Unsurprisingly, this fact is as old as time--and that's why we see so many prayer circles within a multitude of church traditions. These gatherings are a trusted space where people seek help, hope, and peace, energized by God and one another.This book, curated by acclaimed author Sarah Bessey, celebrates and honors that prayerful tradition in a literary form. A companion for daily inspiration, this collection gives women permission to recognize the weight of all they carry, while also offering a broadened imagination of hope--of what can be restored and made new. Each prayer is an original piece of writing, with a short introduction from Bessey sharing exactly why she loves and looks up to the writer.This book is a literary hug, an invitation for respite, and a chance for readers to pause and celebrate who they are, beyond what they do.

    And the name of that better life was Tom, a local gangster with the face of the devil himself.The next thing I saw was my mother's bloody face bashed into the ground and teeth scattered around her lifeless body.I looked at him and thought to myself- PLEASE, DON'T KILL ME.This story has haunted me all of my life, through the daily flashbacks and nightmares. It has taken me some time to build up the courage to let this story out of my heart.And now, with every single word I can live free. Finally.- Karolina -

    In these pages, Sally Clarkson helps you to find your anchors for life's storms. She will encourage you to combat loneliness with intentional engagement and community, find healing and forgiveness, embrace God's strength as the determiner of your battles, and more.

    A willingness to let the world show you things that you play back as you grow as an artist. Talent is cheap. Me: ok i will ponder these things. I am a carr.Dad: that should matter quite a bit, actually not the name but the guts of what that name means.A celebrated journalist, bestselling author, and recovering addict, David Carr was in the prime of his career when he collapsed in the newsroom of The New York Times in 2015. Shattered by his death, his daughter Erin Lee Carr, an up-and-coming documentary filmmaker at age twenty-seven, began combing through the entirety of their shared correspondence--1,936 items in total.What started as an exercise in grief quickly grew into an active investigation: Did her father's writings contain the answers to the questions of how to move forward in life and work without your biggest champion by your side? How could she fill the space left behind by a man who had come to embody journalistic integrity, rigor, and hard reporting, whose mentorship meant everything not just to her, but to the many who served alongside him?In All That You Leave Behind, David Carr's legacy is a lens through which Erin comes to understand her own workplace missteps, existential crises, relationship fails, and toxic relationship with alcohol. Featuring photographs and emails from the author's personal collection, this coming-of-age memoir unpacks the complex relationship between a daughter and her father, their mutual addictions and challenges with sobriety, and the powerful sense of work and family that comes to define them.

    Pressing Pause offers you a calm way to start your day, to refresh yourself in Jesus and drink deeply of His presence so that you are ready to pour out love, time, and energy into the people who matter most to you. With these 100 encouraging devotions, moms will:Begin each day with ScriptureDraw on God's powers by discovering His WordLearn practical ways to love and servePressing Pause is perfect for:Any mother wanting to approach each day with a positive mindset and develop a closer relationship with GodMotivational gifts, birthdays, Mother's Day, or ChristmasMoms, ages 25-50Whether you're juggling a career, kids' schedules, and church commitments or you're covered in spit-up and anxious about what the next 18 years might hold, you can carve out a few quiet moments to rejuvenate your spirit.

    Yet every day, the false kings of anxiety, approval, comfort, image, escape, power, accumulations, self-sufficiency, supremacy, and shame plot to reign over our hearts instead. Their lies about the true king are so subtle and insidious that we rarely recognize them, and we go on living with divided loyalties that stall our spiritual growth, infect our relationships, and hinder our witness.If you want to find freedom from the forces vying for your heart, let Christine Hoover equip you for the fight. In this approachable yet provocative book, she helps you root out your own misplaced allegiances so that you can live wholly as a subject of the king who made and redeemed you.

    If they did, they’d be pleasantly surprised by its impressive quantity of sex and poop jokes.David danced naked. Noah was basically a moonshining hillbilly. Ezekiel baked poop bread. Herod was eaten by worms. Jesus cursed a fig tree, just to prove he could. Mark went streaking. Hosea married a prostitute. Lot was date-raped by his own daughters.It turns out, there’s a lot of weird stuff in the Bible. Murder-Bears, Moonshine, and Mayhem is a funny look at some of the stranger tales in the Bible. From Elisha, who loosed homicidal bears on some kids because they called him bald (it’s a long story), to the story of Ehud, who gets away with assassinating a tyrannical king because his servants think said king is taking a dump (also a long story), this book examines and casts new light on some of the Bible’s stranger moments.Organized by topic (poop, genitalia, weird violence, prostitution, gratuitous nudity, seemingly pointless miracles, and other fun stuff), Murder-Bears, Moonshine, and Mayhem is a thoroughly researched (really!), reverent, and insightful look at the amazing book at the center of our faith.

    Modern life has evolved in a way that sets us up for stress, pressure, and overload. New norms and attitudes tap into deeply-wired psychological impulses that make it harder than ever to take control of your time. Many of us also have innate personality traits that make the struggle even worse.No wonder time can become a tyrant that leaves us chronically stressed and discontented. Unlock an approach to life that bestselling author Valorie Burton calls “living timelessly.” You will come to understand1)    the gradual changes that have led us to a place where having too much to do and too little time to do it is the norm,2)    the vision for what it could look like if you were free from the stress of time and how to blast through the obstacles to those possibilities, and3)    the practical steps to choosing the meaningful over the urgent so that your life is unhurried yet purposeful and reflects the values and impact that are unique to you. It’s About Time  helps you reimagine a life that is meaningful, at a pace that is natural, with a load that is doable and equips you with the tools to make it happen.

    Maybe you’d like to see your faith become more active and life-changing in the world around you. Pastor Kerry and Chris Shook felt that way. Even though their calling involved preaching and teaching, they became weary of sermons and words. They felt a gap between what they were saying and the needs of people around them.  They decided to do something about it.  Be the Message is their story of waking up to the gospel—not just a gospel of words and sermons, but the gospel of intention and action and people. They discovered a profound secret:  You Are the Gospel As they explored the deeper truths of scripture, the verse “the word of God lives in you” came alive. Digging deeper, they discovered that the gospel message is really about life message—your life lived out. God’s call to you is simple: Be the Message Be the Message opens up a new world of understanding about what God calls you to. As the Shooks learned, the gospel is not about what you say. It’s about who you are and what you do—and how you can be God’s hands and feet in the world.  What would happen if we talked about God less and walked with God more? Be the Message reminds us that Christianity was meant to be a faith of action, not a faith of words. Yet often we sacrifice doing something for the sake of talking about it. When we actually act out on our faith, we find our faith grows even more.  You can do more than nothing.  People’s lives are changed when you allow your life to be the gospel to the world. Living out the gospel in the world today is both simple and costly.  The Shooks explore that paradox through biblical stories and their own experience of making a decision to live out the gospel in practical ways.  Choosing to be the gospel changed their family, church and personal relationships with God. How can it change your life?

    God's whole point throughout the Bible has been and will forever be you in His presence and His presence in you.Get to the Point helps you do just that. It is a practical guide into God's presence, hearing His voice, and receiving God's guidance and provision in your everyday life.No matter your age or connection to God, Get to the Point, will affirm or help you start getting to the point today.

    Together with their friends and fellow church members Erin and Dave Wasinger, the Arthurs embarked on a yearlong experiment to implement twelve small practices of radical faith--not waiting until they were out of debt or the kids were out of diapers or God sent them elsewhere, but right now.This book is Sarah and Erin's story, told with humor, theological reflection, and practical insight, exploring such practices as simplicity, hospitality, accountability, sustainability, and social justice--but, most of all, discernment. Along the way readers will consider how God might be calling them to embark on their own year of small but radical changes, right where God has planted them. Each chapter includes discussion questions and suggested readings. Foreword by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.For more information, visit [www.YearofSmallThings.com](http: //www.YearofSmallThings.com).

    It is when children are sick, even dying, that they can suddenly bring us closer to God ourselves. Children's minister and former children's hospital chaplain Leanne Hadley has been ministering to hurting children for years. In "Touching Heaven," she recounts the poignant stories and simple faith of the remarkable children she has been privileged to serve. She shares their encounters with God, Jesus, and angels. And with humor and tenderness, she offers their inspiring testimonies to the presence of God in our lives--even as earthly life is ending. Anyone who has lost a child or another loved one, or anyone who is currently supporting a dying person along the journey, will find in these stories comfort, inspiration, and hope of everlasting life.

    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.

    What is needed is a new story and Alan Steinfeld’s Making Contact is part of that story.” —Deepak Chopra, Author, Total MeditationHow can we prepare for an event that is literally beyond anything humanity has ever faced? Making Contact presents multiple perspectives on what no longer can be denied: UFOs and their occupants are visiting our world. The book answers questions which remain in the wake of the recent Pentagon’s disclosures as to who and why these beings are here. The volume contains original writings by the leading experts of the phenomena such as: Linda Moulton Howe, Earthfiles reporter, Whitley Strieber best-selling author of Communion, Professor John E. Mack, former head of the Harvard Medical school of psychiatry and an alien abduction investigator, Darryl Anka internationally known for his communication with the extraterrestrial Bashar, Nick Pope, former UK Ministry of Defense UFO investigator, Grant Cameron expert on American presidents and UFOs, Drs. J.J. and Desiree Hurtak, globalists and founders of the worldwide organization, The Academy for Future Science, Caroline Cory, director of Superhuman and ET: Contact, Mary Rodwell, author of the New Human about star-seed children, Henrietta Weekes, actress and writer, expressing the poetic aspects of making contact. Alan Steinfeld, contributes and curates the collection with 30 years of experience with the subject. The Foreword by George Noory of Coast to Coast AM kicks off the volume with his veteran overview of the need to wake up to the “new realities of extraterrestrial existence.”At this critical juncture in the government’s official acknowledgement of the reality of UFOs/UAPs, scientists, politicians and mainstream news outlets have no idea what to make of these startling revelations or the outpouring of sightings and “contact” experiences currently being reported on a global scale. The book stands as the most comprehensive clarification to date on the intent and intelligence behind the phenomena. The variety of viewpoints expressed in the volume provide a solid foundation for the “preparation” of the greatest challenge to ever face humankind.Making Contact stands as the essential handbook for embracing the most exalted moment in history: Meeting the cosmic others.

    What you believe is everything!Break free from bondages and live a life of victory through inspiring bite-sized teachings that will help you develop highly effective habits for right believing.Each daily experience includes:Today's Scripture: A scripture to meditate on to recalibrate your mind and believe right about God's heart and plans for you.Today's Excerpt: A key truth about right believing that ministers and delivers God's transforming grace to you.Today's Thought: An uplifting, liberating, and powerful thought for the day.Today's Reflection: A place to journal your thoughts and reflections.Today's Prayer: A simple but powerful prayer to help you express your heart to your heavenly Father.