When we are in the darkness--whatever that is in our own particular story--the temptation is to believe that it's over, it's always going to feel this way, we will never be anywhere else or feel anything other than we do now. We fear the darkness, and for good reason. But it is in the darkness that new life begins. With an openhanded spirit and openhearted vulnerability, Leeana Tankersley reveals the darkest chapter of her own story, the thing she never thought would happen and could do nothing to prevent. Along the way she shares how waiting patiently in the darkness allowed something incredible to take root within her: a defiant and hard-won hope that is not dependent on happy endings. If you have lost your faith, your family, your health, your home, your security, your business, or your very self, Leeana wants you to know that you are not alone or forgotten. You are not doomed to stagnation or stasis. You are not worth less than you once were. Against every last odd, you can hope anyway.

Love breaks through defenses and destroys walls that divide us. Love demands more of you and me than we often want to give. It’s easy to love a lovely person, but what about...them? What about that stereotype, that race, that person or group of people in a political, cultural, or socioeconomic class who don’t behave like you, don’t believe like you, and if you are honest...make you uncomfortable? What is love in this context? We read that Jesus broke boundaries to love the people that many detested. His love was transformative because His love saw past disagreement, indifference, and offense. Loving them? Like this? That’s hard. If you consider yourself a Christian, then love should be your primary characteristic. But it seems that division defines us in our society where rage and anger abound. Today, many people see Christians as angry followers of God who are more interested in winning political arguments than loving people. If we say we follow Jesus but are not loving like Him, then what’s the point? There is a better way. Using the incredible story of how Pastor Choco chose to “love them anyway” to transform the crime-ridden community of Humboldt Park in Chicago, Love Them Anyway will inspire you to love in a way you never have. This book will pave a compelling path for you to both express and experience a truly transformative love on a deep level. It will tap into your deepest desires, expose your hesitations, connect you deeper with God’s love, and help you take bold steps to love the people around you—and your love will change lives. When you learn to Love Them Anyway, your passion will be redirected, your purpose will be refined, and you will see God use you in ways you could never have imagined. Love is hard. It’s not convenient, and it’s not always safe. But love is beautiful. Love is contagious. It breaks through defenses and destroys walls that divide us. Love is the answer. So, love them anyway. Redirect your passion, refine your purpose, and see God use you in ways you never imagined.

One night can change everything. Abby Banks put her healthy, happy infant son to sleep, but when she awoke the next morning, she felt as though she was living a nightmare. Her son, Wyatt, was paralyzed. There was no fall, no accident, no warning. A rare autoimmune disease attacked his spinal cord, and there was no cure. In an instant, all her hopes and dreams for him were wiped away. The life she envisioned for her family was gone, and she was frozen by the fear of a future she never imagined. As she struggled to come to grips with her son’s devastating diagnosis and difficult rehabilitation, she found true hope in making a simple choice, a choice to love anyway—to love her son, the life she didn’t plan, and the God of hope, who is faithful even when the healing doesn’t come. In Love Him Anyway, Abby shares her family’s journey from heartbreak to triumph and reminds us that hope and joy can be found in life’s hardest places.

What happens when life begins to trip us up and failure starts creeping in? Many of us just keep on doing the same thing, hoping for different results. Some of us look for escape, to find a way out of the mess we feel that we've created. But neither enduring nor escaping is ultimately what we need. The answer is to allow ourselves to begin again, every day, in every part of our lives. Through engaging, lyrical prose, Leeana Tankersley shows women how to forgive themselves, develop new and healthier patterns of living, and do away with resentment and regret. Her life-giving words will free women who are feeling stuck and allow them to clear out the debris to make room for what God wants to do in their lives. To begin again is to open the window, even a crack, to let the breeze of grace come in. It is a call to stop running from our fears. To take one small step toward becoming the brave women we were made to be.

You Can Inspire Hope Every Day

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Barack Obama’s lucid vision of America’s place in the world and call for a new kind of politics that builds upon our shared understandings as Americans, based on his years in the Senate “In our lowdown, dispiriting era, Obama’s talent for proposing humane, sensible solutions with uplifting, elegant prose does fill one with hope.”—Michael Kazin, The Washington Post In July 2004, four years before his presidency, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum. One phrase in particular anchored itself in listeners’ minds, a reminder that for all the discord and struggle to be found in our history as a nation, we have always been guided by a dogged optimism in the future, or what Obama called “the audacity of hope.” The Audacity of Hope is Barack Obama’s call for a different brand of politics—a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship and alienated by the “endless clash of armies” we see in congress and on the campaign trail; a politics rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit at the heart of “our improbable experiment in democracy.” He explores those forces—from the fear of losing to the perpetual need to raise money to the power of the media—that can stifle even the best-intentioned politician. He also writes, with surprising intimacy and self-deprecating humor, about settling in as a senator, seeking to balance the demands of public service and family life, and his own deepening religious commitment. At the heart of this book is Barack Obama’s vision of how we can move beyond our divisions to tackle concrete problems. He examines the growing economic insecurity of American families, the racial and religious tensions within the body politic, and the transnational threats—from terrorism to pandemic—that gather beyond our shores. And he grapples with the role that faith plays in a democracy—where it is vital and where it must never intrude. Underlying his stories is a vigorous search for connection: the foundation for a radically hopeful political consensus. Only by returning to the principles that gave birth to our Constitution, Obama says, can Americans repair a political process that is broken, and restore to working order a government that has fallen dangerously out of touch with millions of ordinary Americans. Those Americans are out there, he writes—“waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.”

The most popular source of theological hope for American Christians is that of Jurgen Moltmann. Preachers, teachers, and lay people reflect Moltmann's influence, with their hope in a this-worldly eschatology and a suffering God. However, an exclusive reliance on that hope deprives the church of crucial resources in the face of global economic, environmental, and military crises. This book explores Moltmannian hope and considers its costs before looking elsewhere for additional contributions, from Thomas Aquinas's theological virtue of hope to nihilism and beyond, in order to encourage the church to sustain and practice hope in Jesus Christ, our only hope.

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New York Times bestseller How do you hold on to hope when you don’t get the ending you asked for? When Katie Davis Majors moved to Uganda, accidentally founded a booming organization, and later became the mother of thirteen girls through the miracle of adoption, she determined to weave her life together with the people she desired to serve. But joy often gave way to sorrow as she invested her heart fully in walking alongside people in the grip of poverty, addiction, desperation, and disease. After unexpected tragedy shook her family, for the first time Katie began to wonder, Is God really good? Does He really love us? When she turned to Him with her questions, God spoke truth to her heart and drew her even deeper into relationship with Him. Daring to Hope is an invitation to cling to the God of the impossible—the God who whispers His love to us in the quiet, in the mundane, when our prayers are not answered the way we want or the miracle doesn’t come. It’s about a mother discovering the extraordinary strength it takes to be ordinary. It’s about choosing faith no matter the circumstance and about encountering God’s goodness in the least expected places. Though your heartaches and dreams may take a different shape, you will find your own questions echoed in these pages. You’ll be reminded of the gifts of joy in the midst of sorrow. And you’ll hear God’s whisper: Hold on to hope. I will meet you here.

Dr. Kent Keith published the Paradoxical Commandments as part of a book he wrote for student leaders in the 1960s when he was an undergraduate at Harvard. These maxims for finding meaning in the face of adversity took on a life of their own, making their way into countless speeches, advice columns, books, institutions, and homes around the world. They were even found on the wall of Mother Teresa’s children’s home in Calcutta. They became the basis of Keith’s bestselling book Anyway: The Paradoxical Commandments. Do It Anyway expands on the vision behind the Paradoxical Commandments. It includes forty stories of people who live the commandments each day and gives you the examples, tools, and encouragement to find personal meaning and deep happiness, no matter who you are or what your circumstances, even when times are tough.