In this world there is not one designer who designs things without a purpose. In the same way, God had an intention, a motive, and a purpose in the creation of man. According to this intention, motive, and purpose, God designed what He desired. This shows that there is real meaning behind our human life and a reason for our existence. Since human beings were created according to God's design, what they are and the reason for their existence lie in the God who created them...God's intention was that one day man might receive Him...From our experience we can truly testify that a blessed human life is a human life with Christ. When we have Christ, we are blessed; when we have Christ, we are joyful.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved) asks, how do you move forward with a life you didn’t choose? “Kate Bowler is the only one we can trust to tell us the truth.”—Glennon Doyle, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Untamed It’s hard to give up on the feeling that the life you really want is just out of reach. A beach body by summer. A trip to Disneyland around the corner. A promotion on the horizon. Everyone wants to believe that they are headed toward good, better, best. But what happens when the life you hoped for is put on hold indefinitely? Kate Bowler believed that life was a series of unlimited choices, until she discovered, at age thirty-five, that her body was wracked with cancer. In No Cure for Being Human, she searches for a way forward as she mines the wisdom (and absurdity) of today’s “best life now” advice industry, which insists on exhausting positivity and on trying to convince us that we can out-eat, out-learn, and out-perform our humanness. We are, she finds, as fragile as the day we were born. With dry wit and unflinching honesty, Kate Bowler grapples with her diagnosis, her ambition, and her faith as she tries to come to terms with her limitations in a culture that says anything is possible. She finds that we need one another if we’re going to tell the truth: Life is beautiful and terrible, full of hope and despair and everything in between—and there’s no cure for being human.

Gospels -- Faith -- Wealth -- Health -- Victory -- American blessing -- Megachurch table -- Naming names.

When Nouwen was asked by a secular Jewish friend to explain his faith in simple language, he responded with "Life of the Beloved, " which shows that all people, believers and nonbelievers, are beloved by God unconditionally.

The Sermon on the Mount, one of the most influential portions of the Bible, is the most studied and commented upon portion of the Christian Scriptures. Every Christian generation turns to it for insight and guidance. In this volume, a recognized expert on the Gospels shows that the Sermon on the Mount offers a clear window into understanding God's work in Christ. Jonathan Pennington provides a historical, theological, and literary commentary on the Sermon and explains how this text offers insight into God's plan for human flourishing. As Pennington explores the literary dimensions and theological themes of this famous passage, he situates the Sermon in dialogue with the Jewish and Greek virtue traditions and the philosophical-theological question of human flourishing. He also relates the Sermon's theological themes to contemporary issues such as ethics, philosophy, and economics.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A meditation on sense-making when there’s no sense to be made, on letting go when we can’t hold on, and on being unafraid even when we’re terrified.”—Lucy Kalanithi “Belongs on the shelf alongside other terrific books about this difficult subject, like Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air and Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal.”—Bill Gates NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of the prosperity gospel, a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God’s disapproval. At thirty-five, everything in her life seems to point toward “blessing.” She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loves life with her newborn son. Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. The prospect of her own mortality forces Kate to realize that she has been tacitly subscribing to the prosperity gospel, living with the conviction that she can control the shape of her life with “a surge of determination.” Even as this type of Christianity celebrates the American can-do spirit, it implies that if you “can’t do” and succumb to illness or misfortune, you are a failure. Kate is very sick, and no amount of positive thinking will shrink her tumors. What does it mean to die, she wonders, in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate is stripped of this certainty only to discover that without it, life is hard but beautiful in a way it never has been before. Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate Bowler pulls the reader deeply into her life in an account she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilarious retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, relatives, and doctors. Everything Happens for a Reason tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live. Praise for Everything Happens for a Reason “I fell hard and fast for Kate Bowler. Her writing is naked, elegant, and gripping—she’s like a Christian Joan Didion. I left Kate’s story feeling more present, more grateful, and a hell of a lot less alone. And what else is art for?”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love Warrior and president of Together Rising

Watchman Nee's writings have become well known for their deep spiritual insight among Christians in many nations for many years. Through these volumes a full understanding of his balanced and proper view concerning the Bible and the spiritual life can be accurately appreciated. This new compilation and retranslation of Watchman Nee's writings present the reader a fresh and unedited version of his ministry and promises to shed new light on the reader's understanding of Watchman Nee's ministry.

Given the prominence of prayer in traditional Jewish life, it is surprising to note how few prayers the Torah actually ordains be recited by the pious as part of their ongoing effort to foster a relationship with the Divine. Indeed, some of the most famous of all Jewish prayers that do have their origin in Scripture are not presented as liturgical texts in that context at all. (The Shema, for example, the confession of faith par excellence which rabbinic tradition ordains be recited twice daily, appears in the Bible as part of a larger literary unit with no indication that it is intended to be featured prominently in the prayer lives of the faithful.) Other prayer texts are presented in situ as features of an ongoing narrative—for example, the prayer of Damesek Eliezer that he find a wife for his master’s son (Genesis 24:12–14) or Moses’ prayer that Miriam be healed of her skin disease (Numbers 12:13)—have not come to be a part of the fixed Jewish liturgical tradition. And still others, like the prayer ordained for recitation by farmers presenting their first fruits at the sanctuary (Deuteronomy 26:3–10), are presented as liturgical texts to be recited on a specific occasion, but with no hint that they may licitly be recited in circumstances other than the ones specifically ordained by Scripture.