The Heavenly Man: The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun


Paul Hattaway - 2000
    This is the gripping story of how God took a young, half-starved boy from a poor village in Henan province and placed him on the front line for Jesus, in the face of impossible odds. Instead of focusing on the many miracles or experiences of suffering, however, Yun prefers to focus on the character and beauty of Jesus. Interspersed with his personal account are contributions from his wife, Deling, made mostly during her husband's frequent periods of imprisonment. You will remember where you were the first time you read this life story. It's a watershed book that will turn the reader to prayer and praise. It deserves comparison with past classics such as Tortured for Christ by Richard Wurmbrand, or the Life of Watchman Nee.

Evidence Not Seen: A Woman's Miraculous Faith in the Jungles of World War II


Darlene Deibler Rose - 1988
    Never to see her husband again, she was forced to sign a confession to a crime she did not commit and face the executioner's sword, only to be miraculously spared.

His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage


Willard F. Harley Jr. - 1986
    In His Needs, Her Needs, Willard Harley identifies the ten most vital needs of men and women and shows husbands and wives how to satisfy those needs in their spouses. He provides guidance for becoming irresistible to your spouse and for loving more creatively and sensitively, thereby eliminating the problems that often lead to extramarital affairs. The revised anniversary edition of His Needs, Her Needs is a celebration of how the book has helped thousands of couples revitalize their marriages during the last fifteen years. This best-seller identifies the causes of marital difficulties and instructs couples on how to prevent them, guiding them to build a relationship that sustains romance and increases intimacy. With today's soaring divorce rate and prevalence of affairs, Harley's insights are needed more than ever before.An unabridged recording of His Needs, Her Needs, the 15th anniversary edition, is now available as an audio book.

The Daniel Plan: 40 Days to a Healthier Life


Rick Warren - 2013
    Once and for All During an afternoon of baptizing over 800 people, Pastor Rick Warren realized it was time for change. He told his congregation he needed to lose weight and asked if anyone wanted to join him. He thought maybe 200 people would sign up, instead he witnessed a movement unfold as 15,000 people lost over 260,000 pounds in the first year. With assistance from medical and fitness experts, Pastor Rick and thousands of people began a journey to transform their lives. Welcome to The Daniel Plan. Here's the secret sauce: The Daniel Plan is designed to be done in a supportive community relying on God's instruction for living. When it comes to getting healthy, two are always better than one. Our research has revealed that people getting healthy together lose twice as much weight as those who do it alone. God never meant for you to go through life alone and that includes the journey to health. Unlike the thousands of other books on the market, this book is not about a new diet, guilt-driven gym sessions, or shame-driven fasts. The Daniel Plan shows you how the powerful combination of faith, fitness, food, focus, and friends will change your health forever, transforming you in the most head-turning way imaginably---from the inside out.

Greedy: Notes from a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much


Jen Winston - 2021
    Perfect for fans of Lindy West, Samantha Irby, and Rebecca Solnit—and anyone who wants, and deserves, to be seen. If Jen Winston knows one thing for sure, it’s that she’s bisexual. Or wait—maybe she isn’t? Actually, she definitely is. Unless…she’s not? Jen’s provocative, laugh-out-loud debut takes us inside her journey of self-discovery, leading us through stories of a childhood “girl crush,” an onerous quest to have a threesome, and an enduring fear of being bad at sex. Greedy follows Jen’s attempts to make sense of herself as she explores the role of the male gaze, what it means to be “queer enough,” and how to overcome bi stereotypes when you’re the posterchild for all of them: greedy, slutty, and constantly confused. With her clever voice and clear-eyed insight, Jen draws on personal experiences with sexism and biphobia to understand how we all can and must do better. She sheds light on the reasons women, queer people, and other marginalized groups tend to make ourselves smaller, provoking the question: What would happen if we suddenly stopped?​​ Greedy shows us that being bisexual is about so much more than who you’re sleeping with—it’s about finding stability in a state of flux and defining yourself on your own terms. This book inspires us to rethink the world as we know it, reminding us that Greedy was a superpower all along.

When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor...and Yourself


Steve Corbett - 2009
    Churches and individual Christians typically have faulty assumptions about the causes of poverty, resulting in the use of strategies that do considerable harm to poor people and themselves. Don't let this happen to you, your ministry or ministries you help fund! A must read for anyone who works with the poor or in missions, When Helping Hurts provides foundational concepts, clearly articulated general principles and relevant applications. The result is an effective and holistic ministry to the poor, not a truncated gospel."Initial thoughts" at the beginning of chapters and "reflection questions and excercises" at the end of chapters assist greatly in learning and applying the material. A situation is assessed for whether relief, rehabilitation, or development is the best response to a situation. Efforts are characterized by an "asset based" approach rather than a "needs based" approach. Short term mission efforts are addressed and economic development strategies appropriate for North American and international contexts are presented, including microenterprise development.Now with a new preface, a new foreword, and a new chapter to assist in the next steps of applying the book's principles to your situation, When Helping Hurts is a new classic!

Walking from East to West: God in the Shadows


Ravi Zacharias - 2006
    Ravi has spoken of his own journey only in bits and pieces in his other books and talks. It is a journey that has led him beyond his family and culture into a revelation that replaced pantheism with monotheism, and into a relationship with a God the vast majority of his people do not worship. From this new understanding birthed in him by the founder of Christianity, Ravi has gone forward to teach as one of our generation’s great apologists.A life lived in Christ is the greatest argument of all for the living God. Ravi urges the reader to look at the lives that have turned the hearts of people into movements for Christ. In the first three centuries of the church, the Apostles and followers like Polycarp and Tertullian and Origen demonstrated with their lives the truth of the resurrected Christ. A whole line of witnesses from every generation succeeded these who walked in the footsteps of Jesus, with names like Augustine, Catherine of Sienna, Bernard of Clairvaux, Luther, and Wesley leading the procession.But history begins on an individual level.Ravi shows readers his life, in its successes and failures, in its existence in the East and in the West, and in his attempts to bring the truth of Christ to those in any culture who don’t know him. The Hebrew poet has said that a life rich in experiences is a life from which others can learn.This book is about Ravi’s journey, from meaninglessness to the abundant joy of Christ, from East to West and back again, in the all-consuming passion of letting the world know about true freedom, and in whom that freedom is found.

Space at the Table: Conversations Between an Evangelical Theologian and His Gay Son


Brad Harper - 2016
    Writing to each other with compassion, grit, and humor, Brad and Drew take us on their journey as parent and child from the churches of Middle America to the penthouses of New York's party scenes, through a pastor's-kid childhood and painful conversion therapy to the hard-won victories of their adult relationship.But Space at the Table is more than just a memoir. It is a guide, showing us a way through the roadblocks that threaten to devastate both families and the broader evangelical and LBGTQ communities. Speaking from their own experience, Brad and Drew offer an invitation to join them at a place where love is stronger than the beliefs that divide us.

Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living


Krista Tippett - 2016
    The heart of her work on her national public radio program and podcast, On Being, has been to shine a light on people whose insights kindle in us a sense of wonder and courage. Scientists in a variety of fields; theologians from an array of faiths; poets, activists, and many others have all opened themselves up to Tippett's compassionate yet searching conversation.   In Becoming Wise, Tippett distills the insights she has gleaned from this luminous conversation in its many dimensions into a coherent narrative journey, over time and from mind to mind. The book is a master class in living, curated by Tippett and accompanied by a delightfully ecumenical dream team of teaching faculty.   The open questions and challenges of our time are intimate and civilizational all at once, Tippett says – definitions of when life begins and when death happens, of the meaning of community and family and identity, of our relationships to technology and through technology. The wisdom we seek emerges through the raw materials of the everyday. And the enduring question of what it means to be human has now become inextricable from the question of who we are to each other.   This book offers a grounded and fiercely hopeful vision of humanity for this century – of personal growth but also renewed public life and human spiritual evolution. It insists on the possibility of a common life for this century marked by resilience and redemption, with beauty as a core moral value and civility and love as muscular practice. Krista Tippett's great gift, in her work and in Becoming Wise, is to avoid reductive simplifications but still find the golden threads that weave people and ideas together into a shimmering braid.   One powerful common denominator of the lessons imparted to Tippett is the gift of presence, of the exhilaration of engagement with life for its own sake, not as a means to an end. But presence does not mean passivity or acceptance of the status quo. Indeed Tippett and her teachers are people whose work meets, and often drives, powerful forces of change alive in the world today. In the end, perhaps the greatest blessing conveyed by the lessons of spiritual genius Tippett harvests in Becoming Wise is the strength to meet the world where it really is, and then to make it better.

Church of the Small Things: The Million Little Pieces That Make Up a Life


Melanie Shankle - 2017
    Meanwhile, we lose sight of the small significance of fully living with every breath we take.Melanie Shankle, New York Times bestselling author and writer at The Big Mama Blog tackles these questions head on in her fourth book, Church of the Small Things. Easygoing and relatable, she speaks directly to the heart of women of all ages who are longing to find significance and meaning in the normal, sometimes mundane world of driving carpool to soccer practice, attending class on their college campus, cooking meals for their family, or taking care of a sick loved one.The million little pieces that make a life aren’t necessarily glamorous or far-reaching. But God uses some of the smallest, most ordinary acts of faithfulness—and sometimes they look a whole lot like packing lunch. Through humorous stories told in her signature style, full of Frito pie, best friends, the love of her Me-Ma and Pa-Pa, the unexpected grace that comes when we quit trying to measure up, and a little of the best TV has to offer, Melanie helps women embrace what it means to live a simple, yet incredibly meaningful life and how to find all the beauty and laughter that lies right beneath the surface of every moment.

Angry Conversations with God: A Snarky But Authentic Spiritual Memoir


Susan E. Isaacs - 2009
    . . . She took God to couples counseling. In this cuttingly poignant memoir, Susan Isaacs chronicles her rocky relationship with the Almighty - from early childhood to midlife crisis - and all the churches where she and God tried to make a home: Pentecostals, Slackers for Jesus, and the über-intellectuals who turned everything, including the weekly church announcements, into a three-point sermon. Casting herself as the neglected spouse, Susan faces her inner nag and the ridiculous expectations she put on God - some her own, and some from her "crazy in-laws" at church. Originally staged as a solo show in New York and Los Angeles, Angry Conversations with God is a cheeky, heartfelt memoir that, even at its most scandalous, is still an affirmation of faith.

C. S. Lewis: A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet


Alister E. McGrath - 2012
    S. Lewis continues to inspire and fascinate millions. His legacy remains varied and vast. He was a towering intellectual figure, a popular fiction author who inspired a global movie franchise around the world of Narnia, and an atheist-turned-Christian thinker.In C.S. Lewis: A Life, Alister McGrath, prolific author and respected professor at King's College of London, paints a definitive portrait of the life of C. S. Lewis. After thoroughly examining recently published Lewis correspondence, Alister challenges some of the previously held beliefs about the exact timing of Lewis's shift from atheism to theism and then to Christianity. He paints a portrait of an eccentric thinker who became an inspiring, though reluctant, prophet for our times.You won't want to miss this fascinating portrait of a creative genius who inspired generations. (Tyndale House Publishers)

See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love


Valarie Kaur - 2020
    It enjoins us to see no stranger but instead look at others and say: You are part of me I do not yet know. Starting from that place of wonder, the world begins to change: It is a practice that can transform a relationship, a community, a culture, even a nation. Kaur takes readers through her own riveting journey—as a brown girl growing up in California farmland finding her place in the world; as a young adult galvanized by the murders of Sikhs after 9/11; as a law student fighting injustices in American prisons and on Guantánamo Bay; as an activist working with communities recovering from xenophobic attacks; and as a woman trying to heal from her own experiences with police violence and sexual assault. Drawing from the wisdom of sages, scientists, and activists, Kaur reclaims love as an active, public, and revolutionary force that creates new possibilities for ourselves, our communities, and our world. See No Stranger helps us imagine new ways of being with each other—and with ourselves—so that together we can begin to build the world we want to see.

The Five Love Languages for Singles


Gary Chapman - 2001
    The core message has hit home with over 5 million people as it focuses on the need to "feel" loved. This need is felt by married and singles alike. Dr. Chapman now tackles the unique circumstances that singles face, and integrates how the same five love languages apply in their relationships. For example, in a business environment, when and how is physical touch appropriate? Take the love language test included.

Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son's Journey to God, a Broken Mother's Search for Hope


Christopher Yuan - 2011
    "'Christopher, you must choose! You must choose the family or choose homosexuality.' He looked at me and said, 'It's not something I can choose. I am gay. If you can't accept me, then I have no other choice but to leave.'" Christopher Yuan, the son of Chinese immigrants, discovered at an early age that he was different. He was attracted to other boys. As he grew into adulthood, his mother, Angela, hoped to control the situation. Instead, she found that her son and her life were spiraling out of control, and her own personal demons were determined to defeat her. Years of heartbreak, confusion, and prayer followed before the Yuans found a place of complete surrender, which is God's desire for all families. Their amazing story, told from the perspectives of both mother and son, offers hope for anyone affected by homosexuality. God calls all who are lost to come home to him, and he wants everyone to pursue holy sexuality. Out of a Far Country speaks to prodigals, parents of prodigals, and those wanting to minister to the gay community. "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him." - Luke 15:20