Spiritual Growth Love

The God of the universe - the Creator of nitrogen and pine needles, galaxies and E-minor - loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what is our typical response? We go to church, sing songs, and try not to cuss. Are you hungry for an authentic faith that addresses the problems of our world with tangible, even radical, solutions? God is calling you to a passionate love relationship with Himself. Because the answer to religious complacency isn’t working harder at a list of do's and don'ts - it's falling in love with God.

As parents, we deeply desire the best for our kids. We look for the right preschool, teach them to read, and get them involved in extracurriculars. We take our job as parents seriously. But are we also putting our time and energy into teaching them the Bible? Leading our kids to life through Scripture is not only doable, it's an essential part of parenting kids for Jesus. And the good news is studying God's word as a family doesn't have to be hard or overly time-consuming.

What happens when we replace courage with compromise? What happens when we replace honesty with likability? What happens when we replace conviction with cliches? What happens when we replace discipleship to Christ with a devotion to nice? We live in a culture that prizes niceness as one of its highest virtues. Niceness keeps the peace, wins friends, gains influence, and serves our reputations well, but it also takes the teeth out of our witness and the power out of our faith.

Stormie Omartian’s bestselling books on the power of prayer have touched millions of lives. Recent books have taken a closer look at the leading of the Holy Spirit and the call to be a prayer warrior for God. Now Stormie takes a fresh look at another powerful aspect of knowing our Creator…His amazing and great love for us. We reflect God most clearly when we are motivated by the power of love in all we say and do. But first we have to understand the depth of God's love for us and receive it.

Do you worry that you're messing up your kids? Do you get stressed when you think about their futures? New York Times best-selling author Crystal Paine knows how you feel. A mom of four, Crystal has struggled with anxiety over parenting. She wanted to parent with grace, instead of a system of rules where kids are expected to do all the right things. She wanted to be a safe place for her children, and she definitely didn't want to be remembered as the sort of mom who yelled, wounded her kids with words, or worse, cared more about her reputation than her kids' hearts.

In this book Gem and Alan Fadling outline eight key questions that offer deep insight into how we experience soul change. These questions open the door to spiritual transformation. They help us unpack where we are stuck, where we are in pain, where we are afraid, and much more. They also reveal the path to joy and to the heart of God. Spiritual inventories and exercises will guide you, along with stories from Gem and Alan's lives and their ministry together through Unhurried Living.

Our culture is obsessed with love and romance--so why are so few women experiencing satisfying, long-term love? In this insightful and encouraging book, sisters Kristen Clark and Bethany Baird help single women of all ages discover a radically better approach to navigating their love lives. Covering topics such as true love, romance, purposeful relationships, purity, boundaries, singleness, and glorifying God in our relationships, Love Defined unpacks God's original design for romance, showing modern women how to experience God's best for them in their relationships.

A Course of Love is more than a book. It offers a new way of living and being. ACOL posits that all changes we would like to see happening in our lives, even in the world, stem from a single change: moving from seeing ourselves as separate individuals, to seeing the truth that we are an integral part of life, and of an eternal consciousness that exists in unity. ACOL is a call to move into love's embrace.

Go Forward in Love is a 365-day devotional filled with wisdom and inspiration from pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller's best-loved books that will lead you into worship, give you a fresh sense of awe and wonder before God, and help you Go Forward in Love as willing servants of God and everyone around you.

Through Redeeming Love, millions have experienced the captivating love story of Angel and Michael Hosea that illustrates God's power to redeem even the most lost among us. Redeeming Love: The Companion Study invites you to enter more fully into both the classic novel's eternal message and the biblical story that inspired its writing.

Ever wonder if you’ve stumbled one too many times for God to use someone like you? Could you benefit from an encounter with God’s unending, unbending, unswerving love and devotion?

In Your ONE Life, pastor Lance Witt offers you a roadmap to align yourself with God's purposes and take extreme ownership over your life. Sharing several practical tools, Witt shows you how to craft the life you want; care for your emotional health; establish a healthy rhythm of life; do life with God, not just for God; and practice the presence of people.

There may be no more powerful desire in the human heart than to be loved. And not just loved, but loved anyway. In spite of what we've done or left undone, in spite of the ways we have failed or floundered. We long for an unconditional, lavish love that we know intrinsically we don't deserve. If you are tired, sad, yet always longing, best-selling author Jared C. Wilson has incredible news for you: that kind of love actually exists, and it is actually something you can experience - whether or not you're in a romantic relationship.

For anyone who has ever struggled with their identity, Landra Young Hughes has a radically simple message: give up. Specifically, give up your need to be in control of how other people see you. Instead, let God's words - not yours and not others' - define you. Through her own deeply personal story of trying to control her circumstances and others' perceptions of her through an eating disorder, Landra points the way toward a life free from self-obsession and self-resentment.

How do you set smart limits on your physical relationship? How much do you get involved financially? And how do you know if you've found your future spouse? Dating can be fun, but it's not always easy to navigate the questions and intricacies along the way. In Boundaries in Dating, Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend, counselors and authors of the New York Times bestseller Boundaries, share their practical advice for adding healthy boundaries to your dating life.

Flourishing people are strong and weak. Two common temptations lure us away from abundant living: withdrawing into safety and grasping for power. True flourishing, says Andy Crouch, travels down an unexpected path - being both strong and weak. We see this unlikely mixture in the best leaders - people who use their authority for the benefit of others while also showing extraordinary willingness to face and embrace suffering.

How would you describe your walk with God? Fresh and passionate? Vibrant and full of life? Stagnant? Nonexistent? No matter where you are on your walk, that's exactly where God promises to meet you - even if it's messy.

Millions of Christians have struggled with how to reconcile God's love and God's judgment: Has God created billions of people over thousands of years only to select a few to go to heaven and everyone else to suffer forever in hell? Is this acceptable to God? How is this "good news"? Author, pastor, and innovative teacher Rob Bell presents a deeply biblical vision for rediscovering a richer, grander, truer, and more spiritually satisfying way of understanding heaven, hell, God, Jesus, salvation, and repentance.

As we lie down in green pastures or walk through the shadowy valley, we're assured that whatever our path, whatever our stumbling, the Shepherd will lovingly guide, carry, and protect us. We can depend on His goodness and mercy all the days of our lives. Listeners will find comfort, guidance, and reassurance with A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23.

We want to love God with all our hearts, but we often find ourselves striving in our efforts to please Him, acutely aware of our weaknesses. As our failures pile up, we become frustrated and discouraged. Have we missed the essence of the gospel? Is there a simple but true way to serve God that can fill us with joy and peace rather than fear and discouragement? St. Thérèse of Lisieux faced similar struggles. As a young woman who desired to abandon herself to God, she felt daunted at the thought of climbing “the steep stairway of perfection.”