Dinner with a Perfect Stranger: An Invitation Worth Considering


David Gregory - 2005
    Although his seventy-hour workweek has already eaten into his limited family time, Nick can’t pass up the opportunity to see what kind of plot his colleagues have hatched…The normally confident, cynical Nick soon finds himself thrown off-balance, drawn into an intriguing conversation with a baffling man who comfortably discusses everything from world religions to the existence of heaven and hell. And this man who calls himself Jesus also seems to know a disturbing amount about Nick’s personal life.

His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage


Willard F. Harley Jr. - 1986
    In His Needs, Her Needs, Willard Harley identifies the ten most vital needs of men and women and shows husbands and wives how to satisfy those needs in their spouses. He provides guidance for becoming irresistible to your spouse and for loving more creatively and sensitively, thereby eliminating the problems that often lead to extramarital affairs. The revised anniversary edition of His Needs, Her Needs is a celebration of how the book has helped thousands of couples revitalize their marriages during the last fifteen years. This best-seller identifies the causes of marital difficulties and instructs couples on how to prevent them, guiding them to build a relationship that sustains romance and increases intimacy. With today's soaring divorce rate and prevalence of affairs, Harley's insights are needed more than ever before.An unabridged recording of His Needs, Her Needs, the 15th anniversary edition, is now available as an audio book.

Hinds' Feet on High Places


Hannah Hurnard - 1955
    In this moving tale, follow Much-Afraid on her spiritual journey as she overcomes many dangers and mounts at last to the High Places. There she gains a new name and is transformed by her union with the loving Shepherd. Included in this special edition (February 2009 release) is Hannah Hurnard’s own account of the circumstances that led her to write Hinds’ Feet, and a brief autobiography. Special edition also features a new cover design.

This Beautiful Truth: How God's Goodness Breaks Into Our Darkness


Sarah Clarkson - 2021
    Amid the daily realities of sickness and isolation, disappointment and pain, it can be profoundly difficult to grasp the real goodness of God. But this is where God breaks into our darkness with beauty. In the wonder of creation, in art or film, story or song, in the kindness of his people and the good they create, God breaks into our pain in a tangible way, teaching us to trust his kindness and hope for his healing. Beauty is a voice singing into our suffering, beckoning us toward restoration.In This Beautiful Truth, Sarah Clarkson shares her own encounters with beauty in the midst of her decade-long struggle with mental illness, depression, and doubt. In a voice both vulnerable and reflective, she paints a compelling picture of the God who reaches out to us in a real and powerful way through the "taste and see" goodness of what he has made and what he continues to create amid our darkness. "To recognize and trust God's gift in pain," she writes, "empowers us to create and love as powerful witnesses to God's healing love in a hopeless world."If you want to renew your capacity to recognize and encounter God's beauty in your life, this hope-filled book will show you the way.

Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes Your Soul


Hannah Anderson - 2016
    It's a route made famous by natural beauty and the simple rhythms of rural life.And it's in this setting that Hannah Anderson began her exploration of what it means to pursue a life of peace and humility. Fighting back her own sense of restlessness and anxiety, she finds herself immersed in the world outside, discovering a classroom full of forsythia, milkweed, and a failed herb garden. Lessons about soil preparation, sour mulch, and grapevine blights reveal the truth about our dependence on God, finding rest, and fighting discontentment.Humble Roots is part theology of incarnation and part stroll through the fields and forest. Anchored in the teaching of Jesus, Anderson explores how cultivating humility - not scheduling, strict boundaries, or increased productivity - leads to peace. "Come unto me, all who labor and are heavy laden," Jesus invites us, "and you will find rest for your souls."So come. Learn humility from the lilies of the field and from the one who is humility himself. Remember who you are and who you are not, and rediscover the rest that comes from belonging to him.

The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success


Andy Andrews - 2002
    Once a high-flying executive in a Fortune 500 company, he now works a part-time, minimum wage job and struggles to support his family. Then, an even greater crisis hits: his daughter becomes ill, and he can’t afford to get her the medical helps she needs. When his car skids on an icy road, he wonders if he even cares to survive the crash.But an extraordinary experience awaits David Ponder. He find himself traveling back in time, meeting leaders and heroes at crucial moments in their lives—from Abraham Lincoln to Anne Frank. By the time his journey is over, he has received seven secrets for success—and a second chance.

Unseen: The Gift of Being Hidden in a World That Loves to Be Noticed


Sara Hagerty - 2017
    Yet most of our lives is unwitnessed. We spend our days working, driving, parenting. We sometimes spend whole seasons feeling unnoticed and unappreciated.In Unseen, Sara Hagerty suggests that this is exactly what God intended. He is the only One who truly knows us. He is the only One who understands the value of the unseen in our lives. When this truth seeps into our souls, we realize that only when we hide ourselves in God can we give ourselves to others in true freedom--and know the joy of a deeper relationship with the God who sees us.Our culture applauds what we can produce, what we can show, what we can upload to social media. Only when we give all of ourselves to God--unedited, abandoned, apparently wasteful in its lack of productivity--can we live out who God created us to be. As Hagerty writes, "Maybe my seemingly unproductive, looking-up-at-Him life produces awe among the angels."Through an eloquent exploration of both personal and biblical story, Hagerty calls us to offer every unseen minute of our lives to God. God is in the secret places of our lives that no one else witnesses. But we've not been relegated to these places. We've been invited.We may be "wasting" ourselves in a hidden corner today: The cubicle on the fourth floor. The hospital bedside of an elderly parent. The laundry room. But these are the places God uses to meet us with a radical love. These are the places that produce the kind of unhinged love in us that gives everything at His feet, whether or not anyone else ever proclaims our name, whether or not anyone else ever sees.God's invitation is not just for a season or a day. It is the question of our lives: "When no one else applauds you, when it makes no sense, when you see no results--will you waste your love on Me?"

The Good and Beautiful God: Falling in Love with the God Jesus Knows


James Bryan Smith - 2009
    Some are true--but many are false. James Bryan Smith believes those thoughts determine not only who we are, but how we live. In fact, Smith declares, the most important thing about a person is what they think about God. The path to spiritual transformation begins here. Turning to the Gospels, Smith invites you to put your ideas to the test to see if they match up with what Jesus himself reveals about God. Once you've discovered the truth in Scripture, Smith leads you through a process of spiritual formation that includes specific activities aimed at making these new narratives real in your body and soul as well as your mind. At the end of each chapter you'll find an opportunity for soul training, engaging in spiritual practices that reinforce the biblical messages on your mind and heart. Because the best way to make a complete and lasting change is to go through the material in community, small group discussion questions also accompany each chapter. Those who are leading apprentice groups will also find additional help and opportunities to interact with other leaders at the Apprentice website, www.apprenticeofjesus.com. This deep, loving and transformative book will help you discover the narratives that Jesus lived by--to know the Lord he knew and the kingdom he proclaimed--and to practice spiritual exercises that will help you grow in the knowledge of our good and beautiful God.

Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church


Rachel Held Evans - 2015
    The hypocrisy, the politics, the gargantuan building budgets, the scandals--church culture seemed so far removed from Jesus. Yet, despite her cynicism and misgivings, something kept drawing her back to Church. And so she set out on a journey to understand Church and to find her place in it.Centered around seven sacraments, Evans' quest takes readers through a liturgical year with stories about baptism, communion, confirmation, confession, marriage, vocation, and death that are funny, heartbreaking, and sharply honest.A memoir about making do and taking risks, about the messiness of community and the power of grace, Searching for Sunday is about overcoming cynicism to find hope and, somewhere in between, Church.

Jesus Swagger: Break Free from Poser Christianity


Jarrid Wilson - 2015
    Start being a Christian.Is your faith for real? How about your walk?If everyone who claimed to love Jesus actually did, this world would be pretty close to paradise. Yet we live in a time when being a poser is not only easy, it's rewarded--especially where Jesus is concerned.But claiming to love Jesus without following him is bogus, fraudulent, and--frankly--it's not you. God has called you to be set apart, to live authentically, to walk a genuine Jesus Swagger. He wants followers, not pretenders.From Christian blogger Jarrid Wilson, Jesus Swagger is about calling out the phony, showing the pretender the door, and letting Jesus in instead. If you are suspicious of your own motivations, your own talk, or even your own Christianity, it's time to be honest, come clean, and get real. It's time to take the Jesus Swagger litmus test and start walking the walk.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People


Harold S. Kushner - 1981
    Kushner shares his wisdom as a rabbi, a parent, a reader, and a human being. Often imitated but never superseded, When Bad Things Happen to Good People is a classic that offers clear thinking and consolation in times of sorrow.Since its original publication in 1981, When Bad Things Happen to Good People has brought solace and hope to millions of readers and its author has become a nationally known spiritual leader.

The Scarlet Thread


Francine Rivers - 1995
    By following her ancestor's example, she learns to surrender to God's sovereignty and unconditional love.

The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor's Journey Into Christian Faith


Rosaria Champagne Butterfield - 2012
    She had a tenured position at a large university in a field for which she cared deeply. She owned two homes with her partner, in which they provided hospitality to students and activists that were looking to make a difference in the world. There, her partner rehabilitated abandoned and abused dogs. In the community, Rosaria was involved in volunteer work. At the university, she was a respected advisor of students and her department’s curriculum. And then, in her late 30s, Rosaria encountered something that turned her world upside down—the idea that Christianity, a religion that she had regarded as problematic and sometimes downright damaging, might be right about who God was, an idea that flew in the face of the people and causes that she most loved. What follows is a story of what she describes as a “train wreck” at the hand of the supernatural. These are her secret thoughts about those events, written as only a reflective English professor could."Conversion put me in a complicated and comprehensive chaos. I sometimes wonder, when I hear other Christians pray for the salvation of the “lost,” if they realize that this comprehensive chaos is the desired end of such prayers. Often, people asked me to describe the “lessons” that I learned from this experience. I can’t. It was too traumatic. Sometimes in crisis, we don’t really learn lessons. Sometimes the result is simpler and more profound: sometimes our character is simply transformed." —Rosaria Butterfield

A Trip Into the Supernatural


Roger J. Morneau - 1982
    Updated Edition "A Trip Into The Supernatural" Paperback With (141 Pages).

Girl at the End of the World: My Escape from Fundamentalism in Search of Faith with a Future


Elizabeth Esther - 2014
    I know hundreds of obscure nineteenth-century hymns by heart and have such razor sharp “modesty vision” that I can spot a miniskirt a mile away.Verily, verily I say unto thee, none of these highly specialized skills ever got me a job, but at least I’m all set for the end of the world. Selah. A story of mind control, the Apocalypse, and modest attire.Elizabeth Esther grew up in love with Jesus but in fear of daily spankings (to “break her will”). Trained in her family-run church to confess sins real and imagined, she knew her parents loved her and God probably hated her. Not until she was grown and married did she find the courage to attempt the unthinkable. To leave.In her memoir, readers will recognize questions every believer faces: When is spiritual zeal a gift, and when is it a trap? What happens when a pastor holds unchecked sway over his followers? And how can we leave behind the harm inflicted in the name of God without losing God in the process?By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Girl at the End of the World is a story of the lingering effects of spiritual abuse and the growing hope that God can still be good when His people fail.Includes reading group discussion guide and interview with the author