Yet the struggles they each faced rang with eerie similarity. These courageous women from across the globe-Pakistan, India, Romania, Former Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Nepal, Indonesia-shared similar experiences of hardship, subjugation, and persecution, all because of their faith in Christ. Yet all of these women have emerged from adversity as leaders and heroines.The eight modern-day pilgrims featured in "Hearts of Fire" are the hidden jewels in the church universal. They are worthy role models of faith and passion, and women of every age will gain new strength and hope for their own times of crisis and trial as they read these inspiring stories. Each story concludes with thoughtful self-reflection questions for the reader.

    Sarah Bessey was in her sweet spot: a popular author, sought-after speaker and preacher, and an active and engaged mother of four, married to the love of her life. Raised within the Word of Faith and prosperity movements, which declared that obedience to God led to untold blessings, her life seemed to prove the preachers of her childhood were right. Then she was in a car accident with life-shattering consequences, and everything she thought she knew about God and faith was upended.Weaving together theology and memoir in her trademark narrative style, Sarah tells us the whole story of the car accident that changed her body and ultimately changed her life. The road of healing leads to Rome where she met the Pope (it’s complicated) and encountered the Holy Spirit in the last place she expected. She writes about her miraculous healing, learning to live with chronic pain, and the ways God unexpectedly makes us whole in the midst of suffering. She invites us to a path of knowing God that is filled with ordinary miracles, hope in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, surprising holiness, and other completely reasonable things.Insightful, profound, and unexpected, Miracles and Other Reasonable Things is a wild spirit-filled story of what it means to live with both grief and faith in our hands as we wrestle with God.

    When I Lay My Isaac Down tells their story and shares the transformational power principles they learned about forgiveness and faith.Dealing with her anger, grief, and shame, Carol could have given up. Instead she tells a highly personal, heartbreaking, and uplifting story that will bolster your faith.

    This history of the Underground Church reflects the continuing struggle in many parts of the world today.

    How is it possible for a coach--especially a football coach--to win the respect of his players and lead them to the Super Bowl without the screaming histrionics, the profanities, the demand that the sport come before anything else? How is it possible for anyone to be successful without compromising faith and family? In this inspiring and reflective memoir, Coach Dungy tells the story of a life lived for God and family--and challenges us all to redefine our ideas of what it means to succeed. Includes a foreword by Denzel Washington and a 16-page color photo insert.

    After a year of captivity, and a violent rescue that resulted in Martin's death, the world watched Gracia Burnham return home in June 2002 with a bullet wound in the leg and amazing composure.In this riveting personal account, Burnham tells the real story behind the news about their harrowing ordeal, about how it affected their relationship with each other and with God, about the terrorists who held them, about the actions of the U.S. and Philippine governments, and about how they were affected by the prayers of thousands of Christians throughout the world.

    She is barely an adult when the trials of motherhood and marriage put her on an unexpected collision course with Jesus. After finding her faith at a suburban megachurch, Jamie trades in the easy life on the cul-de-sac for the green fields of Costa Rica. There, along with her family, she earnestly hopes to serve God and change lives. But faced with a yawning culture gap and persistent shortcomings in herself and her fellow workers, she soon loses confidence in the missionary enterprise and falls into a funk of cynicism and despair.

Nearly paralyzed by depression, yet still wanting to make a difference, she decides to tell the whole, disenchanted truth: Missionaries suck and our work makes no sense at all! From her sofa in Central America, she launches a renegade blog, Jamie the Very Worst Missionary, and against all odds wins a large and passionate following. Which leads her to see that maybe a "bad" missionary--awkward, doubtful, and vocal—is exactly what the world and the throngs of American do-gooders need.

    Born without arms or legs, Nick Vujicic overcame his disability to live not just independently but a rich, fulfilling life, becoming a model for anyone seeking true happiness. Now an internationally successful motivational speaker, his central message is that the most important goal for anyone is to find their life’s purpose despite whatever difficulties or seemingly impossible odds stand in their way. Nick tells the story of his physical disabilities and the emotional battle he endured trying to deal with them as a child, a teen, and a young adult. “For the longest, loneliest time, I wondered if there was anyone on earth like me, and whether there was any purpose to my life other than pain and humiliation.” He shares how his faith in God has been his central source of strength and explains that once he found his own sense of purpose—inspiring others to make their lives and the world better—he found the confidence to build a rewarding and productive life without limits. Nick offers practical advice for realizing a life of fulfillment and happiness by building trust in others, developing supportive relationships, and gaining strength for the journey. He encourages the reader by showing how he learned to accept what he could not control and focus instead on what he could. “I do believe my life has no limits! I want you to feel the same way about your life, no matter what your challenges may be. As we begin our journey together, please take a moment to think about any limitations you’ve placed on your life or that you’ve allowed others to place on it. Now think about what it would be like to be free of those limitations. What would your life be if anything were possible?”—Nick Vujicic, from Life Without Limits

    A young preacher from the Pennsylvania hills comes to New York City and influences troubled teenagers with his inspirational message.

    She lost thirty pounds, chugged antacid, and visited doctors for three months before she was finally diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.As she navigates the aftermath of her diagnosis, Kate pulls the reader deeply into her life, which is populated with a colorful, often hilarious collection of friends, pastors, parents, and doctors, and shares her laser-sharp reflections on faith, friendship, love, and death. She wonders why suffering makes her feel like a loser and explores the burden of positivity. Trying to relish the time she still has with her son and husband, she realizes she must change her habit of skipping to the end and planning the next move. A historian of the "American prosperity gospel"--the creed of the mega-churches that promises believers a cure for tragedy, if they just want it badly enough--Bowler finds that, in the wake of her diagnosis, she craves these same "outrageous certainties." She wants to know why it's so hard to surrender control over that which you have no control. She contends with the terrifying fact that, even for her husband and child, she is not the lynchpin of existence, and that even without her, life will go on.On the page, Kate Bowler is warm, witty, and ruthless, and, like Paul Kalanithi, one of the talented, courageous few who can articulate the grief she feels as she contemplates her own mortality.

    One story had ended, and Don was unsure how to start another.But he gets rescued by two movie producers who want to make a movie based on his memoir. When they start fictionalizing Don's life for film--changing a meandering memoir into a structured narrative--the real-life Don starts a journey to edit his actual life into a better story. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years details that journey and challenges readers to reconsider what they strive for in life. It shows how to get a second chance at life the first time around.

    As a man he found himself undercover for God. Brother Andrew was his name and for decades his life story, recounted in God's Smuggler, has awed and inspired millions. The bestseller tells of the young Dutch factory worker's incredible efforts to transport Bibles across closed borders-and the miraculous ways in which God provided for him every step of the way. Revell and Chosen now reintroduce this powerful story with two new releases: a 35th anniversary edition and The Narrow Road, an expanded youth edition. Both contain a new foreword and afterword. The youth edition also features information about ministry to the persecuted church today, including country profiles, quotes from Christians in underground churches, "what if" scenarios based on real-life threats they face, and stories from others who have participated in Brother Andrew's Bible-smuggling work. Brother Andrew's story remains as inspiring today as it was thirty-five years ago, and with these new releases it will motivate a whole new generation to risk everything to follow God's call.

    The hypocrisy, the politics, the gargantuan building budgets, the scandals--church culture seemed so far removed from Jesus. Yet, despite her cynicism and misgivings, something kept drawing her back to Church. And so she set out on a journey to understand Church and to find her place in it.Centered around seven sacraments, Evans' quest takes readers through a liturgical year with stories about baptism, communion, confirmation, confession, marriage, vocation, and death that are funny, heartbreaking, and sharply honest.A memoir about making do and taking risks, about the messiness of community and the power of grace, Searching for Sunday is about overcoming cynicism to find hope and, somewhere in between, Church.

    The book overall contains less detail concerning specific events than typical autobiographies. This is because his purpose in writing wasn't primarily historical. His aim was to identify & describe the events surrounding his accidental discovery of & consequent search for the phenomenon he labelled "Joy". This word was the best translation he could make of the German idea of Sehnsucht, longing. That isn't to say the book is devoid of information about his life. He recounts his early years with a measure of amusement sometimes mixed with pain. However, while he does describe his life, the principal theme of the book is Joy as he defined it. This Joy was a longing so intense for something so good & so high up it couldn't be explained with words. He's struck with "stabs of joy" throughout life. He finally finds what it's for at the end. He writes about his experiences at Malvern College in 1913, aged 15. Though he described the school as "a very furnace of impure loves" he defended the practice as being "the only chink left thru which something spontaneous & uncalculating could creep in." The book's last two chapters cover the end of his search as he moves from atheism to theism & then from theism to Christianity. He ultimately discovers the true nature & purpose of Joy & its place in his own life. The book isn't connected with his unexpected marriage in later life to Joy Gresham. The marriage occurred long after the period described, though not long after the book was published. His friends were quick to notice the coincidence, remarking he'd really been "Surprised by Joy". "Surprised by Joy" is also an allusion to Wordsworth's poem, "Surprised by Joy-Impatient As The Wind", relating an incident when Wordsworth forgot the death of his beloved daughter.

    Here, prisoners are routinely tortured, abused, and violated. Executions are frequent and sudden. But for two women imprisoned for their Christian faith--Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh--this hell on earth was a place of unlikely grace as they reflected God's love and compassion to their fellow prisoners and guards. Against all odds, Evin would become the only church many of them had ever known.In Captive in Iran, Maryam and Marziyeh recount their 259 days in Evin. It's an amazing story of unyielding faith--when denying God would have meant freedom. Of incredible support from strangers around the world who fought for the women's release. And of bringing God's light into one of the world's darkest places--giving hope to those who had lost everything, and showing love to those in despair.