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Living the Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel the Main Thing | 
 enlarge | Author: C.j. Mahaney
Publisher: Multnomah Books
Category: Book
List Price: $13.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 12501
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 176
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 1590525787
Dewey Decimal Number: 248.4
EAN: 9781590525784
ASIN: 1590525787
Publication Date: January 19, 2006
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Product Description
What Really Matters
Have the extremities taken over and left the core of your faith forgotten? Do you get confused by what you feel versus what is real? Let dynamic pastor C. J. Mahaney strip away the nonessentials and bring you back to the simplest, most fundamental reason for your faith: Jesus Christ. This book is packed with powerful truth that will grip your heart, clear your mind, and invigorate your soul. Chapters include “Breaking the Rules of Legalism,” “The Cross Centered Day,” and “Assurance and Joy.” Get ready to behold a breathtaking view of what God intends to accomplish in and through you every day. You’ll discover how embracing this cross centered life is both our highest privilege and greatest responsibility.
Banner:
Combines the C. J. Mahaney favorites The Cross Centered Life and Christ Our Mediator with new material.
His Gift, Your Hope
Do you desire more passion for Jesus Christ? Return to the very essence of your faithathe cross of Christ. Here, the deepest truths of Calvary will stir your passion for Him into an unquenchable fire.
“Never lay it aside. Never move on,” says C. J. Mahaney, who shows you how to center every day around the life-giving reality of the gospel and how to escape the pitfalls of legalism, condemnation, and feelings-driven faith.
One center, countless radical changes.
“Every Timothy needs a Paul. C. J. Mahaney is mineaand this book contains his life-message. Read it yourself, and let God realign your life.”
Joshua Harris
Pastor and bestselling author
“With tenderness and power, C. J. illustrates the critical difference between snacking on the benefits of the cross and surveying the wonders of the cross. This is a must and magisterial read!”
Scotty Smith, senior pastor, Christ Community Church
Franklin, Tennessee
Story Behind the Book
C. J. Mahaney’s The Cross Centered Life and Christ Our Mediator are life-changing books whose unique messages are even more powerful when combined. Living the Cross Centered Life is a careful melding of these two books with new content as well. For readers who have not yet discovered the stand-alone books, or for Mahaney fans ready to cherish their favorites in a new package, this book is sure to become a treasured classic.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
Life Changing. July 19, 2008
This book will change your life. If you have ever wondered how to keep proper Christian perspective, this book is your answer. No fancy formulas, no secret codes, nothing silly. It gives you a single truth (the most important truth, the Gospel truth) to apply to your life in any situation. The book then makes a biblical case for this position, and then gives you amazing ammunition for practical application of this truth in every situation in your life.
It will not steer you wrong. If you are thinking about buying it, stop thinking. It is worth every penny. I recommend it to all my Christian friends, and family, and it would also be an amazing book for non-Christians.
Once you start you wont put it down. It is gripping, easy to read, and at the same time, PACKED with life changing words. CJ is so compassionate, so real. He is your friend and he meets you where you are with beautiful truth that will change you forever.
Making Christ and His Work Preeminent in Our Lives August 10, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Fourteen tight chapters that extol the power, grace, and love of the cross ... Mahaney's book wants nothing less than the cross of Christ at the core of our beings. In theology and in practice, in faith and in works, in putting on Christ and putting off sin, the gospel must take center stage. "If there's anything in life we should be passionate about, it's the gospel...passionate in thinking about the gospel, reflecting upon it, rejoicing in it, allowing it to color the way we look at the world and all of life" (15). The book exudes with Mahaney's characteristic vigor. It is exuberant without being mindless. It's passion is rooted in a deep, biblical understanding of the gospel. It's only right then that begins the book (chapter 2 to be exact) with a meditation on investing Scripture with final authority rather than one's emotions. He proceeds with characteristic wisdom when he writes, "But if you trust your feelings first and foremost, if you exalt your feelings, if you invest your feelings with final authority--they'll deposit you on the emotional roller coaster which so often characterizes our lives" (36).
The majority of the book resonates with various subthemes of the major theme. He moves from a moving exposition of the Suffering Servant in Isa 53 all the way to the unfathomable loneliness of the Savior hanging on the cross at the end of His earthly life. Along the path, he explicates the wrath of a holy God against sin, the utter depravity of mankind, the necessity of blood-sacrifice by the God-man, and the soul-shattering obedience and love of Christ in drinking fully the cup of His Father's fierce wrath. I can honestly say that I was moved at each turn. Mahaney captivates our attention through well-placed quotes from other authors, concisely packaged dense theology, and frequent reminders of the love of God in the gospel. The last feature really balances the argument of the book.
When Mahaney gets to the cross and our lives, he doesn't disappoint. The "me" element of the cross is sin. He writes of who he identifies with the most on Golgotha: "I identify most with the angry mob screaming, 'Crucify Him!' That's who we should all identify with. Because apart from God's grace, this is where we would all be standing, and we're only flattering ourselves to think otherwise" (87). He strongly applies the cross to our sufferings with the result that assurance and joy overflow in our lives no matter what the circumstance. He also manages to tackle legalism and self-condemnation, two joy-robbing, cross-undermining sins that are quickly dispatched (but not with any sense of ease or casualness) with reminders as to the objective realities of the cross and our basic need to believe in what Christ has done. The simplicity of these chapters only elevates our responsibility to indulge ourselves in every aspect of Christ's death.
The penultimate chapter is the most practical. In it, he shares five simple ways that he's used to draw near to the cross each day. The five ways are:
(1) Memorize the Gospel
(2) Pray the Gospel
(3) Sing the Gospel
(4) Review How the Gospel Has Changed You
(5) Study the Gospel
Even here, in a chapter about our practice of the gospel, he ends with the reminder that apart from the empowering grace of the Holy Spirit, these five ways would be merely human deeds.
C.J. Mahaney, as always, is frank. He tells it like it is, especially about himself. The last chapter begins with the Christian equivalent of a smack: "I was smoking pot the first time I heard the gospel." His forthrightness about himself and his own sins don't detract from the message. They serve to enhance it. Such humility puts flesh and blood on what could otherwise be a very dry tome on the centrality of the cross to the Christian life. Instead, we are treated to a rich feast of devotional warmth, practical wisdom, and impassionateed urgency. May we never move on from the cross. May we move only deeper into its glories.
Great Gospel Book May 13, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a book that is focused on the gospel. An easy read but does not sacrifice doctrinal clarity and orthodoxy. This is a great alternative to the "new" emerging Christian messages. Chapters on legalism and condemnation are particularly powerful. Great read for new Christians and Christians needing to kneel at the cross anew.
Put some passion and heart behind your theology May 7, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As a guy whose denomination tends to be very doctrinally oriented, this book is a tremendous breath of gospel fresh air. It's one thing to give a textbook definition for "justification", etc. It's another thing entirely to have one's heart opened to the implications of Christ's finished work on the Cross. This book will help you to appreciate and love Christ more. Please read it; cry occasionally; repent; and rise to embrace the Cross of Christ each day of your life. This book will transform you.
Great work... May 2, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is truly a great one as C.J. Mahaney brings it all back to the cross. A lot of this book includes previous works, "The Cross Centered Life" and "Christ Our Mediator." I also had just listened to C.J.'s sermon from the 2005 Resolved Conference called "Interrogating the Legalist Within" so most of this was review. But if you have yet to read or listen to these, please pick this little book up, you will not be disappointed.
C.J. continues to bring out the cross in everything in this dissertation of the cross centered life. C.J. goes into understanding the cross in defining our lives, feelings (experience), God's love, Gethsemane, our part in the cross (sin), our suffering, legalism, condemnation (with much more) and then just the practical application.
C.J. gives five practical ways to live a cross centered life:
1. Memorize the Gospel: Memorize those scriptures that remind us of the gospel (2 Cor 5:21; Romans 8:31-34; Isaiah 53:3-6)
2. Pray the Gospel: Since the Gospel is the reason we can approach such a holy God, continue to pray the Gospel as a reminder of why you can speak to such an awesome God.
3. Sing the Gospel: Find songs and CD's whose focus in on the great and glorious Gospel and not on man. Those songs that concentrate on what He has done for us.
4. Review How the Gospel Has Changed You: Looking to your past, not for condemnation's sake, but for the reminder of mercy and grace
5. Study the Gospel: Don't only study books on the Gospel or only on the New Testament, but study the Old Testament and see Christ's fulfillment of It. Making sure that our studies don't leave the Gospel behind but builds itself upon It.
I would really recommend this to any and all Christians. Great reminders of how the Cross should impact our lives and how it has freed us from condemnation and the errors of legalism.
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