What's So Amazing About Grace? Study Guide [Paperback]

Phillip Yancey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1998

We speak of grace often. But do we understand it? More important, do we truly believe in it . . . and do our lives proclaim it as powerfully as our words? In What's So Amazing About Grace?, award-winning author Philip Yancey explores grace at street level. If grace is God's love for the undeserving, he asks, then what does it look like in action? And if Christians are its sole dispensers, then how are we doing at lavishing grace on a cruel and pain-filled world? In fourteen sessions, this study guide will help you to interact deeply with Yancey's most personal and provocative book yet. If you're willing to leave your comfort zone to embrace a more vigorous, passionate Christianity -- read on. And prepare to grapple with grace and 'un-grace' on a personal level. You'll consider how you can contend graciously with today's tough moral issues. And you'll discover how you can become Christ's answer to a world that desperately wants to know, What's So Amazing About Grace?

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Award-winning author Philip Yancey has a way of toppling convention and getting at the truth. In What's So Amazing About Grace?, he turns his gift for inquiry to that most basic of all Christian tenets--grace. Grace is the church's great gift to the world, says Yancey. But do Christians really understand grace--and if we do, then why do we experience and show so little of it? Yancey sets grace in the midst of life's stark, often brutal realities to help readers discover the power of God's unrelenting love for sinners. This study guide will help readers apply the discoveries and challenges contained in Yancey's newest and most personal book.

From the Author

Philip Yancey serves as editor at Large for Christianity Today magazine. His books The Jesus I Never Knew and What's So Amazing About Grace? were national best-sellers appearing on both the Publisher's Weekly and ECPA lists. Both books also won the Gold Medallion Book of the Year Award. Yancey has written eight Gold Medallion Award-winning books, including Where Is God When it Hurts? Disappointment with God, and The Gift of Pain. He co-edited The Student Bible, which also won a Gold Medallion Award. He and his wife live in Colorado.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan; Stg edition (March 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310219043
• ISBN-13: 978-0310219040
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #62,860 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #5 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Theology > Soteriology
  • #6 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Reference > Criticism & Interpretation

More About the Author

I worked for 10 years as an Editor and then Publisher for Campus Life magazine. There I learned journalistic skills (there's no tougher audience than teenagers), but every year it seemed I wrote fewer and fewer words. In 1980 my wife Janet and I moved to downtown Chicago where I began a career as a freelance writer. (She has worked as a social worker and hospice chaplain--which gives me plenty of material to write about!) We lived there until 1992, when we moved to the foothills of Colorado. I've written around 20 books, most of them still in print, thankfully. Three of them I coauthored with Dr. Paul Brand, who influenced me more than any single person. My own favorites are "Soul Survivor" and "Reaching for the Invisible God" because both of them forced me to dig deep and get personal. I'm a pilgrim, still "in recovery" from a bad church upbringing, searching for a faith that makes its followers larger and not smaller. I feel overwhelming gratitude that I can make a living writing about the questions that interest me.

Please visit my website at www.philipyancey.com for more information, essays, events, travel notes, and a blog.

There is also an official Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/PhilipYancey?v=wall

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book changed my life, December 14, 2000

By 

K. West (Little Rock, AR USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What's So Amazing About Grace? Study Guide (Paperback)

This book really did change my life by forcing me to look at the world around me and how I react to it as a Christian. Since reading this book, I have felt personally challenged to convey God's grace to others, particularly those that are "different" from myself. I think this is the best Christian book out right now and I have already given it as a gift to several friends and family members. If you are a Christian and have become discouraged by the negative reaction to Christians by non-Christians, read this book and help me start to change those stereotypes.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wish I had read this book twenty years ago, April 24, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Hamilton NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What's So Amazing About Grace? Study Guide (Paperback)

Why is it, Yancey asks, that those who are loudest in preaching the gospel of grace exhibit so little grace in their own lives? Christians are called to be like their Lord, who came not "to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance," but today's churches often act more like the Pharisees whom Jesus rebuked so severely. Yancey does not attempt to explain or excuse such unChristlike behavior, but rather invites us to join him in receiving God's amazing grace. Grace, Yancey tells us, means that "there is nothing we can do to make God love us more." Yet at the same time "there is nothing we can do to make God love us less." Yancey explores the implications of these statements not with theological discussions, but in stories. He finds examples of grace in literary works such as Les Miserables and Babette's Feast, as well as in countless anecdotes from a variety of sources, including his own experience. Jesus' own parables, so familiar to those of us with a church background, are suddenly alive with provocative meanings, bursting with hope, challenging what we thought we knew Jesus was saying. I have heard sermons and read books on the topic of grace, but never has it come so vividly to life as in the stories that Yancey weaves into every page of this book. I wish I had read this book twenty years ago, although at the time I might not have been ready to hear God's message of grace spoken through Philip Yancey. Like Yancey, I spent years in churches that preached grace but practiced legalism, even while they decried the legalistic tendencies in others. Many people observe this deplorable lack of grace among evangelical Christians, and conclude that it is Christianity that is defective. Yancey affirms the message of grace and hope central to Christianity, while sadly acknowledging the failure of Christians to follow the example of grace-full living of their Lord. This is not a book to read quickly. It is easy reading as far as the reading goes, but it asks hard questions and Yancey does not pretend to have all the answers. Christians talk about forgiveness, but does forgiveness extend to a murderer like Jeffrey Dahmer? To the Nazis who massacred Jews in the concentration camps? What does grace mean for those living in Bosnia or Northern Ireland or South Africa ... or in the United States? Each story Yancey tells is a nugget of grace, revealing the darkness hidden within us, and the brighter light of the Gospel that alone can dispel the darkness.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Here's What's Amazing about Grace, May 2, 2000

By 

Pamela B. Garrud "seeker963" (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What's So Amazing About Grace? Study Guide (Paperback)

How can I add anything to all the rave reviews of this book? Why does everyone love it so much? Two reasons: the fact of God's grace and the fact that Yancey conveys that grace in a well-written book that is moving and touching. Yancey -- praise the Lord! -- is one conservative Christian who understands that Christianity is about God's love and forgiveness and not about a wrathful, rule-enforcing God who forgives grudgingly. And Yancey has a way of conveying this message with art and feeling. I have already bought multiple copies of this book to give to friends. I consider it a must-read for anyone looking for God's love.