Personal Ministries

Living life at a sprint might be leaving you nature blind. If you’re feeling stressed, disconnected from God, and disenchanted with life, this book will help you find solace for your scattered soul. Through storytelling, practical application, and reflective questions, Laurie Kehler invites you on a journey of discovery.

We’ve all felt the weight of shame and brokenness. We long for a fresh start, but what we need most is the ability to see ourselves through God’s eyes of grace. New York City pastor Chris Durso believes grace is the central message of all Scripture. While there have been some daring heists and cunning capers throughout history, this book is about the greatest heist the world has ever seen...a daring raid where God’s son took back what the enemy had stolen, freeing us from the power of shame, sin, and Satan.

Women are bombarded with ideas of perfection every day. The desire to be perfect, says author Kim Hyland, is actually a God-given urge. After all, we were made for Eden. But there is a difference between perfection and perfectionism, which is our attempt to achieve perfection on our own, by our own strength, and for our own purposes. In this freeing book, Hyland offers women a stirring manifesto for acknowledging their limitations and embracing the perfection of God through his grace.

Christian faith isn't blind obedience to a set of rules and regulations; it is entering into a relationship with a God who pursues us - not to punish, but to love. As the leader of Central Christian Church in the self-proclaimed "Sin City, U.S.A.", Jud Wilhite has seen it all, and he knows that no matter how far someone has strayed from God, God always remains in passionate pursuit.

Have you convinced yourself the abundant life Jesus came to bring is out of reach? Have you developed an "if only" mentality, waiting for something or someone to turn things around? While you become more and more dependent on your excuses, you watch others get what you want to have, go where you want to go, and experience what you long to feel. It seems it's never your turn to experience the joy that comes from attaining all God has for you.

Christians today are facing a crisis of influence. In our rush to speak truth to today's tensions, cultural issues, and trending controversies, it becomes all too easy to focus on proving our points rather than extending God's grace. Conversely, when we seek only to love yet never proclaim a better way, we short-circuit God's plan. Truth Plus Love invites you to rediscover the biblical framework for engaging culture as ambassadors of Christ. Through biblical insight, cultural analysis, and practical principles, Matt Brown outlines how to champion truth without compromise.

With characteristic humor and insight, author and pastor John Ortberg invites us to follow the biblical story of Esther and her example to courageously choose to embrace the mission God gives. Like Esther, we can lead without feareven in threatening circumstancesbecause we know God is always at work in unseen, unknown, and unlikely ways.

In the midst of carpools and play dates, does the idea of saving the planet feel like something else to feel guilty about not doing? Green Mama puts green living within your reach. Tracey Bianchi offers creative tips, tricks, and resources that will benefit your kids and your community and will draw you closer to God’s heart for this planet.

If forgiveness is possible after genocide, then perhaps there is hope for the comparably smaller rifts that plague our relationships, our communities, and our nation. As We Forgive explores the pain, the mystery, and the hope through seven compelling stories of those who have made this journey toward reconciliation.

A comprehensive guide to breaking bad habits and/or addictions and living the life you have always wanted. The method is simple and easy to apply. It offers step-by-step help about how to process past wounding and come through present battles with long-term lifetime healing.

Do you sometimes feel that you are wandering in a wilderness of grief, confusion, and faltering faith? If so, you are not alone. Like the lost children of Israel, many have searched for a way through a personal wilderness. But just as those same Israelites followed God's leading to the Promised Land, you too can find the promised new life in the Spirit. Jamie Buckingham made such a journey - not only figuratively but literally. During a time of intense personal struggle, he traveled to the Sinai. There he found restoration and, in the solitude of a wilderness night, he learned ancient Bible truths that would alter his life forever.

Dvora responded to the call of her heritage, moved to Israel, developed a successful career, and had a fruitful ministry among Chinese students, but her internal world was fractured. She married at 52 and became a widow at 55. Would trusting in God really be enough? Well-acquainted with grief and loss, author Dvora Elisheva, with courageous honesty, talks about her life experiences and her relationship with God. Her story has many “dots” of hope, mercy, and grace. Connecting these dots reveals a grace-filled perspective on hurt, disappointment, and grief.

We may be leading a life, but what will determine living an examined life is the use of our brain powers. We make a living through our natural abilities, but we live a life through the use of our brain powers. The power you have as a human who has the capacity to differentiate you from others in the world is your brain, and you might as well develop that brain to its utmost level. One can mainly be great through the development of one's brainpower as well as sharpening one's thinking ability in order to reason and think out what an ordinary person cannot think of in life.

In Hustling God, Craig Barnes invites hard-running, stressed-out, burned-out people to simply stop. Stop running—long enough to realize we’re lost. Stop—and encounter the God who has climbed down the ladder from heaven to earth to find us. Stop—so we can at last receive all the blessing that, in Jesus Christ, God was dying to give us.

Stumbling on Open Ground steps away from the pattern of other cancer books, Christian or secular, and attempts to tackle the question of how you can doubt a God that you do not doubt. It's about having trouble believing what is going on when you believe God knows what he is doing at all times. It is about questioning what is happening when you know where all the questions are answered.

Your past is not your past if it’s still impacting your present. Do you ever feel as though your life has become a broken record? You’re hearing the same song play over and over again? Nearly every human being on earth has likely spent some time on the carousel of pain. Whether you’re dealing with the guilt and regret of your own sinful choices, or you’re sitting in the shame of someone else’s deceitful actions, God wants to bring you healing.

Consumerism is everywhere. It shapes the way we eat, shop, rest, think, love and believe. We can't escape it, but how can we live well in the midst of it? We are daily seduced by a 250 billion dollar marketing machine. But how often do we consider how this might influence us? The current prevailing orthodoxy is that life should be lived to the max. By contrast, Jesus modeled a life of joyful limitation - free to do; free not to do. Consumer Detox, complete with the Detox Diary in the back of the book with suggestions for each chapter, encouraging stories, and space for writing personal reflections....

Many believers have backslid. Some have turned away completely while others have turned away only in small degrees. Many will honestly say, "I have lost that love which I first had for the Lord". Many are prepared to say that, but they are not willing to take radical steps to put things right. They see the need to repent; they desire to repent, but they do not repent, for they do not pay the price of repentance.

"I was born with the choice to pass as Black or White. Everyday I ask myself whose blood is it that rushes through my veins? My own blood is making me hate who I really am. I feel two opposing ancestors at war within me - one fighting to be free, the other fighting to control me by denying me my true identity. When I visit my family in Mississippi, I'm Black. When I return to Chicago, I'm White again. I find myself taking on the values of the people who would squash me if the knew. I find no wholeness in either role."

Through his journey to overcome personal obesity and develop a healthy lifestyle, Drew learned successful strategies that all people can put into practice in their daily lives. Oftentimes, we are not conscious about our health until we run into a problem. Hopefully that problem isn't so severe or fatal that it is too late to fix it.