<ul>
<li>Logos Bookstores' 2015 Best Book in Spirituality/Devotional</li>
<li>2015 Christianity Today Book of the Year</li>
<li>Honorable Mention, 2014 Best Book of the Year from Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds Bookstore</li>
</ul> As Christians, we're squeamish about desire. Isn't wanting sinful and selfish? Aren't we supposed to find and follow God's will rather than insisting upon our own? The story of each person is a story of want―desires unmet, hopes dashed, passions pursued and ambitions fulfilled. Our wants cannot be ignored. But when desire is informed by Scripture and re-formed by our spiritual practices, it can root us more deeply in the fundamental belief that God is good and generous and can invite us into active kingdom participation. Jen Pollock Michel guides us on a journey of understanding who we are when we want, and reintroduces us to a God who gives us the desires of our hearts. That same good God calls us into a new reality in which we seek first his kingdom and righteousness, and we discover our disordered desires burned away while our truest longings are happily fulfilled and purified. The disciples asked Jesus to "Teach us to pray." This book asks, "Teach us to want."

Teach Us to Want: Longing, Ambition and the Life of Faith

Religion & Spirituality

Michel, Jen Pollock

Beaty, Katelyn

Christian Books & Bibles

In this five-session video companion to Teach Us to Want, Jen Pollock Michel guides us on a journey of understanding who we are when we want, and reintroduces us to a God who would give us the desires of our hearts. The story of each person is a story of want―desires unmet, hopes dashed, passions pursued and ambitions fulfilled. And yet why we want―and how we can want well―often eludes us. Our individual stories are set against a greater story: a good God creates us according to his good pleasure. That good God enters our reality and redeems us down to our soul for his good pleasure. And our desires have a role in the life of our faith. A free printable discussion guide to the DVD is available to download.

Teach Us to Want DVD

To be human is to long for home. Home is our most fundamental human longing. And for many of us homesickness is a nagging place of grief. This book connects that desire and disappointment with the story of the Bible, helping us to see that there is a homemaking God with wide arms of welcome―and a church commissioned with this same work. "Many of us seem to be recovering the sacred, if ordinary, beauty of place," writes author Jen Pollock Michel. "Perhaps we're reading along with Wendell Berry, falling in love with Berry's small-town barber and Jayber Crow's small-town life. . . . Or maybe we're simply reading our Bibles better, discovering that while we might wish to flatten Scripture to serve our didactic purposes, it rises up in flesh and sinew, muscle and bone: God's holy story is written in the lives of people and their places." Including a five-session discussion guide and paired with a companion DVD, Keeping Place offers hope to the wanderer, help to the stranded, and a new vision of what it means to live today with our longings for our eternal home.

Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home

Self-Help

Sauls, Scott

Happiness

To be human is to long for home. Home is our most fundamental human longing. And for many of us homesickness is a nagging place of grief. This five-session DVD study featuring author Jen Pollock Michel connects that desire and disappointment with the story of the Bible, helping us to see that there is a homemaking God with wide arms of welcome―and a church commissioned with this same work. Keeping Place offers hope to the wanderer, help to the stranded, and a new vision of what it means to live today with our longings for our eternal home. The companion book includes a five-session discussion guide that incorporates the DVD sessions.

Keeping Place DVD: Reflections on the Meaning of Home

IVP Books

<ul><li>Christianity Today's 2020 Book of the Year Award of Merit - The Beautiful Orthodoxy</li></ul>
What if certainty isn't the goal? In a world filled with ambiguity, many of us long for a belief system that provides straightforward answers to complex questions and clarity in the face of confusion. We want faith to act like an orderly set of truth-claims designed to solve the problems and pain that life throws at us. With signature candor and depth, Jen Pollock Michel helps readers imagine a Christian faith open to mystery. While there are certainties in Christian faith, at the heart of the Christian story is also paradox. Jesus invites us to abandon the polarities of either and or in order to embrace the difficult, wondrous dissonance of and. The incarnation―the paradox of God made human―teaches us to look for God in the and of body and spirit, heaven and earth. In the kingdom, God often hides in plain sight and announces his triumph on the back of a donkey. In the paradox of grace, we receive life eternal by actively participating in death. And lament, with its clear-eyed appraisal of suffering alongside its commitment to finding audience with God, is a paradoxical practice of faith. Each of these themes give us certainty about God while also leading us into greater curiosity about his nature and activity in the world. As Michel writes, "As soon as we think we have God figured out, we will have ceased to worship him as he is." With personal stories and reflection on Scripture, literature, and culture, Michel takes us deeper into mystery and into worship of the One who is Mystery and Love.

Surprised by Paradox: The Promise of "And" in an Either-Or World

Ramsey, Russ

Product Description 
Belonging has never come easy to me. Growing up, there was my mutated national identity to deal with―my not-quite-American, not-quite-Indonesian soul, restless in both countries. Later, when I came out as a celibate gay Christian, I found I didn't fit into the church as easily as I used to. I've often wondered what it means to belong to others even when I can't manage to blend in with them. The way Jesus tells it, if we give up on belonging in order to follow him, we'll find ourselves belonging anyway. We might not belong the way other people do, with normal homes and normal families and normal ways of fitting in. But we'll belong in a way that's a hundred times better. We'll be fully in place because we know we are out of place. We'll belong like aliens. Maybe you're caught in the same tension as me, wanting to fit somewhere even as you're permanently out of place. Maybe you feel like an alien. If so, let's be aliens together. 
 Review 
"Greg Coles has become one of the most important voices in the church. I can't express how grateful I am for him and for this book. No Longer Strangers is another home run―showing us a creative, bold, and intrepid way forward in following Jesus in a gray world. I commend him to you. And his melodic book." -- A. J. Swoboda, author of After Doubt, assistant professor of Bible and theology at Bushnell University, Eugene, Oregon\n"Equal parts delightful and sobering, Greg Coles relates his experience of being a third-culture kid to the alienness of the Christian life. Self-deprecating without victimizing himself for all the ways he's felt different or out of place, he levels the ground for all of us who have always felt a little extra or a lot not enough. Come for the stories, and leave with a bit more hope for the future church and all the different ways Christ draws us in and sends us out." -- Lore Ferguson Wilbert, author of Handle with Care: How Jesus Redeems the Power of Touch in Life and Ministry\n"When I finished reading No Longer Strangers I thought that all of my friends should read this book, because in its pages they will find a friend in Greg, hope for the church, and true belonging with Friend and Lover, Jesus Christ." -- Laurie Krieg, podcaster, teacher, and coauthor of An Impossible Marriage: What Our Mixed-Orientation Marriage Has Taught Us About Love and the Gospel\n"Greg’s book is most 'delightful,' to use one of his often-used expressions. I enjoyed reading about his quest for belonging through various friendships, among his peers, families, with his God, or his church community. His skills in adjusting to his environment, a third-culture-kid characteristic, is key in his crossing various cultural bridges. Like most TCKs, Greg is a gem of a friend. His writings reveal his pursuit of being authentic and vulnerable while honoring his Indonesian roots, celibate gay Christian core, and wonderful sense of humor. What a delightful book!" -- Lois J. Bushong, licensed marriage and family therapist and author of Belonging Everywhere and Nowhere\n"Simply superb. Theologically excellent. Deeply personal. Brutally honest. Intensely engaging. Coles's writing is simply exquisite. He moves from vivid description of personal experience to profound theological reflection with the ease of an exceptionally gifted writer. A must-read." -- Ron Sider, distinguished professor emeritus of theology, holistic ministry, and public policy, Palmer Seminary at Eastern University, author of Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger\n"Structured around compelling narrative, No Longer Strangers is a story of the human quest for acceptance and belonging. Greg Coles, in his winsome and honest way, takes all of us on a journey to discover the places, the people, and the God in whom and to whom we all belong." -- Deb Hirsch, missional leader and author of Redeeming Sex: Naked Conversations About Sexuality and Spirituality\n"Greg Coles is one of the most talented Christian writers

No Longer Strangers: Finding Belonging in a World of Alienation

Coles, Gregory

Does it feel like no matter where you look or what the issue is, everyone seems to be fighting about everything? &nbsp; We live in the information age, with more access to knowledge than ever before, flowing to us in a never-ending digital stream of updates, statistics, polls, opinions, news, and narratives from those on opposing sides of any issue. And while we'd assume this influx of information would help us find a good, informed way forward in our culture, it actually stirs up all sorts of anger, anxiety, and even loneliness.&nbsp;This all contributes to an increasingly defensive society that feels like it's not only fracturing, but could go up in flames at any moment. &nbsp; If you're anything like the contributors to&nbsp;World on Fire,&nbsp;you've realized that all this knowledge isn't the same thing as wisdom. While our world relies on expected, reflexive, status-quo, earthly wisdom to make a way forward or take a side on any given issue,&nbsp;Christ would rather us rely on his unexpected, counterintuitive, going-against-the- grain, heavenly wisdom as outlined in his famous Beatitudes.&nbsp;This surprising wisdom is not a call to be removed from the fire we feel blazing around us, but one to engage and tame it--beginning with our own hearts. &nbsp; Whatever those nearest you seem to be arguing about today, and no matter what the fire looks like in your neck of the woods, Jesus has an answer for the ways his kingdom citizens should walk as they navigate the flames in his power and posture. In their own unique voice and in their own unique way, each contributor in World on Fire welcomes you to&nbsp;come explore not only some of the polarizing issues of our day, but how the unexpected wisdom of Jesus might help us be more discerning and Christlike amidst them.&nbsp;

World on Fire: Walking in the Wisdom of Christ When Everyone’s Fighting About Everything

Holmes, Jasmine L.

Edwards, Jada

Woodson, Elizabeth

Anderson, Hannah

Gilson, Rachel

Gorman, Ashley Marivittori

McLaughlin, Rebecca

Wiley, Mary

B&H Books

A Habit Called Faith: 40 Days in the Bible to Find and Follow Jesus

About the Author\nJen Pollock Michel is the award-winning author of Teach Us to Want, Keeping Place, Surprised by Paradox, and A Habit Called Faith. She holds a BA in French from Wheaton College and an MA in Literature from Northwestern University, and she is also a student in Seattle Pacific's MFA program. Jen is a wife and mother of five and hosts the Englewood Review of Books podcast.\n"Award-winning author and speaker casts a vision for the transformative nature of habits, inviting you to embark on a 40-day experience of reading the Bible to establish rhythms of faith, deepening and inspiring your walk with Christ"--

Baker Books

In Good Time

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Books by Michel, Jen Pollock