Messy Grace

Author: Caleb Kaltenbach
Publisher: WaterBrook
ISBN: 1601427379
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
Sometimes, grace gets messy. Caleb Kaltenbach was raised by LGBT parents, marched in gay pride parades as a youngster, and experienced firsthand the hatred and bitterness of some Christians toward his family. But then Caleb surprised everyone, including himself, by becoming a Christian…and a pastor. Very few issues in Christianity are as divisive as the acceptance of the LGBT community in the church. As a pastor and as a person with beloved family members living a gay lifestyle, Caleb had to face this issue with courage and grace. Messy Grace shows us that Jesus’s command to “love your neighbor as yourself” doesn’t have an exception clause for a gay “neighbor”—or for that matter, any other “neighbor” we might find it hard to relate to. Jesus was able to love these people and yet still hold on to his beliefs. So can you. Even when it’s messy. “Messy Grace is an important contribution to the conversation about sexual identity for churches and leaders. Caleb's story is surprising and unique, and he weaves it together compellingly. He states his views clearly, leaves room for disagreement, and champions love no matter where you are in this conversation.” —Jud Wilhite, Sr. Pastor, Central Christian Church

Messy Truth

Author: Caleb Kaltenbach
Publisher: WaterBrook
ISBN: 0525654275
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
From the author of Messy Grace, a former pastor raised by gay parents, comes a compassionate playbook to help Christians, church staff, and ministry leaders create a culture of belonging without sacrificing theological convictions. What should we do? This is a question many Christians are asking as they face shifting societal norms, conflicting opinions, and often inaccurate scriptural interpretations regarding those who identify as LGBTQ+. Caleb Kaltenbach believes there’s a more helpful question:What am I willing to do to keep and build influence with ______________? Caleb knows our love for others is best measured by the lengths we’ll go to help them. He also recognizes that people find and follow Jesus better in community than in isolation. As a child raised by three activist gay parents, Caleb experienced firsthand the outrage of some Christians. That’s why he is committed to creating a sense of belonging for all people. True community can happen only when Christians are intentional in infusing their attitudes, systems, and values with grace and truth. This hopeful, practical book offers tools for encouraging church involvement, strengthening personal relationships, increasing empathy, and engaging in pivotal conversations about grace and truth with our whole community. Fostering a culture of belonging is a messy process, but it holds a massive possibility for everyone involved: a growing relationship with Jesus.

Everyday Sacrament

Author: Laura Kelly Fanucci
Publisher: Liturgical Press
ISBN: 0814637930
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Book Description
In Everyday Sacrament: The Messy Grace of Parenting Laura Kelly Fanucci sees the Catholic sacraments through the smudged and sticky lens of life with little ones. From dinnertime chaos to bath-time giggles to never-ending loads of laundry, Laura stumbles into the surprising truth of what the seven sacraments really mean: that God is present always, even in the messes of motherhood. A spiritual memoir of parenting’s early years and a sacramental theology rooted in family life, Everyday Sacrament offers an honest, humorous, and hopeful look at ordinary moments as full of grace.

Detoured

Author: Jen Babakhan
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers
ISBN: 0736976736
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Book Description
Does having it all even exist? Former marketing executive turned third-grade teacher, Jen Babakhan never expected her transition to stay-at-home mom would bring feelings of grief and loss. She felt God was calling her to be home with her newborn son, and she wanted to be with him—yet she felt conflicted about giving up her career. Detoured chronicles the often-bumpy path Jen took to contentment and peace in her new role at home. She honestly shares the struggles and joys of being home, and the truth she uncovered about “having it all.” She invites you to walk beside her on this journey and find: a new confidence and peace in your decision to place your career on hold an invitation to discover your true identity that has nothing to do with your job title a sense of community and the knowledge that you are not alone in your motherhood journey Stay-at-home motherhood isn’t easy—but it can be the most beautiful detour you ever take.

Messy Faith

Author: A. J. Gregory
Publisher: Revell
ISBN: 1441201947
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
While most of us trudge toward the cross with the best intentions, at times our lives just don't pan out the way we've planned. Messy Faith addresses the muddled adventure that we call "working out our salvation." It is being sure and unsure, whole and broken, warring, losing, and winning. It is being right and being wrong and having no clue, but believing anyway. And it is trusting in God to perfect the final product of our flawed, human lives. Author A. J. Gregory explores her own personal experiences, and those of a handful of flawed biblical heroes and others who have endured painful or simply ordinary realities in the journey to belief. This honest book will comfort anyone who has had a less-than-straight path to belief and those who continue to struggle.

This Messy Magnificent Life

Author: Geneen Roth
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 150118248X
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
Geneen Roth, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Women Food and God, explains how to take the journey to find one’s own best self in this “beautiful, funny, deeply relevant” (Glennon Doyle) collection of personal reflections. With an introduction by Anne Lamott, This Messy Magnificent Life is a personal and exhilarating read on freeing ourselves from daily anxiety, lack, and discontent. It’s a deep dive into what lies behind our self-criticism, whether it is about the size of our thighs, the expression of our thoughts, or the shape of our ambitions. And it’s about stopping the search to fix ourselves by realizing that on the other side of the “Me Project” is spaciousness, peace, and the capacity to reclaim one’s power and joy. This Messy Magnificent Life explores the personal beliefs, hidden traumas, and social pressures that shape not just women’s feelings about their bodies but also their confidence, choices, and relationships. After years of teaching retreats and workshops on weight, money, and other obsessions, Roth realized that there was a connection that held her students captive in their unhappiness. With laugh-out-loud humor, compassion, and dead-on insight she reveals the paradoxes in our beliefs and shows how to move beyond our past to build lives that reflect our singularity and inherent power. This Messy Magnificent Life is a brilliant, bravura meditation on who we take ourselves to be, what enough means in our gotta-get-more culture, and being at home in our minds and bodies.

Of Mess and Moxie

Author: Jen Hatmaker
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
ISBN: 0718031865
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
Life is messy for each of us. But Jen Hatmaker reminds us that it's okay to admit that we're all in the same boat. Join New York Times bestselling author and honorary big sister Jen as she shares hilarious tales, shameless honesty, and unconditional hope for the woman who's forgotten her moxie. We will endure discouragement, heartbreak, failure, and suffering. All of us. And more than once. But we are the very same folks who can experience triumph, perseverance, joy, and rebirth. More than once. And in more than one category. And in more than one season. And that? That's moxie. Moxie reaches for laughter, for courage, for the deep and important truth that women are capable of weathering the storm. We are not victims, we are not weak, we are not a sad, defeated group of sob sisters. Yes, life is hard, but we are incredibly resilient. Of Mess and Moxie shines a light on Jen's own triumphs and tragedies into a sigh of relief for all normal, fierce women everywhere. Whether it's the time she drove to the wrong city for a fourth-grade field trip or the way she learned to truly forgive, she offers a reminder to those of us who sometimes hide in the car eating crackers that we do actually have the moxie to get back up and face our messes head-on. After all, this race is not a contest--there's enough abundance to go around. This book will give you the encouragement you need to remember that: Your mess is normal You are not in competition with your peers--your seat at the table is secure You have incredible gifts to offer Come alongside Jen as she teaches us that we can all choose to live undaunted and in the moment, no matter what the moments hold, and we really can lead vibrant, courageous, grace-filled lives.

Messy Beautiful Love

Author: Darlene Schacht
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
ISBN: 1400206219
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Book Description
Messy Beautiful Love delivers an incredible testimony of grace that offers hope for today’s marriages and a spark for rekindling love. Love gets messy. Financial problems, sickness, aging parents, a chronically unhappy spouse . . . trials will inevitably come that threaten your marriage. No matter how long you’ve been married or how strong your relationship is, sooner or later you are going to have a mess to clean up. Messy Beautiful Love is about cleaning up messes God’s way, exchanging your ideas for His, and being prepared for both the best and the worst that marriage has to offer. When you surrender your relationship to God, then and only then will you experience the blessing of marriage as He intended. This is the blessing of obedience. Messy Beautiful Love is an invitation to that obedience. The cynical world says marriages don’t last, but God knows better. Tune out the world and tune in to Him. When you do that, a beautiful marriage is not only possible, it’s inevitable.

Models of the Mind

Author: Grace Lindsay
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472966457
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
The human brain is made up of 85 billion neurons, which are connected by over 100 trillion synapses. For more than a century, a diverse array of researchers searched for a language that could be used to capture the essence of what these neurons do and how they communicate – and how those communications create thoughts, perceptions and actions. The language they were looking for was mathematics, and we would not be able to understand the brain as we do today without it. In Models of the Mind, author and computational neuroscientist Grace Lindsay explains how mathematical models have allowed scientists to understand and describe many of the brain's processes, including decision-making, sensory processing, quantifying memory, and more. She introduces readers to the most important concepts in modern neuroscience, and highlights the tensions that arise when the abstract world of mathematical modelling collides with the messy details of biology. Each chapter of Models of the Mind focuses on mathematical tools that have been applied in a particular area of neuroscience, progressing from the simplest building block of the brain – the individual neuron – through to circuits of interacting neurons, whole brain areas and even the behaviours that brains command. In addition, Grace examines the history of the field, starting with experiments done on frog legs in the late eighteenth century and building to the large models of artificial neural networks that form the basis of modern artificial intelligence. Throughout, she reveals the value of using the elegant language of mathematics to describe the machinery of neuroscience.

Messy Church

Author: Ross Parsley
Publisher: David C Cook
ISBN: 1434705064
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 179

Book Description
When you look at the church today, what do you see? A corporation with a CEO at the helm? A social organization that does good things for the community? Pastor Ross Parsley believes that neither of those pictures is God’s desire. Instead, God wants His church to function as a family—a group of real people who love each other and care for one another’s needs, no matter how messy. Our culture is dying for the kind of community that only the church can provide—if we are living as God intended: as a family, protecting one another, extending grace, and loving unconditionally. We are not called to be consumers who ask what the church can offer us. We are called to love deeply, fight fairly, and bring hope to a generation of people starving to belong to something greater than themselves. Welcome to the family. You belong here.