The best way to understand God's grace is to see it in action. Terry Virgo shares his own story of God's transformative grace in his own life

Dearest Mom, do you ever feel as if this life is just a little too much? It would be so easy to check out on your relationship with the Lord, your devotion to your husband and family, your accountability to supportive friends, and involvement in your church. Take heart, dear sister, your loving Father has something much better for you! He wants you to stay engaged in life!His desire is for you to be "steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:8).The Wise Woman Stays Bible study will encourage you to stay the course that our Lord has set before you. Each day, you will receive a beautiful glimpse into our Savior's heart of love for you and will be encouraged with biblical wisdom and faith-filled ideas.This devotional is absolutely perfect for the busy mama and will deliver bite-sized practical tips and loads of inspiration!Be prepared to dive head-first into a loving relationship with the Lord this summer, and watch as He grows you into the wife, mother, and friend He has created you to be! We cannot wait for you to join us as we walk this path of faithfulness with our Savior!

“Arise, my love, my beautiful one come away.”Song of Solomon 2:10 (ESV) The insightful wisdom, joy, and lightheartedness of seven amazing women who have pushed through extreme winters only to fall more intensely in love with Jesus will challenge and provoke you to dance, live, breathe, and have your being in the One who created you to arise and come along with Him as His delicate, brilliant one into the bounteous reality of Heaven on Earth. Shed the orphan mindset that keeps you or your loved ones in spiritual poverty, misery, bondage, or rejection and get caught up in the swirl of deeper Father-daughter relationship with Abba Daddy God, who dispatches all of Heaven’s resources concerning you for major help and breakthrough from whatever your cocoon into a lavishly abundantly fragrant “destiny now” season. See how time truly has been on your side! Not one moment has been wasted! Learn how all of these women:—Sue, Heidi, Beni, Winnie, Anne, Nina, and DeAnn—endured and discovered how to push through their painful labor for the birthing and rushing in of new things beyond belief. Your moment has arrived. Daddy is in the building! Say good-bye to Poverty Flats. Hear the voice of the Spirit of Adoption calling His darling beautiful daughter, “Arise! Come with Me child. Your time is now.” Learn how to:· detoxify, filter your reality, and get focused· make it to the place of faith and belief for your circumstances· endure time and overcome the hurdles· observe, focus, shift paradigms· see God on the other side of your pain· get caught up into God’s extravagant plan· embrace Daddy's lavish love

Seminary is dangerous. Really dangerous. The hard truth is that many seminarians enter pastoral ministry feeling drained, disillusioned, and dissatisfied. But the problem isn't with the faculty or the material. Rather, the most perilous danger to the soul of the pastor-in-training is the sin residing deep within his own heart. Drawing on their years of pastoral ministry and seminary experience, David Mathis and Jonathan Parnell take a refreshingly honest look at this oft-neglected—yet all too common—experience, offering real-world advice for students eager to survive seminary with their faith intact. In seven short but challenging chapters, the authors remind readers of the foundational role of the gospel in the life of ministry, equipping them with the keys to grow in their faith while making the most of their education.

Tens of thousands of moms who struggle with anger have found hope, laughter, understanding, and biblical counsel in She's Gonna Blow! With over 100,000 in print, this bestseller now has a fresh cover and a new practical helps section with more resources and step-by-step advice. Gary Chapman, author of The Five Love Languages of Children, tells readers that Julie Ann Barnhill "has learned from her journey, and so will you...You'll identify with Julie's open, honest approach." Straightforward and easy-to-read, She's Gonna Blow! is for every mom seeking here-and-now hope and help to... find healthier ways of expressing anger let go of "control" issues and be more positive draw closer to the God who created moms and mothering

Helping to understand what God has done for us and to rediscover excitement in our walk with God. The book examines the Scriptures and shows us how we can be set free to begin and maintain a brand new relationship with God.

This book is not a before-and-after story. Our culture treats suffering like a problem to fix, a blight to hide, or the sad start of a transformation story. We silently, secretly wither under the pressure of living as though suffering is a predicament we can avoid or annihilate by working hard enough or having enough faith. When your prayers for healing haven't been answered, the fog of depression isn't lifting, your marriage is ending in divorce, or grief won't go away, it's easy to feel you've failed God and, worse, he's failed you. If God loves us, why does he allow us to hurt? Over a decade ago chronic illness plunged therapist and writer K.J. Ramsey straight into this paradox. Before her illness, faith made sense. But when pain came and never left, K.J. had to find a way across the widening canyon that seemed to separate God's goodness from her excruciating circumstances. She wanted to conquer suffering. Instead, she encountered the God who chose it. She wanted to make pain past-tense. Instead, God invited her into a bigger story. This Too Shall Last offers an antidote to our cultural idolatry of effort and ease. Through personal story and insights from neuroscience and theology, Ramsey invites us to let our tears become lenses of the wonder that before God ever rescues us, he stands in solidarity with us. We are all mid-story in circumstances we did not choose, wondering when our hard things will end and where grace will come if they don’t. We don't need to make suffering a before-and-after story. Together we can encounter the grace that enters the middle of our stories, where living with suffering that lingers means receiving God's presence that lasts.

This fascinating book explains that the gospel is about the restoration of "cracked Eikons" (fallen humans) so that humans can be in union with God and in communion with the saints. In the candid and lucid style that has made McKnight's The Jesus Creed so appealing to thousands of pastors, lay leaders, and everyday people who are searching for a more authentic faith, he encourages all Christians to recognize the simple, yet potentially transforming truth of the gospel message: God seeks to restore us to wholeness not only to make us better individuals, but to form a community of Jesus, a society in which humans strive to be in union with God and in communion with others.

See the lavish grace of Jesus's love for you... As Christians, we commonly portray grace as something that comes to us in the form of a paycheck and healthy bodies. By wading into the deep end of suffering, I have learned that God's grace is much more evident in the mire and dung of life. Amid deep pain and suffering, I found myself at the grace-filled cross where his glory is revealed in the unseen as I struggle with what is transient. Michelle grew up in church and believed in what she calls Christian karma: Do good, get good. She adopted this unspoken mantra during her teen and young adult years and even into her early married life. But when suffering came to her door, she returned to the Scripture to learn the truth of the gospel. She learned to see grace through the loss of expectation and the loss of three of her six children. As you read this book, Michelle's hope is that you will see the lavish grace of Jesus's love for you, and-if you are walking through immense suffering-that you will understand Jesus is most certainly enough.

Based on the National Study of Youth and Religion--the same invaluable data as its predecessor, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers--Kenda Creasy Dean's compelling new book, Almost Christian, investigates why American teenagers are at once so positive about Christianity and at the same time so apathetic about genuine religious practice. In Soul Searching, Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton found that American teenagers have embraced a "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism"--a hodgepodge of banal, self-serving, feel-good beliefs that bears little resemblance to traditional Christianity. But far from faulting teens, Dean places the blame for this theological watering down squarely on the churches themselves. Instead of proclaiming a God who calls believers to lives of love, service and sacrifice, churches offer instead a bargain religion, easy to use, easy to forget, offering little and demanding less. But what is to be done? In order to produce ardent young Christians, Dean argues, churches must rediscover their sense of mission and model an understanding of being Christian as not something you do for yourself, but something that calls you to share God's love, in word and deed, with others. Dean found that the most committed young Christians shared four important traits: they could tell a personal and powerful story about God; they belonged to a significant faith community; they exhibited a sense of vocation; and they possessed a profound sense of hope. Based on these findings, Dean proposes an approach to Christian education that places the idea of mission at its core and offers a wealth of concrete suggestions for inspiring teens to live more authentically engaged Christian lives. Persuasively and accessibly written, Almost Christian is a wake up call no one concerned about the future of Christianity in America can afford to ignore.