Life Of Faith Order Printed Copy

Author: Shenouda III
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About the Book

"Life of Faith" by Pope Shenouda III is a spiritual guide that explores the concept of faith and how it impacts every aspect of a Christian's life. The book delves into the importance of faith in overcoming challenges, building a closer relationship with God, and living a fulfilling and purposeful life. Through insightful reflections and practical advice, Pope Shenouda III inspires readers to deepen their faith and trust in God's plan for their lives.

Lee Strobel

Lee Strobel (Lee Patrick Strobel) is a former American investigative journalist and a Christian Author who has written several books, including four which received ECPA (Evangelical Christian Publishers Association) Christian Book Awards (1994, 1999, 2001, 2005) and a series which addresses challenges to the veracity of Christianity. He is a former host of the television program called Faith Under Fire on PAX TV and he runs a video apologetic web site. Lee Strobel Age He was born on January 25, 1952 in Arlington Heights, Illinois, U.S. Lee Strobel Family | Chicago Tribune Less information has been revealed about his father, mother and siblings if he has any. He attended the University of Missouri where he received a Journalism degree. He later earned his Masters of Studies in Law degree from Yale Law School. He became a journalist for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers for 14 years. The UPI Illinois Editors Association newspaper award program gave him a first place for public service (the Len H. Small Memorial award) for his coverage of the Pinto crash trial of Ford Motor in Winamac, Indiana in 1980. Later, he became the assistant managing editor of the Daily Herald, before leaving journalism in 1987. Lee Strobel Wife | Daughter He married Leslie Strobel and they are blessed with two children; a son called Kyle who is an an Assistant Professor of Spiritual Theology and Formation at the Talbot School of Theology and a daughter called Alison who is a novelist. Lee Strobel Church He was an atheist when he began investigating the Biblical claims about Christ after his wife’s conversion. Prompted by the results of his investigation, he became a Christian on November 8, 1981. He was a teaching pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, from 1987 to 2000, before shifting his focus to writing and producing his TV show, Faith Under Fire. He later was awarded an honorary doctoral degree by Southern Evangelical Seminary in recognition of his contributions to Christian apologetics in 2007. Lee Strobel Books He has written several books just to list a few. 1998 – The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus 2000 – The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity 2004 – The Case for a Creator 2005 – The Case for Christmas: A Journalist Investigates the Identity of the Child in the Manger 2007 – The Case for the Real Jesus 2013 – The Case for Grace: A Journalist Explores the Evidence of Transformed Lives 2014 – The Case for Christianity Answer Book 2015 – The Case for Hope: Looking Ahead with Courage and Confidence 2018 – The Case for Miracles: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for the Supernatural Lee Strobel Net Worth From his work as a former investigative journalist and from his work as a Christian apologetic author, he has gained a great fortune. Besides that, he lives with his wife in his home that he bought. He has an estimated net worth of $8 million. Lee Strobel Movie His movies include; 2004 – Jesus: Fact or Fiction. 2007 – Jesus: The Great Debate. 2017 – The Case for Christ Lee Strobel The Case For Christ The Case For Christ is one of the books that Lee has written. This book summarizes Lee’s interviews with thirteen evangelical Christian scholars—Craig Blomberg, Bruce Metzger, Edwin Yamauchi, John McRay, Gregory Boyd, Ben Witherington III, Gary Collins, D. A. Carson, Louis Lapides, Alexander Metherell, William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, and J. P. Moreland—in which they defend their views regarding the historical reliability of the New Testament. His personal encounters with these scholars and their beliefs led to the 2017 film of the same name. Lee Strobel The Case For Miracles The Case for Miracles: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for the Supernatural is one of the books that he has written. This book starts with an unlikely interview in which America’s foremost skeptic builds a seemingly persuasive case against the miraculous. But then Strobel travels the country to quiz scholars to see whether they can offer solid answers to atheist objections. Along the way, he encounters astounding accounts of healings and other phenomena that simply cannot be explained away by naturalistic causes. The book features the results of exclusive new scientific polling that shows miracle accounts are much more common than people think. Lee Strobel Testimony This is a summary of the detailed transcript of his testimony; For most of my life I was an atheist. I thought the idea of an all-loving, all-powerful creator of the universe–I thought it was stupid. I mean, my background is in journalism and law. I tend to be a skeptical person. I was the legal editor of the Chicago Tribune. So I needed evidence before I’d believe anything. One day my wife came up to me–she’d been agnostic–and she said after a period of spiritual investigation she had decided to become a follower of Jesus Christ. And I thought, you know, this is the worst possible news I could get. I thought she was going to turn into some sexually repressed prude who was going to spend all her time serving the poor in skid row somewhere. I thought this was the end of our marriage. But in the ensuing months, I saw positive changes in her values, in her character, in the way she related to me and the children. It was winsome; and it was attractive; and it made me want to check things out. So I went to church one day, ah, mainly to see if I could get her out of this cult that she had gotten involved in. But I heard the message of Jesus articulated for the first time in a way that I could understand it. That forgiveness is a free gift, and that Jesus Christ died for our sins, that we might spend eternity with Him. And I walked out saying–I was still an atheist–but also saying, “If this is true, this has huge implications for my life.” And so I used my journalism training and legal training to begin an investigation into whether there was any credibility to Christianity or to any other world faith system for that matter. Lee Strobel The Case For Easter The Case for Easter: A Journalist Investigates the Evidence for the Resurrection is one of his books that answers the following questions. Did Jesus of Nazareth really rise from the dead?Of the many world religions, only one claims that its founder returned from the grave. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the very cornerstone of Christianity. But a dead man coming back to life? In our sophisticated age, when myth has given way to science, who can take such a claim seriously? Some argue that Jesus never died on the cross. Conflicting accounts make the empty tomb seem suspect. And post-crucifixion sightings of Jesus have been explained in psychological terms.How credible is the evidence for—and against—the resurrection? and many others. Lee Strobel Quotes “Only in a world where faith is difficult can faith exist.” “If your friend is sick and dying, the most important thing he wants is not an explanation; he wants you to sit with him. He’s terrified of being alone more than anything else. So, God has not left us alone.” “Faith is only as good as the one in whom it’s invested.” “To be honest, I didn’t want to believe that Christianity could radically transform someone’s character and values. It was much easier to raise doubts and manufacture outrageous objections that to consider the possibility that God actually could trigger a revolutionary turn-around in such a depraved and degenerate life.” “Abruptly, Templeton cut short his thoughts. There was a brief pause, almost as if he was uncertain whether he should continue. ‘Uh … but … no,’ he said slowly, ‘he’s the most …’ He stopped, then started again. ‘In my view,’ he declared, ‘he is the most important human being who ever existed.’ That’s when Templeton uttered the words I neer expected to hear from him. ‘ And if I may put it this way,’ he said in a voice that began to crack, ‘I … miss … him!’ With that tears flooded his eyes. He turned his head and looked downward, raising his left hand to shield his face from me. His shoulders bobbed as he wept.” Lee Strobel Website His website is leestrobel.com

you can’t fake what you love

The soul is measured by its flights, Some low and others high, The heart is known by its delights, And pleasures never lie. I was 25 years old when John Piper’s book The Pleasures of God was first released in 1991. My wife and I had been attending Bethlehem Baptist for two years and had read John’s book Desiring God , which unpacked what he called Christian Hedonism. His fresh emphasis on the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him was working its way into our spiritual bones. But as I read the introduction to The Pleasures of God , the one-sentence poem above crystalized the truth of Christian Hedonism for me, opening my mind to the role delight plays in the Christian life. One Sentence Begets Another John wrote that life-changing sentence as a kind of exposition of another life-changing sentence he had read four years earlier. In fact, the whole sermon series that birthed the book was born of his meditation on that sentence written in the seventeenth century by a young Professor of Divinity in Scotland named Henry Scougal. Scougal had actually penned the sentence in a personal letter of spiritual counsel to a friend, but it was so profound that others copied and passed it around. Eventually Scougal gave permission for it to be published in 1677 as The Life of God in the Soul of Man . A year later, Scougal died of tuberculosis before he had reached his twenty-eighth birthday. John Piper describes what gripped him so powerfully: One sentence riveted my attention. It took hold of my thought life in early 1987 and became the center of my meditation for about three months. What Scougal said in this sentence was the key that opened for me the treasure house of the pleasures of God. He said, “ The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love .” (18) John realized that this statement is as true of God as it was of man. The worth and excellency of God’s soul is measured by the object of its love. This object must, then, be God himself, since nothing of greater value exists than God. John previously devoted a whole chapter in Desiring God to God’s happiness in himself — the God-centeredness of God. Scougal’s sentence, however, opened glorious new dimensions of this truth for John as he contemplated how the excellency of God’s soul is measured. And John’s sentence opened glorious new dimensions for me as I began to contemplate that a heart, whether human or divine, is known by its delights. Pleasures Never Lie It was the last line of John’s poem that hit me hardest: The heart is known by its delights, And pleasures never lie. Pleasures never lie. This phrase cut through a lot of my confusion and self-deceit to the very heart of the matter: what really matters to my heart. “Our lips can lie about what we love, but our pleasures never lie.” “Pleasures never lie” doesn’t mean things we find pleasurable are never deceitful. We all know, from personal experience as well as the testimony of Scripture, that many worldly pleasures lie to us (Hebrews 11:25). Rather, it means that pleasure is the whistle-blower of the heart. Pleasure is our heart’s way of telling us what we treasure (Matthew 6:21). When we take pleasure in something evil, we don’t have a pleasure problem ; we have a treasure problem . Our heart’s pleasure gauge is working just like it’s supposed to. What’s wrong is what our heart loves. Our lips can lie about what we love, but our pleasures never lie . And we can’t keep our pleasure-giving treasures hidden, whether good or evil, at least not for long. What we truly love always ends up working its way out of the unseen heart into the plain view of what we say and don’t say, and what we do and don’t do. My heart, like God’s heart, is known by its delights. I found this wonderfully clarifying. It resonated deeply; all my experience bore out its truth. And I saw it woven throughout the Bible. The more I contemplated it, however, the more devastating this truth became. Devastated by Delight It’s devastating because if the worth and excellency of my soul is measured by the heights of its flights of delights in God, I find myself “naked and exposed” before God, without embellishment or disguise (Hebrews 4:13). No professed theology, however robust and historically orthodox, no amount of giftedness I possess, no “reputation of being alive” (Revelation 3:1) can compensate if I have a deficit of delight in God. And to make sure I understand what is and isn’t allowed on the affectional scale, John says, You don’t judge the glory of a soul by what it wills to do with lukewarm interest, or with mere teeth-gritting determination. To know a soul’s proportions you need to know its passions. The true dimensions of a soul are seen in its delights. Not what we dutifully will but what we passionately want reveals our excellence or evil. (18) As I place my passions on God’s soul-scale, my deficits become clear. I’m a mixed bag when it comes to my passion for God. I can savor God like Psalm 63 and yet still sin against him like Psalm 51. I have treasured God like Psalm 73:25–26, and questioned him like Psalm 73:2–3. Sometimes I sweetly sing Psalm 23:1–3, and sometimes I bitterly cry Psalm 10:1. At times I keenly feel the wretchedness of Romans 7:24, and at times the wonder of Romans 8:1. I have known the light of Psalm 119:105 and the darkness of Psalm 88:1–3. I’ve known the fervency of Romans 12:11 and the lukewarmness of Revelation 3:15. Many times I need Jesus’s exhortation in Matthew 26:41. “We must know our spiritual poverty before we will earnestly seek true spiritual wealth.” It is devastating to stand before God with only what we passionately want revealing the state of our hearts, measuring the worth of our souls. But it is a merciful devastation we desperately need. For we must know our spiritual poverty before we will earnestly seek true spiritual wealth. We must see our miserable idolatries before we will repent and forsake them. We must feel our spiritual deadness before we will cry out, “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” (Psalm 85:6) That’s all true. However, the longer I contemplated John’s sentence over time, the more I realized the devastating exposure of my spiritual poverty is meant to be a door into an eternal world of delight-filled love. Pleasures Forevermore I made this discovery in the story of the rich young man (Mark 10:17–22). When Jesus helped this man see his heart’s true passions (when he exposed his spiritual poverty), the exposure wasn’t Jesus’s primary purpose. Jesus wanted the man to have “treasure in heaven,” to give this man eternal joy (Mark 10:21). And Jesus knew the man would never joyfully sell everything he had to obtain the treasure that is God unless he saw God as his supreme treasure (Matthew 13:44). So he tried to show him by calling the man to the devastating door of exposure and knocking on it. And he grieved when the man wouldn’t open it, because the door led to a far greater treasure than the one he would leave behind. God created pleasure because he is a happy God and wants his joy to be in us and our joy to be full (John 15:11). When he designed pleasure as the measure of our treasure, his ultimate purpose was that we would experience maximal joy in the Treasure. And that the Treasure would receive maximal glory from the joy we experience in him. It is a marvelous, merciful, absolutely genius design: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him . If God has to expose our poverty to pursue our eternal joy, he will. But what he really wants for us is to experience “fullness of joy” in his presence and “pleasures forevermore” at his right hand (Psalm 16:11). And so it is a great mercy, even if at times devastating, that our pleasures never lie.