Women Growth

Best-selling and beloved author Madeleine L’Engle, Newbery winner for A Wrinkle in Time, was known the world round for her imaginative spirit and stories. She was also known to spark controversy - too Christian for some, too unorthodox for others. Somewhere in the middle was a complex woman whose embrace of paradox has much to say to a new generation of readers and listeners today. A Light so Lovely casts a vivid portrait of this enigmatic icon’s spiritual legacy, starting with her inner world and including fresh reflections on her writing for today’s listeners.

This 40-day devotional based on the classic best-selling novel Redeeming Love leads you on a personal, six-week journey into God's all-consuming embrace.

How do we find contentment in God when we feel so hidden? Sara Hagerty unfolds the truths found in the biblical story of Mary of Bethany to discover the scandalous love of God and explore the spiritual richness of being hidden in him. Every heart longs to be seen and understood. Yet most of our lives is unwitnessed. We spend our days working, driving, parenting. We sometimes spend whole seasons feeling unnoticed and unappreciated. In Unseen, Sara Hagerty suggests that this is exactly what God intended. He is the only one who truly knows us.

Hannah Brencher, TED Talk speaker and founder of The World Needs More Love Letters, thought Atlanta was her destination. Yet even after she arrived, she found herself in the same old chase for the next best thing…somewhere else. And it left her in a state of anxiety and deep depression. Our hyper-connected era has led us to believe life should be a highlight reel - where what matters most is perfect beauty, instant success, and ready applause. Yet, as Hannah learned, nothing about faith, relationships, or character is instant. So she took up a new mantra: be where your feet are.

How can you live as a confident woman of faith? Strong, a 90-day devotional by Lisa Bevere, will inspire you to grow deeper in your relationship with God, strengthen your time studying his word, and experience the joy of living in harmony with God, others, and yourself. Lisa Bevere will help you find your strength, not from trying harder or doing more but through a deep and devoted relationship with God and from knowing and following him.

In her new book, Stasi Eldredge meets listeners in their painful realities and offers an invitation to a joy that is defiant in the face of this broken world. This joy does not Pollyannaish-ly ignore life's heartache; rather, it insists that sorrow and loss do not have the final say. This kind of joy is present to both goodness and grief and interprets them in the light of heaven.

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.

My story is not about my past, but about your future, says Marie Roberts Monville. In the startling tragedy of the Amish schoolhouse shooting at Nickel Mines, one story has never been told; Marie Roberts Monville, the wife of the man who created such horror, tells her story for the very first time. It is a story of sorrow and destruction, but also one of majestic deliverance, unending compassion, breathtaking forgiveness, and grace-filled redemption. Within a solitary moment, Marie Monville realized that life, as she knew it, was over.

You long to serve God with grace and strength, to reflect Christ in every word and action. Yet you find yourself continually struggling to bring that vision to life in your daily walk. At our very core, every one of us is a "twisted sister" within whom the flesh and spirit battle constantly for control. We are afflicted with spiritual schizophrenia, the disconnect between our "good girl" desire to put Jesus first and our "bad girl" realities that crowd our thoughts and push him out of the way.

Do It Scared, by popular blogger and podcast host Ruth Soukup, is the essential handbook for any woman who has ever felt like she is sitting on the sidelines of her own life and is finally ready to jump in, dream big, and go after her goals. Equal parts inspiration and tough love, Do It Scared combines easy-to-implement tips with the motivation to start making real changes that lead to big results.

When Susannah Breslin is a toddler, her parents enroll her in an exclusive laboratory preschool at the University of California, Berkeley, where she becomes one of 128 children who are research subjects in an unprecedented 30-year psychological experiment that predicts who she and her cohort will grow up to be. Decades later, trapped in an abusive marriage to a man with a violent history and battling breast cancer, she starts to wonder how growing up under a microscope shaped the person she became and her life choices. Is she the narrator of the story of her life, or is something else?

Prayer is a powerful spiritual weapon. And the Yada Yadas are about to learn just how strong it really is. The women of the Chicago-born Yada Yada Prayer Group have developed a strong sisterly bond. They’ve had a wild year full of joy, sorrow, and a healthy dose of laughter. Lots of laughter. But just when life gets comfortable, things get shaken up. The sisters don’t expect trouble to crop up so soon after the exuberant wedding of Yada Yada member Avis Johnson. But it happens, and sorrow meets their joy head-on.

As a mother, friend, and traveler, Sally Clarkson has witnessed on countless occasions how a shared cup of tea can impact a heart. These simple moments of hospitality become poignant opportunities for women to support each other in faith while drawing nearer to God. With Teatime Discipleship, Sally invites you into her beautiful home, pours you a steaming cup of tea, and shares the prayers, Scripture, stories, recipes, and traditions that are dear to her heart.

Mothering is messy. Our joy and hope in raising children doesn’t change the reality that being a mom can be frustrating, stressful, and tiring. But just as God is using us to shape our children, God is using our children and motherhood to shape us. In The Better Mom, author Ruth Schwenk, herself a mother of four children, encourages us with the good news that there is more to being a mom than the extremes of striving for perfection or simply embracing the mess. We don’t need to settle for surviving our kids’ childhood. We can grow through it.

¿Alguna vez te has sentido atrapado en un ciclo de dolor sin resolver, repitiendo las ofensas una y otra vez en tu mente? Sabes que no puedes seguir viviendo así, pero no sabes qué hacer a continuación. Y simplemente no estás seguro de si alguna vez lo superarás. Lysa TerKeurst ha recorrido este viaje, luchando con heridas profundas y sufriendo para avanzar. Y ha descubierto que, para encontrar la libertad que da vida, hay que dejar de lado el resentimiento y la resistencia para perdonar a las personas que no están dispuestas a hacer las cosas bien.

Boldly change your life and those you influence by developing an ear to not only hear, but to also listen to God's heart. God released grace upon Anna to fast and pray unto the revelation of Jesus to the Earth the first time. God is releasing a similar grace upon a whole generation of women who will operate in a similar anointing as Anna's unto the revelation of Jesus to the Earth in his second coming.

You're strong. You're responsible. You're good. But…as day fades to dusk, you begin to feel the familiar fog of anxiety, the weight and pressure of holding it together and of longing left unmet. Good girls sometimes feel the Christian life means doing hard work with a sweet disposition. We tend to focus only on the things we can handle, our disciplined lives, and our unshakable good moods. But what would happen if we let grace pour out boundless acceptance into our worn-out hearts and undo us?

Laura and Casey were once inseparable: as they floated on their backs in the sunlit lake, as they dreamed about the future under starry skies, and as they teamed up for the wild scavenger hunts in their small California lakeside town. Until one summer night, when a shocking betrayal sent Laura running through the pines, down the dock, and into a new life, leaving Casey and a first love in her wake. But the past is impossible to escape, and now, after 17 years away, Laura is pulled home and into a reunion with Casey she can’t resist - one last scavenger hunt.

Are you eager to walk in the calling and purpose God has for your life but are feeling uncertain? Maybe you're not sure if you're educated enough, or if it's the right time, or if you even have the authority to take a step forward. Perhaps you're at a standstill and are holding out for ideal conditions, or even an invitation, before you act. In Ready As You Are, Brittany Maher and Cassandra Speer say it's time to stop waiting to live on mission. God wants to use you now, right where you are, with the tools you already have.

Books were always Sarah Clarkson's delight. Raised in the company of the lively Anne of Green Gables, the brave Pevensie children of Narnia, and the wise Austen heroines, she discovered reading early on as a daily gift, a way of encountering the world in all its wonder. But what she came to realize as an adult was just how powerfully books had shaped her as a woman to live a story within that world, to be a lifelong learner, to grasp hope in struggle, and to create and act with courage. She's convinced that books can do the same for you.