Holy Unhappiness : God, Goodness, And The Myth Of The Blessed Life
$27.00
What does it mean to be blessed? Are Christians entitled to happiness, fulfilment, and perfect peace? Holy Unhappiness explores these questions and challenges the false beliefs many in the church hold about “the good life” and what it means to walk in communion with God.
American Christians have developed a long list of expectations about what the life with God will feel like. Many Christians rightly deny the Prosperity Gospel–the idea that God wants you to be healthy and wealthy– but instead embrace its more subtle spin-off, the Emotional Prosperity Gospel, or the belief that God wants you to always experience happiness and fulfillment. Our society has become increasingly averse to sadness and emotional discomfort. Too often, people of faith assume that difficult feelings are a result of either God’s judgment or our own lack of spiritual maturity. Some even equate happiness with holiness.
In Holy Unhappiness, Amanda Held Opelt, author of A Hole in the World, grapples with her own experience of disillusionment when life didn’t go the way she expected. She examines some of the historic, religious, and cultural influences that led to the idolization of positive feelings and the marginalization of negative feelings. Unpacking nine elements of life that have been tainted by the message of the Emotional Prosperity Gospel – including work, marriage, parenting, calling, community, and church – she points to a new path forward, one that reimagines what the “blessed” life can be like if we release some of our expectations and seek God in places we never thought to look.
While Opelt acknowledges the dignity of desiring happiness, she ultimately pleads for the normalization of sadness, anger, grief, disappointment, and other uncomfortable feelings as a part of the Christian experience, making a case that there is holiness to be found even in our unhappiness.
in stock within 3-5 days of online purchase
SKU (ISBN): 9781546001928
ISBN10: 1546001921
Amanda Opelt
Binding: Cloth Text
Published: July 2023
Publisher: Worthy Publishing
Related products
-
Weight Of Glory
$16.99Add to cartSelected from sermons delivered by C. S. Lewis during World War II, these nine addresses show the beloved author and theologian bringing hope and courage in a time of great doubt. “The Weight of Glory,” considered by many to be Lewis’s finest sermon of all, is an incomparable explication of virtue, goodness, desire, and glory. Also included are “Transposition,” “On Forgiveness,” “Why I Am Not a Pacifist,” and “Learning in War-Time,” in which Lewis presents his compassionate vision of Christianity in language that is both lucid and compelling.
-
God For The Rest Of Us Pastors DVD Kit
$19.99Add to cartThe Pharisees called Jesus “a friend of sinners.” He took it as a compliment. Would you? In these resources, Pastor Vince Antonucci and his unusual church that reaches out to people on the Las Vegas Strip explore a powerful question: what if God is not just for the faithful, church-going, or holier-than-thou types – what if God is for the rest of us? This small group study expands viewpoints, overcomes stereotypes, and models how to really love people like Jesus does. The Pastor’s Kit includes everything needed to plan a six-week teaching series around the concepts presented in the Small Group Study. It includes:
Special video message for pastors
Video guide for implementing a church-wide program
Six sermon outlines
Six short video clips to accompany each week’s sermon
Six sermon bumpers (short video clips to introduce each week’s sermon)
Digital art files to use in creation of bulletins and other promo materials -
My Faith Confessions
$5.99Add to cartMy faith Confession is a colourfully illustrated confession book for children. It’s filled with Bible based confessions that will help children learn the importance of the principle of saying what God has said about them.
It’s a one-stop resource material that will inspire, sustain and build in children the culture of confession faith-filled words that would launch them into a glorious future. -
Abolition Of Man
$17.99Add to cartIn this graceful work, C. S. Lewis reflects on society and nature and the challenges of how best to educate our children. He eloquently argues that we need as a society to underpin reading and writing with lessons on morality and in the process both educate and re-educate ourselves. In the words of Walter Hooper, “If someone were to come to me and say that, with the exception of the Bible, everyone on earth was going to be required to read one and the same book, and then ask what it should be, I would with no hesitation say The Abolition of Man. It is the most perfectly reasoned defense of Natural Law (Morality) I have ever seen, or believe to exist. If any book is able to save us from future excesses of folly and evil, it is this book.” This beautiful paperback edition is sure to attract new readers to this classic book.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.