Reclaim your hope! Have you ever felt you struggled to find your faith footing? Join Amberly Neese in she explores the questions Jesus asked as a way to reclaim that faith. Chapters explore our own questions like Can God Be Trusted? and How Can I Grow in Faith. Amberly’s unique humor and wit help the whole group find their way through deep and rich issues of personal faith, doubt, and growth. Components for this six-week Bible study, each available separately, include a Participant Workbook with daily reading and reflection, a full Leader Guide to help plan full group sessions, and video sessions with six 20 to 25-minute segments (with closed captioning).
Find freedom from life’s hurts, hang-ups, and habits. The NIV Celebrate Recovery Study Bible is a powerful and positive ally. This Bible is based on eight recovery principles found in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and on the underlying Christ-centered twelve steps of the proven Celebrate Recovery program. This Bible and all of its added content lifts you up and shows you how to walk, step by attainable step, on a path of healing and liberty. Based on the proven and successful Celebrate Recovery program developed by John Baker and Rick Warren, the NIV Celebrate Recovery Study Bible offers hope, encouragement, and, through developing a relationship with Jesus Christ, empowerment to rise above your struggles. Celebrate Recovery is a biblically-based program that helps those who are struggling by showing them the loving power of Jesus Christ through the recovery process. The Celebrate Recovery program is offered in thousands of churches worldwide. Features: Complete text of the accurate, readable, and clear New International Version (NIV) Articles explain eight recovery principles and accompanying Christ-centered twelve steps Over 110 lessons unpack eight recovery principles in practical terms Recovery stories offer encouragement and hope 30 days of recovery-related readings Over 50 full-page biblical character studies are tied to stories from real-life people who have found peace and help with their own hurts, hang-ups, and habits Book introductions Side-column reference system keyed to Celebrate Recovery’s eight recovery principles Topical index “I’m excited you’re beginning the journey to recovery. Your life will change. You’ll experience freedom from your sinful habits, hang-ups, and hurts as you give up control and allow Jesus to be Lord in every area of your life.” From the foreword by Dr. Rick Warren, senior pastor, Saddleback Church “Throughout the pages of Scripture, we see God’s heart for celebrating recovery! This collection will help you experience and celebrate that journey, one step at a time. Jump in and see how recovery and spiritual growth are one and the same.” Dr. Henry Cloud, Christian psychologist, author, and speaker
Find the goodin your failure. Failure is a fact of life, one we’d rather forget. Fortunately it has a silver lining. Failure, the Back Door to Success shows us how God uses even our sins, shortcomings, and weaknesses in His perfect plan. It will inspire you to: Learn from the past without being controlled by it Embrace your limitations Accept yourself as God accepts you Be more gracious toward others Redefine your idea of success Easy to follow, illustrated with engaging stories, and deeply encouraging, Failure, the Back Door to Success speaks straight to the heart. It will make you feel free to try and unafraid of failing, knowing that God is the one at work in you, and that he’s not finished yet. And that’s the first step toward success, every time. “This book is sorely needed in our overanalyzed, under-motivated, and guilt-ridden Christian society. It can be a life changer to anyone tired of the old one-step-forward-and-two-steps-backward routine.” — Howard G. Hendricks
Eden's Bridge: The Marketplace in Creation and Mission explores a biblically based theology of the marketplace implicit in the creation narrative of Genesis 1-2. The thesis validates the calling and ministry of all marketplace Christians. David Doty invites readers to rethink and redirect the purposes of vocation, trade, and profit toward the purposes of God's Kingdom, as they were revealed in the beginning and are to be restored in Christ's reign. This book is eye-opening and inviting as it explores how God is moving to reclaim the marketplace for His Kingdom, and His redeeming purposes for the world of commerce. The marketplace holds untold potential if business is conducted according to God's plan: poverty can be eradicated, abundant living can be shared among all people, and shalom can prevail. Eden's Bridge offers hope for recovering from the recent collapse of the global economic system by envisioning a new view of how wealth is made and how the marketplace is yet to serve God's purposes in His mission to the world.
Francis Spufford's Unapologetic is a wonderfully pugnacious defense of Christianity. Refuting critics such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the "new atheist" crowd, Spufford, a former atheist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, argues that Christianity is recognizable, drawing on the deep and deeply ordinary vocabulary of human feeling, satisfying those who believe in it by offering a ruthlessly realistic account of the grown-up dignity of Christian experience. Fans of C. S. Lewis, N. T. Wright, Marilynne Robinson, Mary Karr, Diana Butler Bass, Rob Bell, and James Martin will appreciate Spufford's crisp, lively, and abashedly defiant thesis. Unapologetic is a book for believers who are fed up with being patronized, for non-believers curious about how faith can possibly work in the twenty-first century, and for anyone who feels there is something indefinably wrong, literalistic, anti-imaginative and intolerant about the way the atheist case is now being made.
A compassionate, shame-free guide for your darkest days “A one-of-a-kind book . . . to read for yourself or give to a struggling friend or loved one without the fear that depression and suicidal thoughts will be minimized, medicalized or over-spiritualized.”—Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church What happens when loving Jesus doesn’t cure you of depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts? You might be crushed by shame over your mental illness, only to be told by well-meaning Christians to “choose joy” and “pray more.” So you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. As darkness lingers and color drains from your world, you’re left wondering if God has abandoned you. You just want a way out. But there’s hope. In I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die, Sarah J. Robinson offers a healthy, practical, and shame-free guide for Christians struggling with mental illness. With unflinching honesty, Sarah shares her story of battling depression and fighting to stay alive despite toxic theology that made her afraid to seek help outside the church. Pairing her own story with scriptural insights, mental health research, and simple practices, Sarah helps you reconnect with the God who is present in our deepest anguish and discover that you are worth everything it takes to get better. Beautifully written and full of hard-won wisdom, I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die offers a path toward a rich, hope-filled life in Christ, even when healing doesn’t look like what you expect.
In 1976 the Big Thompson River flood in Colorado took 150 lives, including those of seven women on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ International. Deeply grieved by the loss, survivor Ney Bailey embraced a journey of faith that led her to a life-changing truth: No matter how things look and no matter how we feel, God is in control. In Faith is Not a Feeling, Ney reveals how life’s tragedies and challenges lead each of us to an important decision about how we will relate to God. Building on a foundation of experiences all believers can relate to, this well-loved speaker and teacher shows how you can take advantage of the endless opportunities life provided to deepen your trust in the Lord. Faith is Not a Feeling has taught hundreds of thousands of people how to choose to believe God’s promises over their own personal feelings. Now you, too, can discover the secrets that will allow you to face painful experiences with a measure of objectivity, use your feelings to take you to God, and experience true peace in the midst of failure and trials. Best of all, you will learn how to obediently and confidently take God at His word as you never have before.
