My Rock My Refuge
New York pastor Timothy Keller is known for his ability to connect a deep understanding of the Bible with contemporary thought and the practical issues we all face in our lives. My Rock; My Refuge – his first devotional, consisting of all new material – offers inspiration for every day of the year, based on the book of Psalms. Here Keller helps readers apply the principles he laid out in his book Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God. He walks them verse by verse through the entire Psalter, the one biblical book designed to teach us how to pray, how to spiritually handle every possible life situation, and how to actually know God.
NEARING HOME: LIFE, FAITH, AND FINISHING WELL
by: Billy Graham But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. —Acts 20:24 (ESV) Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life,” says Billy Graham, known by many as God’s Ambassador. “I would have never guessed what God had in store for me, and I know that as I am nearing home, He will not forsake me the last mile of the way.” In Nearing Home this man of faith—now in his nineties—explores the challenges of aging while gleaning foundational truths from Scripture. Billy Graham invites us to journey with him as he considers the golden years while anticipating the hope of being reunited with his wife, Ruth, in his heavenly home that eclipses this world. “When granted many years of life, growing old in age is natural, but growing old with grace is a choice,” says the author. “Growing older with grace is possible for all who will set their hearts and minds on the Giver of grace, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Join Billy Graham as he shares the challenges of fading strength but still standing strong in his commitment to finishing life well. “Explore with me not only the realities of life as we grow older but also the hope and fulfillment and even joy that can be ours once we learn to look at these years from God’s point of view and discover His strength to sustain us every day.” —BILLY GRAHAM
New morning mercies: A daily gospel devotional
365 Gospel-Centered Devotions for the Whole Year Mornings can be tough. Sometimes, a hearty breakfast and strong cup of coffee just aren’t enough. Offering more than a rush of caffeine, best-selling author Paul David Tripp wants to energize you with the most potent encouragement imaginable: the gospel. Forget “behavior modification” or feel-good aphorisms. Tripp knows that what we really need is an encounter with the living God. Then we’ll be prepared to trust in God’s goodness, rely on his grace, and live for his glory each and every day.
Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family
Winner of the ECPA Book of the Year Award for Christian Living
Over 100,000 Copies in Print
What is your calling as a parent?
In the midst of folding laundry, coordinating carpool schedules, and breaking up fights, many parents get lost. Feeling pressure to do everything “right” and raise up “good” children, it’s easy to lose sight of our ultimate purpose as parents in the quest for practical tips and guaranteed formulas.
In this life-giving book, Paul Tripp offers parents much more than a to-do list. Instead, he presents us with a big-picture view of God’s plan for us as parents. Outlining four teen foundational principles centered on the gospel, he shows that we need more than the latest parenting strategy or list of techniques. Rather, we need the rescuing grace of God―grace that has the power to shape how we view everything we do as parents.
Freed from the burden of trying to manufacture life-change in our children’s hearts, we can embraceagrand perspective of parenting overflowing with vision, purpose, and joy.
PRAYER : FINDING THE HEART’S TRUE HOME
by: Richard Foster A comprehensive, profound and immediately accessible book which opens the way for all to increase their understanding and develop their practice of prayer. Richard Foster explores the riches of the historical classics of prayer as well as his own personal experience and roots his teaching in scripture. No one who reads PRAYER will remain unmoved; all will find encouragement within its pages.
Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God
Renowned pastor and New York Times bestselling author of The Prodigal Prophet Timothy Keller explores the power of prayer.
Christians are taught in their churches and schools that prayer is the most powerful way to experience God. But few receive instruction or guidance in how to make prayer genuinely meaningful. In Prayer, renowned pastor Timothy Keller delves into the many facets of this everyday act.
With his trademark insights and energy, Keller offers biblical guidance as well as specific prayers for certain situations, such as dealing with grief, loss, love, and forgiveness. He discusses ways to make prayers more personal and powerful, and how to establish a practice of prayer that works for each reader.
Praying finding our way through duty to delight
Praying is an action. Praying is an action that is of the essence of Christian existence. It involves our beliefs, emotions, values, hopes and fears, certainties and uncertainties, knowledge and ignorance. As J. I. Packer and Carolyn Nystrom explain, this book “is a heart-to-heart affair, in which two Christians who try to pray and wish they prayed better share thoughts about what they are doing with people whom they envisage as being like themselves. . . . Our aim is not just to clarify Christian understanding but to foster Christian living. In real praying, head, heart and hands go together.” With wisdom, humility and sincerity the authors lead us through different moods of praying, including brooding, praising, asking, complaining and hanging on. In Praying the authors offer hope for those of us who daydream when we try to listen to God and stumble when we try to speak. Yet they don’t just teach us about prayer; they challenge and inspire us to do it by pointing us to a clearer realization of the reality of God and his character. Let Packer and Nystrom come alongside you to encourage and guide your active praying to our powerful God, and let him move your praying through mere duty to delight.
Raising Giant – Killers
Releasing Your Child’s Divine Destiny through Intentional Parenting With honesty, humor, and keen biblical insight, bestselling authors Bill and Beni Johnson help you discover the keys to successful parenting in God’s kingdom. “Parents, we rule for the purpose of protection, but we also serve with the purpose of empowering,” they write. “We want to release our children into their destiny–that’s the privilege of parenting.” In these pages you will gain the wisdom, kingdom concepts, and practical tools you need to help raise your children to their best.
RECLAIMING LOVE: RADICAL RELATIONSHIPS IN A COMPLEX WORLD
by: Ajith Fernando In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul places love at the very center of what it means to embrace life in Christ. All other spiritual gifts are worth nothing in comparison. But the love explained in those verses is nothing short of radical. Fernando’s pastoral work—in the midst of the cultural and ethnic tensions of Sri Lanka—often brought up a very real and honest question: ‘Can the biblical teaching about love actually be practiced?’ The answer he discovered is a resounding ‘yes.’ The radical love of God is not only real, but it is the key to experiencing joy in the pain and suffering of this world. Believers must look to the Scriptures for God’s teaching on the true nature of love, its divine origins, and its power for those who trust in Christ. This book offers reflections on the Bible’s consistent teaching on love and shares real-life experiences of learning to love in difficult situations.
Renovation of the Heart
Renovation of the Heart, a bestseller by Dallas Willard, explains the common misunderstandings about human nature and the discipleship process by outlining the general pattern of personal spiritual transformation―not as a formula, but as a systematic process. As intentional apprentices of Jesus, we are to move deeper into a relationship with God while becoming more like Jesus. In his unique, winning way, Willard guides you in discovering your true identity while exploring spiritual growth in a new way. Includes discussion questions.
RUMORS OF ANOTHER WORLD
What On Earth Are We Missing? by: Philip Yancey What on earth are we missing? Philip Yancey believes we are missing the supernatural hidden in everyday life. In Rumors of Another World, Yancey investigates the natural world and discovers the supernatural hiding in plain view. He grapples with why God made the world and what our role truly is, and seeks to answer the question, ‘How do I live in the natural world while expressing the values of the supernatural?’ Philip writes, ‘I have come to understand faith as the highest form of integrated encounter. Faith puts together, assembles, re-orders, accepting the entire world as God’s handiwork. We live among clues, like rescuers sifting through pieces of stained glass shattered by a bomb, and only with a blueprint or some memory of original design can we begin to connect the shards, to assemble them into a pattern that makes sense of our world. ‘Nature and supernature are not two separate worlds, but different expressions of the same reality. To encounter the world as a whole, we need a more supernatural awareness of the natural world.’ Yancey invites readers to join him on a journey of discovery. He challenges us to tune into ‘rumors of another world,’ and connect the seen with the unseen. He promises that the grace-filled result will be a life of beauty, purpose, freedom, and faith.
Run with the horses the quest for life at its best
In Jeremiah 12:5 God says to the prophet, “If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?” We all long to live life at its best―to fuse freedom and spontaneity with purpose and meaning. Why then do we often find our lives so humdrum, so unadventuresome, so routine? Or else so frantic, so full of activity, but still devoid of fulfillment? How do we learn to risk, to trust, to pursue wholeness and excellence―to run with the horses in the jungle of life? In a series of profound reflections on the life of Jeremiah the prophet, Eugene Peterson explores the heart of what it means to be fully and genuinely human. His writing is filled with humor and self-reflection, insight and wisdom, helping to set a course for others in the quest for life at its best.
SOUL SURVIVOR
by: Philip Yancey We stand at the dawn of the twenty-first century, yet we still struggle to understand the ways in which God taught us to live. Even the church has distorted the message, damaging lives and confusing countless people in the process. Is it possible to live a meaningful life of faith in a world where religion has caused so much harm? Bestselling writer Philip Yancey, whose own Christian belief was almost destroyed by the Church, has spent a lifetime searching for a faith that works. Soul Survivor tells his story, and the stories of thirteen people whose remarkable lives have shaped his own spiritual journey, From John Donne to Martin Luther King Jr, Dostoevsly to Mahatma Gandhi, G. K. Chesterton to Henri Nouwen, he pays homage to some of the most inspiring, selfless, yet provocative individuals our world has known, and asks what we can do to find such beautiful faith in our own lives.
SPIRIT RISING: TAPPING INTO THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
by: Jim Cymbala, Jennifer Schuchmann For some of us being a Christian is harder than it should be. Discouraged, anxious, worn down, we wonder what happened to the power and the joy that Jesus promised. Jim Cymbala believes that many of us are missing something vital. Christianity, he says, for even the best-intentioned person or church, is impossible without the Holy Spirit. You can have regular devotions, great preaching, a strong emphasis on the Bible, a great worship team, and a congregation that is trying, but if you aren’t vitally in touch with God’s Spirit, you are missing out on the life God has for you. The Holy Spirit, he points out, is God’s agent on earth. Yet he is the least understood, least preached about, and least discussed member of the Trinity. That is sad, because without him, our spiritual lives will always become dry, mechanical, and a struggle. Too often, the body of Christ is divided into two sides. One side stresses the Word of God, separating itself from what it views as the emotional fanaticism often linked to those emphasizing the Holy Spirit. The other side is sometimes known for drifting into unbiblical manifestations and unorthodox teaching while attributing it all to the Spirit of God. But the Christianity we see in Scripture is both grounded in the Word and full of the Spirit. With stunning stories of how God is working in the lives of people and churches today and biblical teaching about the Holy Spirit, Jim Cymbala invites you to experience God in a fresh and vital way. Nothing else will change our prayer life, our study of God’s word, and our worship more than opening our hearts to the Spirit. If we want power, confidence, joy, peace, and more love in our lives, then we need a better understanding of how and why the Spirit moves so we can join him there.
SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP
by: J. Oswald Sanders The need for talented vigorous leaders in the church cannot be overemphasized. Such times demand active service of men and women who are guided by and devoted to Jesus Christ. With more than 750,000 copies in print, Spiritual Leadership stands as a proven classic for developing such leadership. In these pages J. Oswald Sanders presents the key principles of leadership in both the temporal and spiritual realms, illustrating his points with examples from Scripture and biographies of eminent men of God (Moses, Nehemiah, Paul, David Livingstone, Charles Spurgeon, and others). He writes that even natural leadership qualities are God-given, and their true effectiveness can only be reached when they are used to the glory of God
STORIES OF THE BIBLE
Bible Stories Every Child Should Know by: Dr. Connie Palm All the best adventure stories from the Bible, beautifully illustrated and written in clear, simple international English. These stories will capture your children’s attention to give the best possible introduction to the Bible. Here you will find: • large print • clear simple sentences • fast-moving stories • lively detailed illustrations These Bible Stories can become the building blocks of the soul – the building blocks that lead to eternal life.
Suffering
Sometimes life just hurts. Out of nowhere, death, illness, unemployment, or a difficult relationship can change our lives and challenge everything we thought we knew—leaving us feeling unable to cope. But, in the midst if all this pain and confusion, we are not alone. Weaving together his personal story, pastoral ministry experience, and biblical insights, best-selling author Paul David Tripp helps us trust God in the midst of suffering. He identifies traps to avoid in our suffering and points us instead to comforts to embrace. This raw yet hope-filled book will help you cling to God’s promises when trials come and move forward with the hope of the gospel.
Teach us to pray
One of the most basic and vital dimensions of the Christian life is the practice of prayer. Frequently our prayers begin with a petition or request, so the content of our prayers is informed by our circumstances. But what if the opposite were true? What if we allowed our prayers to inform our lives? What would our lives be like if prayer altered our living and began to shape the contours and content of our daily experiences? Gordon Smith invites us to learn three movements of prayer―thanksgiving, confession, and discernment―in order to be formed and transformed by prayers that seek God’s kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.” Whether you are a beginner in the life of prayer or further along, this small book is a resource for deepening your prayer practice.
The Family Life of Christian Leader
Anyone involved in Christian ministry knows how challenging it is to balance ministry and family responsibilities. Many demands pull leaders in different directions—making it easy to neglect one or the other, often without even realizing it. Writing from decades of counseling and personal ministry experience, Ajith Fernando points Christian leaders back to the most important aspect of their lives: their relationship with God. He then offers practical guidance for responding to real-life situations in the home, including disciplining children, dealing with disappointment, loving one’s spouse, and pursuing joy. This book presents Christian leaders with a healthy and God-centered understanding of family that leads to a flourishing home.
THE JESUS I NEVER KNEW
What On Earth Are We Missing? by: Philip Yancey What happens when a respected Christian journalist decides to put his preconceptions aside and take a long look at the Jesus described in the Gospels? How does the Jesus of the New Testament compare to the ”new, rediscovered’ Jesus — or even the Jesus we think we know so well? Best-selling author Phillip Yancey says, ‘The Jesus I got to know in writing this book is very different from the Jesus I learned about in Sunday school. In some ways he is more comforting; in some ways more terrifying.’ Yancey offers a new and different perspective on the life of Christ and his work — his teaching, his miracles, his death and resurrection — and ultimately, who he was and why he came. Relating the gospel events to the world we live in today, The Jesus I Never Knew gives a moving and refreshing portrait of the central figure of history. With a willingness to tackle difficult questions, Yancey looks at the radical words of this itinerant Jewish carpenter and asks whether we are taking him seriously enough in our own day and age. From the manger in Bethlehem to the cross in Jerusalem, Yancey presents a complex character who generates questions as well as answers; a disturbing and exhilarating Jesus who wants to radically transform your life and stretch your faith. The Jesus I Never Knew uncovers a Jesus who is brilliant, creative, challenging, fearless, compassionate, unpredictable, and ultimately satisfying. This honest book will help you discover a different Jesus from the flannelgraph Sunday school figure, the sweetly smiling Victorian Savior, and all the cultural clichés that have tamed Jesus and kept him in comfortable religious boxes. According to Yancey, ‘No one who meets Jesus ever stays the same. In the end I found the process of writing this book to be a great act of faith-strengthening. Jesus has rocked my own preconceptions and has made me ask hard questions about why those of us who bear his name don’t do a better job of following him.’
The Meaning of Marriage
“Incredibly rich with wisdom and insight that will leave the reader, whether single or married, feeling uplifted.” —The Washington Times Based on the acclaimed sermon series by New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller, this book shows everyone—Christians, skeptics, singles, longtime married couples, and those about to be engaged—the vision of what marriage should be according to the Bible. Modern culture would have you believe that everyone has a soul mate; that romance is the most important part of a successful marriage; that your spouse is there to help you realize your potential; that marriage does not mean forever, but merely for now; and that starting over after a divorce is the best solution to seemingly intractable marriage issues. But these modern-day assumptions are wrong. Timothy Keller, with insights from Kathy, his wife of thirty-seven years, shows marriage to be a glorious relationship that is also misunderstood and mysterious. The Meaning of Marriage offers instruction on how to have a successful marriage, and is essential reading for anyone who wants to know God and love more deeply in this life. Look out for Timothy Keller’s latest book, The Songs of Jesus.
THE PLEASURE OF HIS COMPANY
by: Dutch Sheets There’s just something about people who are close to God. Through the ups and downs of life, they remain secure, hopeful. If you want a more rewarding spiritual life, if you want the pleasure of knowing your Creator’s heart, this soul-lifting book is for you. Learn from Dutch Sheets as he shares his life lessons for cultivating an intimate relationship with God. Each of the thirty short chapters reveals a simple practice or biblical mindset that will help draw you away from the noise of life and into the Lord’s peaceful presence. With profound insights from the Bible and stories you won’t soon forget, The Pleasure of His Company is like a spiritual mentor, showing you simple ways to enjoy God more.
THE PRODIGAL GOD
by: Timothy Keller Newsweek called New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller a “C.S. Lewis for the twenty-first century” in a feature on his first book, The Reason for God. In that book, he offered a rational explanation for why we should believe in God. Now, in The Prodigal God, Keller takes his trademark intellectual approach to understanding Christianity and uses the parable of the Prodigal Son to reveal an unexpected message of hope and salvation. Within that parable, Jesus reveals God’s prodigal grace toward both the irreligious and the moralistic. This book will challenge both the devout and skeptics to see Christianity in a whole new way.
The Prodigal prophet jonah and the mystery of God’s mercy
An angry prophet. A feared and loathsome enemy. A devastating storm. And the surprising message of a merciful God to his people.
The story of Jonah is one of the most well-known parables in the Bible. It is also the most misunderstood. Many people, even those who are nonreligious, are familiar with Jonah: A rebellious prophet who defies God and is swallowed by a whale. But there’s much more to Jonah’s story than most of us realize.
In The Prodigal Prophet, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller reveals the hidden depths within the book of Jonah. Keller makes the case that Jonah was one of the worst prophets in the entire Bible. And yet there are unmistakably clear connections between Jonah, the prodigal son, and Jesus. Jesus in fact saw himself in Jonah. How could one of the most defiant and disobedient prophets in the Bible be compared to Jesus?
Jonah’s journey also doesn’t end when he is freed from the belly of the fish. There is an entire second half to his story–but it is left unresolved within the text of the Bible. Why does the book of Jonah end on what is essentially a cliffhanger? In these pages, Timothy Keller provides an answer to the extraordinary conclusion of this biblical parable–and shares the powerful Christian message at the heart of Jonah’s story.