The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives
Everyone who gets discouraged and thinks they will never live up to God's expectations—or even their own expectations—should read The Spirit of the Disciplines. Dallas first discusses "The Secret of the Easy Yoke," and then sets about laying a theological foundation for practicing the spiritual disciplines. Next he lists and briefly discusses the the disciplines, dividing them into two categories: Disciplines of Abstinence and Disciplines of Engagement. Finally, he considers the relationships of poverty and power to the disciplines.

It has been ten years since The Spirit of the Disciplines was first published. In the intervening years it has become required reading for students in numerous seminaries and has provided help

and insight to thousands of Christians, including me.

The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God
I hope that Richard and I are not starting to sound like "broken records" in our promotion of The Divine Conspiracy, but we want to emphasize its importance. Let me make almost as bold a statement as does Richard in the Foreword: If the insights in The Divine Conspiracy were taken to heart by its readers, the Kingdom Among Us, the kingdom of God would become real to the entire population of the world within a few short years.

Can we afford not to take Dallas's insights seriously? Maybe you can, but I can not.
—Lynda L. Graybeal

In Search of Guidance

This book is written for those who already believe there is a personal God, present throughout our world and concerned about what becomes of us. It does not attempt to prove that there is such a God, though what it says may help open-minded people find him for themselves.

The main point is that God has created us for intimate friendship with himself, both now and forever. This is the Christian viewpoint. . . . As with close personal relationships in general, we may count on God to speak to each of us when and as it is appropriate. . . .

Our strategy will be to take the highest and best type of communication and guidance we know of from human affairs. We then place these in the even brighter light of the person and teaching of Jesus Christ. In this way we arrive at our model, or "ideal picture," of what divine guidance is meant to be.

To take this picture seriously is to exclude all tricks, mechanical formulas, and gimmickry for "finding out what God wants me to do." Indeed the intent here is to make it clear that the subject of divine guidance simply cannot be successfully treated in terms of what God wants us to do if that automatically excludes, as is usually assumed, what we want to do, and even what we want God to do.