Imagine sitting in the cockpit of a jet fighter descending to the rolling, moving flight deck of a super carrier at sea. You have 600 feet of flight deck to thread the eye of the needle and land safely. Ten thousand times ten thousand this dangerous drama has been repeated in the history of American carrier aviation. It is simply extraordinary. This drama at sea if viewed through the proper lens can have great spiritual significance for your life. Imagine that the flight deck represents your safe haven in life, the place you return to again and again for meaning and stability. The flight deck is also the catapult for every new mission in life but here's the hook; God script for your life written by His own hand is better than any script you could write for yourself. Without God's script engaging your life, the bolters and wave-offs in your life's vocation will be frequent and the safe traps upon His flight deck few. For me to say to you, "Choose God's script," is far too simple and simplistic. Discovering God's script for your life is much more complex and often counterintuitive against the powers of human reasoning. Nevertheless, it is only His script for your life that will lead you through the eye of the needle to reach the blessed end of God's script for your dreams. Life, your life, is a great drama. Take the chance and live without God's script and you will bolter again and again with the imminent danger of ditching your plane into the angry sea. God alone threads the needle reframing your life until He brings you safely aboard His celestial flight deck turning every ordinary life into something truly extraordinary. I have written this little book from my heart to yours via real life vignettes spread across the spectrum of my own ordinary life demonstrating that the grace of God is alive, active and at work. If God above can touch my ordinary life with His extraordinary grace as I wander about in the midst of eight billion souls strolling across planet earth and keep me on the narrow path of His vocation chosen for me, will He not do the same for you? Most certainly true. You're approaching the flight deck. Flaps down. Tailhook down. Call the Ball! Trapped! You have safely landed on the celestial flight deck of God's grace ready for a new extraordinary mission in your ordinary life. Discover God's script for you. To God be all the glory.

A deeply personal introduction to the biblical theology and spirituality of Opus Dei by the bestselling Catholic author Scott Hahn. To conspiracy theorists, Opus Dei is a highly secretive and powerful international organization. To its members, however, Opus Dei is a spiritual path, a way of incorporating the teachings of Jesus into everyday life. In Ordinary Work, Extraordinary Grace, Scott Hahn, a member of Opus Dei, describes the organization’s founding, its mission, and its profound influence on his life. Hahn recounts the invaluable part Opus Dei played in his conversion from Evangelical Christianity to Catholicism and explains why its teachings remain at the center of his life. Through stories about his job, his marriage, his role as a parent, and his community activities, Hahn shows how Opus Dei’s spirituality enriches the meaning of daily tasks and transforms ordinary relationships. He offers inspiring insights for reconciling spiritual and material goals, discussing topics ranging from ambition, workaholism, friendship, and sex, to the place of prayer and sacrifice in Christianity today. Engaging and enlightening, Ordinary Work, Extraordinary Grace is at once a moving personal story and an inspiring work of contemporary spirituality.

God’s extraordinary grace is hard to grasp—but made easier to understand through stories of God’s people. Gary Chapman and Chris Fabry search the Scriptures for examples of God’s grace in the lives of those named in Jesus’ lineage, but what they find are people with faults, foibles, and sins, just like the rest of us. So obviously, grace is not about doing everything exactly right. It is a gift . . . an astonishing gift given by God. In Extraordinary Grace, you will hear the call of grace; laugh because of grace; apply grace; be overtaken by grace; and know the extraordinary grace that comes from loving Jesus. Chapter studies, for individuals or groups, will help you to find examples of extraordinary grace reflected in the lineage of Jesus.

Radical. Crazy. Transformative and restless. Every word we read these days seems to suggest there’s a “next-best-thing,” if only we would change our comfortable, compromising lives. In fact, the greatest fear most Christians have is boredom—the sense that they are missing out on the radical life Jesus promised. One thing is certain. No one wants to be “ordinary.” Yet pastor and author Michael Horton believes that our attempts to measure our spiritual growth by our experiences, constantly seeking after the next big breakthrough, have left many Christians disillusioned and disappointed. There’s nothing wrong with an energetic faith; the danger is that we can burn ourselves out on restless anxieties and unrealistic expectations. What’s needed is not another program or a fresh approach to spiritual growth; it’s a renewed appreciation for the commonplace. Far from a call to low expectations and passivity, Horton invites readers to recover their sense of joy in the ordinary. He provides a guide to a sustainable discipleship that happens over the long haul—not a quick fix that leaves readers empty with unfulfilled promises. Convicting and ultimately empowering, Ordinary is not a call to do less; it’s an invitation to experience the elusive joy of the ordinary Christian life.

Live confidently. Believe expectantly. Embrace your victory! In this new and empowering devotional from New York Times bestselling author Victoria Osteen, you will be inspired to live boldly and courageously each day. Victoria provides you with refreshing insights that will give you the strength and power to press on and live your life to the fullest. She will show you how minor adjustments in your everyday life bring about major victories. When you discover how these changes in your attitude and actions elevate your life, you will live Fearless and Free.

Looking back at a tragic event that occurred during his thirteenth year, Frank Drum explores how a complicated web of secrets, adultery, and betrayal shattered his Methodist family and their small 1961 Minnesota community.

Framed around one ordinary day, this book explores daily life through the lens of liturgy, small practices, and habits that form us. Each chapter looks at something author Tish Harrison Warren does in a day—making the bed, brushing her teeth, losing her keys—and relates it to spiritual practice as well as to our Sunday worship.

Grace in Practice is a challenging call to live life under grace -- a concept most Christians secretly have trouble with. Paul Zahl pulls no punches, contending that no matter how often we talk about salvation by grace, in our "can-do" society we often cling instead to a righteousness of works. Asserting throughout that grace always trumps both law and church, Zahl illuminates an expansive view of grace in everything, extending the good news of grace to all creation. Conversationally written and filled with fascinating insights, Grace in Practice will reward any Christian who seeks to understand the full measure of God's grace and the total freedom it offers.

In her delightful and moving memoir, Sissy Spacek writes about her idyllic, barefoot childhood in a small East Texas town, with the clarity and wisdom that comes from never losing sight of her roots. Descended from industrious Czech immigrants and threadbare southern gentility, she grew up a tomboy, tagging along with two older brothers and absorbing grace and grit from her remarkable parents, who taught her that she could do anything. She also learned fearlessness in the wake of a family tragedy, the grief propelling her "like rocket fuel" to follow her dreams of becoming a performer. With a keen sense of humor and a big-hearted voice, she describes how she arrived in New York City one star-struck summer as a seventeen-year-old carrying a suitcase and two guitars; and how she built a career that has spanned four decades with films such as Carrie, Coal Miner's Daughter, 3 Women, and The Help. She details working with some of the great directors of our time, including Terrence Malick, Robert Altman, David Lynch, and Brian De Palma-who thought of her as a no-talent set decorator until he cast her as the lead in Carrie. She also reveals why, at the height of her fame, she and her family moved away from Los Angeles to a farm in rural Virginia. Whether she's describing the terrors and joys of raising two talented, independent daughters, taking readers behind the scenes on Oscar night, or meditating on the thrill of watching a pair of otters frolicking in her pond, Sissy Spacek's memoir is poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, plainspoken and utterly honest. My Extraordinary Ordinary Life is about what matters most: the exquisite worth of ordinary things, the simple pleasures of home and family, and the honest job of being right with the world. "If I get hit by a truck tomorrow," she writes, "I want to know I've returned my neighbor's cake pan."