An Answered Prayer

God's love is astounding

by Michael T. McCrocklin


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Softcover
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Softcover
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Book Details

Language : English
Publication Date : 12/13/2005

Format : Softcover
Dimensions : 6x9
Page Count : 212
ISBN : 9781420844566

About the Book

What if God got tired waiting for the world to become more loving? What if God saw little hope of traditional Christianity, the Bible, or any existing religion or philosophy managing to make the world adequately loving? What if God decided to say something more about love and to put it into contemporary language? How would God proceed? What would God say?

It seems likely that God would speak to persons in prayer, intending for one or more of them to convey the message to others. It is a time-honored practice fraught with challenges, errors, and limitations. To believe that it can happen is to believe that God exists, that God cares about human beings, and that God answers prayer, all basic tenets of Christianity. It would be helpful to believe that God was not and could not have been captured for all time in the words of the past nor even in the words of the present.

God answered the author''s prayer and, in a startling message, emphasized the preeminence of love and expressed love''s radical nature. God insisted on equality of worth of men and women, validated sexuality, spoke to love-centered Christians about making churches more loving, redefined issues of wealth and power, warned of abuse by organizations, and supported, welcomed, and accepted homosexuals and bisexuals without insisting upon change or chastity.

Believers in exile; those frustrated or disappointed in the church; those who never found a religion or a church worth their time; those who value heterosexuality, bisexuality, or homosexuality; those who trust in science; those who never found a model or message of God worth commitment; and those who are committed to love - all those will appreciate God''s message.

What if human life could be improved by love? Would the message not be worth attention?


About the Author

Dr. McCrocklin earned his A.B. in psychology from Dartmouth College, M.S. in family life education and Ph.D. in marriage and family therapy from Purdue University, and Master of Public Administration from the University of Tennessee.

What is not apparent but important to his story is the fact that he was a religion major at Dartmouth for a couple of years, taking every available ethics class. He had been raised in the Disciples of Christ denomination and thought he wanted to be a pastor. He believed in God but could not reconcile the God of hatred and the God of love that he found in the Bible. He had a crisis of faith at Dartmouth that forced him away from the church for 20 years but drove him relentlessly to reexamine his understanding of philosophy and religion. He lost his faith in God and put his trust in science and love. He valued love above all else and strove to understand love as a psychological, social, cultural, biological, philosophical, and therapeutic concept.

As all of that was underway, he finished his education, adopted a critical stance toward Christianity, and pursued his career, the majority of which he devoted to treatment programs for sex offenders. He created a theory of ethics that he called the moral gift and applied it to the offenders in his programs. After finding a path that might lead back to God and holding God to be love, he reentered the church. He was becoming convinced that, if God exists, God must be love and love alone. He prayed a great deal to try to connect with the God of Love, but the effort seemed largely fruitless until, one day, his prayer was answered in a spiritual reawakening. The book reveals the answer.