Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God
By Brian Zahnd
In his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Puritan revivalist Jonathan Edwards shaped predominating American theology with a vision of God as angry, violent, and retributive. Three centuries later, Brian Zahnd was both mesmerized and terrified by Edwards’s wrathful God. Haunted by fear that crippled his relationship with God, Zahnd spent years praying for a divine experience of hell.
What Zahnd experienced instead was the Father’s love—revealed perfectly through Jesus Christ—for all prodigal sons and daughters.
In Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God, Zahnd asks important questions like: Is seeing God primarily as wrathful towards sinners true or biblical? Is fearing God a normal expected behavior? And where might the natural implications of this theological framework lead us?
Thoughtfully wrestling with subjects like Old Testament genocide, the crucifixion of Jesus, eternal punishment in hell, and the final judgment in Revelation, Zanhd maintains that the summit of divine revelation for sinners is not God is wrath, but God is love.
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Water to Wine: Some of My Story
By Brian Zahnd
Why would the pastor of a large and successful church risk everything in a quest to find a richer, deeper, fuller Christianity? In Water To Wine Brian Zahnd tells his story of disenchantment with pop Christianity and his search for a more substantive faith.
“I was halfway to ninety—midway through life—and I had reached a full-blown crisis. Call it garden variety mid-life crisis if you want, but it was something more. You might say it was a theological crisis, though that makes it sound too cerebral. The unease I felt came from a deeper place than a mental file labeled “theology.” I was wrestling with the uneasy feeling that the faith I had built my life around was somehow deficient. Not wrong, but lacking. It seemed watery, weak. In my most honest moments I couldn’t help but notice that the faith I knew seemed to lack the kind of robust authenticity that made Jesus so fascinating. And I had always been utterly fascinated by Jesus. What I knew was that the Jesus I believed in warranted a better Christianity than what I was familiar with. I was in Cana and the wine had run out. I needed Jesus to perform a miracle.”
– Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine
Available at Amazon.com.
A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor’s Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace
By Brian Zahnd
We know Jesus the Savior, but have we met Jesus, Prince of Peace? When did we accept vengeance as an acceptable part of the Christian life? How did violence and power seep into our understanding of faith and grace? For those troubled by this trend toward the sword, perhaps there is a better way. What if the message of Jesus differs radically differs from the drumbeats of war we hear all around us? Using his own journey from war crier to peacemaker and his in-depth study of peace in the scriptures, author and pastor Brian Zahnd reintroduces us to the gospel of Peace.
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Beauty Will Save The World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity
By Brian Zahnd
Brian Zahnd issues a challenge to Christians to discover new vitality through reenvisioning, reimagining and reforming the church according to the pattern of the cruciform. For thousands of years artists, sages, philosophers, and theologians have connected the beautiful and the sacred and identified art with our longing for God. Now we live in a day when pragmatism and utilitarian “morals” have largely displaced beauty as a value. The church is no exception–even salvation is commonly viewed in a scientific and mechanistic manner and presented as a plan, system, or formula.
We have technology, convenience, security, and a measure of prosperity, but where is the beauty?In “Beauty Will Save the World,” Brian Zahnd presents the argument that this loss of beauty as a principal value has been disastrous for Western culture–and especially for the church. The full message of the beauty of the gospel has been replaced by our desires to satisfy our material needs, to empirically prove our faith, and to establish a Caesar-style kingdom in our world. Exactly those things that Christ was tempted with–and rejected–in the wilderness. Zahnd shows that by following the teachings of the Beatitudes, the church can become a viable alternative to current-day political, commercial, and religious power and can actually achieve what these powers promise to provide but fail to deliver. Using stories from the lives of St. Francis of Assisi and from his own life, he teaches us to stay on the journey to discover the kingdom of God in a fuller, richer way.
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Unconditional?: The Call of Jesus to Radical Forgiveness
By Brian Zahnd, Foreward By Miroslav Volf
In a world where the ugliness of rage and retaliation are driving the story line, Unconditional? offers the beauty, reconciliation, and total restoration of forgiveness the way Jesus taught us to live it.
More than just another biblical exposition, this book begins with the horror of the Holocaust as it explores what forgiveness means — and how far it should go — in the real world of murder, rape, child abuse, genocide, and other atrocities.
With unusual honesty, compassion, and depth, Zahnd incorporates some of the most compelling and difficult thoughts on the subject from history’s writers, philosophers, and theologians — always returning to the example Jesus gave us with his life and his death.
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What to Do on the Worst Day of Your Life
By Brian Zahnd, Foreward By Jentzen Franklin
Nobody knew adversity like King David. He was called and anointed to reign in life, and yet he had to find a way in God to keep from losing it all. In What to Do on the Worst Day of Your Life, Brian Zahnd looks into the life of David to discover a pattern of faith we can apply to overcome life’s daunting obstacles.
In David’s story we find a timeless model for how to encounter God’s restorative power in the midst of deep tragedy. Join Brian Zahnd, and see what David did on his worst day.
You’ll see David weep but not get bitter. You’ll see him reorient his vision and regain his passion. All along the journey you’ll be reminded that God’s great work in David’s life was not an odd, one-off miracle but a pattern of faith for all who are facing the worst day of their life.
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