Offers powerful insights into a new way of living to help men understand their lives, build stronger relationships, identify the temptations that cause detours, experience the spiritual power of vulnerability, and discover the secret to being truly known and loved.

Does it really matter? Does it matter if we have free will? Does it matter if Calvinism is true? And does what you think about it matter? No and yes. No, it doesn't matter because God is who he is and does what he does regardless of what we think of him, just as the solar system keeps spinning around the sun even if we're convinced it spins around the earth. Our opinions about God will not change God, but they can change us. And so yes, it does matter because the conversations about free will and Calvinism confront us with perhaps the only question that really matters: who is God? This is a book about that question--a book about the Bible, black holes, love, sovereignty, hell, Romans 9, Jonathan Edwards, John Piper, C. S. Lewis, Karl Barth, and a little girl in a red coat. You've heard arguments, but here's a story--Austin Fischer's story, and his journey in and out of Calvinism on a trip to the center of the universe.

A Long and Restless Journey in Pursuit of Happiness with Empty Hands of Faith: An Authoritative Resource for Bushfallers is a brilliant how to collection of provocative essays that addresses the predicaments surrounding the rollercoaster and sometimes paralyzing crusade of wretched and disillusioned Africans deserting their homelands to seek lifes greener pastures overseas. It is a book on contemplative life that examines with concrete Biblical determinations the spectacular challenges faced by prisoners of hope - bushfallers - in their epic effort to migrate, assimilate, and thrive in their adopted American home. Bat has ingeniously and persuasively interlaced humor, wit, and the Bible to engage readers on a subject that is at times delicate, private, and mystifying to discuss publicly. He advances forthright strategies for bushfallers to follow in order to optimize every moment of their expedition. The book proffers reliable self-help instructions on how to dodge or contend with the abstract, confrontational, and perturbing experiences of the work-a-day life overseas. He proposes knowledge and skills needed in the areas of tactical positioning; indispensable human, material, and social capital; as well as mental and physical astuteness essential for persistence. Most importantly, Bat invites the bushfaller as well as the onlooker to develop spiritual character and pledge total allegiance to the Lord for faith, strength, and direction. This collection of essays is current, thorough, and complete in its coverage of the multidimensional challenges faced by the bushfaller. As the prospects for living and survival gets even darker and heartless at home, and as the immigration climate gets menacing and precarious for bushfallers overseas, it becomes even more imperative to be proactive, innovative and resourceful in handling lifes vicissitudes.

From places like John Piper's den, Al Mohler's office, and Jonathan Edwards's college, Christianity Today journalist Collin Hansen investigates what makes today's young Calvinists tick. Church-growth strategies and charismatic worship have fueled the bulk of evangelical growth in America for decades. While baby boomers have flocked to churches that did not look or sound like church, it seems these churches do not so broadly capture the passions of today's twenty-something evangelicals. In fact, a desire for transcendence and tradition among young evangelicals has contributed to a Reformed resurgence. For nearly two years, Christianity Today journalist Collin Hansen visited the chief schools, churches, and conferences of this growing movement. He sought to describe its members and ask its leading pastors and theologians about the causes and implications of the Calvinist resurgence. The result, Young, Restless, Reformed, shows common threads in their diverse testimonies and suggests what tomorrow's church might look like when these young evangelicals become pastors or professors.

The Restless Hungarian is the saga of an extraordinary life set against the history of the rise of modernism, the Jewish Diaspora, and the Cold War. A Hungarian Jew whose inquiring spirit helped him to escape the Holocaust, Paul Weidlinger became one of the most creative structural engineers of the twentieth century. As a young architect, he broke ranks with the great modernists with his radical idea of the “Joy of Space.” As an engineer, he created the strength behind the beauty in mid-century modern skyscrapers, churches, museums, and he gave concrete form to the eccentric monumental sculptures of Pablo Picasso, Isamu Noguchi, and Jean Dubuffet. In his private life, he was a divided man, living behind a wall of denial as he lost his family to war, mental illness, and suicide. In telling his father’s story, the author sifts meaning from the inspiring and contradictory narratives of a life: a motherless child and a captain of industry, a clandestine communist who designed silos for the world’s deadliest weapons during the Cold War, a Jewish refugee who denied he was a Jew, a husband who was terrified of his wife’s madness, and a man whose personal saints were artists.

As a young Jewish musician, Bob Dylan faithfully explored the roots of modern American music-the spirituals and gospel songs. It is not surprising Dylan's words, both in his songs and in his interviews, have often touched upon biblical themes. From his apocalyptic expressions onstage and in the studio, to his unapologetic biblical views that leak out during interviews, the public record of Dylan's spiritual journey makes for a fascinating story. A curious icon of popular culture, yet distinct in his Judeo-Christian expressions, Bob Dylan doesn't fit neatly into the typical rock 'n' roll mold. Who else would have the chutzpah to publicly contribute to Orthodox Jewish communities while publicly singing songs about Jesus' crucifixion, resurrection and eventual return? Restless Pilgrim: The Spiritual Journey of Bob Dylan wrestles with the seemingly contradictory facts of Dylan's preoccupation with Jesus and his own Jewish heritage, by looking through the lens of this reluctant legend's four-decade career.

A good autobiography has a strange effect on a reader, at least this one. As I read Adugnaw Worku's riveting life story, I found that I was putting myself in his shoes. After a few chapters, I was imagining that I had lived his odyssey and shared in his struggle for an education. That's the impact of a successful writer. As I reflected on his choice to both honor and defy his parents, to love his homeland and to adopt a new citizenship, I thought I understood. To a reader just picking up this book, allow me to adopt Adu's persona and speak in his voice: "A reader of my story begins with certain handicaps," I might say in his voice, putting my words in his mouth. "But those handicaps can disappear. You are entering an alien world in which road signs have been removed or changed, a world in which assumptions and proverbs are not the same as the wisdom that is taken for granted by present-day Americans or Europeans. Words like 'peasant' or 'patriarchy' or even 'tradition' may, for you, my readers, obscure as much as they reveal. "Even my Ethiopian-American sons have a hard time understanding, I suspect, a time and place where abduction and love could overlap, where sex is unavoidably rooted in procreation, where male and female are simply defined by nature, and where old age brings authority. "Please don't jump to conclusions," I can hear Adu saying. "People who do so are certain to miss subtleties or paradoxes. You may never have met an illiterate wise man or known a woman, hedged about by strict limitations, who nonetheless exercises real power. You might scoff at a society that, without irony, speaks of 'manly courage' or somehow respects both an all-encompassing, demanding tradition and the stubborn individual who goes his or her own way. "Reader, you may be appalled by the plagues and deprivation of the community I was born into. But do not make the mistake of concluding that human life was less valued in such circumstances, that my people were degraded by their poverty and isolation. "I understand your confusion and sometimes almost share it. At the end of a long and eventful life, I am glad to have traveled and learned and changed. I relish my new identity as an educated citizen of an innovating and 'creatively destructive' democracy. I am happy that I am no longer an unlettered shepherd. But the change in my life was costly and (in the words of the poet), 'Though much is taken, much abides.' "I urge you to be open-minded as you consider the interaction of old and new, unfamiliar and known," he concludes. And I agree. I couldn't have said it better myself! --From the Introduction by Dr. Eric Anderson: