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.

Scripture reveals a God who meets us where we are, not where we pretend to be. No More Faking Fine is your invitation to get honest with God through the life-giving language of lament.

Hurting people ask heart-felt questions about God and suffering. The usual answers fail. They don't support the truth God loves everyone all the time. God Can't gives a believable answer to why a good and powerful doesn't prevent evil.

"Okay, Lord, you can have him. But if he must die, I want it to be for something big. I want someone’s life to be changed forever." This is what Laura Sobeich prayed when she found out her 17-year-old son had only one year to live. With this desperate prayer, she released her son to God’s will. At that point, Zach Sobiech was just another teenager battling cancer. When his mother told him to think about writing good-bye letters to family and friends, he decided instead to write songs. One of them, "Clouds", captured hearts and changed not one life but millions, making him an international sensation.

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.

When a bullet pierced a calm August evening, it forced one family into tragedy and fractured lives in the small Oklahoma community. In this powerful memoir, a mom recounts her family's grief, which was ignited by one seemingly harmless decision, resulting in the senseless and violent death of her five-year-old child. Full of haunting foreshadowing and ethereal experiences, this story traverses the barbed and foreign landscape of loss and the quest for justice.It entrenches the power and impact of one choice and of one life. Ultimately, this story is one of human resiliency that is rooted in...

What exactly are the weird and the eerie? In this new essay, Mark Fisher argues that some of the most haunting and anomalous fiction of the 20th century belongs to these two modes. The weird and the eerie are closely related but distinct modes, each possessing its own distinct properties. Both have often been associated with horror, yet this emphasis overlooks the aching fascination that such texts can exercise. The weird and the eerie both fundamentally concern the outside and the unknown, which are not intrinsically horrifying, even if they are always unsettling.

Worship leader and recording artist Laura Story’s life took an unexpected turn when her husband, Martin, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Their lives would never be the same. Yes, with God all things are possible. But the devastating news was that no cure existed to restore Martin’s short-term memory, eyesight, and other complications. The fairy-tale life Laura had dreamed of was no longer possible. And yet in struggling with God about how to live with broken dreams, Laura has found joy and a deeper intimacy with Jesus.

Written after his wife's tragic death as a way of surviving the "mad midnight moment," A Grief Observed is C.S. Lewis's honest reflection on the fundamental issues of life, death, and faith in the midst of loss. This work contains his concise, genuine reflections on that period: "Nothing will shake a man - or at any rate a man like me - out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself."

Best-selling author, hospice chaplain, and grief specialist Gary Roe uses his three decades of experience interacting with grieving parents to give us this heartfelt and intensely practical book. In Shattered, Roe walks the listener through the powerful impact a child's death can have - emotionally, mentally, physically, relationally, and spiritually.

People assume Christians have all the answers; yet, in the face of tragedy, death, or suffering, everyone struggles to find just the right words to bring comfort or closure to those in need. Sometimes just hearing "It is God's will" isn't enough. Sometimes just saying "God will turn this to good" seems so meaningless when despair is so profound. Often the pain goes too deep, the questions won't go away, and even the assurance of faith doesn't help. How could God let this happen? How can God love us, yet allow us to suffer in this way? What is the point of this? What is the purpose?

Confronted with a fatal diagnosis for their unborn baby girl, Brooke Martin and her husband faced an unimaginable choice, grappling with how to move forward amid a sea of unanswerable questions. Yet, in the midst of unspeakable grief, Brooke's faith and vulnerability not only laid the foundation for her own healing but also for a global movement toward resilience and recovery. Controlled Burn weaves together invaluable advice, spiritual insights, and raw truths learned from Brooke Martin's greatest trials, offering listeners guidance to walk through life's fires and come out unburned.

Close to one in four American women experience the silent grief of pregnancy loss. Loved Baby offers much-needed support to women in the middle of psychological and physiological grief as a result of losing an unborn child through miscarriage, stillbirth, or ectopic pregnancy loss. In Loved Baby, author Sarah Philpott gently walks alongside women as they experience the misguided shame, isolation, and crushing despair that accompany the turmoil of loss.

This honest, warm and personal book shows us that we don’t need to wrap up our stories of suffering with lessons and silver linings or suppress our pain. Being honest with God, and with others, about our heartache is not only “allowed” but encouraged in the Scriptures. In fact, lament is authorized by God as an act of worship.

We all dream about how if one thing was different in our lives it would finally make us content. But once we get the very thing we wished for, we are still left wanting more. Is it even possible to feel peaceful and satisfied in life? Wishing for "more" in life usually leaves you feeling unfulfilled and anxious—especially when we realize that more will never be enough. In The Secret to Complete Contentment Bible teacher and author Jack Countryman offers Bible verses and 60 thoughtful reflections to reveal why living in the love of Jesus is the only way to know true, lasting contentment.

This is the second book in the Afterlife, Interrupted series. Over the past 23 years, Nathan G. Castle, OP, has helped more than 300 “stuck" - and not-so-stuck - souls who died suddenly and traumatically adjust to the afterlife. Victims of fires, automobile accidents, shootings, stabbings, drownings - and suicides - come to him in his dreams seeking help to resolve their Interrupted Death Experiences™. Father Nathan believes that providing such help is something the Holy Spirit has given him and his prayer partners to do.

If you’ve ever spent time in a hospital, you know that it can be a place of struggles and hardships. These hardships aren’t limited to physical problems; often when our bodies are in pain, our spiritual lives can suffer too.

If you've lost a spouse, child, family member, or friend, you've discovered that few people understand the deep hurt you feel. Through a Season of Grief is the first 365-day devotional designed to support and uplift you in the first, most difficult year of bereavement. These devotions offer biblical comfort and practical teaching that will enable you to take steps forward each day toward healing. You will better understand the grieving process and will receive needed encouragement along the way.

No grief is quite like the grief that follows pregnancy loss. But true hope and redemption are available, even in the heartbreak of miscarriage and stillbirth.

When four-year-old Colton Burpo emerges from life-saving surgery with remarkable stories of his visit to heaven, his family doesn’t know what to believe. Heaven Is for Real details what Colton saw and his family’s journey towards accepting their young son had visited the afterlife.