Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches


Russell D. Moore - 2009
    Moore does not shy away from this call in Adopted for Life, a popular-level, practical manifesto for Christians to adopt children and to help equip other Christian families to do the same. He shows that adoption is not just about couples who want children-or who want more children. It is about an entire culture within evangelicalism, a culture that sees adoption as part of the Great Commission mandate and as a sign of the gospel itself.Moore, who adopted two boys from Russia and has spoken widely on the subject, writes for couples considering adoption, families who have adopted children, and pastors who wish to encourage adoption.

Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full: Gospel Meditations for Busy Moms


Gloria Furman - 2014
    Soccer practice. Dirty dishes.Motherhood is tough, and it often feels like the to-do list just gets longer and longer every day--making it hard to experience true joy in God, our children, and the gospel.In this encouraging book for frazzled moms, Gloria Furman helps us reorient our vision of motherhood around what the Bible teaches. Showing how to pursue a vibrant relationship with God--even when discouragement sets in and the laundry still needs to be washed--this book will help you treasure Christ more deeply no matter how busy you are.

Miracles and Other Reasonable Things: A Story of Unlearning and Relearning God


Sarah Bessey - 2019
    Sarah Bessey was in her sweet spot: a popular author, sought-after speaker and preacher, and an active and engaged mother of four, married to the love of her life. Raised within the Word of Faith and prosperity movements, which declared that obedience to God led to untold blessings, her life seemed to prove the preachers of her childhood were right. Then she was in a car accident with life-shattering consequences, and everything she thought she knew about God and faith was upended.Weaving together theology and memoir in her trademark narrative style, Sarah tells us the whole story of the car accident that changed her body and ultimately changed her life. The road of healing leads to Rome where she met the Pope (it’s complicated) and encountered the Holy Spirit in the last place she expected. She writes about her miraculous healing, learning to live with chronic pain, and the ways God unexpectedly makes us whole in the midst of suffering. She invites us to a path of knowing God that is filled with ordinary miracles, hope in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, surprising holiness, and other completely reasonable things.Insightful, profound, and unexpected, Miracles and Other Reasonable Things is a wild spirit-filled story of what it means to live with both grief and faith in our hands as we wrestle with God.

Learning to Walk in the Dark


Barbara Brown Taylor - 2014
    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.

Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family


Paul David Tripp - 2016
    But if moms and dads view their role through the lens of God's grace, they will see that the gospel must first shape how they parent before they can effectively shape their children. In this highly practical book, Paul David Tripp unfolds a more biblical perspective on parenting than merely adhering to a list of rules. He lays out fourteen gospel-centered principles that will radically change the way parents think about what it means to raise up a child, informing everything they do as a parent.

Shalom Sistas: Living Wholeheartedly in a Brokenhearted World


Osheta Moore - 2017
    But honestly: who's got the time? So one night she whispered a dangerous prayer: God, show me the things that make for peace…In Shalom Sistas, Moore shares what she learned when she challenged herself to study peace in the Bible for forty days. Taking readers through the twelve points of the Shalom Sistas’ Manifesto, Moore experiments with practices of everyday peacemaking and invites readers to do the same. From dropping “love bombs” on a family vacation, to talking to the coach who called her son the n-word, to spreading shalom with a Swiffer, Moore offers bold steps for crossing lines between black and white, suburban and urban, rich and poor.What if a bunch of Jesus-following women catch a vision of a vibrant, whole, flourishing world? What happens when Shalom Sistas unite?Free downloadable study guide available here.

The Gospel Comes with a House Key


Rosaria Champagne Butterfield - 2018
    However, when the Bible calls Christians to be hospitable, it's calling them to much more. In this book, Rosaria Butterfield invites readers into her home and shows from her own life and experience how "radically ordinary hospitality" can be a bridge for bringing the gospel to lost friends and neighbors—something that she experienced herself on her journey to Christ. Such hospitality welcomes those who look, think, believe, and act differently than us into our own everyday, sometimes messy lives. Christians will be inspired and equipped to use their homes and tables as a way of showing a skeptical, unbelieving world what love and authentic faith really look like.Table of ContentsPreface: Radically Ordinary Hospitality1. Priceless: The Merit of Hospitality2. The Jesus Paradox: The Vitality of Hospitality3. Our Post Christian World: The Kindness of Hospitality4. God Never Gets the Address Wrong: The Providence of Hospitality5. The Gospel Comes with a House Key: The Seal of Hospitality 6. Judas In the Church: The Borderland of Hospitality7. Giving Up the Ghosts: The Lamentation of Hospitality8. The Daily Grind: The Basics of Hospitality9. Blessed are the Merciful: The Hope of Hospitality 10. Walking the Emmaus Road: The Future of Hospitality Conclusion: Feeding the 5000: The Nuts and Bolts and Beans and Rice

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.

The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place


Andy Crouch - 2017
    It's about developing wisdom, character, and courage in the way we use digital media rather than accepting technology's promises of ease, instant gratification, and the world's knowledge at our fingertips. And it's definitely not just about the kids.Drawing on in-depth original research from the Barna Group, Andy Crouch shows readers that the choices we make about technology have consequences we may never have considered. He takes readers beyond the typical questions of what, where, and when and instead challenges them to answer provocative questions like, Who do we want to be as a family? and How does our use of a particular technology move us closer or farther away from that goal? Anyone who has felt their family relationships suffer or their time slip away amid technology's distractions will find in this book a path forward to reclaiming their real life in a world of devices.

A Year of Biblical Womanhood


Rachel Held Evans - 2012
    Intrigued by the traditionalist resurgence that led many of her friends to abandon their careers to assume traditional gender roles in the home, Evans decides to try it for herself, vowing to take all of the Bible's instructions for women as literally as possible for a year.Pursuing a different virtue each month, Evans learns the hard way that her quest for biblical womanhood requires more than a "gentle and quiet spirit" (1 Peter 3:4). It means growing out her hair, making her own clothes, covering her head, obeying her husband, rising before dawn, abstaining from gossip, remaining silent in church, and even camping out in the front yard during her period. See what happens when a thoroughly modern woman starts referring to her husband as "master" and "praises him at the city gate" with a homemade sign. Learn the insights she receives from an ongoing correspondence with an Orthodox Jewish woman, and find out what she discovers from her exchanges with a polygamist wife. Join her as she wrestles with difficult passages of scripture that portray misogyny and violence against women. With just the right mixture of humor and insight, compassion and incredulity, A Year of Biblical Womanhood is an exercise in scriptural exploration and spiritual contemplation. What does God truly expect of women, and is there really a prescription for biblical womanhood? Come along with Evans as she looks for answers in the rich heritage of biblical heroines, models of grace, and all-around women of valor.

The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus


Rich Villodas - 2020
    Our pace is too frenetic to be in union with God, and we don't know how to quiet our hearts and minds to be present. Our emotions are unhealthy and compartmentalized. We feel unable to love well or live differently from the rest of the world--to live as people of the good news.New York pastor Rich Villodas says we must restore balance, focus, and meaning for our souls. The Deeply Formed Life lays out a fresh vision for spiritual breakthrough following five key values:- Monastic Value: unplug from this noisy world to care for your soul- Emotional Health Value: why deep love can't come from shallow wells- Healthy Sexuality Value: how our bodies connect with our spirituality- Multiracial Value: a spiritual, internal approach to pursuing racial justice- Missional Value: how to be the hands and feet of Jesus in a consumerist worldThe Deeply Formed Life is a roadmap to live in the richly rooted place we all yearn for: a place of communion with God, a place where we find our purpose.

The Circle Maker: Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears


Mark Batterson - 2011
    Sharing inspiring stories from his own experiences as a prayer circle maker, Batterson will help readers uncover their heart's deepest desires and God-given dreams and unleash them through the kind of audacious prayer that God delights to answer.

Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life


Tish Harrison Warren - 2016
    But God can become present to us in surprising ways through our everyday routines. Framed around one ordinary day, this book explores daily life through the lens of liturgy, small practices and habits that form us. Each chapter looks at something making the bed, brushing her teeth, losing her keys that the author does in the day. Drawing from the diversity of her life as a campus minister, Anglican priest, friend, wife, and mother, Tish Harrison Warren opens up a practical theology of the everyday. Each activity is related to a spiritual practice as well as an aspect of our Sunday worship. Come and discover the holiness of your every day."

Rhythms of Renewal: Trading Stress and Anxiety for a Life of Peace and Purpose


Rebekah Lyons - 2019
    Rhythms of Renewal will help you trade your anxiety for the vibrant life you were meant to live through four profound rhythms: rest, restore, connect, and create. With encouraging stories and practical steps, Rebekah Lyons will help you begin an intentional, lifelong journey toward sustained emotional, relational, and spiritual health. Rhythms of Renewal  is your guide to daily rescue and a way forward into the peace your soul longs for. As a society, we are in the throes of a collective panic attack. Anxiety and loneliness are on the rise, with 77% of our population experiencing physical symptoms of stress on a regular basis. We feel pressure chasing careers, security, and keeping up. We worry about health, politics, and many other complexities we can't control. Eventually we find our minds spinning, trying to cope or manage a low hum of anxiety, unlike ever before. But it doesn't have to stay this way. Rebekah draws from her own battle with depression and anxiety and shares a pathway to establish four life-giving rhythms that quiet inner chaos and make room for a flourishing life. By taking time to rest, restore, connect, and create, you will discover how to: Take charge of your emotional health and inspire your loved ones to do the sameOvercome anxiety by establishing daily habits that keep you mentally and physically strongFind joy through restored relationships in your family and communityWalk in confidence with the unique gifts you have to offer the world

The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and Women's Work


Kathleen Norris - 1998
    Definitely not "for women only." +