Showing results by publisher "Hodder & Stoughton" in Christian Living

Multi-award winning spirituality writer Philip Yancey is loved throughout the world for his honest, insightful and inspirational writing. Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? carries all the hallmarks of classic Yancey, a journalist by training.His quest to unravel the mysteries of prayer is like the journal of a fellow traveller: questioning, challenging, lamenting the unexplainable and rejoicing in the discovery of awesome insights. His journey is beautifully illustrated with moving true stories drawn from around the world.

Whether or not we attend church, deep down we wonder if the biblical story of faith is really enough for the complexity of the world in which we live. We fill our lives with other things, hoping that maybe the next experience or accomplishment will complete us. Yet with every goal we reach, we still feel discouraged and anxious. In Searching for Enough, Pastor Tyler Staton draws on ancient and modern insights to introduce us, as if for the first time, to Jesus' disciple Thomas: history's most notorious sceptic.

The New Testament begins not with a dramatic narrative or lofty poetry but with a genealogy. Provocatively, Matthew's Gospel includes women in Jesus' family line - something that wasn't customary in an ancient culture, where women were largely powerless and uninfluential. In this surprising take on the Christmas story, Tim Keller reveals how, by focusing on the women in Jesus' birth narratives, a colourful, scandalous and refreshing tale of grace emerges.

It is commonly thought in secular society that the Bible is one of the greatest hindrances to doing justice. Isn't it full of regressive views? Didn't it condone slavery? Why look to the Bible for guidance on how to have a more just society? But Timothy Keller, pastor of New York City's Redeemer Presbyterian Church, sees it another way. In Generous Justice, Keller explores a life of justice empowered by an experience of grace: a generous, gracious justice.

Despite predictions of continuing secularisation, the 21st century has witnessed a surge of religious extremism and violence in the name of God. In this powerful and timely book, Jonathan Sacks explores the roots of violence and its relationship to religion, focusing on the historic tensions between the three Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Life After Doom is a sober analysis of how things stand in relation to climate breakdown, and a deeply insightful exploration of the challenge of living well, maintaining resilience and growing in wisdom and love in the face of nations, ecosystems, economies, religions, and other institutions in disarray.

The Pope guarantees us that is precisely when we open our hearts to providence and allow tenderness and mercy to enter that life becomes beautiful. It's comforting to know that we can always begin again, that God can rebuild a story within us from the fragments. By letting ourselves be inspired by Pope Francis' 15 Rules for a Good Life, we can revel in the wondrous creations that we are, and savour the experience of what it means to live authentically.

Tim and Kathy Keller's best seller The Meaning of Marriage looked at the human need for love and its expression in marriage. This new devotional, drawing on that book but consisting of all-new material, is a day-by-day devotional to help couples find God's wisdom as they navigate the complexities of married life. Each day includes a quotation from Scripture, a comment from the Kellers and a prayer to help you ground your married life in God.

From the day James rescued a street cat abandoned in the hallway of his sheltered accommodation, they began a friendship which has transformed both their lives and, through the bestselling books A Street Cat Named Bob and The World According to Bob, touched millions around the world.

It is these three prayers - asking for assistance, appreciating the good we witness, and feeling awe at the world - that get us through the day and show us the way forward. In Help, Thanks, Wow, Lamott recounts how she came to these insights, explains what they have meant to her over the years and how they've helped, and explores how others have embraced these ideas. Insightful and honest as only Anne Lamott can be, Help, Thanks, Wow is an audiobook that new Lamott listers will love and longtime Lamott fans will treasure.

An exciting look at the real Jesus - wild, playful and provocative - from best-selling author John Eldredge. Jesus is the most vague, misrepresented figure in the history of the world. Is it possible to know and trust someone so ethereal and lofty? What is he really like? Beautiful Outlaw offers a look into the humanity of Jesus, dismantling all the religious nonsense and helping us understand who this man really was - on a personal level. Focusing on his compelling personality, best-selling author John Eldredge shows us the real Jesus - playful, wild and often scandalous.

Rich Villodas, bestselling author of The Deeply Formed Life, helps us to diagnose whether we are following the broad or narrow path, in order to help us pursue the way of Jesus more deeply. The Narrow Path reintroduces the counterintuitive wonder of Jesus's timeless wisdom for this age, one fraught with anxiety, depression, polarizing politics, and online vitriol. The path of Jesus is most certainly narrow, but it is the only one filled with the ever-expanding life of God . . . and it is available now for all who want it!

God planted happiness in the souls of each of us. God wants us to be happy. But so many of us have misunderstood what this means, and we search for fulfilment in the wrong places. In I Want You To Be Happy, Pope Francis explains the characteristics of true, lasting happiness, no matter your circumstances or situation.

Short daily reflections from one of the world's favourite adventurers. Best-selling author Bear Grylls has survived a free-fall parachute accident that left him with a broken back, possibly unable to walk again; falling down a mountain in the Rockies, severing a finger in the Vietnam jungle, a broken shoulder in Antarctica. He passed the gruelling training to join the SAS, crossed the North Atlantic in an open inflatable boat, and held the highest ever open-air formal dinner party, in a balloon at 25,000 feet.

At a time when loneliness and isolation have reached unprecedented levels, it has never been more important for Christians to embrace the practice of hospitality. For many, it is a lost art—a practice we have forgotten, neglected or distorted beyond all recognition. Amid material comforts and rife individualism, practising hospitality can often hold unrealistic expectations and insurmountable pressure. But what if the practice of hospitality was simpler and yet more profound than we imagined?

Doesn't the Bible condone slavery? Isn't the New Testament's teaching on sex outdated? And surely we can't take the Genesis creation story seriously today? These are just three of the seven questions that popular Bible teacher Andrew Ollerton asks of Scripture as he takes an honest look at common issues with God's book.

In the course of his work as a vicar, Dave Tomlinson meets lots of people who describe themselves as 'not good enough' to be Christians, thinking that faith involves going to church a lot or believing in a list of strange things or following certain rules. But being a Christian isn't about any of that - and actually, following Jesus is a lot easier, and more fun, than most people think....

Rob Parsons, author of The Sixty Minute Grandparent and The Heart of Success, now a grandfather himself, shares some of the wisdom he's picked up down the years, from his own experiences and that of others he's met. You don't always have to learn the hard way. On the spur of the moment, the morning after the birth of one of his grandchildren, Rob Parsons wrote the baby a letter.

In response to the devastating loss the world faced during the pandemic, Pope Francis was inspired to write a book to help people find hope and meaning. God is joyful, he writes. And God's compassion is no less than the deepest expression of God's joy, and the heart of all Christian preaching. The liberating revolution of the Gospel is encapsulated here. We are not supposed to carry burdens heavier than those we already have, but to bear witness to a new, beautiful and surprising horizon: to share a joy that has been prepared for everyone.

Many of us have big questions that the Christian faith seems to leave unanswered. So we push them to the back of our minds, for fear of destabilising our beliefs. But leaving these questions unexamined is neither healthy for us nor honouring to God. Rather than shying away from the difficult questions, we need to face them head on.