Spiritual Grief

If you've ever been given empty clichés during challenging times, you know how painful it can feel to be misunderstood by well-meaning people. Far too often, it seems the response we get to our hurt and disappointment is to suck it up or pray it away. But Scripture reveals a God who meets us where we are, not where we pretend to be.

This revolutionary book about our future is based on the simple idea that, according to the Bible, heaven is not our eternal home - the New Earth is. As Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, the next chapter of our story begins with "the renewal of all things", by which he means the Earth we love in all its beauty, our own selves, and the things that make for a rich life: music, art, food, laughter, and all that we hold dear. Everything shall be renewed "when the world is made new".

What will heaven be like? Randy Alcorn presents a thoroughly biblical answer, based on years of careful study, presented in an engaging, listener-friendly style. His conclusions will surprise readers and stretch their thinking about this important subject. Heaven will inspire readers to long for heaven while they're living on earth.

In this eloquent account of her current struggle with physical pain, Joni Eareckson Tada offers her perspective on divine healing, God’s purposes, and what it means to live with joy. Over four decades ago, a diving accident left Joni a quadriplegic. Today, she faces a new battle: unrelenting pain. The ongoing urgency of this season in her life has caused Joni to return to foundational questions about suffering and God’s will.

For the past 25 years, Heaven has inspired us to live well on Earth even as we long for eternity. Drawing on Scripture, Joni Eareckson Tada answers the deepest questions of our hearts about what heaven will be like, who we will see there, and who we will be there. This updated and expanded edition of Joni’s classic brings a new understanding of what heaven is, along with new mysteries and hopes. Now in her late 60s, Joni is much closer to heaven than she was when she first wrote the book in her mid 40s.

This Too Shall Last offers an antidote to our cultural idolatry of effort and ease. Through personal story and insights from neuroscience and theology, Ramsey invites us to let our tears become lenses of the wonder that before God ever rescues us, he stands in solidarity with us. We are all mid-story in circumstances we did not choose, wondering when our hard things will end and where grace will come if they don’t. We don't need to make suffering a before-and-after story.

Dr. Chauncey Crandall knows his patients well. When they are dying, he sits at the bedside with them and holds their hands. He prays with them. Sometimes he can feel what they feel and see what they see. At other times his patients have near-death experiences and "come back" with astonishing descriptions of the afterlife.

While mediums sometimes resist the flow of communications they receive from the "other side", the best of them - like Bill Philipps - know what solace such messages can provide. The truly gifted also know that their gifts are not unique, that they can be cultivated by anyone with a sincere and open heart. Philipps illuminates all of this for listeners by demystifying what he does, sharing more than 20 inspiring stories of people receiving signs, and, most wonderfully, by providing step-by-step guidance that allows listeners to receive afterlife communications themselves.

When Colin Campbell’s two teenage children were killed by a drunk driver, Campbell was thrown headlong into a grief so deep he felt he might lose his mind. He found much of the common wisdom about coping with loss—including the ideas that grieving is a private and mysterious process and that the pain is so great that “there are no words”—to be unhelpful. Drawing on what he learned from his own journey, Campbell offers an alternative path for processing pain that is active and vocal and truly honors loved ones lost.

Behind monastery walls, men of God spend their lives preparing for the passage of death. Best-selling French author Nicolas Diat set out to find what their deaths can reveal about the greatest mystery faced by everyone - the end of life. How to die? How to respond to our fear of death? To answer these and other questions, Diat travelled to eight European monasteries including Solesmes Abbey and the Grande Chartreuse. Through extraordinary interviews with monks, he learned that their death experiences are varied and unique, with elements of peace, pain, humility, sorrow, and joy.

An inspirational classic for more than thirty years, Where Is God When It Hurts? honestly explores pain—from physical wounds to emotional and spiritual pain—and sheds new light on God's presence in our suffering.

When our circumstances unravel, how do we hold on to truth, to hope, to who we’re meant to be? After Carole Holiday experienced a series of heartbreaking losses, she realized something else had slipped away: her identity. Grief had stolen her sense of self, leaving her feeling unmoored and empty. But it was not the end of her story. Her debut book, I Don’t Know Who I Am Anymore,is for the wanderers, the waylaid, the wavering. The ones who feel weak and worthless. The ones who weep.

For those suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's, for their friends and family, community and church, this book will help you understand the disease itself, how to love and care for those affected by it, and how to see the hope that's greater than it: we may forget, but God always remembers. With pastoral tenderness and gospel confidence, Dr. Benjamin Mast shares his expertise on the subject and displays the power of the gospel that remains intact even when memory fades.

Life is painful. Everyone's story comes with unique challenges, difficulties, bumps, and bruises that leave you lost and drowning in their wake. It could be a financial disaster, a health issue, or the loss of a loved one. Dr. Tony Evans understands life's hardships firsthand. In the span of less than two years, he lost his brother, sister, brother-in-law, two nieces, father, and wife. At the same time, both of his daughters received cancer diagnoses. Dr. Evans had to put into practice, at the deepest levels, the truths he has preached about God for more than 40 years.

Every person who lives long enough will eventually encounter circumstances that are difficult to explain theologically. From years of counselling experience, Dr. James Dobson offers assurance of God's constant care, even when human suffering is beyond our comprehension.

Though suffering often leaves us feeling isolated, God invites us into the community of the Trinity and offers us many companions in scripture. We experience loneliness alongside the exiled Israelites. We journey with David as he pleads to God for rescue. With Asaph we confess our unbelief. With Job we learn to lament. With Mary and Martha we learn to wait. In God's community, there is sweet fellowship, even in the hardest of circumstances. Journey in this book with Wendy Alsup through her story of suffering, and more importantly, with the God who walks with us in the wilderness.

Where is Jesus when we need him most? An influential pastor shares how despair can lead us to discover true hope and a deeper relationship with God, helping us emerge stronger and more joyful from times of crisis. None of us live free of difficulties or hardships. But how can we learn to live richly in the midst of them? And even grow spiritually because of them? The answer is found in the hopeful humanity of Jesus.

What does it feel like to come back from something hard, to be able to hope again? Hard things are a part of life. Yet they don’t have to have the final word. They can become the keys to our greatest usability in the kingdom of God - that is, if we let God make good of them, rather than running away and refusing the growth we truly crave. Written for those who desperately want to move forward, The Hard Good gives voice to the hard places we all have lived and Lisa’s clear directions as to where to go next.

In Divine Disruption, Dr. Tony Evans and his children pull back the curtain on their faith-shaking experiences, in order to provide biblical wisdom and practical encouragement for how to deal with the hard, unexpected things we all inevitably face.

Frederick Buechner has grappled with the nature of pain, grief, and grace ever since his father committed suicide when Buechner was a young boy. He continued that search as a father when his daughter struggled with anorexia. In this essential collection of essays, including one never before published, Frederick Buechner finds that the God who might seem so silent is ever near. He writes about what it means to be a steward of our pain, and about this grace from God that seems arbitrary and yet draws us to his holiness and care.