"It's about having the kind of marriage where you can stand before God and say, 'Lord, I was all that You intended me to be.' Only when we make that kind of commitment can we truly have a marriage without regrets!"Speaking candidly about her first marriage, her conversion to Christianity, and her longtime marriage to Jack, Kay offers practical advice on effective communication, security and significance, difficult relationships, parenting, and God's guidelines for divorce and remarriage.Readers will discover what the Bible says about...resolving conflictunderstanding each partner's roleimproving the sexual relationshipbecoming financially wiserespecting and keeping marriage vowsThis rerelease with a fresh new cover (more than 110,000 copies sold) contains the marriage-building and life-changing material Kay has presented to enthusiastic audiences worldwide—helping thousands of people in many countries experience supportive, Christ-centered marriages.

    We yearn for the freedom and peace of the gospel, but remain addicted to our technology, shackled by our screens, and exhausted by our routines. But because our habits are the water we swim in, they are almost invisible to us. What can we do about it?The answer to our contemporary chaos is to practice a rule of life that aligns our habits to our beliefs. The Common Rule offers four daily and four weekly habits, designed to help us create new routines and transform frazzled days into lives of love for God and neighbor. Justin Earley provides concrete, doable practices, such as a daily hour of phoneless presence or a weekly conversation with a friend.These habits are “common” not only because they are ordinary, but also because they can be practiced in community. They have been lived out by people across all walks of life—businesspeople, professionals, parents, students, retirees—who have discovered new hope and purpose. As you embark on these life-giving practices, you will find the freedom and rest for your soul that comes from aligning belief in Jesus with the practices of Jesus.

    Beautiful in God's Eyes helps you make each day immensely meaningful as you delight in God and discover how to...experience instant progress toward personal goalsmanage daily life more effectivelytap into unlimited energyapply biblical principles to enhance relationshipsmove from the ordinary to the extraordinaryYou can experience a richer, more exciting spiritual walk as you embrace God's design for true beauty in your life.

    This book helps readers walk a path to true love that is more fulfilling than they ever imagined.

    Family-based youth ministry is about adults discipling teens one-on-one and in groups. It is about involving not just the nuclear family but the whole church family--from singles to older adults. More important, it's about incorporating youth into the life of your church. So stop worrying about the size of your youth group or your budget. Mark DeVries's refreshing approach to youth ministry will show you how your church can reach today's teens and how you can keep them involved in the life of the church. Whether you are a parent, a youth pastor or a church member who cares about teens, you will find in this book an entirely different approach to youth ministry that will build mature Christian believers.

    New from the author of the critically acclaimed Blue Like Jazz--and the man who taught him the things his dad never did--comes a gut-wrenching, honest look at growing up without a father.

    If we’re honest, we’ve been overfunctioning for so long, we can’t even imagine another way. How else will things get done? How else will we survive?It doesn’t have to be this way.Aundi Kolber believes that we don’t have to white-knuckle our way through life. In her debut book, Try Softer, she’ll show us how God specifically designed our bodies and minds to work together to process our stories and work through obstacles. Through the latest psychology, practical clinical exercises, and her own personal story, Aundi equips and empowers us to connect us to our truest self and truly live. This is the “try softer” life.In Try Softer, you’ll learn how to: Know and set emotional and relational boundaries Make sense of the difficult experiences you’ve had Identify your attachment style—and how that affects your relationships today Move through emotions rather than get stuck by them Grow in self-compassion and talk back to your inner critic Trying softer is sacred work. And while it won’t be perfect or easy, it will be worth it. Because this is what we were made for: a living, breathing, moving, feeling, connected, beautifully incarnational life.

    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.

    D. Greear. He struggled for many years to gain an assurance of salvation and eventually learned he was not alone. “Lack of assurance” is epidemic among evangelical Christians.In Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart, J. D. shows that faulty ways of presenting the gospel are a leading source of the confusion. Our presentations may not be heretical, but they are sometimes misleading. The idea of “asking Jesus into your heart” or “giving your life to Jesus” often gives false assurance to those who are not saved—and keeps those who genuinely are saved from fully embracing that reality.Greear unpacks the doctrine of assurance, showing that salvation is a posture we take to the promise of God in Christ, a posture that begins at a certain point and is maintained for the rest of our lives. He also answers the tough questions about assurance: What exactly is faith? What is repentance? Why are there so many warnings that seem to imply we can lose our salvation?Such issues are handled with respect to the theological rigors they require, but Greear never loses his pastoral sensitivity or a communication technique that makes this message teachable to a wide audience from teens to adults.

    It combines authoritative research with a captivating style to bring our heritage home to us.

    This new edition includes these helpful resources:    • Study guide for small groups    • Responses to Frequently Asked Questions    • Guide to painless Scripture memorization Friesen tackles the very practical issues of choosing a mate, picking a career, and giving in this fresh and liberating approach to decision making and the will of God. Story Behind the BookMost Christians have been taught how to find God’s will, yet many are still unsure whether they’ve found it. God does guide His people, but the question is, “How does He guide?” After “putting out a fleece” to decide which college to attend, Garry Friesen began pondering why it was so hard to find God’s will when he had so sincerely sought it. Was he the only one who did not have 100 percent clarity for every decision? Then a new possibility struck—perhaps his understanding of the nature of God’s will was biblically deficient. Maybe there was a better way to understand HOW God guides.

    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

    Even our vacations have a panicky, task-like edge to them. "If I only had more time," is the mantra of our age. But is this the real problem?Widely acclaimed author Mark Buchanan states that what we've really lost is "the rest of God-the rest God bestows and, with it, that part of himself we can know only through stillness." Stillness as a virtue is a foreign concept in our society, but there is wisdom in God's own rhythm of work and rest. Sabbath is elixir and antidote. It is a gift for our sanity and wholeness--to prolong our lives, to enrich our relationships, to increase our fruitfulness, to make our joy complete. Jesus practiced Sabbath among those who had turned it into a dismal thing, a day for murmuring and finger-wagging, and he reminded them of the day's true purpose: liberation-to heal, to feed, to rescue, to celebrate, to lavish and relish life abundant.The gift of Sabbath is essential to our full humanity and faith, says Buchanan. Far from being some starched and dour day only to be endured, Sabbath is a day wide and bright, brimming with laughter, enough to lend beauty to all our other days. Readers will be changed forever by this pivotal book."It seems very unsabbath-like to describe a book about Sabbath with the adverb 'urgently'--but we urgently need this book. Mark Buchanan shows us that our busyness is killing us--killin us--and that Sabbath is our best cure, our best path for rest and reverence and discipleship."--LAUREN WINNER, Best-selling author of Girl Meets God and Mudhouse Sabbath"With the easiness of long intimacy and a very deft hand, Buchanan here braids together into one gracious and sustaining strand the beauty of Sabbath, the wisdom of its keeping, and the generosity of God in gifting us with it. These pages are not just a blessing, they are a psalm that cries out to be joyfully engaged."--PHYLLIS TICKLE, Religion editor (ret.) Publishers Weekly and compiler of The Divine Hours

    Far more than a personality test, author Chris Heuertz writes, the enneagram is a sacred map to the soul. Lies about who we think we are keep us trapped in loops of self-defeat. But the enneagram offers a bright path to cutting through the internal clutter and finding our way back to God and to our true identity as God created us.Chris Heuertz’ life was forever changed after he learned about the enneagram 15 years ago. Today, he leads enneagram workshops all over the world. Join Chris as he shows you how this ancient tool can help you awaken to the gifts God has given you, find freedom from your personal patterns of sin and fear, and grow in acceptance of your identity as you grow with God.In conversational style with compelling stories, The Sacred Enneagram will show youHow to understand the 'why' behind your type, beyond caricatures and stereotypesHow to align your type with prayer posturesHow to identify and find freedom from self-destructive patternsHow to grow in spiritual discernmentHow to face your past wounds and step toward healingHow to awaken your unique gifts to serve today’s broken worldChris’s own journey with the enneagram is an accessible introduction and exploration of how the enneagram can change your life, because to the extent that we are transformed, the world will be transformed.

    But the good news is, God gave us emotions to experience life, not destroy it. With gut-honest personal examples and biblical teaching, Lysa shows us how to use our emotions for good.Unglued will equip you to:Know with confidence how to resolve conflict in your important relationships.Find peace in your most difficult relationships as you learn to be honest but kind when offended.Identify what type of reactor you are and how to significantly improve your communication.Respond with no regrets by managing your tendencies to stuff, explode, or react somewhere in between.Gain a deep sense of calm by responding to situations out of your control without acting out of control.