Could the best thing about religion be the heresies it spawns? Leading intellectuals in interwar Europe thought so. They believed that they lived in a world made derelict by God's absence and the interruption of his call. In response, they helped resurrect gnosticism and pantheism, the two most potent challenges to the monotheistic tradition. In God Interrupted, Benjamin Lazier tracks the ensuing debates about the divine across confessions and disciplines. He also traces the surprising afterlives of these debates in postwar arguments about the environment, neoconservative politics, and heretical forms of Jewish identity. In lively, elegant prose, the book reorients the intellectual history of the era. God Interrupted also provides novel accounts of three German-Jewish thinkers whose ideas, seminal to fields typically regarded as wildly unrelated, had common origins in debates about heresy between the wars. Hans Jonas developed a philosophy of biology that inspired European Greens and bioethicists the world over. Leo Strauss became one of the most important and controversial political theorists of the twentieth century. Gershom Scholem, the eminent scholar of religion, radically recast what it means to be a Jew. Together they help us see how talk about God was adapted for talk about nature, politics, technology, and art. They alert us to the abiding salience of the divine to Europeans between the wars and beyond--even among those for whom God was long missing or dead.

From telemarketers to traffic jams to twenty-item shoppers in the ten-item line, our lives are full of interruptions. They're often aggravating, sometimes infuriating, and can make us want to tell people what we really think about them. But they also tell us something quite important about ourselves. The prophet Jonah's life was interrupted by a clear call of God that made him mad enough and scared enough to run in the completely opposite direction. Yet it wasn't really an interruption. It was an opportunity for Jonah to be involved in something the likes of which the Old Testament world had never seen: national revival in a Gentile country. What if Jonah had seen God's interruption for what it truly was—a divine intervention that held more adventure and possibility than any other thing he could have been doing at the time? What could have felt any better than being directly in the center of God's will? Yet we play it that same way—always running from major pains and minor problems that just don't seem to suit us at the time. Who knows what we're missing by being so interruption avoidant? In this very personal account of opportunities lost and lessons learned, popular conference speaker and author Priscilla Shirer shows how to embrace the amazing freedom and fulfillment that comes from going with God, even when He's going against your grain. .

The word ''faith'' is common these days, but placing one's faith in God is a weighty action, uncommonly fraught with consequence and, by His design, inconvenience. Faith in God is reassuring and comforting only insofar as believers trust Him - and that depth of trust is the mark of a mature Christian who has allowed faith to intrude on his life and shift his gaze away from his own aims, needs and desires. This is nothing if not a painful and disturbing process. A Disruptive Faith is A. W. Tozer's never-before-published teaching on what he termed ''faith that perturbs'' - faith that contradicts the unbelieving man and threatens the complacency of the Christian. The renowned pastor and teacher insists in these pages that genuine faith breeds dissatisfaction with this life, by God's design; it weans us from this temporary life and prepares us for the life to come. Readers will learn to be content with this faith-inspired discontent and to experience a fresh hope for eternity with God.

Much of what happens in our lives is not what we planned, not what we expected, and certainly not what we would have chosen. At a young age, Jaci Velasquez’s singing career rocketed to stardom, and her marriage thrived—then both suddenly crashed. Losing her reputation, her record label, and even some of her most-treasured relationships, Jaci began a long, healing journey from thinking of herself not as a Christian music darling or a broken young woman but as a beloved child of God. Today, her renewed faith carries her through a resurrected career, the adventures of a second marriage, and the ups-and-downs of being a mother of a child who has autism. When God Rescripts Your Life is Jaci’s exploration of the lessons she’s learned living a story full of mistakes and grace, rejection and contentment, worldly success and spiritual rest. Drawing on lessons from biblical characters such as Aaron, Joseph, and Paul, as well as from illustrations from her own life, Jaci reminds us how God loves to rewrite pain and weakness into a glorious tale of redemption. The most difficult parts of life don’t need to be removed; they need to be rescripted.

In Shame Interrupted, bestselling author Edward T. Welch empowers readers to live in light of the gospel of God's grace, which breaks the lingering power of shame. Providing immediate application to every reader's spiritual journey, Welch's book guides men and women to seek freedom from the shame of their own relational and sexual brokenness. Shame controls far too many of us, and the Bible addresses the issue of shame from start to finish. Shame Interrupted reminds readers that God cares for the shamed, and that through Jesus, they are covered, adopted, cleansed, and healed. Shame Interrupted creates a safe place to deal with shame, shining a light on the dynamics of sin and how it is overcome through the power of Christ. By identifying with our shame on the cross, Jesus gives believers freedom from the paralyzing effects of sin and shame. As someone who is familiar with the effects and crushing weight of shame—and the overwhelming freedom found in Christ—Welch invites readers to find confidence in the cleansing work of Christ in this raw and brutally honest book. By examining the depths of the human heart, Welch has made accessible invaluable tools for counseling, soul care, and pastoral work. Shame Interrupted dwells on hope and healing, providing gospel answers to difficult questions.

Our lives are constantly changing. It's hard to keep up, to keep our balance. It's hard to keep trusting in God. And it's especially difficult when the changes we're faced with are unwanted: the death of a loved one, a child leaving home, an illness, a frustrated dream. Craig Barnes knows the dark side of change. As a pastor, he has counseled many Christians through tough times of transition. And he has been challenged by unwanted changes--interruptions--in his own life. At times it seems as though God has moved far, far away. But Barnes has discovered that just the opposite is true: during times of change and seeming abandonment, God is right at our side offering to lead us in a new direction, offering us new life. He writes, "A young widow can outlive her grief and decide her life may never be the same but is far from over. A lost job can become the beginning of a new vocation." Here is the book for all who have known disappointment, bereavement or the shattering of faith, a book all the more valuable because it promises hope without denying despair. In When God Interrupts a sensitive, insightful pastor shows us how we can be found by God in the middle of unwanted change.

With camera in hand, Tracey Lind, dean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Cleveland and an open lesbian, looks for and finds God on the edge of exclusion and embrace in "Interrupted by God: Glimpses From the Edge." This powerful combination of black-and-white photographs and spare storytelling shares not only her spiritual journey but will introduce you to interruptions by God in unexpected people and places: Lisa, the homeless Christmas angel; Siah, the infant hope of her ancestors; Sally, who feasts on communion remnants; the Garbage Tree on Ellison Street; and Bacardi, the drunken Christ, among others.