Meant to Live


Book Description

Meant to Live unpacks how Christians can live in the power and glory of the Gospel?the Good News of Jesus Christ?and celebrate God’s glory in themselves, the Church and beyond. Inspirational communicator Nancy Hicks describes four “camps” of Christians who wallow in the bad news (our fallen-ness), while disgruntled Christians and non-Christians alike are watching and thinking: If that’s what it means to be a Christian, no thanks! Frankly, these versions of the Gospel aren’t good. So, those watching are left wondering: How are we to live? Meant to Live offers a vision on humanity’s calling and a way to live a genuine life gloriously into the Good News! Nancy combines personal stories with biblical wisdom and offers a revisit of the Gospel. She offers a fresh view on humanity’s glory as seen in the Gospel and an honest diagnosis of the four main “camps” often found in the Church. Nancy also helps readers identify an honest assessment of self. Meant to Live is a practical guide to living in light of the Gospel and is an inspired and energized focus on the core calling in Christians’ lives.




What Satan Meant for Evil...God Meant for Good!


Book Description

The most exciting part of writing this book was reliving my life and seeing the attacks of the enemy and the blessings of our Saviour. To be able to sit down and think back over the last seventy-plus years and have God reveal things back into my mind is just a double miracle in itself. I realize that nothing is too small or too big in the eyes of God, but if I were to take every little event that has crossed my path, this book would probably be 300 pages or more. Thank You, Jesus, for Your love and guidance. It's just amazing when I stop to analyze things that are happening or have happened in my life. If you are not sure you can handle something, stop, think, and just talk to God. He is always ready for you. You don't need to be anything other than yourself. Let Him show what it is that you need to do. I personally have never heard an audible voice from Jesus. I have never heard God say, "David, this is God. Listen to Me." He speaks to me in His own way through His Holy Spirit, and I know without a doubt that it is time to sit back and listen. If this happens to you, just say, "Thank You, Jesus, for speaking to me. I will listen." If after reading this book, you have been blessed, tell your friends. If not, tell me. If you feel you have been offended as a friend, family member, or anyone else I referred to or you have seen things you were not aware of, please accept my apology. Call me, 519-562-4799, so we can talk. Life is too short down here and eternity is too long up there to let differences come between us. Thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to see how God has blessed me and protected me and my family. I pray you will seek God's protection daily. "Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings" (1 Peter 5:8-9). God is saying to you today, "When people try to push you down, I will lift you up." "When people try to make you look bad, I will cause you to shine." "What Satan meant for evil, I mean for good." Don't give up--you are on the brink of a miracle.




When Good Government Meant Big Government


Book Description

The years after World War I have often been seen as an era when Republican presidents and business leaders brought the growth of government in the United States to a sudden and emphatic halt. In When Good Government Meant Big Government, the historian Jesse Tarbert inverts the traditional story by revealing a forgotten effort by business-allied reformers to expand federal power—and how that effort was foiled by Southern Democrats and their political allies. Tarbert traces how a loose-knit coalition of corporate lawyers, bankers, executives, genteel reformers, and philanthropists emerged as the leading proponents of central control and national authority in government during the 1910s and 1920s. Motivated by principles of “good government” and using large national corporations as a model, these elite reformers sought to transform the federal government’s ineffectual executive branch into a modern organization with the capacity to solve national problems. They achieved some success during the presidency of Warren G. Harding, but the elite reformers’ support for federal antilynching legislation confirmed the worries of white Southerners who feared that federal power would pose a threat to white supremacy. Working with others who shared their preference for local control of public administration, Southern Democrats led a backlash that blocked enactment of the elite reformers’ broader vision for a responsive and responsible national government. Offering a novel perspective on politics and policy in the years before the New Deal, this book sheds new light on the roots of the modern American state and uncovers a crucial episode in the long history of racist and antigovernment forces in American life.




What Jesus Meant


Book Description

“Garry Wills brings his signature brand of erudite, unorthodox thinking to his latest book of revelations. . . . A tour de force and a profound show of faith.” (O, the Oprah Magazine) Look out for a new book from Garry Wills, What The Qur'an Meant, coming fall 2017. In what are billed “culture wars,” people on the political right and the political left cite Jesus as endorsing their views. But in this New York Times-bestselling masterpiece, Garry Wills argues that Jesus subscribed to no political program. He was far more radical than that. In a fresh reading of the gospels, Wills explores the meaning of the “reign of heaven” Jesus not only promised for the future but brought with him into this life. It is only by dodges and evasions that people misrepresent what Jesus plainly had to say against power, the wealthy, and religion itself. But Wills is just as critical of those who would make Jesus a mere ethical teacher, ignoring or playing down his divinity. An illuminating analysis for believers and nonbelievers alike, What Jesus Meant is a brilliant addition to our national conversation on religion.




SelfLess


Book Description

In SelfLess, popular speaker Megan Fate Marshman exposes the source of self-limiting beliefs that create needless striving to be good enough and points to powerful truths that can transform life into a new experience of freedom, joy, and love. People desire to be significant; however, ironically amidst a self-help and “find-me” culture, they become their own greatest obstacles. Significance cannot be created through self or found by desperately reaching for other people. An abundant life, joyful spirit, and the awe of touching others can only be found by allowing God to fill hearts to overflowing. By moving over and giving Him everything, people discover what they really seek and join the amazing adventure of God’s wondrous story.




Honestly, We Meant Well


Book Description

From the author of The People We Hate at teh Wedding, soon to be a major motion picture starring Kristen Bell, Allison Janney and Ben Platt! “This rollicking book has it all: sex, lies, and scenery. Grant Ginder weaves a wonderful, engrossing multi-generational family story, with the Greek isles as a backdrop so beautiful that the reader will want to dive in.” — Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of The Vacationers and Modern Lovers An Entertainment Weekly Must Read Named Best Book of the Summer by: The New York Post - Newsweek - Bloomberg Business Week - Southern Living - Pop Sugar - Parade - The Betches An irresistible, deftly observed novel about family, regret, and vacation by the author of The People We Hate at the Wedding Family vacation always comes with baggage. The Wright family is in ruins. Sue Ellen Wright has what she thinks is a close-to-perfect life. A terrific career as a Classics professor, a loving husband, and a son who is just about to safely leave the nest. But then disaster strikes. She learns that her husband is cheating, and that her son has made a complete mess of his life. So, when the opportunity to take her family to a Greek island for a month presents itself, she jumps at the chance. This sunlit Aegean paradise, with its mountains and beaches is, after all, where she first fell in love with both a man and with an ancient culture. Perhaps Sue Ellen’s past will provide the key to her and her family’s salvation. With his signature style of biting wit, hilarious characters, and deep emotion, Grant Ginder’s Honestly, We Meant Well is a funny, brilliant novel proving that with family, drama always comes with comedy.




What I Meant...


Book Description

After 15 years of being a good daughter and loyal friend, wouldn't you expect the people closest to you to believe you? To at least try to understand what you mean? Since my evil aunt moved in, everything has gone wrong. My little sister thinks I'm a thief. My best friend thinks I'm a jerk. My parents think I'm bulimic. And the boy I love thinks I'm not into him at all. Somehow I have to set the record straight before I totally lose my mind. Marie Lamba's debut novel tells the story of how 15-year-old Sangeet Jumnal's sleepy suburban life suddenly gets super complicated.




We Meant Well


Book Description

"One diplomat's darkly humorous and ultimately scathing assault on just about everything the military and State Department have done—or tried to do—since the invasion of Iraq. The title says it all."—The New York Times A work of "scathing, gallows humor" (The Boston Globe), We Meant Well is a tragicomic voyage of ineptitude and corruption that leaves its writer—and readers—appalled and disillusioned, but wiser. Charged with rebuilding Iraq, would you spend taxpayer money on a sports mural in Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhood to promote reconciliation through art? How about an isolated milk factory that cannot get its milk to market? Or a pastry class training women to open cafés on bombed-out streets that lack water and electricity? As Peter Van Buren shows, we bought all these projects and more in the most expensive hearts-and-minds campaign since the Marshall Plan. We Meant Well is his eyewitness account of the civilian side of the surge—that surreal and bollixed attempt to defeat terrorism and win over Iraqis by reconstructing the world we had just destroyed. Leading a State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team on its quixotic mission, Van Buren details, with laser-like irony, his yearlong encounter with pointless projects, bureaucratic fumbling, overwhelmed soldiers, and oblivious administrators secluded in the world's largest embassy, who fail to realize that you can't rebuild a country without first picking up the trash.




What They Meant for Evil


Book Description

Many stories have been told about the famous Lost Boys, but now for the first time, a Lost Girl shares her hauntingly beautiful and inspiring story. One of the first unaccompanied refugee children to enter the United States in 2000, after South Sudan's second civil war took the lives of most of her family, Rebecca's story begins in the late 1980s when, at the age of four, her village was attacked and she had to escape. WHAT THEY MEANT FOR EVIL is the account of that unimaginable journey. With the candor and purity of a child, Rebecca recalls how she endured fleeing from gunfire, suffering through hunger and strength-sapping illnesses, dodging life-threatening predators-lions, snakes, crocodiles, and soldiers alike-that dogged her footsteps, and grappling with a war that stole her childhood. Her story is a lyrical, captivating portrait of a child hurled into wartime, and how through divine intervention, she came to America and found a new life full of joy, hope, and redemption.




The Good Dad


Book Description

It’s never too late to be a better father Jim Daly, president and CEO of Focus on the Family, is an expert in fatherhood—in part because his own "fathers" failed him so badly. His biological dad was an alcoholic. His stepfather deserted him. His foster father accused Jim of trying to kill him. All were out of Jim's life by the time he turned 13. Isn’t it odd—and reminiscent of the hand of God—that the director of the leading organization on family turned out to be a guy whose own background as a kid and son were pretty messed up? Or could it be that successful parenting is discovered not in the perfect, peaceful household but in the midst of battles and messy situations, where God must constantly be called to the scene? That is the mystery unraveled in this book. Using his own expertise, humor, and inexhaustible wealth of stories, Jim will show you that God can make you a good dad, a great dad, in spite of the way you’ve grown up and in spite of the mistakes you’ve made. Maybe even because of them. It’s not about becoming a perfect father. It’s about trying to become a better father, each and every day. It's about building relationships with your children through love, grace, patience, and fun—and helping them grow into the men and women they’re meant to be.