Spiritual Friendship

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.

All ministry leaders need to cultivate healthy and life-giving friendships with peers, and especially with Jesus. Unfortunately, the concept of friendship has been reduced to clicks and “likes” on social media sites that are neither life-giving, nor truly signs of friendship.

With the warmth, wisdom, and grace that infuse his works, Father James Martin explains why Jesus' crucifixion and death on the cross is an important teaching moment in the Gospels. Jesus' final statements, words that are deeply cherished by his followers, exemplify the depth of his suffering but also provide a key to his empathy and why we can connect with him so deeply.

There's just something about people who are close to God. Through the ups and downs of life, they remain secure, hopeful. If you want a more rewarding spiritual life, if you want the pleasure of knowing your Creator's heart, this soul-lifting book is for you. Learn from Dutch Sheets as he shares his life lessons for cultivating an intimate relationship with God. Each of the 30 short chapters reveals a simple practice or biblical mindset that will help draw you away from the noise of life and into the Lord's peaceful presence.

Relational Intelligence is your action plan for getting smart about your purpose partners. Relationships were God's idea, writes Daniels, and when we understand and apply what God has to say about them we end up avoiding unnecessary relational turmoil, advancing in all areas of our life, and accomplishing our God-given purpose. When your purpose is on the line, the cost of relational unintelligence is too great to pay. In this audiobook, you will explore and learn how to activate the relational intelligence you need for the life of purpose you want.

Do you really want to meet you? Do you want to know what kind of personality you are and how you can benefit enormously from knowing your true identity? Well, then read on! If you do not understand your true identity you will never be happy! Knowing your weak and strong points and your personality type can give you enormous help on most people who think they know everything, but in the end they are lost and very unhappy. Only by discovering yourself will you be much more successful and, above all, much happier! This is why we made this book.

Based upon powerful insights from the scriptural book of Ephesians, and seasoned with personal stories and practical wisdom, Defined challenges you to let the One who knows you best be the One who guides your heart the most. It’s time for all of us to live in the amazing light of His acceptance, abundance, and strength.

What does it mean to pursue an intimate relationship with God? A clear understanding of the integral relationship between intimacy and obedience provides a framework in today’s world for glorifying God, particularly through the miraculous, as Dr. Clark has so profoundly demonstrated during his many years of ministry. He longs for you to renew your knowledge of God’s deep love for his children and how fervently God desires a life of intimate friendship with you.

In No Greater Love, Rebecca McLaughlin walks us through the highs and lows of friendship love—a love that’s been neglected and malnourished in our modern world. She draws especially on Jesus in the Gospels and on Paul to show how powerful and precious Christian friendship is and how we can walk through the hurt, loss, and disillusionment that comes from broken friendship trust. Beginning with the words of Jesus on the night he was betrayed and abandoned, she points us to his battle-tested love as the unending source of our best love for one another.

Women long for deep and lasting friendships but often find them challenging to make. The private angst they feel regarding friendship often translates into their own insecurity and isolation. Christine Hoover offers women a fresh, biblical vision for friendship that allows for the messiness of our lives and the realities of our schedules.

Too often our friendships with other women can be marked by drama, competition, betrayal, and unforgiveness. As women, we can cause one another deep pain, creating wounds in need of healing. But we were made for connection and healthy friendships with other women to cheer each other on and fulfill our God-breathed purpose - together.

Immigrant daughter, novice chaplain, bereaved friend: author Chenxing Han (Be the Refuge) takes us on a pilgrimage through the wilds of grief and laughter, pain and impermanence, reconnecting us to both the heartache and inexplicable brightness of being human.

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.

Author and pastor David Kim shares his experiences with loneliness as a Korean American immigrant and delivers compelling research about belonging that includes the revolutionary five anchors for developing meaningful relationships.

Why is the third person in the Godhead - the one Jesus said would be the believer's ultimate source of truth and comfort - the source of such confusion? In The God I Never Knew, Robert Morris clearly explains that the Holy Spirit's chief desire is for relationship - to offer us the encouragement and guidance of a trusted friend. This insightful and biblically-based book moves beyond theological jargon, religious tradition, and cultural misconceptions to clarify what the Holy Spirit promises to do in your life.

Whether you are engaged and afraid you won't be able to light the spark, are newlyweds who haven't started off well, or have been married five, 10, 25 years, or more and you'd like to recapture the spark you once had, this audiobook is for you! The challenges aim to spice up the bedroom while guiding you through all three levels of sexual intimacy. As you go through these challenges with lots of laughter and enjoyment, sex will stop being a source of tension and become something fun that brings you together, just the way God intended.

Mama Jane was a hero! A rock of faith and tenacity, of hope and love, and Chad Norris’ paternal grandmother. She spent her life modeling Christ, loving God and others, and four generations of her family have been eternally impacted because of it. It’s here that we uncover a great secret - that Jesus came to reconnect us to Father, to restore relationship with his children.

For many, friends now play the role of family, but often our friendships don't turn out quite as we envisioned or hoped. Bible teacher Kelly Needham debunks our world's constricted, small view of friendship and casts a richer, more life-giving, biblical vision for friendship. In Friend-ish, Kelly Needham takes a close look at what scripture says about friendship. She reveals the distorted view most of us have of it and recasts a glorious vision for a Christian understanding.

There’s never been a more complex and confusing time to navigate adulthood than right now, but what if it didn’t have to be confusing for you? It’s possible to live the happy and healthy life that God has for you, and this step-by-step guide helps you get there. In her debut book, Christian YouTuber, podcaster, and Bible teacher Jeanine Amapola shows you how.

Jeff Deyo invites you into a conversation about worship in an audiobook that was made for anyone seeking to experience the Lord in a deeper way. Shift your perspective on relationship with God from obligation to invitation and rediscover authentic worship that reaches from the secret place to the marketplace.