Personal Spiritual Growth

After over 25 years of researching, writing, and speaking on this subject, in Healthy Me, Healthy Us the Parrotts have whittled down their answer to the truth contained in this single sentence: If you try to build intimacy with another person before you have gotten whole on your own, all your relationships become an attempt to complete yourself.

In You Are Free, Rebekah Lyons--author of Rhythms of Renewal--reveals her journey of releasing stress, anxiety, and worry to uncover the peace that comes from Jesus Christ. Have you bought into the lie? So many of us do. We measure our worth by what others think of us. We compare and strive, living our lives for the approval of others. Pressure rises, fear and anxiety creeps in, and we hustle to keep up.

When you look at a plate, cup, or fork, you realize each has been designed and created for a different purpose. What if you could look into the mind and heart of God and see just how you have been designed and created? If you truly knew you were a "plate, cup, or fork," you would be freed from trying to be someone you are not, and free to live your life with greater faithfulness, fruitfulness, and fulfillment...making God famous!

Rob and Kristin Bell introduce a startling new way of looking at marriage, The Zimzum of Love. Zimzum is a Hebrew term where God, in order to have a relationship with the world, contracts, creating space for the creation to exist. In marriage, zimzum is the dynamic energy field between two partners, in which each person contracts to allow the other to flourish. Mastering this field, this give and take of energy, is the secret to what makes marriage flourish.

Let these words help you articulate your own sorrows, bring you to your knees, encourage you to confess your insufficiency, and express your most genuine emotions. In Our Suffering, Lord Be Near will help find hope in God when your world is falling apart. God can handle your suffering. So, tell Him.

Decode the prophetic language of God! In The Divinity Code to Understanding Your Dreams and Visions, Adam Thompson and Adrian Beale taught you the supernatural keys to interpreting God’s voice through your dreams. In this follow-up work, Thompson and Beale offer revelatory insights about the prophetic language that God speaks through everyday signs, symbols, and pictures! God's Prophetic Symbolism in Everyday Life will open your eyes to how God is constantly speaking to you through what’s around you.

Sometimes you simply need to be reminded how loved you really are - that every day, with every breath, you are loved with such precision that every hair, every molecule of you is known, counted, invited, and welcomed. This audio study guide is that reminder. Best-selling author and speaker Lysa TerKeurst will talk you through the Holy Land in order to come closer to Jesus' words, which will help you enter a place of healing and new perspective. Be a part of this biblical learning process of "living loved".

After her brother died unexpectedly and her mother moved into a dementia-care facility, spiritual travel writer and Episcopal deacon Lori Erickson felt called to a new quest: to face death head-on, with the eye of a tourist and the heart of a pastor. Blending memoir, spirituality, and travel, Near the Exit examines how cultures confront and have confronted death by investigating Egypt's Valley of the Kings, Mayan temples, Colorado cremation pyres, Day of the Dead celebrations, Maori settlements, and tourist-destination graveyards.

One of the church's primary responsibilities is to foster genuine spiritual growth in people's lives. Today's pastors bring tremendous effort and passion to this task, but they are often disappointed by people who sit in the pews for years, knowing about Jesus but never really knowing him. In 2004, Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago undertook a three-year study to measure spiritual growth called the REVEAL Spiritual Life Survey. Over the next six years, additional data was collected from over a quarter million people in well over a thousand churches of every size....

Overcoming the Sting of Suicide is a hope line that will speak life over your loss and will supply you with seeds of biblical truth to refresh your faith, recover your soul and restore your joy. Sandy’s compassionate and coaching heart offers reflective questions after each chapter to help transform emotions from despaired into repaired. Sandy’s message provides a safe place and guidance to live outside of regrets so you can feel the worth of your soul!

In Boundaries in Marriage, Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend, counselors and authors of the New York Times bestseller Boundaries, will show you how healthy marriages are marriages with boundaries. They promote love by protecting individuals.

None of us signed up for a conventional experience with the unconventional God, yet too often the spiritual life can become routine, dare we say, even boring. In Adore, Sara Hagerty gives us all permission to admit "I barely know You, God," and with this honest admission, to scoot a little nearer to this familiar stranger. Adoration is the simple practice Sara discovered for starting where you are, and letting the grit of your day greet the beauty of God's presence.

He Speaks in the Silence is the story of Diane Comer's search for the kind of intimacy with God every woman longs for. It is a story of trying to be a good girl, of following the rules, of longing for a satisfaction that eludes us. Disappointed with all Diane had been told was supposed to fulfill her, she begged God in desperation to give her more. And he did. But first he took her through a trial so debilitating it almost destroyed what little faith she had. He let her go deaf.

Love is easy to give when you are getting it back. Are we still called to God's plan of how to love when we are getting none in return? Shauna Shanks's brave journey through obedience reveals the outcome of when we dare to follow God's ludicrous outline for love as described in 1 Corinthians 13. Wrecked with news of her husband's affair and his request for a divorce, Shauna finds herself urgently faced with a decision. Does she give up and divorce her husband and move on, or does she try to fight for her marriage?

We often think of doubt as the opposite of faith, but could it actually strengthen our relationship with God? According to John Ortberg, best-selling author and pastor, the very nature of faith requires the presence of uncertainty. In this refreshingly candid look at a life of faith, he traces the line between belief and unbelief: less a dividing line between hostile camps than a razor's edge that runs through every soul. His findings point us toward the relief of being totally honest.

What your marriage will become is determined by how you pray. Bold prayers honor God. God honors bold prayers. Praying Circles Around Your Marriage will empower you and your spouse to identify your greatest dreams for the most important relationship in your life and pray the kind of audacious prayers in which God finds delight.

In this compelling audiobook, Scot McKnight shares his personal experience in the Church as well as his study of the Apostle Paul to answer this significant question: What is the Church supposed to be?

Many believers have backslid. Some have turned away completely while others have turned away only in small degrees. Many will honestly say, "I have lost that love which I first had for the Lord". Many are prepared to say that, but they are not willing to take radical steps to put things right. They see the need to repent; they desire to repent, but they do not repent, for they do not pay the price of repentance.

This book is for everyone who has a father. And for all those who know what it's like to long for a father's blessing: his approval, affection, and attention. It's for anyone who's ever longed to hear your dad say, "I love you. I'm so proud of you." You may already know what it's like to live in the rays of such a blessing, to flourish in the marvelous light of a father's love. Yet, in this "fatherless generation", it's also likely you've never known the blessing of your earthly dad.

Jim Daly, president and CEO of Focus on the Family, is an expert in fatherhood - in part because his own 'fathers' failed him so badly. His biological dad was an alcoholic. His stepfather deserted him. His foster father accused Jim of trying to kill him. All were out of Jim's life by the time he turned 13. Isn't it odd - and reminiscent of the hand of God - that the director of the leading organization on family turned out to be a guy whose own background as a kid and son were pretty messed up?