Showing results by narrator "Carla Mercer-Meyer" in All Categories

In these profound reflections on the mysteries of life and death, Stone unpacks how childbirth reveals our anxieties, our physicality, our mortality. All who are born or give birth will someday die. While living and working in one of the world's most impoverished countries, teacher, doula, and mother Rachel Marie Stone unexpectedly caught a baby without wearing gloves, drenching her bare hands with HIV-positive blood. Already worried about her health and family and whether her service was of any use, Stone grappled with realities of human suffering, global justice, and maternal health.

We long to see firsthand the power of God as displayed in the Bible. Miracles, prophecy, dreams, healing - most of these tend to be missing from our normal, safe, predictable faith. Yet we tend to view any movement of God outside our own experience with mistrust and confusion. But what if we've got "normal" all wrong? In this audiobook is an invitation to a new way of living: embracing God's power through simple yet bold prayer. It's for the night owl, the caffeine-addicted, even the skeptic, beckoning all of us out of our comfort zones with stories of spiritual breakthrough, mind-blowing miracles, and physical healing.

Greta loves her job as assistant librarian. She loves her best friend, Will, the high school civics teacher and debate coach. She even loves her mother despite her obvious disappointment that Greta is still single. Then she meets Mac in the poetry section of the library, and she is smitten. Mac is heart-stoppingly gorgeous and showers her with affection - poetic text messages, and free hot chocolate at the local café where he works. The only problem is that he seems to be a different person in his texts than in his face-to-face conversation.

Emotions can be confusing. At times, we live at the mercy of our emotions, feeling helpless to understand them and powerless to control them. But the Bible brings clarity to this confusion, showing women that emotions are ultimately a gift from God. In this book, a mother-daughter team offers women a fresh perspective on their feelings straight from God's Word, helping them handle emotions in a way that honors God and others.

Many believers know in their heads that God cares about them. But it's hard to hold that truth in your heart when you're worn out and weary from the mundane, everyday battles and struggles - when you lose your temper again or give into that persistent temptation or feel paralyzed by overwhelming circumstances. The truth is that the Holy Spirit is right there - waiting for you to let him help. With warmth and encouragement, Sarah Bowling shows how he longs to be part of every situation you face in life.

Let's be honest. The journey to discovering Jesus - Real Jesus - can be complicated, messy, and a little crazy. Just ask Jami Amerine. Banned from the Mormon church as a child, she's spent the rest of her life trying to reconcile Fifth-Grade Jesus, Catholic Jesus, and Americanized Jesus (just to name a few). But when she met Real Jesus, everything changed. You can meet Him, too - right here, just as you are.

In The Happy Traveler: Unpacking the Secrets of Better Vacations, psychology professor Dr. Jaime Kurtz applies the large and ever-growing body of research on happiness and decision-making to enhance the experience of travel. An avid explorer, study abroad instructor, teacher, and happiness researcher, Dr. Kurtz shows how anyone who has a vacation in his or her future can create the most meaningful, fulfilling, and joyful experiences possible.

There are so many moments in life when we choose to silence our intuition, abandon our own voice, and play small because we wonder, deep down: "Do I know who I really am? Is who I really am enough?" It's courageous work to learn to live from our essential identity - loved, worthy, whole. But what if God is calling us to shamelessly recover the woman he created us to be? What if God is urging us to be - for the first time in our lives - brazen?

Kara Tippetts discovered how to find joy in the small moments of life. She learned how to hold tight to hope, even while battling intense physical and emotional pain. And she lived out the truth that God can redeem any story. In her final book, Kara offers gentle reflections on living and dying well. She invites us to cultivate soft hearts, even when we face great disappointment. Her ideas for living are hard-won, wrestled with in the crucible of family, illness, and faith.

Violet Mayhew is a proper young lady—who's on the run from her parents! Eleven-year-old Violet has one goal in mind when she runs away from home: to find her sister, Chloe. Violet’s parents say Chloe has turned into the "wrong sort of person," but Violet knows better. The only problem is...

Stay follows Abbey, a young woman from Canada now living in a village outside Galway. She falls in love with Dermot, an older Irish man, in an unconventional, affectionate but troubled relationship.

In 1918, rainy Dundee is nearly emptied of men. The Great War has left the town’s women both newfound freedom and servitude. They toil in the deadly jute mills, taking in the children of perished family members and praying their own bodies - and spirits - do not fail them too. A grateful widow of the war, Morag shelters her daughters as best she can: beautiful Caro schemes to escape the working class with well-calculated seduction, while Wallis works in the mill alongside her mother, slowly fortifying both spirit and pocketbook for a more radical departure.

Jami Amerine, author of Stolen Jesus, returns with a totally relatable account of her experiences as a mom. She's eager to help you see how to let your Heavenly Father parent you so you can embrace peace as you parent. Come find the miracle in the mayhem and meet the one whose presence turns sticky floors into sacred ground.

Jesus Everlasting includes thought-provoking questions, journaling space, and unique explorations of six hymns to draw listeners closer to their Savior. This is a timely invitation for women to understand more of who Jesus is, was, and will be for every tomorrow.

God delights in transforming lives. In Broken into Beautiful, singer and songwriter Gwen Smith's first book, she tells the real-life stories of women with shattered dreams, shameful secrets, and damaged souls and the God who makes them beautiful again. Each chapter features a compelling personal story coupled with relevant biblical teaching and application. Listeners will meet women wounded by infidelity, abortion, widowhood, abuse, and other tragic events, only to discover the joy of being restored by a loving heavenly Father.

While many leadership books focus on the individual, Lifelong Leadership offers a comprehensive mentoring community model to support and develop Christian leaders, extending the work of God in and through ministry. This model was inspired by Leighton Ford as a way to inspire and support young leaders. MaryKate Morse is the inheritor of this leadership legacy. Her team has developed the mentoring community model, which is easy to replicate in a variety of settings.

So many Christian women are exhausted because we've come to believe that God's purpose for us is rooted in what we do - which means we're constantly striving to have somehow done enough. But there is hope! Elizabeth takes us back to the gracious plan God laid out for us in Genesis: He created us to bear his image, he is inviting us to live out that purpose, and through Christ, he frees us to flourish as those who are unconditionally loved.

Many Christians are alarmed by the decline in church attendance and seek a culprit. Too often, we point the finger away from the church, make culture the enemy, and build walls between us and others. But our antagonism and enemy-making are toxins that further eat away at our witness. Is there a better way? Tara Beth Leach could easily be one of those millennials giving up on the church. Instead, she is a pastor who loves the church and is paradoxically hopeful for its future.

Women are fierce and fed-up, and they have been joining hands together for the purposes of societal change for as long as there has been injustice. Women of faith are guided by the Holy Spirit to work together to bring down these injustices, to build on the foundation Christ laid for the beloved community of God on earth. This book is women joining together to speak and act in new ways in response to the increasing challenges of our day.

None of us wants to be sidelined, stuck, shamed, or silenced. But the difficulties of life have a way of putting us in a corner, and we don't know how to move forward. We see brokenness in our communities, our relationships, and our spirits. It's so easy to blame ourselves or our circumstances, to get bogged down in discouragement and toxic thinking. But that's not what we were meant for, and that's not how God wants us to live.