Religious Life

In this book, Joni unveils the God whom she has found to be faithful through over 30 years as a paralytic. This is not the story of a woman who has all the answers or who is very different from you. Joni struggles with the same fears, questions, and heartaches we all have in common. But as the weeks and months turn into years and the years into decades, she meets her Savior at every turn.

In Reposition Yourself, best-selling author T.D. Jakes shares insights that will help you adjust to the many changes that life brings. This is a shrill wake-up call to take charge of your life now, confronting areas where subtle passivity, or even poor choices, may have stifled your creativity. It's also a how-to for managing change and maximizing life now. Covering financial, relational, and spiritual creativity, Jakes shows how adapting to transitional moments is the path to an enriched existence.

There are times when looking back helps to fuel our future. Looking back at the life of evangelist Maria Woodworth-Etter, you will be emboldened by the truth that nothing is impossible to the believer who surrenders to God. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Maria Woodworth-Etter, the grandmother of the Pentecostal movement, astounded many Americans as she traveled across the country holding revivals. At these meetings, the worst sinners in the town were saved, the most diseased were healed, and her biggest critics were proven wrong.

Becky Powell faced the unthinkable on May 16, 2013. Her husband, Mark, called and said, "I've done something terrible." Within hours, she learned that he had taken his own life and, over a period of several years, millions of dollars from friends and colleagues. Everything she believed to be true, the very fiber of her marriage, was called into question. Yet from that first horrific moment, God was there. Awful Beautiful Life is Becky's journey through the two years surrounding Mark's death and how she overcame.

In his retirement, Thomas Jefferson edited the New Testament with a penknife and glue, removing all mention of miracles and other supernatural events. Inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment, Jefferson hoped to reconcile Christian tradition with reason by presenting Jesus of Nazareth as a great moral teacher - not a divine one. Peter Manseau tells the story of the Jefferson Bible, exploring how each new generation has reimagined the book in its own image as listeners grapple with both the legacy of the man who made it and the place of religion in American life.

Chronicles of Wonder tells the story of the imaginative boy born in Ireland who loved books and poetry and grew himself to be a famous teacher and writer. But before he penned The Space Trilogy or The Chronicles of Narnia, Clive Staples Lewis found friends in other stories, including tales from Beatrix Potter, The Wind and the Willows, Phantastes by George MacDonald, and The Pilgrim’s Progress.

From classics such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid to fifth-century Christian apocrypha, narratives that described guided tours of the afterlife played a major role in shaping ancient notions of morality and ethics. In this new account, acclaimed author Bart Ehrman contextualizes early Christian narratives of heaven and hell within the broader intellectual and cultural worlds from which they emerged.

She’d waited years for this moment…for him. You can always go home…but what will you find when you do. Jonathan Hansen is about to find out. For years they’ve hidden a huge secret…an island that was home to their small town, the families and friends who live there, and the secrets they've kept for generations. But danger might be right beyond the water’s edge. Together, two guarded hearts are willing to face the impending threat and the danger it poses to the tranquility of their home. Ainslin O’Cleary wasn’t the type to over-react but she was beginning to feel a little ...

In the early 1970s, Swami Kriyananda asked Asha to start taking notes for the book he knew she would someday write. He explained himself to her in a way he did to only a few others. Since then, she has stayed in constant contact with him, as a devotee, friend, personal assistant, and eventually, a spiritual teacher in her own right. It's a rare gift to live with a true teacher. Experience it for yourself, as Asha brings you into meetings, conversations, personal counseling, living rooms, classrooms, long walks, meetings, and meditations.

This is a story of the days of chivalry in England and of young Myles Falworth, son of a lord unjustly disgraced for treason, who was forced to make his fortune as best he might in the days when men seemed made of iron. How he entered the service of a powerful lord, rose to knighthood, defeated his father's old enemy in thrilling combat, and at last won the friendship of the king is told against a background of the dangerous times of the 14th century that makes them live again.

Where do we go when we die? Or is there nowhere to go? Is death something we can do or is it just something that happens to us? Now in his ninth decade, former Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, has spent a lifetime at the bedsides of the dying, guiding countless men and women towards peaceful deaths. In The Last Bus, he presents a positive, meditative and profound exploration of the many important lessons we can learn from death.

She needs a husband to keep her ranch...can she convince the cowboy next-door to marry her? Darren Dumond has been working at Chestnut Ranch since he sold his place after the death of his first wife. But he starts to see the woman who owns the ranch just north of where he works over the summer, and he thinks his heart can handle a new relationship. His heart was wrong. He ends things with Sarena, but he's oh-so-lonely. And Sarena Adams is desperate. Her father died a few months ago, and she only has six months to get married or she and her sisters lose the ranch to their greedy uncle. He'll...

Joseph F. Smith was born in 1838 to Hyrum Smith and Mary Fielding Smith. Six years later both his father and his uncle, Joseph Smith Jr., the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were murdered in Carthage, Illinois. The trauma of that event remained with Joseph F. for the rest of his life, affecting his personal behavior and public tenure in the highest tiers of the LDS Church, including the post of president from 1901 until his death in 1918.

Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad became famous for his popularization of an Afrocentric branch of Islam. In later years, however, the movement came under fire after critics pointed out that its ideology had very little to do with the mainstream faith. Nevertheless, Elijah’s words and teachings still managed to galvanize and capture the hearts of millions of disaffected and oppressed African Americans. During the movement’s heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, Elijah extended his hand to a downtrodden people in a way that few others could.

"The world is too small," Saint Frances Cabrini (1850–1917) once declared. "I would like to embrace it all, to reach every corner." This compelling, authoritative biography chronicles the astounding life of a petite Italian-born religious sister who, with the heart of a missionary, conquered all odds to become the first American citizen canonized a saint.

When His Holiness the Dalai Lama came to New York City in 1999, he spoke simply and powerfully on the everyday Buddhist practice of compassion. An Open Heart lays out this course of meditation, from the simplest to the most challenging, describing the mental training techniques that will enable anyone of any faith to change their minds and open their hearts. Featuring an afterword by Richard Gere.

Vida es un viaje extraordinario por la historia del mundo a través de la mirada de un hombre excepcional. Con observaciones agudas y reflexiones profundas, el papa Francisco nos transporta a los sucesos más significativos de los últimos tiempos, desde el Holocausto hasta la caída del Muro de Berlín, pasando por el golpe de Videla en la Argentina y el Mundial de 1968, cuando Maradona marcó el famoso gol de la «mano de Dios».

Relates one of the most remarkable lives in the tumultuous English Reformation. Thomas Cranmer was the first Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, the author of the Book of Common Prayer, and a central figure in the English Protestant Reformation. Few theologians have led such an eventful life: Cranmer helped Henry VIII break with the pope, pressed his vision of the Reformation through the reign of Edward VI, was forced to recant under Queen Mary, and then dramatically withdrew his recantations before being burned alive.

At the age of six, Tim Guest was taken by his mother to a commune modeled on the teachings of the notorious Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Tim and his mother were given Sanskrit names, dressed entirely in orange, and encouraged to surrender themselves into their new family. In 1985, the movement collapsed amid allegations of mass poisonings, attempted murder, and tax evasion, and Yogesh was once again Tim. In this extraordinary memoir, Tim Guest chronicles the heartbreaking experience of being left alone on earth while his mother hunted heaven.

Twenty-four of the Buddha's most distinguished disciples are brought to life in ten chapters of rich narration. They include monks who were very close to him throughout his life, including Sariputta and Mahamoggallana; his cousin and companion Ananda; his principal women disciples, including the nun Isidasi and his lay disciple, the courtesan Ambapali; and the serial killer Angulimala, whose character was transformed after meeting the Buddha.