But instead of easing our emotional burden, the pressure to love ourselves more actually makes it worse. Even so, the idea that unconditional self-love can cure all that ails us is tempting and easy to rationalize.It's time to admit to ourselves what we already know: we are not smart enough; we are not beautiful enough; we are not tough enough; we are not good enough. And that's okay, because God is.Allie Beth Stuckey, a young mother, Christian, and conservative thought leader, was once herself sucked into the Cult of Self-Love--and knows that you probably have been too. In this book, she shows you how to identify and combat the toxic, exhausting myths our culture encourages with Scripture and traditional values like personal responsibility, self-sacrifice, and grit. For instance:Myth: There is no objective truth.Truth: We'll never feel personally fulfilled if we have no moral benchmark at which to aim.Myth: Life is all about me.Truth: When our highest priority is our own comfort and success, we end up alienating family and friends.Myth: Happiness is the goal.Truth: Since good vibes don't last forever, they're not sufficient criteria for personal purpose and meaning.Blending timeless wisdom and biblical truths, Stuckey shows how these sneaky, pervasive myths threaten women and fuel victimhood culture--from social justice warriors to radical feminism and the new wave of socialism. Stuckey dismantles these myths step-by-step and offers strategies that can help you move past them--and undo the damage they've done.

    By studying the biblical character Ruth, women learn the characteristics that every woman of God should develop. This expanded edition of the original best-seller includes a personal journal and study guide.You hold in your hands a fresh and exciting way to enhance your personal life and enrich your spiritual journey. This expanded edition of Lady in Waiting includes: Original text of the best-selling book - complete and unabridged!Complete Study Guide - Learn how to apply the principles taught in Lady in Waiting. These questions, quotes, thoughts, and teachings will help you to become the woman of God that He designed you to be. You can also record your spiritual growth in a specially designed journal section. Don't miss this opportunity to become God's lady in waiting!Forty-Day Meditational Journal - This section offers profound motivational truths from some of the greatest women of God in the history of the Church, with meditative readings to help you live in the presence of the Lord every day. Quiet meditation, contemplative prayer, and careful study will help you receive the full benefit from spiritual truth - and this new edition assists with all three. When you give yourself to the Lord through the pages of this book, the spiritual truths you gain will bring you to new places in your experience with God and prepare you for deeper levels of loving relationships!

    The path toward the liberated existence we all long for is found in a truth as simple to say as it is hard to do: love people, even the difficult ones, without distinction and without limits.Driven by Bob’s trademark storytelling, Everybody, Always reveals the lessons Bob learned--often the hard way--about what it means to love without inhibition, insecurity, or restriction. From finding the right friends to discovering the upside of failure, Everybody, Always points the way to embodying love by doing the unexpected, the intimidating, the seemingly impossible. Whether losing his shoes while skydiving solo or befriending a Ugandan witch doctor, Bob steps into life with a no-limits embrace of others that is as infectious as it is extraordinarily ordinary. Everybody, Always reveals how we can do the same.

    Do you want help figuring out who you are and why you're stuck in the same ruts? The Enneagram is an ancient personality typing system with an uncanny accuracy in describing how human beings are wired, both positively and negatively. In The Road Back to You Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile forge a unique approach―a practical, comprehensive way of accessing Enneagram wisdom and exploring its connections with Christian spirituality for a deeper knowledge of ourselves, compassion for others, and love for God. Witty and filled with stories, this book allows you to peek inside each of the nine Enneagram types, keeping you turning the pages long after you have read the chapter about your own number. Not only will you learn more about yourself, but you will also start to see the world through other people's eyes, understanding how and why people think, feel, and act the way they do. Beginning with changes you can start making today, the wisdom of the Enneagram can help take you further along into who you really are―leading you into places of spiritual discovery you would never have found on your own, and paving the way to the wiser, more compassionate person you want to become.

    Fears about the future; fears about your health, job, and family; fears about inadequacy and failure (and maybe success); fears about how much fear itself seems to affect your decisions, plans, and growth in this life.You might even fear what God thinks about your fears. After all, in his Word God commands us not to be afraid hundreds of times. But how is this possible? We're troubled by evil, we're slammed with bad news, and we can't know what tomorrow will bring. How can we learn to trust God and not be afraid?Kristen Wetherell is in the fight with you. She is a fearful fellow traveler on the road of the Christian life, making strides alongside you in this battle. In Fight Your Fears she carefully searches 10 of God's great and precious promises, equipping you with the practical tools to overcome the fears and anxious thoughts that are robbing you of your joy. Each chapter ends with Scripture exercises, a memory verse, questions to ponder, and a prayer.Discover truths that will bring peace to your soul as you learn to fear God and nothing else.

    But what if you struggle as a parent to read the Bible yourself. How can you pass a love for God's Word along to your children if you struggle with it yourself? That was Carrie Ward's story. Until God gave her a plan to help her develop a consistent time in the Word, right along with her children. Readers will walk together with Carrie Ward, an everyday mama, as she journeys through the Bible with her small children one chapter a day. As her children re-enact the Bible stories readers will be able to see Scripture through the eyes of a child. Parents will learn how to impart God's truth to their children day by day, and will see its transformative power on their families. Together: Growing Appetites for God is an easy read and includes helpful tools for scripture memorization and charts to follow progress through the Bible.A True Woman BookThe goal of the True Woman publishing line is to encourage women to:Discover, embrace, and delight in God's divine design and mission for their livesReflect the beauty and heart of Jesus Christ to their worldIntentionally pass the baton of Truth on to the next generationPray earnestly for an outpouring of God's Spirit in their families, churches, nation and world

    To be single, we often think, is to be alone and spiritually hindered.But the Bible paints a very different picture of singleness: it is a positive gift and blessing from God. This book seeks to help Christians--married and unmarried alike--value singleness as a gift from God so that we can all encourage singles to take hold of the unique opportunities their singleness affords and see their role in the flourishing of the church as a whole.

    The meaning is: Do what you have been assigned to do, and do it well! Many Christian women have been told over the years that they must quietly stay under their parasols while their men go out and conquer the world. Is this what the Bible really teaches? Author and pastor, Mark Chanski, insists that the Bible tells us a different story. He insists that the Bible teaches a woman to take dominion of her God-assigned role as wife, mother and church helper. This is not in a feminist way, but in a God-glorifying way that speaks volumes of who she is and why God created her. Women should not think of themselves as victims, says the author, but as victors who conquer the realm that their Lord and Master, Jesus Christ has given them.

    As a result, churches today are filled with people who believe they are Christians . . . but aren’t. We want to be disciples as long as doing so does not intrude on our lifestyles, our preferences, our comforts, and even our religion.Revealing a biblical picture of what it means to truly be a Christian, Follow Me explores the gravity of what we must forsake in this world, as well as the indescribable joy and deep satisfaction to be found when we live for Christ.The call to follow Jesus is not simply an invitation to pray a prayer; it’s a summons to lose your life—and to find new life in him. This book will show you what such life actually looks like.

    Instead, they want to be accepted as full participants in God's work, sharing in kingdom tasks in ways that use their gifts appropriately.In Gender Roles and the People of God, author, radio host, and professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary Alice Mathews surveys the roles women have played in the Bible and throughout church history, demonstrating both the inspiring contributions of women and the many hurdles that have been placed in their path. Along the way, she investigates the difficult passages often used to preclude women from certain areas of service, pointing to better and more faithful understandings of those verses.Encouraging and hopeful, Mathews aims for an "egalitarian complementarity" in which men and women use all of their gifts in the church together, in partnership, for the glory of God.

    This type of woman is truly becoming an endangered species! It’s a sad fact, but modern churches are just not teaching the “aged women” to become Titus 2 mentors and women just are not stepping up to mentor the younger women in the church. This is part of the reason I think so many of the young women in today’s church are floundering and turning away from Godly womanhood. They are just not being taught how to be Godly women. Too many churches today are pushing a twisted form of womanhood that has more in common with feminism and worldly standards than Godly standards. It is truly a sad state!Just what traits does the Bible say a Godly woman should posses? Titus 2: 3-5 lays these traits out to us in a simple and plain way. The aged women likewise, that [they be] in behavior as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, [To be] discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed. — Titus 2:3-5(KJV)When you look at these verses, you can plainly see that what God requires from a Godly woman. “The Titus 2 Woman” by Susan Godfrey, dissect these eleven qualities to help us understand exactly what is expected of us as we grow and mature as Christians.

    But you might not love what you think.In this book, award-winning author James K. A. Smith shows that who and what we worship fundamentally shape our hearts. And while we desire to shape culture, we are not often aware of how culture shapes us. We might not realize the ways our hearts are being taught to love rival gods instead of the One for whom we were made. Smith helps readers recognize the formative power of culture and the transformative possibilities of Christian practices. He explains that worship is the "imagination station" that incubates our loves and longings so that our cultural endeavors are indexed toward God and his kingdom. This is why the church and worshiping in a local community of believers should be the hub and heart of Christian formation and discipleship.Following the publication of his influential work Desiring the Kingdom, Smith received numerous requests from pastors and leaders for a more accessible version of that book's content. No mere abridgment, this new book draws on years of Smith's popular presentations on the ideas presented in Desiring the Kingdom to offer a fresh, bottom-up rearticulation. The author creatively uses film, literature, and music illustrations to engage readers and includes material on marriage, family, youth ministry, and faith and work. He also suggests individual and communal practices for shaping the Christian life.

    But the life of prayer is neither efficient nor productive. Instead, as we learn in the psalms, prayer calls us to wait, to watch, to listen, to taste, and to see. These things are not productive by any modern measure--but they are transformative. As a pastor in Manhattan, John Starke knows the bustle and busyness of our society. But he also knows that prayer is not just for spiritual giants. Prayer, he writes, is for each of us--not because we are full of spiritual wisdom and maturity, but because we are empty. Here is an invitation to discover, via the church's ancient rhythms and with Starke's clear, practical guidance, the possibility of prayer. Here is a book about prayer that is really a book about the whole Christian life.

    As she grapples with her God-shaped void alongside the friends, classmates, and professors she meets, she tackles big questions in search of love and a life that matters. This savvy, beautifully written, credible account of Christian conversion follows the calendar and events of the school year as it entertains, informs, and promises to engage even the most skeptical and unlikely reader.

    What is prayer? Does it change God’s mind or ours--or both? This book is an invitation to communicate with God the Father who invites us into an eternal partnership through prayer.In his most powerful book since What’s So Amazing About Grace? and The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey probes the most fundamental, challenging, perplexing, and deeply rewarding aspect of our relationship with God: prayer. What is prayer? How does it work? And more importantly, does it work? In theory, prayer is the essential human act, a priceless point of contact between us and the God of the universe. In practice, prayer is often frustrating, confusing, and fraught with mystery. Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? is an exploration of the mysterious intersection where God and humans meet and relate. Writing as a fellow pilgrim, Yancey explores such questions as:Is God listening?Why should God care about me?If God knows everything, what’s the point of prayer?Why do answers to prayer seem so inconsistent and capricious?Why does God seem sometimes close and sometimes far away?How can I make prayer more satisfying?"I have found that the most important purpose of prayer may be to let ourselves be loved by God," says Yancey. Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? encourages us to pray to God the Father who sees what lies ahead of us, knows what lies within us, and who invites us into an eternal partnership--through prayer.