He gave me this child. And now I give this child to the Lord. 1 Samuel 1:27 ERVDo you remember when you first held your newborn daughter and sensed the awesome responsibility and immense privilege of parenthood? God gave you this precious gift to care for and to love, and He may have even whispered to your heart, "She is yours." Now comes the hard part—raising her up from a baby to a happy, healthy adult—and remembering that everything you have is God's, including your daughter. Wynter and Jonathan Pitts want you to know you are not alone. The proud parents of four young daughters, they've gained a wealth of valuable insights on the unique challenge of raising girls. They've been right where you are and now they want to share what they've learned with you. With this practical advice and encouragement, you can help your daughter develop awesome relationships with God, with you, and with the world around her.Start this journey by making this commitment to God:Lord, she is Yours and I trust You with her.

    Restore and grow your faith as you read about Hilary Yancey's personal journey back to God.Three months into her pregnancy with her first child, Hilary Yancey received a phone call that changed everything. As she learned the diagnosis-cleft lip and palate, a missing right eye, possible breathing complications-Hilary began to pray in earnest. Even in the midst of these findings, she prayed that God would heal her son. God could do a miracle unlike anything she had seen. Only when Hilary held her baby, Jack, in her arms for the first time did she realize God had given her something drastically different than what she had demanded. Hilary struggled to talk to God as she sat for six weeks beside Jack's crib in the NICU. She consented to surgeries and learned to care for a breathing tube and gastronomy button. In her experience with motherhood Hilary had become more familiar with the sound of her son's heart monitor than the sound of his heartbeat. Later, during surgeries and emergency trips back to the hospital with her crying, breathless boy, Hilary reproached the stranger God had become. Jack was different. Hilary was not the mother she once imagined. God was not who Hilary knew before. But she could not let go of one certainty-she could see the image of Christ in Jack's face. Slowly, through long nights of wrestling and longer nights of silence, Hilary cut a path through her old, familiar faith to the God behind it. She discovered that it is by walking out onto the water, where the firm ground gives way, that we can find him. And meeting Jesus, who rises with his scars to proclaim new life, is never what you once imagined.

    Michael believes that relationships are the epicenter of human thriving. All too often, though, we lack the tools or vision to build our relationships on the wisdom and power of God.In other words, it's good to have a goal, but you can't get there without proper aim! By charting a course that candidly examines our most common pitfalls, and by unpacking explosive truths from God's Word, Michael's debut book will transform a trendy hashtag into a future where your most cherished relationships thrive in relational life, hope, and abundance. Now those are real #relationshipgoals.

    We continually demand that life be fair, yet we’re well aware that it’s not. Life can leave you at a loss for words. It has a way of suddenly casting you into the darkness of doubt. In these desperate moments, you find your soul being drained dry . . . you’re empty . . . and faith just doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Faith loses out when you realize that God could have done something . . . and He did nothing. Your life is further emptied when you realize that even if you live the “Christian” life, things don’t always turn out the way you’d like them to . . . and that’s not the way you hoped faith worked. You don’t want God to comfort you in your troubles . . . you want Him to take them from you. As God continually frustrates our faith with His constant inconsistency and ridiculously draining unpredictability, we resolve in the truth that He is the only one who understands our hurting hearts, empty lives, and searching souls. We find the ongoing trials of life continually draining us and . . . we’re thirsty. Yet, through our endless efforts to quench our undying thirst, nothing satisfies. Our souls seem to be insatiable, and we know we desperately need something to fill us, completely . . . but it’s not what we think. You’ve been waiting for God to show up, yet He’s actually been waiting for you. He’s ready to meet with you . . . one on one . . . at the well.

    Yet often our most deeply felt longings—for meaning, for love, for significance—end up leading us away from, instead of toward, our Creator and the person he made us to be.  Finding Your Way Back to God shows you how to understand and listen to your longings in a whole new way. It’s about waking up to who you really are, and daring to believe that God wants to be found even more than you want to find him. It’s about making the biggest wager of your life as you ask God to make himself known to you. And it’s about watching what happens next.

    When he walked the earth, Jesus said to an unwell man, "Do you want to be made well?" His invitation stretched beyond physical healing--he sought to restore the soul. The same invitation stands for us today.For anyone struggling on the journey toward wholeness, singer/songwriter Jenny Simmons offers a resting place and a friend along the way. With personal insight into emotional pain, she invites readers to encounter a God who is working out their restoration--often in surprising "half-baked" ways. Her humorous and inspirational prose lights a path toward wholeness. Anyone trying to find their way to spiritual, mental, and emotional healing will benefit from Jenny's vulnerable and compassionate stories of being made well in the midst of a messy life.

    Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would teach them all things and bring to their remembrance all the things that He had commanded them. In his warm personal style, Pastor Chuck Smith, a bible teacher for over 50 years, paints an intimate picture of the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. He is to conform you into the image of Christ. He is to come alongside of you to help you in your walk. He is to teach you all things. He is to give you an understanding of spiritual things. He is to give you the power to be a witness of Jesus Christ. There is a vast difference between being filled with the Holy Spirit and having the Holy Spirit flow forth out of your life like a torrent of living water. Pastor Smith will lead you step by step into this rich and intimate relationship with God which is made possible by the work of the Holy Spirit. You will experience the refreshing streams of living water filling your life then flowing forth from your life unto a thirsty world.

    Now she’s back with a legacy work on Titus 2 and its powerful vision for women.From Nancy:"Cross-generational community between women is the biblical antidote for being chronically, hopelessly overwhelmed, as so many of us are.When older women come out of their protective cocoons to invest themselves in the lives of younger women, whole families and churches feel the blessing. When young moms and singles widen their peer groups to include women who have already braved the same rapids and lived to tell about it, both sides of the relationship are strengthened and grow. We all, in different ways and in different seasons, need to be on both the giving and receiving end of this life-to-life process.So I invite you to join me as we look to God’s Word for His perspective on the character, commitments, and attitudes of godly women—and His prescribed process for helping us live out these virtues not only today, but from generation to generation."

    Marriage, according to Scripture, will always involve two flawed people living with each other in a fallen world. Yet, in counselor Paul Tripp's professional experience, the majority of couples enter marriage with unrealistic expectations, leaving them unprepared for the day-to-day realities of married life. This unique book introduces a biblical and practical approach to those realities that is rooted in God's faithfulness and Scripture's teaching on sin and grace. Spouses need to be reconciled to each other and to God on a daily basis, Tripp declares. Since we're always sinners married to sinners, reconciliation isn't just the right response in moments of failure. It must be the lifestyle of any healthy marriage. What Did You Expect? presents six practical commitments that give shape and momentum to such a lifestyle. These commitments, which include honestly facing sin, weakness, and failure; willingness to change; and embodying Christ's love, will equip couples to develop a thriving, grace-based marriage in all circumstances and seasons of their relationship.

    We want to dwell in lush valleys, not wander in trackless deserts. And yet, during the first three centuries of the church, many men and women purposefully moved into deserts to seek God. They understood something that we have missed: a desert is not a place of vast nothingness, but a place where we can truly experience God's provision, restoration, and intimacy.Through Scripture and personal stories of her own times of waiting and struggle, Allison Allen offers a fresh perspective for women who dare to believe that God is doing something of eternal value in their dry seasons. She shows how God can use these times in our lives to reveal himself to us, to give us rest, to get our attention, to show us our strength, to experience his blessings, and more. Any woman who has been feeling spiritually sapped will welcome this refreshing message of hope.

    They tell a story of the God who made you, knows everything about you, and who loves you so much that He went to hell and back for you.If your daily life hasn’t been radically changed by the power of this love, then this book is for you.Author Mark Stibbe is passionate about awakening people to the reality of the Father’s extravagant love. These carefully  selected Bible verses from the Old and New Testaments will  gently guide you to experience the depth of God’s love in amazing new ways.

    Joining his movement will mean coming to terms with the real Jesus, the rebel Jesus.Jesus didn't come to start a religion. The rebel Jesus came with a renegade gospel to start a revolution. You and I are invited to be a part. In Renegade Gospel, pastor and author Mike Slaughter presents Jesus and his challenging message to inspire us during Lent, Easter, and through the year. Read the red letters and discover Jesus all over again.Renegade Gospel is a multi-component, all-church series and group study with six sessions. Topics include:Discovering the Rebel Jesus Revolutionary Lifestyle The Most Important Question You Will Ever Have to Answer Seeing Jesus Today The Way of the CrossResurrectionWho better than Mike, renegade pastor that he is, to present Jesus in all of his unmanageable, demanding, troublemaking glory?Will Willimon, United Methodist Bishop, retired; Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry, Duke Divinity SchoolRenegade Gospel is Mike's life and message distilled into one pure, powerful, delicious, nourishing jolt.Brian D. McLaren, Author/speakerThis isn't your grandma's Sunday school curriculum... this is a call to a holy uprising. Shane Claiborne, Author/activist

    

      And for all those who know what it’s like to long for a father’s blessing: his approval, affection and attention. It’s for anyone who’s ever longed to hear your dad say, “I love you. I’m so proud of you.”   You may already know what it’s like to live in the rays of such a blessing, to flourish in the marvelous light of a father’s love. Yet, in this “fatherless generation,” it’s also likely you’ve never known the blessing of your earthly dad. The possibility of hearing the words, “I love you, I’m proud of you,” may be gone—washed away by your dad’s death or distance or divorce or disinterest. Your father’s blessing may be mired in a pit of regret, pain or abandonment.   But here’s the good news— regardless of how amazing or absent, invested or disinterested, empowering or deflating your earthly father was or is — you do have a perfect Father.   We see all throughout Scripture that God wants us to know Him as Father and wants us to live under the waterfall of His blessing.   In Not Forsaken, Pastor Louie Giglio invites us to reframe our view of fatherhood, by understanding that God is not simply the bigger version of our earthly dads, He is the perfect version of our earthly dads. And, He’s inviting us to walk in freedom as loved sons and daughters of the King.   God is not the reflection of your earthly father; He is the perfection of your earthly father.

    As a result, they focus a lot on what Jesus has done to appease God's wrath for sin. But how does Jesus Christ actually feel about his people amid all their sins and failures? This book draws us to Matthew 11, where Jesus describes himself as "gentle and lowly in heart," longing for his people to find rest in him. The gospel is primarily about God's heart drawn to his people, a heart of tender love for the sinful and suffering. These chapters take readers into the depths of Christ's very heart for sinners, diving deep into Bible passages that speak of who Christ is and encouraging readers with the affections of Christ for his people. His longing heart for sinners will comfort and sustain readers in their up-and-down lives.