Religious Love

Jesus told us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We love the idea of it, but many of us are so busy it can be hard to live out. The past few years our culture has become more polarized with division and disrespect. As tragedies and social issues fill the headlines, the church seems to be nearly absent in the conversation. Love Our City presents our problem, how we can overcome it, and solid ways to fulfill our God-given mission.

In 2013, Ayaz Virji left a comfortable job at an East Coast hospital and moved to a town of 1,400 in Minnesota, feeling called to address the shortage of doctors in rural America. But in 2016, this decision was tested when the reliably blue, working-class county swung for Donald Trump. Virji watched in horror as his children faced anti-Muslim remarks at school and some of his most loyal patients began questioning whether he belonged in the community. Virji wanted out. But in 2017, a local pastor invited him to speak at her church....

Meet pastor Titus T. Smith. He has suffered a great loss by losing his wife, Pearl. As he rebuilds his life and ministry, can he find love again? This is a dramatic story of a second chance at love for an alpha pastor. Will he be able to love again without chaos breaking out in his family and ministry? Book one of two in the Endless Love series.

When Brother Nathan was a child in Egypt, he witnessed the unthinkable - his own father's murder at the hands of terrorists. At first he struggled with his powerful urge to seek revenge against his father's assassins. Today he ministers in the very village where his father was killed as well as in countless other cities and villages across Egypt and throughout the Middle East.

This book touches on certain dynamics regarding the theoretical and cultural basis of the model Fethullah Gülen has developed based on dialogue, tolerance, and concurrence among groups that come from different religions, cultures, and civilizations. Gülen's model focuses on human beings, those who surround all their world with thought and action, and who are directed toward love for God and for creation.

Mary is about the mother of Jesus and the arc of her development from a peasant teenager to an icon in the church, to a bold witness of the Gospel who journeys from Jerusalem to Samaria, to the mostly Gentile church in Antioch of Syria, and finally to Ephesus, a major metropolitan city of Asia Minor. This book tells the story of Mary in the style of a memoir while still being faithful to the canon of scripture in the hopes that women who seek to have their voices heard in a male-dominated society will find inspiration and strength.

Abused! The preacher’s wife! Divorced! How had I gotten to this place? Not believing the truth of God’s unconditional love was the root of the problem. How could a child of God not believe He loves or cares about them? Though your life may look like he doesn’t love you and the disconnection that you may be experiencing in your relationship with God may make you feel like he doesn’t love you, God does love you!

What was calling me was eternal. I had no words to describe it, but its draw on me was deep and ancient in ways I could not even begin to grasp, much less articulate. I wanted something more than the rituals, ceremonies, fancy robes, and lifelessly rote and memorized performances I witnessed in church each Sunday. I wanted something deeper and more heartfelt, something more real and alive with the Love of God I felt inside… and I found it! My life has been transformed by God’s Grace. I now experience richness, color, and depth of life and love I had not experienced before.

Levi Benkert was playing with his children in the park when he received an urgent phone call from a friend asking him to drop everything and fly to Ethiopia to help organize a rescue orphanage for children destined to be murdered as part of a tribal superstition known as "mingi". In tribal culture, children and infants with even the slightest defect are considered "cursed" and are killed by their own parents, who fear allowing the children to live will cause bad luck to descend on the village. Moved by his friend's story, Levi packed his bags and left.

In late 1956, an item in the Times of London stunned England's literary set. Confirmed bachelor and celebrated Christian apologist C.S. Lewis announced his marriage to Joy Gresham. His choice could not have been more unlikely. Joy was an American, a divorcee, an ex-communist, and a former atheist. Yet this extraordinary and fascinating woman made a great impact on Lewis and his writings in the short time they had together.

The House That Love Built is the quintessential story of one woman's questioning what it means to be an American - and a Christian - in light of a broken immigration system. Through tender stories of opening her heart and home to immigrants, Sarah Jackson shines a holy light on loving our neighbor.

Termites for dinner. Bombs in the backyard. A nation torn by decades of war, still on the brink. Can one life really make a difference here? Born without her left hip and leg, Michele Perry is no stranger to seeming impossibilities. So when she arrived in war-torn southern Sudan, with little more than faith in God's promises, she did what everyone told her was crazy: she opened a home for orphaned children in guerilla warfare territory.

Have you loved God your whole life but also had a lurking fear in you about hell? What Did Jesus Say About Hell? can take that fear away from you forever, simply by guiding you through Jesus’ words in the Gospels on the matter and the essential context he drew from in the Old Testament, all in an easy listen. Once you learn for yourself what Jesus actually said, and did not say, it will change the way you think about hell forever.

In The Gift of Love, Amy Clipston shares her story of almost losing the love of her life to kidney disease and the ultimate sacrifice that kept their family together. An ordinary woman who cherishes family above all else, Amy was challenged in every way - from her strength of character to the depths of her faith to the close-knit family that surrounds her. Enduring the good, the bad, and the really bad, she was determined to help her husband once again be the husband and father their family needed.

While all of us are capable of holiness, canonization is the Church’s official recognition that a particular person displayed an extraordinary degree of holiness, or devotion to God, during his or her time on Earth. There is much to be learned from the words, acts, and lives of the saints of the Roman Catholic Church. Each concise biography, from Saint Padre Pio to Saint Catherine of Siena, provides guidance for living a life of love.

Tom Stodulka has loved to write for many years, though as a child he found this form of expression was a struggle. As the years progressed, through high school and law school, Stodulka gained an appreciation of language and how it could be used as a tool for making a difference. His confidence grew enough to write diaries of his life in the Navy and eventually in 1976, on board the HMAS Duchess, he wrote his first poem, The World and the Future, which features in his first publication, Storm Clouds and Silver Linings; My Journey.

Eden Creswell finds herself in River Bend, Wyoming, without a man to marry. Knowing she can’t go back to her Delaware home, she does the only thing she can: pretend to be someone’s fiancée. Ryder Graham is surprised by one thing after another. First, his depressing paralyzed state, and then a woman shows up on his doorstep claiming to be his mail-order bride. He wonders if it is possible he ordered a bride and didn’t know it, but without another option, he takes her up on her gracious offer to help, alleviating his sister from the duty.

Jessica Winters’ father is a stubborn and onerous man. In his drive to make his mark, he drags his family west, only to be slain on the treacherous trail, leaving his daughters to defend themselves in the open wilds. No horses, no wagon. No hope but in God. When the sheriff’s son, Nicolas Holloway, discovers the girls sheltering in a cave, it takes a sensitive heart to coax them out. But there is more that Nicholas wants to coax from this gentle and courageous girl—the answer to a question he will ask only one special woman.

Doris Watson comes from humble circumstance, but when her family is blackmailed and her life threatened, the young lady is sent to safety. Her trip to safety is hijacked by the evil intent of a dangerous yet beautiful lady on the train—a stranger with a clever plan to implicate Doris in a spate of jewelry robberies and crush her family. Only Basil Dermott, a young man from Nebraska with a nose for the truth and an eye to uncover wrongdoing, has the means to absolve Doris from these spurious accusations. In his quest, Basil discovers not just the missing riches, but Doris' heart too.

Orphaned Gwendolyn knows she will be thrown to the street on her 18th birthday—just one year away. All she dreams of is to be part of a loving family, and know and marry a man who will truly cherish her. When naïve Gwen is convinced to run away with smooth-talking Oscar Hunter, her longing for love blinds her to his true intentions. Abandoned as a child, she is now abandoned again by the man she thought she loved. It is only the kindness of an elderly Christian mother traveling on the same westbound train that saves Gwendolyn from utter despair.