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.

    Becca Stevens, founder and president of Thistle Farms, shares true stories of healing and joy where brokenness is transformed into compassion. In each chapter, Stevens provides encouragement and practical steps for anyone going through a difficult season or searching for a deeper faith. Love Heals is:A gorgeous gift book with beautiful photography and inspirational calloutsFor women of any age seeking healing and hopeA gift of hope for a friend or self-purchaseAfter reading, readers will learn:Love heals by the mercy of God.Love heals with compassion.Love heals during the act of forgiving.Love heals past our fears.Love heals across the world.In Love Heals, you'll find principles that have transformed lives. Stevens has been featured in the New York Times, on ABC World News, NPR, the TODAY show, and PBS, and named a 2016 CNN Hero. In 2011, the White House named Becca a "Champion of Change."

    This biography, written by his close spiritual disciple Elder Isaac and universally recognized as the most authoritative account of his life, has been reprinted numerous times in numerous languages. The life and virtues of the elder are exhaustively and accurately sketched in profound simplicity, revealing the spiritual brilliance which shone forth from his heart, enveloping on all who drew near. In part one, we are led step by step through the development of a contemporary saint: from his origins in Cappadocia and early spiritual zeal, through his monastic beginnings in the monastery and ascetic struggles on Athos and Sinai, to his outpouring of spiritual consolation to his fellow man and his blessed repose in the Lord. In part two, we are presented with the full spectrum of his spiritual personality: his virtues, way of life, spiritual gifts, self-offering and teaching. The life of Elder Paisios of Mount Athos resembles a garden adorned with countless flowers in bloom, radiant and colourful, beautiful to the eyes of man's spiritual heart, letting off an otherworldly aroma of holiness. The reader is invited to enter into his life and words, to "lay aside all earthly cares", to see life from the divine perspective, to understand the mystery of the Gospel by standing under, submitting and entrusting oneself to experience and wisdom this God-bearing Holy Father.

    

    He goes to the heart of his personal beliefs and speaks with passion about the existence of God; about the dignity of man; about pain, suffering, and evil; about eternal life and the meaning of salvation; about hope; about the relationship of Christianity to other faits and that of Catholicism to other branches of the Christian faith.With the humility and generosity of spirit for which he is known, John Paul II speaks directly and forthrightly to all people. His message: Be not afraid!

      What do you do when God dies? It's a question facing millions today, as science reveals a Universe that's self-creating, as American culture departs from Christian social norms, and the idea of God begins to seem implausible at best and barbaric at worst.   Mike McHargue understands the pain of unraveling belief. In Finding God in the Waves, Mike tells the story of how his Evangelical faith dissolved into atheism as he studied the Bible, a crisis that threatened his life, his friendships, and even his marriage. Years later, Mike was standing on the shores of the Pacific Ocean when a bewildering, seemingly mystical moment motivated him to take another look. But this time, it wasn't theology or scripture that led him back to God—it was science.    In Finding God in the Waves, "Science Mike” draws on his personal experience to tell the unlikely story of how science led him back to faith. Among other revelations, we learn what brain scans reveal about what happens when we pray; how fundamentalism affects the psyche; and how God is revealed not only in scripture, but in the night sky, in subatomic particles, and in us.   For the faithful and skeptic alike, Finding God in the Waves is a winsome, lucid, page-turning read about belonging, life’s biggest questions, and the hope of knowing God in an age of science.

    This book is in some way a sequel to Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, in which her own very private spiritual struggles were explained.  Sent to alleviate the sufferings of the poor, she assumed their struggles and pain in the depths of her heart. This led to particularly intense anguish which she lived through with heroic courage and fidelity over several decades.  As important as this aspect of her life is, that remarkable testimony of her life and her words intensifies the need and desire to know more of her thought.  There is much she can teach us as we face our daily struggles or sufferings, which can at times be unusually severe.  Where There is Love, There is God, though not an exhaustive anthology of Mother Teresa’s teaching, nonetheless shows what she believed and taught about important issues that confront all people. Due to her constant interaction with people of diverse backgrounds, no life situation was foreign to her and in this book her role is primarily one of teacher and guide.  Love is perhaps the word that best summarizes Mother Teresa’s life and message. The title reflects what she proclaimed during her entire life: God is alive, present, and “still loves the world through you and through me”.  Mother Teresa sought to be an extension of God’s heart and hands in the world of today. She was called to be a missionary of charity, a carrier of God’s love to each person she met, especially those most in need. Yet she did not think that this was a vocation uniquely hers; each person is in some way called to be a carrier of God’s love. Through the practical and timely advice she offers, Mother Teresa sets us on the path to closer union with God and greater love for our brothers and sisters. MOTHER TERESA (1910–1997) was born in Skopje (present-day Macedonia), and joined the Sisters of Loreto in Dublin in 1928. She left the Loreto order in 1948 to begin the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta. Her service to the poorest of the poor became her life’s work. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and was beatified in 2003. Editor of Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, FATHER BRIAN KOLODIEJCHUK, M.C., Ph.D., was associated with Mother Teresa for twenty years and is now director of the Mother Teresa Center, which has offices in California, Mexico, India, and Italy.  “What you are doing I cannot do, what I’m doing you cannot do, but together we are doing something beautiful for God, and this is the greatness of God’s love for us—To give us the opportunity to become holy through the works of love that we do because holiness is not the luxury of the few. It is a very simple duty for you, for me, you in your position, in your work and I and others, each one of us in the work, in the life that we have given our word of honor to God.…You must put your love for God in a living action.” -Mother Teresa, From Where There is Love, There is GodFrom the Hardcover edition.

    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.

    Along the way, Foster shows that it is only by and through these practices that the true path to spiritual growth can be found.Dividing the Disciplines into three movements of the Spirit, Foster shows how each of these areas contribute to a balanced spiritual life. The inward Disciplines of meditation, prayer, fasting, and study offer avenues of personal examination and change. The outward Disciplines of simplicity, solitude, submission, and service help prepare us to make the world a better place. The corporate Disciplines of confession, worship, guidance, and celebration bring us nearer to one another and to God.Foster provides a wealth of examples demonstrating how these Disciplines can become part of our daily activities—and how they can help us shed our superficial habits and "bring the abundance of God into our lives." He offers crucial new insights on simplicity, demonstrating how the biblical view of simplicity, properly understood and applied, brings joy and balance to our inward and outward lives and "sets us free to enjoy the provision of God as a gift that can be shared with others." The discussion of celebration, often the most neglected of the Disciplines, shows its critical importance, for it stands at the heart of the way to Christ. Celebration of Discipline will help Christians everywhere to embark on a journey of prayer and spiritual growth.

    Lane embarks on solitary spiritual treks through the Ozarks and across the American Southwest. For companions, he has only such teachers as Rumi, John of the Cross, Hildegard of Bingen, Dag Hammarskj�ld, and Thomas Merton, and as he walks, he engages their writings with the natural wonders he encounters--Bell Mountain Wilderness with S�ren Kierkegaard, Moonshine Hollow with Thich Nhat Hanh--demonstrating how being alone in the wild opens a rare view onto one's interior landscape, and how the saints' writings reveal the divine in nature.The discipline of backpacking, Lane shows, is a metaphor for a spiritual journey. Just as the wilderness offered revelations to the early Desert Christians, backpacking hones crucial spiritual skills: paying attention, traveling light, practicing silence, and exercising wonder. Lane engages the practice not only with a wide range of spiritual writings--Celtic, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, and Sufi Muslim--but with the fascination of other lovers of the backcountry, from John Muir and Ed Abbey to Bill Plotkin and Cheryl Strayed. In this intimate and down-to-earth narrative, backpacking is shown to be a spiritual practice that allows the discovery of God amidst the beauty and unexpected terrors of nature. Adoration, Lane suggests, is the most appropriate human response to what we cannot explain, but have nonetheless learned to love.An enchanting narrative for Christians of all denominations, Backpacking with the Saints is an inspiring exploration of how solitude, simplicity, and mindfulness are illuminated and encouraged by the discipline of backcountry wandering, and of how the wilderness itself becomes a way of knowing-an ecology of the soul.

    Then he made Eve. And ever since we've been picking up the pieces. Loveology is just that—a theology of love. With an autobiographical thread that turns a book into a story, pastor and speaker John Mark Comer shares about what is right in male/female relationships—what God intended in the Garden. And about what is wrong—the fallout in a post-Eden world. Loveology starts with marriage and works backward. Comer deals with sexuality, romance, singleness, and what it means to be male and female; ending with a raw, uncut, anything goes Q and A dealing with the most asked questions about sexuality and relationships. This is an audiobook for singles, engaged couples, and the newly married—both inside and outside the church—who want to learn what the Scriptures have to say about sexuality and relationships. For those who are tired of Hollywood's propaganda, and the church's silence. And for people who want to ask the why questions and get intelligent, nuanced, grace-and-truth answers, rooted in the Scriptures.

    Chad Ripperger, Fr. Gabriele Amorth, Fr. Jose Antonio Fortea, Fr. Gary Thomas, among others, and packages it into an approachable and intriguing book that conveys, to today’s Catholics, critical insights into the activity of the diabolical and spiritual warfare tactics with which we must be familiar. These exorcists pull their teachings from the sacred traditions of our Faith, the teachings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the wisdom of exorcists under whom they were trained, and their own extensive experience in the realm of spiritual warfare, deliverance, and exorcisms. The purpose of this book is to help enlighten Catholics to the spiritual war in which we all find ourselves. Not only is this battle real, but the Church knows it well, and has provided both wisdom and weapons, teachings and sacramentals, to enable Catholics to fight in this battle into which they have all been drafted, and be victorious. “The devil prowls like a roaring lion, seeking to devour,” as St. Peter says. These exorcists face this devil, and the many demons who fell with him, as a central part of their spiritual ministry. Let them teach you what they know and impart to you those things that will aid you most in your spiritual life. Allow yourself to be instructed by spiritual masters that you may learn the manner in which the devil attacks you, the weapons you have at your disposal, and the means to find healing for the wounds you have suffered in your life. Know your enemy. Know his tactics. Know his motives. Know his nature. Know his origin. Know his goal. Know his language. Know his network. Know his strengths. Know his weaknesses. Once this knowledge is obtained, you can more effectively predict your enemy’s behavior, recognize his traps, use the proper preventative measures against him, and drive him away when he persists. Book now has the nihil obstat. Visit our store at www.TheRetreatBox.com for special sales. Sign up there on our email list. Follow us at www.TheSlayingDragonsBook.com for news, commentary, and publications on the topic of spiritual warfare.

    Then, in 1991, realizing that accounts of her life and work could inspire others, she gave Kathryn Spink, who had long been intimately involved with the work of Mother Teresa and her order and co-workers around the world, permission to proceed with a complete biography on the understanding that it would not be finished until after her death. Here, now, is the complete story of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, founder of the Missionaries of Charity and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a woman regarded by millions as a contemporary saint for her dedication to serving the poorest of the poor. From her childhood in Balkans as a member of a remarkably openhearted and religious family to her work in India, from attending the victims of war-torn Beirut to pleading with George Bush and Saddam Hussein to choose peace over war. Mother Teresa was driven by an absolute faith. She consistently claimed that she was simply responding to Christ's boundless love for her and for all of humanity. When People magazine interviewed Kathryn Spink for their cover story on Mother Teresa 's death, Spink told them: "What one has to understand about Mother Teresa is that she sees Christ in every person she encounters." Clad in her white peasant sari with blue edging, Mother Teresa brought to the world a great and living lesson in joyful and selfless love.

    Using as an illustration her own spiritual journey from certainty to doubt to faith, Evans challenges you to disentangle your faith from false fundamentals and to trust in a God who is big enough to handle your tough questions.In a changing cultural environment where new ideas seem to threaten the safety and security of the faith, Faith Unraveled is a fearlessly honest story of survival.This book is also available, with this same ISBN entitled "Faith Unraveled: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask Questions"...with a published date of 2010 by Zondervan...it has the reddish cover, not this cover.

    In this classic book, Madeleine L'Engle addresses the questions, What makes art Christian? What does it mean to be a Christian artist? What is the relationship between faith and art? Through L'Engle's beautiful and insightful essay, readers will find themselves called to what the author views as the prime tasks of an artist: to listen, to remain aware, and to respond to creation through one's own art.