Our families have shaped our views on everything from religion to finances to sex, and, whether helpful or harmful, these views are brought to our marriage and can unknowingly affect it. Getting Ready for Marriage Workbook helps engaged couples and newlyweds:learn what "ghosts' they bring to marriageexamine their family backgroundsdetermine guidelines for their own marriageThrough interactive exercises, couples discover the roots of their beliefs, sight potential problem ares, and learn how to successfully through problems.  Couples are then encouraged to make their own covenants in specific areas such as financial matters, resolving conflict, religious orientation,. and family planning & children-essential in building a strong marriage partnership.

    So now is the time to make each moment of your ordinary, everyday, beautiful existence count. It’s time to own your life.Sally Clarkson’s Own Your Life is a breath of fresh air into the life and soul of a busy woman. Like a faithful friend, Sally journeys with you to explore what it means to live meaningfully, follow God truly, and bring much-needed order to your chaos. Each page offers deeply personal, authentic, and practical guidance to help you build an intentional life. Discover what it means to own your life, and dare to trust God’s hands as He richly shapes your character, family, work, and soul.

    It's an activity. It's something you do. And participating in the act of love is the secret to understanding God's love--the secret to a life well lived. Building on the foundation of the New York Times bestseller, Love Does, the Love Does video study (DVD/digital video sold separately) is a case study in love done--a love that's practical, functional, active. Not a "love" that has all the right answers. Not a "love" with ulterior motives. Not a "love" that's all talk or paralyzed by doubt. But a radically alive love that's an intentional participation in God's world.How is that kind of love done?The how is what this study is about. Real growth happens when you learn how to tap into the empowering, energizing love of God. Using it fills you. Risking it secures you. Giving it satisfies you.Each of the five sessions in the Love Does video study explores a different aspect of God's active love through Bob Goff's teachings and stories:I'm With You - we've been given the invitation to love. Taking it seriously is where life meets faith.Free to Fail - exploring the nature of failure, how it works, and what God does with it.Audacious Love - understanding why receiving love is essential to giving love.Be Not Afraid - chasing out the anxieties that keep us from acting and living the life that Jesus has called us to.Follow Me - delving into how to bring our passions and plans together and bind them to God's plan.This study guide provides teaching notes, discussion questions, Bible study, between-session activities and a practical application called "Putting Love into Action," which gives you the opportunity to put the principles you have learned into real-life practice.It's time to step off the ledge and fall into God's immeasurable love.Designed for use with the Love Does Video Study (9781400206292), sold separately.

    Jim Petersen distills years of counseling and pastoral ministry into an informal volume loaded with practical tips, examples and techniques to practice. His book highlights our cultures courtroomlike communication that often puts people at odds with each other. Most people think they listen well but dont and folks walk away unheard, misunderstood and disconnected. Readers will chuckle in recognition at the tongueincheek but spoton flatbrain theory of emotions. It shows how and why we get upset and confused in tense situations and what to do about it. It lays the practical groundwork to better manage emotionally loaded situations. This book shows communication that works and is equally appropriate for professionals, such as pastors and therapists and for the general public. The ingenious TalkerListener Card gives a takingturn method to end arguing as we know it. It works for couples, business relationships, church listening programs, counselors, group discussions and the family dinner table listening game. Thirty listening techniques will help the reader immediately begin to turn enemies into friends, poor relationships into decent ones and good relationships into better ones. These accessible skills are being used in pastoral counseling classes, counseling offices, church staffs, professional offices, on dates, in corporate board rooms and at kitchen tables around the country .

    Picking up on the monastic tradition of creating a rule of life that allows for regular space for the practice of the spiritual disciplines, this book takes you more deeply into understanding seven key disciplines along with practical ideas for weaving them into everyday life. Each chapter includes exercises to help you begin the practices--individually and in a group context. The final chapter puts it all together in a way that will help you arrange your life for spiritual transformation. The choice to establish your own sacred rhythm is the most important choice you can make with your life.

    And yet, far too many churches are dying. For more than twenty-five years, Dr. Thom Rainer has helped churches grow, reverse the trends of decline, and has autopsied those that have died. From this experience, he has discovered twelve consistent themes among those churches that have died. Yet, it’s not gloom and doom because from those twelve themes, lessons on how to keep your church alive have emerged.Whether your church is vibrant or dying, whether you are a pastor or a church member, Autopsy of a Deceased Church will walk you through the radical paths necessary to keep your church alive to the glory of God and advancement of Christ’s Kingdom!

    She shows how the husband and wife relationship is the foundation for a happy and godly home. And at the same time, she shows how a submissive wife is not an inferior partner.

    How can churches best equip families to disciple their children?Family ministry expert Dr. Timothy Paul Jones gives church leaders a practical plan to equip parents to be the primary faith trainers in their children's lives, moving beyond mere programming into genuine spiritual transformation.This resource is for leaders in the trenches--those who: •see parents disengaging from their children's spiritual development, •see too many students leave for college and drop out of church, or •are frustrated with programmed ministries that fail to produce results.Based on solid research, this field guide unpacks how real-life churches can narrow the gap between present reality and the biblical ideal of faith-nurturing families.

    In highly readable, first-person style, Mason’s writing stimulates readers’ thoughts and prayers and propels couples to deeper intimacy. “A marriage is not a joining of two worlds,” says the author, “but an abandoning of two worlds in order that one new one might be formed.” Rich chapters on “Otherness,” “Vows,” “Intimacy,” “Sex,” “Submission,” and an all-new chapter on “Oneness” lift readers to view the eternal, spiritual nature of this faith-filled, “impossible,” wild—yet wonderful—frontier. Story Behind the Book"Over the twenty years since its publication, many couples have told me that they’ve read my book aloud to each other. This always amazes me and gives me great joy. I’m also amazed that many single people have read it. Either way, my goal is for hearts to be warmed by the mystery of divine love. I want couples to enter into deeper intimacy by thinking together about the mystery of marriage—about how their love, besides being a gift of God, reflects the very love He has for Himself in the Trinity. For God is not a bachelor, and throughout the Bible marriage is a supreme picture of the nature of God’s love and of His kingdom. I want people who read my book to feel so soaked in these wonderful, divine mysteries that it deepens their reverence for marriage and inspires them to greater love."   -Mike Mason

    From the manger in Bethlehem to the cross in Jerusalem, Yancey presents a complex character who generates questions as well as answers; a disturbing and exhilarating Jesus who wants to radically transform your life and stretch your faith.The Jesus I Never Knew uncovers a Jesus who is brilliant, creative, challenging, fearless, compassionate, unpredictable, and ultimately satisfying. ’No one who meets Jesus ever stays the same’, says Yancey. ‘Jesus has rocked my own preconceptions and has made me ask hard questions about why those of us who bear his name don t do a better job of following him.’

    They are living, complex things that grow and change. Sometimes they fly so high we scrape the top of heaven. Sometimes they barely make it off the ground. Sometimes they feel buried under the ground. What hope do we have of understanding ourselves when we are so changeable? And what hope do we have for lasting change when our response to life is so different from one day to the next? But God designed our hearts to be both varied and varying, and he delights in his craftsmanship. He made our hearts to respond to life in a wide, beautiful spectrum of thought, desire, and choice. This spectrum bends, adapts, expands, and contracts as it dynamically responds to changing situations. The goal of change is not to flatten this variety, but to guide our responses so they reflect who we are in Christ. Jesus perfectly lived his humanity out as a dynamic being. Now as our risen Savior, he redeems all of human experience for his purposes. Without a holistic understanding of people, our approach to those in need of help will be lopsided, focusing on just one aspect of human experienceperhaps simply trying to correct faulty thinking, to stir different emotions, or to correct wrong actions. Focusing on one of these aspects of human experience to the exclusion of the others does not do justice to Gods design. Jeremy Pierre, in this ground-breaking book, lays out a holistic understanding of who we are and how we change through a dynamic relationship with Christ. Every day our dynamic hearts need help from our dynamic Savior. As Dr. Pierre connects the realities of our changing and complex thoughts, desires, emotions, and actions to who we are in Christ, readers will gain a more complete understanding of who we are, who God is, and how change happens in

    What does it look like to help others become more like Christ?In this concise guide, pastor Mark Dever outlines the who, what, where, when, why, and how of discipling--helping others follow Jesus.Following the pattern found in Scripture, this book explains how disciple-making relationships should function in the context of the local church, teaching us how to cultivate a culture of discipling as a normal part of our everyday lives.Part of the 9Marks: Building Healthy Churches series.

    Many are looking to spirituality as a means of disengaging from this life--to experience the transcendent or discover personal wholeness. On the other hand, much of popular Christian thought seems to be about avoiding the corruption of the world by being pious and following the rules. But Jesus offers a radical model for living. As the Incarnate One who dwelt among us to accomplish the mission of God, he teaches us how to dwell in the world for the sake of the world. If we are to become like him, we must learn what it means to live out this missional spirituality in the places we dwell. What does a Christian life deeply rooted in the logic of the Incarnation look like? Missional teacher and pastor Barry Jones shares his vision for authentic Christian spirituality focused on becoming more like Jesus. We dwell in a specific place and time in history, with unique bodies and in a world for which God has great purposes of redemption. This presence in the world should lead us to pattern our lives after the life of Jesus who was a boundary breaker, a shalom-maker, a people-keeper, and a wounded-healer. Jesus' life shows us what it looks like to be fully human, to be whole and holy . . . to be in the world and not of the world, to live passionately for the world and not protectively withdrawn from it, says Jones. Allowing the logic of the Incarnation to inform our vision of the spiritual life corrects the tendency toward a self-oriented pursuit of transcendence or a negative spirituality of behavior modification and disengagement from the world. Including practical suggestions for real-life application and questions for discussion, Jones describes living a missional life from a place of deep connection with and dependence on God. Not only must we have a clear and compelling vision of the life we want to live, but we must also cultivate the spiritual disciplines necessary to live out our vision in the specific contexts of day-to-day life. We need a renewed vision of Christian spirituality that leads us to be conformed into the image of Christ who dwelt with us for us.

    It shows that the guidance God gives comes primarily through knowing, loving and obeying him.

    This popular resource gently encourages married couples to make their sexual relationship the fulfilling experience it was meant to be. This is a complete sex manual, with basic facts, illustrations, and frank discussion of all facets of human sexuality. A perfect gift for newlyweds and a source book for pastors and marriage counselors, this book has helped more than a million people understand and enjoy the gift God intended for pleasure.