He is risen indeed!

Easter Sunday is the holiest day of the year, a day when even those who don't usually observe the Christian calendar or attend liturgical churches greet each other with the proclamation Christ is risen!

But Easter is more than a day--it's a season even longer than Lent. In fact, for the Christian who has died with Christ and been brought to life in him, Easter is the new, joyous, and radical way of living. The world is turned upside down. In this short volume, priest and New Testament scholar Wesley Hill explores the history and significance of the season of Easter for the church and for our own spiritual formation.

This volume of the Fullness of Time series offers readers

• An accessible, digestible introduction to the history and practice of the season of Easter,
• Practical application of the Scriptural story and theology of Easter to our own spiritual formation, and
• A helpful contextualization of the Easter season into the context of the rest of the church calendar.

About the Series

Each volume in the Fullness of Time series invites readers to engage with the riches of the church year, exploring the traditions, prayers, Scriptures, and rituals of the seasons of the church calendar.

You pray it. But do you understand it?

The Lord's Prayer has become so familiar to us that we don't think about what we're praying. It's a portrait of Jesus' heart. And in it Christians from different times, places, and traditions have been united. We pray it, but do we actually believe it?

When Jesus taught his followers how to pray, he emphasized how uncomplicated it should be. There's no need for pretense or theatrics. Instead, simply ask for what you need as though you were speaking with your earthly father. This opens a window into Jesus' prayer life and presents us with a portrait of his heart for his followers.

Wesley Hill re-introduces the Lord's Prayer. He shows us a God who is delighted to hear prayer. Petition by petition, in conversation with the Christian tradition, he draws out the significance of Jesus' words for prayer today.

Wesley Hill's personal experiences and biblical reflections offer insight into how a nonpracticing gay Christian can prove, live out, and celebrate the grace of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.

For many who are on this path, it's a lonely one. The reality of loneliness and isolation of the celibate homosexual Christian is something that Hill lives and takes seriously in his pursuit of the gospel-centered life. To those on a similar journey, it's often a life of uncertainties and questions.

In Washed and Waiting, Hill explores the three main struggles that have been part of his daily effort to live faithfully:

• What exactly does the gospel demand of gay and lesbian Christians, and how can it enable them to fulfill its commands?
• How do Christians who experience homoerotic desires live with the loneliness such desires entail? Is there any relief for it? What comfort does the gospel offer?
• Can those of us who struggle with homosexuality please God and truly experience his pleasure in the midst of sexual brokenness?

Interspersed throughout these main sections are character sketches and stories of people who have experienced this journey's trials and triumphs.

Hill offers wise counsel that is biblically faithful, theologically serious, and oriented to the life and practice of the church. As a celibate gay Christian, he gives us a glimpse of what it looks like to wrestle firsthand with God's No to same-sex sexual intimacy and contemplate serious and difficult questions.

Do your twenties feel restless? You're not the first young adult to feel this way.

Saint Augustine describes the same struggle in his Confessions, the most-read spiritual memoir in history. He experimented with different religious options, tried to break destructive habits, struggled to find the right friends, experienced a devastating breakup, and nearly burned out in his career-all before his thirty-second birthday. He spent his twenties looking for rest in all the wrong places.

In A Restless Age, Austin Gohn wades through Augustine's Confessions to show us how the five searches of young adulthood-answers, habits, belonging, love, and work-are actually searches for rest. Our heart is restless, Augustine writes, until it finds rest in you. Most of us spend our twenties looking for rest, but God is inviting you to spend your twenties living from rest.

Endorsements

Austin Gohn shares my passionate hope that the Confessions will become as useful to Protestants as it has been to Catholics over the centuries. . . . he comes straight to the point in every discussion, and shows a virtuoso sympathy with young people in confusing, trying times.
Sarah Ruden, Translator of Augustine's Confessions

Young adults need old, time-tested wisdom, especially in today's world of social media ephemera and soul-crushing digital delirium. Augustine is a good place to start, and A Restless Age tells us why.
Brett McCracken, a senior editor at The Gospel Coalition and author of Uncomfortable

Austin Gohn's A Restless Age is an important read not only for people in their twenties but also those who live with, work with, and mentor them.
Vince Burens, President/CEO, CCO

This is a wonderful book. Austin Gohn 'gets' Augustine and then gives Augustine to the twenty-something wondering why life hasn't turned out as expected. A Restless Age is rich in biblical insight, perceptive in cultural analysis, and grounded in truth that goes much deeper than today's headlines.
Trevin Wax, Director for Bibles and Reference at LifeWay Christian Resources, author of This Is Our Time: Everyday Myths in Light of the Gospel

About the Author

Austin Gohn is a pastor at Bellevue Christian Church, where he has worked primarily with young adults over the past seven years. He and his wife Julie, along with their son Levi, reside in Pittsburgh, PA.

Paul's ways of speaking about God, Jesus, and the Spirit are intricately intertwined: talking about any one of the three, for Paul, implies reference to all of them together. However, much current Pauline scholarship discusses Paul's God-, Christ-, and Spirit-language without reference to trinitarian theology.

In contrast to that trend, Wesley Hill argues in this book that later, post-Pauline trinitarian theologies represent a better approach, opening a fresh angle on Paul's earlier talk about God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Spirit. Hill looks critically at certain well-known discussions in the field of New Testament studies -- those by N. T. Wright, Richard Bauckham, Larry Hurtado, and others -- in light of patristic and contemporary trinitarian theologies, resulting in an innovative approach to an old set of questions.

Adeptly integrating biblical exegesis and historical-systematic theology, Hill's Paul and the Trinity shows how trinitarian theologies illumine interpretive difficulties in a way that more recent theological concepts have failed to do.

Watch a 2015 interview with the author of this book here: