Knee Deep in Life: Wife, Mother, Realist… and why we’re already enough


Laura Belbin - 2020
    

Judge Me, Dear Reader: Emma's Story


Erwin E. Wirkus - 1978
    A member of the Church from the beginning and a staunch supporter of her husband through his trials and eventual death, Emma lived a difficult life, yet many wonder how she could have turned her back on the beliefs that she held so strongly and suffered so much for. Judge Me, Dear Reader is the story of Emma, one of the greatest champions - and most criticized members - of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. By showing Emma in a more sympathetic light, the author reminds each of us that Emma - and everyone else - will be judged according to the desires of their heart by the only one who can see things clearly: the Lord.

Coming Clean: A Story of Faith


Seth Haines - 2015
    That evening, he asked his sister to smuggle in a bottle of gin, and gave in to addiction.But whether or not you've ever had a drop to drink in your life, we're all looking for ways to stop the pain. Like Seth, we're all seeking balms for the anxiety of what sometimes seems to be an absent, unresponsive God—whether it's through people-pleasing, shopping, the internet, food, career highs, or even good works and elite theology. We attempt to anesthetize our anxiety through addiction—any old addiction. But it often leaves us feeling even more empty than before.In Coming Clean, Seth Haines writes a raw account of his first 90 days of sobriety, illuminating how to face the pain we'd rather avoid, and even more importantly, how an abiding God meets us in that pain. Seth shows us that true wholeness is found in facing our pain and anxieties with the tenacity and tenderness of Jesus, and only through Christ's passion can we truly come clean

Hiding in the Light


Rifqa Bary - 2015
    But God was calling her to freedom and love. He was calling her to true faith. He was calling her to give up everything. Leaving Islam for Christianity cost her more than she imagined but gave more than she could have dreamed. Hiding in the Light is the story of Rifqa's remarkable spiritual journey from Islam to Christianity. It is also the untold story of how she ran from her father's threats to find refuge with strangers in Florida, only to face a controversial court case that reached national headlines. Most of all, it is the story of a young girl who made life-changing sacrifices to follow Jesus-and who inspires us to do the same. Teens and young adults will be moved by Rifqa's story of standing up to religious persecution, literally giving up everything to follow her faith.

Glenn Hughes: The Autobiography - From Deep Purple to Black Country Communion


Glenn Hughes - 2010
    Starting with the Midlands beat combo Finders Keepers in the 1960s, he formed acclaimed funk-rock band Trapeze in the early 70s before joining Deep Purple at their commercial peak. Flying the world in Starship 1, the band's own Boeing 720 jet, Hughes enthusiastically embraced the rock superstar's lifestyle while playing on three Purple albums, including the classic Burn. When the band split in 1976 Hughes embarked on a breakneck run of solo albums, collaborations and even a brief, chaotic spell fronting Black Sabbath. All of this was accompanied by cocaine psychosis, crack addiction and other excesses, before Hughes survived a clean-up-or-die crisis, and embarked on a reinvigorated solo career enriched by a survivor's wisdom. In his autobiography, Hughes talks us through this whirlwind of a life with unflinching honesty and good humour, taking us right up to date with his triumphant re-emergence in current supergroup Black Country Communion. "I had a constant fascination with the darkside. It is another world, bordering on insanity, and demonic possession, or what I thought was my own Soul Bending personal nirvana. Its good to be back in the middle of the boat, instead of hanging on for dear life in the last life boat." - Glenn Hughes, April 2011

Vintage Saints and Sinners: 25 Christians Who Transformed My Faith


Karen Wright Marsh - 2017
    The word saint conjures up images of superstar Christians revered for their spectacular acts and otherworldly piety. But when we take a closer look at the lives of these spiritual heavyweights, we learn that they also experienced struggle, doubt, and heartache. In fact, we learn that in many ways they're not all that different from you and me. Narrating her own winding pilgrimage through faith, Karen Marsh reveals surprising lessons in everyday spirituality from these "saints"--folks who lived and breathed, and failed and followed God. Told with humor and vulnerability, Vintage Saints and Sinners introduces us afresh to twenty-five brothers and sisters who challenge and inspire us with their honest faith. Join Karen on her journey with the likes of Augustine, Brother Lawrence, and Saint Francis, as well as Amanda Berry Smith, Soren Kierkegaard, Dorothy Day, Howard Thurman, Flannery O'Conner, and many more. Let their lives and their wisdom be an invitation to authentic life in Christ.

All About the Angels


Paul O'Sullivan - 1945
    Catholic Tradition teaches that God has given each of us a special Guardian Angel from the moment of our birth. In this book Fr. O’Sullivan explains that this Angel’s great love for us can only be compared to that of a mother. Further, he shows how, with all their power and magnificence, the Angels are also immensely kind, faithful and generous and actually even grateful for our own poor love, repaying us many times over for our little acts of love toward them. With their superior intelligence and power, they are willing and able to prevent accidents, to comfort us, to defend us from the attacks of the devil and to help us in our spiritual and temporal affairs.In this fascinating little book, Fr. O’Sullivan tells stories about St. Michael, St. Gabriel and St. Raphael, plus stories of the Angels and St. Gemma, St. Agnes, St. Frances of Rome, St. Dominic, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Rose of Lima, St. Vincent Ferrer, St. Isidore the Farmer, St. Francis of Assisi, the children of Fatima, and many others, both famous and obscure, plus the wonderful story of St. John Bosco’s mysterious dog.All About the Angels is a book uniquely conceived to open our eyes to the invisible world of the blessed spirits all around us, our powerful, holy friends who love us and humbly desire to guide us and assist us daily in countless ways—if we will only acknowledge their presence and call upon them for assistance.

Walking from East to West: God in the Shadows


Ravi Zacharias - 2006
    Ravi has spoken of his own journey only in bits and pieces in his other books and talks. It is a journey that has led him beyond his family and culture into a revelation that replaced pantheism with monotheism, and into a relationship with a God the vast majority of his people do not worship. From this new understanding birthed in him by the founder of Christianity, Ravi has gone forward to teach as one of our generation’s great apologists.A life lived in Christ is the greatest argument of all for the living God. Ravi urges the reader to look at the lives that have turned the hearts of people into movements for Christ. In the first three centuries of the church, the Apostles and followers like Polycarp and Tertullian and Origen demonstrated with their lives the truth of the resurrected Christ. A whole line of witnesses from every generation succeeded these who walked in the footsteps of Jesus, with names like Augustine, Catherine of Sienna, Bernard of Clairvaux, Luther, and Wesley leading the procession.But history begins on an individual level.Ravi shows readers his life, in its successes and failures, in its existence in the East and in the West, and in his attempts to bring the truth of Christ to those in any culture who don’t know him. The Hebrew poet has said that a life rich in experiences is a life from which others can learn.This book is about Ravi’s journey, from meaninglessness to the abundant joy of Christ, from East to West and back again, in the all-consuming passion of letting the world know about true freedom, and in whom that freedom is found.

The Tapestry: The Life and Times of Francis and Edith Schaeffer


Edith Schaeffer - 1981
    Book by Schaeffer, Edith

Moonshiner's Daughter


Mary Judith Messer - 2010
    Her father, an ardent moonshiner when he wasn't in prison, and her mother, often showing mental illness from an earlier brain injury, raised their four children in some of the grimmest circumstances that you will ever read about. Messer eventually escaped her extreme living conditions by going to live with a family as their mother's helper outside of Washington, DC. She then moved to New York City to join her oldest sister who had fled an abusive arranged marriage when she was fifteen and left behind a young son. These two teenage girls, uneducated but determined, found freedom from their Appalachian abuse yet encountered a culture and some inhabitants who provided scars even so. Messer's memoir is told through the eyes and with the words of a barely educated child and young woman yet their meaning and her descriptions are clear as a mountain stream. Messer changed the names of many people and places she wrote about to protect her still living family members and herself as well. In the final chapter, Messer shares one legacy from her father....he even taught the infamous "Popcorn" Sutton of Maggie Valley how to be a moonshiner when Popcorn was a teenager. The moonshiner's daughter did survive and ultimately thrive. This is her story. You won't be able to put it down.

Imperfect


Sanjay Manjrekar - 2017
    His photographic memory takes the reader along on his journey from the dusty maidansof Mumbai to the world stage as the diminutive batsman faces up to the fearsome West Indian andPakistani pace attacks.In his precise plainspeak, Sanjay reflects on his father Vijay Manjrekar, and the effects of thatlegend on his game; comments on the complex equations with the India greats with whom he sharedthe dressing room and on the lessons learnt from his opponents; and reveals his own excruciatingobsession with batting technique, the quest for perfection, and the battle to try to shake off hismental shackles.This remarkable memoir sets a new standard for cricket writing in India, with significant life lessonsfor those who aren t cricket fans as well.

Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was and Who God Has Always Been


Jackie Hill Perry - 2018
    Jackie grew up fatherless, experienced gender confusion, and embraced both masculinity and homosexuality with every fiber of her being. She knew that Christians had a lot to say about all of the above. But was she supposed to change herself? How was she supposed to stop loving women, when homosexuality felt more natural to her than heterosexuality ever could?At age nineteen, Jackie came face-to-face with what it meant to be made new. And not in a church, or through contact with Christians. God broke in and turned her heart toward Him right in her own bedroom in light of His gospel.Read in order to understand. Read in order to hope. Or read in order, like Jackie, to be made new.

Saint Augustine: A Life From Beginning to End


Hourly History - 2019
     Although he was born in what was considered the backwaters of the Roman Empire, Saint Augustine of Hippo has long been renowned for his early religious and philosophical thought. He has been called a Doctor of the Church for his unrivaled ability of patching up even the most complex of theological questions. He tackled such things as the condition of the soul and the omnipotence of God. During the course of his tenure as bishop of the North-African city of Hippo, Augustine often gained as many critics as he did followers. Inside you will read about... ✓ The Son of a Pagan ✓ Augustine’s Love Child ✓ The Road that Led to Rome ✓ Looking toward Christianity ✓ The Priest of Hippo ✓ A Founding Father of the Church And much more! To say that this esteemed theologian was a complex man would be an understatement. Saint Augustine’s life held many contradictions from the very beginning. Born to a pagan father and a devoutly Christian mother, he seemed destined to be at a crossroads. In his life he was both a sinner and a saint, and his seminal works, such as the Confessions and the City of God, prove that somewhere at the intersection of tremendous faith and terrible human frailty you will find the greatness of Saint Augustine.

Gunning for Greatness: My Life: With an introduction by Jose Mourinho


Mesut Özil - 2018
    After an eventful sojourn among the Galacticos of Real Madrid he has savoured silverware at Arsenal, while in 2014 he lifted the World Cup with Germany.But his life and career have been a test of resilience. Growing up in Germany's Turkish community, he faced prejudice from those who claimed his dual identity would prevent him giving his all for the national team. Later came questions over a different type of commitment, the kind levelled against those, like Mesut Ozil, who excel in football's finer arts rather than relying simply on running and ruggedness. He has proved concerns on both these issues lack substance.In Gunning for Greatness, Mesut Ozil reveals the inside stories of his relationships with Jose Mourinho and Arsene Wenger, his quest to help the under-fire Frenchman restore Arsenal's pre-eminence - and how he silenced the sceptics by conquering the world.

Saint Francis of Assisi


G.K. Chesterton - 1923
    By universal acclaim, this biography by G. K. Chesterton is considered the best appreciation of Francis's life--the one that gets to the heart of the matter.For Chesterton, Francis is a great paradoxical figure, a man who loved women but vowed himself to chastity; an artist who loved the pleasures of the natural world as few have loved them, but vowed himself to the most austere poverty, stripping himself naked in the public square so all could see that he had renounced his worldly goods; a clown who stood on his head in order to see the world aright. Chesterton gives us Francis in his world-the riotously colorful world of the High Middle Ages, a world with more pageantry and romance than we have seen before or since. Here is the Francis who tried to end the Crusades by talking to the Saracens, and who interceded with the emperor on behalf of the birds. Here is the Francis who inspired a revolution in art that began with Giotto and a revolution in poetry that began with Dante. Here is the Francis who prayed and danced with pagan abandon, who talked to animals, who invented the creche.