Building Strong Friendships . . . We Need Them! "Sin always tends to make us blind to our own faults," writes James Houston, quoted in the book Connecting. "We need a friend to stop us from deceiving ourselves that what we are doing is not so bad after all. We need a friend to help us overcome our low-image, insulated self-importance, selfishness, pride, our deceitful nature, our dangerous fantasies. . . ." True, but there are so many other reasons we need close friends! And they are happy reasons, having nothing to do with sin and dysfunction. After all, what good is a smashing success without a close friend to share in our joy? What would a scrumptious dinner be like without a pal across the table to savor it with? And how can we ever truly know the good in ourselves unless our friend reminds us to take a second look and —especially in the times when we're so down on ourselves, blinded to the wonderful gifts God has given us. The Scripture agrees when it says: Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work. If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! - Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 Yes, we need close friends because we often stumble and need help getting up. In short, we need encouragement, affirmation, warmth, and smiling eyes looking back into ours. We'll never grow beyond our need for close friends, so let's learn how to create those friendships and keep them going strong.

Written by Lisa-Jo Baker of the (in)courage women's community, Never Unfriended, is a step-by-step guide to friendships you can trust with personal stories and practical tips to help you make the friends, and be the friend, that lasts.

Designed to generate impulse sales, titles in this line are carefully balanced for gift giving, self-purchase, or collecting. Little Books may be small in size, but they're big in titles and sales.

This unique approach to dating, courtship, and marriage based on Christian values offers young people a practical plan for finding the right life partner. Christian authors Michael and Judy Phillips are veterans of a forty-six-year marriage (and counting!). In this book, they share practical advice for young people who want a partnership that will last a lifetime. Drawing on their pioneering work in home schooling as well as their work with young people, Michael and Judy present bold, surprising, sometimes even controversial alternatives to dating as the means for choosing spouses. Best Friends for Life develops revolutionary ideas about parental involvement, about dating as it is usually understood, and about the pressures young people face to make lifetime decisions prematurely. Families who want to choose God’s best will find here a strong prescription for wise, sensible, and lasting Christian marriages.

Five brief episodes about two friends, George and Martha, who just happen to be hippopotamuses.

"....a very sweet dog story" -- Outside The story of a dog, his human, and the friendship that saved both of their lives. When Ben Moon moved from the Midwest to Oregon, he hadn’t planned on getting a dog. But when he first met the soulful gaze of a rescue pup in a shelter, Ben instantly felt a connection, and his friendship with Denali was born. The two of them set out on the road together, on an adventure that would take them across the American west and through some of the best years of their lives. But when Ben was diagnosed with colorectal cancer at age 29, he faced a difficult battle with the disease, and Denali never once left his side until they were back out surfing and climbing crags. It was only a short time later that Denali was struck by the same disease, and Ben had the chance to return the favor. Denali is the story of this powerful friendship that shaped Ben and Denali’s lives, showing the strength and love that we give and receive when we have our friends by our side.

Our best friends, Twitter followers, gal-pals, bromances, Facebook friends, and long distance buddies define us in ways we rarely openly acknowledge. But as a society, we are simultaneously terrified of being alone and already desperately lonely. We move through life in packs and friendship circles and yet, in the most interconnected age, we are stuck in the greatest loneliness epidemic of our time. It's killing us, making us miserable and causing a public health crisis. Increasingly, we don’t just die alone; we die because we are alone. What if meaningful friendships are the solution?Journalist Kate Leaver believes that friendship is the essential cure for the modern malaise of solitude, ill health, and anxiety and that, if we only treated camaraderie as a social priority, it could affect everything from our physical health and emotional well being. Her much-anticipated manifesto, The Friendship Cure, looks at what friendship means, how it can survive, why we need it, and what we can do to get the most from it. Why do some friendships last a lifetime, while others are only temporary? How do you “break up†? with a toxic friend? How do you make friends as an adult? Can men and women really be platonic? What are the curative qualities of friendship, and how we can deploy friendship to actually live longer, better lives?From behavioral scientists to besties, Kate draws upon the extraordinary research from academics, scientists, and psychotherapists, and stories from friends of friends, strangers from the Internet, and her “squad†? to get to the bottom of these and other facets of friendship. For readers of Susan Cain’s Quiet and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic, The Friendship Cure is a fascinating blend of accessible “smart thinking,†? investigative journalism, pop culture, and memoir for anyone trying to navigate this lonely world, written with the wit, charm, and bite of a fresh voice.