BOOKS WE LOVE

Cindee Snider Re

This 10-chapter study invites participants to experience radical hope and compassionate change in a life with chronic illness.

No matter how dark the days, how wild the storm, how deep the valley, or how long the winter, there is hope.

There is always hope.

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Cindee Snider Re

What if purpose looks different than we believe?

This 10-chapter study invites participants to release cultural and traditional definitions of purpose, and instead, to embrace God's - a timeless definition rooted in His Word and as refreshing as a gentle spring rain.

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Cindee Snider Re

Rejuvenate, revitalize, rekindle, and reconnect with this insightful and enriching 10-chapter study, designed just for couples, offers you and your spouse a safe place to grieve, heal, grow, and begin to dream together again – to thrive as one – in sickness and in health.

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Heather MacLaren Johnson

With this incredible resource you can learn to lead through God's grace; create a space for spiritual growth and healing; empathize, listen and engage with those in pain; grow in prayer and compassion; foster hope and encouragement; build small group communities that thrive.

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Bruce Wilkerson

The Dream Giver is a compelling modern-day parable about Ordinary, who dares to leave the Land of Familiar to pursue his Big Dream. With the help of the Dream Giver, Ordinary begins the hardest and most rewarding journey of his life. Discover the practical, biblical keys to fulfilling your own dream, revealing that there's no limit to what God can accomplish when we choose to pursue the dreams He gives us for His honor.

C.S. Lewis

A classic Christian allegorical tale about a bus ride from hell to heaven. An extraordinary meditation upon good and evil, grace and judgment.

Hannah Hurnard

Hinds Feet on High Places is the timeless allegory of Much-Afraid who tended the Shepherd's flocks in the Valley of Humiliation. She loved her work and desired to please the Shepherd, but several things hindered her, causing her secret distress and shame.

C.S. Lewis

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis is a classic masterpiece of religious satire that entertains readers with its sly and ironic portrayal of human life and foibles from the vantage point of Screwtape, a highly placed assistant to "Our Father Below." At once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original, C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters is the most engaging account of temptation—and triumph over it—ever written.

Mitch Album

The inventor of the world's first clock is punished for trying to measure God's greatest gift. He is banished to a cave for centuries and forced to listen to the voices of all who come after him seeking more days, more years. Eventually, with his soul nearly broken, Father Time is granted his freedom, along with a magical hourglass and a mission: a chance to redeem himself by teaching two earthly people the true meaning of time.

Margery Williams

For at least two hours the Boy loved him, and then Aunts and Uncles came to dinner, and there was a great rustling of tissue paper and unwrapping of parcels, and in the excitement of looking at all the new presents the Velveteen Rabbit was forgotten.

Amy Simpson

Our culture is frantic with worry. We stress over circumstances we can’t control, we talk about what’s keeping us up at night and we wring our hands over the fate of disadvantaged people all over the world, almost as if to show we care and that we have big things to care about. Worry is part of our culture, an expectation of responsible people.

Michelle Bengtson

Ours is an age of anxiety. We worry about our children, jobs, homes, health, and finances. News and social media feed our fears. Even the fear of missing out leads to anxiety. The solution isn't to rid ourselves of the sources of anxiety but to recognize that anxiety originates from a spiritual influence--and then use the weapons of power, love, and a sound mind to fight back and live in God's peace.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

At one of the lowest points in Henri Nouwen’s life, he gave a series of lectures on the importance of following Jesus in an age of anxiety. Drawn from those talks, this new work reveals what sustained Nouwen to remain faithful to the teachings of Jesus and led him to become an icon of compassion and vulnerability.

Holley Gerth

Stress is inevitable, but letting it control your life is optional. This 60-day devotional offers spiritual truth to soothe your soul alongside practical tools to apply that will truly make a difference. Each day, discover Scripture, a prayer, questions for reflection, and inspirational quotes to help you learn to live with more peace and less pressure, more calm and less chaos, more worship and less worry.

Ruth Haley Barton

Do you long for a deep, fundamental change in your life with God? Do you desire a greater intimacy with God? Spiritual disciplines are activities that open us to God's transforming love and the changes that only God can bring about in our lives. Dive deeply into understanding seven key disciplines along with practical ideas for weaving them into everyday life.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

Discover a spiritual path consisting of three stepping-stones: Solitude (learning not to be alone but to be alone with God); Silence (the discipline by which the inner fire of God is tended and kept alive); and Prayer (standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart).

Jean Wise

The practice of breath prayers helps you connect more deeply and more intimately with God. Breath prayers are powerful, short prayers said in one breath, often only 5-7 words in length and quietly repeating a phrase for several minutes allowing the words to merge with one’s breathing. The idea is to pick a meaningful phrase and repeat it until it become part of your very being.

Kay Marshall Strom brings experience and compassion to caregiving. Her practical ideas for how to meet your own needs for energy, patience, strength, wisdom, peace, and creativity will carry you through many difficult days.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

If you provide care for another person, whether you are a family member or a professional caregiver, you know that caregiving is hard, sometimes unappreciated work. But have you ever considered that it isn't easy to be the care receiver?

Shelly Beach

Caregiving is probably the hardest work you will ever do. Yet it can also change your heart and transform your life. Experienced caregiver Beach offers practical help and spiritual insights to those facing the challenges of caregiving.

Annetta Dellinger 

Find encouragement for the realities of daily care giving challenges. Through brief Gospel-focused readings and Scripture verses, this small book offers refreshment and renewal for the exhausted caregiver. Each reading focuses on Jesus as the source of our hope and strength. Blessings and Prayers for Caregivers can be tucked in a pocket or a purse to go with you wherever you are and to be at your fingertips whenever you have a minute or two and need a word of encouragement.

Kenneth C. Haugk, PhD

An essential guide on how to care for and relate to people as they encounter difficult times in life. This book draws on extensive research of those who have experienced various kinds of suffering in their lives, offering key insights and suggestions of what to say and do—and what not to say or do—when people are hurting. With its biblical foundation, compassionate approach, and concrete ideas, this book will help you bring God’s loving presence to hurting people when they need it most.

BUY FROM STEPHEN MINISTRIES

Merry Marinello

Are you ready to find something more than just a lesson to learn from painful experiences? Are you ready to meet God in a deeper, more meaningful way? In the package of suffering, God wraps a most surprising, precious gift: Himself. If you find yourself struggling to see God, may the meditations in this book carry you to his arms of love and his throne of grace.

Megan A Schartner

It can be difficult to explain symptoms to others but Foggy Frog and the Pain Gang can help. Come meet the gang, and get a better understanding of what life is like with an invisible illness causing chronic pain and fatigue.

Rebecca Elliott

Toby loves his big sister Clemmie. She always looks after him and he looks after her—no matter what. Toby knows his sister is very brave, but when she has to go to the hospital again, they both have to help each other face their fears. Together, they still find ways to have fun and make the hospital a much better place. Their uplifting story will be loved by parents and children alike who find themselves in a similar situation.

Gemma Everson

A moving and true story about one little girl and her super energetic, superhero dad whose battery suddenly and unexplainably goes flat and will not fully recharge. This rhyming story shares their journey through the eyes of a child as she comes to terms with her father’s condition.

Dayna Abraham

Do kids' behaviors leave you confused and frustrated? Discover the power of using science and child development to see him/her for the superkid he/she already is. Bridge the gap between kids and the adults who love them by empowering kids to be their own problem solvers; helping adults understand what kids really need to succeed.

Margery Williams

For at least two hours the Boy loved him, and then Aunts and Uncles came to dinner, and there was a great rustling of tissue paper and unwrapping of parcels, and in the excitement of looking at all the new presents the Velveteen Rabbit was forgotten.

P.B. Power

Suffering need not be a dark experience… While illness brings time to think, the natural tendency of our thoughts may not be comforting. Sickness may end activities we once enjoyed; it will make us dependent upon others; and feelings of pain, or of uselessness, or of anxiety about the future, may be very real.

Mary C. Earle

For centuries, Christians have turned to the Benedictine practice of lectio divina, or sacred reading, to pray the Scripture and deepen their experience of God’s presence in their lives. In this gentle book, Mary Earle, who has suffered with serious illness of her own, explores how this ancient practice can be used to “read the text of our illnesses,” and, in doing so, discover God’s presence and guidance even in the midst of pain and suffering.

Esther Smith

When it comes to chronic pain and illness, perhaps no questions cause more confusion than the ones that arise when you are pulled out of a thriving life of work that benefits the world, only to spend your hours, days, and weeks languishing in bed. It just doesn’t make sense. Why, God? Why would you take away my thriving career when it took me years to get to this point?

Liuan Huska

What do we do when our bodies don't work the way they should? What is healing, when one has a chronic illness? Can we still be whole when our bodies suffer? Liuan helps us redefine what it means to find healing and wholeness even in the midst of ongoing pain.

Maureen Pratt

Using a combination of Bible passages, her own observations and insights, and prayer, Pratt provides help on issues that include dealing with isolation, coping with medical expenses, and learning to say no. Written with unstinting honesty and humor, Peace in the Storm will help readers identify their own spiritual and physical needs.

Craig K. Svensson

How do you live well when the physical foundation of your life is crumbling? This is the challenge for millions who live with diseases for which there is no cure. These incurable ailments produce a life of constant pain, fatigue, numbness, dizziness, and other debilitating symptoms that create chronic suffering. Can you thrive in life while experiencing the suffering persistent sickness provokes? Drawing on his expertise as a pharmacist-scientist, as well as a fellow sufferer with several incurable diseases, he helps to steer readers through the twists and turns of life with chronic illness.

Kenneth C. Haugk, PhD

An essential guide on how to care for and relate to people as they encounter difficult times in life. This book draws on extensive research of those who have experienced various kinds of suffering in their lives, offering key insights and suggestions of what to say and do—and what not to say or do—when people are hurting. With its biblical foundation, compassionate approach, and concrete ideas, this book will help you bring God’s loving presence to hurting people when they need it most.

BUY FROM STEPHEN MINISTRIES

Matthew S. Stanford

Why has the church struggled in ministering to those with mental illnesses? Each day men and women diagnosed with mental disorders are told they need to pray more and turn from their sin. Mental illness is equated with demonic possession, weak faith, and generational sin. Learn about mental illness from both biblical and scientific perspectives.  

Matthew S. Stanford

The church's response to child and adolescent mental health disorders has too often been characterized by fear and misinformation rather than grace or wisdom. The result has been families that desperately need practical advice and pastoral care on these disorders, and on the thorny issues that often surround them.

Stephen Grcevich

The church across North America has struggled to minister effectively with children, teens, and adults with common mental health conditions and their families. One reason for the lack of ministry is the absence of a widely accepted model for mental health outreach and inclusion.

Amy Simpson

Mental illness is the sort of thing we don't like to talk about. It doesn't reduce nicely to simple solutions and happy outcomes. So instead, too often we reduce people who are mentally ill to caricatures and ghosts, and simply pretend they don't exist. They do exist...

Makoto Fujimura

After thirty years of painting and creating in his studio, this book is his broad and deep exploration of creativity and the spiritual aspects of “making.” In between pouring precious, pulverized minerals onto handmade paper to create the prismatic, refractive surfaces of his art, he comes into the quiet space in the studio, in a discipline of awareness, waiting, prayer, and praise.

Luci Shaw

Imagination, appreciation of beauty, creativity: all of these qualities have been given to us by God. Provocative, enlightening, and above all, inspiring, Breath for the Bones will help readers discover the artist within, and bring them further along the path to God Himself.

Dirk Devries

Did you know that your digital camera (or smart phone) can be a window to wonder and God? Indeed, the practice of contemplative photography invites people of faith to set aside distractions of contemporary life. This enables them to view the world through the eyes of the divine and uncover the extra-ordinary in the ordinary.

Matthew Knisely

In this modern age, many of us fill every "spare" moment we have rather than taking an intermission to see the true works of God and realize that he is present in every moment. The author illustrates a new way to see God and to help us live in the moment through the exploration of various photography concepts.

Michael Card

With Jesus as his model, Card shows how understanding God's creative imagination leads to a lifestyle of humility, obedience and servanthood. And he invites us to follow God's creative call through worship and community. He has articulated the story of Jesus to others through his own scribblings in the sand. This book shows us how we can do the same.

Philip Richter

Millions of photos are taken every day across the world. Some are just snapshots. Others are more carefully crafted and have the capacity to deepen our vision and sharpen our sense of what life is truly about. Spirituality in Photography explores how photography can offer unique perspectives on the self, the world, and what we live by.

Elizabeth Ruth Skoglund

Millions read the words of the great nineteenth-century preacher Charles Spurgeon without knowing that his ministry succeeded during seasons of overwhelming emotional pain and deep depression this great man of God encountered.

Spurgeon confronted emotional problems with an acceptance based on physical, emotional, and spiritual causes and cures.

David P. Murray

Many Christians mistakenly believe that true Christians don't get depressed, and this misconception heaps additional pain and guilt onto those who are suffering from mental and emotional distress. The author exposes misconceptions some Christians have about the causes and treatments of depression.

Readers discover that depression is a complex problem that defies superficial answers and provides help and hope to those suffering from depression, caregivers, pastors, and churches.

Diana Gruver

The depressed have often been ostracized or institutionalized. But looking back in church history we find others who are companions in the darkness. They include some of our most beloved saints - Martin Luther, Charles Spurgeon, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King Jr. The author tells their stories in fresh ways and offers a wealth of practical wisdom for those in the darkness and those caring for them.

Michelle Bengston

Dr. Bengtson writes with deep compassion, blending her training and faith, to offer readers a hope grounded in God’s love and grace. She helps readers understand what depression is, how it affects them spiritually, and what, by God’s grace, it cannot do. The result is an approach that offers the hope of release, not just the management of symptoms. For those who struggle with depression and those who want to help them, discover hope for the future.

Nika Maples

Hope is not an accident. Sometimes it has to be hunted, and hunting it takes courage. Hope hunters know how to excavate hope from hardship. They rake through the rubble of an unwanted situation, digging into difficult circumstances because they have come to expect that adversity will produce good. They believe that light always triumphs over darkness. They have learned to walk through winter with their eyes on spring.

Chris Hodges and Rick Warren

Depression is the number one health issue in the world today, yet those who suffer are still sometimes stigmatized—especially followers of Jesus. Many assume God's peace, power, and protection should prevent us from ever feeling anxious, depressed, and afraid. But the Bible teaches otherwise, particularly in its depiction of the life of the Old Testament prophet Elijah.

Zack Eswine

Fresh insights about Charles Spurgeon’s recurring battles with depression and the remedies that sustained the great 19th century British preacher.

Spurgeon is quoted concerning the nature and complexity of depression, and strategies for relieving it that he found helpful. The author uses Spurgeon to show how God’s Word sustains in the midst of depression.

John Piper

Even the most faithful, focused Christians can encounter periods of depression and spiritual darkness when joy seems to stay just out of reach. It can happen because of distressing circumstances or hereditary and other physical causes.

John Piper aims to give some comfort and guidance to those experiencing spiritual darkness. Readers will gain insight into the physical side of depression and spiritual darkness and what it means to wait on the Lord in a time of darkness.

Lisa Brittain

A unique devotional based on the book of book of Ruth focuses on a single word. Personal examples help us to question our faith and glean important truths.

Christopher D. Hudson

Experience the peace, joy, and hope that come from deepening your understanding of who God is with this beautiful devotional. From Adonai to Jehovah-Jireh, each of these stunning full-color daily devotions usher you into the very presence of God by having you reflect on who God is. In God's names, you will find new reasons to worship Him, trust Him, and praise Him even more!

Henri Nouwen

A daybook of reflections as Nouwen suddenly found himself on "a true spiritual adventure." For in these 366 original, interlocking morsels of daily wisdom, he provides both sustenance and a trail for us to follow, as he unveils, to his own surprise, his personal map of faith.

Gerhard E. Frost

86 short reflections inspired by the biblical Job. Each reflection begins with a quotation from Job and wrestles with the difficult issues that we face during times of crisis, such as trust in God, the meaning of life, and fairness in the world. With newly added questions for reflection and discussion, this thoughtful book is ideal for individual and group study or for personal devotion.

 Douglas Kaine McKelvey

A book of liturgies for the ordinary events of daily life--liturgies such as "A Liturgy for Feasting with Friends" or "A Liturgy for Laundering" or "A Liturgy for the First Hearthfire of the Season." These are ways of reminding us that our lives are shot through with sacred purpose even when, especially when, we are too busy or too caught up in our busyness to notice.

Tammy Mashburn

Mornings in The Word was birthed out of my relationship with God. My years of a shallow relationship led to a longing for deeper relationship. This book is for the women who have gone before me, who walk along beside me, and behind me. My longing is for you to find deep and abiding relationship in God.

Joni Eareckson Tada

Joni Eareckson Tada wants to help you become rich in faith and wealthy in hope. Some people focus on material treasures, but Joni reminds you that life’s true gems come from God―priceless pearls that are worth everything to purchase … and own. In the tradition of Diamonds in the Dust and More Precious Than Silver comes this book, Pearls of Great Price.

Shelly Miller

Sabbath-keeping not only brings physical refreshment, it restores the soul. God commands us to “remember the Sabbath,” but is it realistic in today’s fast-paced culture? In this warm and helpful book, Shelly Miller dispels legalistic ideas about Sabbath and shows how even busy people can implement a rhythm of rest into their lives–whether for an hour, a morning, or a whole day.

Kara J. Plett

Journeying with a chronic illness is hard but as Christians we don’t have to walk alone. God wants us to press into Him for strength, understanding, and perspective. These 30 self-paced devotions invite you to meet with God in a special way as you interact with His Word and complete the journaling activities within the pages.