BOOKS WE LOVE
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DISCOVERING HOPE: Beginning the Journey Toward Hope in Chronic Illness
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.
FINDING PURPOSE: Rediscovering Meaning in a Life with Chronic Illness
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.
EMBRACING WORTH: Understanding Your Value in a Life with Chronic Illness
Cindee Snider Re
This 10-chapter study powerfully reminds us that our value isn’t found in what we can or cannot do, but in Christ alone. Regardless of what we’ve lost through chronic illness, this isn’t the end of our story, for despite our circumstances, in the midst of the hard, when we’re not sure we can take even one more breath, God is still good.
I TAKE YOU IN SICKNESS & IN HEALTH: Marriage with Chronic Illness
Cindee Snider Re
Rejuvenate, revitalize, rekindle, and reconnect with this insightful and enriching 10-chapter study (designed just for couples) that 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.
GRACE, TRUTH & TIME: Facilitating Thriving Small Groups
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, and build small group communities that thrive.
The Dream Giver
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.
The Great Divorce
C.S. Lewis
A classic Christian allegorical tale about a bus ride from hell to heaven, this book is an extraordinary meditation upon good and evil, grace and judgment.
Hinds Feet On High Places
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.
The Pilgrim's Progress
John Bunyan
The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come, delivered under the Similitude of a Dream, is a Christian allegory written by John Bunyan. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of religious English literature, has been translated into more than 200 languages, and has never been out of print.
The Screwtape Letters
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.
The Time Keeper
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.
The Velveteen Rabbit
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.
Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation
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.
The Way of the Heart: Connecting with God Through Prayer, Wisdom, and Silence
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).
Whispers: Being with God in Breath Prayers
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.
Word by Word: A Daily Spiritual Practice
Marilyn McEntyre
Word by Word is a beautifully written book of meditations on fifteen well-chosen words. Readers are invited to dwell intentionally with single words: remembering their biblical and literary contexts, considering the personal associations they bring up, and allowing them to become a focus for prayer and meditation.
A Caregiver’s Survival Guide: How to Stay Healthy When Your Loved One is Sick
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.
A Spirituality of Caregiving
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. However, have you ever considered that it isn't easy to be the care receiver?
Ambushed by Grace: Help and Hope on the Caregiving Journey
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.
Being There: How to Love Those Who Are Hurting
Dave Furman
We all know people suffering from sickness, disability, depression, or grief. Where are we to find strength in such circumstances? Dave Furman offers support, encouragement, and wisdom for those called to care for others in need, equipping us to effectively care for the hurting and pointing us to the strength that God provides.
Blessings & Prayers for Caregivers
Annetta Dellinger
Find encouragement for the realities of daily caregiving 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 go and to be at your fingertips whenever you have a minute or two and need a word of encouragement.
Don't Sing Songs to a Heavy Heart: How to Relate to Those Who are Suffering
Kenneth C. Haugk, PhD
Haugk has written 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.
Invisible Illness, Visible God: When Pain Meets the Power of an Indestructible Life
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.
Not Alone: Encouragement for Caregivers
Neil E. Noonan
Caregivers have a front-row seat to suffering. Helping someone (most likely a close loved one) through disease, pain, frailty, and death exacts a tremendous toll. We don't want to think about it, feeling inadequate and overwhelmed with despair in the midst of it. Yet we must somehow pull it together and press on.
Foggy Frog and the Pain Gang
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.
How Can I Help? God's Calling for Kids
Mary Moerbe
God sends people to help in little ways and big ways. He calls all of us to love and to serve others, to help however we can no matter how old or young we are. A child's call to love and serve is the same as an adult's.
Children learn that God provides for their needs (sometimes through others he places in their life), he works through them to help others, and he has a plan for their life no matter what.
Sometimes
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.
Squirmy Wormy: How I Learned to Help Myself
Lynda Farrington Wilson
Squirmy Wormy is a wonderful little children's book about a boy named Tyler, who has autism and SPD. Together with Tyler, the reader learns about SPD and what easy therapies he can do by himself to feel better. For instance: "I feel like running really fast, run run run! Maybe I just need a s-q-u-e-e-z-e between the couch cushions like a hot dog. Whew! I feel better." Kids can help themselves through daily life like no one has before with some great everyday tips and techniques.
Supercharged Superhero
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.
The Superkids Activity Guide to Conquering Every Day: Awesome Games and Crafts to Master Your Moods, Boost Focus, Hack Mealtimes and Help Grownups Understand Why You Do the Things You Do
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 s/he already is. Bridge the gap between kids and the adults who love them by empowering kids to be their own problem solvers. Abraham's guide helps adults understand what kids really need to succeed.
The Velveteen Rabbit
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.
Zip-Line
David Humpherys
A book for kids that have a scar on their chest from open-heart surgery to repair a CHD. Used by families, schools, and hospitals, Zip-line whimsically explains the answer to the question "How did that line get there?" The story centers around a little girl and her bunny rabbit explaining to the reader how she got the scar on her chest and how she isn't any different than anyone else.
Don't Sing Songs to a Heavy Heart: How to Relate to Those Who are Suffering
Kenneth C. Haugk, PhD
Haugk has written 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.
Grace for the Afflicted: A Clinical and Biblical Perspective on Mental Illness
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.
Grace for the Children: Finding Hope in the Midst of Child and Adolescent Mental Illness
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 surround them.
Joy in the Sorrow: How a Thriving Church (and Its Pastor) Learned to Suffer Well
Matt Chandler and Friends
We all wonder how we will cope in times of terrible suffering, and how we can best support others who are suffering. We all ask the question: "How does suffering square with God's character and purpose?" Joy in the Sorrow is Matt's story of his battle with a potentially fatal brain tumor and the stories of those who taught him -- and teach him -- how to walk with joy in sorrow.
Mental Health and the Church: A Ministry Handbook for Including Children and Adults with ADHD, Anxiety, Mood Disorders, and Other Common Mental Health Conditions
Stephen Grcevich
The church across North America has struggled to minister effectively to 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.
Troubled Minds: Mental Illness and the Church’s Mission
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, simply pretending they don't exist. They do exist...
Art and Faith: A Theology of Making
Makoto Fujimura
After thirty years of painting and creating in his studio, Fujimura has written this book as a broad and deep exploration of creativity and the spiritual aspects of “making.” He describes how, 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.
Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination and Spirit: A Reflection on Creativity and Faith
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.
Contemplative Vision: Photography As a Spiritual Practice
Dirk Devries
Did you know that your digital camera (or smartphone) can be a window to wonder and God? Indeed, the practice of contemplative photography invites people of faith to set aside the distractions of contemporary life. This enables them to view the world through the eyes of the divine and uncover the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice
Christine Valters Paintner
More than a book on photographic technique, Eyes of the Heart is about cultivating photography as a spiritual practice. The book goes through six themes connecting the medium of photography with the Christian spiritual life, inviting readers to a new way of viewing the world — through the lens of a camera.
Framing Faith: From Camera to Pen, An Award-Winning Photojournalist Captures God in a Hurried World
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. In Framing Faith, Knisely illustrates a new way to see God and to help us live in the moment through the exploration of various photography concepts.
Scribbling in the Sand: Christ and Creativity
Michael Card
With Jesus as his model, Card shows how understanding God's creative imagination leads to a lifestyle of humility, obedience, and servanthood. Card articulates the story of Jesus through his "scribblings in the sand" and invites us to join him in following God's creative call through worship and community.
Spirituality in Photography: Taking Pictures with Deeper Vision
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 the things we live by.
Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art
Madeleine L'Engle
What does it mean to be a Christian artist? What is the relationship between faith and art? The author's insightful and beautiful reflections on faith and art call the reader to listen, be aware, and respond to creation through one's own art.