Showing results by narrator "Van Tracy" in All Categories

Master the decisions that will make your life everything God wants it to be. Every day we make choices. And those choices accumulate and eventually become our life story. What would your life look like if you became an expert at making those choices? In this inspiring guidebook, New York Times best-selling author Craig Groeschel shows how the choices that are in your power, if aligned with biblical principles, will lead to a life you've never imagined.

“I want to believe, I want to have hope, but....” Pastor and author Craig Groeschel hears these words often and has asked them himself. We want to know God, feel his presence, and trust that he hears our prayers, but in the midst of great pain, we may wonder if he really cares about us. Even when we have both hope and hurt, sometimes it’s the hurt that shouts the loudest. Can God be good when life is not? You long to know that even in overwhelming reality, you can still believe that God is good.

The Little Red Book of Wisdom takes the listener on a journey so often sidestepped in favor of the newer, quicker, easier. If you're seeking simplicity in a complicated world, Mark DeMoss's insights will illuminate your path to a wiser and more deliberate way of living. By illuminating the notions of integrity, humility, and self-restraint, DeMoss demonstrates what is possible when we value listening and thinking over talking and doing. Wisdom is not just for past generations; it calls to us today. We need only respond.

As teens, it can feel difficult to find a way out of our bad habits and unhealthy thought patterns, too often feeling like our thoughts are running out of control and finding ourselves off-track from where we want to be. Pastor and bestselling author Craig Groeschel deeply understands this daily battle against self-doubt and negative thinking, and in this book adapted from his bestselling Winning the War in Your Mind, Groeschel explains how you too can challenge your thinking and change the course of your life for the better, revealing the strategies he’s found that help.

Dr. Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, reveals this integral unity of the Declaration and the Constitution. Together, they form the pillars upon which the liberties and rights of the American people stand. United, they have guided history's first self-governing nation, forming our government under certain universal and eternal principles. Unfortunately, the effort to redefine government to reflect "the changing and growing social order" has gone very far toward success.

The church across North America has struggled to minister effectively with people struggling with mental health issues. One reason for the lack of ministry is the absence of a widely accepted model for mental health outreach and inclusion. In Mental Health and the Church, Dr. Stephen Grcevich presents a simple and flexible model for mental health inclusion ministry for implementation by churches of all sizes, denominations, and organizational styles.

Praying Circles Around Your Children combines timeless scriptures with stories of parents just like you, which will revolutionize your prayer life and give you a new perspective on the power of prayer.

Jim Burgen was a preacher’s kid who grew up loving church, until it felt like one day, he realized he was an adult who didn’t. He’d burned out and was full of questions. An encounter with C.S. Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader introduced him to Eustace, a little boy whose greed and hurt turned him into a dragon. He couldn’t un-dragon himself, no matter how hard he tried. Only one person could: the good lion, Aslan. That day, Burgen’s life changed forever. Burgen takes us on a journey through the remarkable process of Jesus saving him from himself.

Who was Jesus? Historical sources portray a person who was complex, multi-layered, and often contradictory to the tidy portrait that much of modern Christianity paints him as. Even the gospel accounts render him as both judge and healer, teacher and temple, servant and savior. A Doubter's Guide to Jesus is a persuasive and often challenging investigation into the historical figure found in the earliest sources. These sources, which include references both direct and indirect - from Roman, Jewish, and Christian accounts - offer us more than simple evidence that Jesus existed.

Do you ever sense that there's far more to prayer, and to God's vision for your life, than what you're experiencing? It's time you learned from the legend of Honi the Circle Maker - a man bold enough to draw a circle in the sand and not budge from inside it until God answered his prayers for his people. What impossibly big dream is God calling you to draw a prayer circle around? In this powerful booklet, excerpted from The Circle Maker, Batterson helps you uncover your heart's deepest desires and God-given dreams and unleash them through the kind of audacious prayer that God delights to answer.

America has become a beautiful mosaic filled with many colors and ethnicities - but does your church reflect this change? Are you longing to be a cross-cultural leader who can guide the church into a multicolored world for the sake of the gospel? Best-selling author and pastor Dr. Derwin Gray calls all churches and their leaders to grow out of ignorance, classism, racism, and greed into a flourishing, vibrant, and grace-filled community of believers.

Being a misfit does not disqualify you from a dynamic life - it prepares you for it.Matthew Barnett knows a thing or two about misfits. As founder of the Dream Center in Los Angeles, a 24-hour church that ministers to 35,000 hurting people a week, Barnett has seen a little of everything. Gangsters, addicts, orphans, taggers, cutters, the sick, the suffering, the hopeless . . . all the misfits of the world come through the church's doors in search of hope.

Moral evaluation must be based on more than our subjective feelings or the received wisdom or majority opinion of our community. But thinking objectively and reasonably about our ethical commitments is a process that's rarely taught in contemporary education or even in churches. Ethics Beyond Rules is a clear and accessible introduction for thoughtful Christians who want to lead moral lives - who want to define their moral code by firm biblical standards while acknowledging the complex nature of the issues at hand.

Is your life limited by labels the world and other people have used to define you? Labels you have internalized and apply to yourself every day? Labels like “Afraid” or “Addict” or “Orphan.” “Damaged Goods.” “Failure.” Maybe even “Religious.” These labels might be sewn into your life with such tight little stitches that they feel like a part of you. It feels like they define you. But that’s a lie. If you let him, Jesus can remove those old labels and tattoo new ones onto your soul. Then you’ll begin to see yourself as God the Father sees you.

Following a deadly car crash, small-town lawyer Lance Cooper risked everything to battle one of the most powerful auto corporations in the world to get justice for a young woman. A fast-paced, journalistic account of tragedy turned to triumph, despair to hope, Cobalt Cover-Up is an inspirational, thoroughly compelling, and victorious listen.

At some point in our lives, we all find ourselves in a boat in the middle of a lake. We might be there due to a job loss or the death of a loved one. Maybe disability, divorce, or financial insecurity has stranded us. Patrick and Ruth Schwenk found themselves feeling battered after five miscarriages and then surrounded by the waves with Patrick’s cancer diagnosis at age 43. They were alone. Drifting. And that’s when their transformation began.

Prayer can sometimes be a frightening thing. How do you approach the maker of the world, and what exactly can you pray for? In this student adaptation of The Circle Maker, Pastor Mark Batterson uses the true legend of Honi the circle maker, a first-century Jewish sage whose bold prayer saved a generation, to uncover the boldness God asks of us at times and what powerful prayer can mean in your life.

A simple and sustainable path to a deep and satisfying walk with Christ. What if it were possible, Pastor Stovall Weems asks, to boil it all down to one practical, uncomplicated principle that would yield the vibrant, purposeful spiritual life so many are looking for? What if, in our relationship with God, we had one simple and sustainable touch point to experience a deep and satisfying walk with Christ? In The God-First Life, Weems shows that true success in our walk with God and in life in general is not an issue of need, but an issue of order.

We all get the same 24 hours in a day, yet a special few seem to have superhuman abilities when it comes to accomplishing great things in life. Tommy Barnett, a proven master at “getting things done,” says the key to maximizing your productivity is to make use of small, manageable moments in your day - just 30 minutes at a time. In this remarkably practical book, Tommy shows how to begin a whole new life of fruitfulness.

It's easy to feel paralyzed by uncertainty. We want our questions answered, our decisions affirmed, and our plans applauded. But life doesn't come with an instruction manual and rarely follows a straight path. How would your life change if you learned to lean into uncertainty instead of waiting on the sidelines for just the right moment or opportunity?