Spiritual Direction

We lead our spiritual lives in relationship with others. A faithful community gives us opportunities for worship, sharing burdens, confessing faults, offering forgiveness, and celebrating life. Wherever he went, Henri Nouwen created such communities, and within them, he offered spiritual direction. Available as an audiobook for the first time ever, Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith is part of “The Nouwen Trilogy.” These convenient audio sessions let you adopt Nouwen as your personal spiritual director.

Blending her own experiences with an intimate grasp of spirituality, Sue Monk Kidd relates the passionate and moving tale of her spiritual crisis, when life seemed to have lost meaning and her longing for a hasty escape from the pain yielded to a discipline of "active waiting." Full of wisdom, poise, and grace, Kidd’s words will encourage us along our spiritual journey, toward becoming who we truly are.

We need companions on our spiritual journey. The modern world has taught us to value autonomy and individualism. Our churches often see spirituality as personal and private. But we cannot go long in our Christian pilgrimage before realizing that isolation leads to spiritual barrenness. We soon discover that our souls long for accompaniment, intimacy, and spiritual friendship. As a result, many Christians today are rediscovering the ancient practice of spiritual direction.

Margaret Guenther uses the images of the spiritual director as host, teacher, and midwife to describe the ministry of spiritual direction today. She pays particular attention to spiritual direction for women, and addresses such down-to-earth questions as setting, time, and privacy. The stories of real people bring the practice of spiritual direction alive.

Starting spiritual direction for the first time? This audiobook tells you everything you need to know. Rev. Dr. John R. Mabry can help. He has been a spiritual director for nearly 20 years, and is the director of the interfaith spiritual direction certificate program at the Chaplaincy Institute in Berkeley, California. Starting Spiritual Direction is one of the first books on spiritual direction written for people who are receiving spiritual direction, rather than giving it.

Here is the modern classic that interweaves the solitude, silence, and prayer of the fourth- and fifth-century Egyptian Desert Fathers and Mothers with our contemporary search for an authentic spirituality.

In Spiritual Direction from Dante: Yearning for Paradise, the Oratorian Father Paul Pearson provides a detailed but accessible spiritual commentary on the last volume of Dante’s masterpiece, Divine Comedy. Fr. Pearson takes listeners step-by-step through the text, explaining the spiritual lessons Dante intends his listeners to learn. These lessons are particularly important, both in Dante’s day and in our own, due to the watered-down image of heavenly bliss the world offers us.

What is spiritual direction and my spiritual direction? What are my "blind spots" and how can I uncover them? What keeps me from all the spiritual riches Christ has for me? How can I better understand where I am in my spiritual progress? Daniel Burke's Navigating the Interior Life will give you the tools you need to understand how and why we grow and die in the spiritual life and what we can do about it.

International healing minister Randy Clark teams up with Mary Healy, a respected Catholic scholar, to show not only that the gifts of the Spirit still exist today but that they are not optional; they are the necessary tools God has given for both building his church and spreading the Gospel.

Hell and how to avoid it are perennial topics of interest for believing Christians and others. With good reason. Entire libraries have been written on the subject. Most people, even those familiar with his classic, do not realize that Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, chock-full as it is of history and politics, is a masterpiece of spiritual writing. The most famous of his three volumes is the Inferno, an account of Dante's journey through the underworld, where he sees the horror of sin firsthand.

Self-criticism is often our default setting. But we can have a more gracious posture toward ourselves. We can practice disciplines of self-kindness. Editor and spiritual director Cindy Bunch calls us to self-care through greater compassion for ourselves. She helps us pay attention to the frustrations that bug us in order to identify negative thinking about ourselves or others. As we do so, we can discern what we need to let go. This allows us to lean into the things that bring us joy. Each chapter is filled with spiritual practices and creative exercises for reflection and celebration.

Join Father Paul Pearson of the Oratory as he guides you on a spiritual journey through one of the great classics of Christian literature, Dante’s Purgatorio. Purgatory is the least understood of the three possible “destinations” when we die (though unlike Heaven or Hell it is not an eternal one) and is mysterious to many Christians and even to many Catholics today. As he did in his first volume in the Spiritual Direction from Dante trilogy, Avoiding the Inferno, Father Pearson adroitly draws out the great spiritual insights hidden in The Divine Comedy.

Master the decisions that will make your life everything God wants it to be. Every day we make choices. And those choices accumulate and eventually become our life story. What would your life look like if you became an expert at making those choices? In this inspiring guidebook, New York Times best-selling author Craig Groeschel shows how the choices that are in your power, if aligned with biblical principles, will lead to a life you've never imagined.

Jesus’ Path of Love “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” - Ephesians 3:17-19 In the first century, Jesus of Nazareth inspired a movement. A community of people whose lives were centered on Jesus Christ and committed to living the way of God's unconditional, unselfish, sacrificial, and redemptive love. Before they were called "...

Do you long for depth and authenticity in your relationship with God? Do you want purpose and daily direction but can't seem to find the right prayer to receive it? When the Soul Listens will guide you away from formulas and step-by-step prayer plans toward contemplative prayer, "the lifestyle that allows you to experience God's presence", writes author Jan Johnson. Learn to find rest and guidance in God, opening yourself to God's presence and direction through this practical approach.

This world is no friend to grace. God has given us some resources, however. As we grow in character qualities like hope, patience, repentance and joy, we ill grow in our ability to persevere. The biblical passages in these studies offer encouragement to continue in the path Christ has set forth for us.

If you're longing to become more attentive to God - to listen to him, know his voice and experience his love, spiritual direction can point the way. In Seeking God Together, experienced spiritual director Alice Fryling offers a unique introduction specifically for group spiritual direction: a place where individuals can experience what it means to be listened to and loved by others, so that they can learn to listen more attentively to God in their daily lives and be used by God.

Dallas Willard, one of today's most brilliant Christian thinkers and the author of The Divine Conspiracy ( Christianity Today's 1999 Book of the Year), presents a way of living that enables ordinary men and women to enjoy the fruit of the Christian life.

When children have a listening companion who hears, acknowledges, and encourages their early experiences with God, it creates a spiritual footprint that shapes their lives. How can we increase our capacity to engage children in spiritual conversations? In this audiobook, Lacy Finn Borgo draws on her own experience of practicing spiritual direction with children. She offers an overview of childhood spiritual formation and introduces key skills for engaging conversation-posture, power, and patterns - from a Christ-centered perspective.

The second part of Peterson's momentous five-volume work on spiritual theology, Eat This Book challenges us to read the Scriptures on their own terms, as God's revelation, and to live them as we read them. With warmth and wisdom Peterson offers greatly needed, down-to-earth counsel on spiritual reading. In these pages he draws readers into a fascinating conversation on the nature of language, the ancient practice of lectio divina, and the role of Scripture translations.