Ministers struggle to find new and captivating angles on the stories that have been told and retold for centuries. The rest of us just struggle to find some meaning amid all the sensationalism that typically surrounds these holy days. The author offers some hope for both the preacher and the listener. Beginning with the season of Advent, Dant guides us to Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter and Pentecost. Added to these prominent holy days are sermons and thoughts for national holidays. The lessons and insights tucked into these pages would be welcomed on any day of your life. The nature of these meditations is rooted in the author's personal background. His faith is even broader, as he was born to a Jewish mother, christened into the Roman Catholic church, adopted as a young student into a Baptist family and educated at a Presbyterian seminary. It is from that rich background that he shares these stories and sermons with us.

The Truth Is Sensational Enough: Meditations for the Church Year (Mercer Church Resources)

Religion & Spirituality

Dant, Jim

Dant, James C.

Worship & Devotion

Mercer University Press

Each year, over 75,000 pairs of feet find their way along the nine miles of pathway that cuts through the fourteen hundred acres of the Ocmulgee Heritage Trail in Macon, Georgia. As the only riverside trail and park system in Middle Georgia, it provides a perfect setting for walking, running, bird-watching, biking and enjoying many of Macon's historic treasures like: Rose Hill Cemetery and the Ocmulgee Heritage Monument. While an obvious setting for recreation, author Jim Dant and photographer Mark Strozier have also found the trail to be a natural sanctuary for contemplation and prayer. This small book moves the reader - meditation by meditation - along the trail. Beginning at Gateway Park and journeying north to Jackson Springs Park, the reader is given opportunity, at recognizable sites, to stop, rest and reflect upon many of life's significant blessings and challenges.

Pray the Trail: A Contemplative Walk on the Ocmulgee Heritage Trail

The Brainstorm Lab

It is almost guaranteed. Most of us know someone who is struggling with the disease of addiction. Friends and family members who find themselves journeying with an addict are on a difficult path. No one is immune. Even pastors. It was during Jim Dant's fifteen-year tenure as pastor of Highland Hills Baptist Church in Macon, Georgia that one of his children fell prey to the disease of addiction. Jim came face to face with his pastoral, parental, and human limitations. As his child began a struggle for sobriety, this father began a struggle for serenity. Both began 12 Step Programs, and three years into his child's recovery, Jim found the strength to share his gleanings in the form of a series of sermons preached to his congregation, and included in this book. Within and between every line of the sermons are the experience, strength and hope that Jim found in his journey through the valley of the shadow of addiction. May they bring the same to you as you make your journey. Jim Dant is the married father of three grown daughters. After serving as a pastor for almost thirty years, in February 2012 he began working as a partner at Faithlab writing, leading retreats and conferences, and providing spiritual direction for individuals. In his leisure, he enjoys music, dabbling in Hebrew, playing Texas Hold 'em poker and training for triathlons.

One Pastor, Twelve Steps: Preaching My Way Through the Valley of the Shadow of Addiction

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Addiction & Recovery

Faithlab

Finding Your Voice: How to Speak Your Heart's True Faith

Answers offered by the most religiously conservative among us frequently sound too narrow. Questions asked by those outside the faith seem broad and unmoored. As thoughtful Christians, we often find it difficult to talk about our faith because at one extreme we're met with simplistic truths and at the other extreme complex wonderings. In Finding Your Voice, Jim Dant offers the thinking Christian a manageable and credible faith language. While respecting the evangelical language of his childhood and those who gave it to him, Jim addresses and offers fresh language regarding the issues of: God, Scripture, Jesus, Salvation, the church, the world, and more. He provides a language for the things we believe but are not quite sure how to say. Jim takes us to his childhood home and introduces us to the language offered him by his faith community. He gives an honest accounting of that faith and, with an extreme dose of humanity and trust, shares with us how that faith has changed. The result is a language that makes sense both in and out of church. Whether you agree or disagree with Jim's conclusions, you are invited into a conversation and perhaps the discovery of your own voice.

Christian Books & Bibles

Most of us don't live our lives from one sparkly mountain top moment to the next. We aren't skipping through our days holding God's hand as doves coo and rainbows flash across the sky to the beat of Amazing Grace. Yet the Psalmist insists that God is always there beside us. If we really believe that, shouldn't we keep an eye out for God? Search the grimy corners as well as the flowery meadows? Scan the aisles of Walmart and the soccer field, the cubicle and the laundry room? In What's a Nice God Like You Doing in a Place Like This? Jim Dant and Becky Ramsey mine their lives for the divine and, lucky for us, find God's fingerprints all over their days. Read along as they spot God in muddy knees and kidney stones, at poker tables and chemistry class, in the words of a homeless grandmother and a rock star. As you walk with them through a year of holy surprises, Dant and Ramsey hope you'll join in the fun, frisking your own life for God's sacred presence. You may even find yourself asking the question, What's a Nice God Like You Doing in a Place Like This? Follow the authors' lead and listen to God speak through the holy souvenirs he's dropped in your lap, whispering, "You are my beloved. How could I be anywhere else?"

What's a Nice God Like You Doing in a Place Like This?: A Completely Unorthodox Devotional Guide

Ramsey, Becky

Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so. These words may ring hollow in the ears of a member of the LGBTQ community. They learned the tune as children. They memorized the words. They delighted in the idea of being cherished by God and guarded by scripture. But somewhere along the way, someone in the church turned the Bible into a weapon and Jesus into an inaccessible friend. Many of the LGBTQ people I've come to know have had to learn to trust this song again. They've had to be reintroduced to the Jesus who loves them and to the Bible that guards them. I want my LGBTQ brothers and sisters to know, Jesus loves them and the Bible says no different.
You owe no assailant a thorough explanation of your beliefs. Most of your critics could not provide a cohesive theological explanation of their beliefs beyond, "There's a verse in the Bible that says..." Second, they are not in conversation with you to be convinced of anything themselves. It is not a true dialogue. They are not thinking. They are simply protecting their ideas, dogma, and personal fears from the intrusion of grace. Sadly, people who fail to offer grace have rarely allowed themselves to enjoy the full measure of grace afforded them. In the end they are trying to condemn or convince you. So use these arguments if you wish, or simply hold them close and sing with confidence, "Jesus loves me; this I know. For the Bible tells me so."

This I Know: A Simple Biblical Defense for LGBTQ Christians

Nurturing Faith Inc.

I am not an authority on the practice of yoga. I am, in many ways, deciding to be the proverbial blind leading the blind. I am a beginner offering insight to other beginners. I am a novice sharing my embryonic experiences and pitifully sophomoric thoughts in order to get you past whatever anxieties and fears you hold with regard to yoga. Some may seem simple: What equipment do I need? How will I ever learn the poses? Will my body really do that? Other concerns may be deeper: Will this conflict with my faith? Do I have to be vegan? How will yoga affect my life? I am making the assumption that my experience and subsequent thoughts will naturally address the mental and physical obstacles that have kept you from entering the yoga world, your local yoga studio, or your community center's yoga class. Some fellow novices will be astounded by the depth of my knowledge and commitment after having only practiced for one year. Longtime practitioners of yoga will probably smile and roll their eyes at my ignorance and naivete. Both reactions will be expressions of truth. I want this book to be informative and fun. I want you to laugh with me and at me. I will transparently expose my worries, missteps, and fumbles so that you can either avoid them or fall fearlessly into them. I would suggest the latter. I'll admit it: I want to entice you into a world-no, into a way of being in the world-that makes the world a better place for all of us.

Namaste, Newbie!

Nurturing Faith

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dant, Jim. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Dant, Jim

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dant, Jim. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Truth Is Sensational Enough: Meditations for the Church Year (Mercer Church Resources)

Pray the Trail: A Contemplative Walk on the Ocmulgee Heritage Trail

One Pastor, Twelve Steps: Preaching My Way Through the Valley of the Shadow of Addiction

Finding Your Voice: How to Speak Your Heart's True Faith

Finding Your Voice: How to Speak Your Heart's True Faith

What's a Nice God Like You Doing in a Place Like This?: A Completely Unorthodox Devotional Guide

This I Know: A Simple Biblical Defense for LGBTQ Christians

Namaste, Newbie!