Book picks similar to
Pain: The Plight of Fallen Man: God's Prescription for Persevering by James Halla
practical
suffering
christian-ministry
christian-spiritual-growth
When I Lay My Isaac Down: Unshakable Faith in Unthinkable Circumstances
Carol J. Kent - 2004
When I Lay My Isaac Down tells their story and shares the transformational power principles they learned about forgiveness and faith.Dealing with her anger, grief, and shame, Carol could have given up. Instead she tells a highly personal, heartbreaking, and uplifting story that will bolster your faith.
Me Too: Experience the God Who Understands
Jon Weece - 2016
So was His.If you've ever tried to pick up the shattered pieces of your life and put them back together again without help, you know it's an impossible task. When you lose your job, when divorce divides your family, when a loved one commits suicide, or when cancer claims a friend, it's easy to lose perspective and abandon hope.According to Jon Weece, Christianity does not require you to smile through your pain, much less praise God for tormenting you. God doesn't enjoy your suffering. But he does understand it--and he knows exactly how to fix it.That's what Me Too is all about: A God who turned the ugliness of the cross into a spectacle of eternal beauty. An all-powerful Lord who will do the same with the pain of this world. An eternal Father who specializes in wiping away tears and putting you back together again. If you'll allow him.
My Name is Hope: Anxiety, depression, and life after melancholy
John Mark Comer - 2012
He was dead wrong.Staggering numbers of modern Americans fight anxiety and depression on a daily basis. In 2010, there were 253 million prescriptions for antidepressants in the U.S. alone. That's in a nation of 311 million people. And the battle is nothing new. My Name is Hope is the story of one follower of Jesus who went through the horrors of anxiety and depression and came out the other side. It is his ruthlessly authentic and scripturally authoritative account of prophets and poets, mothers and fathers, and even a Messiah who all came up against anxiety and depression."With obvious relevance and prophetic resonance," My Name is Hope "speaks needed truth into the over-stressed, over-medicated reality of our lives and culture. It is a book that will awaken and guide many towards a return home to the hope that is ours in Jesus."
The God-Shaped Heart: How Correctly Understanding God's Love Transforms Us
Timothy R. Jennings - 2017
It seems simple, but we are experts at complicating simple things. Instead of living lives characterized by love we find ourselves trapped in cycles of shame, violence, and addiction that steal our joy and keep us from loving others--so much so that, by all indications, Christians are living no differently than anyone else when it comes to abuse rates, use of pornography, alcohol and drug addiction, and more. Christian psychiatrist Dr. Timothy Jennings wants to release us from this prison. With powerful illustrations from case studies and from Scripture, Jennings shows believers who are stuck in addiction, violence, fear, and broken relationships how to experience true freedom through God's transforming love to experience greater health, fulfillment, and well-being.
Finding God's Blessings in Brokenness: How Pain Reveals His Deepest Love
Charles Stanley - 2017
Blessed. How can those two words possibly go together? Considering just how shattering life’s blows can be, can we honestly believe God will bring good out of our most heartbreaking crises? “It’s difficult to discern the blessing in the midst of brokenness,” says Dr. Charles Stanley. “Certain circumstances in life hurt, at times so intensely that we think we will never heal.” The catalysts for brokenness all possess a wrenching pain and the power to forever alter our life. But they also possess one thing more: the potential for discovering a richness in living we otherwise never would know. Perhaps you’ve already experienced circumstances so shattering you may wonder today whether it’s even possible to pick up the pieces. And maybe you can’t. But God can. “After brokenness, we can experience God’s greatest blessings.” In Finding God’s Blessings in Brokenness, Dr. Stanley will carry you through the hard times and show you how God’s glory is consistent throughout and always available. A gentle, encouraging way to explore God’s purpose and power as only experienced through the darkest times of life, this book will encourage you as you journey through the dry seasons.Set amidst beautiful photography and a timeless design, Dr. Stanley’s words of encouragement and hope will guide you to growth and the joy of the Lord. Finding God’s Blessings in Brokenness is a thoughtful and inspiring gift to encourage anyone struggling through a dark season, as well as a thoughtful gift for anyone going through loss.
Guarded by Christ: Knowing the God Who Rescues and Keeps Us
Heather Holleman - 2016
Like many younger women, she knew Jesus, but she wasn’t strong in Him. Her search for comfort seemed unending.Then one day, while reading a simple statement in Scripture, “God guards the lives of his faithful ones” (Psalm 97:10), that all began to change.In Guarded by Christ: Knowing the God Who Rescues and Keeps Us, Heather guides women through a series of practical mental shifts that immensely helped her live strong in the Lord. Learn how in Jesus, you are guarded:By righteousness instead of condemnationBy peace instead of anxietyBy hope instead of despairBy the Holy Spirit’s power instead of self-effortBy a crucified life instead of a self-important oneWe all need maturity in Christ that prepares us not just to endure anything, but to live from the strength and peace of Jesus in every season. Guarded by Christ will help women cultivate this maturity, reconnecting them with the Savior who rescues, keeps, and holds us with His love.
A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships
Paul E. Miller - 2014
Drawing from the book of Ruth, A Loving Life offers the help we need to embrace relationship, endure rejection, cultivate community, and reach out to even the most unlovable around us as we discover the power to live a loving life.
What Your Body Knows about God: How We Are Designed to Connect, Serve and Thrive
Rob Moll - 2014
Scientists are now discovering ways that our bodies are designed to connect with God. Brain research shows that our brain systems are wired to enable us to have spiritual experiences. The spiritual circuits that are used in prayer or worship are also involved in developing compassion for others. Our bodies have actually been created to love God and serve our neighbors. Award-winning journalist Rob Moll chronicles the fascinating ways in which our brains and bodies interact with God and spiritual realities. He reports on neuroscience findings that show how our brains actually change and adapt when engaged in spiritual practices. We live longer, healthier, happier and more fulfilling lives when we cultivate the biological spiritual capacity that puts us in touch with God. God has created our bodies to fulfill the Great Commandment; we are hardwired to commune with God and to have compassion and community with other people. Moll explores the neuroscience of prayer, how liturgy helps us worship, why loving God causes us to love others, and how a life of love and service leads to the abundant life for which we were created. Just as our physical bodies require exercise to stay healthy, so too can spiritual exercises and practices revitalize our awareness of God. Heighten your spiritual senses and discover how you have been designed for physical and spiritual flourishing.
Assured: Discover Grace, Let Go of Guilt, and Rest in Your Salvation
Greg Gilbert - 2019
We worry that our faith isn't strong enough. We struggle through the continuing presence of sin in our lives. All this steals the joy of our salvation and can lead us into a life characterized by legalism, perfectionism, and works righteousness--the very life Jesus freed us from at the cross!But Greg Gilbert has a message for the anxious believer--be assured. Assured that your salvation experience was real. Assured that your sins--past, present, and future--are forgiven. Assured that everyone stumbles. Assured that Jesus is not your judge but your advocate. With deep compassion, Gilbert comforts readers, encouraging them to release their guilt, shame, and anxiety to rejoice in and follow hard after the One who set them free.
The Hardest Peace: Expecting Grace in the Midst of Life's Hard
Kara Tippetts - 2014
and the devestating reality of stage-four cancer. In The Hardest Peace, Kara doesn't offer answers for when living is hard, but she asks us to join her in moving away from fear and control and toward peace and grace. Most of all, she draws us back to the God who is with us, in the mundane and the suffering, and who shapes even our pain into beauty.Winner of the 2015 Christian Book Award® in the Inspiration category.
The Dynamic Heart in Daily Life: Connecting Christ to Human Experience
Jeremy Pierre - 2016
They are living, complex things that grow and change. Sometimes they fly so high we scrape the top of heaven. Sometimes they barely make it off the ground. Sometimes they feel buried under the ground. What hope do we have of understanding ourselves when we are so changeable? And what hope do we have for lasting change when our response to life is so different from one day to the next? But God designed our hearts to be both varied and varying, and he delights in his craftsmanship. He made our hearts to respond to life in a wide, beautiful spectrum of thought, desire, and choice. This spectrum bends, adapts, expands, and contracts as it dynamically responds to changing situations. The goal of change is not to flatten this variety, but to guide our responses so they reflect who we are in Christ. Jesus perfectly lived his humanity out as a dynamic being. Now as our risen Savior, he redeems all of human experience for his purposes. Without a holistic understanding of people, our approach to those in need of help will be lopsided, focusing on just one aspect of human experienceperhaps simply trying to correct faulty thinking, to stir different emotions, or to correct wrong actions. Focusing on one of these aspects of human experience to the exclusion of the others does not do justice to Gods design. Jeremy Pierre, in this ground-breaking book, lays out a holistic understanding of who we are and how we change through a dynamic relationship with Christ. Every day our dynamic hearts need help from our dynamic Savior. As Dr. Pierre connects the realities of our changing and complex thoughts, desires, emotions, and actions to who we are in Christ, readers will gain a more complete understanding of who we are, who God is, and how change happens in
O Love That Will Not Let Me Go: Facing Death with Courageous Confidence in God
Nancy GuthrieMartin Luther - 2011
I. Packer, and John Piper.
Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem
Kevin DeYoung - 2013
We've all said it. All too often, busyness gets the best of us.Just one look at our jam-packed schedules tells us that we know how hard it can be to strike a well-reasoned balance between doing nothing and doing it all.That's why Kevin DeYoung addresses the busyness in this book, and not with the typical arsenal of time-management tips, but with the biblical tools we need to get to the source of the issue and pull the problem out by the roots.
Christ and Calamity: Grace and Gratitude in the Darkest Valley
Harold L. Senkbeil - 2020
In the midst of suffering and uncertainty, we’re all prone to think that God has forgotten us, he doesn’t care, or he’s powerless to do anything.And that’s true of us in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.In Christ and Calamity, Harold L. Senkbeil speaks pastorally to our suffering and uncertainty. Senkbeil shows God’s constant and faithful grace to us. Calamities come in many different sizes, and God addresses them all in his word and by his Spirit. Even when we don’t see or feel it, God is always faithful.“If I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me” (Ps 139:9–10).The disciples’ faith in the midst of the storm may have been weak, but Jesus was mighty to save. And he will save you, too. No matter how small your faith, you can count on him to hear your anguished cry and to answer.
Rejoice and Tremble: The Surprising Good News of the Fear of the Lord
Michael Reeves - 2021
In the Bible the picture can seem equally confusing: Is fear a good thing or a bad thing? And what does it mean to "fear the Lord"?In Rejoice and Tremble, Michael Reeves clears the clouds of confusion and shows that the fear of the Lord is not a negative thing at all, but an intensely delighted wondering at God, our Creator and Redeemer.