Showing results for "Death, Hope" in Death & Grief

Is a life-threatening illness, a major life change, or just plain old age forcing you to face your own mortality? Probably, like most of us, you'd rather not think or talk about your own death. But ignoring your death won't stop it from happening—the mortality rate is still 100%!

Everybody waits. We wait for a spouse, wait for a baby, wait on our children, wait for our parents. We wait for clarity and direction. We wait on a job, a promotion, a new direction. We wait for hope, for healing, and for miracles. We wait on God. And when we misunderstand what waiting is about, we can get confused about what God is up to. Waiting is one of God’s favorite tools. He can do certain things in our hearts, our lives, and our relationships while we wait - things we cannot experience once we’ve opened the gift we have been waiting for.

Times of disaster are unavoidable. We don’t get to choose whether or not to live in such times. We can only choose what to do with the time that we live. Will we let fear and darkness overwhelm us, or will we choose to shine the light of hope? In Hope in Any Crisis, pastor and best-selling author Bill Johnson reveals the powerful divine protection offered to you as a believer, three responses you can experience in times of uncertainty, and your responsibility to have hope in all things.

Come rain or shine, hardship or ease, confusion or clarity, worship is always a choice. But what does it look like when worship meets suffering? How can God be good when it seems the world is collapsing around you? In this inspiring audiobook, Matt and Beth Redman draw on their experiences to explore how to offer praise even in the face of hardship and pain. Focusing on the psalms, they reveal how difficult or tragic circumstances and the choices you make can propel you toward God or away from him.

This is the first Chicken Soup audiobook to focus specifically on stories of faith, including 101 of the best stories from Chicken Soup’s library on faith, hope, miracles, and devotion. These true stories written by regular people tell of prayers answered miraculously, amazing coincidences, rediscovered faith, and the serenity that comes from believing in a greater power, appealing to Christians and those of other faiths, and everyone who seeks enlightenment and inspiration through a good story.

"Albert," the neighbor said, "your mom needs you to come home." That's how it began for Albert Hsu when his father died. Anyone who has lost a loved one to suicide experiences tremendous shock and trauma. What follows is a confusing mix of emotions - anger, guilt, grief, and despair.

Life expectancy worldwide is twice what it was a hundred years ago. And because of modern medicine, many of us don't often see death up close. That makes it easy to live as if death is someone else's problem. Ignoring the certainty of death doesn't protect us from feeling its effects throughout the lives we're living now—but it does hold us back from experiencing the powerful, everyday relevance of Jesus's promises to us. So long as death remains remote and unreal, Jesus's promises will too. But honesty about death brings hope to life.

A mother's heart is shattered and forever changed when she loses a precious baby. The sorrow runs deep, the questions feel unanswerable, and the emptiness is overwhelming. Cradled in Hope is a Christ-centered book for grieving moms that offers real comfort, biblical truth, and compassionate guidance through the heartbreak of pregnancy and infant loss. Ashley Opliger, host of the Cradled in Hope podcast, understands this pain intimately.

Jesus said that in this life we will have pain, heartbreak, and trials. So how do we deal with our pain? What does it look like to walk with God in our grief? In Hope for My Hurting Heart, bestselling author Linda Dillow offers practical wisdom, real-life stories, biblical teachings, and encouragement to help you navigate pain, and loss and find hope and healing through God’s love.

A Bridge of Hope tells the heart-wrenching story of the loss of Camilla Neff’s first full-term baby girl, Serena Nadine, who died unexpectedly during delivery. With compassion and empathy for grieving parents everywhere, Neff describes the raw emotions and anguish that she faced. She shares the deeply personal journey of wading through the layers of grief and pain that engulfed her, to learning to live again in a new reality after her world was shattered.

In her early 20’s, Catherine Renfro received a phone call no one should have. In broken hopelessness, her brother, Barrett, called out with despair before taking his own life. She and her father would rush over to his home only to find out that he was no longer with them. Catherine went through a season of grief that hundreds of thousands of people endure every year in America. But even in the midst of anger, suffering, and guilt, she would say that Christ never left her.

When Sarah Berger’s nineteen-year-old son went to heaven in an inexplicable single-car accident, Sarah found herself plunged into soul-searing grief—the kind that can ruin marriages and destroy faith. But that is not her story. With an unrelenting grip on the Lord’s hand, Sarah clung to the promise that God is close to the brokenhearted. Now, for the many others who grieve losing loved ones to accidents, illnesses, and even suicide, Sarah points them to the God of all comfort. This book opens listeners’ hearts and minds to embrace God’s promises in the midst of grief.

Practical and straightforward, yet warm and compassionate, Grieving with Hope clarifies the popular misconception that people move through stages of grief. This will be an encouragement to many, as grieving people often think something is wrong with them when their grief doesn't proceed neatly through stages. The reality is that grieving people jump back and forth between different emotions, sometimes wrestling with multiple emotions at once. This book is packed with short, biblically based, gospel-centered, topical chapters addressing the issues grieving people face.

Hope for Widows is a valuable source of encouragement and comfort as you adjust to your new normal and reimagine an active life with purpose in your future. With personal reflections, questions, and expressions of gratitude, join Marilyn Nutter in recognizing God's faithful presence in details and unusual places. Having lost her husband of forty-two years, Marilyn offers sixty-five brief readings that cover widows' universal experiences with empathy and poignant honesty.

This book is a pathway to hope - a road map through the pain of grief and loss. Discover new strength through a new closeness to others and to God and make the decisions that lead to comfort, growth, and life.

Life is fragile. But hope in Christ lasts forever. The Bible calls human life a vapor. A mist. A wisp of fog. A flower that springs up in the morning and fades away by mid-afternoon. We like to think we have years to pursue our goals, raise our families, and make a difference in the world. But we just don’t know. The fact is, our stay on earth is really very brief. And when a loved one unexpectedly steps out of this life into eternity, it shakes us to the core. We ask ourselves: Is heaven real?

In Embodied Hope, Kelly Kapic invites us to consider the example of our Lord Jesus. Only because Jesus has taken on our embodied existence, suffered alongside us, died, and been raised again can we find any hope from the depths of our own dark valleys of pain. As we look to Jesus, we are invited to participate not only in his sufferings, but also in the church, which calls us out of isolation and into the encouragement and consolation of the communal life of Christ.

Tens of thousands of women and families every year lose a baby to miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant death. The statistics are sobering--between 10% and 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, 1% in stillbirth, and nearly 23,000 babies die before their first birthday--but statistics alone miss...

After the sudden death of their three-year-old son, Cameron Cole and his wife found themselves clinging to Christ through 12 key theological truths - truths that became their lifeline in the midst of unthinkable grief. Weaving together their own story of tragic loss and abiding faith, Cole explores these 12 life-giving truths to offer hope and comfort to those in the midst of tragedy.

You can meet Hannah in 1 Samuel, chapters 1 and 2. The Bible says she was "barren", and we know she suffered heartache, anguish, and grief because of her empty arms. Perhaps you do, too. Hannah's Hope is for all who long for a child yet to be conceived, grieve for a baby too soon passed from the womb, or have lived through the no-man's-land of failed adoption. It is intended as a guide to assist you in making wise decisions as you struggle through your grief.