Counselor and author Leslie Vernick has discovered that many people pray, “Lord, I just want to be happy!” With candor, Leslie reveals that readers don’t need new circumstances but a new perspective to discover true happiness. With biblical insight, Leslie guides readers to take simple steps as they... recognize and change habits that, day by day, keep them from experiencing happiness make good choices and learn from mistakes without beating themselves up develop the skills that enable them to let go of negative and painful emotions more quickly transform difficult circumstances so they can live with gratitude, joy, and purpose Application questions help readers work godly thinking, as well as healthy skills and habits, into their lives and hearts. They’ll discover that, even if nothing changes in their circumstances, their inner chains can be broken and they can go free...into a new path of real hope and happiness.

Take a daily step toward joy and contentment and ditch stress, overwhelming thoughts, and boredom with encouraging and biblical messages from Alli Worthington. You do your best to live life well—you work hard to be present in the moment, take care of the people in your life, knock it out of the park at work and home. And yet, somehow, you still have days (perhaps more than you'd like to admit) where you're simultaneously stressed and bored, and you wonder if you even know how to be happy. Is happiness a worthy goal? Does happiness matter to God, or does He only care about holier things? Alli Worthington gets it. As a wife, mother of five boys, author, speaker, and entrepreneur, she knows a thing or two about being busy, stressed, and happy in the midst of a crazy world! Over the years, she's seen how happiness gets a bad rap in Christian circles, and now she is standing up to shout the good news from the roof (or the internet, as the case may be): You are allowed to be happy! Yes, you! You can be happy right now! Join Alli for The Year of Living Happy: Finding Contentment and Connection in a Crazy World, and find the roots of your happiest life yet. Each of the 100 short and inspirational entries includes a thoughtful message from Alli, based on God’s Word practical ways to make your life happier day by day a journaling section This gorgeous book is an empowering gift for yourself or any woman you love. It can be used as a daily devotional or as a guided journal. Be part of this exciting message: Happiness and holiness can coexist for a beautiful life. Don’t miss the great big adventure God has for you. Let this be The Year of Living Happy!

Shares uplifting advice about the virtues of forgiveness, offering strategic and biblically based advice on how to achieve peace and personal fulfillment by letting go of past wrongs.

A compassionate, shame-free guide for your darkest days “A one-of-a-kind book . . . to read for yourself or give to a struggling friend or loved one without the fear that depression and suicidal thoughts will be minimized, medicalized or over-spiritualized.”—Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church What happens when loving Jesus doesn’t cure you of depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts? You might be crushed by shame over your mental illness, only to be told by well-meaning Christians to “choose joy” and “pray more.” So you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. As darkness lingers and color drains from your world, you’re left wondering if God has abandoned you. You just want a way out. But there’s hope. In I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die, Sarah J. Robinson offers a healthy, practical, and shame-free guide for Christians struggling with mental illness. With unflinching honesty, Sarah shares her story of battling depression and fighting to stay alive despite toxic theology that made her afraid to seek help outside the church. Pairing her own story with scriptural insights, mental health research, and simple practices, Sarah helps you reconnect with the God who is present in our deepest anguish and discover that you are worth everything it takes to get better. Beautifully written and full of hard-won wisdom, I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die offers a path toward a rich, hope-filled life in Christ, even when healing doesn’t look like what you expect.

Explaining how to become a Christian hedonist, a bestselling author offers guidance on how to find spiritual joy to readers who are unsure of where to seek it.

God is good, God does good, and oh, how He wants you to be happy. In her new book, The Sacrament of Happy: What a Smiling God Brings to a Wounded World, Lisa Harper unveils that happiness is a gift from God that we can unashamedly enjoy. Happiness tends to be cast as a fluffy emotion without substance rather than a biblical concept, but this is not theologically accurate. Wearing the twin hats of both seminarian and belly-laughing adoptive mom, Lisa Harper dismantles the old-school idea that joy, not happiness, is the truly spiritual emotion, and asserts that Christ-followers are actually called to happiness. We are called to happiness, and this happiness is not impacted by personal or global tumult. In fact, happiness is a sacrament. The general definition of sacrament is “a visible sign of inward grace.” In communities of faith, it most often refers to holy communion or the Eucharist. In the broadest understanding, however, a sacrament is a gift bestowed by God, and in that case, ‘happiness’ is absolutely a sacrament—a visible, sometimes even audible, sign of inward grace! Lisa shares heart-wrenching difficult stories from her past, as well as some side-splitting hilarity along the way. Throughout the book, we see that happiness and sadness can coexist and ebb and flow like the tides. Christine Caine, Founder of A21 & Propel Women, had this to say about Lisa’s new book: "The Sacrament of Happy—like all of Lisa’s messages and books—enriches my understanding of God and His Word—and His great love for us. As always, she unfolds biblical truth so clearly and calls me to action. Every. Single. Time.”

The author of Desiring God reveals the biblical evidence to help us see and savor what the pleasures of God show us about Him. Includes a study guide for individual and small-group use. Isn’t it true—we really don’t know someone until we understand what makes that person happy? And so it is with God! What does bring delight to the happiest Being in the universe? John Piper writes, that it’s only when we know what makes God glad that we’ll know the greatness of His glory. Therefore, we must comprehend “the pleasures of God.” Unlike so much of what is written today, this is not a book about us. It is about the One we were made for—God Himself. In this theological masterpiece—chosen by World Magazine as one of the 20th Century’s top 100 books, John Piper reveals the biblical evidence to help us see and savor what the pleasures of God show us about Him. Then we will be able to drink deeply—and satisfyingly—from the only well that offers living water. What followers of Jesus need now, more than anything else, is to know and love—behold and embrace—the great, glorious, sovereign, happy God of the Bible. “This is a unique and precious book that everybody should read more than once.” —J.I. PACKER, Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia

Discover and fulfill your God-given purpose by joining the more than thirty-five million others who have embarked on a spiritual journey that started with this #1 New York Times bestselling book by Pastor Rick Warren. Before you were born, God knew what your life had in store for you. His hope for you is to discover the life he created just for you--both here on earth, and forever in eternity. Let Rick Warren guide you as you learn to live out your true purpose. The Purpose Driven Life is more than a book; it's a road map for your spiritual journey. Combining thoughtful verses from Scripture with timely stories and perspectives from Warren's own life, The Purpose Driven Life will help you discover the answer to one of life's most important questions: What on earth am I here for? Throughout The Purpose Driven Life, Warren will teach you to spend time getting to know yourself and your creator in order to live your life to the fullest. Unlocking your true purpose will also reduce your stress, simplify your decisions, increase your satisfaction, and, most importantly, prepare you for eternity. Designed to be read over the course of forty-two days, The Purpose Driven Life will help you see the big picture, giving you a fresh perspective on the way that the pieces of your life fit together. Every chapter of The Purpose Driven Life provides a daily meditation and practical steps to help you uncover and live out your purpose, starting with exploring three essential questions: The Question of Existence: Why am I alive? The Question of Significance: Does my life matter? The Question of Purpose: What on earth am I here for? Each copy of The Purpose Driven Life also includes thoughtful discussion questions, audio Bible studies that go along with every chapter, and access to a supportive online community, giving you the opportunity to dive even deeper into each life-changing lesson.

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.

What if we were wired for happiness? If you were to ask a room full of people about how God wants us to live, you’d likely get a wide range of answers. Some people would say he wants us to be holy. Others might claim he wants us to love people and stand up for peace and justice. But chances are, you wouldn’t hear anyone say, “God wants us to be happy.” We all want to be happy, but we may feel guilty for this longing. Isn’t it selfish to pursue happiness? Isn’t it more spiritual to frown than to smile? In a world full of brokenness, is happiness a worthy pursuit? For those seeking to follow Jesus, should this quest be written off as superficial and unspiritual? In Does God Want Us to Be Happy?, New York Times bestselling author Randy Alcorn offers a collection of short, easy readings on one of life’s biggest questions. As he explores what happiness is and how we attain it, Alcorn provides wisdom, insight, and scriptural proof that God not only wants us to be happy—he commands it! (Adapted from the trade book Happiness.)