Where Is God When it Hurts/What's So Amazing About Grace?
Award-winning author Philip Yancey takes you for a soul-searching look at two of Christianity's most important topics.
WHAT’S SO AMAZING ABOUT GRACE?
In this critically acclaimed, bestselling book, Philip Yancey explores the church's great distinctive--grace--at street level. If grace is God's love for the undeserving, and if Christians are its sole dispensers, then how are we doing at lavishing grace on a world that knows far more of cruelty and unforgiveness than it does of mercy? Offering compelling, true portraits of grace’s life-changing power, Yancey searches for its presence in his own life and in the church. And he challenges us to become living answers to a world that desperately wants to know, What’s So Amazing About Grace?
WHERE IS GOD WHEN IT HURTS?
If there is a loving God, then why is it that … ? You've heard that question, perhaps asked it yourself. No matter how you complete it, at its root lies the issue of pain. In this award-winning book, Philip Yancey reveals a God who is neither capricious nor unconcerned. Using examples from the Bible and from his own experiences, Yancey looks at pain--physical, emotional, and spiritual--and helps us understand why we suffer. Where Is God When It Hurts? will speak to those for whom life sometimes just doesn't make sense. And it will help equip anyone who wants to reach out to someone in pain but doesn't know what to say.
Top Highlights
“Much of the suffering on our planet has come about because of two principles that God built into creation: a physical world that runs according to consistent natural laws, and human freedom.” (source)
“But early on in that same chapter, Jesus is asked about two ‘current events’ that had evidently prompted much local discussion. One was an act of political oppression, in which Roman soldiers slaughtered members of a religious minority; the other, a construction accident that killed eighteen people. As I study the Bible, I can find no other situation more parallel to the kinds of suffering that bother most of us. Those first-century Jews were asking about their equivalents to the Yuba City bus accident, or the collapse of a stadium roof.” (source)
“Some other religions try to deny all pain, or to rise above it. Christianity starts, rather, with the assertion that suffering exists, and exists as proof of our fallen state. One may dismiss the Christian explanation for the origin of suffering—that it was introduced into the world as a consequence of man’s aborted freedom—as being unsatisfactory. But at least the concept of a great-but-fallen world matches what we know of reality.” (source)
“How did Jesus deal with the question ‘Who is responsible for suffering?’ The clearest insight into that question appears in Luke 13.” (source)
“Many Old Testament passages warn against painful consequences that will follow specific actions.” (source)
Product Details
- Title : Where Is God When it Hurts/What's So Amazing About Grace?
- Author: Yancey, Philip
- Publisher: Zondervan
- Publication Date: 2009
- ISBN: 9780310867074