This Beautiful Truth How Gods Goodness Breaks Into Our Darkness

Download or read book This Beautiful Truth written by Sarah Clarkson and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a broken world. Amid the daily realities of sickness and isolation, disappointment and pain, it can be profoundly difficult to grasp the real goodness of God. But this is where God breaks into our darkness with beauty. In the wonder of creation, in art or film, story or song, in the kindness of his people and the good they create, God breaks into our pain in a tangible way, teaching us to trust his kindness and hope for his healing. Beauty is a voice singing into our suffering, beckoning us toward restoration. In This Beautiful Truth, Sarah Clarkson shares her own encounters with beauty in the midst of her decade-long struggle with mental illness, depression, and doubt. In a voice both vulnerable and reflective, she paints a compelling picture of the God who reaches out to us in a real and powerful way through the "taste and see" goodness of what he has made and what he continues to create amid our darkness. "To recognize and trust God's gift in pain," she writes, "empowers us to create and love as powerful witnesses to God's healing love in a hopeless world." If you want to renew your capacity to recognize and encounter God's beauty in your life, this hope-filled book will show you the way.

Download or read book Book Girl written by Sarah Clarkson and published by NavPress. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When you hear a riveting story, does it thrill your heart and stir your soul? Do you hunger for truth and goodness? Do you secretly relate to Belle’s delight in the library in Beauty and the Beast? If so, you may be on your way to being a book girl. Books were always Sarah Clarkson’s delight. Raised in the company of the lively Anne of Green Gables, the brave Pevensie children of Narnia, and the wise Austen heroines, she discovered reading early on as a daily gift, a way of encountering the world in all its wonder. But what she came to realize as an adult was just how powerfully books had shaped her as a woman to live a story within that world, to be a lifelong learner, to grasp hope in struggle, and to create and act with courage. She’s convinced that books can do the same for you. Join Sarah in exploring the reading life as a gift and an adventure, one meant to enrich, broaden, and delight you in each season of your life as a woman. In Book Girl, you’ll discover: how reading can strengthen your spiritual life and deepen your faith, why a journey through classic literature might be just what you need (and where to begin), how stories form your sense of identity, how Sarah’s parents raised her to be a reader—and what you can do to cultivate a love of reading in the growing readers around you, and 20+ annotated book lists, including some old favorites and many new discoveries. Whether you’ve long considered yourself a reader or have dreams of becoming one, Book Girl will draw you into the life-giving journey of becoming a woman who reads and lives well.

Download or read book Daring to Hope written by Katie Davis Majors and published by Multnomah. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestseller How do you hold on to hope when you don’t get the ending you asked for? When Katie Davis Majors moved to Uganda, accidentally founded a booming organization, and later became the mother of thirteen 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. After unexpected tragedy shook her family, for the first time Katie began to wonder, Is God really good? Does He really love us? When she turned to Him with her questions, God spoke truth to her heart and drew her even deeper into relationship with Him. Daring to Hope is an invitation to cling to the God of the impossible—the God who whispers His love to us in the quiet, in the mundane, when our prayers are not answered the way we want or the miracle doesn’t come. It’s about a mother discovering the extraordinary strength it takes to be ordinary. It’s about choosing faith no matter the circumstance and about encountering God’s goodness in the least expected places. Though your heartaches and dreams may take a different shape, you will find your own questions echoed in these pages. You’ll be reminded of the gifts of joy in the midst of sorrow. And you’ll hear God’s whisper: Hold on to hope. I will meet you here.

Download or read book Journeys of Faithfulness written by Sarah Clarkson and published by Apologia Educational Ministries. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wonderful gift for mothers and their daughters! Sarah Clarkson challenges young women to reach higher and go deeper in their relationship with Jesus Christ by exploring the spiritual journeys of biblical women whose faith moves and inspires us even today. Celebrate the beauty, sacrifice, and courage that made these women the heroines they are with this collection of inspirational stories and devotions. Through the journeys of Ruth, Esther, Mary, and others, learn how God can reach into the life of an ordinary girl who loves Him and bring His beauty and grace to bear in the world through her obedience. Recommended for ages 12 and up.

Download or read book The Goodness of God written by Randy Alcorn and published by Multnomah. This book was released on 2010-08-10 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For those times when we’re wounded by broken trust, assaulted by disease, or victimized by evil—or when we’re crushed to see such things happen to people we love—Randy Alcorn offers something solid to hold onto: God's love. In this specially focused condensation of Alcorn’s If God Is Good…: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil, we’re continually guided into a deeper glimpse of God’s loving ways and higher purposes—the very things we’re often most blinded to whenever we battle pain and anguish. Alcorn avoids superficial or sentimental responses, and instead presses forward boldly to explore all the troubling doubts and questions that agitate within us when we confront suffering and evil. The issues are far from simple, the answers far from easy—but Alcorn shows how the way of suffering—a path that Jesus himself followed more than anyone else—can ultimately become a journey into wholeness and even logic-defying joy.

Download or read book Aggressively Happy written by Joy Marie Clarkson and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A sumptuous feast."--HALEY STEWART, author of Jane Austen's Genius Guide to Life "Her unflappable hope and sense of enchantment radiate through every page."--BOZE HERRINGTON, novelist "Lyrical prose and delightful storytelling."--THE REV. DR. GLENN PACKIAM Discover the Way Toward a Lighter, Braver, and Wiser Life This old world can be exhausting, despairing, and cynical. But you don't have to be. Instead, you can unlock the power to a happy life--an act of defiance that will make you more resilient in times of turmoil, pain, and chaos. Cultivating happiness takes grit, determination, and a good sense of humor. It's not always easy, but it's well worth it. Beloved writer Joy Marie Clarkson leads the way, crafting an audacious case for happiness no matter what you're going through. With her signature humor and lyrical storytelling, Joy offers an irresistible invitation: "If we accept that life will be full of difficulties and sorrows, we then have two options: to resign ourselves to life generally being a bummer, or to seek enjoyment, delight, and hope in the midst of (and in spite of!) life's up and downs. To put it bluntly: You could choose to cultivate happiness, or you could not. . . . I think we should go for it." Go, therefore, and choose an aggressively happy life.

Download or read book Suffering and the Heart of God written by Diane Langberg and published by New Growth Press. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: She's seen slave dungeons in Ghana. Genocide in Rwanda. Systemic sexual abuse in Brazil. Child abuse and domestic violence in the US. After forty years of counseling abuse survivors around the world, Dr. Diane Langberg, a world renowned trauma expert, remains certain that what trauma destroys, Christ can and does restore. This book will convince you, too, of the healing heart of God. But it's not a fast process, instead much patience is required from family, friends, and counselors as they wisely and respectfully help victims unpack their traumatic suffering through talking, tears, and time. And it's not a process that can be separated from the work of God in both a counselor and counselee. Dr. Langberg calls all of those who wish to help sufferers to model Jesus's sacrificial love and care in how they listen, love, and guide. The heart of God is revealed to sufferers as they grow to understand the cross of Christ and how their God came to this earth and experienced such severe suffering that he too is "well-acquainted with grief." The cross of Christ is the lens that transforms and redeems traumatic suffering and its aftermath, not only for the sufferer, but it also transforms those who walk with the suffering. This book will be a great help to anyone who loves, listens to, and seeks to help someone impacted by trauma and abuse. There is no quick fix, but there is the hope for healing through the love of God in Christ.