Book picks similar to
Advent: a thread in the night by E.M. Welcher
poetry
advent
mbc-recommended-books
christian-non-fiction
The Power of PrayerTM to Change Your Marriage Book of Prayers
Stormie Omartian - 2009
They'll come away understanding as never before how to look to God to strengthen and protect their marriage pray for their marriage in order to keep their hearts aligned with one another overcome issues of anger, infidelity, or any other problem that might try to undo what God has joined together Readers by the millions have loved the power and insight of Stormie's books on prayer. She now turns her attention to the deeper issues in the union between husband and wife. With the same care and insight she touches readers' lives with the truth and hope to be found in hearts that seek God.
The Ministry of Ordinary Places: Waking Up to God's Goodness Around You
Shannan Martin - 2018
Where do we even begin?Shannan Martin offers a surprisingly simple answer: uncover the hidden corners of our cities and neighborhoods and invest deeply in the lives of people around us. She walks us through her own discoveries about the vital importance of paying attention, as well as the hard but rewarding truth about showing up and committing for the long haul, despite the inevitable encounters with brokenness and uncertainty. With transparency, humor, heart-tugging storytelling, and more than a little personal confession, Martin shows us that no matter where we live or how much we have, as we learn what it is to be with people as Jesus was, we'll find our very lives. The details will look quiet and ordinary, and the call will both exhaust and exhilarate us. But it will be the most worth-it adventure we will ever take.
Between the Dreaming and the Coming True: The Road Home to God
Robert Benson - 1996
For those who have questioned their Christian faith, Robert Benson offers an account of his sojourn in a season of trouble and his journey back to God. In this spiritual self-portrait, Benson's experiences--battling depression and re-examining the deep Christian faith in which he has been immersed since childhood--become poignant testament of one believer's struggle with the mysteries of faith's road.
The Book of Craw: A Hobo's Testament (Companion Volume to "The Dirty Parts of the Bible")
Sam Torode - 2013
The Book of Craw -- comprised of poems and proverbs from Craw's own notebook -- is the companion volume to The Dirty Parts of the Bible: A Novel.
Hello, My Name Is Mommy: The Dysfunctional Girl's Guide to Having, Loving (and Hopefully Not Screwing Up) a Baby
Sheri Lynch - 2004
Dr. Spock may tell moms to trust their instincts, but Lynch's Misfit Mommies want to do every last thing but that. They feel like frauds and imposters, and Lynch's real-girl's voice will be instantly recognizable to them. Lynch will walk and talk new moms through it all: from lamenting the hot dogs and second-hand smoke they were raised on (and, of course, "you turned out just fine") to the realization that kids are kind of germy and gross (but feeling that way doesn't make one a bad mother) to keeping it together at work with Cheerios in the old nursing bra.
Ronnie
Ronnie Wood - 2007
For more than three decades since then, Ronnie, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts have formed the core of the greatest rock 'n' roll band in history. This book is Ronnie's autobiography, and like the band it can only be talked about in superlatives: it's simply one of the biggest, most outrageous, most extraordinary and most fun rock 'n' roll memoirs ever to be published.From early 1960s Britain, when acts like The Yardbirds, The Kinks, The Who and The Rolling Stones crisscrossed the country's club scene in clapped-out vans, barely making ends meet but having the time of their lives, through to the global mega stadium concerts of the 21st century (in 2006 the Stones played live to more than two million people in Rio), Ronnie takes us on a journey through his life and through rock history. Filled with unforgettable characters and truly eye-popping stories, his autobiography reveals Ronnie the husband, father, grandfather, artist and rock star the way you have never seen any rock star before.
Ronnie
is an up-front and personal look at life as a Rolling Stone, from the inside, and at the Stones as the rest of the world has never seen them. After
Ronnie
, sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll will never be the same again.
Spiritual Multiplication in the Real World: Why some disciple-makers reproduce when others fail.
Bob McNabb - 2014
The solutions presented are inspiring and highly practical. Best of all, the keys to fruitfulness shared are universal principles that work in the “real world.” These principles will help you multiply generations of disciples, wherever you find yourself!BECOME A REPRODUCER: • Don’t just make disciples. Learn to reproduce disciple-makers! • Gain an overview of the discipling process and how to move new believers to maturity and reproduction. • Grasp the keys to successful evangelism and multiplication in the context of a disciple-making team.
Advent 2021: The Everlasting Light
She Reads Truth - 2021
But this story of light piercing through the darkness didn’t begin with the birth of a baby boy under a shining star in the city of Bethlehem. From creation to the incarnation to the coming eternal city, Scripture speaks of Jesus’s life-giving presence and light in a dark world.During this Advent season, we celebrate that the hopes and fears of all the years were answered in Jesus, the everlasting light. This five-week Advent experience features daily Scripture reading that traces this theme throughout the Bible, preparing our hearts to encounter Christmas Day in a fresh way. It is also filled with thoughtful extras designed to help you engage this season as people of light, from daily reflection prompts to recipes, crafts, classic Christmas hymns, and more. Join us for Advent 2021 as we celebrate and contemplate The Everlasting Light.
Light Upon Light: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany
Sarah Arthur - 2014
Well-loved classics by Andersen, Dickens, and Eliot join contemporary works by Frederick Buechner and Gary Schmidt. Poems by Donne, Herbert, and Rossetti are paired with newer voices: Scott Cairns, Benjamín Alire Sáenz, Susanna Childress, and Amit Majmudar. Readers are invited to experience Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany in its raw strangeness, stripped of sentiment, and to turn toward Emmanuel.
Sacred Tears: Simple Reminders That God Sees You and Loves You
Lindsey Wheeler - 2021
You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.
Psalm 56:8 NLT Whatever you are going through as you read this, you need to hear these words: God sees you, He loves you, and your story is not over. Every tear you shed is precious to Him. Your suffering is not in vain. This collection of heartfelt essays, eye-catching word art, inspiring Scripture verses, honest prayers, and uplifting photography will meet you in your place of pain, offering solace and refuge for your weary soul. Lovingly written by Lindsey Wheeler, a pastor’s wife and adoptive mom who lives with chronic pain, Sacred Tears will bring you the blessed respite you’ve been longing for and remind you that you are never alone. You’ll discover what to do when you feel far from God, how to trust Him even when you don’t understand His plan for you, and how to handle the difficult decisions that often accompany painful situations. All this and more await inside. Experience the hope and comfort only God can provide.
In This Place
Kim L. Abernethy - 2011
station meeting where we had decided to stay put for the time being, God did ... as hostages by government soldiers who were caught behind enemy lines. ...
A Different Beautiful: Discovering and Celebrating Beauty in Places You Never Expected
Courtney Westlake - 2016
Through her personal insights and experiences, Courtney shares how you, too, can learn to find and celebrate God’s version of beautiful in your life, especially within our differences and struggles.
I Am Jessica: A Surivor's Powerful Story of Healing and Hope
Jamie Collins - 2019
As a child, I was known as "Jessica Pelley." When I was nine, I went to a sleepover at a friend's house for the weekend. While I was away, my entire family was murdered. I would spend the next 30 years fighting, crawling, and clawing my way through the darkness. This wasn't just a national news headline, a cold case, or a true crime show. It was my family. And my life. I was the broken little girl left behind to tell this story. I am now "Jessi," in the pages of this unapologetic memoir, set free. *** JESSI - APRIL 29, 2016 April 29, 1989. A date I cannot forget. Numbers forever seared deep into my soul. It was 27 years ago, today. Jesus. Get a grip, Jessi. They’re just numbers. They don’t mean anything. You’re giving them power over you, again. That’s what I tell myself. But the numbers—those damn numbers—they haunt me. They always will. I cannot escape them. Not now. Not ever. For most people, dates are just numbers on a calendar. No big deal. Random markers of time affixed to the top left corner of small, white squares on a page to depict days filled with choices, chances, and opportunities. At least that’s what they are for the normal people. But I’m no longer one of them. For me, they serve as numeric reminders of the girl I used to be. A tragedy that would irrevocably and mercilessly alter the life of a little girl wearing dark blue jeans, canvas lace-up sneakers, and a white tee shirt, accessorized by prominent coke bottle glasses, her hair hanging in a messy bob. Her life would be forever dismantled. Gone. The moment they told me the words. The ones that I will never forget. At that moment, my life froze and shattered into pieces, splintering like bits of broken glass, dropping down onto the ground around me, like the remnants of a cracked windshield, falling fast before the spinning mind and broken heart of a wide-eyed little girl. Life, as I knew it, was over in that moment. What happened on April 29, 1989, has scarred me forever. A day that started out normally, before it became ensnared in marred memories, tucked between folds of tragedy and darkness. The lingering memories cut straight to the core of the hollow girl left behind. The darkness delivers itself to me, every year, on schedule. Steadily. Greedily. On the 29th day of April. Relentless. Haunting. It taunts the pieces of me that remain. Every single year. I try to lift myself out of the darkness. I tell myself the numbers shouldn’t matter. Not after 27 years have passed. Jessi, It’s just another day. You can do anything you want with it. Don’t slip into the darkness. But not even the voice in my head believes those lies I tell myself. Year after year, my happiness recoils, my thoughts run to a dark place filled with foggy memories and a void that swallows me whole. The door of despair opens and I’m trapped: alone, numb to the bone, emotionally deplete, void of all reality, space, and time. I hate the helplessness as I slip further into that dark place. A place that, long ago, was filled with light. A place where three little girls would sing happy songs, pick flowers, hold hands while skipping through tall blades of grass, and sit down at the dining room table, where they would bow their heads to pray before plates filled with food, in a home filled with laughter. Then it hits me—the life-defining, self-inflicted images of horror—of their final moments—dragging me deep into the darkness.
Hidden Christmas: The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ
Timothy J. Keller - 2016
Every Christmas displays of Jesus resting in a manger populate lawns and churchyards, and songs about shepherds and angels fill the air. Yet despite the abundance of these Christian references in popular culture, how many of us have examined the hard edges of this biblical story? In his new book Timothy Keller takes readers on an illuminating journey into the surprising background of the Nativity. By understanding the message of hope and salvation within the Bible’s account of Jesus’s birth, readers will experience the redeeming power of God’s grace in a meaningful and deeper way.
Hilariously Infertile: One Woman's Inappropriate Quest to Help Women Laugh Through Infertility.
Karen Jeffries - 2018
It is a comedic, self-deprecating, look into the harsh, scary, and often sad world of infertility. Hilariously Infertile will make you laugh out loud while wishing you could have a glass of wine with the author and discuss how you relate to her story is. The author pokes fun at the infertility world, with jokes, such as, equating the constant gynecological exams to her sluttiest days in college, and wondering if her husband will be home in time to stick it (the IVF ass shot) into her butt.We follow the author's journey from trying to conceive on her own, discovering she is infertile, getting pregnant, and then doing it all again for her second child. The entire journey is marked with uproarious scenes that any woman who has ever been to the gynecologist can identify with. At times, the author's candor will surely lead the reader to conclude that the outlandish stories cannot be true. But they are, all of them.Included in the journey is a chapter on being a new mom. This chapter is funny and real. It does not boast about being a parent, to those who still may be on that path; rather, it speaks candidly about the adjustment to a new life that the author worked hard to achieve, via fertility treatments, and yet still was not ready for.There is no filter for the author of Hilariously Infertile. This book tells it like it is, from sex, to infertility, to being a mother and a wife. If you have thought it somewhere deep down inside, this book says it aloud.