Hope and Faith
Ebooks of Hope and Faith
Action in Waiting
These seventeen essays give a fresh look at the spiritual life as "active expectation" of God's kingdom breaking into this world. This kingdom is no longer relegated to some afterlife, but takes effect today.
"Blumhardt is filled with hope about the power of God to transform the world in concrete ways…His is a holy optimism grounded not in human prowess but in the triumphant grace of God." - Clark Pinnock, author, The Flame of Love
Christoph Blumhardt and his Message
He was an embarrassment to Christians and non-Christians alike. He seemed to challenge and disconcert everyone. And yet he possessed a strange confidence in God’s history; a confidence that inspired hope in many, and continues to do so even today.
Innerland: A Guide Into the Heart of the Gospel
Arnold's classic guide into the heart of the gospel invites readers to turn from the chaos of a society distracted by violence and greed to that "inner land of the invisible, where our spirit can find the roots of its strength."
"The ambassadors of Jesus Christ proclaim a peace that rules over all areas of their life...For them, peace is the hope of their faith, their expectation for the future, and a power here and now. Peace is for them the sum total of all God’s wisdom and decrees. God as the Lord, Christ as their expectation, and the Holy Spirit as the power that reveals all future things fill them with the most confident joy and inviolable peace."
Jesus Is the Victor
If you ever doubt that Jesus has power to change the world, or despair of seeing his victory come to fruition in your own personal life, you should read this book.
"But our hope has never been built on human ideals. Our hope rests on the fact that there is one who lives now in the power of God (Hebrews 10:12). True, all that is earthly is still engulfed in weakness. Jesus too had to suffer all the limitations of human life. However, he is no longer buried in these human things. He has risen healthy and whole, full of life and with the power to give life."
A Joyful Pilgrimage
If life was a battle for Emmy Arnold, it was also a celebration. This is the secret to her joy: she lived an undivided life, a life where the practical and the spiritual, the personal and the political, were one. Her memoir is a challenge to faith and commitment against all odds, and a testimony to the leading of a uniting Spirit stronger than everything that keeps people apart.
"Luckily everything finally came to a good end, and the wedding took place in my parents’ house, in a manner in keeping with our own convictions. Eberhard’s parents and most of his brothers and sisters took part in the ceremony. Like the rest of the relatives, they had had initial objections, advising us to wait until we had a sound economic basis. We, however, wanted to found our common life entirely on faith. This faith never let us down."
Love is Like Fire: The Confession of an Anabaptist Prisoner
Peter Riedemann's first confession of faith, written as a 23-year-old from a dungeon in Austria, is an important historical document and a refreshing reminder of the spirit which fired the early Anabaptists.
No One Can Stem the Tide: Selected Poems, 1931-1999
A collection of Christian poetry that explores the varied emotions of life - of love, longing, and loss; memory, sacrifice, and desire; struggle and frustration, joy and resolve. Hope and faith are recurring themes in many nature-inspired poems.
Now Is Eternity: Comfort and Wisdom for Difficult Hours
A collection of seventy short but striking Christian meditations to battle weariness and despair. In reminding us of the power conferred by hope and faith, Now Is Eternity is a source of daily strength. Given the understated beauty and brevity of its texts, it is one the thirsty reader will surely come back to again and again.
Rachoff: A true Story of Hope and Faith
Meet a revolutionary who spends his last savings on a night at the opera, only to disrupt the performance; a zealot whose habit of exposing hypocrisy in high places lands him behind bars. He's a failure by most standards, and yet his memory still challenges and inspires.
The Secret Flower
Written with a measured beauty that recalls Tolstoy and Tolkien, Clement's poems and short stories carry an uplifting sense of expectancy, hope and faith—of something new on the way. Jane Tyson Clement (1917-2000) was a mother, teacher, and poet.
Articles of Hope and Faith
Pandemic Love
The first Christians not only took care of their own, but also reached out far beyond themselves. Their faith led to a pandemic of love.
"In stark contrast to ... hopelessness and fear, the Christians showed how their faith made this life, and even death, meaningful. Cyprian, for example, almost welcomed the great epidemic of his time, knowing that it was an opportunity for the church to give witness to the hope that was within them. He was so overwhelmed by a sense of confidence that the members of the Alexandrian church were accused of thinking of the plague as a time of festival."
The Stars in a Child's Heart
If only we allow them, the stars will connect us to what is best described as awe—something that comes naturally to children and is the root of all that is good.
"Awe precedes faith, it is at the root of faith…. Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you…. Wisdom comes from awe rather than from shrewdness. It is evoked not in moments of calculation but in moments of being in rapport with the mystery of reality. The greatest insights happen to us in moments of awe." - Abraham Heschel
Saved by Love: The Secret of Remorse
An excerpt from The Gospel in Dostoyevsky. If you are penitent, you love. And if you love, you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love...Can there be a sin that would exceed the love of God?
Sonnet
A poem about finding faith and hope in the contemplation of nature.