Personal Ministries

Harry Potter has captivated the imagination of millions of children. And Harry Potter has caused controversy in churches and schools. What's a parent to do with the magical, mystical world of Harry and his friends? Gina Burkart chose to read the books with her own children. As they read together, she discovered many parallels between Christian faith and the themes of these books. Indeed, the escapades of Harry Potter sparked significant conversation between Burkart and her kids.

We are not taught how to grieve, and yet grief comes to every one of us at some time. Bestselling author Lauraine Snelling discovered this truth when she began her own journey with grief in 1985, the year her 20-year-old daughter, Marie, lost her battle with cancer.

In this nonfiction book,A Hand to Hold, Lauraine helps us release the fears that make us uncomfortable around those who grieve. She urges us to offer those who grieve the gifts of touch, tears, talk, and time.

Find and reach your biggest dreams. Bob Goff, the New York Times best-selling author of Love Does and Everybody, Always, is on a mission to help you recapture the version of your lives you dreamed about before fear started calling the shots. He wants you to dream big.

God helps you accomplish what you couldn't manage on your own. With his blessings, you stand out in the crowd and get breaks that you didn't deserve. The psalmist said, "God's favor surrounds us like a shield." That means that everywhere you go, you have an advantage, a divine empowerment, and a key to open up the right doors. With Joel's encouragement, you'll see how God's goodness uplifts you every day.

In today’s world, it can be difficult to envision a future that is successful, purposeful, prosperous, stable, meaningful and even lucrative. However, as Terri Savelle Foy shares in Imagine Big, we cannot allow what we see happening today to limit what we can imagine God doing for us supernaturally in our lives.

Monica Swanson knew she'd tapped a heartfelt concern when nearly two million readers shared her blog post, "What a Teenage Boy Needs Most from His Mom". In this helpful audiobook, she takes mothers deeper into the insights they need for the boy-raising journey, covering topics from dealing with the daily influences of friends and technology to helping a boy grow to be physically, spiritually, and emotionally healthy. She also addresses learning and finding passions, perspectives on relationships and dating, and work ethics and money management.

Your path to holistic health begins here, as Pastor Rick Warren and fitness and medical experts Dr. Daniel Amen and Dr. Mark Hyman guide you to incorporate healthy choices into your current lifestyle. The concepts in this book will encourage you to deepen your relationship with God and develop a community of supportive friends who will encourage you to make smart food and fitness choices each and every day.

Have you ever felt you tried every solution on earth to solve a problem, but nothing worked? Have you ever wondered where the difficulties you face are coming from? Joyce Meyer has answers. In Your Battles Belong to the Lord, Meyer explains that while some problems may result from a person's choices or circumstances, others are rooted in the spiritual realm. Once you recognize the devil - who is real and active in the world today - as your true enemy and the source of many of your struggles, you can overcome them and live a life of peace, freedom, faith, and victory.

Many of us have let our minds become conditioned to thinking we've reached our limits; we've made too many mistakes; we'll never do anything great. The good news is that people don't determine our destiny - God does. And he has already taken into account every detail of our lives and factored them all into his plan. In his new book, Next Level Thinking, Joel Osteen teaches us that we weren't created to go through life weighed down by the past. God has destined us to rise higher - to the next level.

In Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets, Andy Stanley—pastor and bestselling author of Irresistible and Not In It To Win It—will help you learn from experience and stop making bad decisions by integrating five questions into every decision you make, big or small.

You can't put it into words, but something is happening to you. Your stomach churns, your heart aches, and the tension in your marriage is making you feel weary and a little crazy. The constant criticism, disrespect, cruelty, deceit, and gross indifference are eroding your confidence and breaking your spirit. For any woman caught in an emotionally destructive marriage, Leslie Vernick offers a personalized path forward.

The Christian culture that has underpinned Western society for centuries has been eroded. We're now at the point where to disagree with people on issues such as marriage and sexuality is seen as hateful. Christians are no longer seen as honorable, but as bigots. But history testifies that the more people try to destroy Christianity, the more it grows. So we are entering an exciting period of time because we're back in the place where Christ's church can thrive - at the margins of society. In this stirring, passionate book, Matt Chandler tells us we need Christian courage like never before.

Ken Ham is joined by his brother, Steve Ham, in presenting this powerful look at how the principles and truth of Genesis are vital to the strong and lasting foundation of a family. Sharing their own stories of growing up in a “Genesis” family and sharing this legacy within their own families, it is an intensely personal and practical guide for parents.

Many wives long to have their husbands choose them all over again. To be their knight in shining armor. Their leader. Their listener. Their lover. In 52 Things Wives Need from Their Husbands, Jay Payleitner, veteran radio producer and author of 52 Things Kids Need from a Dad, offers a bounty of welcome advice. A great gift or men's group resource, 52 Things Wives Need from Their Husbands provides a full year's worth of advice. And no chapter will make husbands feel guilty or criticize them for acting like men!

His grandfather’s lynching in the deep South, the murders of his two older brothers, and his verbally harsh and absent father all worked together to form Jason Wilson’s childhood. But it was his decision to acknowledge his emotions and yield to God’s call on his life that made Wilson the man and leader he is today. As the founder of one of the country’s most esteemed youth organizations, Wilson explains the dangers men face in our culture’s definition of “masculinity” and gives listeners hope that healing is possible.

Who am I? It's a question we all ask ourselves at some point. Depending on the season we focus our identity on our job performance, marital status, personality type, or social network, among other options. However, there's a larger question to consider. Who does the Bible tell me I am in Christ? From the wisdom and perspective of insightful authors, we'll seek to answer this question by: exposing our false notions of identity; understanding the biblical truth of our identity in Christ; and reflecting on what it looks like to live in our new (and true) identity.

Playing off the themes in the Caldecott Medal-winning children's book Where the Wild Things Are, this informative, practical, and encouraging guide will help parents guide boys down the path to healthy and authentic manhood. Wild Things addresses the physical, emotional, and spiritual parts of a boy, written by two therapists who are currently engaged in clinical work with boys and their parents and who are also fathers raising five sons.

The Orthodox Christian tradition is filled with wisdom and guidance about the biblical path of salvation. Yet this guidance remains largely inaccessible to parents and often disconnected from the parenting challenges we face in our homes. Parenting Toward the Kingdom will help you make the connections between the spiritual life as we understand it in the Orthodox Church and the ongoing challenges of raising children.

In his first bestseller, Financial Peace, Dave Ramsey taught us how to eliminate debt from our lives. Now in More Than Enough, he gives us the keys to building wealth while also creating a successful, united family. Drawing from his years of work with thousands of families and corporate employees, Ramsey presents the ten keys that guarantee family and financial peace, including: values, goals, patience, discipline, and giving back to one's community. Using these essential steps anyone can create prosperity, live debt-free, and achieve marital bliss around the issue of finances.

In this new audiobook by best-selling author, Edward Sri, we discover the close connection between growing in the virtues and growing in friendship and community with others. A consummate teacher, Dr. Sri leads us through the virtues with engaging examples and an uncanny ability to anticipate and answer our most pressing questions. Dr. Sri shows us in his inimitable, easy-to-listen style, that the virtues are the basic life skills we need to give the best of ourselves to God and to the people in our lives. In short, the practice of the virtues give us the freedom to love.