Higher Is Waiting is a spiritual guidebook, a collection of teachings culled from the experiences of a lifetime, meant to inspire listeners to climb higher in their own lives and pull themselves up to a better, more fulfilling place. In this gem of a book, Tyler Perry writes of how his faith has sustained him in hard times, centered him in good times, and enriched his life.

The Book of Awakening, by poet and teacher Mark Nepo, provides small doses of what really matters, simple truths and stories from everyday lives, plus inspiration from the great wisdom traditions. Each day’s entry is accompanied by simple, yet profound, practices designed to help us live the life we want by being present to the life we have. For, in the words of St. Francis of Assisi, “You are that which you are seeking.”

In the narrator’s dream, Christian follows the advice of Evangelist and leaves the City of Destruction for the Celestial City. His travels include visits to many fascinating places, including the Hill of Difficulty, the Palace Beautiful, the Valley of Humiliation, Vanity Fair, and Doubting Castle. Along the way, he meets Worldly Wiseman, Goodwill, Hypocrite, Apollyon, Faithful, Mr. Talksalot, Hopeful, Simpleton, and a host of other colorful characters.

Hinds' Feet on High Places is Hannah Hurnard's best-known and best-loved book, a beautiful allegory dramatizing the yearning of God's children to be led to new heights of love, joy, and victory. Follow Much-Afraid on her spiritual journey through difficult places with her two companions, Sorrow and Suffering.

At the age of 15, Jennifer Rothschild confronted two unshakable realities: Blindness is inevitable...and God is enough. Now this popular author, speaker, and recording artist offers poignant lessons that illuminate a path to freedom and fulfillment. With warmth, humor, and insight, Jennifer shares the guiding principles she walks by - and shows you how to walk forward by faith into God's marvelous light.

None of us signed up for a conventional experience with the unconventional God, yet too often the spiritual life can become routine, dare we say, even boring. In Adore, Sara Hagerty gives us all permission to admit "I barely know You, God," and with this honest admission, to scoot a little nearer to this familiar stranger. Adoration is the simple practice Sara discovered for starting where you are, and letting the grit of your day greet the beauty of God's presence.

It's not what I lost. It's what I've found. I was only 17, just a girl, when God asked me for everything I had...my health, my hopes, my independence, my dreams, my freedom, and my mobility. He took it all. I was so angry with him that I tried to push him away. God relentlessly held me more closely. Looking back, 40 years later, I understand that God has changed and healed me - my heart and my mind - in the most unexpected ways, giving me rubies of his wisdom about an unbending faith and an experience of his mercy I can now tell you about.

Kate Merrick examines the Bible's gritty stories of resilient women as well as her own experience of losing a child - a journey followed by more than a million people on prayfordaisy.com - to reveal the reality of surprising joy and deep hope even in the midst of heartache.

Christy Nockels knows firsthand how easily our desire to serve God - even when using the gifts he has given us - can overshadow our delight in simply being with him. When God called her to lay down her ministry for a season, Christy was forced to confront how her sense of purpose and worth had become tangled up in her work. God then lovingly invited her to discover true rest in his presence as she learned to live as the Beloved.

In Kate Bowler’s bestselling memoir Everything Happens for a Reason, listeners witnessed the ways she, as a divinity-school professor and young mother, reckoned with a Stage IV cancer diagnosis; in her follow-up memoir, No Cure for Being Human, she unflinchingly and winsomely unpacked the ways that life becomes both hard and beautiful when we abandon certainty and the illusion of control in our lives.

When Katie Davis Majors moved to Uganda, accidentally founded a booming organization, and later became the mother of 13 girls through the miracle of adoption, she determined to weave her life together with the people she desired to serve. But joy often gave way to sorrow as she invested her heart fully in walking alongside people in the grip of poverty, addiction, desperation, and disease.

This revolutionary book about our future is based on the simple idea that, according to the Bible, heaven is not our eternal home - the New Earth is. As Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, the next chapter of our story begins with "the renewal of all things", by which he means the Earth we love in all its beauty, our own selves, and the things that make for a rich life: music, art, food, laughter, and all that we hold dear. Everything shall be renewed "when the world is made new".

Where do we go when we die? Or is there nowhere to go? Is death something we can do or is it just something that happens to us? Now in his ninth decade, former Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, has spent a lifetime at the bedsides of the dying, guiding countless men and women towards peaceful deaths. In The Last Bus, he presents a positive, meditative and profound exploration of the many important lessons we can learn from death.

The Orthodox Church's reverence for Mary the Mother of God can be a stumbling block for converts, and a fulfilling relationship with her can prove elusive for converts and lifelong Orthodox Christians alike. In this deeply personal but beautifully universal memoir, Brandi Willis Schreiber relates her own quest to know and love the Virgin Mary and to incorporate her as a vital participant in her spiritual life. Brandi's sparkling, vulnerable account invites the listener to join her in this quest.

"Amazing Peace" is a beautiful and deeply moving poem from Maya Angelou. Here she inspires us to embrace the peace and promise of Christmas, so that hope and love can once again light up our holidays and the world. "Angels and Mortals, Believers and Nonbelievers, look heavenward," she writes, "and speak the word aloud. Peace." "Amazing Peace" is Maya Angelou's radiant affirmation of the goodness of life and is a touching celebration of the "Glad Season" that will resonate with people of all faiths.

Small Graces is a journey into the sacred moments that illuminate our everyday lives. In 20 elegant pieces, writer, sculptor, and theologian Kent Nerburn celebrates the daily rituals that reveal our deeper truths. Through the exploration of simple acts, Small Graces reminds us to chart a course each day that nourishes the soul, honors the body, and engages the mind.

When Paula D'Arcy lost her husband and baby in a car crash, she began an inner search for a faith that was stronger than fear. In Gift of the Red Bird she shares her remarkable spiritual adventure. Grief, she shows us, is an ongoing, never-completed process, one that becomes woven into the fabric of the grieving person's spiritual life.

In her new book, Stasi Eldredge meets listeners in their painful realities and offers an invitation to a joy that is defiant in the face of this broken world. This joy does not Pollyannaish-ly ignore life's heartache; rather, it insists that sorrow and loss do not have the final say. This kind of joy is present to both goodness and grief and interprets them in the light of heaven.

Frederick Buechner has long been a kindred spirit to those who find elements of doubt as constant companions on their journey of faith. He is a passionate writer and preacher who can alter lives with a simple phrase. Reflecting Buechner's exquisite gift for storytelling and his compassionate pastor's heart, Secrets in the Dark will inspire laughter, hope, and bring great solace. Start listening and rediscover what it means to be thoughtful about faith.

Here is the dramatic story of young, docile Emil Sinclair's descent - led by precocious schoolmate Max Demian - into a secret and dangerous world of petty crime and revolt against convention and eventual awakening to selfhood.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was a reclusive poet whose only friendships were carried out in correspondence. Despite writing almost 1800 poems in her life, very few were published until after her death. Here, the poems are presented in chronological order in their original form, unaltered by editorial revision, in one volume. It offers a wide-angle view of Dickinson's poetic development, from the clunky rhyme schemes of her youth, through valentines she wrote in the early 1850s, to the gloomy, hell-obsessed writings of her last years.

Beloved, profoundly moving account of the author's marriage, the couple's search for faith and friendship with C. S. Lewis, and a spiritual strength that sustained Vanauken after his wife's untimely death.

Sometimes it seems we just can't get what we want. Circumstances thwart our best-laid plans. We struggle to live a heartfelt life. Worst of all, says Eldredge, the modern church mistakenly teaches its people to kill desire (calling it sin) and replace it with duty or obligation (calling it sanctification).

At the age of 15, Jennifer Rothschild confronted two unshakable realities: Blindness is inevitable...and God is enough. Now this popular author, speaker, and recording artist offers poignant lessons that illuminate a path to freedom and fulfillment. With warmth, humor, and insight, Jennifer shares the guiding principles she walks by - and shows you how to walk forward by faith into God's marvelous light.

Little girls know about Cinderella, about her breathtaking beauty, about Prince Charming, about a magical destiny called "happily ever after." And inside every woman is a little girl who secretly aches for a fairy godmother to wave a wand and transform her into the princess she has always longed to be—to make her beautiful, captivating and adored. But we've learned that fairy tales aren't real, and so we squelch our precious gifts of longing and desire.

Stillness as a virtue is a foreign concept in our society, but there is wisdom in God's own rhythm of work and rest. Jesus practiced sabbath among those who had turned it into a dismal thing, a day for murmuring and finger-wagging, and he reminded them of the day's true purpose: liberation - to heal, to feed, to rescue, to celebrate, to lavish and relish life abundant. With this audiobook, Buchanan reminds us of this and gives practical advice for restoring the sabbath in our lives.

What do you do when you wake up and feel like you're not enough for your life? Or when you look out the kitchen window as dusk falls and wonder how do you live when life keeps breaking your heart? As Ann Voskamp writes, "great grief isn't meant to fit inside your body. It's why your heart breaks." And each of us holds enough brokenness to overflow - to be given as the greatest story of our lives. In 60 vulnerably soulful stories, The Way of Abundance moves from self-weary brokenness to Christ-focused givenness.

The long-hidden diary of a young Polish woman's life during the Holocaust, translated for the first time into English. Renia Spiegel was born in 1924 to an upper-middle class Jewish family living in Southeastern Poland, near what was at that time the border with Romania. At the start of 1939, Renia began a diary. By the fall of 1939, Renia and her younger sister, Elizabeth (née Ariana), were staying with their grandparents in Przemysl just as the German and Soviet armies invaded Poland. Cut off from their mother, who was in Warsaw, Renia and her family were plunged into war.

Speaking from the heart, Oriah Mountain Dreamer invites you to confront the varieties of human experience, from desire and commitment to sorrow and betrayal, and challenges you to open repeatedly to love and life. Unique, practical, and often surprising, The Invitation is an invaluable guide to living the ecstasy of everyday life, learning to recognize true beauty in yourself and the world, and finding the sustenance your spirit longs for.

Despite his deep desire to overcome mental illness and lead others out of their own pain, pastor Andrew Stoecklein died by suicide at the age of 30. In the wake of the tragedy, his widow, Kayla, embarked on a journey to better understand Andrew’s harrowing battle, come alongside those with similar struggles, and help the church overcome the stigma of suicide.