Download or read book Unexpected Blessings in the Midst of My Pain written by Betty M. Smith and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2010-05-28 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Unexpected Blessings in the Midst of my Pain, Betty shares with you her life?s experiences at work, retirement and with physical pain. Follow her story as she recounts her life?s experiences after losing her job of 28 years, at age 58 remarrying after being divorced 18 years. Moving from Chicago to Canton OH and founding a social service agency. Accompany her as she was stricken with Occipital Neuralgia (a migraine-type headache), spending months without a clear diagnosis and without relief. Witness how she learned to put her faith in God and take charge of her own medical care and found a way out without medication.
Download or read book Hope When It Hurts written by Sarah Walton and published by The Good Book Company. This book was released on 2017-04-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty biblical meditations for women that offer hope in times of suffering. Thirty biblical meditations for women that offer hope in times of suffering. Hurt is real. But so is hope. Kristen and Sarah have walked through, and are walking in, difficult times. So these thirty biblical reflections are full of realism about the hurts of life-yet overwhelmingly full of hope about the God who gives life. This book will gently encourage and greatly help any woman who is struggling with suffering-whether physical, emotional or psychological, and whether for a season or for longer. It is a book to buy for yourself, or to buy for a member of your church or friend. For anyone who is hurting, this book will give hope, not just for life beyond the suffering, but for life in the suffering. Each chapter contains a biblical reflection, with questions and prayers, and a space for journaling.
Download or read book I Love Jesus But I Want to Die written by Sarah J. Robinson and published by WaterBrook. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compassionate, shame-free guide for your darkest days “A one-of-a-kind book . . . to read for yourself or give to a struggling friend or loved one without the fear that depression and suicidal thoughts will be minimized, medicalized or over-spiritualized.”—Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church What happens when loving Jesus doesn’t cure you of depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts? You might be crushed by shame over your mental illness, only to be told by well-meaning Christians to “choose joy” and “pray more.” So you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. As darkness lingers and color drains from your world, you’re left wondering if God has abandoned you. You just want a way out. But there’s hope. In I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die, Sarah J. Robinson offers a healthy, practical, and shame-free guide for Christians struggling with mental illness. With unflinching honesty, Sarah shares her story of battling depression and fighting to stay alive despite toxic theology that made her afraid to seek help outside the church. Pairing her own story with scriptural insights, mental health research, and simple practices, Sarah helps you reconnect with the God who is present in our deepest anguish and discover that you are worth everything it takes to get better. Beautifully written and full of hard-won wisdom, I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die offers a path toward a rich, hope-filled life in Christ, even when healing doesn’t look like what you expect.
Download or read book Hope Prevails written by Dr. Michelle Bengtson and published by Revell. This book was released on 2016-08-16 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neuropsychologist Offers Hope to Those Struggling with Depression As a board-certified neuropsychologist, Dr. Michelle Bengtson sees the devastation of depression. Early on, she practiced the most effective treatments and prescribed them for her clients. But when she experienced depression herself, she found that the treatments she had recommended were lacking. Her experience showed her the missing component in treating depression. In Hope Prevails, Dr. Bengtson writes with deep compassion, blending her training and faith, to offer readers a hope grounded in God's love and grace. She helps readers understand what depression is, how it affects them spiritually, and what, by God's grace, it cannot do. The result is an approach that offers the hope of release, not just the management of symptoms. For those who struggle with depression and those who want to help them, Hope Prevails offers hope for the future.
Download or read book Suffering Wisely and Well written by Eric Ortlund and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2022-02-07 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why Suffering Exists: God's Purpose for Pain in the Life of Job and throughout Scripture Why does God allow suffering? The pain of suffering can be overwhelmingly mysterious, but the Bible does provide answers. Throughout Scripture, God allows trials in order to accomplish specific purposes in the lives of his people. When faced with suffering they experience spiritual growth; repentance from sin; or, as in the Old Testament story of Job, the chance to demonstrate devotion to God in the face of inexplicable agony. In Suffering Wisely and Well, Eric Ortlund explores different types of trials throughout Scripture, revealing the spiritual purpose for each and reassuring readers with God's promise of restoration. The majority of the book focuses on Job, one of the most well-known yet misunderstood stories of suffering. Ortlund thoughtfully analyzes the text chapter by chapter, including the doubt of Job's friends, God's response to Job's questions, and the meaning behind important imagery including references to Leviathan and Behemoth. Suffering Wisely and Well shows readers how to deepen their relationship with God during painful experiences in their own lives and how to comfort others who are hurting. Explores Lament and Redemption in Scripture: Helps readers understand how to interpret suffering from a Christian perspective Applicable: Each chapter ends with a "What Have We Learned?" summary Biblical Advice on Grief and Support: Teaches Christians how to avoid blame or legalism when addressing the suffering of others
Download or read book Women Living Well written by Courtney Joseph Fallick and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2013-10-08 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women desire to live well. However, living well in this modern world is a challenge. The pace of life, along with the new front porch of social media, has changed the landscape of our lives. Women have been told for far too long that being on the go and accumulating more things will make their lives full. As a result, we grasp for the wrong things in life and come up empty. God created us to walk with him; to know him and to be loved by him. He is our living well and when we drink from the water he continually provides, it will change us. Our marriages, our parenting, and our homemaking will be transformed. Mommy-blogger Courtney Joseph is a cheerful realist. She tackles the challenge of holding onto vintage values in a modern world, starting with the keys to protecting our walk with God. No subject is off-limits as she moves on to marriage, parenting, and household management. Rooted in the Bible, her practical approach includes tons of tips that are perfect for busy moms, including: Simple Solutions for Studying God’s Word How to Handle Marriage, Parenting, and Homemaking in a Digital Age 10 Steps to Completing Your Husband Dealing With Disappointed Expectations in Motherhood Creating Routines that Bring Rest Pursuing the Discipline and Diligence of the Proverbs 31 Woman There is nothing more important than fostering your faith, building your marriage, training your children, and creating a haven for your family. Women Living Well is a clear and personal guide to making the most of these precious responsibilities.
Download or read book The Cure for Sorrow written by Jan Richardson and published by . This book was released on 2020-08 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Jan Richardson unexpectedly lost her husband and creative partner, the singer/songwriter Garrison Doles, she did what she had long known how to do: she wrote blessings. These were no sugar-coated blessings. They minimized none of the pain and bewilderment that came in the wake of a wrenching death. With these blessings, Jan entered, instead, into the depths of the shock, anger, and sorrow. From those depths, she has brought forth words that, with heartbreaking honesty, offer surprising comfort and stunning grace. Those who know loss will find kinship among these pages. In these blessings that move through the anguish of rending into the unexpected shelters of solace and hope, there shimmers a light that helps us see we do not walk alone. From her own path of grief, Jan offers a luminous, unforgettable gift that invites us to know the tenacity of hope and to recognize the presence of love that, as she writes, is "sorrow's most lasting cure."
Download or read book A Garment of Praise written by Lois Lanham and published by CrossBooks Publishing. This book was released on 2013 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lois and Tim had been married almost twenty-five years and were the parents of three teenagers. In a single moment, a fatal accident altered the course of Lois’s life and changed her family forever. In the face of intense pain, God used a variety of people and circumstances to reveal His presence and provisions for Lois and her family. In her memoir, A Garment of Praise: A Story of Blessings in the Midst of Grief, Lois chronicles her journey of grief during her first year as a widow. She shares how she and her family experienced God’s amazing, overwhelming, lavish love and abundant blessings. Within days of her husband’s death, Lois began to see ways God had prepared her family for life without Tim. A Garment of Praise: A Story of Blessings in the Midst of Grief presents Lois’s written record of how God provided care for Lois and brought her and her family unexpected blessings during a time of tragedy.
Download or read book One Thousand Gifts written by Ann Voskamp and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than 1.5 million copies sold! What if you discovered that the life you already have is the life you’ve always wanted? What if joy is possible right where you are? New York Times bestselling author Ann Voskamp invites you to embrace everyday blessings and embark on the transformative journey of chronicling God's gifts. How can you find joy in the midst of deadlines, debt, drama, and even the death of loved ones? What does the Christ-life really look like when your days are gritty, long, and sometimes even dark? How is God even here? “It is in the dark that God is passing by . . . our lives shake not because God has abandoned but the exact opposite. God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can’t see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us...” In One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp invites you to discover a way of seeing that opens your eyes to ordinary amazing grace, a way of living that is fully alive, and a way of becoming present to God that brings deep and lasting joy. It's only in the expression of gratitude for the life we already have, we discover the life we've always wanted . . . a life we can take, give thanks for, and break for others. Come to feel and know the impossible right down in your bones: you are wildly loved by God. As Ann invites you into her own beautiful, heart-aching moments of amazing grace, she gently teaches you how to: Biblically lament loss and turn pain into poetry Intentionally embrace a lifestyle of radical gratitude Slow down and catch God in the moment Not a book merely to read, One Thousand Gifts is an invitation to engage with truths that will serve up the depths of God’s joy and transform your life forever. Leave pride, fear, and control behind, and abandon yourself to the God who overflows your cup.
Download or read book Hope When Life Unravels written by Adam B. Dooley and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by a pastor and father who has walked a painful road, Hope When Life Unravels explores the encouraging, upside-down truths of the book of Job, and other key Bible passages, to remind us of the ways God is present in our pain. Why does God allow suffering? And why does God seem to go silent when we're in pain? In Hope When Life Unravels, Dr. Adam Dooley, pastor and host of the daily radio broadcast A Better Way, searches for answers to our biggest questions about suffering as he shares his son Carson's story of battling leukemia. Adam speaks openly about the gut-wrenching struggle his family endured for three years of life-threatening illness and how God met them in their hours of need--even when it wasn't in the ways they wanted. And, along with his own story, Adam takes readers through the story of Job, unpacking insights about God's character, his love, and how we can stay connected to him even during seasons of pain. Both inspiring and comforting, Hope When Life Unravels invites us to draw closer to a God who is often active in our lives in times when we have trouble seeing him the most.
Download or read book Teach Me To Feel written by Courtney Reissig and published by The Good Book Company. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meditations on the Psalms helping women to express their feelings and grow in their faith. Many of us suppress our feelings because we’re worried they are ungodly. Others of us are so led by our emotions that we let them dominate everything, including our faith. In these honest, personal and uplifting meditations on 24 selected psalms, Courtney Reissig looks at emotions we all experience, ranging from shame, anxiety, and anger through to gratitude, hope, and joy. For each, she shows how the psalms give us permission to acknowledge how we feel before God, and how they can help us to use those feelings productively and faithfully. This inspiring book will give women a language to cry out to God in order to help them process their feelings, as well as help them to grow in their faith. Can be used as a daily devotion.
Download or read book Unsinkable Faith written by Tracie Miles and published by David C Cook. This book was released on 2017-04-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many people, remaining optimistic and feeling positive about themselves and their lives is a constant battle—especially when circumstances are difficult and life is hard. For others, negativity is something that only sneaks up from time to time, yet still wreaks havoc in their hearts. Regardless of the root causes, once pessimistic thoughts permeate our minds, our feelings and emotions begin to control us instead of us controlling them. Eventually it doesn’t seem possible to stay positive, happy, and full of joy, and negative thought patterns shake our faith, causing us to sink emotionally, mentally, and spiritually over time. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Despite what storms roll in, hearts anchored in God don’t sink. When we change the way we think, we can change the way we feel and live, even if our circumstances remain the same. Intentionally embracing the opportunity to experience a transformed heart and a renewed mind opens the door for a changed life, because a positive mind will always lead to a more positive life. In Unsinkable Faith, author and Proverbs 31 Ministries speaker Tracie Miles offers hope for women who struggle with negativity. Each chapter explores Tracie’s and other women’s personal stories, showing how they rose above their circumstances by transforming and renewing their minds. Unsinkable Faith is a breath of fresh air for anyone longing for a heart full of joy, an unbreakable smile, and a new, more optimistic perspective on life. This book will equip you to: Replace pessimism with positive thinking by becoming the captain of your thoughts; Learn how true joy and happiness are based on choice, not circumstances; Overcome unhealthy habits of negative thinking by intentionally implementing three easy mind-renewing steps; Stop feeling hopeless and pitiful, and start feeling hope-filled and powerful instead; and Discover that when you change the way you think, you change the way feel, and in turn you can change your life completely.
Download or read book The Scars That Have Shaped Me written by Vaneetha Rendall Risner and published by . This book was released on 2017-03-31 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 21 surgeries by age 13. Years in the hospital. Verbal and physical bullying from schoolmates. Multiple miscarriages as a young wife. The death of a child. A debilitating progressive disease. Riveting pain. Abandonment. Unwanted divorce... Vaneetha begged God for grace that would deliver her. But God offered something better: his sustaining grace.
Download or read book Unexpected Journey written by Erika Ganaway and published by Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2019-03-18 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some of us experience things in our lives that we didn't expect to ever go through. We look for those words to express how we feel and never find them. In this book, I believe that you will find them through a poem or a passage you might read. We experience pain, bullying, heartache, loss, betrayal, and so much more even as adults, and in this book, I pray that you find words that will help you heal. This book will make you cry and even wonder, "What is my pain birthing forth in my life?" My unexpected journey in life would birth forth this book. This book will inspire some readers to tell their story. Some readers will find the courage to keep living and I hope those that are just existing decide to live again. You shall survive the wilderness. A road is being formed. If God be for you, who is it that can be against you? It's working for your good. For those that do not like it, then it's not for you in this season. This is a must read book for 2018.
Download or read book Holding On When You Want to Let Go written by Sheila Walsh and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are you struggling today? Do you look back and long for what used to be, or are you looking ahead and have no idea what's coming? Are you stuck in the middle of a mess because life has not turned out as you expected? When you run to God for answers, do you often feel like you aren't getting them--or at least aren't getting the answers you want? Are you holding on . . . but not sure how much longer you can? In times of not knowing, Sheila Walsh offers a lifeline of hope. With great compassion born of experience and hardship, Walsh comes alongside the hurting, fearful, and exhausted to remind us that we serve a God who is so much greater than our momentary troubles, no matter how insurmountable they feel. She doesn't offer a quick fix. She offers a God fix. Sharing from her own painful struggles and digging deep into biblical stories of rescue, hope, and miracles, she gives you the strength to keep going, to keep holding on to God in a world turned upside down. The accompanying study includes 10 lessons to help individuals or groups dive deeper.
Download or read book Aching Joy written by Jason Hague and published by NavPress. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When his oldest son was diagnosed with severe autism, pastor Jason Hague found himself trapped, stuck between perpetual sadness and a lower, safer kind of hope. This is the common struggle for those of us walking through the Land of Unanswered Prayer. Life doesn’t look the way we expected, so we seek to protect ourselves from further disappointment. But God has a third path for us, beyond sadness or resignation: the way of aching joy. Christ himself is with us here, beckoning us toward the treasures hidden in the darkness. Aching Joy is an honest psalm of hope for those walking between pain and promise: the aching of a broken world and the beauty of a loving God. In this place, rather than trying to dodge the pain, we choose to feel it all—and to see where Jesus is in the midst of struggle. And because we make that choice, we feel all the good that comes with it, too. This is Jason’s story. This is your story. Come, find your joy within the aching.
Download or read book The End of the Island written by Jeffrey C. Tucker and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if you were to look at human suffering, pain, and loss with another lens? Not as something that you merely make it through but as something that you move around within. In this fresh, creative, and provocative new book, Jeffrey Tucker explores suffering in new ways, challenging our existing beliefs and theologies while offering a healthier and more helpful approach to viewing ourselves, our faith, and others in the face of suffering. Tucker addresses specific and practical questions that we often ask ourselves when we suffer--attempting to locate our suffering, our identity, the persons of the Divine, our support, and our hope in the process. He also engages us along the way by wrapping wisdom within the framework of a story of an old man on an island who is seeking answers to his pain and loss. The journey takes unexpected turns as the old man learns new ways to walk and to live in the midst of his pain. As we join the old man in his walk, we learn new ways as well. This highly readable and accessible book offers thought-provoking and transforming ideas for persons of every walk of life and faith.
