Spiritual Biography

If you want to appreciate life to the fullest, this unabridged audio download of A Positive Life reveals nine basic yet powerful lessons for living with passionate faith and joy. Through his story of living with HIV, Shane Stanford will help you find contentment in your own life, no matter the circumstances.

Can you find faith in an episode of "Friends"? Can Adam Sandler teach us about the love of God? Can Kermit the Frog and Alanis Morissette teach us about prayer? Can Harry Potter help save us? Jesuit Father Mark Mossa says yes! Fr. Mossa has served as a minister for young adults in various parts of the northeast and southern U.S. He currently teaches theology at Fordham University in New York City.

Learning My Name is the harrowing chronicle of a fearful prodigal putting family relationships on the line as he learns to trust the love of both his dad and his heavenly Father for the sake of putting neurotic, addictive thinking to rest. This book is more than the author's story; it is the story of humanitys interaction with God.

At age 21, Andrea Palpant Dilley stripped the Christian fish decal off her car bumper in a symbolic act of departure from her religious childhood. At 23, she left the church and went searching for refuge in the company of men who left her lonely and friends who pushed the boundaries of what she once held sacred. In this deeply personal memoir, Andrea navigates the doubts that plague believers and skeptics alike: Why does a good God allow suffering? Why is God so silent, distant, and uninvolved? And why does the church seem so dysfunctional?

The author of My Beautiful Idol is on a quest to be successful - in a lucrative job at an advertising agency, in ministry work, even in his relationships. And in a futile attempt to control the sources of love and security, he has turned these things into idols he can keep in his soul's back pocket. He pulls the idols out when he feels vulnerable and defenseless, and hides them again when things are going well. But the idols keep failing - even when he turns to his own Christian faith.

Renee Altson's powerful, personal narrative details the evil done to her throughout her life---almost exclusively at the hands of the church---and how she struggles and stumbles toward faith despite her ordeal.

At the age of eight, Chad Gibbs attended his first Southeastern Conference football game. Since then he has been in a constant battle to not let his love of all things pigskin consume him. As a Christian, Gibbs knows he cannot serve two masters, but at times his faith is overwhelmed by his fanaticism. He is not alone. In 2008 over six million people attended an SEC football game.

Evangelical pastor Ed Dobson chronicles his year of living like Jesus and obeying his teachings. Dobson's transition from someone who follows Jesus to someone who lives like Jesus takes him into bars, inspires him to pick up hitchhikers, and deepens his understanding of suffering. As Dobson discovers, living like Jesus is quite different from what we imagine.

In this unabridged audio edition— Love Mercy: A Mother and Daughter's Journey from the American Dream to the Kingdom of God—Christy award-winning novelist Lisa Samson and her daughter, Ty, experience a life-changing, soul-rattling journey on a mission trip to Africa. Confronted face-to-face with the AIDS crisis, poverty, prostitution, and illness, Lisa and Ty find something else as well: Christ’s love and redemption ablaze.

Drawing from his leadership and ministry experience as president of Alpha USA and Vineyard Churches USA and from his own life experiences as an ordinary Christian, Hunter calls us to reframe our salvation and discipleship. He believes that God intends us to become cooperative friends of Jesus, living in creative goodness for the sake of others through the power of the Holy Spirit.

This is the true story of Ora-Jay and Irene Eash, Amish farmers from northwest Montana whose lives changed in an instant when a semi-truck struck the family buggy, killing their two young daughters. After the accident, the couple turned to their Amish community for comfort, but they remained haunted by the thought that they might not see their girls again in heaven. Would their deeds be good enough?

Author Paul Richardson draws on stories from his life as a change specialist in the world’s largest Muslim country to explore what causes us to be deactivated—pinned down under life’s fluctuating circumstances, personal apathy, and disappointment. In A Certain Risk, Richardson will inspire you to engage the complexities of your world with creative solutions—creativity that comes straight from the heart of the Creator.

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.

It's not what I lost. It's what I've found. I was only 17, just a girl, when God asked me for everything I had...my health, my hopes, my independence, my dreams, my freedom, and my mobility. He took it all. I was so angry with him that I tried to push him away. God relentlessly held me more closely. Looking back, 40 years later, I understand that God has changed and healed me - my heart and my mind - in the most unexpected ways, giving me rubies of his wisdom about an unbending faith and an experience of his mercy I can now tell you about.

The Only Road North is the true-life adventure of a 9,000-mile journey across Africa taken by author Erik Mirandette, his brother, and two friends. When the travelers fall victim to a terrorist attack, Erik must struggle through grief and darkness to find his way back to a life lived for God.

From contemporary men to historical figures, learn how 16 individuals have inspired millions and created legacies that have helped bring so much light into a dark world. Inspiring stories of faith from a master storyteller.

In this memoir, the author reflects on her life, beginning with her childhood, adolescence, and youth. Throughout this book, she describes the events that have marked her life that caused her great emotional wounds and many physical illnesses in adulthood.

Robert W. Janek grew up, with his mother, father, and older brother, in the farm and ranch country of west Texas. It was a “normal” childhood… until the late summer of 1952 when he had just turned eleven years old and was stricken with polio. Polio: A Personal Spiritual Journey tells the continuing story of the effects of polio on a human being: what it means to go through the initial stages of hospitalization and then the life-long physical, social, and spiritual aftermath of living with partial facial paralysis due to bulbar polio.

Thelma Nicholls was born into a poor family in Jamaica. Molested by her father, she left home as soon as she could. Journey with Thelma as she rises above her humble beginnings to become a major as an army nurse, and finds peace, joy, and forgiveness along the way.

Growing up in the only Korean family in a Minnesota town, Michelle Lee-Barnewall has felt the pain of racial discrimination and the resulting identity confusion that follows. Through the telling of her personal story, she seeks to transcend the current divide between those who emphasize social justice concerns and those who believe these concerns compromise the core of the gospel. A Longing to Belong integrates a biblical worldview and personal experience on the topic of race and race relations.