Jesus was quite clear that we must lose our life before we find it. This book gives a hopeful and realistic look at what losing our life entails, articulating how “growth” in the Christian life is not our ascent to God but the process by which our eyes are opened to the beauty God has already given to us. It is a book about descending into God, and into our own inner depths, about the deep waters of the Christian faith. “Put out into the deep and let your nets down for a catch.” (Luke 5:4) We live in a world that values productivity and success, and we vainly imagine that God expects us to be spiritually productive and successful, too. It doesn’t matter how much we talk about grace, our conversation is often narrowly focused on what we need to do for God—so much so that we often block the work God longs to do in us. This book does not articulate God’s work as a process by which we become spiritually strong, but rather as the process by which we embrace our weakness as the place where we most fully experience God’s perfect strength (2 Corinthians 12:9).

With Southern sass and a comedic flare, Dr. Donna Grant Wilcox delivers a message of hope as she shares about a life once filled with pain due to a rare blood disease and cancer. Faith in God and a determination to survive brought healing, joy, and abundant blessings into her life. Unable to have children of her own, Donna fell into depression. As she struggled to make sense of it all, God showed up big time! Nothing is too hard for God. Donna and her husband, Bob, have been a mom and dad to over forty-nine young people. Today, they also enjoy the title of proud grandparents. Through Falling into Faith: A Journey to Freedom, Donna delivers encouragement, mental health awareness tools, and transformational life lessons on growing your faith in God and believing the impossible!

In this searing meditation on the bonds of family and the allure of extremist faith, one of today’s most celebrated Christian writers recounts his unexpected journey from a strict fundamentalist upbringing to a life of compassion and grace—a revelatory memoir that “invites comparison to Hillbilly Elegy” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). “Searing, heartrending . . . This stunning tale reminds us that the only way to keep living is to ask God for the impossible: love, forgiveness, and hope.”—Kate Bowler, New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason Raised by an impoverished widow who earned room and board as a Bible teacher in 1950s Atlanta, Philip Yancey and his brother, Marshall, found ways to venture out beyond the confines of their eight-foot-wide trailer. But when Yancey was in college, he uncovered a shocking secret about his father’s death—a secret that began to illuminate the motivations that drove his mother to extreme, often hostile religious convictions and a belief that her sons had been ordained for a divine cause. Searching for answers, Yancey dives into his family origins, taking us on an evocative journey from the backwoods of the Bible Belt to the bustling streets of Philadelphia; from trailer parks to church sanctuaries; from family oddballs to fire-and-brimstone preachers and childhood awakenings through nature, music, and literature. In time, the weight of religious and family pressure sent both sons on opposite paths—one toward healing from the impact of what he calls a “toxic faith,” the other into a self-destructive spiral. Where the Light Fell is a gripping family narrative set against a turbulent time in post–World War II America, shaped by the collision of Southern fundamentalism with the mounting pressures of the civil rights movement and Sixties-era forces of social change. In piecing together his fragmented personal history and his search for redemption, Yancey gives testament to the enduring power of our hunger for truth and the possibility of faith rooted in grace instead of fear. “I truly believe this is the one book I was put on earth to write,” says Yancey. “So many of the strands from my childhood—racial hostility, political division, culture wars—have resurfaced in modern form. Looking back points me forward.”

Falling From the Faith brings together research on religious disaffiliation by leading sociologists of religion, exemplifying the current state of knowledge on an increasingly important subject. The volume is divided into two main sections, disaffiliation from mainline churches and from alternative religious groups, emphasising the different approaches used to study each and suggesting issues for future work. The contributors suggest that the patterns of disaffiliation disclose a historic restructuring of the place of religion in the social order. The volume is thus a useful tool for sociologists interested in the study of religion in today's society and an essential text for courses in religion.

Justice St. Rain has been writing short pieces for many years and has been producing material for use in promoting the Baha'i Faith for twenty years.

When the unthinkable strikes, FreeFall offers women biblical inspiration to emerge from a season of profound change as a restored woman of purpose.

"Saved!" meets To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before in this laugh-out-loud romantic comedy that takes a meaningful look at consent and what it means to give it. When CeCe’s born-again ex-boyfriend dumps her after they have sex, she follows him to Jesus camp in order to win him back. Problem: She knows nothing about Jesus. But her best friend Paul does. He accompanies CeCe to camp, and the plan—God’s or CeCe’s—goes immediately awry when her ex shows up with a new girlfriend, a True Believer at that. Scrambling to save face, CeCe ropes Paul into faking a relationship. But as deceptions stack up, she questions whether her ex is really the nice guy he seemed. And what about her strange new feelings for Paul—is this love, lust, or an illusion born of heartbreak? To figure it out, she’ll have to confront the reasons she chased her ex to camp in the first place, including the truth about the night she lost her virginity.