Wilderness Spirituality

Sarah Bessey is an expert at faithfully stumbling forward. As a New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of Evolving Faith, the foremost community for progressive Christians, she has been trusted by thousands of people to pursue a reconstruction of faith centered on compassion, truth, and inclusion. Bessey has found a deeply underserved and underestimated remnant in the wilderness of Christianity who are still devoted to Jesus, deeply rooted in the Gospel, fascinated with Scripture, and committed to reimagining their faith.

It's Jake's birthday. He is sitting in a small plane, being flown over the landscape that has been the backdrop to his life - his childhood, his marriage, his work, his passions. Now he is in his early sixties, and he isn't quite the man he used to be. He has lost his wife, his son is in prison, and he is about to lose his past, for Jake has Alzheimer's.

The creators of the wildly popular Girls Gone Bible podcast walk alongside you in your hardest seasons, with daily encouragement to reconnect with God and his Word to bolster your faith.

Could wilderness be our only hope? As our culture removes itself from the natural world, something very essential has been lost. But there is still one place we can go to get it back. Come along on a spiritual journey, away from a chaotic world of details, obligations, smartphones, and noisy machines to a place that is unspoiled, untamed, and free. Backpacking mostly solo, Stillman leads us to the heart of the American wilderness, where nature works her magic to heal and transform your life.

How do believers begin at a place of joy and find themselves once again defeated? This book will give the listener new hope and an understanding of some of the basic definitions of the Christian life missed by so many people.

In Wild Men, Wild Alaska professional hunting and fishing guide and outfitter Rocky McElveen tells the stories of his own adventures as well as those of some of his well-known clients. The book takes listeners directly into the Alaskan bush, and shares the intense challenges of a majestic wilderness that pushes a man to his limits.

Shattered by the discovery of her husband's affair, Liv knows they need to leave the chaos of New York to save their marriage. Maybe the road trip they'd always planned, exploring America's national parks - just the two of them - would help heal the wounds.

Welcome to the wilderness - the place between receiving a promise from God and seeing it come to pass. God uses the wilderness to prepare and equip you for your destiny. Contrary to what many may think, getting through this season isn’t just a matter of waiting on God. You have a part to play in navigating through it. And if you don’t want to waste time wandering in circles, it’s important to learn what that is. Author John Bevere equips you with key biblical insights and profound stories that will help you navigate your dry or difficult seasons and step into all that God has for you.

Lincoln Atwood survived the contagion that wiped out nine-tenths of humanity. As the last survivor in a secret government bunker, he knows that the other survivors are scared, angry, and dangerous, just like him. After weeks alone with the mummified bodies of his colleagues, he escapes the bunker. But the world outside has changed. Among the crumbling ruins of civilization, he loses himself to the wilderness in his soul. When he sees Caroline, a fellow survivor, she is vision of light in a world gone dark.

In The Path of Loneliness, Elliot gives hope to the lonely through tender reflections on God's love for us and his plans to bless us. Here you will find honesty and compassion, not platitudes. She tackles this difficult topic with grace and faith, showing you how to make peace with loneliness, however it has come about, and how to grow through it.

Carrying only basic camping equipment and a collection of the world's great spiritual writings, Belden C. Lane embarks on solitary spiritual treks through the Ozarks and across the American Southwest. For companions, he has only such teachers as Rumi, John of the Cross, Hildegard of Bingen, Dag Hammarskjöld, and Thomas Merton, and as he walks, he engages their writings with the natural wonders he encounters, demonstrating how being alone in the wild opens a rare view onto one's interior landscape, and how the saints' writings reveal the divine in nature.

Loving a prodigal is a long and desperate journey, filled with fear, worry, anger, self-recrimination. You wait for the phone call - will it be from jail or the hospital? You plead with your loved one. You search for help. You feel the shame. You cry out to God, "How long, Lord?" Author Judy Douglass knows these lovers of prodigals well. She is one herself and has created a large and growing community with others. When You Love a Prodigal is a collection of 90 essays - 90 days of perspective on what God offers to you as you love your prodigal.

Gripping true tales of holiness and horror: In the savage forests and rivers of 17th-century Canada, eight courageous Jesuits braved torture, treachery, and martyrdom to bring the light of Christ to a land steeped in darkness. Their blood sanctified North America.

The wilderness can be scary—a place full of peril and desolation. And it can feel meaningless. But when we read the Scriptures, the wilderness is also the place God reveals Himself and cares for the people He loves. Pastor Dustin Crowe explores the biblical theme of the wilderness, helping listeners counter the harsh, seemingly hopeless seasons in their lives with hope and courage. The wilderness is often the place where God grows our faith and proves His faithfulness. But to grow, we must be intentional about listening and leaning into His provision.

The Lord’s Prayer is a beautiful, subversive passage of words given to the church by Jesus. It forms our imaginations and—given time—transforms us. And today, we are in desperate need of renewed imaginations. Christians are living in a wilderness of secularism. In Liturgy in the Wilderness, Anglican priest D. J. Marotta shows how the Lord’s Prayer provides a framework in our secular age for understanding, believing, and living in light of Jesus Christ.

Every Christian must pass through the desert on the way to their Promised Land. Wilderness experiences are often times of great uncertainty and change. Our faith in Christ is refined in the intense heat of the desert experience and our intimacy with him increases. Find out how to go from surviving to thriving by partnering with God as he leads you in the path that will strengthen your faith and prepare you to step into your destiny.

In tough times, we can become more familiar with pain than progress and more acquainted with loneliness than companionship. But what if the purpose of our faith is not to reach the Promised Land but to recognize that God is with us in our lowest moments and times of our own personal wilderness? In Experiencing Friendship with God, speaker and pastor Faith Eury Cho draws on ancient wisdom about intimacy with God to help us cultivate a relationship with Him, even among all the complications of today’s world.

Every Christian must pass through the desert on the way to their Promised Land. Wilderness experiences are often times of great uncertainty and change. Our time in the desert seasons of our lives is lengthened or shortened depending on our response to each circumstance. Our faith in Christ is refined in the intense heat of the desert experience as our intimacy with Him increases.

In God in the Desert, Old Testament scholar and spiritual director Noel Forlini Burt explores Old Testament wilderness narratives in conversation with wise voices from throughout church history, bridging the gap between biblical studies and spiritual formation. Journeying through stories such as Hagar, Elijah, and the Israelites at Sinai, each chapter also engages with figures like the desert fathers and mothers, Parker Palmer, Henri Nouwen, Richard Rohr, and Eugene Peterson.

Do you sometimes feel that you are wandering in a wilderness of grief, confusion, and faltering faith? If so, you are not alone. Like the lost children of Israel, many have searched for a way through a personal wilderness. But just as those same Israelites followed God's leading to the Promised Land, you too can find the promised new life in the Spirit. Jamie Buckingham made such a journey - not only figuratively but literally. During a time of intense personal struggle, he traveled to the Sinai. There he found restoration and, in the solitude of a wilderness night, he learned ancient Bible truths that would alter his life forever.