Saint Francis of Assisi is quite possibly the most popular of all Christian saints. Perhaps it is his adoration for all living things or his unrelenting generosity that has made so many people open their hearts to him. Perhaps it is the deep conviction and piety expressed not only by the saint himself, but in his name, in the Franciscan orders throughout the centuries.Whatever the reason, in a world that is quickly developing in a direction diametrically opposite to the saint's own simple asceticism, Saint Francis of Assisi still stirs strong emotions and compassion. How close he found God, in the very nature around him, is inspiring.All books in The Life and Prayers series come complete with a Touch-or-Click Table of Contents, divided by each section. Enjoy.

    Is the dream of equality Dr. King envisioned still alive today? Can our historic national hurts still be healed? How can we rise above the racial tension threatening the nation? The Dream King is the astonishing true story of two men whose lives are woven together by history and the hidden hand of God. It reveals an inspiring narrative that exposes systemic injustice and delivers new keys for understanding the nation’s past, present, and future. • Learn about the nation’s hidden history and the unknown heroes who overcame injustice. • Discover how your life is an important part of a much bigger story. • Be equipped to be a countercultural dreamer and change the world around you.

    Elaine Heath urges the church to boldly follow the Holy Spirit's leadership beyond buildings and programs to join what Jesus is doing in the world.KEY FEATURES--Each chapter has reflection questions for small-group discussion.--The book could be used for leadership development over several weeks or months.

    She's an upbeat Southerner with good hair and a successful business background, but she's had more heartache than most of us can imagine. Laughing Through the Ugly Cry is a collection of honest and sometimes raw stories. Dawn throws an arm around readers as she brings them along on her journey through the loss of a child, divorce, cancer, rape, the death of her only sibling, her husband's substance abuse, and finding her way back to Jesus in the middle of it all. Dawn shares her personal story to show readers how to find happiness and purpose even in the darkest of days. By laughing through the ugly cry, you will discover how to:Shut down negative feelings causing you to feel inadequateIdentify the pros despite how challenging the cons may seemEmbrace joy wherever you can find itLearn how to be honest with yourself and process grief in a healthy wayDawn writes, If more women were open about just how difficult our lives feel and how hard we are on ourselves, I think we'd learn to relax a little and give ourselves the grace God gives us every day. Laughing Through the Ugly Cry is great for:Women of any age seeking comfort, encouragement, and inspirationBook clubs and girls' nights--Dawn poses thoughtful group questions to support meaningful conversations about growth and joy

    People are the best and worst thing about the human life.Jen Hatmaker knows this all too well, and so she reveals how to practice kindness, grace, truthfulness, vision, and love to ourselves and those around us. By doing this, For the Love leads our generation to reimagine Jesus' grace as a way of life, and it does it in a funny yet profound manner that Christian readers will love. Along the way, Hatmaker shows readers how to reclaim their prophetic voices and become Good News again to a hurting, polarized world.

    We adore plans and perfectly staged rooms. But what happens when we discover we are living a life we did not design? When our dreams lie in tatters or when we experience loss of any kind? What happens when life feels like one big Pinterest fail? Where is God in the midst of what doesn't make sense? Does he care?Drawing from time-honored design principles such as movement, contrast, and pattern, former interior designer and Bible teacher Tracy Steel offers frustrated and discontented women the assurance that God is their ever-present, caring Designer. With a mix of wit and wisdom, Tracy proves through biblical examples and personal testimony that God remains true to his plans and purposes, accomplishing them in and through us in every season of life. She helps us recognize God's design principles, enabling us to embrace our sometimes messy lives, especially when they're ones we never would have designed for ourselves.

    The solution is here with the revised and updated Isaiah Made Easier! Noted gospel scholar David J. Ridges brings Isaiah's symbolism and literary imagery to life in Isaiah Made Easier, turning this often misunderstood book of scripture into a gold mine of truth. As with his other books in the Gospel Studies series, this book includes the full-text of the scripture for quick reference, in-the-verse notes that provide effective and unique teaching tools, and extra explanations that give additional insights into valuable principles and doctrines. Join the tens of thousands of readers who have experienced spiritual growth from reading and pondering this book. Never before has Isaiah been so easy to understand!

    After her parents' divorce, she rejected her family's Islamic faith and became an atheist. During her stormy adolescence, she tried to convince a Christian missionary that there is no God but was converted to Christ instead.Her winding path through the riddles of God was not over, however. While attending a Turkish university and serving as a Christian youth minister, Derya began to compare the teachings of Protestantism and Catholicism, and during her doctoral studies in England, she entered the Catholic Church. Ultimately, she ended up in the United States, where she has become a citizen and has settled down to raise a family.Derya's story provides a window into both Islam and modernity. It shows that the grace and the mercy of God know no bounds.  Rather, the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ reaches souls in the most unlikely places.

    And he has consistently been guided by his faith, which influenced his actions on issues ranging from capital punishment to pardons, health care to abortion, welfare to free college tuition. Yet the place of faith in public life has been hotly debated since our nation's founding, and the relationship of church and state remains contentious to this day--and for good reason. Too often, Bill Haslam argues, Christians end up shaping their faith to fit their politics rather than forming their politics to their faith. They seem to forget their calling is to be used by God in service of others rather than to use God to reach their own desires and ends.Faithful Presence calls for a different way. Drawing upon his years of public service, Haslam casts a remarkable vision for the redemptive role of faith in politics while examining some of the most complex issues of our time, including:partisanship in our divided era;the most essential character trait for a public servant;how we cannot escape "legislating morality";the answer to perpetual outrage; andhow to think about the separation of church and state.For Christians ready to be salt and light, as well as for those of a different faith or no faith at all, Faithful Presence argues that faith can be a redemptive, healing presence in the public square--as it must be, if our nation is to flourish.

    He worked as a police reporter, racing the cops to robberies and shootings. He interviewed and wrote about mass murders and serial killers. He wrote dark, sexually graphic, and violent films like "Basic Instinct," "Jagged Edge," and "Jade."Eszterhas knew a lot about darkness. Then, on a hellishly hot day in 2001, desperately battling to survive throat cancer and his addictions to alcohol and cigarettes, Joe Eszterhas found God. Or God found him.And he came from darkness into light."Crossbearer" is the powerful, poignant, and sometimes wryly humorous account of a streetwise and cynical man's newfound faith, and of how he discovers God in the most intimate and routine moments of life: a family game of baseball, a child's photograph of a cloud, a dying mother's dying roses.It is also the inspiring story of a man who must overcome his addictions to stay alive--and can't by himself. He realizes that he needs the love of his wife, his children, and especially his new friend, God, to do it.Eszterhas is a master memoirist--his "Hollywood Animal "was called "powerful and affecting" ("The New York Times"), "absolutely first-rate" ("Los Angeles Times Book""Review") and "heartbreaking, funny and outrageous" ("Houston Chronicle")--and with "Crossbearer" he reveals a fresh and completely unexpected new chapter of his life. With surprising tenderness and a willingness to bare even weaknesses and mistakes, Joe Eszterhas has written a startling personal story about faith, values, family and love.

    The Devil plots to defeat you. Meet some battle-tested warriors who fight at your side.Satan is real. He’s a formidable foe who wants to snatch us away from God, and the thought of doing battle with him can seem daunting.Even so, the saints who have gone before us have engaged the Devil, armed with the power of Christ … and emerged victorious! These fellow warriors in heaven now fight on our behalf. In Saints Who Battled Satan, Paul Thigpen, author of Manual for Spiritual Warfare, details the heroic combat of 17 saints who defeated the Enemy.In Saints Who Battled Satan, discover:How Satan attacks us through extraordinary assaults and everyday temptations. How these 17 saints used prayer, Scripture, the sacraments, and other spiritual weapons against the Enemy.How the virtues served these saints as combat armor. How these victorious saints now offer their aid to those of us still battling on earth.Read the inspiring and triumphant stories of Padre Pio, Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, John Vianney, and a dozen other saints who battled Satan. You’ll find the strength, the courage, and the faith to win your own war against the Enemy.

    REVISED AND RE-EDITED BY FATHER HILARION DUERK, O.F.M.

    Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to dive in headfirst and attempt to obey the Bible as literally as possible for one full year. He vows to follow the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful and multiply. To love his neighbor. But also to obey the hundreds of less publicized rules: to avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibers; to play a ten-string harp; to stone adulterers.The resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal and will make you see history's most influential book with new eyes.Jacobs's quest transforms his life even more radically than the year spent reading the entire "Encyclopedia Britannica" for "The Know-It-All." His beard grows so unruly that he is regularly mistaken for a member of ZZ Top. He immerses himself in prayer, tends sheep in the Israeli desert, battles idolatry, and tells the absolute truth in all situations - much to his wife's chagrin.Throughout the book, Jacobs also embeds himself in a cross-section of communities that take the Bible literally. He tours a Kentucky-based creationist museum and sings hymns with Pennsylvania Amish. He dances with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and does Scripture study with Jehovah's Witnesses. He discovers ancient biblical wisdom of startling relevance. And he wrestles with seemingly archaic rules that baffle the twenty-first-century brain.Jacobs's extraordinary undertaking yields unexpected epiphanies and challenges. A book that will charm readers both secular and religious, "The Year of Living Biblically" is part Cliff Notes to the Bible, part memoir, and part look into worlds unimaginable. Thou shalt not be able to put it down.

    In Unleashed, she shares her passion for the scriptures by weaving the Word of God with her own experiences to show readers how the Holy Spirit flows through their lives in relationships, prayer, and even in times of suffering. Sonja Corbitt’s passionate faith and natural storytelling ability combine to create a refreshing message of how God, in his continual pursuit of us, speaks to us through the positive and painful circumstances of life, relationships, and his Word. In Unleashed, Corbitt testifies that prayerful and regular study of the scriptures is the key to hear the voice of God, to see the Holy Spirit at work even in times of suffering, and to receive all the graces God wants to give. Corbitt has been captivating Catholic women across the country with her message about God and his desire to know them in a deep and personal way. Endorsed by her bishop as a “credit to her faith,” Corbitt inspires Catholics everywhere to engage with the scriptures with renewed vigor and energy.

    Three books in one, bringing you closer to the Savior. In Come Thirsty, Max Lucado encourages you to visit the well and drink deeply, to receive Christ's work on the cross, the energy of his Spirit, and his lordship over your life, and his unending, unfailing love.Using the illustration of weary travelers in Traveling Light, Lucado invites us to release the burdens of our excess baggage that we were never intended to bear--with the Twenty-third Psalm as our guide.In Next Door Savior, master storyteller Max Lucado presents the life of Jesus Christ in stunning contrast, revealing the irresistible human qualities and the undeniably divine characteristics of Jesus. Lucado describes, as only he can, a Savior who is as approachable as a next-door neighbor, yet mighty enough to save humanity.