We all long for healthy and successful families and relationships, but this dream often seems out of our reach. We may look to spiritual powers such as diviners, prayer, or church to help us meet our basic needs – from income to health to relationships.

Highly Favoured encourages us that the God of the Bible is not unreliable or inaccessible like the spiritual beings in African traditional religions. In the Bible, the all-powerful God deeply desires a relationship with his people. He chooses to have a covenant relationship with his people. We do not have to earn God’s favour. He lays out the terms for blessing and punishment, and he is completely faithful to abide by them. No matter what happens, God’s commitment to his people is unshakeable. If we choose a relationship with God, it is both secure anddemanding – and much better than we dared to imagine. We are within his mighty protection and he gives us the power of his Spirit, but we can turn to no other powers besides him.

“You will be my people and I will be your God.” This is God’s promise throughout the Bible. This book leads you to discover what this deep truth means for your life, using African proverbs, relatable stories, and familiar illustrations to bring the message home. You will finish this book with a shining confidence in God’s unfailing love for you, a reassurance of his amazing favour, and a fresh passion for his Word.

Are you struggling with the question of belonging? Do you feel unsatisfied with life? Let this small book show you the big story that God is writing for you.— Dr Frew Tamrat, Vice-Principal, Evangelical Theological College, Ethiopia

The pages of this book illustrate that as instruments of socialization and sites of ideological discourse textbooks are powerful artefacts in introducing young people to a specific historical, cultural and socioeconomic order. Crucially, exploring the social construction of school textbooks and the messages they impart provides an important context from within which to critically investigate the dynamics underlying the cultural politics of education and the social movements that form it and which are formed by it.

The school curriculum is essentially the knowledge system of a society incorporating its values and its dominant ideology. The curriculum is not “our knowledge” born of a broad hegemonic consensus, rather it is a battleground in which cultural authority and the right to define what is labelled legitimate knowledge is fought over. As each chapter in this book illustrates curriculum as theory and practice has never been, and can never be, divorced from the ethical, economic, political, and cultural conflicts of society which impact so deeply upon it. We cannot escape the clear implication that questions about what knowledge is of most worth and about how it should be organized and taught are problematic, contentious and very serious.

We all long for healthy and successful families and relationships, but this dream often seems out of our reach. We may look to spiritual powers such as diviners, prayer, or church to help us meet our basic needs – from income to health to relationships.

Highly Favoured encourages us that the God of the Bible is not unreliable or inaccessible like the spiritual beings in African traditional religions. In the Bible, the all-powerful God deeply desires a relationship with his people. He chooses to have a covenant relationship with his people. We do not have to earn God’s favour. He lays out the terms for blessing and punishment, and he is completely faithful to abide by them. No matter what happens, God’s commitment to his people is unshakeable. If we choose a relationship with God, it is both secure anddemanding – and much better than we dared to imagine. We are within his mighty protection and he gives us the power of his Spirit, but we can turn to no other powers besides him.

“You will be my people and I will be your God.” This is God’s promise throughout the Bible. This book leads you to discover what this deep truth means for your life, using African proverbs, relatable stories, and familiar illustrations to bring the message home. You will finish this book with a shining confidence in God’s unfailing love for you, a reassurance of his amazing favour, and a fresh passion for his Word.

Are you struggling with the question of belonging? Do you feel unsatisfied with life? Let this small book show you the big story that God is writing for you.— Dr Frew Tamrat, Vice-Principal, Evangelical Theological College, Ethiopia

The pages of this book illustrate that as instruments of socialization and sites of ideological discourse textbooks are powerful artefacts in introducing young people to a specific historical, cultural and socioeconomic order. Crucially, exploring the social construction of school textbooks and the messages they impart provides an important context from within which to critically investigate the dynamics underlying the cultural politics of education and the social movements that form it and which are formed by it.

The school curriculum is essentially the knowledge system of a society incorporating its values and its dominant ideology. The curriculum is not “our knowledge” born of a broad hegemonic consensus, rather it is a battleground in which cultural authority and the right to define what is labelled legitimate knowledge is fought over. As each chapter in this book illustrates curriculum as theory and practice has never been, and can never be, divorced from the ethical, economic, political, and cultural conflicts of society which impact so deeply upon it. We cannot escape the clear implication that questions about what knowledge is of most worth and about how it should be organized and taught are problematic, contentious and very serious.