Though I don’t know where your fears started or how deep they sit in your soul, I do know this: Fear is a heavy burden. One of the heaviest you can carry. It’s exhausting and overwhelming. And it’s not from God. —Susie Davis, Unafraid In 1978 Susie Davis watched as a thirteen-year-old classmate entered her classroom and killed her teacher. As a witness to one of the earliest school shootings in our nation, Susie faced years of paralyzing fear and an intense distrust of God. But God relentlessly pursued her and, over time, broke Susie’s fear addiction. In Unafraid, Susie offers her hard-won insights about how we can trust God in the midst of our fears about violence, disease, and personal tragedy. With you, she asks, “How do we live unafraid? How do we remain aware of world events without giving in to fear? How do we make everyday choices to stop letting ‘What if?’ control us?” As Susie shows us, it is possible to break fear’s grasp on our lives. We can be aware of the terrible without forgetting the beautiful. We can look up with joy and realize the remarkable truth: Jesus wants to take our fear and give us, in its place, true peace. Walk this liberating journey with her and learn what it means to live unafraid.

Learn how to face and overcome the fears we feel about loneliness, illness, financial insecurity, disappointing others, failure, insignificance, and aging “A thoughtful, literate, faith-filled guide to reclaiming our minds and our lives.”—John Ortberg, senior pastor of Menlo Church and author of I’d Like You More If You Were More Like Me You’d be hard-pressed to overstate the extent to which fear, anxiety, and worry permeate our lives today. Fear wreaks havoc on our relationships and communities. It leads us into making bad decisions. It holds us back from the very pursuits that promise fulfillment and joy. As the senior pastor of a large, diverse church in America’s heartland, Adam Hamilton has seen the cost of fear up close. When he surveyed his congregation on how fear affects them, 2,400 people responded—and what they said was eye-opening. Eighty percent admitted to living with moderate or significant levels of fear. Unafraid is Hamilton's insightful and impassioned response. Drawing on recent research, inspiring real-life examples, and fresh biblical insight, Hamilton uses a mixture of facts and faith to help readers understand and counter fears related to such outsize perils as death and illness, as well as the everyday anxieties all of us encounter. He invites us to: Face our fears with a bias of hope Examine our fears in light of the facts Attack our anxieties with action Release our cares to God Writing with generosity and intelligence, Hamilton shows how believer and unbeliever alike can develop sustaining spiritual practices and embrace Jesus’s recurring counsel: “Do not be afraid.” For anyone struggling with fear or wondering how families and communities can thrive in troubled times, Unafraid offers an informed and inspiring message full of practical solutions.

Find Me Unafraid tells the uncommon love story between two uncommon people whose collaboration sparked a successful movement to transform the lives of vulnerable girls and the urban poor. With a Foreword by Nicholas Kristof. This is the story of two young people from completely different worlds: Kennedy Odede from Kibera, the largest slum in Africa, and Jessica Posner from Denver, Colorado. Kennedy foraged for food, lived on the street, and taught himself to read with old newspapers. When an American volunteer gave him the work of Mandela, Garvey, and King, teenaged Kennedy decided he was going to change his life and his community. He bought a soccer ball and started a youth empowerment group he called Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO). Then in 2007, Wesleyan undergraduate Jessica Posner spent a semester abroad in Kenya working with SHOFCO. Breaking all convention, she decided to live in Kibera with Kennedy, and they fell in love.Their connection persisted, and Jessica helped Kennedy to escape political violence and fulfill his lifelong dream of an education, at Wesleyan University. The alchemy of their remarkable union has drawn the support of community members and celebrities alike—The Clintons, Mia Farrow, and Nicholas Kristof are among their fans—and their work has changed the lives of many of Kibera’s most vulnerable population: its girls. Jess and Kennedy founded Kibera’s first tuition-free school for girls, a large, bright blue building, which stands as a bastion of hope in what once felt like a hopeless place. But Jessica and Kennedy are just getting started—they have expanded their model to connect essential services like health care, clean water, and economic empowerment programs. They’ve opened an identical project in Mathare, Kenya’s second largest slum, and intend to expand their remarkably successful program for change. Ultimately this is a love story about a fight against poverty and hopelessness, the transformation made possible by a true love, and the power of young people to have a deep impact on the world.

Celebrate a vulnerable and open life by overcoming your fear of criticism and start living the life God intended. ​ Fear of criticism has turned into a massive epidemic harder than ever to overcome. It prevents people from speaking up; it's why most people struggle to make decisions; it's why we're uncomfortable with vulnerability and openness; and it's why so many are unable to meet their full potential. But it doesn't have to be that way. Through the Bible story of King David dancing naked in the streets while his distant, guarded, and critical wife watches from a window, Naked and Unafraid provides a visual contrast of these two characters that sheds light on the way we all approach life and explains how the fear of criticism impacts our lives much more than we realize or are willing to admit. God didn't create us to live guarded, isolated lives. Our greatest fulfillment isn't found in the window. It's found in the street. Everything in our lives, including our relationships, our work, our emotional and spiritual health, gets better in a place of openness and vulnerability. But that doesn't mean it's easy. . . because it's not. Vulnerability is risky. Exposure is scary. Naked and Unafraid pushes readers to: Find the courage to not let criticism control or determine who they are and what they do. Stop living in the shallow end of relationships and experience the rewards that true vulnerability can bring. Abandon smallness and live the life they were born to live. Discover how the fear of criticism diminishes in direct proportion to understanding it. Reject the limitations and inhibitions of "window living," so they can experience the freedom and rewards of "street life." Confront their own worst critic that counts them out of what God has included them in. God will help you move away from window watching, and toward street dancing. Know who He says you are, and live in that freedom!

The boarding school known as Archangel Academy possesses a legacy of secrets known only to a privileged few. For in this peaceful, charming part of England lives a population of vampires at war with one another--and Michael Howard is caught in the middle of it all. . . When Michael left his small Nebraska hometown to enroll at Archangel Academy, he couldn't have imagined how much the experience would change him. Once mortal, Michael is now a vampire with a destiny that was foretold long ago, and a group of friends with their own mysterious abilities. But there are enemies too, some of them hiding in plain sight. Being strong enough to defend himself isn't enough. Michael must find a way to protect his entire race of vampires. Dark forces within the school will drive everyone to take sides in the escalating violence. And for all his new powers, Michael will discover that love, jealousy, and vengeance have a danger all their own. . .

In her deeply affecting, vividly written memoir, Rosemary L. Bray describes with remarkable frankness growing up poor in Chicago in the 1960s, and her childhood shaped by welfare, the Roman Catholic Church, and the civil rights movement. Bray writes poignantly of her lasting dread of the cold and the dark that characterized her years of poverty; of her mother's extraordinary strength and resourcefulness; and of the system that miraculously enabled her mother to scrape together enough to keep the children fed and clothed. Bray's parents, held together by their ambitions for their children and painfully divided by their poverty, punctuate young Rosemary's nights with their violent fights and define her days with their struggles. This powerful, ultimately inspiring book is a moving testimony of the history Bray overcame, and the racial obstacles she continues to see in her children's way.