Showing titles in Christian Living

The more complex life becomes, the more people crave simplicity - in their work, relationships, health, finances, and leisure time. For all of those who are overpowered, overextended, overworked, and overcome by the go-go lifestyle of the last decade, Simplify Your Life provides a user's manual for learning how to unwind and improve the quality of one's life.

When poet Kathleen Norris was a child, the words judgment, prayer, salvation, sinner, and even Christ all formed what she calls religion's "scary vocabulary" - words that intimidate and alienate people from their faith. As an adult, Norris set out to reclaim her religion, redefining these words using her own experience. In Amazing Grace, she shares her wisdom, challenges our fear of difficult theological ideas, and offers an illuminating perspective on the vocabulary of faith.

From the New York Times best-selling author of Circle of Friends and The Glass Lake comes This Year It Will Be Different, a stunning work that brings us the magic and spirit of Christmas in 15 stories filled with Maeve Binchy's trademark wit, charm, and sheer storytelling genius. Instead of nostalgia, Binchy evokes contemporary life; instead of Christmas homilies, she offers truth; and instead of sugarplums, she brings us the nourishment of holidays that precipitate change, growth, and new beginnings.

These poignant writings about the defining moments in many women's lives represent a variety of different cultural, ethnic, religious, and social backgrounds. Each woman reflects on the difficult choices she's had to make, and whether she'd do things differently if given the chance. The evocative, universal stories of challenges and conflicts touch on issues we can all relate to, including marriage, children, relationships, aging, and career choices.

Christians often focus so much on being loving and unselfish that they forget their own limitations, allowing others to take advantage of their kindness. Authors Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend offer Biblically-based ways to take control of your life and set healthy boundaries with parents, spouses, children, friends, coworkers, and even yourself.

In A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson shares her reflections on A Course in Miracles and her insights on the application of love in the search for inner peace.

Join Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend, authors of the New York Times bestseller Boundaries, as they share the research and guidance you need to raise your kids to take responsibility for their actions, attitudes, and emotions. What Boundaries has done for adult relationships, Boundaries with Kids will do for you and your family.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a leader and visionary of the civil rights movement, was first and foremost a preacher. This unique collection features a selection of Dr. King's best sermons - some not heard since he first delivered them!

The Ten Commandments are the first direct communication between a people and God. Designed to elevate our lives above mere frantic, animal existence to the sublime levels humanity is capable of experiencing, they are the blueprint of God's expectations of us and his plan for a meaningful, just, loving, and holy life. Each commandment asserts a principle, and each principle is a moral focus point for real-life issues relating to God, family, sex, work, charity, property, speech, and thought.

What does it take to raise great kids? Do you get tough? Or show acceptance? Lay down the rules? Or lighten up? In this audio guide, Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend show you how to avoid the twin extremes of permissiveness and over-control, and instead give your child the care and acceptance that make grace real to your child and the discipline and firmness that give direction. Drs. Cloud and Townsend provide you with important parenting advice that will help you reach middle-ground in the way you raise your kids.

Only when you and your mate know and respect each other's needs, choices, and freedom can you give yourselves freely and lovingly to one another. Boundaries are the "property lines" that define and protect husbands and wives as individuals. Once they are in place, a good marriage can become better, and a less-than-satisfying one can even be saved. Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend, counselors and authors of the award-winning best seller Boundaries, show couples how to apply the 10 laws of boundaries that can make a real difference in relationships.

Pet peeves been trailing mud all over your nice, bright outlook? Let Chonda Pierce help you clean up your attitude with a little deep-cleansing, sparkling-fresh humor! This comedian, singer, and preacher's daughter has a knack for finding merriment in those little things that can drive anyone crazy. Chonda's wacky stories won't just get you laughing so hard you'll forget what was bugging you. They go deeper, illustrating profound spiritual truths. As a Christian, it's easy to assume that life's little sticking points shouldn't aggravate you.

The Wisdom of John Paul II is a powerful, illuminating distillation of the Pope's most moving, wise, and penetrating statements on a range of important issues. In this compilation by Nick Bakalar and Richard Balkin, the Pope addresses spirituality in modern life, human rights and religious freedom, marriage and family, morality, peace, prayer, women's roles, poverty, and many other concerns vital to Christian life and thought.

In today's psychological culture, we have become a people more concerned with solving our problems than finding God. Suffer low self-esteem? Get counseling. Unfulfilled in life? Join a recovery group. But solving problems is not the point, argues Dr. Larry Crabb. In fact, whenever we place a higher priority on solving our problems than on pursuing God, we are being immoral!

Too many of us have invested in relationships that have gone wrong. It's easy to make the same mistakes of judgment over and over - or, worse, to give up on trying to have great, authentic relationships again. In Safe People, Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend teach you that being with an unsafe person can be damaging to your confidence, your trust in others, and even your health. You'll learn that you have the power to surround yourself with accepting, honest, and safe people who draw you closer to being the person God intended you to be.

It's easy to trust God when things are going our way and the world makes sense. But when suffering strikes - especially seemingly senseless suffering - we are filled with doubt and stunned by events spiraling beyond our control. In the midst of suffering, we often question the very foundation of our faith - our belief in the God who says he loves us.

From the manger in Bethlehem to the cross in Jerusalem, Philip Yancey presents a complex character who generates questions as well as answers—a disturbing and exhilarating Jesus who wants to radically transform your life and stretch your faith. The Jesus I Never Knew will engage your heart, mind, emotions, and senses, preparing you for a new, life-changing encounter with the real Jesus described in the Gospels.

"The Lord is my shepherd...." The words of this famous psalm have brought comfort to many - but what impact do they have on an actual shepherd? Best selling author and shepherd Phillip Keller draws on his firsthand experience to lead and prod listeners to the greenest pastures of discovery and coolest waters of fulfillment hidden in the psalm. This lively devotional commentary will show you how to experience Psalm 23 in a new way. See with the eyes, touch with the hands, and feel with the heart of our Lord - the Great Shepherd.

Every church is driven by some controlling force: tradition, finances, programs, events, personalities, or even the building itself. But author and pastor Dr. Rick Warren, the founder of Saddleback Valley Community Church in California, believes that a church can only be truly healthy if it becomes "purpose-driven," built around the 5 goals Jesus stated in the New Testament. Dr. Warren's illuminating work outlines a proven 5-part strategy that will enable your church to become warmer through fellowship, deeper through discipleship, stronger through worship, broader through ministry, and larger through evangelism. By shifting the focus away from church-building programs, Dr. Warren emphasizes a people-building, inclusive process that will allow your church to grow without compromising its message and mission.

Dr. Ben Carson is known around the world for breakthroughs in neurosurgery that have brought hope where no hope existed. In Gifted Hands, he tells of his inspiring odyssey from his childhood in inner-city Detroit to his position as director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions at age 33. Filled with fascinating case histories, Gifted Hands will transplant you into the operating room to witness surgeries that made headlines around the world, and into the private mind of a compassionate, God-fearing physician who lives to help others.