If you are a victim of any form of abuse by professing Christians and are carrying around buried emotions that negatively affect your life, you need a resource that will help you unpack and release these silent killers. You deserve to heal and feel peace! Overcoming Church & Abuse lovingly guides victims of abuse out of victimhood and into freedom, using faith-based tools and powerful soul-healing exercises. This book offers hope, healing, and freedom to victims of abuse by clergy, professing Christians, and those who misuse the Bible. Erin is also the author of I Thought I Knew What Love Was and Confident & Free, two powerful books that, in the words of readers, "help draw them closer to the heartbeat of God."
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.
This can be your turning point. God can take the hardest places in your life - the things you never thought you’d overcome - and heal you and set you free so you can use your story to help other people discover their own abundant life. The message of this book is simple: You can be healed and overcome. You can walk in freedom. Through the power of the Holy Spirit and the work that Jesus did at the cross, you don’t have to stay trapped in your pain and heartache. No person is doomed to repeat the cycles of the past. You can choose, as I did so many years ago, to start your own journey to healing and freedom and start really living the abundant life Jesus has for you. Are you ready? Let’s get started.
From the time Erin Lamb was a child, she was curious about the God of the Bible. She grew up in a home with a pastor and Sunday school teacher, which made knowing God a part of everyday life. More than reading about Him, her heart longed to know Him personally, as Moses knew Him. Along this journey, she picked up a pen and paper and began to write about her experiences with God and His responses. I Thought I Knew What Love Was is a book for every person who wants to plunge deeper into the heart of God. If circumstances or life have made God seem distant or cold, the words on these pages will lure your heart on a journey with the God of the high and low places. Understanding the depths of Gods love during the good and the challenging times is essential to living a joy-filled life. Erin has captured the heart of God through prayers, sonnets, and poems that reveal the human experience in relation to God. If you have ever felt as though God doesnt understand you, then poems like Agape, Even If, and Our Deepest Need will reveal Gods unfailing love for you. Whether you find yourself in the difficult places, or on the mountaintop, your heart and mind will be drawn to a more intimate place where you commune with God.
Travel the world, change lives, save souls. (Note: Results not typical.) A young idealist heeds the call to radical obedience, gives away all of his belongings and shaking off the fetters of a complacent life, travels halfway around the world. There he discovers, among the poor and the fatherless of West Africa, that he has only surrendered to a new kind of captivity. There is no doubt that young people today are fully invested in social and human rights issues. They start their own nonprofits, they run their own charities, they raise money for worthy causes. Books on saving the world abound, topping the bestsellers’ lists, fueling the drive to prove not only commitment to the world but devotion to God. Now there is a new crop of books starting to emerge, detailing the consequences of trying to save a world that is not ours to save. But none of these books tell the story thatRunaway Radical tells; this is the first book to highlight the painful personal consequences of the new radicalism, documenting in heartbreaking detail what happens when a young person becomes entrapped instead of liberated by its call. His radical resolve now shaken, he returns home to rebuild his life and his faith. Runaway Radical serves as an important and cautionary tale for all who lead and participate in compassion activism, in the art of doing good— both overseas and at home— amidst this new culture of radical Christian service.
One of the core messages of the gospel is that of total forgiveness…not only that we can be totally forgiven by God, but also that we must, in turn, totally forgive others.
"Read it for twists on twists, meditations on faith, and a deeply thoughtful treatment of an evangelical community." — Glamour, Beach Reads That Are Like Summer in a Book “A thoughtful and candid meditation on faith, family, and forgiveness . . . fabulous.” —Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had Recommended by Good Housekeeping, Elle, Parade, Real Simple, Glamour,Refinery29,Bustle, Oprah Daily, The Millions, Shondaland, Yahoo!, Literary Hub, and more! A mesmerizing debut novel set in northern Texas about two sisters who discover an unsettling secret about their father, the head pastor of an evangelical megachurch, that upends their lives and community—a story of family, identity, and the delicate line between faith and deception. Luke Nolan has led the Hope congregation for more than a decade, while his wife and daughters have patiently upheld what it means to live righteously. Made famous by a viral sermon on purity co-written with his eldest daughter, Abigail, Luke is the prototype of a modern preacher: tall, handsome, a spellbinding speaker. But his younger daughter Caroline has begun to notice the cracks in their comfortable life. She is certain that her perfect, pristine sister is about to marry the wrong man—and Caroline has slid into sin with a boy she’s known her entire life, wondering why God would care so much about her virginity anyway. When it comes to light, five weeks before Abigail’s wedding, that Luke has been lying to his family, the entire Nolan clan falls into a tailspin. Caroline seizes the opportunity to be alone with her sister. The two girls flee to the ranch they inherited from their maternal grandmother, far removed from the embarrassing drama of their parents and the prying eyes of the community. But with the date of Abigail’s wedding fast approaching, the sisters will have to make a hard decision about which familial bonds are worth protecting. An intimate coming-of-age story and a modern woman’s read, God Spare the Girls lays bare the rabid love of sisterhood and asks what we owe our communities, our families, and ourselves. “A deeply felt book about love — love for family and community, for people who sustain you and people who disappoint you. And love for God, too, which Kelsey McKinney writes about with humane and incisive frankness.”—Linda Holmes, New York Times bestselling author of Evvie Drake Starts Over “The accomplishment of this canny novel is in positing coming of age itself as a loss of faith—not only in the church, but in our parents, our family, and the world as we thought we understood it.” — Rumaan Alam, New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind and Rich and Pretty
For writer, professor, and activist Marlena Graves, formation and justice always intertwine on the path to a balanced life of both action and contemplation. Drawing on the rich traditions of Eastern and Western Christian saints, she describes the process of emptying herself that allows her to move upward toward God and become the true self that God calls her to.
