Women Spiritual Growth

A woman's longing to present herself as physically beautiful is universal. Beauty is extolled throughout the Bible as complementing God's plan for women's lives. There are currently no books that examine the beauty practices of biblical women, the plants and products God created to accent their beauty, and the spiritual roots of feminine rituals. Beautiful women abound in the Bible: Queen Esther, the bride of Solomon, Delilah, Rachel, Sarah, and more. Their beauty was a gift from God, and God also supplied the many foods, spices, and oils that perfected each woman's appearance.

Katherine Clark was just an average wife and mother with two young children when she was in a tragic playground accident in late May 2009. A little boy playing on the jungle gym jumped and landed on Kate’s head, knocking her over and snapping her neck. Kate was paralyzed from the neck down. The doctors diagnosed her with quadriplegia and said she would never walk again. This terrifying prognosis could have been the end of the story. But instead, God chose to work a profound miracle in Kate’s life and in the life of her family.

Insecurity is easily the most pervasive struggle of women in America today. We have more ways than ever to compare ourselves to others, and our sense of self-worth takes a serious beating on an almost daily basis. We want real, workable solutions about how to find peace with ourselves. This is what professional Christian counselor Donna Gibbs gives women. Drawing from her 20 years of experience, she exposes the many lies that produce insecurities in us, the result of letting those insecurities get the best of us, and, most importantly, the way out of insecurity for good.

Males look to be served. Men look to be of service. Emmy Award - nominated actor best known for his role on Queen Sugar and transformational speaker Dondré Whitfield challenges us to be real men in this provocative look at the power found in serving others.

Born and raised in a small Oregon town, all-American girl Rebecca Bender was a varsity athlete and honor-roll student with a promising future. Then a predator pretending to be her boyfriend lured her into a web of lies that sent her down a path she never imagined possible. For nearly six years, Rebecca was sold across the underground world of sex trafficking in Las Vegas. She was branded, beaten, told when to sleep and what to wear, and traded between traffickers. During that time, God began revealing himself to her.

Easter weekend, eighteen years earlier, an ordinary workday turned into a nightmare when Ema McKinley passed out and was left hanging upside down in the storage room. Rather than improving, Ema's body became progressively bent and disfigured. Doctors diagnosed Ema with reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD), an extremely painful trauma-induced disease which led to Ema's hand and foot deformities, painful sores, insomnia, gastrological distress, curvature of the neck and spine, heart and lung failure, and permanent confinement to a wheelchair.

Too often, the world speaks words of harm, and too often, we believe them - living stories God never intended for us. Join House of Belonging founder Tiffini Kilgore at the misfit table to discover how an ongoing, open dialogue with God changed her life, and how it can change yours.

Kathy Keller, cofounder of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, offers in Jesus, Justice, and Gender Roles a personal and challenging perspective on biblical gender roles and the complementarian view - a preference for reserving certain leadership positions in ministry for men.

As a woman who wants to follow Jesus in her everyday life, you yearn for intimacy with God. You long to know his presence, to be satisfied in heart and soul, but you don’t know how. You feel like you’re trudging through your days, making sure you’re doing everything you can for him...but you can’t shake the feeling that something is missing. Linda Dillow understands. She longed for depth of intimacy with God, but in the middle of a busy and complicated life, realized that she’d settled for serving him.

We know our lives should reflect Jesus. But if we’re being honest, there are days when we face tough, confusing things that can make us feel, well, not like Jesus. As our culture moves further from truth and grace, Christians are unsure of where to turn for sound biblical advice that applies to their everyday struggles. If you’ve ever felt this way or wished someone would talk about things like forgiveness, mental health, broken friendships, church hurt, and more in honest, down-to-earth terms while sticking to what Scripture has to say about them, you’ve come to the right place.

What if you told God you would do anything...and he took you up on it? Anything is a prayer of surrender that will spark something. A prayer that will move you to stop chasing things that just make you feel happy and start living a surrendered life that matters. Join Jennie on an adventure to discover your anything, those things that actually mean nothing until you know the God truly worth giving it all up for. And when you do, that will change everything.

Many women joke about having trust issues - laughing at their struggle because it feels common but secretly feeling there is no hope. Grace Valentine was one of them. In her 20s, she realized her trust issues were not humorous because, in reality, hers were trust issues with Jesus, her community, her family, and herself. And they were destroying her faith. Grace told herself she was simply being realistic, but the truth was, she was entangled with doubt and lies.

People of faith are lined up in lanes all over this globe, batons in hand, running the race that matters most in this world - the divine relay! The divine relay is tough. The track is treacherous. There are so many ways to mangle the exchange zones, to overshoot, to be knocked off the track, to drop the baton, to stop running. The church needs champion runners who never give up, who persevere no matter what they encounter, who run to win, unstoppable, no matter the cost.

A more abundant life is within your reach. Join Jess Connolly as she casts a fresh vision for how to break free of cheap grace and empty rule-keeping and change the world rather than be changed by it. Grace is always good news, but it's not cheap. True grace compels us to change, and that's where holiness comes in. Dance, Stand, Run charts Jess's discovery that holiness was never meant to be a shaming reminder of what we "should" do, but rather a profound privilege of becoming more like Christ.

Why do moms find themselves settling for a depleted and frustrated existence when motherhood is truly one of the greatest gifts from God? Being a mom is one of the most important-yet-difficult roles a woman will ever fill. Deep in their hearts, many women believe they are failing their families, are emotionally anemic, and are utterly helpless to maintain their peace while raising kids. As a result, hearts and homes are constantly defeated by the "peace pirates" that are allowed to take away the security God paid for His children to have.

Author Elizabeth Laing Thompson invites you to walk alongside people of the Bible who had to wait on God. Their stories will provide a roadmap for your own story, helping you navigate the painful, lonely territory of waiting, coming out on the other side with your faith, relationships, and sense of humor intact. They might even help you learn to enjoy the ride. This book is about the journey of waiting, the space between answers, and the people we become while we live there.

Drawing on her experience on America's Next Top Model and her work as a fashion model, Leah Darrow exposes the lies we are told about our worth being tied to our appearance and instead invites us to look again at the real meaning of beauty. She shows how we can reclaim true and lasting beauty - the kind that doesn't depend on self-doubt, exploitation, or comparison - when we reflect God's glory and embrace our value as he made us to be: strong, brave, and free.

Who are you, really? In an uncertain world, we crave the security of knowing exactly who we are and where we belong. But too often as women, we try to find this safety in our roles and relationships, our professional accomplishments, or our picture-perfect homes. And as we do, our souls shrink smaller and smaller. It's because these things aren't made to hold us.

Women long for deep and lasting friendships but often find them challenging to make. The private angst they feel regarding friendship often translates into their own insecurity and isolation. Christine Hoover offers women a fresh, biblical vision for friendship that allows for the messiness of our lives and the realities of our schedules.

In the shifting (or even collapsing) of everything familiar in life, you don’t have to wring your hands in fear. Push past the loss of your “normal” with best-selling author and Bible teacher Laura Story, and step into the new story God is writing for you.