Spiritual Growth Love

Seasons of crisis, pain, and loss may impact the people we become, but our circumstances do not define who we are. Your identity is greater than your experiences. The only experience that ought to define your identity, determine your self-worth, and shape your destiny is an encounter with the unconditional love of God. The eternal, unchanging love of a Perfect Father changes everything!

Everywhere we look, we see evidence that love is in short supply. Terrorists and political corruption, school shootings and troubled marriages, impatient online sniping and character assassination - all point to the fact that we do not know how to love one another as Jesus commanded and modeled. We put our own interests and happiness first, despite the fact that the greatest happiness comes through sacrificial love.

A whole year of encouragement, Scripture, and peace for women seeking to grow in faith. Life gets busy. But even a few quiet moments with God each day can bring focus, calm, and renewal. This 365-day devotional offers gentle inspiration and daily reminders of God’s love through short passages, powerful verses, and heartfelt reflections written to strengthen your walk with Him.

John Pavlovitz examines the bedrock ideas of our religion: the existence of hell, the utility of prayer, the way we treat LGBTQ people, the value of anger, and other doctrines to help all of us take a good, honest look at how the beliefs we hold can shape our relationships with God and our fellow humans - and to make sure that love has the last, loudest word.

The love that the world tells us to pursue is all about self, about following your heart’s desires. But what is the Christian worldview on love? When we follow Jesus, we realize that he invites us to reorient the focus of our lives, so instead of chasing love primarily for our own happiness, we are first and foremost to give love - to God and to others.

With biblical insight and practical wisdom, The Power to Bless shows you how to craft a positive, faith-filled blessing. By learning a few simple, biblical skills for imparting life-changing blessings, you'll be more spiritually blessed than you'd ever imagined, and you'll be equipped with the power to bless the people you love.

These 100 love letters are a royal escort to the real you. They are spoken through the totally human and totally divine being of Jesus, identifying himself as “The Christ in You” to emphasize the true nature of your own being as unique, eternal, immutable, and holy. They were written to help each of us transcend polarity and to usher us into the integrity—the unity—of being.

Pumpkin crunch cake. Game night with friends. Jazz music. Baseball. These are good gifts — and potential threats to the worship of God. At the heart of the Christian life is a tension between the supremacy of God over all things and the enjoyment of all things for his sake. In this audiobook, Joe Rigney offers a biblical vision for enjoying God in everything and enjoying everything in God.

I Will Love You Forever reveals one woman's decades-long quest to find healing and redemption after the accidental death of her sister as a child. Since 2012, God has used hospice babies - those left to live and die without family to care for them - to mend Cori's broken heart. Bringing these fragile hospice babies into their home, Cori and her family have promised not only to hold them briefly, until their last breath on this side of heaven, but to love them forever and always.

For many Christian women, the constant demands of family, pursuing a career, and managing a household leave little time or energy for anything else. As a result, more than half of women struggle to read God’s Word as much as they’d like. As a busy working mom of three, Brittany Ann, the founder of Equipping Godly Women, understands this struggle all too well. In her latest book, Brittany Ann helps women of faith overcome spiritual resistance, create and maintain a quiet time they’ll love, and change their lives forever.

This abridged edition of the Holy Bible: Evangelical Heritage Version (EHV) will help you see the full picture of God's love and plan of salvation for humanity. The Bible is— at its heart— the grand and beautiful story of God' s love for you. It shows how sin separates you from God, and reveals what God has done to restore that broken relationship with you: He sent his Son, Jesus to save you and all people from sin. Drawn directly from the EHV text, the accounts in The Story of God's Love are presented without chapter or verse numbers for smooth, continuous reading.

Being human is hard. Being in relationships with other humans is even harder. People are complex and relationships are messy but loving one another well is possible. Whether navigating political or religious differences, or dealing with toxic people or our own unforgiveness, this book tackles the struggles no one really wants to talk about. But there is hope! We can actually grow closer to God and others through the circumstances we'd rather run from.

Jesus promises that His burden is light, but how many of us are actually feeling, well . . . light? If life is like a long hike, most of us feel like we have a giant backpack of responsibilities and burdens that weigh us down and take the joy out of living. But Jesus offers another way.

Dr. Barry Corey, president of Biola University, believes we tend to devalue the importance of kindness, opting instead for caustic expressions of certainty that push people away. We forget that the essence of what God requires of us is to "love kindness". In this book, filled with stories from his travels around the globe, Barry shows us the forgotten way of kindness. It is a life that calls us to put ourselves at risk. A life that calls us to hope. A life of a firm center and soft edges. It is the life Christ invites us to follow, no matter what the cost.

Do you ever feel like you don't pray enough, read your Bible enough, share your faith enough, love God enough...and ultimately that you're not a very good Christian? Welcome to the club. Messy Spirituality was written for the silent majority of us who are convinced we just don't do Christianity right. Mike Yaconelli dares to suggest that imperfection, unfinishedness, and messiness are, in fact, the earmarks of true Christianity; that real Christianity is messy, erratic, lopsided...and gloriously liberating.

We want to love God with all our hearts, but we often find ourselves striving in our efforts to please Him, acutely aware of our weaknesses. As our failures pile up, we become frustrated and discouraged. Have we missed the essence of the gospel? Is there a simple but true way to serve God that can fill us with joy and peace rather than fear and discouragement? St. Thérèse of Lisieux faced similar struggles. As a young woman who desired to abandon herself to God, she felt daunted at the thought of climbing “the steep stairway of perfection.”

The best-selling author of A Woman After God's Own Heart has a brand new release! Elizabeth George's A Mother After God's Own Heart offers 10 principles to help moms make God an everyday part of their children's lives. Elizabeth, who has two grown children and six grandchildren, gives practical advice and real¿life suggestions for helping children, no matter what their ages, incorporate God into daily life. Elizabeth's husband, Jim, also provides biblical advice from a dad's perspective.

There is no better way to comprehend our Abba's love for us than through The Parable of the Prodigal Son. However, one might miss significant insights if interpreted from a Western Christian perspective. Studying it from the ancient Jewish biblical context—considering Jesus was a Jewish rabbi in 1st-century Israel—can reveal layers of the parable in unprecedented ways and demonstrate God's unconditional love in ways you've never seen before!

One of the most beautiful, soul-stirring stories in the Bible is the loving, moving account of Ruth and Boaz. Ruth means that which lovingly clings. Boaz means God's truth. These are the two pillars which lead to the Holy of Holies within you.

A husband's God-given responsibility to his wife is to be her shepherd: to love her, serve her, comfort her, protect her, provide for her, sacrifice for her, and lead her. Like the Shepherd guides men on how to embrace the role of shepherd, drawing on the wisdom of the Bible to give men practical, powerful advice on how to take responsibility for their relationships and realize the Christian ideal of a healthy, happy marriage.