Discover your true identity in Christ. Many of us live for the approval of others. We let the world decide who we are, or we look to those around us to discover who we think we’d like to be. The problem is that living for what people think of you is the quickest way to forget what God thinks of you. In Altar Ego, pastor and author of Winning the War in Your Mind Craig Groeschel will show you how to sacrifice your broken ideas of approval-based identity on the altar of God’s truth and become who you were meant to be in Christ. You'll learn how to: Expose false labels and selfish motives. Live according to God's higher values with a deeper confidence in His calling. Trade in your broken ego and unleash your “altar” ego as a living sacrifice to Him. Understand how God continuously shapes you into His vision of you. Once you know your true identity and are growing in Christ-like character, then you can behave accordingly with bold behavior, bold prayers, bold words, and bold obedience. Altar Ego reveals who God says you are, and then calls you to live up to it. Rather than living a timid, halfhearted, shallow cultural Christianity, you'll boldly live in the confidence of the God who believes in you.

Doug Reed uses important insights from scripture, the historical context of Jesus's day, and personal experience to prove God's fervent passion to give Himself to us. When we understand God's purpose, we begin to see His presence in places we thought He was absent. We come to know God not as one who occasionally visits but as one who abides, always giving His gift, even when we suffer defeat, weakness, and loss. God is a Gift is invaluable for overcoming fear and finding a life filled with God's presence. It reveals how grace revolutionizes our relationship with the Lord. Topics include understanding the New Covenant, living in the gift of righteousness, abundant life, worship, and intimacy with God.

The instant Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and international bestseller “While the history books are filled with tales of obsessive visionary geniuses who remade the world in their image with sheer, almost irrational force, I’ve found that history is also made by individuals who fought their egos at every turn, who eschewed the spotlight, and who put their higher goals above their desire for recognition.” —from the prologue Many of us insist the main impediment to a full, successful life is the outside world. In fact, the most common enemy lies within: our ego. Early in our careers, it impedes learning and the cultivation of talent. With success, it can blind us to our faults and sow future problems. In failure, it magnifies each blow and makes recovery more difficult. At every stage, ego holds us back. Ego Is the Enemy draws on a vast array of stories and examples, from literature to philosophy to his­tory. We meet fascinating figures such as George Marshall, Jackie Robinson, Katharine Graham, Bill Belichick, and Eleanor Roosevelt, who all reached the highest levels of power and success by con­quering their own egos. Their strategies and tactics can be ours as well. In an era that glorifies social media, reality TV, and other forms of shameless self-promotion, the battle against ego must be fought on many fronts. Armed with the lessons in this book, as Holiday writes, “you will be less invested in the story you tell about your own specialness, and as a result, you will be liberated to accomplish the world-changing work you’ve set out to achieve.”

"For most of us, only at the end of a lifetime do we begin to understan that even our life stories are sacred and that God has been involved all along."---from "The Life of Torah" --

Dr. John Shackelford, Christian psychologist, wants to help you know yourself. Your journey starts with being honest about your life and what you have been through - the good and the bad - and considering how it has affected you. He then offers three personality systems which have helped him and which can help you know yourself better: Myers-Briggs, ego states, and Enneagram. While there may be no one exactly like you, there are many people with whom you share personality traits. The Myers-Briggs has sixteen types. You will fit one of those. The Enneagram offers nine types. You will see yourself in one of these. The Enneagram adds value as it describes the deeper dynamics which limit you. This knowledge helps you move beyond your ingrained way of living life, i.e. your ego-life. Learning about yourself can be fun at times, and hard at times. You will come to see your strengths and weaknesses more clearly. Dr. Shackelford also offers chapters on the ego, the False Self and the True Self. In your life you go through painful experiences where you flounder and fail (collapse of False Self). This life crisis, though difficult, can be a portal from your ego-run-life, to a healthy dependence on God, what the book refers to as a God-Led-Life. The author shares his own story of collapse and how he found God in a new way, despite being a Christian for years. Actually, knowing yourself better proves to be quite helpful in knowing God better and trusting Him to be the Lord of your life. In the second part of the book, Dr. Shackelford offers three chapters toward knowing God better: God's Gift, God's Will, and God's Desire. This can serve as a foundation for beginning to "pursue God." The last section of the book is very personal. It is the story of six individuals who made a consistent effort to pursue God and journal their experiences. The reader can see how these six Christians moved from an Ego-Led-Life to a God-Led-Life. On this journey life becomes less about striving for love or significance, and more about knowing and following God/Jesus. As one's identity becomes secure in the unconditional love of Christ, the believer understands that life is not about what we can do for God, but about what He has done for us. This book was written to increase awareness of self and God, so that one may in humility accept the riches of knowing Christ in a intimate way. Following Him flows from deep attachment, gratitude, and having learned to hear His voice. The reader may come to better understand St. Paul who said, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. " Galatians 2:20 NIV.

To mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, Paul Hacker’s landmark study Faith in Luther: Martin Luther and the Origin of Anthropocentric Religion appears now in a new English edition. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, in his final memoir in 2016, remembers Paul Hacker as “a great master, someone with an unbelievably broad education, someone who knew the Fathers, knew Luther, and had mastered the whole history of Indian religion from scratch. What he wrote always had something new about it, he always went right to the bottom of things.” No doubt one of the “things” he was referring to was Martin Luther’s view of faith, which Hacker explores in this text. A unique contribution to ecumenical studies, Faith in Luther engages the primary texts of Luther, assessing them for how they reveal Luther’s novel conception of faith and how the development of “reflexive faith” impacted Luther’s spirituality and theology—and the world.