Loving People


Book Description

Your personal guide to learning how to love. When you say or hear the words "I love you" it can change your life forever. Love is one of God's most important gifts to anyone, yet there are many misunderstandings about how to make love work in our families, friendships, marriages and dating relationships. In Loving People, best-selling author Dr. John Townsend shows you that love can actually be learned, and gives you the steps and tools to become skilled in love. Using his trademark stories and illustrations to flesh out the important principles, Dr. Townsend covers: receiving love connecting love healing love confronting love romantic love surrendering love Through his teaching, readers will discover - and start enjoying - the words, actions, and experiences of authentic love.




Love Like Jesus: How Jesus Loved People (and how you can love like Jesus)


Book Description

Based on Kurt Bennett's popular-ish blog God Running, Love Like Jesus begins with the story of how after a life of regular church attendance and Bible study, Bennett was challenged by a pastor to study Jesus. That led to an obsessive seven-year deep dive. After pouring over Jesus' every interaction with another human being, he realized he was doing a much better job of studying Jesus' words than he was following Jesus' words and example. The honest and fearless revelations of Bennett's own moral failures affirm he wrote this book for himself as much as for others. Love Like Jesus examines a variety of stories, examples, and research, including: -Specific examples of how Jesus communicated God's love to others. -How Jesus demonstrated all five of Gary Chapman's love languages (and how you can too). -The story of how Billy Graham extended Christ's extraordinary love and grace toward a man who misrepresented Jesus to millions. -How to respond to critics the way Jesus did. -How to love unlovable people the way Jesus did. -How to survive a life of loving like Jesus (or how not to become a Christian doormat). -How Jesus didn't love everyone the same (and why you shouldn't either). -How Jesus guarded his heart by taking care of himself--he even napped--and why you should do the same.-How Jesus loved his betrayer Judas, even to the very end. With genuine unfiltered honesty, Love Like Jesus, shows you how to live a life according to God's definition of success: A life of loving God well, and loving the people around you well too. A life of loving like Jesus.




Loving People Well


Book Description

Loving People Well leads you on a healing journey from the effects of trauma to spiritual, emotional, and relational health. Linda Rykowski reveals how God’s spirit took her trauma and used it to help herself as well as others. By sharing the obstacles and pain she’s overcome, she reveals how to: • embrace being different or even weird; • overcome feelings of shame that come from abuse; • confront and move past addiction; • stop running away from the Lord. Throughout the book, the author poses questions for personal reflection or small group discussion. By participating in the exercises, you’ll have the opportunity to come to terms with the past, forgive yourself and others, and move forward. Grow in the power of His love and help yourself and others with the wisdom in this book.




Loving People Who Are Hard to Love


Book Description

Renowned Bible teacher and #1 New York Times bestselling author Joyce Meyer teaches readers to love the people in their life who are hard to love. We’re never going to be able to prevent people from saying or doing things that hurt our feelings. We will always have opportunities to get offended. But if we do things God’s way, we can choose to save ourselves a lot of misery and hardship. This doesn’t mean we allow people to abuse us. No, there is a time for confronting people and dealing with situations. However, the Bible commands us to love our enemies and forgive those who have wronged us, even when it feels impossible. Everything the Lord asks us to do in the Bible is ultimately for our good. In fact, when we choose to love our enemies and forgive those who have hurt us, we are actually helping ourselves more than anyone else. Because whatever the Lord commands us to do, He is going to give us the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish it—and that includes loving and being good to difficult people! God’s love flowing through us is strong enough to melt even the hardest hearts, so use kindness as a weapon to overcome the meanness in people. A Study Guide is also available for purchase.




Not by Sight


Book Description

Trusting Jesus is hard. It requires following the unseen into an unknown, and believing Jesus's words over and against the threats we see or the fears we feel. Through the imaginative retelling of 35 Bible stories, Not by Sight gives us glimpses of what it means to walk by faith and counsel for how to trust God's promises more than our perceptions and to find rest in the faithfulness of God.




Things Not Seen


Book Description

True faith is hard. More than mere sentimentalism, faith often calls for a deep and resilient trust in God—especially when the going gets tough and the road is dark. In Things Not Seen, author Jon Bloom encourages readers with 35 imaginative retellings of stories from the Bible that illustrate the importance of living by faith. A follow-up to the author's previous book, Not by Sight: A Fresh Look at Old Stories of Walking by Faith, this inspiring volume explores the lives of Abraham, Moses, Saul, John the Baptist, and more—helping readers remember God's promises, rely on his grace, and follow his leading regardless of the circumstances. The book includes a foreword by popular author and blogger Ann Voskamp.




How to Love Difficult People


Book Description

Prickly, defensive, nasty, volatile, withdrawn, miserable . . . aren't there days when you feel surrounded by difficult people? How do you cope? You can try avoiding them, gossiping about them, or giving them a piece of your mind. But wait! Don't your reactions make you hard to love too? William P. Smith explains that learning how to deal ...




The People Pleaser's Guide to Loving Others without Losing Yourself


Book Description

We all want other people to like us and think well of us. But when we depend on the praise, admiration, or appreciation of others for our sense of self-worth, we become trapped in an exhausting and debilitating cycle of people-pleasing relationships where we always give and rarely receive. The most common advice we hear--Start putting your own needs first!-- doesn't work, because we do love helping other people! Thankfully, the solution to the people pleaser's "problem" isn't to fundamentally change who you are--it's to fundamentally change where you find your worth. In this freeing book, Dr. Mike Bechtle shows you stop letting your fears of rejection, criticism, invisibility, or inadequacy drive your actions and start rebuilding your sense of self-worth from the inside out. When you do, you'll discover that what you once thought of as a struggle is actually a strength.




Loving Well - Small Group Kit


Book Description

Let's face it--some people are harder to love than others. This 4-session Bible study kit encourages women to look to the unconditional love they have experienced in their relationships with God while extending love to others. This kit includes five Bible study journals, one leader guide, and two DVDs with teaching videos from Beth on the different types of people--those who are a joy to love, those who are difficult to love, and those who are humanly impossible to love. We will never be able to love others well until we have been loved well, and only God can give us the love we desperately need. Features: Biblically-rooted and gospel-centered content Interactive teaching videos (approximately 45 minutes per session) Leader guide with questions and discussion starters for small groups Five Bible study journals, one leader guide, and two DVDs Promotional materials including posters and invitation cards available online for free downloads Benefits: Learn how to love all types of people--those who are a joy to love as well as those who are more difficult to love Root your identity in God's unconditional love Increase your effectiveness as a Christian Challenge yourself in the discipline of daily Bible study Video Sessions: Session 1: In session 1, Beth shares that we must allow God to minister His love to us and that we will never learn to love well without letting Him love us well. (50:00) Session 2: In session 2, Beth teaches from the Bible how we are to love Testy (someone who is difficult to love). She encourages us to use times with difficult people to let God love on us because God won't "give through us" what we don't let Him "give to us." (38:00) Session 3: In session 3, Beth continues to help us understand how to love Testy (who is difficult to love) and introduces Foe (who is impossible to love unless God empowers us). (43:00) Session 4: In session 4, Beth addresses what someone who is married to Testy (who is difficult to love) can do. She discusses our biblical mandate to plug into what God is doing across the globe and not just in our personal worlds. (50:00)




If God Is Love, Don't Be a Jerk


Book Description

Thou Shalt Not Be Horrible. Imagine for a moment what the world might look like if we as people of faith, morality, and conscience actually aspired to this mantra. What if we were fully burdened to create a world that was more loving and equitable than when we arrived? What if we invited one another to share in wide-open, fearless, spiritual communities truly marked by compassion and interdependence? What if we daily challenged ourselves to live a faith that simply made us better humans? John Pavlovitz explores how we can embody this kinder kind of spirituality where we humbly examine our belief system to understand how it might compel us to act in less-than-loving ways toward others. This simple phrase, "Thou Shalt Not Be Horrible," could help us practice what we preach by creating a world where: spiritual community provides a sense of belonging where all people are received as we are; the most important question we ask of a religious belief is not Is it true? but rather, is it helpful? it is morally impossible to pledge complete allegiance to both Jesus and America simultaneously; the way we treat others is the most tangible and meaningful expression of our belief system. In If God Is Love, Don't Be a Jerk, John Pavlovitz examines the bedrock ideas of our religion: the existence of hell, the utility of prayer, the way we treat LGBTQ people, the value of anger, and other doctrines to help all of us take a good, honest look at how the beliefs we hold can shape our relationships with God and our fellow humans—and to make sure that love has the last, loudest word.