Loving Well in a Broken World


Book Description

How can we love our neighbors amid so much division and hurt? Loving your neighbor as yourself would be easy if your neighbors were all people you understood, people you agreed with, people like you. But what about playground bullies, colleagues, refugees, online adversaries? They're all our neighbors, and Jesus said to love them. Every one. But how? Lauren Casper believes the key is the lost art of empathy, stepping into other people’s shoes and asking what if?—what if it were my child? What if it were me? Casper helps us discover how to identify our blind spots and tune our hearts to the stories around us; seek and extend forgiveness with grace and humility; and engage in diverse and meaningful relationships. Following these steps will enable us to connect in simple but life-altering ways, to respond to conflict with grace, bring about needed change, and shine God’s unconditional love into a dark world.




A Loving Life


Book Description

Having successfully helped readers develop a solid prayer life with the best-selling release of A Praying Life, author Paul Miller applies his expertise to an even more important issue—love. After all, love is what holds all things together, it's what we're looking for, it's what we all need, and it's what we must learn how to give. But loving people is hard. Our neighbors, friends, kids, spouses, and even our enemies require a relentless, self-giving demonstration of love that only God can produce within us. Taking his cues from the perseverance and faithfulness portrayed in the book of Ruth, Miller sheds light on a biblical portrait of love that is sure to give us hope and transform our souls. Here is the help we need to embrace relationship, endure rejection, cultivate community, and reach out to even the most unlovable as we discover the power to live a loving life.




Whole Marriages in a Broken World


Book Description

Author Gary Inrig probes Scripture and draws from his own marriage of thirty years to give you valuable tools for building a successful and rewarding marriage that helps both partners reach their God-given potential.




He Saw That It Was Good


Book Description

A deep exploration of the intersection of faith, creativity, and justice from acclaimed hip-hop artist and creative polymath Sho Baraka “Sho has the courage to say what many are thinking and the candor to say what many are not. His words have positively influenced me for years—now this book gives the world that influence.”—Lecrae You were created to help bring truth and beauty into this broken world. God made you with an imagination and a yearning for justice. No matter your calling or vocation, you can help shape a better world around you through your creativity. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy. We are surrounded by toxic stories and bad cultural thinking. We’re held back by incomplete theology. But does it have to be like that? Is frustration the end of the story? In the face of confusion and injustice, we can lose sight of our true narrative—the one that started in a garden and wants to make our real lives better today. In He Saw That It Was Good, activist and recording artist Sho Baraka wrestles deeply and honestly with these questions, gives you permission to do the same, and shows a hard-earned path to creative change. With Sho, you’ll engage with art, justice, and history. Learn from the powerful principles of historic movements, explore why it’s important to cultivate your creative calling (no matter what you do!), and discover a fresh look at how the gospel can transform how you see God, your neighbor, your work, and your world. You’ll return to your biggest and truest story. Your life (and your world) need never be the same.




The Mystery


Book Description

Love Exists. It's for You--and It's Worth Pursuing Rock princess Lacey Sturm wants to share her journey from heartbreak to wholeness with young women. In The Mystery, Sturm helps readers understand that any loving relationship begins with knowing your own identity in Christ. And yet, so many people have learned to define love through their own dysfunctional family, unhealthy relationships, the romances and wrecked relationships of mainstream pop culture, or, sadly, through pornography. Is it any wonder so many people end up brokenhearted, divorced, abused, abusive, or even suicidal? Through personal stories, Sturm shows readers why true love is difficult and often painful but still worth fighting for. She helps women recognize destructive patterns in their relationships, discover a vision for a true and heart-flourishing love, and heal from past wounds. For anyone seeking healthy, loving relationships in our broken world, The Mystery lights the way to the love we were meant for.




Scripture and Counseling


Book Description

What role does Scripture play in counseling? Today, we face a weakening of confidence in the Bible. This is just as true for the pastor offering counsel in his office as it is for the person in the pew talking with a struggling friend. We need to regain our confidence in God's living Word as sufficient to address the real-life issues we face today. Scripture and Counseling will help you understand how the Bible equips us to grow in counseling competence as we use it to tackle the complex issues of life. Divided into two sections, Part One develops a robust biblical view of Scripture’s sufficiency for "life and godliness" leading to increased confidence in God's Word. Part Two teaches how to use Scripture in the counseling process. This section demonstrates how a firm grasp of the sufficiency of Scripture leads to increased competence in the ancient art of personally ministering God's Word to others. Part of the Biblical Counseling Coalition series, Scripture and Counseling brings you the wisdom of twenty ministry leaders who write so you can have confidence that God’s Word is sufficient, necessary, and relevant to equip God’s people to address the complex issues of life in a broken world. It blends theological wisdom with practical expertise and is accessible to pastors, church leaders, counseling practitioners, and students, equipping them to minister the truth and power of God’s word in the context of biblical counseling, soul care, spiritual direction, pastoral care, and small group facilitation.




Life of the Beloved


Book Description

When Nouwen was asked by a secular Jewish friend to explain his faith in simple language, he responded with "Life of the Beloved, " which shows that all people, believers and nonbelievers, are beloved by God unconditionally.




Good and Beautiful and Kind


Book Description

ECPA BESTSELLER • An invitation to love like Jesus and step beyond distraction and division into the joy we long to experience—from the author of The Deeply Formed Life, winner of the Christianity Today Book Award “A stunning book with power to reshape our world . . . if we let it.”—Glenn Packiam, pastor and author of Blessed Broken Given We long for a good life, a beautiful life, a kind life. But clearly that’s not the world we live in. We carry the stress of our fractured world in our bodies and relationships. Families that once gathered around tables have converted those tables into walls. Hostility, rage, and offense is the language of our culture. How did we lose goodness, kindness, and beauty? And more important, how do we get them back into our lives? These are the two questions crying out in our streets, homes, churches, and from deep within our souls. Pastor and author Rich Villodas is convinced that only Jesus offers a way of being human that is both strong and tender enough to tear down the walls of hostility we experience daily. In Good and Beautiful and Kind, he reveals how… • These three essentials are stolen by sin, powers and principalities, and trauma. • We can get goodness, beauty, and kindness back through contemplative prayer, humility, and the cultivation of calm presence. • The traits of healthy conflict, forgiveness, and justice lead to wholeness, healing, and a new collective future—when rooted in the ancient way of Jesus. Filled with fresh energy, classic truth, and practical solutions, this is your road map for stepping beyond distraction and division to love like Jesus. Doing so will change the atmosphere within you…and around you!




Broken Vows


Book Description

“There was never supposed to be a post-marriage period of my life,” says John Greco. He had just accepted his dream position as a church pastor when his wife announced she was divorcing him. In a few short weeks, his marriage ended and his career plans unraveled. He was hurt, angry, and felt abandoned by God. Marriage is supposed to be for life, but divorce still happens. How can a Christian reconcile the reality of divorce with the biblical view of marriage? How can the wronged spouse forgive? And how can God still be good when bad things happen? In Broken Vows: Divorce and the Goodness of God, Greco doesn’t offer pat answers. In the initial aftermath, he says one must simply grieve. “There is a period after a devastating loss when a soul is unable to take in words of healing,” he says. “These are the moments, not to look for answers or try to find any sort of good in the situation, but to pour yourself out to Jesus.” Broken Vows combines Greco’s personal story with a biblical view of suffering. He provides pastoral help for those who have experienced divorce and gives all Christians a way to think biblically about this difficult subject.




It's Not Supposed to Be This Way


Book Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER What do you do when God’s timing seems questionable, his lack of intervention hurtful, and his promises doubtful? Lysa TerKeurst unveils her heart amid shattering circumstances, inviting you to live assured when life doesn't turn out like you expected. Life often looks so very different than we hoped or expected. Some events may simply catch us off guard for a season, but others shatter us completely. We feel disappointed and disillusioned at best and overwhelmed and hopeless at worst. We quietly start to wonder about the reality of God’s goodness and why he allows us to suffer and experience grief and loss. Lysa TerKeurst understands this deeply. But after many tears, godly counseling, and prayerful seeking, she's also discovered that our disappointments can be the divine appointments our souls need to radically encounter God. In It's Not Supposed to Be This Way, Lysa invites us into her own journey of faith and, with grit, vulnerability, and honest humor, helps us to: Stop being pulled into the anxiety of disappointment by discovering how to better process unmet expectations and other painful situations. Train ourselves to recognize the three strategies of the enemy, so we can stand strong and persevere through unsettling relationships and uncertain outcomes. Discover the secret of being steadfast and not panicking when God actually does give us more than we can handle. Shift our suspicion that God is cruel or unfair to the biblical assurance that God is protecting and preparing us. Know how to encourage a friend and help her navigate hard realities with real help from God's truth, the Bible. Look for additional biblically based resources and devotionals from Lysa: Good Boundaries and Goodbyes Forgiving What You Can't Forget Uninvited You're Going to Make It Embraced Seeing Beautiful Again