Spiritual Memoir

World-changers. Rebels. Rejecters of the status quo. Throughout history, Christians were never meant to have a safe faith. Highlighting people throughout the millennia, this book is a compilation of faith and facts that celebrate the prayer lives of spiritual giants and invigorate your faith.

Vaneetha Risner contracted polio as an infant, was misdiagnosed, and lived with widespread paralysis. She lived in and out of the hospital for 10 years and, after each stay, would return to a life filled with bullying. When she became a Christian, though, she thought things would get easier, and they did: carefree college days, a dream job in Boston, and an MBA from Stanford where she met and married a classmate. But life unraveled. Again.

This series of reflections reveals the importance of gratitude in helping us see beyond the immediate to a broader and deeper reality. The discovery of this perpetual alleluia will help you discover what you are, become who you are, and grow with gratitude into the unknown.

In May 2003 prominent philosopher, author, and professor J. P. Moreland awoke in the middle of the night to a severe panic attack. Though often anxious by temperament and upbringing, Moreland had never experienced such an incident before. Thus began an extended battle with debilitating anxiety and depression. More than a decade later, Moreland continues to manage mental illness. Yet along the way he's moved from shame and despair to vulnerability and hope. In Finding Quiet Moreland comes alongside fellow sufferers with encouragement and practical, hard-won advice.

Embrace your identity as God's beloved, step out of your own brokenness, and bring hope to a darkened world. You have a calling to fulfill. Are you ready to take the risk of moving past your past to fulfill it? Christine Caine faced hurdles that seemed insurmountable - abuse, abandonment, and the loss of a child. Yet she decided to answer God's call on her life no matter where it would lead her. Many times, the only thing that kept her going was knowing that she was God's beloved. She was God's chosen.

Journalist and baseball lover Ed Henry reveals for the first time the backstory of faith that guided Jackie Robinson into not only the baseball record books but the annals of civil rights advancement as well. Through recently discovered sermons, interviews with Robinson's family and friends, and even an unpublished book by the player himself, Henry details a side of Jackie's humanity that few have taken the time to see.

In her best-selling books Anything and Restless, Jennie Allen challenged women to fully surrender their lives to God and then offered a process to uncover and understand the raw materials he had given them. Now, those two concepts have been combined to create a 40-day journey for women to pursue God and find the deepest yearnings of their heart fulfilled. This step-by-step process, to fully surrender to God and then identify the threads of gifts, passions, places, relationships, and sufferings in your life, is not to get what you want but to find what God wants of you.

If you are longing to experience God more than the shame or hurts of your past, the pressures of your present, or the fear of your future, Brave Surrender offers a soul-healing path forward. As Kim learned in her own life, the first step - and the bravest step - is letting go. Once we let go of anything that gets between us and God, we are freed to take hold of the life that truly matters.

Rumi's inspiring and deceptively simple poems have been called ecstatic, mystical, and devotional. To writer and activist Melody Moezzi, they became a lifeline. In The Rumi Prescription, we follow her path of discovery as she translates Rumi's works for herself - to gain wisdom and insight in the face of a creative and spiritual roadblock. With the help of her father, who is a lifelong fan of Rumi's poetry, she immerses herself in this rich body of work, and discovers a 13th-century prescription for modern life.

Through these stories, Shannon explains the intimate connection between faith and family—and how God’s unexpected agenda can redefine the way we think about family. Not all of these mothers and daughters in the Bible were paragons of virtue. Like us, they were human beings who faltered and struggled to do their best. While some heard God’s voice, others chose their own paths. Through the lens of their imperfections, we can see how God used their stories to bring about His divine plans. He’s still doing the same work in our lives today.

In this groundbreaking book, one of America's premier religion writers revives ancient expressions through cultural commentary, vulnerable personal narratives, and surprising biblical insights. Both provocative and liberating, Learning to Speak God from Scratch will breathe new life into your spiritual conversations and lure you into the embrace of the God who inhabits them.

As a troubled teenager, Tamara Laroux just wants the pain to go away. Crying out to God for forgiveness, she makes the heart-wrenching decision to end her life. As she plummets from her body to a place of vast darkness, torment, and agony, Tamara instantly realizes the finality of her rash decision and begs God to save her.

Becky Powell faced the unthinkable on May 16, 2013. Her husband, Mark, called and said, "I've done something terrible." Within hours, she learned that he had taken his own life and, over a period of several years, millions of dollars from friends and colleagues. Everything she believed to be true, the very fiber of her marriage, was called into question. Yet from that first horrific moment, God was there. Awful Beautiful Life is Becky's journey through the two years surrounding Mark's death and how she overcame.

Despite his deep desire to overcome mental illness and lead others out of their own pain, pastor Andrew Stoecklein died by suicide at the age of 30. In the wake of the tragedy, his widow, Kayla, embarked on a journey to better understand Andrew’s harrowing battle, come alongside those with similar struggles, and help the church overcome the stigma of suicide.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was not trying to start a movement. She was simply tired of the social injustice. Yet her simple act of courage started a chain of events that forever shaped the landscape of American race relations. Now, decades after her quiet defiance inspired the modern civil rights movement, Mrs. Parks' own words tell of her courageous life, her passion for freedom and equality, and her strong faith.

Never before has a book like this one delved into the spiritual odyssey of cultural icon Bob Dylan. Tracking an American original - from his Jewish roots to his controversial embrace of Jesus to his enduring legacy as the composer of the Tempest album - Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life delivers the story of a man in dogged pursuit of redemption. Based on years of research and original interviews, this book sorts through the myths and misunderstandings and reveals Dylan to be both traditional and radical in the way he expresses his spiritual quest for meaning.

“You were like this once. What did you do to get better?” A day out from a mental institution, a woman devastated by flashbacks from childhood trauma poses this question to her big brother. Within a few weeks, she took her own life. This book is the answer that her brother wished he could have offered. Spiritual director and professor Frank Rogers had been there. As a young adult, he too was tormented by trauma suffered in the same family.

Raised as an atheist, Sara Miles lived an enthusiastically secular life as a restaurant cook and a writer. Then early one winter morning, for no earthly reason, she wandered into a church. "I was certainly not interested in becoming a Christian," she writes, "or, as I thought of it rather less politely, a religious nut." But she ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine, and found herself radically transformed.

When we rewind history to Abraham's era, we encounter people who concocted false superstitions to explain the unexplainable. Powerful kings claimed to be gods, building massive pyramids in an attempt to achieve immortality. Out of this mass of misunderstandings, this collage of confusion, one man emerged. Why, thousands of years later, are we still discussing the faith of this desert nomad? Chuck Swindoll answers that question and many more in this compelling and insightful biography that will inspire your own faith.

Upon her death, the New York Times hailed Madeleine L'Engle as "an author whose childhood fables, religious meditations and fanciful science fiction transcended both genre and generation." L'Engle has long captivated and provoked listeners by exploring the intersection of science and religion in her work. In this intimate memoir, the award-winning author uncovers how her spiritual convictions inform and enrich the everyday.