Jazz Notes captures the essential Don Miller with non-religious reflections on how Don's incredible spiritual odyssey got started; what happened to Don at one of the most liberal colleges in the world to help him experience faith and grace for the first time in his life; a recasting of Don's marvelous "confession booth" story; and how Don discovered the secret to really loving other people-and himself. Jazz Notes includes a bonus audio CD with Don Miller interview.BLUE LIKE JAZZ Highlight Notes:1 million copies sold45 appearances on the NY Times Bestseller List-and countingA publishing phenomenon that continues to sell more books each year it is in the marketplace!

    Welcome to the middle!In these intimate reflections on midlife, Lisa-Jo Baker invites women to get a good look at their middles and gives permission to embrace them--beyond what the media, the mirror, the magazines, or our teenagers say. Through gutsy, beautiful storytelling, she admits out loud what most women are thinking about marriage, parenting, failure, and how badly we all want to buy those matching Magnolia Market mugs. Her delicious stories come from not being afraid of who she is (Your Age is Not a Dirty Word). Because she has finally grown comfortable in her own skin (The Scale is Not the Boss of You). She's not asking you to seize the day, just to make sure you actually see it; for all its wildly ordinary glory (Sobbing in my Minivan Over Honor Roll). Because Lisa-Jo knows that the middle might be the best part of the love story of life, muffin top included.

    He continued to make great music while slowly returning to his Catholic roots. His hard-won wisdom filters through his stories whether he's recalling how he went shopping with John Lennon and ended up on the cover of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band or what it was like to travel in the Jim Crow South with Sam Cooke.Praise for Dion... "To this day nobody, nobody can rock like Dion."—Lou Reed "He always had the name that said it all...Dion."—Bruce Springsteen "If you want to hear a great singer, listen to Dion. His genius has never deserted him."—Bob DylanThe audio edition of this book can be downloaded via Audible.

     Terry Wardle grew up in the Appalachian coalfields of southwestern Pennsylvania, part of a hardscrabble family of coal miners whose cast of characters included a hot-tempered grandfather with a predilection for blowing up houses, a distant and disapproving father, and a mother who disciplined him with harsh words and threats of hellfire.After enduring a crazy childhood, Terry graduated to a troubled adolescence, and then on to what seemed like a successful transition into adulthood, earning multiple degrees and founding one of the country's fastest growing churches. But all was not well.All his life, he felt he was never enough. Plagued by a truckload of fear no matter what he accomplished, he fell down the ladder of success into the deepest ditch of his life--ending up in a psychiatric hospital. Fortunately, that's when he discovered that Jesus has no fear of ditches.In fact, Jesus does some of his best work with people who find themselves there. In sharing his remarkable journey, Terry offers hope that healing and wholeness are possible no matter how broken a life may be. His larger-than-life story will help you move forward along your own healing path.

    Mary Neal's walk with God has been both ordinary and extraordinary, brimming with the gift and privilege of being touched by God in visible and very tangible ways. She is a practicing orthopaedic surgeon, a wife, and a mother who has experienced joy as well as great sorrow and death. She experienced life after death and, despite her scientific training, she believes the answer to each one of these questions is a definitive yes. She drowned on a South American river and went to Heaven. She conversed with angels. She returned to Earth, in part, to tell her story to others and help them find their way back to God. In this book , Dr. Neal shares the captivating details of her life in which she has experienced not just one miracle, but many. Her story is both compelling and thought provoking. Her experiences provide confirmation that miracles still occur, shows how God keeps His promises and why there is sufficient reason to live by faith. Dr. Neal's message is fundamentally one of hope.

    And that is the case with My Heart Can't Even Believe It, by journalist, blogger, and NPR contributor Amy Silverman. Amy bravely looks at her life, before and after her daughter Sophie was born, and reflects on her transformation from "a spoiled, self-centered brat," who used words like retard and switched lines at the Safeway to avoid a bagger with special needs, into the mother of a kid with Down syndrome and all that her new identity entails. She describes her evolution as gradual, one built by processing her fears and facing questions both big and small about Sophie, Down syndrome, and her place in the world. Funny, touching, and honest, this wonderful book looks at a daughter and her power to change minds and fill hearts with love so deep.

    Before retiring in 1997, he took his team to a bowl game every year, won three national championships in the last four years he coached, and ended his career boasting an 84 percent winning record. But while these numbers testify to an undeniable accomplishment, it has been another, more powerful force that has shaped Osborne's life: his faith.In Faith in the Game, this legendary coach shares the philosophy he used to create not only a champion football team, but also a meaningful life. Both a memoir of Osborne's career with the Cornhuskers and an inspirational guide to making the most out of life, Faith in the Game presents the traits Osborne helped to instill in his team, including core values like honesty, loyalty, and courage. Illustrated with compelling behind-the-scenes stories of the Nebraska football team and conveyed in his own captivating tone, Osborne's message reveals the value of hard work, the need to balance our professional and personal obligations, and, above all, the importance of bringing faith into our lives.For those seeking a spiritually centered approach to living and working, this candid account of Tom Osborne's faith and strength is a warm and authentic book from which all of us can learn.

    In the critically acclaimed prayer memoir from Patricia Raybon, the award-winning author and journalist sets out to learn the secrets of mountain-moving prayer. But will her broken marriage, a dying husband and her determination to pray for her household lead to a healed family and a renewed faith? In the page-turning depths of I Told the Mountain to Move, Raybon wrestles with her upbringing in a strict, churchgoing family, her departure from her childhood faith, and her struggle to return to God in adulthood. This wonderfully written book reaches across racial, denominational, and cultural lines, as Raybon discovers that prayer is a deliberate discipline that draws the prayer warrior into a life-changing relationship with God.

    But joy often gave way to sorrow as she invested her heart fully in walking alongside people in the grip of poverty, addiction, desperation, and disease.After unexpected tragedy shook her family, for the first time Katie began to wonder, Is God really good? Does He really love us? When she turned to Him with her questions, God spoke truth to her heart and drew her even deeper into relationship with Him.Daring to Hope is an invitation to cling to the God of the impossible--the God who whispers His love to us in the quiet, in the mundane, when our prayers are not answered the way we want or the miracle doesn't come. It's about a mother discovering the extraordinary strength it takes to be ordinary. It's about choosing faith no matter the circumstance and about encountering God's goodness in the least expected places.Though your heartaches and dreams may take a different shape, you will find your own questions echoed in these pages. You'll be reminded of the gifts of joy in the midst of sorrow. And you'll hear God's whisper: Hold on to hope. I will meet you here.

    Inside the world of emergency dispatch, tragedy, boredom, and mind-bending weirdness are constant companions.

    She is barely an adult when the trials of motherhood and marriage put her on an unexpected collision course with Jesus. After finding her faith at a suburban megachurch, Jamie trades in the easy life on the cul-de-sac for the green fields of Costa Rica. There, along with her family, she earnestly hopes to serve God and change lives. But faced with a yawning culture gap and persistent shortcomings in herself and her fellow workers, she soon loses confidence in the missionary enterprise and falls into a funk of cynicism and despair.

Nearly paralyzed by depression, yet still wanting to make a difference, she decides to tell the whole, disenchanted truth: Missionaries suck and our work makes no sense at all! From her sofa in Central America, she launches a renegade blog, Jamie the Very Worst Missionary, and against all odds wins a large and passionate following. Which leads her to see that maybe a "bad" missionary--awkward, doubtful, and vocal—is exactly what the world and the throngs of American do-gooders need.

    Part of the bestselling Emotionally Healthy Spirituality book collection, this 40-day devotional by Peter Scazzero will help you nurture the kind of healthy relationships you long for.Emotionally Healthy Relationships Day by Day--just like its sister devotional, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day--is your invitation into the ancient yet powerful discipline of the Daily Office, the practice of pausing morning and evening to reflect on God's work in your life.Each devotional will reflect on emotionally healthy relational themes, such as:Clarifying expectationsDeep listeningClean fightingAnd moreYou'll will be ushered into a transformational practice that will deepen your daily walk with Jesus, and along the way, you'll discover the spiritual nourishment, joy, and peace that comes from meeting with him every day.Emotionally Healthy Relationships Day by Day is also available in Spanish, Relaciones emocionalmente sanas Día a día.

    "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.

    In her chatty and breezy style, typical of any online conversation, Bethany Hamilton shares information on a wide variety of topics about her life and faith.

    Mitch Pacwa, SJ, tackles these and other questions in this comprehensive book on discernment. He says that first we need to believe in God and his moral laws and make a commitment to please him in all that we do. Then we need to pray so that we can experience the peace that can come only from God. Fr. Pacwa draws from St. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises, using plenty of everyday examples as well as stories from Scripture to help clarify his points. He encourages readers to develop a rich prayer life and says we can learn to listen to God's powerful voice and hear him speaking lovingly to us even when we are suffering in some way.Confronts modern-day assumptions that can prevent us from being open to God's will for our lives.Emphasizes the many ways we can develop our prayer life to nourish an authentic relationship with the Lord.