ST. LOUIS— Modern culture insists that identity, purpose, and meaning are found by looking inward. In his new book, Lift Your Eyes: How to Live Outside Yourself, author Joshua Pfeiffer takes a different approach to finding a purpose. Readers will follow along as Pfeiffer charts a compelling path: upward to God in faith and gratitude, outward to neighbors in love and service, and forward in joyful anticipation of the resurrection. Lift Your Eyes is available from Concordia Publishing House beginning May 19.
“While there are powerful forces at work encouraging us to look inward for hope, identity, purpose, and meaning—indeed, for life itself—Christians are fundamentally to look elsewhere, to lift our eyes from ourselves . . . ,” Pfeiffer writes. “Looking up and looking out. When we get that right, we do truly look forward in joyful anticipation to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, and there is even a sense in which we can rightly look in at ourselves.”
Drawing on Martin Luther’s transformative insight on how Christians live, Pfeiffer writes, “We look up to God in faith, and we look out to our neighbor in love.” The author reveals how the freedom we desperately seek comes not from looking within but from lifting our eyes beyond ourselves. He identifies expressive individualism—the cultural conviction that authentic identity is constructed from the inside out—as a problem that has reached into the church itself, and he proposes a recovery of classical Christian anthropology rooted in baptismal identity, vocation, and Luther’s twofold righteousness.
“Lift Your Eyes is a much-needed pastoral guide for Christians shaped by a culture that urges constant self-focus,” says Marcus “FLAME” Gray, GRAMMY®-nominated hip hop artist and author of Extra Nos: Discovering Grace Outside Myself. “This is not a self-improvement book offering empty promises but an invitation to true rest in Christ’s righteousness—freeing you to love others in ways that truly count.”
Visit cph.org for more information. Contact Erica Sontag to schedule an interview with the author.
Praise for Lift Your Eyes
Pastor Joshua Pfeiffer echoes Luther’s insistence that Christian life is not self-enclosed; it is a life lived outside of the self through faith in Christ and through love in service to the neighbor. The Christian lives with feet firmly planted in creation but with eyes fixed on the hope that is ours because Jesus is Lord over death. Pastor Pfeiffer demonstrates how our faith and the hope that it brings does not evacuate Christians from the world but enlivens believers for their callings in creation.
—John T. Pless, assistant professor of pastoral ministry and mission, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana
Lift Your Eyes is a much-needed pastoral guide for Christians shaped by a culture that urges constant self-focus. Joshua Pfeiffer redirects our gaze upward to Christ and outward to those around us, drawing deeply from Scripture and Luther’s theology. This is not a self-improvement book offering empty promises but an invitation to true rest in Christ’s righteousness—freeing you to love others in ways that truly count.
—Marcus “FLAME” Gray, GRAMMY®-nominated and Stellar Award–winning hip hop artist; author of Extra Nos: Discovering Grace Outside Myself and Because Jesus Taught It: Christianity Through the Eyes of the Church Fathers
This book heralds the arrival of a gifted new writer with a warm heart and a popular touch. In this book, Joshua Pfeiffer tackles some of the darkest, deepest issues in our self-absorbed society in a lucid, winsome way. He weaves a colorful tapestry of biblical, personal, practical, and pastoral insights into a bright, coherent vision of life in the world. With the eyes of a skilled artist, he explores various kinds of looking—away from ourselves, up to Jesus in faith and thanksgiving, and out to others in love, so that we can look honestly into ourselves and forward in hope to eternal life with God.
—Dr. John W. Kleinig
The strength of Lift Your Eyes lies in its call to look outside of ourselves. Instead of navel-gazing and disputing with neighbors (Christian or not), our focus can be drawn up to God in faith and out to others in love. This book would be beneficial for laypeople as they consider their stance before the world as servants, not rulers.
—Jessica Bordeleau, MAR; theological media producer, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri
About the Author
Rev. Joshua Pfeiffer is pastor of the Tarrington Lutheran Parish in the southeastern state of Victoria in Australia, where he lives with his wife, Kimberley, and their four children. He served various congregations in Australia before moving to the United States for graduate studies. He hosts a YouTube channel and enjoys mountain biking, hiking, golf, and other outdoor activities.
