Great new book recommendations for our Spiritual Seeker this Spring
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JUNE NEW RELEASES
Created to Dream: The 6 Phases God Uses to Grow Your Faith
by Rick Warren
God has a dream for your life--and in this concise yet powerful volume, beloved pastor and trusted teacher Rick Warren explains the process God uses to fulfill the dream he gives you.
The Bible is full of stories of people whose God-given dreams became reality--but not without first going through the six phases of faith. In Created to Dream, Pastor Rick will help you understand how God uses these phases to grow people to spiritual maturity while fulfilling the dreams he gives them. Each phase is a test of your faith.
The process God uses to grow your faith:
- Phase 1: Dream--God puts an exciting dream in your heart.
- Phase 2: Decision--You make the decision to go after the dream.
- Phase 3: Delays--God allows delays to get you ready for the dream.
- Phase 4: Difficulties--You face problems that grow your character.
- Phase 5: Dead Ends--Your situation becomes impossible.
- Phase 6: Deliverance--God miraculously fulfills the dream!
The Body Revelation: Physical and Spiritual Practices to Metabolize Pain, Banish Shame, and Connect to God with Your Whole Self
by Alisa Keeton
Do you sometimes feel as though your body is a problem to solve? Discover how to make it part of the solution instead. It's now known that the emotional and relational pain we've lived through has a profound negative physical effect on our bodies. Alisa Keeton, popular fitness professional, proposes that the reverse is also true: What we do with our bodies can have a dramatic positive effect on our emotions, relationships, and our connection with God. In The Body Revelation, she shows us how to use our bodies as a means of healing past pain and promoting physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
Too often, people of faith are taught to ignore, avoid, or forget our bodies, but Alisa reminds us that God calls our bodies good and cares about our pain. Offering a variety of physical and spiritual practices as well as stories from her own journey, Alisa.
When Your Way Isn't Working: Finding Purpose and Contentment Through Deep Connection with Jesus
by Kyle Idleman
When you are worn-out, when you feel discouraged, when you think you don't have what it takes, what is the one thing that Jesus wants you to never forget? When Your Way Isn't Working equips you to discover authentic connection to God and others so you are free to live the life you long for.
In some of his final words to his closest friends, Jesus didn't suggest a five-year plan for success or a checklist of things to do. Instead, he offered a metaphor about what the good life really looks like: I am the vine. You are the branches. Abide in me. In other words, No matter what happens next, the most important thing is to stay connected to me.
In When Your Way Isn't Working, pastor and bestselling author Kyle Idleman offers a unique exploration of John 15 for all of us who are going through the motions and feel frustrated. Idleman reminds us that it's connection, not production, that leads to a fruitful life--relationships, not circumstances, that bring joy. He offers his distinctive, biblical perspective with specific how-tos.
MAY NEW RELEASES
Happiness Is Overrated: Simple Lessons on Finding Meaning in Each Moment
by Lu, Cuong
Stop chasing happiness and reconnect to the meaning of each moment through this practical guide, told through vignettes of life training as a Buddhist monk under world-renowned spiritual leader Thich Nhat Hanh.
We spend so much time in pursuit of happiness--trying to purchase it, experience it, meditate our way toward it--but happiness is elusive and doesn't last. According to the teachings of the Buddha, Cuong Lu writes, "Suffering is not a problem to be solved. It is a truth to be recognized." Happiness Is Overrated invites us to look deeply at the truths in our lives--not glossing over or denying our suffering--and to focus on the meaning and value already within us.
Each chapter of Happiness Is Overrated shares a lesson drawn from Buddhist psychology, accessible for all readers. Short practices at the end of each of the 30 short chapters help readers apply the teachings on their own.
Happiness Is Overrated helps us get in touch with our true selves and our true minds, through meditation and mindfulness practices that include paying attention to the breath, observing our minds, connecting with our hearts, practicing "interbeing" with others and the Earth, and more.
The Well-Lived Life: A 102-Year-Old Doctor's Six Secrets to Health and Happiness at Every Age
by McGarey Gladys - Hyman, Mark
Dr. Gladys McGarey, a centenarian still-practicing doctor and the mother of holistic medicine, reveals her powerful and life-changing secrets for how to live with joy, vitality, and purpose at any age.
Dr. Gladys McGarey, cofounder of the American Holistic Medical Association, began her medical practice at a time when women couldn't even own their own bank accounts. Over the past sixty years, she has pioneered a new way of thinking about disease and health that has transformed the way we imagine health care and self-care around the world.
On these pages, Dr. McGarey shares her six actionable secrets to enjoying lives that are long, happy, and purpose-driven:
-Spend your energy wildly: How to embrace your life fully and feel motivated every day.
-All life needs to move: How to move--spiritually, mentally, and physically--to help let go of trauma and other roadblocks.
-You are here for a reason: How to find the everyday "juice" that helps you stay oriented in your life's purpose.
-You are never alone: How to build a community that's meaningful to you.
-Everything is your teacher: Discover the deep learnings that come from pain and setbacks.
-Love is the most powerful medicine: Learn to love yourself--and others--into healing.
In a voice that is both practical and inspiring, Dr. McGarey shares her own extraordinary stories and eternal wisdom--from her early childhood in India and a chance encounter with Mahatma Gandhi to her life as a physician and a mother of six, to her survival of both heartbreak and illness. And she doesn't just look backwards, she looks forward. At over a hundred years old, Dr. McGarey has an inspiring plan for a healthier and more joyful future for all.
Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most
by Alter, Adam
A groundbreaking guide to breaking free from the thoughts, habits, jobs, relationships, and even business models that prevent us from achieving our full potential.
Almost everyone feels stuck in some way. Whether you're muddling through a midlife crisis, wrestling writer's block, trapped in a thankless job, or trying to remedy a fraying friendship, the resulting emotion is usually a mix of anxiety, uncertainty, fear, anger, and numbness. But it doesn't have to be this way. Anatomy of a Breakthrough is the roadmap we all need to escape our inertia and flourish in the face of friction.
Adam Alter has spent the past two decades studying how people become stuck and how they free themselves to thrive. Here he reveals the formula he and other researchers have uncovered. The solution rests on a process that he calls a friction audit--a systematic procedure that uncovers why a person or organization is stuck, and then suggests a path to progress. The friction audit states that people and organizations get unstuck when they overcome three sources of friction: HEART (unhelpful emotions); HEAD (unhelpful patterns of thought); and HABIT (unhelpful behaviors).
Despite the ubiquity of friction, there are many great "unstickers" hidden in plain sight among us and Alter shines a light on some exceptional stories to share their valuable lessons with us. He tells us about the sub-elite swimmer who unstuck himself twice to win two Olympic gold medals, the actor who faced countless rejections before gaining worldwide fame, the renowned painter who became paralyzed and had to relearn to paint with a brush strapped to his wrist, and Alter's own story of getting unstuck from a college degree that made him deeply unhappy.
Artfully weaving together scientific studies, anecdotes, and interviews, Alter teaches us that getting stuck is a feature rather than a glitch on the road to thriving, but with the right tweaks and corrections we can reach even our loftiest targets.
APRIL NEW RELEASES
Please, Sorry, Thanks: The Three Words That Change Everything
by Batterson, Mark
Strengthen your spiritual, mental, and emotional health and reach your most audacious goals with three simple but power-packed words--from the New York Times bestselling author of Win the Day.
"A practical framework to be the kind of thoughtful, helpful force for good you always wanted to be."--Carey Nieuwhof, founder of the Art of Leadership Academy
The best predictor of success in life, in love, and in leadership is your proficiency at please, sorry, and thanks. Those three words are the foundation of all healthy relationships and successful careers. Those three words are the only ceiling on achieving your dreams. Those three words will determine how happy you are.
With his trademark blend of personal stories, scientific and historical references, and biblical insight, Pastor Mark Batterson shows how you can change your world with your words:
- A timely please can help you unlock the rule of reciprocity for greater results, discover the power of "we is greater than me," and honor others above yourself.
- A sincere sorry can lead you to mend broken relationships, strengthen connections through being radically vulnerable, and better understand the degrees of forgiveness.
- A heartfelt thanks paves the way toward a resilient mindset of gratitude and an expectancy to see God move on your behalf.
Whether you're launching out into a new phase of life or navigating long-established complexities, it's time to harness the power of those three transformative words and let them propel you wherever God leads you to go.
You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir
by Smith, Maggie
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"This book is extraordinary." --Ann Patchett
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by Good Housekeeping, Goodreads, Zibby Mag, Newsweek, BookPage, and LitHub
The bestselling poet and author of the "powerful" (People) and "luminous" (Newsweek) Keep Moving offers a lush and heartrending memoir exploring coming of age in your middle age.
"Life, like a poem, is a series of choices."
In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman's personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes. With the spirit of self-inquiry and empathy she's known for, Smith interweaves snapshots of a life with meditations on secrets, anger, forgiveness, and narrative itself. The power of these pieces is cumulative: page after page, they build into a larger interrogation of family, work, and patriarchy.
You Could Make This Place Beautiful, like the work of Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk, and Gina Frangello, is an unflinching look at what it means to live and write our own lives. It is a story about a mother's fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman's love and regard for herself. Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility. With a poet's attention to language and an innovative approach to the genre, Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.
The Year of Jubilee
by Morgan, Cindy
The Year of Jubilee is a lyrical coming-of-age novel set against the backdrop of the turbulent South in the early 1960s.
The Mockingbird family has always lived peacefully in Jubilee, Kentucky, despite the divisions that mark their small town. Until the tense summer of 1963, when their youngest child, Isaac, falls gravely ill. Middle sister Grace, nearly fourteen, is determined to do whatever it takes to save her little brother. With her father and mother away at the hospital, Grace is left under the loving but inexperienced eye of her aunt June, with little to do but wait and worry. Inspired by a young teacher's mission for change, she begins to flirt with danger--and with a gifted boy named Golden, who just might be the key to saving Isaac's life. Then the unthinkable happens, and the world as she knows it shifts in ways she never could have imagined. Grace must decide what she believes amid the swirling, conflicting voices even of those she loves the most.
From gifted songwriter Cindy Morgan comes this lyrical, tender tale of a girl standing at the threshold of adulthood, learning the depths of the human heart and the bonds of family that bend, break, and bind together over and over again.
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