Religion & Spirituality

Read by the author. God has a dream for your life, and in this concise yet powerful volume, beloved pastor and trusted teacher Rick Warren explains the process God uses to fulfill the dream he gives you. Founding pastor of Saddleback Church and New York Times bestselling author of The Purpose Driven Life, Warren has already impacted the lives of countless believers across 160 countries and hundreds of denominations. Now, through the audiobook edition of Created to Dream, Warren is here to minister to you as your God-given dreams become reality. In the audiobook edition of Created to Dream, Warren powerfully shares the stages God uses to grow people to spiritual maturity while fulfilling the dreams he gives them. Created to Dream will guide you through those six distinct phases of faith: Phase 1: Dream—God puts an exciting dream in your heart Phase 2: Decision—You make the decision to go after the dream Phase 3: Delays—God allows delays to get you ready for the dream Phase 4: Difficulties—You face problems that grow your character Phase 5: Dead Ends—Your situation becomes impossible Phase 6: Deliverance—God miraculously fulfills the dream!   Knowing these biblical phases will allow you to stop wondering, Why is this happening to me? and begin cooperating with God's process of growing you and your faith. You'll find yourself thinking, So that's why that happened! and you'll be prepared for all that God has dreamed up for your future. This one book can lead to big changes in your life. Listen to it, then share it with a friend. Reflection questions and a scannable QR code to access extra resources are included in the audiobook companion PDF download.

Peace is always possible, even in the midst of a storm. By sharing a meditation for each day of the year, author Karen Casey speaks to the common experience, shared struggles, and unique strengths of those who seek support and spiritual growth in recovery. Featuring daily inspirational quotes about finding peace and honoring love, this positive thinking book offers the perfect touchstone at this crucial time in history—a time when millions are seeking quiet moments and mindful meditation. Today can open the door to a new way of living. Love can be a powerful influence in our lives. It’s the total absence of judgment. It’s pure acceptance. It is the inner voice reminding us that all is well and God is present, right here and right now. The overwhelming peace we feel is all the evidence we need of God’s constancy. The expression of love quiets our minds and we are flooded with inner peace. How much gentler our lives would be if we dispensed with all expressions but love. But we don’t live in a world that truly values peace. What if we can turn away from constant judgment and offer love instead, in every situation? If you’re looking for inspirational books, mindful gifts, quotes about thinking positive, or mindfulness books for adults—or enjoyed books like A Year of Positive Thinking and 5-Minute Daily Meditations—then you’ll love Each Day a Renewed Beginning.

Grammy Award–nominated artist Kem shares his life in this revealing and remarkable memoir tracing his transformative journey from homelessness to gold-selling artist. Known for his smooth affecting crooning and dapper style, Kem’s journey to the stage is nothing short of inspiring. In Share My Life, Kem goes back to the very beginning before his time to introduce his grandmother who worked as a sharecropper in the South and had thirteen children. As Kem’s family rises from the sharecropping and ultimately lands in Detroit, there is an unspoken mantra of “hard things are better left unsaid,” which has devastating consequences down the line. And so, Kem grows up in the midst of an impenetrable silence. His mother is never without a beer in her hand, and his relationship with his father is oddly tense. Emotionally starved, Kem internalizes harmful feelings, eventually spiraling to drug use in his search for relief. At nineteen, Kem is homeless, roaming the cold Detroit streets. In the overly bright AA halls, Kem comes across men like himself verbalizing their feelings. The meetings helped him discover his own voice, using music as an outlet that has since touched millions. In Share My Life, Kem chronicles his incredible journey of self-discovery. The young boy who struggled with feelings of worthlessness becomes a man willing to put everything on the line for his dream.

Read by the author. Beloved author and Bible teacher Michele Cushatt offers ten practices to strengthen your confidence in God's daily presence and power and build a faith strong enough to endure even the toughest seasons. Life can be hard. Although there are moments of beauty and goodness, more often than not, life is marked by fear, struggle, disappointment, and loss. And we don't know what to do with it. We've tried to find hope and security in various people and places--but each has proved unworthy of our trust. We need more. Something--or Someone--who won't fail us when our world falls apart. In this book, beloved author and Bible teacher Michele Cushatt presents a better way. By exploring powerful personal, historical, and biblical stories of people of extraordinary faith, she curates and shares ten practices to help you deepen your confidence and certainty in the God who can be trusted with your worry, questions, confusion, and grief. As a woman who has been through immeasurable suffering, she writes with both deep compassion and practical insight as she guides you to: Practice lament and process grief without guilt or shame Understand what keeps you from trusting God and how to navigate doubt with truth Learn simple ways to foster shalom and gratitude on a daily basis Develop a fresh, eternal perspective that delivers both peace for today and hope for tomorrow Savor daily "faith-builder" practices to strengthen your confidence in God's love and purposes for you, no matter what happens   There is hope in your hardship and a God who is both with you and for you. These ten practices point the way to the only One you can truly trust, and ultimately, to a faith in him that will not fail.  

A New York Times bestselling Biblical scholar reveals why our popular understanding of the Apocalypse is all wrong—and why that matters. You’ll find nearly everything the Bible has to say about the end in the Book of Revelation: a mystifying prophecy filled with bizarre symbolism, violent imagery, mangled syntax, confounding contradictions, and very firm ideas about the horrors that await us all. But whether you understand the book as a literal description of what will soon come to pass, interpret it as a metaphorical expression of hope for those suffering now, or only recognize its highlights from pop culture, what you think Revelation reveals…is almost certainly wrong. In Armageddon, acclaimed New Testament authority Bart D. Ehrman delves into the most misunderstood—and possibly the most dangerous—book of the Bible, exploring the horrifying social and political consequences of expecting an imminent apocalypse and offering a fascinating tour through three millennia of Judeo-Christian thinking about how our world will end. By turns hilarious, moving, troubling, and provocative, Armageddon presents inspiring insights into how to live our lives in the face of an uncertain future and reveals what the Bible really says about the end.

Known to millions as simply "Sister Jean," the Loyola Chicago matriarch and college basketball icon invites you into her remarkable memoir filled with history, wonder, and common-sense wisdom for this century and beyond. As Sister Jean wisely says, "I've seen so many changes in the last 102 years, but the important things remain the same." Part life story, part philosophy text, and part spiritual guide, Sister Jean's wit, wisdom, and common sense has broad appeal and application that transcends religious creed, belief, and even feelings on Loyola's basketball team. Along with her collaborator Seth Davis, an award-winning writer, broadcaster and New York Times best-selling author, Wake Up with Purpose! lets you experience: Sister Jean's words and her spirit. her sharp sense of humor. life lessons gleaned from one hundred years of living. universal themes that connect us all. priceless wisdom. The driving force inside Wake Up with Purpose! is the narrative of Sister Jean's fascinating life--from teaching at a Catholic school during the Second World War to serving on a Chicago college campus in the sixties and beyond to cheering from the sidelines of a men's basketball tournament in March 2018. As you learn about Sister Jean's century-long life, you'll feel just like the Loyola students do when they knock on her office door, plop down in a chair, and ask if she would have time to chat, an activity that she still does daily.

A single life is a life worth living--and it's worth living well God has a great life all planned out for you. What you may not realize if you're single is that you're already living it. Right now. Today. Your God-designed life doesn't start when you say "I do" or when you get engaged or even when you meet "the one." It's been happening as long as you've been alive--even if you're still single and wish you weren't. Hannah Schermerhorn knows exactly what it's like. She was months away from getting married when her wedding was called off. She absolutely loathed being single again, but in the following years, God taught her many hard lessons that transformed her bitterness to authentic joy. Drawing from the diverse experiences of single people in the Bible, Hannah debunks common myths and misunderstandings about singleness, including the pervasive feeling that a person can't really begin their life until they're married. If you are lonely, hopeless, or impatient, let Hannah be your guide through the internal battles and external pressures you're facing. God has a special purpose for singleness, whether it lasts for only a season or your whole life. Let Hannah help you discover God's best for you in your single life.

Are you a single mom? You are a superhero doing everyone's job and then some. You need a devotional that understands what you're experiencing, affirms your value and points you to God's Word for wisdom and strength. 100 Devotions for the Single Mom invites you on a journey that brings you peace and deepens your faith while speaking to relevant topics such as raising children, self-care, empathy, sympathy, balance, maintaining hope, and getting rest. Each day includes: A relevant Bible verse Inspirational devotion A personalized prayer   This 100-day devotional will remind single moms that they're loved by their friends, family and most importantly God.. Check out the other mom-inspired devotionals in the collection--100 Devotions for the Working Mom and 100 Devotions for the Stay-at-Home Mom.

"Readers will find abundant wisdom in this accessible guide."--Publishers Weekly In an era in which "resistance" has become tokenized, popular Indigenous author Kaitlin Curtice reclaims it as a basic human calling. Resistance is for every human who longs to see their neighbors' holistic flourishing. We each have a role to play in the world right where we are, and our everyday acts of resistance hold us all together. Curtice shows that we can learn to practice embodied ways of belonging and connection to ourselves and one another through everyday practices, such as getting more in touch with our bodies, resting, and remembering our ancestors. She explores four "realms of resistance"--the personal, the communal, the ancestral, and the integral--and shows how these realms overlap and why all are needed for our liberation. Readers will be empowered to seek wholeness in whatever spheres of influence they inhabit.

New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed religion scholar, Stephen Prothero, captures the compelling and unique saga of twentieth-century America on an identity quest through the eyes and books of one of the most influential editors of the day—a search, born of two world wars, for resolution of our divided identity as a Christian nation and a nation of religions. One summer evening in 1916 in Blanchester, Ohio, a sixteen-year-old farm boy was riding his horse past the town cemetery. The horse reared back and whinnied, and Eugene Exman saw God. For the rest of his life, he struggled to recreate that moment. Through a treasure of personal letters and papers, God, the Bestseller explores Exman’s personal quest. A journey that would lead him in the late 1920s to the Harper religious books department, which he turned during the Great Depression into a money-making juggernaut and the country’s top religion publisher.  Exman’s role in the shaping of American religion is undeniable. Here was a man who was ahead of his time and leading the rest of the nation through books on a spiritual exploration. Exman published bestsellers by the controversial preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick, the Catholic radical Dorothy Day, the Civil Rights pioneer Howard Thurman, and two Nobel laureates: Albert Schweitzer and Martin Luther King Jr. Exman did not just sit at a desk and read. In addition to his lifelong relationships with the most influential leaders of the day, Exman was on a spiritual journey of his own traversing the world in search of God. He founded a club of mystics, dropped acid in 1958, four years before Timothy Leary. And six years before The Beatles went to India, he found a guru there in 1962.  In the end, this is the story of the popularization of the religion of experience—a cultural story of modern America on a quest of its own. Exman helped to reimagine and remake American religion, turning the United States into a place where denominational boundaries are blurred, diversity is valued, and the only creed is that individual spiritual experience is the essence of religion. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

An incredibly thoughtful, disarmingly funny, and intensely vulnerable glimpse into the life and ministry of a woman familiar to many but known by few. “It’s a peculiar thing, this having lived long enough to take a good look back. We go from knowing each other better than we know ourselves to barely sure if we know each other at all, to precisely sure that we don’t. All my knotted-up life I’ve longed for the sanity and simplicity of knowing who’s good and who’s bad. I’ve wanted to know this about myself as much as anyone. This was not theological. It was strictly relational. God could do what he wanted with eternity. I was just trying to make it here in the meantime. As benevolent as he has been in a myriad of ways, God has remained aloof on this uncomplicated request.” ―Beth Moore All My Knotted-Up Life is a beautifully crafted portrait of resilience and survival, a poignant reminder of God’s enduring faithfulness, and proof positive that if we ever truly took the time to hear people’s full stories . . . we’d all walk around slack-jawed.

Read by the author. Do you long for an intimate relationship with your Creator, but He seems elusive? Perhaps it is because something utterly essential is missing—the fear of the Lord. Don't let this frighten you. Fearing God is very different than being afraid of God. It's the key to everything. Holy Fear is not a topic you'll hear much about these days. But if you want to build a faith that stands strong through troubled times, you cannot afford to ignore this book. In The Awe of God, John Bevere invites you to take a fresh look at what it means to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. This healthy, holy, and largely forgotten virtue is the uncommon path to a more fulfilled and fruitful life. In this book you will see why godly fear is the foundation of: Wisdom, understanding, and knowledge Foresight, clarity, and divine direction Maturity and conformity to the image of Jesus Christ Building an eternal legacy Confidence, fearlessness, and security Freedom from the fear of man as all lesser fears are eclipsed   If you look at the men and women in Scripture, the ones who lived and finish well all have one thing in common: they are marked by holy fear. The Awe of God was designed to be read slowly and intentionally. At the end of each of the 42 chapters are five tools to help you deepen your understanding and apply what the Spirit of God is teaching you. Experience the intimate relationship with God that you have always longed for by unlocking this countercultural message. "Making It Personal” journal prompts and a scannable QR code to gain access to additional supplemental videos are included in the audiobook companion PDF download.

Read by the author. Feeling stuck no matter how hard you try to make positive changes in your life? You can start living the life you want through the practical, biblical, and highly doable strategies in The Power to Change. Few things in life are more frustrating than knowing you need to change, wanting to change, and trying to change, but not changing. Craig Groeschel knows what it's like to be caught in that demoralizing cycle. That was his own story--until he discovered practical principles for experiencing lasting change. Since then, Craig has helped countless others find true change in their relationships, habits, and thoughts. In The Power to Change, Craig helps you understand: How God's power, not your willpower, leads to true transformation The real reasons you do what you do Why falling isn't failure The power of creating small habits that lead to big change How to choose what you want most over what you want now   A powerful blend of biblical wisdom and fascinating psychology, The Power to Change includes helpful exercises, real-life stories, and life-changing spiritual insights. Whether you are trying to lose weight, breathe new life into your marriage, read the Bible more, get out of debt, or give up an addiction, Craig's step-by-step, time-tested strategies will equip you to start living the life God wants for you. Exercises and appendix are included in the audiobook companion PDF download.  

New York Times Bestseller  Read by the author. Jinger Vuolo, the sixth child in the famous Duggar family of TLC's 19 Kids and Counting and Counting On, recounts how she began to question the unhealthy ideology of her youth and learned to embrace true freedom in Christ. When Jinger Duggar Vuolo was growing up, she was convinced that obeying the rules was the key to success and God's favor. She zealously promoted the Basic Life Principles of Bill Gothard, fastidiously obeying the modesty guidelines (no shorts or jeans, only dresses), eagerly submitting to the umbrella of authority (any disobedience of parents would place her outside God's protection),  promoting the relationship standard of courtship, and avoiding any music with a worldly beat, among others.   Jinger, along with three of her sisters, wrote a New York Times bestseller about their religious convictions. She believed this level of commitment would guarantee God's blessing, even though in private she felt constant fear that she wasn't measuring up to the high standards demanded of her. In Becoming Free Indeed, Jinger shares how in her early twenties, a new family member—a brother-in-law who didn't grow up in the same tight-knit conservative circle as Jinger—caused her to examine her beliefs. He was committed to the Bible, but he didn't believe many of the things Jinger had always assumed were true. His influence, along with the help of a pastor named Jeremy Vuolo, caused Jinger to see that her life was built on rules, not God's Word. Jinger committed to studying the Bible—truly understanding it—for the first time. What resulted was an earth-shaking realization: much of what she'd always believed about God, obedience to His Word, and personal holiness wasn't in-line with what the Bible teaches. Now with a renewed faith of personal conviction, Becoming Free Indeed shares what it was like living under the tenants of Bill Gothard, the Biblical truth that changed her perspective, and how she disentangled her faith with her belief in Jesus intact.

*I'll Start Again Monday is a newly revised and condensed version of Lysa's bestseller Made to Crave.* Have healthy eating plans left you feeling defeated? Based on her bestseller Made to Crave, Lysa TerKeurst offers a new perspective to all those stuck in the cycle of losing weight and then gaining it back, equipping you with the deeper spiritual and emotional motivation you need to make lasting changes. So often we characterize our food cravings as bad, especially when dieting has made us feel even more disappointed and discouraged. But the reality is we were made to crave. We just need to realize God created us to crave more of Him instead of misplacing that craving by overindulging in physical pleasures and unhealthy choices that will never truly satisfy. In the midst of her own personal struggle with this, New York Times bestselling author Lysa TerKeurst invites us to embrace a new outlook that leads to enduring change. In this newly revised and condensed version of Made to Crave, Lysa encourages you to: Break the cycle of "I'll start again Monday" and start taking steps toward consistency that lasts Stop agonizing over numbers on the scale and make peace with your body Replace rationalizations that lead to failure with wisdom that leads to victory Reach your healthy goals and grow closer to God through the process This is not a "how-to" book. This is not the latest and greatest dieting plan. This is the necessary resource to use alongside whatever healthy lifestyle plan you choose that will help you find your "want to" and lead to a spiritual satisfaction that goes far beyond the physical.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Imagine if all the worn-out, untrue, painful chapters of our lives started to quiet, and the beautiful, unique pieces of who we are were to rise. Imagine if the stories we tell brought us back to our true selves, back to one another. Imagine if they spoke of how we loved and lost and tried our best. How we saw it all, even the parts that hurt. Joanna Gaines' new book, The Stories We Tell, invites us on an authentic and deeply vulnerable journey into her story—and helps shine a light on the beauty of our own—guiding us to release the weights that hold us back so we may live and share our story in truth. We've all dropped anchor in places that suited us for a time: a city, a perspective, a lie we mistook as truth. This book is an invitation to a kind of life where you know how to hold what you believe—about yourself and the quiet worlds behind the people you pass—with gracious and open hands. To see your story as greater than any past or future thing, but for all the beauty and joy and hope it holds today. It’s an invitation to take stock of the chapters you’ve lived—the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly—glean what’s gold, and carry only that forward. Let it slow your feet and steady your life-in-motion so you can see where you stand today from a new point of view. No longer through weary or uncertain eyes, but a lens brimming with hope. ————— "The only way to break free was to rewrite my story. Because something would happen every time my pen stopped: It was like my soul was coming back to my body. Like the deepest parts of me that got knocked around and drowned out by all the crap I let the world convince me about who I was came back to the surface. And what was left was only what was real and true. I was, finally, standing in the fullness of my story. I felt hopeful. I felt full. Our story may crack us open, but it also pieces us back together. We all have a story to tell. This happens to be mine—every chapter a window into who I am, the journey I’m on, and the season I’m in right now. Because this is my story, maybe you won’t always relate, or maybe it will feel like you’re looking in a mirror. Whatever we have in common and whatever differences lie between us, I only hope my story can help shine a light on the beauty of yours. That my own soul work will stir something of your own. And that by the time you get to the end of my story, you’re also holding the beautiful beginnings of your own. A story only you can tell. And I hope that you will." -Joanna

"Christopher de Bellaigue has a magic talent for writing history. It is as if we are there as the era of Suleyman the Magnificent unfolds." —Orhan Pamuk, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Narrated through the eyes of the intimates of Suleyman the Magnificent, the sixteenth-century sultan of the Ottoman Empire, The Lion House animates with stunning immediacy the fears and stratagems of those brought into orbit around him: the Greek slave who becomes his Grand Vizier, the Venetian jewel dealer who acts as his go-between, the Russian consort who becomes his most beloved wife. Within a decade and a half, Suleyman held dominion over twenty-five million souls, from Baghdad to the walls of Vienna, and with the help of his brilliant pirate commander Barbarossa placed more Christians than ever before or since under Muslim rule. And yet the real drama takes place in close-up: in small rooms and whispered conversations, behind the curtain of power, where the sultan sleeps head to toe with his best friend and eats from wooden spoons with his baby boy. In The Lion House, Christopher de Bellaigue tells not just the story of rival superpowers in an existential duel, nor of one of the most consequential lives in human history, but of what it means to live in a time when a few men get to decide the fate of the world. A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Relationships are wonderful . . . until they're not. Join #1 New York Times bestselling author Lysa TerKeurst as she helps you stop the dysfunction of unhealthy relationships by showing you biblical ways to set boundaries--and, when necessary, say goodbye--without losing the best of who you are. Is it unloving or selfish to set a boundary? Are Christians ever called to walk away from a relationship that’s no longer safe or sustainable? Lysa TerKeurst deeply understands these hard questions in the midst of relational struggles. But after thousands of hours of counseling intensives and extensive theological research that transformed the way she defined healthy relationships, Lysa is now more committed than ever to loving people well without losing the best of who she is. She wants to help you do the same. In these pages Lysa will help you: Understand the five factors to remember when implementing healthy boundaries. Determine the appropriate amount of personal and emotional access someone has to you based on how responsible they'll be with that access. Stop being misled and emotionally paralyzed by wrongly interpreted or weaponized scriptures that perpetuate unhealthy dynamics in difficult relationships. Overcome the frustrating cycle of ineffective boundary-setting with realistic scripts and practical strategies to help you communicate, keep, and implement healthier patterns. Be equipped to say goodbye without guilt when a relationship has shifted from difficult to destructive and is no longer sustainable. Receive therapeutic wisdom you can trust directly from Lysa’s Christian counselor Jim Cress, who weighs in throughout the book.   You'll be relieved to learn that boundaries aren't just a good idea, they're a God idea.

From a trusted advisor and devoted friend of Mother Teresa comes a “powerful” (The Washington Free Beacon) firsthand account of the miraculous woman behind the saint and a book that is “rich in reflection on contemporary sanctity” (George Weigel). Mother Teresa was one of the most admired women of the 20th century, and her memory continues to inspire charitable work around the world. She believed the greatest need of a human being is to love and be loved. In 1948, she founded the Missionaries of Charity to work directly with the very poorest of Calcutta. From the efforts of one woman entering the slums of Entally, the Missionaries of Charity grew into an organization operating soup kitchens, health clinics, hospices, and shelters in 139 countries, at no cost to any government or to those who served. In 2016, she became Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Author Jim Towey had been a high-flying Congressional staffer and lawyer in the 1980s until a brief meeting with Mother Teresa illuminated the emptiness of his life. He began volunteering at one of her soup kitchens and using his legal skills and political connections to help the Missionaries of Charity. When Mother Teresa suggested he take up shifts at her AIDS hospice, Towey realized he was all in. Soon, he gave up his job and possessions and became a full-time volunteer for Mother Teresa. He traveled with her frequently, arranged her meetings with politicians, and handled many of her legal affairs. To Love and Be Loved is an “inspiring and joyful” (Kirkus Reviews) firsthand account of Mother Teresa’s last years, and the first book ever to detail her dealings with worldly matters. We see her gracefully navigate the opportunities and challenges to leadership, the perils of celebrity, and the humiliations and triumphs of aging. We also catch her indulging in chocolate ice cream, making jokes about mini-skirts, and telling the President of the United States he’s wrong. Above all, we see her extraordinary devotion to God and to the very poorest of His children. Mother Teresa taught Towey to be more prayerful, less selfish, more humble, less worldly, move in love with God, and less in love with himself. Her lessons are here for all to share.

An authentic exploration of the real Rumi As one of the world's most loved poets, Rumi's poems are celebrated for their message of love and their beauty, but too often they are stripped of their mystical and spiritual meanings. The Gift of Rumi offers a new reading of Rumi, contextualizing his work against the broader backdrop of Islamic mysticism and adding a richness and authenticity that is lacking in many Westernized conceptions of his work. Author Emily Jane O'Dell has studied Sufism both academically, in her work and research at Harvard, Columbia, and the American University of Beirut, and in practice, learning from a Mevlevi master and his whirling dervishes in Istanbul. She weaves this expertise throughout The Gift of Rumi, sharing a new vision of Rumi’s classic work. At the heart of Rumi’s mystical poetry is the “religion of love” which transcends all religions. Through his majestic verses of ecstasy and longing, Rumi invites us into the religion of the heart and guides us to our own loving inner essence. The Gifts of Rumi gives us a key to experiencing this profound and powerful invitation, allowing readers to meet the master in a new way.

Read by the authors. New York Times Bestseller! Kathie Lee Gifford and Rabbi Jason Sobel the authors of the New York Times best seller The Rock, the Road, and the Rabbi bring you an exciting new life-changing message that will help you read the Bible with new eyes and take you into the heart of God's people in Scripture – from Abraham to Ruth to Jesus and His early followers. In The God of the Way, Rabbi Jason shares wisdom from his Jewish heritage and helps us read Scripture in the cultural context of biblical times. Kathie Lee adds personal stories and reflections from her spiritual journey and studies, serving as a companion as you go deeper in your own relationship with God. You will experience: The God of the How and When: When you don’t know the details…God does. The God of His Word: When you can’t see God…trust His heart and the promises in His Word. The God Who Sees: When you feel abandoned and forgotten…God knows and cares about you. The God of the Other Side: When you feel overwhelmed and unworthy…God never passes by but crosses over and brings freedom.   Journey into God’s word, from the creation of the world through the desert and empty places, the Hebrew nation, and meet Jesus, the disciples, and his followers. As you do, you will see how you are part of God’s epic story of redemption – a radiant testimony to the truth that belief in God’s promises is never wasted.

When everything we've been clinging to falls apart, how do we know what to keep and what to let go of? I Guess I Haven't Learned That Yet, now a New York Times bestseller, is a clear-eyed look at where we go from here--and how we can transform our lives along the way. Just after her fortieth birthday, author Shauna Niequist found herself in a season of chaos, change, and loss unlike anything she'd ever faced. She discovered that many of the beliefs and practices that she usually turned to were no longer serving her. After trying--and failing--to pull herself back up using the same old strategies and systems, she realized she required new ones: courage, curiosity, and compassion. She discovered the way through was more about questions than answers, more about forgiveness than force, more about tenderness than trying hard. In I Guess I Haven't Learned That Yet, Niequist chronicles her journey--from her life-changing move from the Midwest to Manhattan to the power of unlearning what is no longer helpful and accepting the unknowns that come with midlife, heartbreak, and chronic pain. With her characteristic candor and grace, Niequist writes about her experience learning how to: Discover new ways of living when the old ways stop working Embrace the challenges and delights of releasing our expectations for how we thought our lives would look Trust God's goodness in a deeper, more profound way Follow Niequist as she endeavors to understand grief, to reshape her faith, and to practice courage when it feels impossible. Praise for I Guess I Haven't Learned That Yet: "Gentle. Loving. This tender book asks us to listen to our pain, lean into our discomfort, and trust that we can be lifted back on our feet by God and each other." --Kate C. Bowler, New York Times bestselling author of No Cure for Being Human "This book is a masterpiece. It is a journey and an invitation and a joy and a heartbreak and all the things you need to read to be reminded that hope can still be found." --Annie F. Downs, New York Times bestselling author of That Sounds Fun

The world has never been more distracting—joy has never been more possible. You live with a massive amount of distraction: desperate headlines smartphone scrolling an endless to-do list Not to mention the nagging questions of your heart: Am I making the right decision? Am I with the right person? Will my past mistakes keep me from my best future? Through the pithy and inspiring storytelling that has endeared him to millions, New York Times bestselling author Bob Goff invites you to laugh with more gusto, dream with more confidence, and love with more intention in this disarming call to live Undistracted. Bob’s stories are like the rumble strips on the road that make you suddenly alert to how far you have drifted from your lane. From visiting friends in San Quentin to accidentally getting into a stalker’s car at the airport to establishing Uganda’s first space program, Bob shows you the way back to an audaciously attentive life. Your undistracted life is an adventure waiting to happen. What stories will you live with undistracted purpose and unstoppable joy?

In this timely, much-needed book, theologian, social psychologist, and activist Christena Cleveland recounts her personal journey to dismantle the cultural “whitemalegod” and uncover the Sacred Black Feminine, introducing a Black Female God who imbues us with hope, healing, and liberating presence. For years, Christena Cleveland spoke about racial reconciliation to congregations, justice organizations, and colleges. But she increasingly felt she could no longer trust in the God she’d been implicitly taught to worship—a white male God who preferentially empowered white men despite his claim to love all people. A God who clearly did not relate to, advocate for, or affirm a Black woman like Christena.  Her crisis of faith sent her on an intellectual and spiritual journey through history and across France, on a 400-mile walking pilgrimage to the ancient shrines of Black Madonnas to find healing in the Sacred Black Feminine. God Is a Black Woman is the chronicle of her liberating transformation and a critique of a society shaped  by white patriarchal Christianity and culture. Christena reveals how America’s collective idea of God as a white man has perpetuated hurt, hopelessness, and racial and gender oppression. Integrating her powerful personal story, womanist ideology, as well as theological, historical, and social science research, she invites us to take seriously the truth that God is not white nor male and gives us a new and hopeful path for connecting with the divine and honoring the sacredness of all Black people.

Never has this book been more timely. Religious intolerance, the resurgence of fundamentalism, hate crimes, repressive laws, and mass shootings are pervasive in today’s world. Selina O’Grady asks how and why our societies came to be as tolerant or intolerant as they are; whether tolerance can be expected to heal today’s festering wound between Islam and the post-Christian West; or whether something deeper than tolerance is needed. From Umar, the seventh century Islamic caliph who led what became the greatest empire the world has ever known, to King John (of Magna Carta fame) who almost converted to Islam; from Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who created the religious-military alliance with the House of Saud that still survives today, to the bloody Thirty Years’ War that cured Europe of murderous intra-Christian violence (but probably killed God in the process), Selina O’Grady takes the reader through the intertwined histories of the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish faiths. In the Name of God is an original and thought-provoking history of monotheistic religions and their ever-shifting relationship with each other.

Over the centuries, people have longed for a messiah, whether a religious figure such as Jesus, a political leader, or even in popular culture. The messianic quest emerges most acutely during difficult times when people experience a sense of powerlessness and desperation. But the concept of a messiah—a savior—has its root in the writings of ancient Judaism and early Christianity, evolving from an anointed leader to universal savior. Wilson turns to a little understood pre-Christian text, “The Psalms of Solomon,” which set the stage for messianic expectation just prior to the birth of Jesus. Known today only to a handful of scholars—in marked contrast to the “Song of Solomon”—these important pslams were composed not by a King, but by a devout 1st century BCE Jew who witnessed terrible atrocities under brutal Roman rule. This crucial work encourages us to ask: what is a messiah? Who is a messiah? How would we recognized one should he or she appear? And what is a messiah supposed to do? In his own lifetime, Jesus directed his followers to search for “the messiah within” in his parables. Later, Paul changed the concept of “the messiah,” to “the Christ,” when presenting his message to Gentiles instead of Jews. Jesus was no longer a Jewish messiah but a Hellenistic divine avatar. In Searching for the Messiah, Wilson reveals how this collective search for messiahs throughout modern human history has been fundamentally flawed. Jesus himself rejected the idea of an external fixer, instead formulating his teachings to focus on the role of the individual, their choices, and their actions. Searching for the Messiah is revelatory and illuminating work of scholarship that will challenge and inspire.

New York Times Bestseller “A touching series of essays in which Evans, with Chu’s invisible pen, explores how one might find a path forward in Christianity beyond conservative evangelicalism” -Eliza Griswold, The New Yorker “Evans died at 37, but a beautiful new book captures her brave outlook. . . . I could not help but notice the poetry in Evans’s prose. . . . What readers will find in these pages was someone deeply human: funny, irreverent, curious, wise, forgiving, nonjudgmental.” -Maggie Smith, The Washington Post A collection of original writings by Rachel Held Evans, whose reflections on faith and life continue to encourage, challenge, and influence.  Rachel Held Evans is widely recognized for her theologically astute, profoundly honest, and beautifully personal books, which have guided, instructed, edified, and shaped Christians as they seek to live out a just and loving faith. At the time of her tragic death in 2019, Rachel was working on a new book about wholeheartedness. With the help of her close friend and author Jeff Chu, that work-in-progress has been woven together with some of her other unpublished writings into a rich collection of essays that ask candid questions about the stories we’ve been told—and the stories we tell—about our faith, our selves, and our world. This book is for the doubter and the dreamer, the seeker and the sojourner, those who long for a sense of spiritual wholeness as well as those who have been hurt by the Church but can’t seem to let go of the story of Jesus. Through theological reflection and personal recollection, Rachel wrestles with God’s grace and love, looks unsparingly at what the Church is and does, and explores universal human questions about becoming and belonging. An unforgettable, moving, and intimate book.

In Subversive Habits, Shannen Dee Williams provides the first full history of Black Catholic nuns in the United States, hailing them as the forgotten prophets of Catholicism and democracy. Drawing on oral histories and previously sealed Church records, Williams demonstrates how master narratives of women's religious life and Catholic commitments to racial and gender justice fundamentally change when the lives and experiences of African American nuns are taken seriously. For Black Catholic women and girls, embracing the celibate religious state constituted a radical act of resistance to white supremacy and the sexual terrorism built into chattel slavery and segregation. Williams shows how Black sisters—such as Sister Mary Antona Ebo, who was the only Black member of the inaugural delegation of Catholic sisters to travel to Selma, Alabama, and join the Black voting rights marches of 1965—were pioneering religious leaders, educators, healthcare professionals, desegregation foot soldiers, Black Power activists, and womanist theologians. In the process, Williams calls attention to Catholic women's religious life as a stronghold of white supremacy and racial segregation—and thus an important battleground in the long African American freedom struggle.

Fasting for Ramadan is structured as a chronicle of daily meditations, during two cycles of the 30-day rite of daytime abstinence required by Ramadan for purgation and prayer. Estranged in certain ways from his family’s cultural traditions when he was younger, Ali has in recent years re-embraced the Ramadan ritual, and brings to this rediscovery an extraordinary delicacy of reflection, a powerfully inquiring mind, and the linguistic precision and ardor of a superb poet.

Deciding that her life was insufficiently grounded in real-world experience, the author, a Quaker reared as a Catholic, embarked on a year of tending sheep. In this often hilarious book, she describes her time in the barn as well as an extended visit to a Buddhist monastery in France.