Christianity and modern politics. Attacked by partisans on both sides of the aisle, he has been called a "right-wing hate monger," the "ultimate D.C. power-broker," a "traitor" and "turncoat." Now, this influential spiritual adviser to America's political class chronicles his controversial, sometimes troubling career in this revelatory and often shocking memoir.As a teenager in the 1970s, Schenck converted from Judaism to Christianity and found his calling in public ministry. In the 1980s, he, like his twin brother, became a radical activist leader of the anti-abortion movement. In the wake of his hero Ronald Reagan's rise to the White House, Schenck became a leading figure in the religious right inside the Beltway. Emboldened by his authority and access to the highest reaches of government, Schenck was a zealous warrior, brazenly mixing ministry with Republican political activism - even confronting President Bill Clinton during a midnight Christmas Eve service at Washington's National Cathedral.But in the past few years Schenck has undergone another conversion - his most meaningful transition yet. Increasingly troubled by the part he played in the corruption of religion by politics, this man of faith has returned to the purity of the gospel. Like Paul on the Road to Damascus, he had an epiphany: revisiting the lessons of love that Jesus imparted, Schenck realized he had strayed from his deepest convictions. Reaffirming his core spiritual beliefs, Schenck today works to liberate the evangelical community from the oppression of the narrowest interpretation of the gospel, and to urge Washington conservatives to move beyond partisan battles and forsake the politics of hate, fear, and violence. As a preacher, he continues to spread the word of the Lord with humility and a deep awareness of his past transgressions.In this moving and inspiring memoir, he reflects on his path to God, his unconscious abandonment of his principles, and his return to the convictions that guide him. Costly Grace is a fascinating and ultimately redemptive account of one man's life in politics and faith.
Thirst
By Harrison, Scott
An inspiring personal story of redemption, second chances, and the transformative power within us all, from the founder and CEO of the nonprofit charity: water. At 28 years old, Scott Harrison had it all. A top nightclub promoter in New York City, his life was an endless cycle of drugs, booze, models - repeat. But 10 years in, desperately unhappy and morally bankrupt, he asked himself, "What would the exact opposite of my life look like?" Walking away from everything, Harrison spent the next 16 months on a hospital ship in West Africa and discovered his true calling. In 2006, with no money and less than no experience, Harrison founded charity: water. Today, his organization has raised over $300 million to bring clean drinking water to more than 8.2 million people around the globe.In Thirst, Harrison recounts the twists and turns that built charity: water into one of the most trusted and admired nonprofits in the world. Renowned for its 100% donation model, bold storytelling, imaginative branding, and radical commitment to transparency, charity: water has disrupted how social entrepreneurs work while inspiring millions of people to join its mission of bringing clean water to everyone on the planet within our lifetime.In the tradition of such bestselling books as Shoe Dog and Mountains Beyond Mountains, Thirst is a riveting account of how to build a better charity, a better business, a better life - and a gritty tale that proves it's never too late to make a change.100% of the author's net proceeds from Thirst will go to fund charity: water projects around the world.
Everybody Always
By Goff, Bob
What if we stopped avoiding the difficult people in our lives and committed to simply loving everybody? What happens when we give away love like were made of it? In Everybody, Always, Bob Goffs joyful New York Times bestselling follow-up to Love Does, youll discover the secret to living without fear, constraint, or worry.
Bob teaches us that the path toward the outsized, unfettered, liberated existence we all long for is found in one simple truth: love people, even the difficult ones, without distinction and without limits.
In Everybody, Always, Bob shows us the simple truths about life that have the power to shift our mindset forever:
Driven by Bobs trademark storytelling, this book reveals the wisdom Bob learned--often the hard way--about what it means to love without inhibition, insecurity, or restriction. From finding the right friends to discovering the upside of failure, Everybody, Always points the way to embodying love by doing the unexpected, the intimidating, the seemingly impossible.
Whether losing his shoes while skydiving solo or befriending a Ugandan witch doctor, Bob steps into life with a no-limits embrace of others that is as infectious as it is extraordinarily ordinary. Everybody, Always reveals how we can do the same.
Finding Truth
By Pearcey, Nancy
Don't Think, Just Believe? That's the mantra in many circles today--whether the church, the classroom, the campus, or the voting booth. Time for a Reality Check Nancy Pearcey, bestselling and critically acclaimed author, offers fresh tools to break free from presumed certainties and test them against reality. In Finding Truth, she explains five powerful principles that penetrate to the core of any worldview--secular or religious--to uncover its deepest motivations and weigh its claims. A former agnostic, Pearcey demonstrates that a robust Christian worldview matches reality--that it is not only true but attractive, granting higher dignity to the human person than any alternative. Finding Truth displays Pearcey's well-earned reputation for clear and cogent writing.
Overcomer
By Fabry, Chris
Life changes overnight for coach John Harrison when his high school basketball team and state championship dreams are crushed under the weight of unexpected news. When the largest manufacturing plant shuts down and hundreds of families leave their town, John questions how he and his family will face an uncertain future. After reluctantly agreeing to coach cross-country, John and his wife, Amy, meet an aspiring athlete who's pushing her limits on a journey toward discovery. Inspired by the words and prayers of a newfound friend, John becomes the least likely coach helping the least likely runner attempt the impossible in the biggest race of the year.
There Is More
By Houston, Brian
Founder and Global Senior Pastor of Hillsong Church and author of LIVE LOVE LEAD shows how, with God's power, you can believe and achieve a life that exceeds every earthly expectation. When you surrender control and follow God's guidance, you become empowered and equipped to do the impossible, reach higher, and go further than you could have ever imagined--giving Him all the glory.By building our lives around godly principles, surrounding ourselves with wisdom, and living for a cause greater than ourselves, we can effectively live out God's purposes and have an enduring impact. As Brian Houston has personally discovered, when we depend on Jesus as the source for our identity, our lives can be a lasting legacy that maximize the gifts He has given each of us as unique individuals.
20 Ways to Make Every Day Better
By Meyer, Joyce
#1 New York Times bestselling author Joyce Meyer shares powerful, practical ways to experience a new level of joy and excitement about life every day. The traffic is backed up, the kids are screaming, and the car is making a funny noise again. Any one of these challenges can test our temperament and rob us of joy. Our impulse is to write today off and hope for a better tomorrow. However, this creates a hard pattern to break. One terrible day easily turns into many-and soon we're living a life far from what God has in mind for us. A new, transforming sense of excitement, happiness, and contentment in our lives is possible when we pursue God's goodness each day. In 20 WAYS TO MAKE EVERY DAY BETTER, Joyce Meyer shares biblical illustrations, actionable advice, uplifting stories, and the encouragement we need to start enjoying the life God created for us.
Live the Let-Go Life
By Prince, Joseph
Letting your problems go into the hands of the One who created the universe is the most powerful thing you can do to live carefree and joyful. You are acknowledging that you cannot--but He can--and you are stepping aside so that His supply can flow into every area of your life. God wants you to live at peace. He wants to see you enjoying life. In LIVE THE LET-GO LIFE, Joseph Prince unveils God's plan for how you can experience the permanent, stable, and aggressive peace that passes all human understanding. You will find out how you can keep your heart from being troubled as you receive fresh revelations of how Jesus' finished work at Calvary enables you to live by the unforced rhythms of grace and truly embrace a "let-go" life--free from stress, worry, and anxiety!.
The Templars
By Jones, Dan
"Dan Jones is an entertainer, but also a bona fide historian. Seldom does one find serious scholarship so easy to read." - The Times, Book of the YearA New York Times bestseller, this major new history of the knights Templar is "a fresh, muscular and compelling history of the ultimate military-religious crusading order, combining sensible scholarship with narrative swagger" - Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Jerusalem A faltering war in the middle east. A band of elite warriors determined to fight to the death to protect Christianity's holiest sites. A global financial network unaccountable to any government. A sinister plot founded on a web of lies.Jerusalem 1119. A small group of knights seeking a purpose in the violent aftermath of the First Crusade decides to set up a new order. These are the first Knights Templar, a band of elite warriors prepared to give their lives to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Over the next two hundred years, the Templars would become the most powerful religious order of the medieval world. Their legend has inspired fervent speculation ever since. In this groundbreaking narrative history, Dan Jones tells the true story of the Templars for the first time in a generation, drawing on extensive original sources to build a gripping account of these Christian holy warriors whose heroism and alleged depravity have been shrouded in myth. The Templars were protected by the pope and sworn to strict vows of celibacy. They fought the forces of Islam in hand-to-hand combat on the sun-baked hills where Jesus lived and died, finding their nemesis in Saladin, who vowed to drive all Christians from the lands of Islam. Experts at channeling money across borders, they established the medieval world's largest and most innovative banking network and waged private wars against anyone who threatened their interests.Then, as they faced setbacks at the hands of the ruthless Mamluk sultan Baybars and were forced to retreat to their stronghold in Cyprus, a vindictive and cash-strapped King of France set his sights on their fortune. His administrators quietly mounted a damning case against the Templars, built on deliberate lies and false testimony. On Friday October 13, 1307, hundreds of brothers were arrested, imprisoned and tortured, and the order was disbanded amid lurid accusations of sexual misconduct and heresy. They were tried by the Pope in secret proceedings and their last master was brutally tortured and burned at the stake. But were they heretics or victims of a ruthlessly repressive state? Dan Jones goes back to the sources tobring their dramatic tale, so relevant to our own times, to life in a book that is at once authoritative and compulsively readable.
The C. S. Lewis Signature Classics
By Lewis, C S
The C. S. Lewis Signature Classics
Lies We Believe About God
By Young, Wm Paul
From the author of the twenty million plus copy bestselling novel The Shack and the New York Times bestsellers Cross Roads and Eve comes a compelling, conversational exploration of the wrong-headed ideas we sometimes have and share about God.Wm. Paul Young has been called a heretic for the ways he vividly portrays God's love through his novels. Here he shares twenty-eight commonly uttered and sometimes seemingly innocuous things we say about God. Paul exposes these as lies that keep us from having a full, loving relationship with our Creator. With personal anecdotes and sharing the compassion readers felt from the "Papa" portrayed in The Shack - now a major film starring Sam Worthington and Octavia Spencer - Paul encourages readers to think anew about important issues including sin, religion, hell, politics, identity, creation, human rights, and helping us discover God's deep and abiding love.
Unseen
By Hagerty, Sara
Every heart longs to be seen and understood. Yet most of our lives is unwitnessed. We spend our days working, driving, parenting. We sometimes spend whole seasons feeling unnoticed and unappreciated. So how do we find contentment when we feel so hidden? In Unseen, Sara Hagerty suggests that this is exactly what God intended. He is the only One who truly knows us. He is the only One who understands the value of the unseen in our lives. When this truth seeps into our souls, we realize that only when we hide ourselves in God can we give ourselves to others in true freedom - and know the joy of a deeper relationship with the God who sees us. Our culture applauds what we can produce, what we can show, what we can upload to social media. Only when we give all of ourselves to God - unedited, abandoned, apparently wasteful in its lack of productivity - can we live out who God created us to be.
He Chose the Nails
By Lucado, Max
Linger on the hill of Calvary. Rub a finger on the timber and press the nail into your hand. Taste the tinge of cheap wine and feel the scrape of a thorn on your brow. Touch the velvet dirt, moist with the blood of God. Allow the tools of torture to tell their story. Listen as they tell you what God did to win your heart.
The Last Hour
By Tsarfati, Amir
Avoiding sensationalism and date-speculating, respected Bible teacher Amir Tsarfati uses his unique perspective as an Israeli Christian to lead you through a fascinating modern-day description of God's plan for the end of the world.Grounded from start to finish in Scripture, the book reveals how the Rapture, the imminent rise of the Antichrist, and the tragic horrors of the Great Tribulation will play out in our world today. He also helps you understand the roles--and fates--of Russia, Iran, Syria, Turkey, the European Union, the United States of America, and Israel in the end times, showing just how biblical prophecies are being fulfilled in our time. But above all, he offers hope that in the midst of chaos and horror, God is ultimately in control, and those who belong to him will be safe with him.
How God Hauled Me Kicking and Screaming Into the Catholic Church
By Lowry, Kevin
A preacher's kid at a Catholic university, Kevin Lowry settled into a double major in beer and billiards soon followed by uncomfortable run-ins with pious students, failing grades, increasing anxiety, a missing night and the startling realization that some fellow students actually attended Mass the morning after a party instead of sleeping it off.After getting kicked out, Kevin got his act together, got the MBA, and also got the girl. Meanwhile God was working, drawing him to the inevitable conclusion that Catholicism was all true despite his objections.Kevin Lowry's journey to Catholicism is fascinating, often funny, and demonstrates God's unfailing, patient love for all of us.
Costly Grace
By Schenck, Robert
A leading American evangelical minister - whom public figures long turned to for guidance in faith and politics - recounts his three conversions, from childhood Jewish roots to Christianity, from a pure faith to a highly politicized one, and from the religious right to the simplicity of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.Rob Schenck's extraordinary life has been at the center of the intersection between evangelical Christianity and modern politics. Attacked by partisans on both sides of the aisle, he has been called a "right-wing hate monger," the "ultimate D.C. power-broker," a "traitor" and "turncoat." Now, this influential spiritual adviser to America's political class chronicles his controversial, sometimes troubling career in this revelatory and often shocking memoir.As a teenager in the 1970s, Schenck converted from Judaism to Christianity and found his calling in public ministry. In the 1980s, he, like his twin brother, became a radical activist leader of the anti-abortion movement. In the wake of his hero Ronald Reagan's rise to the White House, Schenck became a leading figure in the religious right inside the Beltway. Emboldened by his authority and access to the highest reaches of government, Schenck was a zealous warrior, brazenly mixing ministry with Republican political activism - even confronting President Bill Clinton during a midnight Christmas Eve service at Washington's National Cathedral.But in the past few years Schenck has undergone another conversion - his most meaningful transition yet. Increasingly troubled by the part he played in the corruption of religion by politics, this man of faith has returned to the purity of the gospel. Like Paul on the Road to Damascus, he had an epiphany: revisiting the lessons of love that Jesus imparted, Schenck realized he had strayed from his deepest convictions. Reaffirming his core spiritual beliefs, Schenck today works to liberate the evangelical community from the oppression of the narrowest interpretation of the gospel, and to urge Washington conservatives to move beyond partisan battles and forsake the politics of hate, fear, and violence. As a preacher, he continues to spread the word of the Lord with humility and a deep awareness of his past transgressions.In this moving and inspiring memoir, he reflects on his path to God, his unconscious abandonment of his principles, and his return to the convictions that guide him. Costly Grace is a fascinating and ultimately redemptive account of one man's life in politics and faith.