Experience God's Powerful Grace for Yourself God's grace is all around us, but often we fall back into well-worn paths of discouragement, trying harder, or thinking that we've failed as Christians. The key to a fruitful Christian life lies in the life-changing, heart-changing power of God's grace. It's time to experience it at a deeper level-and bear more fruit than you thought possible! The Grace Course is an 8 session video-based course designed for small group or individual study. This Participant's Guide will accompany you on the journey. It is a powerful 8-week study from internationally respected ministry Freedom In Christ that will equip you to - deal with the false motivators of guilt, shame, fear, and pride - overcome striving and performing - remain secure in God's love - become an agent of reconciliation and healing in the world. You'll also go through The Steps to Experiencing God's Grace and learn how to use Stronghold-Busting, a powerful tool to renew your mind and bring genuine, lasting transformation. The Grace Course is part of The Grace & Freedom Project, a collaboration between Freedom In Christ Ministries, Bethany House, RightNow Media, and YouVersion. It features a range of top-quality resources to help you experience God's grace and freedom at such a deep level that you are forever changed and equipped to take the love and healing of Jesus to a broken world.

Churches have made many converts but far too few real disciples. Many Christians struggle to take hold of basic biblical truth and live it out. We often take a painfully long time to mature. This is not because we lack resources or teaching, but because we struggle to connect with truth This is where the Freedom in Christ course comes in. It is specifically designed to help Christians take hold of who they are in Christ, resolve personal and spiritual conflicts through genuine repentance, and move on to maturity.

Help Others Experience God's Powerful Grace God's grace is all around us, but often we fall back into well-worn paths of discouragement, trying harder, or thinking that we've failed as Christians. In this powerful, eight-week study from internationally respected ministry Freedom In Christ, you will encounter God's grace like never before. This leader's guide for The Grace Course will help you move believers past behavior modification and into heart transformation. Through biblical teaching, reflection and discussion times, video testimonies, and practical exercises, participants will discover how to · deal with the false motivators of guilt, shame, fear, and pride · overcome striving and performing · remain secure in God's love · become agents of reconciliation and healing in the world You can use the accompanying videos or present the content yourself using the scripts in this Leader's Guide. Each participant will need a Participant's Guide as well. The Grace Course is part of The Grace & Freedom Project, a collaboration between Freedom In Christ Ministries, Bethany House, RightNow Media, and YouVersion. It features a range of top-quality resources to help people experience God's grace and freedom at such a deep level that they are forever changed and equipped to take the love and healing of Jesus to a broken world. See what's available at GraceAndFreedomProject.com or scan the QR code.

Grace is a gift. Even before we recognize its need in our lives, God extends us favor. This 9-week study in the Companions in Christ series explores the Gospel of John and how divine grace is at work in our lives today, just as it was in the lives of biblical characters 2,000 years ago. "God's grace comes to us in the distinctive shape of our personal histories, needs, and possibilities," Indermark writes. "Yet divine grace also reveals the depths of what we share across all boundaries of time and place." Participants in this small-group study will explore the central stories of John, focusing on people who discovered God's grace through their encounters with Jesus. The Way of Grace is a transforming interaction with the events and the characters, a chance to identify with what God provided for these people a provision they could never achieve for themselves.

Aging with Grace by the Power of the Gospel Whatever season of life you're in, God has equipped you to flourish—to live in the transforming power and beauty of his grace. As we age, we can easily lose sight of this message as cultural ideals glorifying youth take center stage. In this book, Sharon W. Betters and Susan Hunt offer present-day and biblical examples of women who rediscovered gospel-rooted joy later in their lives. Equipped with a biblical view of aging, Aging with Grace will help you encounter afresh the gospel that "is big enough, good enough, and powerful enough to make every season of life significant and glorious."

Pete Greig, the acclaimed author of Red Moon Rising, has written his most intensely personal and honest account yet in God on Mute, a book born out of his wife Samie's fight for her life and diagnosis of a debilitating brain tumor. Greig asks the timeless questions of what it means to suffer and to pray and to suffer through the silence because your prayers seem unanswered. This silence, Greig relates, is the hardest thing. The world collapses. Then all goes quiet. Words can't explain, don't fit, won't work. People avoid you and don't know what to say. So you turn to Him and you pray. You need Him more than ever before. But somehow . . . even God Himself seems on mute. In this heart-searching, honest, and deeply profound book, Pete Greig looks at the hard side of prayer, how to respond when there seem to be no answers, and how to cope with those who seek to interpret our experience for us. Here is a story of faith, hope, and love beyond all understanding.

The Christian life is built on three seemingly unremarkable practices: reading the Bible, prayer, and fellowship with other believers. However, according to David Mathis, such “habits of grace” are the God-designed channels through which his glorious grace flows—making them life-giving practices for all Christians. Whether it’s hearing God’s voice (the Word), having his ear (prayer), or participating in his body (fellowship), such spiritual rhythms of the Christian life have the power to awaken our souls to God’s glory and stir our hearts for lifelong service in his name. What’s more, these seemingly simple practices grant us access to a host of spiritual blessings that we can only begin to imagine this side of eternity—and the incredible joy that such blessings bring to God’s children today.

Help Others Experience God's Powerful Grace God's grace is all around us, but often we fall back into well-worn paths of discouragement, trying harder, or thinking that we've failed as Christians. In this powerful, eight-week small group study from internationally respected ministry Freedom In Christ, you will encounter God's grace like never before. This Leader's Guide for The Grace Course will help you move believers past behaviour modification and into heart transformation. Through biblical teaching, reflection and discussion times, video testimonies, and practical exercises, participants will discover how to deal with the false motivators of guilt, shame, fear, anxiety, and pride overcome striving and performing remain secure in God's love become agents of reconciliation and healing in the world You can use the accompanying videos (available separately) or present the content yourself using the scripts in this Leader's Guide. Each participant will need a Participant's Guide as well. The Grace Course is part of The Grace & Freedom Project, a collaboration between Freedom In Christ Ministries, Bethany House, RightNow Media, and YouVersion. It features a range of top-quality resources to help people experience God's grace and freedom at such a deep level that they are forever changed and equipped to take the love and healing of Jesus to a broken world.

Grace. We talk asthough we understand the term. The bank gives us a grace period. The seedy politician falls from grace. Musicians speak of a gracenote. We describe an actress as gracious, a dancer as graceful. We use the wordfor hospitals, baby girls, kings, and premeal prayers. We talk as though weknow what grace means. But do wereally understand it? Have we settled for wimpy grace? It politely occupies aphrase in a hymn, fits nicely on a church sign. Never causes trouble or demandsa response. When asked, "Do you believe in grace?" who could say no? Max Lucadoasks a deeper question: Have you been changed by grace? Shaped by grace?Strengthened by grace? Emboldened by grace? Softened by grace? Snatched by thenape of your neck and shaken to your senses by grace? God's gracehas a drenching about it. A wildness about it. A white-water, riptide, turn-you-upside-downness about it. Grace comes after you. It rewires you. Frominsecure to God secure. From regret riddled to better-because-of-it. Fromafraid to die to ready to fly. Grace isthe voice that calls us to change and then gives us the power to pull it off. Let's makecertain grace gets you. Endorsements for GRACE: "God's grace--His unconditionally loving, unmerited favor--issometimes difficult for people to grasp, even though each one of us is indesperate need of it. But in Max Lucado's new book, GRACE, it is completely embraceable and understandable. ThroughLucado's characteristic narrative style and profound biblical understanding, welearn that God's grace is truly much more than we deserve and greater than weimagine. " --Dr. Charles F. Stanley "Max Lucado has blended his creative writing style withhonesty about how he has experienced God's grace, mercy and forgiveness in hisown times of failure and despair. Youwill find comfort as Max shines the light of the Word of God revealing thatJesus Christ is truly the only hope that brings everlasting peace." --Franklin Graham, President and CEO, Samaritan's Purse, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association "Reading Max Lucado on grace is like hearing Warren Buffetton money or Julia Child on food--it's a subject he spent a lifetime falling inlove with." --John Ortberg, pastor and author, Menlo Park PresbyterianChurch "Few writers are better than Max Lucado, no subject isbetter than God's grace." --Randy Alcorn, author of Heaven and If God is Good "Max gives us encouragement, hope and a needed reminderthat the grace we all possess as followers of Jesus should empower us to movemountains, vs simply settling for pushing wimpy molehills." --Brad Lomenick, President and Executive Director, Catalyst "Max offers up a biblical vision of God's grace that comesdrenched in sweat and with a set of six-pack abs; a life-defining newness andrelationship-refining kindness straight from the heart of God." --Tim Kimmel, author of GraceBased Parenting "Some writers aim for the mind, others for the heartand a small number for the soul. With his latest book, 'Grace, ' Max Lucado hitsthe trifecta, touching on all three." -- Cal Thomas, Syndicated and USA Today Columnist and Fox News Contributor "If you love the writings of Max Lucado, this will probablybecome your favorite." -- Stephen Arterburn, Founder and Chairman of New LifeMinistries, host of "New Life Live " and best selling author "I can think of no more needed message for weary peopleeverywhere, and no better writer than Max Lucado to paint so gloriously thehope that "Christ in you" affords." --Louie Giglio, creator of Passion Conferences and pastor, Passion City Church

Many Christians have a good understanding that salvation is by grace through faith, and that there is nothing they can do to earn their salvation. However, many have fallen into the trap that once saved, they must try to maintain God's acceptance by working hard and doing the right things. They focus so much on how well they are behaving as children of God that they miss experiencing life in the reality of God's grace. In the end they become stressed out, burned out, or fed up with trying to act like they think Christians should act but never quite managing it. Tragically they usually come to believe that they will never be "good enough." This course is designed to help Christians understand what it means to be God's child, to help them receive the assurance of what makes them acceptable to God, to point out the things that don't affect their acceptance, and to encourage them to deal with any hindrances that may be stopping them from walking in the fullness of God's grace every day. The intention is that they will then be free to glorify God in their behavior, not because they feel they have to but because they want to. A natural follow-up to the Alpha or Freedom in Christ Course (sold by Gospel Light in North America as the Beta course), The Grace Course has been developed by Freedom in Christ Ministries. The Leader's Guide provides all the material necessary to lead the course and includes a CD with PowerPoint presentations developed to make the lessons quick and easy for the leader. Participants are not required to prepare before the sessions but a Participant's Guide that emphasizes the take-away of each lesson is also available. The DVD is hosted by Steve Goss and Rich Miller and shows them teaching the entire course supplemented by interviews of the leaders. Materials to promote the Grace Course are available at www.ficm.org.