Even in the questions. Even in the hurt."I want to believe, I want to have hope, but . . ." Pastor and bestselling author Craig Groeschel hears these words often and has asked them himself. We want to know God, feel his presence, and trust that he hears our prayers, but in the midst of great pain, we may wonder if he really cares about us. Even when we have both hope and hurt, sometimes it's the hurt that shouts the loudest.In Hope in the Dark, Groeschel explores the story of the father who brought his demon-possessed son to Jesus, saying, "I believe! Help my unbelief!" In the man's sincere plea, Jesus heard the tension in the man's battle-scarred heart. He healed not only the boy but the father too, driving out the hopelessness that had overtaken him. He can do the same for us today.As Groeschel shares his pain surrounding the health challenges of his daughter, he acknowledges the questions we may ask in our own deepest pain:"Where was God when I was being abused?""Why was my child born with a disability?""Why did the cancer come back?""Why are all my friends married and I'm alone?"He invites us to wrestle with such questions as we ask God to honor our faith and heal our unbelief. Because in the middle of your profound pain, you long for authentic words of understanding and hope. You long to know that even in overwhelming reality, you can still believe that God is good.Hope in the Dark is also available in Spanish, Esperanza en la Oscuridad.

    In an instant, a tragic car accident claimed three generations of his family: his mother, his wife, and his young daughter. While most of us will not experience such a catastrophic loss in our lifetime, all of us will taste it. And we can, if we choose, know as well the grace that transforms it. A Grace Disguised plumbs the depths of sorrow, whether due to illness, divorce, or the loss of someone we love. The circumstances are not important; what we do with those circumstances is. In coming to the end of ourselves, we can come to the beginning of a new life one marked by spiritual depth, joy, compassion, and a deeper appreciation of simple blessings.

    God doesn't have boundaries, and faith doesn't have to be limited to what someone else has told us. God is alive. Faith is alive. Velvet Elvis helps us find our faith. And even if it doesn't, it encourages us to keep looking. Faith doesn't end with this book. But it just might begin...

    In the Bible the picture can seem equally confusing: Is fear a good thing or a bad thing? And what does it mean to "fear the Lord"?In Rejoice and Tremble, Michael Reeves clears the clouds of confusion and shows that the fear of the Lord is not a negative thing at all, but an intensely delighted wondering at God, our Creator and Redeemer.

    As a father he took his kids on a world tour to eat ice cream with heads of state. He made friends in Uganda, and they liked him so much he became the Ugandan consul. He pursued his wife for three years before she agreed to date him. His grades weren't good enough to get into law school, so he sat on a bench outside the Dean's office for seven days until they finally let him enroll.Bob Goff has become something of a legend, and his friends consider him the world's best-kept secret. Those same friends have long insisted he write a book. What follows are paradigm shifts, musings, and stories from one of the world's most delightfully engaging and winsome people. What fuels his impact? Love. But it's not the kind of love that stops at thoughts and feelings. Bob's love takes action. Bob believes Love Does.When Love Does, life gets interesting. Each day turns into a hilarious, whimsical, meaningful chance that makes faith simple and real. Each chapter is a story that forms a book, a life. And this is one life you don't want to miss.Light and fun, unique and profound, the lessons drawn from Bob's life and attitude just might inspire you to be secretly incredible, too.

    Each of us born separated from our true Father and suffers from the ingrained habits of our 'false parents' and even when we come into God's family, we often find barriers stand in the way of us becoming who God intends us to be. Bob Hamp encourages us to look and think again about everything we thought we knew. He explains why so many of us remain in captivity and shows us how we can access true freedom.

    Instead of clinging to grace, we strive for good and believe that the Christian life means hard work and a sweet disposition. As good girls, we focus on the things we can handle, our disciplined lives, and our unshakable good moods. When we fail to measure up to our own impossible standards, we hide behind our good girl masks, determined to keep our weakness a secret.In Grace for the Good Girl, Emily Freeman invites women to let go of the try-hard life and realize that in Christ we are free to receive from him rather than constantly try to achieve for him. With an open hand and a whimsical style, Emily uncovers the truth about the hiding, encouraging women to move from hiding behind girl-made masks and do-good performances to a life hidden with Christ in God.

      Over the last twenty years, Andrew Peterson has performed thousands of concerts, published four novels, released ten albums, taught college and seminary classes on writing, founded a nonprofit ministry for Christians in the arts, and executive-produced a film—all in a belief that God calls us to proclaim the gospel and the coming kingdom using whatever gifts are at our disposal. He’s stumbled along the way, made mistake after mistake, and yet has continually encountered the grace of God through an encouraging family, a Christ-centered community of artists in the church, and the power of truth, beauty, and goodness in Scripture and the arts.   While there are many books about writing, none deal first-hand with the intersection of songwriting, storytelling, and vocation, along with nuts-and-bolts exploration of the great mystery of creativity. In Adorning the Dark, Andrew describes six principles for the writing life:  serving the workserving the audienceselectivitydiscernmentdisciplineand community  Through stories from his own journey, Andrew shows how these principles are not merely helpful for writers and artists, but for anyone interested in imitating way the Creator interacts with his creation.   This book is both a memoir of Andrew’s journey and a handbook for artists, written in the hope that his story will provide encouragement to others stumbling along in pursuit of a calling to adorn the dark with the light of Christ.

    D. Greear. He struggled for many years to gain an assurance of salvation and eventually learned he was not alone. “Lack of assurance” is epidemic among evangelical Christians.In Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart, J. D. shows that faulty ways of presenting the gospel are a leading source of the confusion. Our presentations may not be heretical, but they are sometimes misleading. The idea of “asking Jesus into your heart” or “giving your life to Jesus” often gives false assurance to those who are not saved—and keeps those who genuinely are saved from fully embracing that reality.Greear unpacks the doctrine of assurance, showing that salvation is a posture we take to the promise of God in Christ, a posture that begins at a certain point and is maintained for the rest of our lives. He also answers the tough questions about assurance: What exactly is faith? What is repentance? Why are there so many warnings that seem to imply we can lose our salvation?Such issues are handled with respect to the theological rigors they require, but Greear never loses his pastoral sensitivity or a communication technique that makes this message teachable to a wide audience from teens to adults.

    Christians who suffer from OCD may grapple with additional guilt, as the undesired thoughts are frequently of a spiritual nature. Yet people may be surprised to learn that some of the greatest leaders in Christian history also struggled with this malady. What did they experience? How did they cope? Were they able to overcome these tormenting, often violent, obsessions? Where did God fit into the picture?Ian Osborn shares the personal accounts of Martin Luther, John Bunyan, and Saint Th�r�se of Lisieux, as well as his own story, in exploring how faith and science work together to address this complex issue.

    Follow along in a three-part deconstruction of today's full-throttle existence to build the kind of life that Jesus modeled.

    Accomplish more. Buy more. Post more. Be more.In following these demands, we have indeed become more: More anxious. More tired. More hurt. More depressed. More frantic.What we are doing isn't working!In a society where hustle is the expectation, busyness is the norm and information is king, we have forgotten the fundamentals that make us human, anchor our lives, and provide meaning.Jefferson Bethke, New York Times bestselling author and popular YouTuber, has lived the hustle and knows we need to stop  doing  and start becoming.   After reading this book, you will discover:How to proactively set boundaries in your lifeHow to get comfortable with obscurityThe best way to push back against the demands of contemporary lifeThe importance of embracing silence and solitudeHow to handle the stressors that life throws at us To Hell With the Hustle  is for anyone who isFeeling overwhelmed with the demands of work, family and communityWanting to connect and spend time with their family.Tired of being anxious, lonely, and burned outJoin Bethke as he discovers that the very things the world teaches us to avoid at all costs--silence, obscurity, solitude, and vulnerability--are the very things that can give us the meaning, and the richness we are truly looking for.

    It will inspire the necessary and difficult conversations we all need to have with loved ones as it illuminates a path to a better way of death.Like so many of us, award-winning writer Katy Butler always assumed her aging parents would experience healthy, active retire­ments before dying peacefully at home. Then her father suffered a stroke that left him incapable of easily finishing a sentence or showering without assistance. Her mother was thrust into full-time caregiving, and Katy became one of the 24 mil­lion Americans who help care for aging parents. In an effort to correct a minor and non–life threatening heart arrhythmia, doctors outfitted her father with a pacemaker. The device kept his heart beating but did nothing to prevent his slide into dementia, incontinence, near-muteness, and misery. After several years, he asked his wife for help, telling her, "I am living too long." Mother and daughter faced a series of wrench­ing moral questions: When does death cease being a curse and become a blessing? Where is the line between saving life and prolonging a dying? When is the right time to say to a doctor, "Let my loved one go"? When doctors refused to disable the pace­maker, sentencing her father to a protracted and agonizing death, Katy set out to understand why. Her quest had barely begun when her mother faced her own illness, rebelled against her doctors, refused open-heart surgery, and instead met death head-on. Knocking on Heaven's Door, a revolution­ary blend of memoir and investigative reporting, is the fruit of the Butler family's journey. With a reporter's skill, a poet's eye, and a daughter's love, Butler explores what happens when our terror of death collides with the tech­nological imperatives of modern medicine. Her provocative thesis is that advanced medicine, in its single-minded pursuit of maximum longevity, often creates more suffering than it prevents. Butler lays bare the tangled web of technology, medicine, and commerce that modern dying has become and chronicles the rise of Slow Medicine - a growing movement that promotes care over cure. Knocking on Heaven's Door is a visionary map through the labyrinth of a broken and morally adrift medical system. It will inspire the necessary and difficult conversations we all need to have with loved ones as it illuminates a path to a better way of death.

    Surprising to many, this life is not measured by success, comparison, or accolades. Rather, free and joyful living stems from a God-centered celebration of our union with Christ and the lives of those around us. Jon Tyson's exploration of the reverse economy of the kingdom frees his readers from merit-based living...not just in terms of salvation, but daily, earthly value. Life is not meant to be a series of competitions or a survival of the fittest rat race. Yet so many of the messages around us, so many of the voices bombarding our hearts and minds tie up our value and package it with our accolades.This book gives another way forward. It shows readers how to value their individual lives based on what God says about them, rather than how they measure themselves against the world. This is a must read for each and every person trying to find their voice and purpose in a loud and frenetic world.

    We lack space between one task and the next, one thought and the next, one email and the next. Social media, TV, work deadlines, and family stress steal our enjoyment and engagement in the moment.Holy Noticing will teach you how to:become more aware of your thoughts, emotions, and environmentrecognize Christ’s presence in the momentreduce your stress by developing the ability to focus on God and people rather than tasksMany today think mindfulness is dangerous, unchristian, or associated with Eastern religions—and often it is! But Dr. Charles Stone reveals that the art of holy noticing—purposefully paying attention to God as he works in us, our relationships, and our world—is a spiritual discipline Christians have practiced for millennia. Holy Noticing explores the historically Christian and biblical roots of this lifestyle, as well as Dr. Stone’s BREATHe model, which teaches you to be more engaged with Christ in the everyday moments that too often slip right by us.Discover the lost spiritual discipline of holy noticing today and learn to engage the world like Christ.