If you could point to one thing in your life and say, Lord, heal this. What would it be? Where does God's mercy most need to abide in your life? We all hold ourselves back from truly letting God love us, but what if today you let Him in? What would you lay down at the foot of the cross?

When Kristin Armstrong was in the pit of her divorce, she eagerly read every spiritual book and devotional she could get her hands on out of a hunger to connect with someone who knew exactly what she was going through and how she felt. Now, at a time when society offers so many conflicting messages about what it means to be a woman, Kristin invites readers to discover grace as a way of life. Using real-life anecdotes, biblical wisdom, and insight born of hard experience, Kristin teaches women the twelve traits of grace, inviting reflection and interaction. Warm, engaging, and practical, WORK IN PROGRESS examines what God has to say about being His kind of woman in the twenty-first century.

Carolyn Staley has been serving as a pastor's wife for over 45 years and she has been laboring over this exposition of PILGRIM'S PROGRESS for the last ten years. In her own words from her Preface we read: 'My journey to the Celestial City began at the age of nineteen when the Lord opened my heart, brought me to the Lord Jesus Christ, and saved me by his grace. In those early days as a young Christian, my tendency toward morbid introspection caused great mental anguish concerning the assurance of my salvation. During that dark period, I first became acquainted with John Bunyan when I was given two of his books, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners and The Pilgrim's Progress. At first I was actually afraid to read them, afraid that they would confirm my worst fears. However, as I began to read and ponder these works written so long ago, a glimmer of hope began to arise in my mind. I was not alone after all! John Bunyan suffered the very same things and wrote of them. At last I could give a name to the spiritual turmoil I had so often experienced. It was the murky Slough of Despond. The tormenting fear that so often held my heart and mind captive also had a name, Doubting Castle, baronial estate of Giant Despair. Thus I felt an immediate affinity with the humble tinker of Bedford that greatly encouraged me in those first days of my own pilgrimage. Many years later when I was asked to teach The Pilgrim's Progress to our teenagers in Sunday school, I gladly accepted the challenge and began an in-depth study of that great work. Using those early lessons as a foundation, I later expanded and revised them into a series of thirty meditational studies that were published in Adam's Rib, a monthly periodical especially designed for Christian women. These meditations provided the framework for an even more comprehensive study that resulted in the writing of this book."

The biblical teaching in Grow in Grace will appeal to Christians at all stages, while its straightforward explanation of the patterns of God's work in his people makes it ideal for those who are just beginning.

We all face stress and tension in our daily lives. We might even wonder why our God of abundant goodness doesn’t remove the everyday struggles we face. Jesus’ interactions with Martha and Mary in the Gospel provide us the key to understanding how God shows us his love by allowing tensions in our lives. As we follow the sisters’ transformative journeys through their own struggles, reflecting on what transpires between Scripture verses, we see their initial tension become the catalyst that drives both Mary and Martha to the feet of Jesus — the place where all discover peace. Grace in Tension explores the areas where stress arises in our own lives. Each chapter ends with a thought-provoking prayer to inspire us to go to God with our problems, followed by questions for reflection to help us see all the ways he’s working for our good. God doesn’t create any of it, but he does show up amid life’s difficulties, ready to lead us through. No matter how big or small our struggle, when we seek him out, he reveals what we need to do to resolve our tension, transforming it into grace. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Claire McGarry is the founder of MOSAIC of Faith, a ministry for mothers of infants to school-aged children to explore their faith through motherhood. She contributes regularly to CatholicMom.com and blogs at ShiftingMyPerspective.com. She is the author of Lenten devotional With Our Savior, and her work has appeared in Chicken Soup for the Soul, Keys for Kids, These Days, and Focus on the Family magazine. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and three children.