I was surprised and, in fact, a little terrified when I found myself in the middle of a feminist spiritual reawakening.Sue Monk was a "conventionally religious, churchgoing woman, a traditional wife and mother" with a thriving career as a Christian writer until she began to question her role as a woman in her culture, her family, and her church. From a jarring encounter with sexism in a suburban drugstore to monastery retreats and rituals in the caves of Crete, Kidd takes readers through the fear, anger, healing, and transformation of her awakening. Retaining a meaningful connection "with the deep song of Christianity," she opens the door for traditional Christian women to discover a spirituality that speaks directly to them and provides inspiring wisdom for all who struggle to embrace their full humanity.

    In his next book, Jim takes the reader along into the wide open spaces of exploring and experiencing God beyond religion. Jim writes, "It is no secret that God can be lost beneath the waving banner of religion. Divine Nobodies is my story of how this happened to me. Sometimes you have to disentangle God from religion, even Christ from Christianity, to find the truth. With the help of some unsuspecting nobodies, I uncovered a new starting line with God. As I've put one foot in front of another, I've experienced God in ways that are deeply transforming."Each chapter revolves around a central question related to knowing God on fresh terms: Is God a belief system? Is the Bible a landing strip or launching pad? Can what we're feeling inside be God? Are we too religiously minded to be any earthly good?Brian McLaren wrote, "I am tempted to say that Jim Palmer could well be the next Don Miller, but what they have in common, along with an honest spirituality and extraordinary skill as storytellers, is a unique voice."The Library Reviews said of him, "Jim Palmer's casual, yet compelling writing style cuts through the religious rhetoric and gets to the real issues…readers will love this author! His sense of humor is alternately mixed with shocking sentences and poignant moments. Laced throughout is a refreshing honesty that ties his ideas together with a ribbon of reality…each turn of the page strips away a little more of the contrived mystery of Christianity until the simplicity and sincerity of it stands in realistic splendor."More and more people seek a deeper spirituality beyond status-quo religion. Others are left empty and weary from a shallow and narrow pop-Christianity. Palmer says that God's kingdom of love, peace, and freedom can be a present reality in any person's life. He proclaims that God is indeed in the process of birthing something deep and wide among unlikely people in unconventional ways, which is changing the world...one "nobody" at a time.

    Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to dive in headfirst and attempt to obey the Bible as literally as possible for one full year. He vows to follow the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful and multiply. To love his neighbor. But also to obey the hundreds of less publicized rules: to avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibers; to play a ten-string harp; to stone adulterers.The resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal and will make you see history's most influential book with new eyes.Jacobs's quest transforms his life even more radically than the year spent reading the entire "Encyclopedia Britannica" for "The Know-It-All." His beard grows so unruly that he is regularly mistaken for a member of ZZ Top. He immerses himself in prayer, tends sheep in the Israeli desert, battles idolatry, and tells the absolute truth in all situations - much to his wife's chagrin.Throughout the book, Jacobs also embeds himself in a cross-section of communities that take the Bible literally. He tours a Kentucky-based creationist museum and sings hymns with Pennsylvania Amish. He dances with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and does Scripture study with Jehovah's Witnesses. He discovers ancient biblical wisdom of startling relevance. And he wrestles with seemingly archaic rules that baffle the twenty-first-century brain.Jacobs's extraordinary undertaking yields unexpected epiphanies and challenges. A book that will charm readers both secular and religious, "The Year of Living Biblically" is part Cliff Notes to the Bible, part memoir, and part look into worlds unimaginable. Thou shalt not be able to put it down.

    Since Operating Instructions and Bird by Bird, her fans have been waiting for her to write the book that explained how she came to the big-hearted, grateful, generous faith that she so often alluded to in her two earlier nonfiction books. The people in Anne Lamott's real life are like beloved characters in a favorite series for her readers: Her friend Pammy; her son, Sam; and the many funny and wise folks who attend her church are all familiar. And Traveling Mercies is a welcome return to those lives, as well as an introduction to new companions Lamott treats with the same candor, insight, and tenderness. Lamott's faith isn't about easy answers, which is part of what endears her to believers as well as nonbelievers. Against all odds, she came to believe in God, and then, even more miraculously, in herself. As she puts it, "My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers." At once tough, personal, affectionate, wise, and very funny, Traveling Mercies tells in exuberant detail how Anne Lamott learned to shine the light of faith on the darkest part of ordinary life, exposing surprising pockets of meaning and hope.

    Doesn’t God work in the nighttime as well? In Learning to Walk in the Dark, Taylor asks us to put aside our fears and anxieties and to explore all that God has to teach us “in the dark.” She argues that we need to move away from our “solar spirituality” and ease our way into appreciating “lunar spirituality” (since, like the moon, our experience of the light waxes and wanes). Through darkness we find courage, we understand the world in new ways, and we feel God’s presence around us, guiding us through things seen and unseen. Often, it is while we are in the dark that we grow the most.With her characteristic charm and literary wisdom, Taylor is our guide through a spirituality of the nighttime, teaching us how to find our footing in times of uncertainty and giving us strength and hope to face all of life’s challenging moments.

    Take This Bread is the story of her journey to faith and how she took Jesus' call to feed others by establishing food pantries that feed thousands of people.

    Each chapter offers a truth or an answer forged through experience and deep reflection, and a nugget of insight certain to encourage thought and discussion among readers, who may, in turn, find their own spiritual language.

    That’s what Jen Hatmaker had to admit after taking in hurricane victims who commented on the extravagance of her family’s upper middle class home. She once considered herself unmotivated by the lure of prosperity, but upon being called “rich” by an undeniably poor child, evidence to the contrary mounted, and a social experiment turned spiritual was born.7 is the true story of how Jen (along with her husband and her children to varying degrees) took seven months, identified seven areas of excess, and made seven simple choices to fight back against the modern-day diseases of greed, materialism, and overindulgence.Food. Clothes. Spending. Media. Possessions. Waste. Stress. They would spend thirty days on each topic, boiling it down to the number seven. Only eat seven foods, wear seven articles of clothing, and spend money in seven places. Eliminate use of seven media types, give away seven things each day for one month, adopt seven green habits, and observe “seven sacred pauses.” So, what’s the payoff from living a deeply reduced life? It’s the discovery of a greatly increased God—a call toward Christ-like simplicity and generosity that transcends social experiment to become a radically better existence.

    Whether it’s writing the next great American novel, starting a business, or joining a band, Rob Bell wants to help us make those dreams become reality. Our path is ours and ours alone to pursue, he reminds us, and in doing so, we derive great joy because we are living our passions.How to Be Here lays out concrete steps we can use to define and follow our dreams, interweaving engaging stories, lessons from biblical figures, insights gleaned from Rob’s personal experience, and practical advice. Rob gives you the support and insight you need to silence your critics, move from idea to action, take the first step, find joy in the work, persevere through hard times, and surrender to the outcome.Like Stephen Pressfield’s classic The War of Art, How to Be Here will inspire readers to seek the lives they were created to lead.

    The successful novelist and writer recounts the events that led her to become a born again Christian, and describes the ways her faith has sustained her.

     For many, depression is associated with shame and humiliation -- even a lack of faith. But in this refreshingly honest and oh-so-very-real revelation of one woman's journey through depression, you'll hear the voice of a kind friend. And in her words you'll find hope and renewed confidence that will guide you through your own darkness and into the light. If you are currently suffering from depression -- this book will help you realize you're not alone.If you have a loved one dealing with depression -- this book will help you understand.If you are a mental-health professional -- you now have a new tool to encourage your clients. Along with the humor, Chonda shares practical insight, biblical teaching, emotional support, and sympathetic concern. Whether you've experienced depression in your own life or in the life of someone you love, this friend has something to offer you: help, hope and, believe it or not, plenty of laughter.

    "Ocean Star" is the story of how God found her in the midst of an abusive childhood, became the loving parent she never had, and revealed himself in tangible ways through her amazing life journey. Filled with insightful symbolism, "Ocean Star" will help Christians and non-Christians find hope, humor, and healing in a powerful true story of a broken life made new.

    "There is a whole sensible world around me that I should be able to turn to Your praise." Written between 1946 and 1947 while O'Connor was a student far from home at the University of Iowa, A Prayer Journal is a rare portal into the interior life of the great writer. Not only does it map O'Connor's singular relationship with the divine, but it shows how entwined her literary desire was with her yearning for God. "I must write down that I am to be an artist. Not in the sense of aesthetic frippery but in the sense of aesthetic craftsmanship; otherwise I will feel my loneliness continually . . . I do not want to be lonely all my life but people only make us lonelier by reminding us of God. Dear God please help me to be an artist, please let it lead to You."O'Connor could not be more plain about her literary ambition: "Please help me dear God to be a good writer and to get something else accepted," she writes. Yet she struggles with any trace of self-regard: "Don't let me ever think, dear God, that I was anything but the instrument for Your story."As W. A. Sessions, who knew O'Connor, writes in his introduction, it was no coincidence that she began writing the stories that would become her first novel, Wise Blood, during the years when she wrote these singularly imaginative Christian meditations. Including a facsimile of the entire journal in O'Connor's own hand, A Prayer Journal is the record of a brilliant young woman's coming-of-age, a cry from the heart for love, grace, and art.

    What they weren't expecting, though, was the story that emerged in the months that followed--a story as beautiful as it was extraordinary, detailing their little boy's trip to heaven and back.Colton, not yet four years old, told his parents he left his body during the surgery--and authenticated that claim by describing exactly what his parents were doing in another part of the hospital while he was being operated on. He talked of visiting heaven and relayed stories told to him by people he met there whom he had never met in life, sharing events that happened even before he was born. He also astonished his parents with descriptions and obscure details about heaven that matched the Bible exactly, though he had not yet learned to read.With disarming innocence and the plainspoken boldness of a child, Colton tells of meeting long-departed family members. He describes Jesus, the angels, how "really, really big" God is, and how much God loves us. Retold by his father, but using Colton's uniquely simple words, "Heaven is for Real" offers a glimpse of the world that awaits us, where as Colton says, "Nobody is old and nobody wears glasses.""Heaven is for Real" will forever change the way you think of eternity, offering you the chance to see, and believe, like a child.

      What do you do when God dies? It's a question facing millions today, as science reveals a Universe that's self-creating, as American culture departs from Christian social norms, and the idea of God begins to seem implausible at best and barbaric at worst.   Mike McHargue understands the pain of unraveling belief. In Finding God in the Waves, Mike tells the story of how his Evangelical faith dissolved into atheism as he studied the Bible, a crisis that threatened his life, his friendships, and even his marriage. Years later, Mike was standing on the shores of the Pacific Ocean when a bewildering, seemingly mystical moment motivated him to take another look. But this time, it wasn't theology or scripture that led him back to God—it was science.    In Finding God in the Waves, "Science Mike” draws on his personal experience to tell the unlikely story of how science led him back to faith. Among other revelations, we learn what brain scans reveal about what happens when we pray; how fundamentalism affects the psyche; and how God is revealed not only in scripture, but in the night sky, in subatomic particles, and in us.   For the faithful and skeptic alike, Finding God in the Waves is a winsome, lucid, page-turning read about belonging, life’s biggest questions, and the hope of knowing God in an age of science.