The New Covenant as a Paradigm for Optimal Relations regards the New Covenant primarily as a gracious and merciful redemptive deal, springing from God's unilateral, unconditional, and proactive initiative. The New Covenant is adopted as representing both a salvific and an exemplary paradigm that displays God's gracious and merciful ways toward his children. Ten discrete, yet interwoven principles are extracted from, interpreted, and abstracted from Scriptures pertaining to the promised New Covenant. These principles apply to those who, as dearly beloved children, are invited to imitate God's loving ways. God's manner of love defines the foundational basis from which the author derives and elaborates the propositions that guide the considerations pertaining to thoughts, feelings, motivations, and behaviors that enter into play in relational transactions. In terms of style, an architectural design permeates the content of this book, offering and encompassing a metacognitive view of God's covenantal ways: a top-down perspective that applies to bottom-up endeavors of relational nature. The challenges posed by our cultural, postmodern trends--devoid of absolute principles and lacking a moral compass--are countered and addressed by the author in insightful fashion, offering theologically-based guidelines integrated to sound psychological principles, applicable to psychotherapeutic and counseling endeavors as well as to pastoral care.

God is good, God does good, and oh, how He wants you to be happy. In her new book, The Sacrament of Happy: What a Smiling God Brings to a Wounded World, Lisa Harper unveils that happiness is a gift from God that we can unashamedly enjoy. Happiness tends to be cast as a fluffy emotion without substance rather than a biblical concept, but this is not theologically accurate. Wearing the twin hats of both seminarian and belly-laughing adoptive mom, Lisa Harper dismantles the old-school idea that joy, not happiness, is the truly spiritual emotion, and asserts that Christ-followers are actually called to happiness. We are called to happiness, and this happiness is not impacted by personal or global tumult. In fact, happiness is a sacrament. The general definition of sacrament is “a visible sign of inward grace.” In communities of faith, it most often refers to holy communion or the Eucharist. In the broadest understanding, however, a sacrament is a gift bestowed by God, and in that case, ‘happiness’ is absolutely a sacrament—a visible, sometimes even audible, sign of inward grace! Lisa shares heart-wrenching difficult stories from her past, as well as some side-splitting hilarity along the way. Throughout the book, we see that happiness and sadness can coexist and ebb and flow like the tides. Christine Caine, Founder of A21 & Propel Women, had this to say about Lisa’s new book: "The Sacrament of Happy—like all of Lisa’s messages and books—enriches my understanding of God and His Word—and His great love for us. As always, she unfolds biblical truth so clearly and calls me to action. Every. Single. Time.”

The term "conjugal rights" has long characterized ways of speaking about marriage both in the canonistic tradition and in the secular legal systems of the West. This book explores the origins and dimensions of this concept and the range of meanings that have attached to it from the twelfth century to the present. Employing far-ranging sources, Charles Reid Jr. examines the language of marriage in classical Roman law, the Germanic legal codes of early medieval Europe, and the writings of canon lawyers and theologians from the medieval and early modern periods. The heart of the book, however, consists of the writings of the canonists of the High Middle Ages, especially the works of Hostiensis, Bernard of Parma, Innocent IV, and Raymond de Peafort. Reid's incisive survey provides a new understanding of subjects such as the right of parties to marry free of parental coercion, the nature of "paternal power," the place of bodies in the marriage contract, the meaning and implications of gender equality, and the right of inheritance.

As a theologian in the Reformed tradition, covenant theology was for Jonathan Edwards the internal scaffolding that gave shape to the biblical story of redemption. The establishment of the eternal rule of righteousness as the basis of the believer's communion with God and eternal happiness is a central theme beginning with the Covenant of Works, grounded in the eternal Covenant of Redemption, and culminating in the Covenant of Grace. It is the basis for the law-gospel distinction in Edwards and the early architects of federal theology. For the "God intoxicated" New England Puritan preacher, this was no dry academic exercise. Rather, it was a joyous and affectionate discovery and embrace of what God had ordained in eternity, what Christ accomplished in history on the cross, and what the Holy Spirit is doing and will complete in the church. This study grew out of current discussions in Reformed scholarship questioning aspects of traditional covenant theology. As a key transitional figure in the history of Reformed theology, Edwards's thinking is still relevant. The richness and depth of Edwards's vision of redemptive history provides a clear and comprehensive understanding of his Reformed soteriology and the role of evangelical obedience in justification.

Relationship with God is always backed by covenant. When we understand the tenets of our covenant relationship with God, life would be more exciting. This is a book that explains all the benefits of the believer's covenant with God. Every believer should own this book.