First Religion

From the best-selling author of the biography of Shunryu Suzuki (Crooked Cucumber), comes a memoir and oral history of Tassajara—a monastery founded in 1967 by Shunryu Suzuki, abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center. Peopled like a Sixties film of Buddhist invasion, with hippies, dreamers, lovers, a wave of serious practitioners. Nyogen Senzaki, D.T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, Ruth Fuller Sasaki, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and of course Shunryu Suzuki and Richard Baker are all here. This is the story of what happened at and surrounding the founding of the first Zen monastery in the West.

This book tells four important stories from the Bible, presented in a bedtime story format that is age-appropriate and easy for younger children to understand and read for themselves as they get older.

No other book of the Bible gives a clearer sequence and detail of the events surrounding the glorious return of Jesus Christ than the two letters Paul writes to a young church at Thessalonica (Greece) that fears it will be left behind when that great day comes.

A quarter of a century before Smith Wigglesworth, John G. Lake, and Maria Woodworth-Etter, Ethan Otis Allen pioneered an extraordinary move of God. Rising from abject poverty, this uneducated man became, in the words of A.B. Simpson, “The father of divine healing in America.” Who was this forgotten man, and what did he discover about the mysteries of the Kingdom of God?

Every person inherits a system of beliefs. Maybe yours came from community, or church, or society, or your parents. But one day you reach a breaking point. You look at the rituals and traditions and worship and theology and it all seems foggy. Foreign. Strange. You wonder why you believe what you believe. If you even believe anymore... Brothers Ryan and Josh Shook reached that breaking point. Their book, Firsthand, is a smart, honest and deeply felt journey that invites you to leave behind handed-down beliefs and find authentic faith.

First-Person Messiah uses our God-given imagination to supply some possibilities of the backstory, to help us understand the cultural issues of the day, and to relate the struggles of the time to our own. Moore helps us see and love the amazing rabbi from Nazareth in a fresh and transformative way.

Based on a careful study of Scripture and hundreds of interviews with Christian givers on every populated continent, Cameron Doolittle offers global listeners fresh insight about how to put generosity into practice. Joy Giving compiles the wisdom of the early church and best practices from around the modern world, revealing practical, biblical principles that help us all give more wisely…and with more joy.

British Narrator Simon Peterson reads The First Epistle to the Thessalonians in this wonderful audiobook collection of The New Testament. As a well-known Christian Broadcaster, Simon has the ideal voice for those of all ages who want to listen to The Bible in full, unabridged form. His emotive reading perfectly captures the beauty and power of God's Word and makes the King James English clear and easy to understand.

British Narrator Simon Peterson reads The First Book of Kings in this wonderful audiobook collection of The Old Testament. As a well-known Christian Broadcaster, Simon has the ideal voice for those of all ages who want to listen to The Bible in full, unabridged form. His emotive reading perfectly captures the beauty and power of God's Word and makes the King James English clear and easy to understand.

The Middle Ages in Europe were some of the most precarious centuries in recorded history, bristling with war, excitement, and chaos. The Western Roman Empire had crumbled, territories were rapidly expanding, and heavy ploughs, hourglasses, spectacles, tidal mills, and more pioneering inventions were popping up across the continent. It was also a time of extreme prejudice, when women were treated as second-class citizens. Their only purpose in life was to procreate by the dozen.

God...is the master of beginnings. Your circumstances may overwhelm you - but not God, who created everything from nothing. God lovingly offers relief, hope, and renewed energy for every beginning in your life. Join Steve Wiens on a paradigm-shifting walk through the seven days of creation, where he reveals how to apply the genesis of life to every one of your transitions. Discover your place in the creation process and how God longs to work in and through every change you encounter.

British Narrator Simon Peterson reads The First Epistle of Peter in this wonderful audiobook collection of The New Testament. As a well-known Christian Broadcaster, Simon has the ideal voice for those of all ages who want to listen to The Bible in full, unabridged form.

This book is the continuation of Part 2: Restoring the Seventh Color, which was written by me when my name was still Daniel Kole. This book documents how God took the man I was, Daniel Kole, and transformed me into the man I am becoming: Benjamin Kareth. Of all the gifts God has given me, he has chosen writing to be the defining gift.

When wounded people come to church, we often do one of two things, with the best of intentions: We minimize or discount their pain, or we try to "fix" them by being the therapist. Both just cause more damage. And the worst part is, we don't know we're causing damage. We want to help. We have the right heart. We've just never been trained how to receive wounded people effectively. By doing it wrong we make it clear we don't understand their pain, and they keep it secret for their own protection. Because we aren't safe. But what if there's another way?

This collection of prayers by noted Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann can be used in both public worship and private devotion. These prayers run the gamut from particular days in the church year to special moments in the lives of worshiping communities to events playing out on the world stage. In all cases, the prayers show us how God accompanies us through all the moments and stages of our life, bringing us the joys of life even amid a broken and hurting world and especially offering a joyous calling in Christ to serve that world.

The First 40 Days is Part 12 of The Book Of Benjamin Kareth. This part of The Book Of Benjamin Kareth covers a 40 day period of time between January 21, 2021 and March 1, 2021. This is a time of transition and a time of changes. It is a time of becoming something new and of stepping into the new.

The West has taken to meditation with great enthusiasm. We contemplate. We concentrate. We embrace mindfulness techniques and a multitude of mantras. We have undertaken to “do” meditation. The Aspects of Meditation series is comprised of brief, precious texts in which Osho shows us the core of meditation is not about sitting silently or chanting a mantra. It is, instead, a question of understanding the subtle workings of the mind. In book one, Osho reintroduces us to our body, focusing on the “root” of the human, the soul.

In his book, The Great Omission, missionary Jon Nelms “tells it like it is” by exposing the failures in missions and the reasons behind them as he leads the listener to logical, biblical, and proven solutions that, if followed, will allow this to be the first generation to fulfill the Lord’s Great Commission since it was assigned some 2,000 years ago.

Rather than contain vague references to the words and actions of "the LORD" and "God" within the text, The First Seventy offers both seasoned readers/listeners of the Bible and those new to the text a spiritual explanation that can be discussed, debated, and incorporated into each individual's moment-to-moment life. Weaving direct quotations from the Bible into a fluid narrative, The First Seventy: A Retelling Commentary, Creation - The Ten Commandments retells and explains the interconnected story that spans the first seventy chapters of the Bible.

If we didn't need a cross, there would have been no manger. The first words of a child hold great power. They begin to unveil personalities, passions, and - for Jesus - his purpose. With his first recorded words, Jesus's purpose became clear both for that moment and for the remainder of his beautiful, tragic, and triumphant life, stretching from the wooden cradle in Bethlehem to the wooden cross on Calvary.