Book picks similar to
Grieving, Hope and Solace: When a Loved One Dies in Christ by Albert N. Martin
theology
christian
christian-living
grief
What's Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done
Matt Perman - 2012
It’s about getting the right things done—the things that count, make a difference, and move the world forward. In our current era of massive overload, this is harder than ever before. So how do you get more of the right things done without confusing mere activity for actual productivity?When we take God’s purposes into account, a revolutionary insight emerges. Surprisingly, we see that the way to be productive is to put others first—to make the welfare of other people our motive and criteria in determining what to do (what’s best next). As both the Scriptures and the best business thinkers show, generosity is the key to unlocking our productivity. It is also the key to finding meaning and fulfillment in our work.What’s Best Next offers a practical approach for improving your productivity in all areas of life. It will help you better understand:• Why good works are not just rare and special things like going to Africa, but anything you do in faith even tying your shoes.• How to create a mission statement for your life that actually works.• How to delegate to people in a way that actually empowers them.• How to overcome time killers like procrastination, interruptions, and multitasking by turning them around and making them work for you.• How to process workflow efficiently and get your email inbox to zero every day.• How your work and life can transform the world socially, economically, and spiritually, and connect to God’s global purposes.By anchoring your understanding of productivity in God’s purposes and plan, What’s Best Next will give you a practical approach for increasing your effectiveness in everything you do.
Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep
Tish Harrison Warren - 2021
When she navigated a time of doubt and loss, the prayer was grounding for her. She writes that practices of prayer gave words to my anxiety and grief and allowed me to reencounter the doctrines of the church not as tidy little antidotes for pain, but as a light in darkness, as good news.Where do we find comfort when we lie awake worrying or weeping in the night? This book offers a prayerful and frank approach to the difficulties in our ordinary lives at work, at home, and in a world filled with uncertainty.
But God, Wouldn't I Be More Useful to You If I Were Healthy? (Chronic Pain and the Christian Life)
Esther Smith - 2016
Perhaps no questions cause more confusion than the ones that arise when you are pulled out of a thriving life of work that benefits the world, only to spend your hours, days, and weeks languishing in bed. It just doesn’t make sense. Why, God? Why would you take away my thriving career when it took me years to get to this point? Why would you take away my ability to serve and help and contribute? In this first book in the Chronic Pain and the Christian Life series, explore what it looks like to live a life of work, service, and rest, even when the pain doesn’t go away.
Simplify: Ten Practices to Unclutter Your Soul
Bill Hybels - 2014
Overwhelmed. Overscheduled. Sound familiar? Today's velocity of life can consume and control us . . . until our breakneck pace begins to feel normal and expected. That's where the danger lies: When we spend our lives doing things that keep us busy but don't really matter, we sacrifice the things that do.What if your life could be different? What if you could be certain you were living the life God called you to live--and building a legacy for those you love? If you crave a simpler life anchored by the priorities that matter most, roll up your sleeves: Simplified living requires more than just cleaning out your closets or reorganizing your desk drawer. It requires uncluttering your soul. By eradicating the stuff that leaves your spirit drained, you can stop doing what doesn't matter--and start doing what does.In Simplify, bestselling author Bill Hybels identifies the core issues that lure us into frenetic living--and offers searingly practical steps for sweeping the clutter from our souls.
Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs For. What Every Church Can Be.
James MacDonald - 2012
Arriving in minutes, I find the family imploding with grief having just discovered their son hanging in the garage. In a moment of unshakable pain, he jumped off the ladder and into eternity. And I will never shake the look in their eyes when I asked why he hadn't called a church. "Why would he do that?" Across town, a pool of tears on my kitchen table as an out of town guest feels the weight of his infidelity, despairing that his famished soul finds no refuge and that he has to board a plane to feel fellowship. "Has your church tried to help you?" And the Christian leader confesses he hasn't been to church in years." Infighting, backbiting, heartbreaking, frustrating ... church. Though exceptions do exist, the reality is that church in America is failing one life at a time. Somewhere between pathetically predictable and shamefully entertaining, sadly sentimental and rarely authentic, church has become worst of all ... godless. "Vertical Church "points to a new day where God is the seeker, and we are the ones found. In "Vertical Church "God shows up, and that changes everything. If you want to experience God as you never have before and witness His hand at work, if you want to wake up to the first thought, "Thank God it's Sunday," if you're ready to feel your heart beat faster as you drive to your place of worship ... then devour and digest the lessons of "Vertical Church.
The Promise: God's Purpose and Plan for When Life Hurts
Jonathan Morris - 2008
Now Father Jonathan peels back the layers of questions that arise when someone asks, "Why me?" in response to human suffering. With an accessible voice and calming pastoral guidance, Father Jonathan leads readers through each step of suffering---from doubt and anger to healing and acceptance. The Promise comprises three parts, each addressing a step in the process of healing. Part 1, "God on Trial," speaks to doubts and anger that arise when we suffer and poses tough questions such as "Does God even care?" and "Why should we trust a God who allows innocent suffering?" Part 2 takes the reader on a journey of finding emotional and spiritual healing from suffering. In part 3 Father Jonathan introduces the five "Principles for Freedom-Living." From living your personal vocation to a step-by-step guide for sketching a plan for your spiritual life, the freedom principles are practical and easily applied to everyday life. Together these five principles have the power to transform what would otherwise be useless suffering into a means of great sanctification and personal fulfillment. While pulling back the layers of philosophy and theology that surround human suffering, Father Jonathan offers not only a deeply spiritual answer but also a practical one to this most fundamental of human questions: Why do we suffer? The Promise not only addresses how to understand and live with suffering, but also poses the toughest question regarding our relationship to God: Why do we suffer under a benevolent God? Father Jonathan delves into how we can heal from the spiritual, emotional, and even physical scars left behind by suffering. The Promise offers five principles for living a free life, or a life free of the fear that God is not there for us, and offers comfort and hope to those experiencing hard times.
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 Supernatural Power of Forgiveness: Discover How to Escape Your Prison of Pain and Unlock a Life of Freedom
Kris Vallotton - 2010
In fact, He uses difficult seasons and relationships to propel His children toward their destiny. The healing process from emotional and spiritual wounds is a journey that prepares Christians to live powerful lives, fully trusting the God who has freed them from the past.Jason Vallotton thought his world was burning down around him when he found out that his wife, Heather, was having an affair and planned to leave him and their children. Using his own story as a poignant, evocative illustration of God’s grace and healing, Jason invites readers to reframe their understanding of redemption. With his dad, Kris Vallotton, Jason shows believers how they can steward the hardest times and deepest pain in their lives and allow God to use them to lay a foundation for complete restoration and empowerment for the future. While it may be hard to see emotional wounds as gifts when they still hurt so deeply, those who read The Supernatural Power of Forgiveness will discover that God can not only heal their wounds, but He can also use the process of healing to equip them for whole, fulfilled and powerful lives.
The Joy of Calvinism: Knowing God's Personal, Unconditional, Irresistible, Unbreakable Love
Gregory Forster - 2012
But too often the defenders of Calvinism explain it only in highly technical, formulaic, and negative terms. As a result, most people today do not understand what "Calvinism" really is. They are robbed—in whole or in part—of the everyday experience of devotional joy that a robust and well-formed Calvinistic piety always produces.This book will show you how Calvinism can transform your everyday walk with God by unlocking the purpose of the Christian life, and how you can have the joy of God in spite of trials and suffering. It is time we rediscover the joy of Calvinism.
Thoughts for Young Men
J.C. Ryle - 1886
J.C. Ryle--the last of the great Puritans--tackles each of these subjects with a tenderness and tact which is unsurpassed. If it was difficult to be a young man in the days of the nineteeth century when Ryle first penned Thoughts for Young Men, it is all the more difficult to be a young man in the twenty-first century world of image-overload, radical individualism, and rampant sensuality. Thoughts for Young Men remains to this day the most relevent and helpful book on the subject in print.
Is It My Fault?: Hope and Healing for Those Suffering Domestic Violence.
Lindsey A. Holcomb - 2014
The effects of domestic violence are physical, social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual, and can have long-lasting distressing consequences. It is common for victims of domestic violence to suffer from ongoing depression and recurring nightmares, self-harm, such as cutting, panic attacks, substance abuse, and more.This book exists to address the abysmal issues of domestic violence using the powerful and transforming biblical message of grace and redemption. Save Me From Violence convincingly shows that the Lord is the Only One who can heal the despairing victim. It deals with this devastating problem and sin honestly and directly without hiding its prevalence today.
Depression, Anxiety, and the Christian Life: Practical Wisdom from Richard Baxter
Michael S. Lundy - 2018
Depression--whether circumstantial and fleeting or persistent and long term--impacts most people at some point in their lives. Puritan pastor Richard Baxter spent most of his ministry caring for depressed and discouraged souls, and his timeless counsel still speaks to us today. In this book, psychiatrist Michael S. Lundy and theologian J. I. Packer present Baxter's writings in order to comfort, instruct, and strengthen all who struggle with depression.
Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels
J. Warner Wallace - 2013
A. County homicide detective and former atheist, Cold-Case Christianity examines the claims of the New Testament using the skills and strategies of a hard-to-convince criminal investigator. Christianity could be defined as a “cold case”: it makes a claim about an event from the distant past for which there is little forensic evidence. In Cold-Case Christianity, J. Warner Wallace uses his nationally recognized skills as a homicide detective to look at the evidence and eyewitnesses behind Christian beliefs. Including gripping stories from his career and the visual techniques he developed in the courtroom, Wallace uses illustration to examine the powerful evidence that validates the claims of Christianity. A unique apologetic that speaks to readers’ intense interest in detective stories, Cold-Case Christianity inspires readers to have confidence in Christ as it prepares them to articulate the case for Christianity.
The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine
A.W. Tozer - 1948
Tozer, is not for a select few, but should be the experience of every follower of Christ. Here is a masterly study of the inner life by a heart thirsting after God. Here is a book for every child of God, pastor, missionary, and Christian. It deals with the deep things of God and the riches of His grace. In The Pursuit of God, Tozer sheds light on the path to a closer walk with God.
Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God
Paul Copan - 2010
This viewpoint is even making inroads into the church. How are Christians to respond to such accusations? And how are we to reconcile the seemingly disconnected natures of God portrayed in the two testaments?In this timely and readable book, apologist Paul Copan takes on some of the most vexing accusations of our time, including: God is arrogant and jealousGod punishes people too harshlyGod is guilty of ethnic cleansingGod oppresses womenGod endorses slaveryChristianity causes violenceand moreCopan not only answers God's critics, he also shows how to read both the Old and New Testaments faithfully, seeing an unchanging, righteous, and loving God in both.