Showing titles in Death & Grief

As a young pastor, Matt Chandler knew he needed to learn how to help hurting people. He studied the Scriptures, and he learned from people at the Village Church who remained joyful in their suffering. And then suddenly he was having to live what he'd learned. This is the moving story of Matt's battle with a potentially fatal brain tumor. But it's also the stories of those who taught him, and teach him, how to walk with joy in sorrow.

This audiobook will allow you to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches in this season of a modern-day Passover. A timely prophetic message on how to discern the times and know what to do as the body of Christ. As people and nations emerge in the aftermath of this pandemic, God will realign hearts and nations in preparation for an end-time harvest.

Though suffering often leaves us feeling isolated, God invites us into the community of the Trinity and offers us many companions in scripture. We experience loneliness alongside the exiled Israelites. We journey with David as he pleads to God for rescue. With Asaph we confess our unbelief. With Job we learn to lament. With Mary and Martha we learn to wait. In God's community, there is sweet fellowship, even in the hardest of circumstances. Journey in this book with Wendy Alsup through her story of suffering, and more importantly, with the God who walks with us in the wilderness. 

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.

In the tumultuous days of the Reformation, the centerpiece of Luther’s ministry was his bold biblical preaching. Martin Luther, the reformer, theologian, author and polemicist is well known as hymn-writer, musician, teacher, and pastor to both clergy and laity. However, Luther saw himself as a preacher first. On religious holidays, he preached twice a day. The sermon "Day of St. John the Evangelist" is based on John 21:19-24, about Christ’s imminent death. At that time, Jesus reprimanded Peter for doing everything but that which he was supposed to do.

Christians today are often not prepared to suffer well and have a short-sighted view of pain and trials. Ken Boa shows how God uses suffering to shape his children for eternity and to grow them in Christlike character. The book of 1 Peter tells us suffering is both a guarantee and comparatively brief; we shouldn't be surprised when it comes to us. The nature of our affliction is not as important as our response to it. God is at work through our hardships and wants to use them to prepare us for eternal life. Suffering can make us bitter or better. Rediscover living hope, present joy, and a glorious future.

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.

How will we face the end? On whom does our hope finally depend? What are the last things ever to be remembered? These are the questions examined in this course, whose lectures abound with insight and imagery drawn from the rich patrimony of the Church's wisdom and experience. In this course, Dr. Regis Martin presents a comprehensive overview of the finalities that frame our human story and how our action (or inaction) when faced with the end will determine where we spend eternity.

Thomas More (1478-1535) opposed King Henry VIII's separation from the Catholic Church, and refused to acknowledge Henry as Supreme Head of the Church of England. While awaiting execution for refusing to betray his faith, More wrote this fictional dialogue set in 16th century Hungary. The dialogue takes place between a young man, Vincent, and his wise old uncle, Anthony. Vincent fears a Turkish invasion which could force him to either betray his faith or die a martyr.

After her brother died unexpectedly and her mother moved into a dementia-care facility, spiritual travel writer and Episcopal deacon Lori Erickson felt called to a new quest: to face death head-on, with the eye of a tourist and the heart of a pastor. Blending memoir, spirituality, and travel, Near the Exit examines how cultures confront and have confronted death by investigating Egypt's Valley of the Kings, Mayan temples, Colorado cremation pyres, Day of the Dead celebrations, Maori settlements, and tourist-destination graveyards.

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.

The book addresses the question of the silence of God, especially when people suffer. It also deals with miracles, and the Bible versus the church. Several indexes contain further discussions on the subject matter.

Can any good come from thinking about death? Our natural tendency is to answer that question no! But what if our meditation on death was informed by a theological understanding of death, a recognition of the comfort Jesus's death affords Christians, and ethical guidance for dealing with death in these complicated days of modern medical developments? Rather than being morbidly unhelpful, authors Joel R. Beeke and Christopher W. Bogosh contend that meditating on dying and death can be profitable, even necessary, for us. Are you prepared to say that your death will be "gain" (Phil. 1:21)?

Life hit Pat and Tammy McLeod hard when their son Zach collapsed on a high school football field; he had sustained a severe brain injury. Facing the devastating possibility that things would never be the same for their beloved son, they committed to staying strong as a family and finding a way to maintain their footing. But the journey would reshape their faith, their family, and their future in ways they never saw coming. 

In this short work, G.K. Chesterton writes with characteristic vivacity as he explores the compelling paradoxes of the book of Job, as found in the Hebrew Scriptures. Armed with keen precision and incisive wit, Chesterton revels in the reversions of expectation found in this story, particularly regarding the character of God. Indeed Chesterton names the God of Job a blasphemer, an atheist...and identifies the loneliness of God as the central idea of the Hebrew Scriptures. Listeners will delight in the twists and turns of Chesterton's thought.

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.

Texas businessman Mike Fechner had it all. Money. Investments. Prestige. Until he did the unthinkable. He sold his company and poured his life's earnings into a ministry for the poor. With a strong faith in God at his core, this millionaire turned missionary envisioned a long future serving the urban Dallas poor and the people of poverty-stricken Africa.

Underwood shares how the story of Lazarus brought renewed hope during his darkest moments of suffering and doubt in his personal battle with leukemia, bringing to life God's powerful answer to the question of pain and suffering: that Jesus loves and cares for us.

Join Morris and his wife as they share how they survived their son's death from a drug overdose. Though they prayed diligently for Jeff, they still wondered what would save him. The answers were anything but expected! And in the midst of it all, they learned that God is ever faithful and Christ is always present.

In your darkest hour, when the pain seems almost too much to bear, God is there for you. He sees your grief. He hears your cry. He sends others to keep you company along the way. Let these prayers ease your heart and be companions for your own grief journey. Grief is a fragile and intimate process. We all grieve differently, and there are no secret healing formulas, no 12-step recovery programs, and no shortcuts for the grief journey…