Winner! 2012 Christian Small Publisher's Book of the Year in young adult (12-18) category. Add this book to your arsenal in the battle to remain pure! The most difficult task in the life of a Christian single today is maintaining purity until marriage. The payoff is perfect love and sex, just as our Creator intended. But if that’s so awesome, why aren’t more people choosing it? And how can premarital sex be so bad if so many people are doing it and loving it? People who were virgins when they married aren’t usually the type to kiss and tell. And when premarital sex goes wrong, no one wants to Tweet it. This awkward silence from both contingents isn’t helping the next generation to decide well on the issue of premarital sex. Purity’s Big Payoff/Premarital Sex is a Big Rip-off is a collection of 17 first-person narratives about successfully waiting for marriage to have sex – or not. Contributors on both sides of the issue candidly share in face-reddening detail what they learned on their way to the wedding bed. Young people aiming to remain pure will be encouraged and learn practical strategies for resisting sexual temptation. Those who wish they had waited will learn that it’s never too late to restore purity with God’s grace. (This book is two-faced. One side is dedicated to purity, then turned over and flipped upside down, the other side is dedicated to premarital sex. Thus the last page of the purity book is immediately followed by the last page of the premarital sex book, but upside down, and vice versa. Got it?)

Can purity survive real-world temptation? "True love waits"--but what exactly are you waiting for? After all, we're constantly bombarded with Hollywood's idea of romance--that sex is no big deal, that everyone is doing it, that it's the only path to a happy ending. Maybe you've even begun to wonder, What am I missing? Is the wait really worth it? Marian Jordan Ellis has been there. She knows the pitfalls of giving in to temptation--but also the blessings of God's best found in waiting after she committed herself to Christ and to sexual purity. Now, from one Christian woman to another, she hopes to spare you from the heartache of sexual sin and instead point you toward God's best. Marian offers lots of practical advice, backed by biblical truth, to equip you with the tools to overcome past mistakes and future temptations. You are cherished. Whether you are happily single, casually dating, or have found "the one," your purity is worth fighting for.

The purpose of the Eliminating the Achievement Gapis to provide a resource for scholars and students into many of the most salient issues, trends, and factors that are most effective in reducing the achievement gap. Eliminating the Achievement Gap is particularly unique because it will: 1) utilize a meta-analysis to determine what factors contribute the most to reducing the achievement gap and 2) examine potential achievement gap reducing variables from across disciplines. These disciplines include education, sociology, economics, family science, psychology, public policy, and educational psychology. The second emphasis is largely based on the meta-analysis, because the results of the meta-analysis indicate that the best way to completely eliminate the achievement gap is to initiate a multidisciplinary approach to the achievement gap. It is the intention of this book to make scholars, educators, policymakers, parents, and the general public more aware of the factors that best bridge the achievement gap, so that they can take major steps to implementing comprehensive and multidisciplinary efforts. The more such efforts are inaugurated, the more the achievement gap will be reduced. The nine chapters of this book are therefore divided into four parts to reflect this extent of this comprehensive approach.

Where are you at this moment? If your first reaction was to say, "I am in a book store," or "I am in my recliner," I would likely say the same thing. But what I am asking is where you are in your faith walk with God. Do you feel far from Him? Maybe you walk closely with Him and hear His voice in your life. Are you in a listening mode or are you tuned into the "noise" in your life, cluttered with things to do, places to go, and people to see? Maybe you picked up this book because you were curious how God could possibly whisper. Or maybe you needed to make a major decision and you thought this book might help. Or maybe you picked it up because when you saw "fudge" in the subtitle, you thought it might be a recipe book. It is a recipe book, in its own way, and for fun, you will find fudge recipes in the appendix. But I wrote this book to share some experiences of mine, and those of its contributors, about how we learned from our fudges and responded to God's nudges. God wants to free us from our self-made cocoons, or chrysalises, and watch us fly free like a butterfly. Liz Thompson lives in Grove City, Ohio, with her husband, Bob, and wire-haired dachshund, Toby Bear, who is her Certified Hearing Dog. In 2008, Liz's first book, Day by Day: The Chronicles of a Hard of Hearing Reporter was published by Gallaudet University Press. She has a column in ThisWeek Newspapers (formerly Suburban News Publications - SNP) in Columbus, Ohio, where she was also a reporter (SNP) from 2000-2003. From 2003-2005, she and her husband lived in Arizona where she was a Community Columnist for The Arizona Republic. Liz has been a writer for Hearing Health Magazine and www.moveoverms.org. She wants to share her faith in God in her writing and pass on the love of writing to the next generation. keywords: Religion, Christian, Christianity, Inspirational, Recipes, Witness, Poetry, Faith, Healing, Motivational

Edited by David Platt, Daniel L. Akin, and Tony Merida, this new commentary series, projected to be 48 volumes, takes a Christ-centered approach to expositing each book of the Bible. Rather than a verse-by-verse approach, the authors have crafted chapters that explain and apply key passages in their assigned Bible books. Readers will learn to see Christ in all aspects of Scripture, and they will be encouraged by the devotional nature of each exposition. Exalting Jesus in Exodus is written by Tony Merida.

The generation born into evangelical purity culture has grown up, but many still struggle with its complicated legacy. Examining purity culture's teachings through the lens of Scripture, Rachel Joy Welcher charts a path forward in the ongoing debates about sexuality—one that rejects legalism and license alike, steering us back instead to the good news of Jesus.

You can’t afford to live casually, haphazardly. No matter your age, you were born into a plethora of expectations of what it means to be a woman. How easily we assume impoverished views of womanhood as we hoist beauty and desirability above the more enduring traits of self-possession and dignity. We tend to live as divided and distracted selves, allowing our bodies and minds to drift to opposite poles while swapping our pursuit of God for tamer, lesser loves. This collection of essays is more than a call to modesty or chastity. It is a thoughtful provocation to speak well, read often, make choices that reflect the character of God, and even to establish a theology of play or leisure. Being intentional with your choices, cultivating your intellect, and taking seriously your voice determines not only what kind of person you are, but also what kind of woman you will be. “[Unseduced and Unshaken] raises the bar for young Christian women...It’s a call for all Christian women to examine their personal faith presuppositions, deliberately choose a life of Biblical ‘dignity,’ and to not be frightened to allow ‘theology to inform our choices.’” Just Between Us, Summer 2013 issue

Updated for a new generation, a resource for overcoming sexual temptation shares the stories of men who have escaped sexual immorality and offers a practical plan for achieving sexual integrity.

In this New York Times bestseller, Hollywood power couple DeVon Franklin and Meagan Good candidly share their courtship and marriage, and the key to their success—waiting. President/CEO of Franklin Entertainment and former Sony Pictures executive DeVon Franklin and award-winning actress Meagan Good have learned firsthand that some people must wait patiently for “the one” to come into their lives. They spent years crossing paths but it wasn’t until they were thrown together while working on the film Jumping the Broom that their storybook romance began. Faced with starting a new relationship and wanting to avoid potentially devastating pitfalls, DeVon and Meagan chose to do something almost unheard of in today’s society—abstain from sex until they were married. DeVon and Meagan share the life-changing message that waiting—rather than rushing a relationship—can help you find the person you’re meant to be with. The Wait is filled with candid his-and-hers accounts of the most important moments of their relationship and practical advice on how waiting for everything—from dating to sex—can transform relationships, allowing you to find a deep connection based on patience, trust, and faith.

“An explosive, fascinating book that reveals how the Bible cannot be used as a rulebook when it comes to sex. A terrific read by a top scholar.” —Bart Ehrman, author of Misquoting Jesus Boston University’s cutting-edge religion scholar Jennifer Wright Knust reveals the Bible’s contradictory messages about sex in this thoughtful, riveting, and timely reexploration of the letter of the gospels. In the tradition of Bart Erhman’s Jesus Interrupted and John Shelby Spong’s Sins of Scripture, Knust’s Unprotected Texts liberates us from the pervasive moralizing—the fickle dos and don’ts—so often dictated by religious demagogues. Knust’s powerful reading offers a return to the scripture, away from the mere slogans to which it is so often reduced.