Come Alive: Matthew (Paperback)

Conversations with Scripture

Come Alive: Conversations with Scripture is a guide through the books of the Bible, providing cultural context and insights that bridge the gap between the world of the Bible and our world today. Each book includes a daily reading, a daily insight and a daily reading prompt that will help you reflect on the text and build the skills to read the Bible for yourself with more confidence and understanding. Discover a new and unexpected way to engage with Scripture and experience the Bible not as a distant, confusing document, but as a living, breathing conversation between God and humanity that continues to speak into our ever-changing world.

Matthew

Matthew betrayed his own people for money—then was called and transformed by Jesus. This Jewish tax collector, who worked for the oppressor Romans, gives a detailed account of the life of Jesus through the lens of Jewish history and prophecy. More than any other Gospel writer, Matthew documents the actual words of Jesus and connects everything Jesus said and did to the promises about the Messiah. Through this interactive guide through the book of Matthew, you will gain a new appreciation for both Matthew’s literary genius and how he invites you into the unfolding story of God and humanity.

Come Alive: Galatians and Ephesians (Paperback)

Conversations with Scripture

Come Alive: Conversations with Scripture is a guide through the books of the Bible,
providing cultural context and insights that bridge the gap between the world of the Bible
and our world today. Each book includes a daily reading, a daily insight and a daily
reading prompt that will help you reflect on the text and build the skills to read the Bible
for yourself with more confidence and understanding. Discover a new and unexpected
way to engage with Scripture and experience the Bible not as a distant, confusing
document, but as a living, breathing conversation between God and humanity that
continues to speak into our ever-changing world.

Galatians and Ephesians

Galatians is unique among Paul’s letters in that he did not write it to a single church (like
the church at Rome or the church at Philippi) or to an individual (as with 1 and 2
Timothy) but to a collection of churches within the region of Galatia, a rugged area in
what is today southwestern Turkey.

The Galatians were a Gentile people who had come to faith in Christ from the
pagan religions that dotted the landscape of Asia Minor. As Gentiles, they were steeped
neither in the way of Moses nor in the customs of the synagogue. Their naivete toward
all things Hebrew became one of the great ironies of Paul’s letter and the occasion of its
writing. The Galatian drama involved several false teachers who had slipped into the
churches’ congregations and sown both confusion and discord as the Gentiles were
persuaded to accept Jewish legal requirements. In some of Paul’s most majestic
language he calls on the Galatians to accept the true gospel of grace.

Ephesians is written to the church in Ephesus - a singular congregation in a
cosmopolitan city. The city of Ephesus was located on the western coast of Turkey on
the Aegean Sea. You can visit the remaining ruins of the city on any excursion to that
region of the world. Like Galatia, the people in the Ephesian church were primarily
gentile. Their drama differed slightly from their neighbors’ in that it involved merging
Jews and Gentiles together within the same congregation. How could God make
something new and different out of two people so separate and distinct?
Filled with more of Paul’s lofty prose, Ephesians emphasizes the reconciliation
between Jews and Gentiles in Christ, and gives instructions for Christian living.

Come Alive: Proverbs (Paperback)

Conversations with Scripture

Each book includes a daily reading, a daily insight and a daily reading prompt that will help you reflect on the text and build the skills to read the Bible for yourself with more confidence and understanding. Discover a new and unexpected way to engage with Scripture and experience the Bible not as a distant, confusing document, but as a living, breathing conversation between God and humanity that continues to speak into our ever-changing world.

This volume deals with the unexpected gems found in the well-known book of Proverbs.

Come Alive: Philippians & Colossians (Paperback)

Conversations with Scripture

Philippians and Colossians: on the surface, they are nice books filled with treasured
platitudes for encouragement, relationships, and life.

The great temptation for modern readers is to read these books just that way: as a
series of brilliant but disconnected sound bites.

But these two powerful letters are full of hidden treasures – treasures about who you are, who Jesus is, and why your identity can never be separated from His supremacy.

Set against the backdrop of the Roman world, where ideas were a dime a dozen, Come Alive: Philippians and Colossians will help you understand some of the false, competing claims that were being made about Jesus and remind you of the supreme joy of knowing Him: the Son of God and the only authority in heaven and on earth.

In these pages, you will:

 

• Uncover hidden treasures and see why these letters are so much more than a doctrinal statement or advice column
• Experience how Jesus exposes who we are so we can see who He really is
• Meet the quiet heroes of the early church and what they have to say about your role in the world
• Peel back the curtain on the lives of the first followers of Christ as they were working out the story of Jesus and the reality of their faith in real-time

Come Alive: Philippians and Colossians will invite you into the real-life drama and
humanity of the early church and help you see how your story and Jesus’s story
intersect today.

Come Alive: Ecclesiastes

Conversations with Scripture

What do you do when life hasn’t worked out like you thought it would?

Why do pleasure and privilege – the things we think should make us happy – so often come up empty?

Does life have meaning or is it a random accident, where contentment eludes us and we all meet the same fate?

Ecclesiastes is an unexpected piece of Scripture that asks these questions with beautiful, brutal honesty and gives us permission to wrestle with our own existence – without prescribing easy answers or requiring that we arrive at an “approved” conclusion.

Like a great song or piece of art, Ecclesiastes speaks to the range of human experience and emotion, reminds us we’re not alone, and proves that wisdom can be found even in the darkest of places.

Come Alive: Ecclesiastes will help you navigate this poetic, perplexing, and profound
book so you can:

• See beyond your Western “how to” lens and approach Ecclesiastes like the work of art it is
• Stop asking, “What am I supposed to do?” and start asking, “How do I feel?” when reading Scripture
• Identify where Solomon’s musings reflect distorted thinking and where they reveal truth about God
• Experience God as caring and empathetic, even in our struggles 

The fact that God inspired a book written in the middle of depression and despair reveals His great love for us: He is secure enough for our questions and compassionately meets us in our pain.

Ultimately, Ecclesiastes leaves us with hope that there is a purpose to every season, that life has meaning beyond our passions and attachments, and that everything is made beautiful in its time.