- Improve your health and well-being. - Remove the problems from your life - Increase the power of your faith In life, day-to-day problems come to us all, but if our faith is weak, even small problems can quickly grow to appear bigger than they really are. Doubt and worry are the most destructive forms of fear; they can cloud our vision blinding us from the truth. A mountain of doubt can cripple your life. Like a rabbit in headlights, you close your eyes and freeze, hoping the problem will go away when you have opened them. When it remains, you can be left dazed and confused not knowing what way to turn. All rational thought goes out the window. In a panic to get things back to the way they were; you can make all the wrong decisions. No one likes change, but it is much easier when you come from a place of strength; when it originates from a place of faith and not fear. Faith is like a muscle; like any muscle, it needs to be consistently exercised to have maximum power. When all is going smoothly, our faith can be easily neglected, although this is the time that we must use to maintain its strength. If you were asked to run a marathon tomorrow, unless you had put in the training, you might not even reach the half way point. How then can you expect to have the faith to remove the problems from your life if you do not first develop a level of faith that can do so? Faith is something that needs constant attention or thoughts of doubt will set in. In this book, I will share with you methods to increase your faith, and keep it at its highest level; so you are prepared for any problem or difficulty that may arise. When you nurture your faith, you will begin to see your life change in unusual ways. Things that once held you back will soon fade away. A simple change of perspective can make a mountain become level ground. Change your life today; increase the power within.

Jesus' first recorded sermon in the Bible is a blueprint for being happy here on earth. And though His definition contains no prescriptions for acquiring cars, homes, or savings, it does require transformation and obedience. MacArthur examines Jesus' timeless definition of happiness, and explains that our reward for following Jesus' plan is citizenship in the kingdom of God- and an abiding joy that can never be taken away. Study guide and review included for individual or group study.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Everybody tells you to live for a cause larger than yourself, but how exactly do you do it? The author of The Road to Character explores what it takes to lead a meaningful life in a self-centered world. “Deeply moving, frequently eloquent and extraordinarily incisive.”—The Washington Post Every so often, you meet people who radiate joy—who seem to know why they were put on this earth, who glow with a kind of inner light. Life, for these people, has often followed what we might think of as a two-mountain shape. They get out of school, they start a career, and they begin climbing the mountain they thought they were meant to climb. Their goals on this first mountain are the ones our culture endorses: to be a success, to make your mark, to experience personal happiness. But when they get to the top of that mountain, something happens. They look around and find the view . . . unsatisfying. They realize: This wasn’t my mountain after all. There’s another, bigger mountain out there that is actually my mountain. And so they embark on a new journey. On the second mountain, life moves from self-centered to other-centered. They want the things that are truly worth wanting, not the things other people tell them to want. They embrace a life of interdependence, not independence. They surrender to a life of commitment. In The Second Mountain, David Brooks explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation, how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our commitments into one overriding purpose. In short, this book is meant to help us all lead more meaningful lives. But it’s also a provocative social commentary. We live in a society, Brooks argues, that celebrates freedom, that tells us to be true to ourselves, at the expense of surrendering to a cause, rooting ourselves in a neighborhood, binding ourselves to others by social solidarity and love. We have taken individualism to the extreme—and in the process we have torn the social fabric in a thousand different ways. The path to repair is through making deeper commitments. In The Second Mountain, Brooks shows what can happen when we put commitment-making at the center of our lives.

The Sermon on the Mount, one of the most influential portions of the Bible, is the most studied and commented upon portion of the Christian Scriptures. Every Christian generation turns to it for insight and guidance. In this volume, a recognized expert on the Gospels shows that the Sermon on the Mount offers a clear window into understanding God's work in Christ. Jonathan Pennington provides a historical, theological, and literary commentary on the Sermon and explains how this text offers insight into God's plan for human flourishing. As Pennington explores the literary dimensions and theological themes of this famous passage, he situates the Sermon in dialogue with the Jewish and Greek virtue traditions and the philosophical-theological question of human flourishing. He also relates the Sermon's theological themes to contemporary issues such as ethics, philosophy, and economics.

This timely coming of age novel takes on the controversial issues of fracking and environmental protection. Stay away from my woods. Eleven-year-old Fern doesn't have the easiest life. Her stepfather is out of work, and she's responsible for putting dinner on the table--not to mention keeping her wild younger brothers out of trouble. The woods near their home is her only refuge, where she finds food and plays with her neighbor's dog. But when a fracking company rolls into town, her special grove could be ripped away, and no one else seems to care. Her stepfather needs the money that a job with the frackers could bring to their family, and her wealthy grandfather likes the business it brings to their town. Even her best friend doesn't understand what the land means to Fern. With no one on her side, how can she save the forest that has protected her for so long? The acclaimed author of Wonder at the Edge of the World weaves a poignant story about life on the poverty line, the environment, friendship and family--and, most of all, finding your place in the world.

An instant New York Times bestseller. Over 1 million copies sold! Two spiritual giants. Five days. One timeless question. Nobel Peace Prize Laureates His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have survived more than fifty years of exile and the soul-crushing violence of oppression. Despite their hardships—or, as they would say, because of them—they are two of the most joyful people on the planet. In April 2015, Archbishop Tutu traveled to the Dalai Lama's home in Dharamsala, India, to celebrate His Holiness's eightieth birthday and to create what they hoped would be a gift for others. They looked back on their long lives to answer a single burning question: How do we find joy in the face of life's inevitable suffering? They traded intimate stories, teased each other continually, and shared their spiritual practices. By the end of a week filled with laughter and punctuated with tears, these two global heroes had stared into the abyss and despair of our time and revealed how to live a life brimming with joy. This book offers us a rare opportunity to experience their astonishing and unprecedented week together, from the first embrace to the final good-bye. We get to listen as they explore the Nature of True Joy and confront each of the Obstacles of Joy—from fear, stress, and anger to grief, illness, and death. They then offer us the Eight Pillars of Joy, which provide the foundation for lasting happiness. Throughout, they include stories, wisdom, and science. Finally, they share their daily Joy Practices that anchor their own emotional and spiritual lives. The Archbishop has never claimed sainthood, and the Dalai Lama considers himself a simple monk. In this unique collaboration, they offer us the reflection of real lives filled with pain and turmoil in the midst of which they have been able to discover a level of peace, of courage, and of joy to which we can all aspire in our own lives.

When we think of happiness, we have to admit that our idea is at times worldly and self-centered. Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount showed us that true happiness will elude us, however, if we follow that kind of thinking. And, in the form of a series of promises and challenges, which we have come to know as the Beatitudes, He told us how to find perfect happiness--both here and in the hereafter. In a world that is capable of the best and the worst, we all have reason to be concerned about the very possibility of ever finding happiness in our lifetimes. The good news of the Gospel message is that we can. Even more, it teaches a way based not on rules and obligations so much as one founded on love, a way that depends upon and leads to the blessings of God Himself. These pages have been written in the conviction that every seeker should make the Sermon on the Mount the primary source of what will and will not make her happy. In His approach to the question, Jesus insists from the outset that we face up to the inevitable trials of life: poverty, tears, hunger and thirst, and shows us how we can find God--the source and object of our joy--in the midst of them.