RENOVARE (SPITITUAL FORMATION)

Connecting with God: A Spiritual Formation Guide
How can we experience god?God has communicated with his people throughout the ages in many ways. Adam and Eve encountered him directly in the Garden of Eden, Teresa of Avila experienced him through visions, and Francis of Assisi heard his voice through nature. Connecting with God gives practical advice for communing on a deeply personal level with God. It uncovers new places to look for God, while providing reflection questions and activities to reinvigorate communication with God in such traditional areas as prayer and Bible study.Divided into twelve chapters conveniently organized for individual or group study, each section explores a different area in which we can deepen our individual communion with God, including: Living with God • Talking with God • Meeting God in Scripture • Listening to God Through the Creation • Hearing God Through Other People • Perceiving God in Circumstances • Seeking God in Silence • Seeing God in Dreams and Visions • Sensing God's Presence • Encountering God's Messengers • Wrestling with God • Walking with God.
Published by, HarperSanFrancisco, softcover, 144 pages.
       The Renovaré Spiritual Formation Guides, created by Richard J. Foster and the team that developed The Renovaré Spiritual Formation Bible and the longstanding A Spiritual Formation Workbook, provide tangible lessons that help us become spiritually formed, conformed, and transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. Geared for either individual study or use in small groups with chapter structure similar to A Spiritual Formation Workbook, each Renovaré Spiritual Formation Guide explores one facet of our life with God, providing readings from Scripture as well as classic and contemporary works of spirituality.
       The combination of readings, reflection questions, exercises, and activities makes these books invaluable interactive guides that prompt true spiritual growth. And they are a tremendous resource for connecting Scripture study with larger spiritual formation ideas and themes.


Learning from Jesus: A Spiritual Formation Guide
How do we become a student of the Master?To Christians, Jesus is many things: the Son of God, the pivotal figure in whom we put our trust and who speaks on our behalf, a companion in the life of faith. But Jesus is also an incredible example of how to lead a faithful life. Jesus, as a human, walked on earth and confronted the same struggles that we face.
      Our primary mission as his followers is to learn from him--to become his apprentices. In this book we seek to further our apprenticeship by studying everything from Jesus's interactions with those around him to the revolutionary wisdom recorded in the Gospels.Learning from Jesus is organized for individual or group study, and includes chapters on: Expecting the Messiah • And the Word Became Flesh . . . • Experiencing the Second Birth • Redefining Blessedness • Freeing the Sabbath • Feasting on the Word • Confronting the Powers • Welcoming Us into Community • Living Abundance • Balancing Mary and Martha • Bearing the Cross • Abiding in Christ. Each section of this Guide leads you further down the path to true discipleship.
       HarperSanFrancisco, softcover, 160 pages.The Renovaré Spiritual Formation Guides, created by Richard J. Foster and the team that developed The Renovaré Spiritual Formation Bible and the longstanding A Spiritual Formation Workbook, provide tangible lessons that help us become spiritually formed, conformed, and transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. Geared for either individual study or use in small groups with chapter structure similar to A Spiritual Formation Workbook, each Renovaré Spiritual Formation Guide explores one facet of our life with God, providing readings from Scripture as well as classic and contemporary works of spirituality.
       The combination of readings, reflection questions, exercises, and activities makes these books invaluable interactive guides that prompt true spiritual growth. And they are a tremendous resource for connecting Scripture study with larger spiritual formation ideas and themes.


The Great Omission
"The word disciple occurs 269 times in the New Testament," writes Dallas Willard in The Great Omission. "Christian is found three times and was first introduced to refer precisely to disciples of Jesus. . . . The New Testament is a book about disciples, by disciples, and for disciples of Jesus Christ. But the point is not merely verbal. What is more important is that the kind of life we see in the earliest church is that of a special type of person. All of the assurances and benefits offered to humankind in the gospel evidently presuppose such a life and do not make realistic sense apart from it. The disciple of Jesus is not the deluxe or heavy-duty model of the Christian--especially padded, textured, streamlined, and empowered for the fast lane on the straight and narrow way. He or she stands on the pages of the New Testament as the first level of basic transportation in the Kingdom of God." Willard boldly challenges the thought that we can be Christians without being disciples, or call ourselves Christians without applying this understanding of life in the Kingdom of God to every aspect of life on earth.  
He calls on believers to restore what should be the heart of Christianity--being active disciples of Jesus Christ.
Willard shows us that in the school of life, we are apprentices of the Teacher whose brilliance encourages us to rise above traditional church understanding and embrace the true meaning of discipleship--an active, concrete, 24/7 life with Jesus.HarperSanFrancisco, hardcover, 256 pages.
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