It's possible to be a new creation in Christ . . . yet still struggle with strongholds. With compassion, personal experience and raw honesty, Pastor Bobby Davis leads readers through seven common struggles, or strongholds, holding Christians back. He demonstrates how to experience victory and freedom instead of just hearing about it in church. Bobby offers real answers to real problems that keep believers enslaved every day, uncovering hidden strongholds--including unforgiveness, insecurity, addiction and fear--and offering a way out. If you're tired of feeling defeated, this book is for you. There's hope. Christianity isn't just about future freedom in heaven; it's about entering your promised land and embracing the power of God now. You can accept this freedom, overcome your strongholds and fulfill God's perfect plan for your life.

The Slave Bible was published in 1807. It was commissioned on behalf of the Society for the Conversion of Negro Slaves in England. The Bible was to be used by missionaries and slave owners to teach slaves about the Christian faith and to evangelize slaves. The Bible was used to teach some slaves to read, but the goal first and foremost was to tend to the spiritual needs of the slaves in the way the missionaries and slave owners saw fit.

This book, based on addresses preached at the Evangelical Movement of Wales Conference at Aberystwyth in 2005, deals with these chapters and this vital subject. Godliness, we are told, is contrary to the selfish spirit that moves the world, the flesh and the devil, in that it seeks to do everything for the glory of Christ. Stuart Olyott shows us that godliness is a moral and not a mystical quality; it is the fruit of union with Christ; it results in glad obedience to a new master and, although this will result in loss and suffering in this life, it anticipates the future glory of heaven which awaits every believer. An essential read for all who wish to live godly lives in Christ Jesus.

Early Christians frequently used metaphors about slavery, calling themselves slaves of God and Christ and referring to their leaders as slave representatives of Christ. Most biblical scholars have insisted that this language would have been distasteful to potential converts in the Greco-Roman world, and they have wondered why early Christians such as Paul used the image of slavery to portray salvation. In this book Dale B. Martin addresses the issue by examining the social history and rhetorical and theological conventions of the times. The first half of the book draws on a variety of historical sources – inscriptions, novels, speeches, dream-handbooks, and agricultural manuals – to portray the complexity of slavery in the early Roman empire. Concentrating on middle-level, managerial slaves, Martin shows how slavery sometimes functioned as a means of upward social mobility and as a form of status-by-association for those slaves who were agents of members of the upper class. For this reason, say Martin, “slavery of Christ,” brought the Christian convert a degree of symbolic status and lent the Christian leader a certain kind of derived authority. The second half of the book traces the Greco-Roman use of political rhetoric that spoke about populist leaders as “enslaved” to their followers, especially to members of the lower class. This provides the context for Paul’s claim, in 1 Corinthians 9, that he has enslaved himself to “all” – that is, to those very people he is supposed to lead as an apostle. Martin thus interprets this statement to mean that Paul identifies himself with the interests of persons with lower status in the Corinthian church, calling on those with higher status to imitate his self-debasement in order to further the interests of those below them on the social scale.

Who is your master: sin or the Savior? This well-researched book explores the cultural and political background of slavery during the time of Christ and what it implies for our modern-day commitment to the Lord. Thought-provoking and insightful, this book will strengthen your relationship with and faith in the Savior.

According to Hebrews, the Son of God appeared to "break the power of him who holds the power of death--that is, the devil--and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." What does it mean to be enslaved, all our lives, to the fear of death? And why is this fear described as "the power of the devil"? And most importantly, how are we--as individuals and as faith communities--to be set free from this slavery to death?In another creative interdisciplinary fusion, Richard Beck blends Eastern Orthodox perspectives, biblical text, existential psychology, and contemporary theology to describe our slavery to the fear of death, a slavery rooted in the basic anxieties of self-preservation and the neurotic anxieties at the root of our self-esteem. Driven by anxiety--enslaved to the fear of death--we are revealed to be morally and spiritually vulnerable as "the sting of death is sin." Beck argues that in the face of this predicament, resurrection is experienced as liberation from the slavery of death in the martyrological, eccentric, cruciform, and communal capacity to overcome fear in living fully and sacrificially for others.