If you could have a conversation with God Himself, what would He say? Would He be vicious, stripping you with His words, recounting your mistakes? Perhaps you, like the author of this book, have spent much of your life expecting and avoiding a fear-hungry God who watches you hawkishly from the Other Side. Perhaps you, like the author of this book, have found yourself being chased - but not in the way you most feared. From her real and intense encounters with a God who proved Himself mysterious, sacrificial, humorous, and meticulously kind comes this collection of stark and honest Christian poetry from Carisa Downs. On every page of this fully illustrated book, you will have the opportunity to "be found" by a God who may be softer than any of us know.
Over 100,000 copies sold! In the wise and soulful tradition of teachers like Shauna Niequist and Brene Brown, therapist Aundi Kolber debuts with Try Softer helping us align our mind, body, and soul to live the life God created for us. In a world that preaches a "try harder" gospel―just keep going, keep hustling, keep pretending we're all fine―we're left exhausted, overwhelmed, anxious, and numb to our lives. If we're honest, we've been overfunctioning and hurtling toward burnout for so long, we can't even imagine another way. How else will things get done? How else will we survive? It doesn't have to be this way. Aundi Kolber believes we don't have to white-knuckle our way through life, stuck in survival mode and stressed. In her debut book, Try Softer, she'll show us how God specifically designed our bodies and minds to work together to process our stories and work through obstacles. Through the latest psychology, practical clinical exercises, and her own personal story, Aundi equips and empowers us to connect us to our truest self and truly live. This is the "try softer" life. In Try Softer you'll learn how to: Know and set emotional and relational boundaries Make sense of the difficult experiences you've had Identify your attachment style―and how that affects your relationships today Move through emotions rather than get stuck by them Grow in self-compassion and talk back to your inner critic Trying softer is sacred work. And while the healing journey won't be perfect or easy, it will be worth it. Because this is what we were made for: a living, breathing, moving, feeling, connected, beautifully incarnational life.
The Try Softer Guided Journey is your next step toward wholeness and healing. Based on the groundbreaking book by trauma-informed therapist Aundi Kolber, The Try Softer Guided Journey is a five-session workbook that will help you grow in self-compassion and grace. Whether you've read Try Softer and feel ready to dig deeper into its principles or you've been doing this work for a while and are looking for more guided support, the content in these pages is designed to help you engage with and explore your inner world, your creativity, and your hopes for the future. Easily adapted for either individual or group work, The Try Softer Guided Journey provides an empathic foundation for conversation and growth. Trying softer is deep, sacred work. Let this guide be exactly that: a gentle guide, a companion helping you come home to yourself. May it give you profound courage and ground you in goodness with every step.
MORE THAN 100,000 COPIES SOLD! New York Times bestselling author Rachel Macy Stafford shares simple words of daily inspiration in this unique, seasonal devotional to help you find new and more connected ways to live undistracted, heart-led, and hands-free every day. Rachel Macy Stafford, known to millions as the Hands Free Mama, equips readers to breathe life into what really matters: the ordinary moments in our routine lives and the people in them. Her inspiring words fill this beautiful book of short pieces constructed around the seasons of life. From finding daily surrender in the autumn and daily hope in the winter to finding daily bloom and daily spark in the spring and summer, you will always find fresh, beautiful words for your day. With a flexible, non-dated devotional structure, Only Love Today offers life-giving words that remind you of the tools you already possess and insights you already have as you seek to find: Clarity when you're conflicted Unity when you're divided Faith when you're uncertain Rest when your soul is weary Meaning in the meaningless A reset button directing you back to what matters most Regardless of what you're experiencing or what season you're in, in these pages, you'll find wisdom, encouragement, strength, vision, and clarity to live for what really matters.
A fresh look at the earliest Christian movement reveals what made the new faith so compelling...and what we need to change today to make it so again. Once upon a time there was a version of the Christian faith that was practically irresistible. After all, what could be more so than the gospel that Jesus ushered in? Why, then, isn't it the same with Christianity today? Author and pastor Andy Stanley is deeply concerned with the present-day church and its future. He believes that many of the solutions to our issues can be found by investigating our roots. In Irresistible, Andy chronicles what made the early Jesus Movement so compelling, resilient, and irresistible by answering these questions: What did first-century Christians know that we don't—about God's Word, about their lives, about love? What did they do that we're not doing? What makes Christianity so resistible in today's culture? What needs to change in order to repeat the growth our faith had at its beginning? Many people who leave or disparage the faith cite reasons that have less to do with Jesus than with the conduct of his followers. It's time to hit pause and consider the faith modeled by our first-century brothers and sisters who had no official Bible, no status, and little chance of survival. It's time to embrace the version of faith that initiated—against all human odds—a chain of events resulting in the most significant and extensive cultural transformation the world has ever seen. This is a version of Christianity we must remember and re-embrace if we want to be salt and light in an increasingly savorless and dark world.
With Dear Daughters, Susie Davis creates a bridge between two groups of women–dear daughters and spiritual mamas. Dear daughters are young women in search of spiritual guidance and spiritual mamas are women just a little further down the road with age-old wisdom to share. Each group has valuable insight for the other and the hope is that the reader will invite someone to come alongside them, pore over the included letters together, and pass along wisdom and advice that will make both lives more beautiful, wherever they are in their God story. This book, ideal for a gift, is a casebound hardcover with ribbon.
Rediscovering the Original "Way" of Jesus the Christ Leading Bible scholar Marcus Borg takes us on an incredible journey to discover who Jesus was, what he taught, and why he still matters today. In the definitive book of his career, Borg argues that how we see Jesus affects how we see Christianity and reveals a new way of seeing—a new perspective that can overcome the differences between the literalists and progressives, a path that emphasizes following "the way" of Jesus, the original name of the Jesus movement.
World-renowned Jesus scholar Marcus J. Borg shows how we can live passionately as Christians in today's world by practicing the vital elements of Christian faith. For the millions of people who have turned away from many traditional beliefs about God, Jesus, and the Bible, but still long for a relevant, nourishing faith, Borg shows why the Christian life can remain a transforming relationship with God. Emphasizing the critical role of daily practice in living the Christian life, he explores how prayer, worship, Sabbath, pilgrimage, and more can be experienced as authentically life-giving practices. Borg reclaims terms and ideas once thought to be the sole province of evangelicals and fundamentalists: he shows that terms such as "born again" have real meaning for all Christians; that the "Kingdom of God" is not a bulwark against secularism but is a means of transforming society into a world that values justice and love; and that the Christian life is essentially about opening one's heart to God and to others.
Does it really matter? Does it matter if we have free will? Does it matter if Calvinism is true? And does what you think about it matter? No and yes. No, it doesn't matter because God is who he is and does what he does regardless of what we think of him, just as the solar system keeps spinning around the sun even if we're convinced it spins around the earth. Our opinions about God will not change God, but they can change us. And so yes, it does matter because the conversations about free will and Calvinism confront us with perhaps the only question that really matters: who is God? This is a book about that question--a book about the Bible, black holes, love, sovereignty, hell, Romans 9, Jonathan Edwards, John Piper, C. S. Lewis, Karl Barth, and a little girl in a red coat. You've heard arguments, but here's a story--Austin Fischer's story, and his journey in and out of Calvinism on a trip to the center of the universe.
No words, no language about God can ever fully reflect the divine mystery. The "loving Father" image is the one with which children are most familar. This book helps children experience another metaphor for God. Its songs, stories, pictures, prayers, and activities introduce children to the nurturing, tender care of Mother God, who loves them unconditionally.
