Reviews Archives - Life Is Story: Recent Episodes
Josh Olds
I have thoroughly enjoyed the Elita Brown series, so reading the final volume was bittersweet. This is a solid conclusion to the series, but I want more! Even if Heather Holleman doesn’t return to the [...]
The post This Seat’s Yours – Heather Holleman appeared first on Life Is Story.
Christian homeschooling mothers who value a nontraditional, literature-based approach to learning will appreciate the perspective this book offers. Homeschooling mother Jennifer Pepito encourages moms that they don’t have to replicate everything about a public school [...]
The post The Inspired Homeschool: Lessons from 10 Home-Educated Heroes for Confident, Faith-Filled Learning at Home – Jennifer Pepito appeared first on Life Is Story.
Kathryn Butler and Korrie Johnson are writers and mothers who are passionate about children’s literature. In this book, they share guidance for Christian parents who want to provide good books for their children, and who [...]
The post Stories Woven in Silver: Pointing Kids to the Gospel Through Children’s Literature – Kathryn Butler and Korrie Johnson appeared first on Life Is Story.
One of the most obvious ways to evaluate the third edition of a book is whether or not it was necessary. Why not just reprint the second edition? What new content is added? What old [...]
The post Exegetical Fallacies (3rd Edition) – Andrew Naselli and D.A. Carson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Aging is an often-ignored topic in Christian living books. The Christian publishing industry tends to emphasize youth and relevance, just like in the broader culture, and people try to avoid thinking about aging. This new [...]
The post Dust to Dust: Aging Wisely in an Anti-Aging World – Jen Wilkin appeared first on Life Is Story.
Every once in a while, I read a book that is totally different than anything I’ve ever read before. In Created to Play, author Brianna Lambert offers a unique and much-needed corrective in how we [...]
The post Created to Play: How Taking Hobbies Seriously Grows Us Spiritually – Brianna Lambert appeared first on Life Is Story.
This collection of historic writings is part of the Plough Spiritual Guides series. This series publishes curated writings by notable Christian thinkers, and while some of these authors are well-known, others are obscure. This new [...]
The post A Sure Way: Following Truth in a World on Fire – Edith Stein and Carolyn Beard (editor) appeared first on Life Is Story.
If there is one word that defines much of the modern church, it may be fragmentation. Congregations divide over politics, race, worship styles, theology, and social issues. Christians increasingly sort themselves into communities of like-minded [...]
The post Mending Sunday – Skot Welch appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have been a Tiffany Yecke Brooks fan since first picking up her book Gaslighted by God some years ago. That book, subtitled Reconstructing a Disillusioned Faith, spoke to any number of folks who had [...]
The post To Rebehold the Stars – Tiffany Yecke Brooks appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is an incredibly niche book about an incredibly wide topic. There are, and this may be only a slight exaggeration, millions of parenting books. There are, and I am sure this is no exaggeration, [...]
The post Parenting Beyond Boundaries in Mark’s Gospel – Sung Uk Lim and Amy Lindeman Allen appeared first on Life Is Story.
Attachment theory is a psychological framework pioneered by 20th century British psychoanalyst John Bowlby. He posited that the emotional bonds formed with primary caregivers in infancy would highly inform that infant’s capacity for trust, intimacy, [...]
The post Bonding with God – Victor Counted appeared first on Life Is Story.
The word “pastor” is a word from nature. It comes from the Latin noun for “shepherd” which derives from a verb meaning “to lead to pasture” or “to feed.” Earliest usage of “pastor” in English [...]
The post The Pastor as Gardener – Matthew Erickson appeared first on Life Is Story.
My single sentence review of Oscar and the Mystery of the Glowing Orbs is that it is an interesting story with baffling execution that brings up a lot of good ideas and then utterly fails [...]
The post Oscar and the Mystery of the Glowing Orbs – Don Everts appeared first on Life Is Story.
This illustrated children’s book is full of fascinating information about the Notre-Dame cathedral. The book opens with the story of the horrifying fire that occurred in 2019, and then moves back in time. Lynn Curlee [...]
The post Notre-Dame: The World’s Cathedral – Lynn Curlee appeared first on Life Is Story.
This Christian picture book uses a fictional story to teach a lesson about forgiveness. The main characters are twins named Daisy and Dylan. They normally do everything together, so when Dylan leaves Daisy out at [...]
The post The Big Brave Choice: Forgiving Like Jesus – Joby Martin, Lori Newell, and Eszter Miklós appeared first on Life Is Story.
Every stage of life involves unique blessings and challenges, and nothing reveals this more than the crucible of early parenthood. In this compassionate book for Christian moms, Annie Vanderheiden shows how the intensity of the [...]
The post Cradled: Christ’s Care for Postpartum Moms – Annie Vanderheiden appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have read many books about suffering, and this stands out as one of the best. Brittany Lee Allen gives a stirring defense of why it is both acceptable and biblically faithful for Christians to [...]
The post Free to Weep: Finding the Courage to Grieve and Embracing the God Who Heals – Brittany Lee Allen appeared first on Life Is Story.
In recent years, the phrases “exvangelical” or “deconstruction” have become common as more and more folks who grew up in conservative, evangelical Christian spaces moved away from those beliefs. Deconstruction refers to a tearing down, [...]
The post Beyond Deconstruction – James McGrath appeared first on Life Is Story.
Normal is a myth. The central thesis of MaryAnn McKibben Dana’s Better than Normal is both whispered and shouted on every page. Whispered for those moments when you need quiet exhortation to perseverance. Shouted for [...]
The post Better Than Normal – MaryAnn McKibben Dana appeared first on Life Is Story.
Over my years as a pastor, the New International Commentary series has become my go-to Bible commentary for sermon preparation and Bible study. Written by top evangelical scholars, the series consistently takes a high view [...]
The post Daniel 1-6 (NICOT) – Aubrey Buster and John Walton appeared first on Life Is Story.
The idea of friendship with Christ is often been relegated to the realm of feel-good worship music and colloquial, folksy sermons. God as your buddy or your pal has—in more “intellectual” academic circles been sort [...]
The post Friendship with Christ – John A. Vissers appeared first on Life Is Story.
Author Allison Byxbe explores the emotional and spiritual benefits of writing in a journal, sharing stories and examples from her life to illustrate how journaling helps her draw closer to Jesus in the midst of [...]
The post Journaling as a Spiritual Practice: Tracing the Lines of Grace to God’s Presence – Allison Byxbe appeared first on Life Is Story.
Christians who struggle with anxiety will appreciate this book’s helpful perspective. Author Karen Roudkovski has dealt with anxiety struggles herself, and she is a licensed counselor and counseling professor. This book is full of insights [...]
The post Reframing Anxiety: A Counselor’s Guide to Finding Peace Through Curiosity – Karen Roudkovski appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Do Great Things for God biography series is great for Christian families who want to teach young children about famous and lesser-known figures from church history. These picture books cover different historical time periods, [...]
The post Elisabeth Elliot: The Brave Girl Who Chose to Love – Ellen Vaughn and Emma Randall appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Do Great Things for God biography series is great for Christian families who want to teach young children about famous and lesser-known figures from church history. These picture books cover different historical time periods, [...]
The post Jonathan Edwards: The Boy Who Sparked Revival – David Mathis and Lee Dixon appeared first on Life Is Story.
I read this book sitting in my open garage, listening to my young daughter play with the neighbor kids across the street as my son played with the neighbors next door. At one point, another [...]
The post Becoming Neighbors – Amar D. Peterman appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is one of those books that came to me unsolicited from the publisher and I will admit that, even had I known about the book, it’s not one that I would’ve actively sought to [...]
The post The Strain of Other Blood – Patricia Allen appeared first on Life Is Story.
Depending on who you ask, the Tolkien estate is either unearthing mithril or have delved too greedily and too deep. Despite having passed in 1973, Tolkien still manages to produce several books per year—all new [...]
The post The Bovadium Fragments – JRR Tolkien appeared first on Life Is Story.
Growing up within the sphere of the Religious Right, I had been taught that the political mobilization of conservative evangelicalism could be traced back to Roe v. Wade and the legalization of abortion. This was [...]
The post Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right – Randall Balmer appeared first on Life Is Story.
The New International Commentaries are my first-stop resources when deeply studying any biblical text. They have been the evangelical standard for fifty years now, collecting the very best research from top-notch scholars to produce a [...]
The post The Book of Ecclesiastes 2nd Edition (NICOT) – Tremper Longman III appeared first on Life Is Story.
This new addition to the Jesus Moments series retells the story of Samson. At the beginning of the book, author Alison Mitchell tells kids that if they look closely, they can spot parallels to Jesus [...]
The post Jesus Moments: Samson: Finding Jesus in the Story of Samson – Alison Mitchell and Noah Warnes appeared first on Life Is Story.
Author Tim Challies has traveled to multiple different churches around the globe, experiencing their worship services, talking with church leaders, and observing how each congregation uniquely honors God within their cultural context. Challies wrote a [...]
The post God’s Great Big Global Church: Visit 10 Kids and Their Churches All Around the World – Tim Challies and Siân James appeared first on Life Is Story.
This cute middle-grade novel is the fifth in a series, but it also works as a standalone, since the author reintroduces all of the characters. In this story, Abigail is facing a summer filled with [...]
The post Abigail and the Summer Situation: Will Maggie EVER Get to Hear About Jesus? – Bethany McIlrath and Katie Saunders appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this vibrantly colorful picture book, author Alison Mitchell shares the story of Ruth with children, retelling the biblical narrative and highlighting ways that Ruth’s story foreshadows the gospel. In a note at the beginning, she [...]
The post Jesus Moments: Ruth: Finding Jesus in the Story of Ruth – Alison Mitchell and Noah Warnes appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book absolutely wrecked me. It’s not my story. It’s Stephanie’s. But as a pastor, it’s a story that I’ve heard time and time again. As someone who grew up within the evangelical-industrial complex—married to [...]
The post Everything in Color – Stephanie Stalvey appeared first on Life Is Story.
This heartfelt, practical book is full of wisdom for Christians who are navigating an unwanted separation or divorce. Author Vaneetha Rendall Risner shares vulnerable stories and insights from her own experiences, and she unpacks common [...]
The post This Was Never the Plan: Walking with God Through the Heartache of Divorce – Vaneetha Rendall Risner appeared first on Life Is Story.
Bethany Frymire is a financial advisor, and she wrote this book to empower Christian women to understand and take ownership of their personal finances. She reflects on reasons why many women feel overwhelmed or incapable [...]
The post Women of Worth: A Faith-Based Guide to Financial Wisdom – Bethany Frymire appeared first on Life Is Story.
Let me tell you about Jaime Jo Wright’s genius: her novels are comfortingly familiar yet still engagingly original. With every novel, she manages to walk down a familiar path while giving readers a completely different [...]
The post The Bookshop of 99 Doors – Jaime Jo Wright appeared first on Life Is Story.
The series God’s Word for You offers accessible commentaries on books of the Bible, with different authors contributing. This volume by Sam Allberry offers a conversational exploration of 1, 2, and 3 John. This is [...]
The post 1, 2, and 3 John For You: Joyful Certainty – Sam Allberry appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have read over a thousand Christian living books, but this is the first one I’ve ever encountered about cultivating a spiritual retreat experience. The topic piqued my interest because it’s so unusual. I appreciate [...]
The post Come Away and Rest: A Guide to Personal Spiritual Retreats – Alyson Pryor appeared first on Life Is Story.
This small, paperback book retells the Easter story in simple, kid-friendly language. The words have a solid rhythm for reading aloud, and the illustrations are photos of Lego builds. The brick builds by Joshua Whitehouse [...]
The post The Easter Story Brick by Brick – Rachael Hood and Joshua Whitehouse appeared first on Life Is Story.
This inspiring memoir was originally published in France in 2020, and is now available translated into English. André Trocmé was a French Protestant pastor who helped save thousands of Jews from the Nazis during World [...]
The post The Memoirs of André Trocmé: The Pastor Who Rescued Jews – André Trocmé (Author), Patrick Cabanel (Editor), and Patrick Henry and Mary Anne O’Neil (Translators) appeared first on Life Is Story.
This stunning hardcover graphic novel shares selected nature poems, alongside comic style illustrations of the text. Sometimes, the illustrations depict what a poem directly describes. Other times, they offer the artist’s interpretation of metaphorical concepts. [...]
The post Nature Poems to See By: A Comic Artist Interprets More Great Poetry – Julian Peters appeared first on Life Is Story.
This beautifully bound poetry collection shares selected works by George Herbert, along with short explanations and spiritual reflections from Stephen Witmer, the compiler. This book’s introduction provides some background on the life of George Herbert, [...]
The post In All Things Thee to See: A Devotional Guide to Selected Poems of George Herbert – George Herbert and Stephen Witmer appeared first on Life Is Story.
This gentle, insightful book offers wisdom for navigating grief from a Christian perspective. Amy C.L. Kulbok is a trauma therapist, so she draws on both biblical wisdom and her clinical knowledge throughout this book, showing how [...]
The post In the Valley of the Shadow: Grief, Faith, and the Transformative Work of Suffering – Amy C.L. Kulbok appeared first on Life Is Story.
This Lent and Easter devotional is full of insightful reflections on Christian doctrine and its implications for life. The editors collected readings from many different writers, and the content in this book spans multiple centuries. [...]
The post Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter: Revised and Expanded Edition – Various appeared first on Life Is Story.
Jo Johnson is a Christian psychologist, and in this book, she shares paradigm shifts and practical tips that can help people deal with difficult emotions and unhealthy thinking patterns. She encourages her readers to know [...]
The post Disentangled: Taming Your Thoughts and Feelings to Live Freely for Jesus – Jo Johnson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Most Easter resources for kids focus on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, without all of the context and lead-up that are part of the biblical story. This new picture book covers all of Holy Week, [...]
The post That Holy Week So Long Ago: The Seven Days That Led to Easter – Matthew Boswell and Helena Perez Garcia appeared first on Life Is Story.
This guide for Christian parents shares helpful insights for shepherding children through the world of stories. The authors run a reviewing website by the same name as this book, and in these pages, they share [...]
The post The Redeemed Reader: Cultivating a Child’s Discernment and Imagination Through Truth and Story – Janie Cheaney, Betsy Farquhar, Hayley Morell, and Megan Saben appeared first on Life Is Story.
Some picture books about prayer are hopelessly vague in their attempts to be all-inclusive. This beautifully illustrated, touching book is a refreshing alternative. Tameka Fryer Brown explains prayer in a way that has real substance, [...]
The post Prayer Is – Tameka Fryer Brown and Alleanna Harris appeared first on Life Is Story.
This companion book to It’s Good to Be a Girl celebrates God’s design for boys. The simple words, rhyming refrain, and colorful illustrations are perfect for kids ages 3-7, and the book offers a clear, positive [...]
The post It’s Good to Be a Boy: A Celebration of All That God Made You to Be – Champ Thornton and Hsulynn Pang appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Elite Seat is the third book in the Elita Brown series by Heather Holleman. This fictional series is about a seventh-grade girl who lives in rural Pennsylvania, and the books explore her changing friendships, deepening [...]
The post The Elite Seat – Heather Holleman appeared first on Life Is Story.
There are lots of great books about sobriety, but this one stands out because of its unique audience. This book focuses on Christian women, due to the author’s personal experience and awareness of how alcohol [...]
The post Freely Sober: Rethinking Alcohol Through the Lens of Faith – Ericka Andersen appeared first on Life Is Story.
If you believe that you’re supposed to live an extraordinary life and change the world, what happens when none of that pans out? According to Ryan P. Tinetti, many people are living lives of “quiet [...]
The post The Quiet Ambition: Scripture’s Surprising Antidote to Our Restless Lives – Ryan P. Tinetti appeared first on Life Is Story.
Unlike most memoirs, Rebecca Sue doesn’t focus on the author. Instead, Kathleen Norris focuses on the story of her sister. As Norris explains at the beginning of the book, Becky Sue suffered a traumatic brain [...]
The post Rebecca Sue: A Sister’s Reflections on Disability, Faith, and Love – Kathleen Norris appeared first on Life Is Story.
Children of Zion brings The Dragons Among Us to a resounding conclusion. New Alchemy, the Scalers, and those of Zion are all ready to march to battle. Fear reigns just as the dragons want. Even [...]
The post Children of Zion (The Dragon’s Among Us #6) – Ted Dekker and Rachelle Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
It was prophesied that the Golden Egg would hatch once the dragon within found its rider. For generations, the Guardians have watched over the egg, keeping it hidden and away from those who would have [...]
The post The Unknown Path (The Dragon Rider Who Saved the World #2) – Ted Dekker and Rachelle Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
Set a few hundred years after the events of the And They Found Dragons trilogy and its sequel trilogy The Dragons Among Us, The Dragon Rider Who Saved the World tells the story of a [...]
The post The Golden Egg (The Dragon Rider Who Saved the World #1) – Ted Dekker and Rachelle Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
Ted and Rachelle Dekker wrap up their The World Fixers trilogy with The Light of the One. Andrew and Heidi, having narrowly escaped an island of strict judgment, have learned that there is a dark [...]
The post The Light of the One (The World Fixers #3) – Ted Dekker and Rachelle Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
Ted and Rachelle Dekker have each forged wildly successful careers in traditionally-published Christian fiction. In 2019, the duo teamed up for The Girl Behind the Red Rope, which made them the first and so far [...]
The post The Blue Boy and the Red Princess (The World Fixers #1) – Ted Dekker and Rachelle Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
Christlike Acceptance Across Deep Difference is a diverse and challenging anthology that seeks to re-orient the church’s conversation about sexuality, gender, and LGBTQ ministry through a posture of Christlike acceptance—of both stances—using a methodology that [...]
The post Christlike Acceptance across Deep Difference: Constructive Conversations on Sexuality and Gender – ed. Ronald Pierce and Karen Keen appeared first on Life Is Story.
Anxiety is at an all time high. Nearly one in three US adults have experienced an anxiety disorder at some point in their life. And, looking around at the world, you can sort of understand. [...]
The post Discovering Your Internal Universe – Cody Deese appeared first on Life Is Story.
I grew up in a conservative evangelical church at the height of the Left Behind craze. As a kid, I remember that the church actually fired our pastor because he was not a premillennial dispensationalist. [...]
The post Rereading Revelation – Greg Carey appeared first on Life Is Story.
In The Ten Commandments through the Ages, Sara Koenig offers a succinct yet comprehensive exploration of one of the most influential texts in Western religious and moral imagination. Rather than treating the Decalogue as a [...]
The post The Ten Commandments through the Ages – Sara M. Koenig appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Well That Washes What It Shows takes its title from a line by the 17th-century poet and clergyman George Herbert. In a poem entitled “The Holy Scriptures,” Herbert likens Scripture to pure water that [...]
The post The Well That Washes What It Shows – Jonathan Linebaugh appeared first on Life Is Story.
As a pastor and public theologian, I often run into one of two improper interpretations of the Old Testament Law. First, there are those ready to throw any part of the Law (except maybe the [...]
The post Understanding Biblical Law – Dru Johnson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Rachel Held Evans died on May 4, 2019, following a sudden and severe illness. Evans was an “exvangelical” pioneer. Her first book, Faith Unraveled (then called Evolving in Monkey Town), detailed her deconstruction (was anyone [...]
The post Braving the Truth – Rachel Held Evans appeared first on Life Is Story.
We all know tragic stories about Christian leaders who started out well, but whose lives and ministries later crashed and burned because of immorality. There are also leaders who start out with big dreams of [...]
The post How Leaders Lose Their Way: And How to Make Sure It Doesn’t Happen to You – Peter Greer and Jill Heisey appeared first on Life Is Story.
As Erin Devers explains in this book, people have two core desires: we want to be right, and we want to feel good about ourselves. These priorities can lead to all kinds of cognitive biases, [...]
The post The Unbiased Self: The Psychology of Overcoming Cognitive Bias – Erin Devers appeared first on Life Is Story.
This series of small, sturdy board books introduces little children to classic expressions of the Christian faith. The previous three volumes in the Tiny Hands series shared selected hymns, promises from God, and prayers from [...]
The post Tiny Hands Hymns, Vol. 2 | Tiny Hands Psalms | Tiny Hands Apostles’ Creed – Hannah Estes and Jessica Hiatt appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is the most bizarre Christian living book I have ever read. If I had seen the full-length description quoted above, that would have raised some red flags. However, I read a shorter summary, so [...]
The post Exposing Emotional Manipulation: Break the Control, Grow Relationally, Heal Emotionally – Ryan LeStrange appeared first on Life Is Story.
This small, reflective book explores the topic of vocation and calling. Karen Swallow Prior writes from her experience as a college literature professor and writer who has encountered many students who agonized over the concept [...]
The post You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful – Karen Swallow Prior appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Christian publishing industry offers all kinds of books about suffering, but most of them assume that you are dealing with a very specific form of trial, and that it will only last for a [...]
The post Limping Heavenward: Living by Faith in Comprehensive and Chronic Suffering – Karrie Hahn appeared first on Life Is Story.
Sometimes gift books look beautiful without having much substance inside. With books by Ruth Chou Simons, you know that what you’re getting is both visually stunning and spiritually nourishing. This latest devotional helps women rest [...]
The post The Way of the Wildflower: Gospel Meditations to Unburden Your Anxious Soul – Ruth Chou Simons appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book tells the fascinating true story of Christian social activists who became involved in trying to change the criminal justice system in Honduras. The story begins with two friends deciding to take action against [...]
The post Bear Witness: The Pursuit of Justice in a Violent Land – Ross Halperin appeared first on Life Is Story.
There are lots of books that pontificate about the relationship between faith and work, but this book dramatizes it. Instead of exploring the subject from an intellectual angle, Jordan Raynor and his co-writer Kaleigh Cox [...]
The post Five Mere Christians: Binge-Worthy Biographies That Show You How to Glorify God in Your Work – Jordan Raynor and Kaleigh Cox appeared first on Life Is Story.
This new installment in the Abigail series has a seasonal focus, but it can appeal all year round. The engaging story follows Abigail as she prepares for her relatives to visit, enjoys traditions with her [...]
The post Abigail and the Christmas Contest: Cousins + Snow + a Big Shiny Trophy = Christmas Chaos! – Bethany McIlrath and Katie Saunders appeared first on Life Is Story.
This bright, cheerful picture book teaches kids that Jesus is the greatest gift of all. The rhyming text comes from an adult’s perspective, talking to a child who is excited for Christmas. The illustrations show [...]
The post The Gift of All Gifts: Celebrating God’s Special Christmas Present for You – Melissa B. Kruger and Melissa Fischer appeared first on Life Is Story.
This devotional by Sharon Hodde Miller is a follow-up to her prior book, Free of Me: Why Life Is Better When It’s Not about You, which is about becoming free from self-preoccupation and insecurity. In this [...]
The post Gazing at God: A 40-Day Journey to Greater Freedom from Self – Sharon Hodde Miller appeared first on Life Is Story.
This short, thought-provoking book explores how nature speaks to God’s glory and character. Author Seth Lewis explains that nature is one form of God’s revelation to mankind, and he explores how we can use Scripture [...]
The post The Language of Rivers and Stars: How Nature Speaks of the Glories of God – Seth Lewis appeared first on Life Is Story.
As a wilderness survival expert, Therese has seen (and done) a lot. But seeking a missing girl in Guadalupe Mountains National Park wasn’t something she ever thought she would do. She recruits Blane to help, [...]
The post Canyon of Deceit – DiAnn Mills appeared first on Life Is Story.
Perilous Tides by Elizabeth Goddard is the second novel in her “Hidden Bay” series, and what a novel it was! It is well connected with the first model; however, it stands well on its own. [...]
The post Perilous Tides – Elizabeth Goddard appeared first on Life Is Story.
Final Approach by Lynette Eason rounds out her “Lake City Heroes” series. We see the return of previous’ novels characters while focusing on the budding relationship between two others: Andrew and Kristine. Both have scarred, [...]
The post Final Approach – Lynette Eason appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Book of Doors was easily one of my favorite books of 2024. I loved every word of it. It was one of the most unique books I have ever read. I had the same [...]
The post The Society of Unknowable Objects – Gareth Brown appeared first on Life Is Story.
Last Light Over Galveston by Jennifer L. Wright follows Kathleen McDaniel, who ran as far away from her family as her supply of money could take her. A tragic incident opened her eyes to certain [...]
The post Last Light Over Galveston – Jennifer L. Wright appeared first on Life Is Story.
Sarah Forbes Bonetta was a real-life African princess who was born in 1843. When she was five years old, a neighboring kingdom invaded her village, killing Princess Aina’s parents and capturing people as slaves. After [...]
The post Brave Princess Aina: The Courageous Heart of Sarah Forbes Bonetta – Leah Boden appeared first on Life Is Story.
Jack and the Red Giant is a short chapter book that tackles big topics. Jack wants to get revenge on Buzz, a neighborhood bully. But after Buzz’s house goes up in flames, Jack’s parents invite Buzz [...]
The post Jack and the Red Giant – Amanda Cleary Eastep appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is the second Bible storybook that I have reviewed from The Good Book Company. I wondered what would make this one distinct from the God’s Big Promises Bible Storybook, and they are different in [...]
The post The Kingdom and the King Storybook Bible – Bob Hartman and Catalina Echeverri appeared first on Life Is Story.
This new Bible edition has special formatting to help readers better focus on and mentally process the text. It uses the Bionic Reading Method, which puts the first few letters of each word in bold. [...]
The post NIV Clear Focus Bible: Read More of the Bible with Better Focus – Zondervan appeared first on Life Is Story.
Saving Face is a deeply personal book that flows from the author’s experiences with church trauma. She reflects on her lifelong spiritual journey, ways that her experiences in recent years have changed her, and what [...]
The post Saving Face: Finding My Self, God, and One Another Outside a Defaced Church – Aimee Byrd appeared first on Life Is Story.
Seoul is awake. The day is dreary. The city stretches and rumbles to life. Cars pack the roadway as everyone jostles for position. Nobody wants to be late. In the midst of that controlled chaos [...]
The post Late Today – Jungyoon Huh and Myungae Lee appeared first on Life Is Story.
This thorough, well-researched guide equips Christian counselors and pastors with key information for how to minister to people who are in crisis. The book begins by exploring the nature of suffering, what makes something a [...]
The post Counseling Through the Storm: A Guide to Treating Crisis and Trauma – Brooke Osborn and Karen Roudkovski appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book biography introduces children to John Knox, the Scottish pastor who helped lead the Reformation in his country. The book features simple text from pastor and author Sinclair Ferguson, who is also from [...]
The post John Knox: The Boy Who Changed a Country – Sinclair Ferguson and Cecilia Messina appeared first on Life Is Story.
This early chapter book tells short, cute stories about characters who live in the world of Little Pilgrim’s Progress, a children’s adaptation of Pilgrim’s Progress that stars woodland creatures. In this new collection of short stories, [...]
The post The King’s Cadets and Little Joe: A Little Pilgrim’s Progress Adventure – Joe Sutphin and Kevan Chandler appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this mystery novel for kids, the main character wins a contest and gets to travel to a World War II museum for a special event. The museum is celebrating the real-life women behind the [...]
The post Keep ‘Em Flying: Heroes on the Home Front Mysteries #1 – Nell Branum appeared first on Life Is Story.
The previous biographies in the Do Great Things for God series have all been about Christian women, but with this new addition, the series expands to cover notable Christian men as well. This delightful picture [...]
The post C.S. Lewis: The Boy Who Loved to Ask Big Questions – Laura Caputo-Wickham and Keila Elm appeared first on Life Is Story.
This short pamphlet for adults goes with the six lift-the-flap board books in the Training Young Hearts series, which teach little kids about appropriate behaviors. For example, What Are Hands For? gives positive examples about what [...]
The post Guide for Grown-ups: A Training Young Hearts Book – Abbey Wedgeworth and Emma Randall appeared first on Life Is Story.
In the bestselling book The Common Rule, Justin Whitmel Earley shared his personal story of establishing new, life-giving habits that helped him break free from overwhelming stress, isolation, and unhealthy engagement with his phone, and [...]
The post The Common Rule Youth Edition: Growing Your Faith in a Distracted World – Justin Whitmel Earley appeared first on Life Is Story.
Christmastime means Christmas books and, specifically, retellings of the Christmas story that must somehow find some new perspective while dealing with some pretty established material. Getting animals engaged in the action is not new at [...]
The post The Birds of Christmas – Olivia Armstrong & Mira Miroslavova appeared first on Life Is Story.
Throughout my adult life as someone involved in ministry, I’ve struggled with the fact that I would consider my primary ministry identity as a preacher. I’m a good pastor. One of my academic focuses in [...]
The post Some of the Words are Theirs – Austin Carty appeared first on Life Is Story.
From its first page, The Earth Is the Lord’s unfolds with both intellectual rigor and an almost poetic sense of purpose. It’s a dense, scholarly work that—utilizing a background of Catholic moral and social tradition—invites [...]
The post The Earth is the Lord’s – Liam de los Reyes appeared first on Life Is Story.
From its opening chapters, Kingdom Racial Change feels less like a traditional academic study and more like an invitation into lives that are shaped by divergent realities but unified by a shared purpose. Michael Evans [...]
The post Kingdom Racial Change – Michael Evans, David McFadden, and Michael Emerson appeared first on Life Is Story.
What do you think of when you hear the words “catechesis”? No, it’s not the sounds a sneeze makes. It’s a transliterated Greek word that simply means “spoken instruction.” A catechesis was a systematic lecture [...]
The post Making Disciples – Alex Fogleman appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is the best parenting book that I’ve read in a long time. It is easy to read, practical, and full of humble, honest advice. The author, Peter Mutabazi, is a speaker and author who [...]
The post Love Does Not Conquer All: And Other Surprising Lessons I Learned as a Foster Dad to More Than 40 Kids – Peter Mutabazi appeared first on Life Is Story.
Former pastor and licensed therapist Dr. Andrew J. Bauman conducted research about women’s experiences in the church, and this book unpacks his findings and explores topics related to sexism and abuse. Bauman outlines the problem, [...]
The post Safe Church: How to Guard against Sexism and Abuse in Christian Communities – Dr. Andrew J. Bauman appeared first on Life Is Story.
The premise of this book deeply resonates with me. I agree that looking back at our pasts can help us make sense of our current difficulties, and that compassionate engagement with our most shameful, unpleasant [...]
The post Make Sense of Your Story: Why Engaging Your Past with Kindness Changes Everything – Adam Young appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Outsider is the third book in Katy Morgan’s biblical fiction series. It retells the story of Ruth for a middle-grade audience, and it is faithful to the Scriptural narrative while also including fictionalized elements. [...]
The post The Outsider: Ruth: A Retelling – Katy Morgan appeared first on Life Is Story.
Joy. Three little letters. Great big word. In Marked by Joy, pastor Jared Mitzelfelt encourages Christians to rediscover this mindset of the early church. Jared just doesn’t offer platitudes or tell his readers to fake [...]
The post Marked by Joy – Jared Mitzelfelt appeared first on Life Is Story.
Last year, I reviewed Understanding Spiritual Abuse by Karen Roudkovski. This new book is a companion workbook for survivors to use as part of their healing journeys. The author wrote this for people who have experienced [...]
The post Spiritual Abuse Recovery Workbook: Engaging Faith in Healing – Karen Roudkovski appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book biography about Joni Eareckson Tada shares her inspiring Christian testimony. The story begins with her happy and physically active childhood, and then covers the tragic diving accident that paralyzed her from the [...]
The post A Paintbrush for Joni: The True Story of Joni Eareckson Tada and the Savior Who Turns Tragedy into Joy – John Greco and Amélie Videlo appeared first on Life Is Story.
This small, hardcover gift book features one hundred prayers for tough moments in life. In the introduction, Cristina Baker shares her personal testimony about learning that God truly hears her and listens to her prayers, [...]
The post A Minute of Hope: 100 Prayers for Staying Steadfast Through Challenges and Change – Cristina Baker appeared first on Life Is Story.
This honest, insightful book speaks to teens about the challenges of being a Christian in today’s world. Teacher and school chaplain Chris Morphew spends a lot of time with teens, and it’s clear how well [...]
The post Worth It: Following Jesus When Life Feels Complicated – Chris Morphew appeared first on Life Is Story.
There’s something about a Max Lucado book that just feels comforting. Over the decades, Max has cultivated a warm, charming style of writing that is engaging, easy to read, and personable. Reading Lucado feels like [...]
The post Never Give Up – Max Lucado appeared first on Life Is Story.
Deconstruction is one the biggest buzzwords in Christianity right now. I’m still not sure if I like it or not, but it typically refers to the process that believers in Christianity go through when they [...]
The post Deconstructing Your Faith Without Losing Yourself – Angela J. Herrington appeared first on Life Is Story.
Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election for a number of reasons, but primary among them was his ability to demonize and vilify immigrants while promising mass deportations. He was successfully able to point to [...]
The post Migrant God – Isaac Samuel Villegas appeared first on Life Is Story.
J. Warner Wallace made his name in evangelical circles as being the Lee Strobel of the law enforcement world. While Strobel put his investigative journalism skills to work to make A Case For… Christian thinking, [...]
The post Case Files vol. 1 – J. Warner Wallace & Jimmy Wallace appeared first on Life Is Story.
Not many picture books deal with concept of child marriage. Alain Serge Dzotap’s Adi of Boutanga: A Story from Cameroon is a picture book for upper elementary to middle school readers meant to reflect upon [...]
The post Adi of Boutanga: A Story from Cameroon – Alain Serge Dzotap appeared first on Life Is Story.
As a parent, I’m always trying to introduce my kids to new foods—healthy foods in particular—in order to expand their palette and their knowledge of the natural world. Mabi David’s How Do You Eat Color? [...]
The post How Do You Eat Color? – Madi David, Yas Doctor appeared first on Life Is Story.
Yiting Lee’s The Quiet One is a gentle, empowering picture book that celebrates the quiet strength of introverted children. With tender storytelling and charming illustrations, Lee introduces us to Milly, a shy girl who finds [...]
The post The Quiet One: Yiting Lee appeared first on Life Is Story.
I received a copy of Pilgrim: A Theological Memoir about a week before I made an international move from the US to Australia and I was left in a quandary: Do I pack this book [...]
The post Pilgrim: A Theological Memoir – Tony Campolo appeared first on Life Is Story.
The books in the Library of Religious Biography have a habit of taking an individual that I did not really like – be it their personality, morality, or methodology – and making me if not [...]
The post The Church Must Grow Or Perish: Robert H. Schuller and the Business of American Christianity – Gerardo Marti and Mark T. Mulder appeared first on Life Is Story.
Tyler Staton explores who the Holy Spirit is, what the Bible teaches about this member of the Trinity, and how ordinary Christians can more fully experience the Spirit’s power and presence in their lives. Staton [...]
The post The Familiar Stranger: (Re)Introducing the Holy Spirit to Those in Search of an Experiential Spirituality – Tyler Staton appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is the second book in the Elita Brown series. The first book, This Seat’s Saved, explored Elita’s struggles with social exclusion and bullying in middle school. That book shared a powerful message about what [...]
The post The Disappearing Seat – Heather Holleman appeared first on Life Is Story.
I am not athletically gifted in the slightest, but this book piqued my interest, because I had never before seen a Christian living book that focused on sports. There are plenty of Christian books that [...]
The post Spiritual Game Plan: Competing with Joy and Godliness – Graham Daniels and Jonny Reid appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is a collection of morning and evening devotionals, written for an audience of women. Kara Stout shares a Bible verse at the beginning of each reading, and then there’s about a page and a [...]
The post An Untroubled Heart: Calming Anxiety and Finding God’s Peace – Kara Stout appeared first on Life Is Story.
This guide to postpartum recovery is full of information and encouragement. The author, Rachel Taylor, draws on her expertise as a postpartum nurse, and she also includes insights from other healthcare professionals, answering common questions [...]
The post After Baby Comes: Physical, Spiritual, and Emotional Recovery for Postpartum Moms – Rachel Taylor, RN appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book celebrates God’s creation and the joy of worshiping through song. Kristyn Getty, a well-known Christian singer and songwriter, partnered with illustrator P. J. Lynch to create this beautiful book. The text is [...]
The post Pippa and the Singing Tree: Joining the Song of All Creation – Kristyn Getty and P. J. Lynch appeared first on Life Is Story.
Growing up, I thought a parachurch ministry was when you “pair a church” together with other churches for a specific purpose. I grew up, learned about prefix meanings, and came to understand that “parachurch” ministries [...]
The post Beyond Church and Parachurch – Angie Ward appeared first on Life Is Story.
This soft, sensory book features the first verse and chorus of the beloved song “Jesus Loves Me.” The front cover is crinkly, and it makes a satisfying sound, in addition to being fun to touch [...]
The post Jesus Loves Me, This I Know: A Cuddly Crinkly Cloth Book – Kregel Children’s appeared first on Life Is Story.
This board book teaches kids about why God made our feelings. Abbey Wedgeworth gives examples of why feelings are important, since they tell us what we need and can help us meet those needs. She [...]
The post What Are Feelings For? Board Book – Abbey Wedgeworth and Emma Randall appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book retells the biblical story of Joseph in a kid-friendly way. Tim Thornborough simplified the plot for a very young audience while remaining faithful to the source material, and the book has lots [...]
The post Joseph and the Very Strange Dreams – Tim Thornborough and Jennifer Davison appeared first on Life Is Story.
Finding a therapist can be overwhelming, and people who are unfamiliar with what to expect from therapy can find the process especially mystifying. This book educates potential clients about therapy so that they can determine [...]
The post The Client’s Guide to Therapy: How to Get the Most out of Your Counseling Experience – Terri S. Watson, PsyD appeared first on Life Is Story.
Deconstruction has been a controversial topic for a while now, and lots of people have written memoirs about their deconstruction journeys, or have written books about the dangers of deconstruction. This book takes a completely [...]
The post Walking Through Deconstruction: How to Be a Companion in a Crisis of Faith – Ian Harber appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson offers a fresh, entirely new, and extraordinary fantasy world for readers to explore. Entertaining and witty, the novel is filled with imperfect characters, unexpected twists, and meticulously calculated scenes. [...]
The post The Raven Scholar – Antonia Hodgson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Is Christianity the White Man’s Religion? Antipas Harris first heard that question when it interrupted his lecture on a graduate course in ministry leadership. “What do you say to your friends who are leaving the [...]
The post Is Christianity the White Man’s Religion – Antipas Harris appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Stardust Thief was one of my favorite books back when I read it in 2023. Two years later, I finally got to return to the world I loved so much, and Chelsea Abdullah did [...]
The post The Ashfire King – Chelsea Abdullah appeared first on Life Is Story.
This brief, staple-bound book introduces kids to the basics of reading and understanding the Bible. Each double page spread covers a different topic, such as finding your way around the Bible, understanding who Jesus is, [...]
The post A Short Guide to the Bible: Exploring the Most Important Book You’ll Ever Read – Katy Morgan appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Lie That Binds Them by Matthew Ward wraps up his “Soulfire Saga” trilogy with a perfectly tied, shiny new bow. Not a squished one from the bottom of that cellophane bag you purchased from [...]
The post The Lie That Binds Them – Matthew Ward appeared first on Life Is Story.
This new installment in the Jesus Moments series covers the story of Jonah. Alison Mitchell’s writing is engaging and conversational, and at the beginning, she explains to kids that if you look closely, you can [...]
The post Jesus Moments: Jonah: Finding Jesus in the Story of Jonah – Alison Mitchell and Noah Warnes appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is a reissued edition of an existing Bible study by Timothy Keller. It is part of the Good Book Guide study series, which connects with the series of biblical commentaries from the same publisher. [...]
The post Galatians: Gospel Matters: 7-Session Bible Study – Timothy Keller appeared first on Life Is Story.
I am not the intended audience for this book. However, even though work is going very well for me right now, I wanted to read this book related to some friends’ traumatic experiences in their [...]
The post When Work Hurts: Building Resilience When You’re Beat Up or Burnt Out – Meryl Herr appeared first on Life Is Story.
Walking in God’s Will explores a frequently confusing and misapplied concept, helping readers understand what it does and doesn’t mean to pursue God’s plan for your life. Costi Hinn explains foundational concepts about pursuing God’s moral [...]
The post Walking in God’s Will: Demystify God’s Plan for Your Life and Make Decisions with Confidence – Costi W. Hinn appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have read a large number of books about trauma, and this one stands out as an especially helpful one. The guidance in The Trauma Tree flows from the author’s experiences as a trauma survivor and [...]
The post The Trauma Tree: Going Beyond Survival, Growing Toward Wholeness – Lisa Saruga appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Baby Believer board book series introduces little children to core Christian concepts in enraging, age-appropriate ways. This installment teaches Hebrew words from Scripture, and the book also follows the arc of redemptive history from [...]
The post Hallelujah: A Biblical Hebrew Primer – Danielle Hitchen and Jessica Blanchard appeared first on Life Is Story.
This vibrant, colorful picture book portrays the author’s childhood experience of eagerly waiting for plantains to ripen. The story begins with a grocery shopping trip and then goes through the days of the week as [...]
The post Ripening Time – Patrice Gopo and Carlos Vélez Aguilera appeared first on Life Is Story.
Christian women who are interested in minimalism will appreciate how this book combines home and lifestyle advice with spiritual reflections. Julia Ubbenga shares her personal story of overcoming a life of consumerism and clutter, and [...]
The post Declutter Your Heart and Your Home: How a Minimalist Life Yields Maximum Joy – Julia Ubbenga appeared first on Life Is Story.
Break My Fall by Lynn H. Blackburn continues the author’s “Gossamer Falls” series, thrusting readers into a small community that is once again fraught with danger. Grayson Ward has closed off his heart to a [...]
The post Break My Fall – Lynn H. Blackburn appeared first on Life Is Story.
Up until reading this book I had no idea that conservation dogs existed. Of course, I knew that dogs could be taught to track and find things—that’s how a lot of breeds were bred, after [...]
The post Trouble Dog – Carol A. Foote appeared first on Life Is Story.
At the end of 2023, the UNHCR reported that 117.3 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide, including 43.4 million refugees, 68.3 million internally displaced people, and 6.9 million asylum seekers. Midway through 2025, as I [...]
The post Thread by Thread – Alice Brière-Haquet and Michela Eccli appeared first on Life Is Story.
A fish has fallen and there’s only one detective that can solve the case—Ramon Fellini the Dog Detective! The fishbowl has fallen down the stairs. The fish is lying, gasping on the floor. He is [...]
The post Ramon Fellini the Dog Detective – Guilherme Karsten appeared first on Life Is Story.
John the Baptist is often seen an apertif, an amuse-bouche, a prelude, or an entry into the story of Jesus. He whets our appetite for the Kingdom of God by dancing in his mother’s womb [...]
The post Christmaker: A Life of John the Baptist appeared first on Life Is Story.
Despite the title sounding like a bad Christian time-travel novel, The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus is a pretty much the opposite: a well-written, comprehensive, extensively-researched, expertly-crafted foray into what can be known about [...]
The post The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus – James Crossley and Chris Keith appeared first on Life Is Story.
It’s hard to feel empathy for Richard Nixon, but in One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation, Daniel Silliman manages to paint a complex portrait of a lost and troubled man whose search for [...]
The post One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation – Daniel Silliman appeared first on Life Is Story.
Biographies tend to be written by folks who align with their subjects in some fashion—socially, politically, religiously. There are exceptions, of course, but by and large those who are interested in chronicling an individual’s life [...]
The post Machen’s Hope – Richard Burnett appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Commentaries for Christian Formation is a relatively new Bible commentary series from Eerdmans that has the central focus of faith formation. That is, the focus is not simply academic translation and interpretation from a [...]
The post Hebrews: Commentary for Christian Formation – Amy Peeler appeared first on Life Is Story.
The issue of remarriage in Christianity has often been a contentious one, usually revolving around the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount that (in the King James), “whosoever shall marry her that [...]
The post Remarriage in the Early Church – A. Andrew Das appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’m a bit of a Bible translation nerd. Not a Bible nerd, though I am a bit of that, too, but specifically a Bible translation nerd. I love seeing how different translations differ, what their [...]
The post Bible Translations for Everyone – Tim Wildsmith appeared first on Life Is Story.
I really didn’t know what I was getting into with Exploring the Paranormal: Miracles, Magic, and the Mysterious. Written by Dr. R. Alan Streett, professor emeritus of biblical theology at Criswell College, the book is a [...]
The post Exploring the Paranormal – R. Alan Streett appeared first on Life Is Story.
1 out of every 6 American women and 1 out of every 33 American men have been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. Everyone is impacted by sexual assault. And [...]
The post Enough Silence – Cheryl Miller appeared first on Life Is Story.
Every year on All Souls’ Day, Mara, along with her Nene and Popi, walk throughout their village and sing to those who had loved ones die during the year. But this year is different. This [...]
The post Popi’s All Souls Song – CK Malone and Shelly Swann appeared first on Life Is Story.
Finn is a ghost. And he is scared of everything. His ghost family wants to go trick-or-treating, but Finn isn’t sure he can go out. Humans are scary. Butterflies are scary. The color orange? Very [...]
The post The Ghost Who Was Afraid of Everything – Nadia Ahmed appeared first on Life Is Story.
Each Day is a Gift is a straightforward reminder of how each new day brings us some new thing, new experience, or new challenge. We can’t choose what gifts to receive, but we can choose [...]
The post Each Day is a Gift – Lisl Detlefsen and Natalia Vasilica appeared first on Life Is Story.
Dr. Steve Midgley has previously contributed to the co-written book Mental Health and Your Church, and this book is a helpful follow-up. This book focuses specifically on trauma, and the first section of the book [...]
The post Understanding Trauma: A Biblical Introduction for Church Care – Dr. Steve Midgley appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is the second in a new series of fictionalized biographies for children. Chronicles of Wonder covers the life of C. S. Lewis, highlighting the influence of books and imagination throughout his life, the [...]
The post Chronicles of Wonder: The Story-Formed Life of C. S. Lewis – Leah Boden appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Light in My Bunny is a gentle, touching story about dealing with death and how loved one can live on in our memory. Selena’s best friend is Conejo, a beautifully bunny who lights up [...]
The post The Light in My Bunny – Luna Vargas appeared first on Life Is Story.
December is awash with holidays, cultural and religious, new and ancient. What happens when those traditions intersect? Nisha’s Just-Right Christmas Tree offers an alternative to the “culture wars” and instead teaches us a lesson in [...]
The post Nisha’s Just-Right Christmas Tree – Susan Lynn Meyer, Jaya Mehta, and Parvati Pillai appeared first on Life Is Story.
As I write this review, the winter solstice is only a few weeks away. It is dark in the mornings when I wake up. It is dark once again by dinner. And it is these [...]
The post Winter Solstice Wish – Kate Allen Fox and Elisa Paganelli appeared first on Life Is Story.
Ana Moose is rather shy and enjoys being alone. She doesn’t mind observing others interact, but it often seems hard or just not that interesting to join in. But then, she noticed someone. He had [...]
The post Anonymoose – Shawna JC Tenney appeared first on Life Is Story.
Sharon Garlough Brown writes novels of spiritual formation. Her books float in the liminal space between fiction and non-fiction—they are definitely fiction but their power and purpose go beyond just entertainment. Of course, I think [...]
The post Not Finished Yet – Sharon Garlough Brown appeared first on Life Is Story.
Hiro is a bear who doesn’t want to hibernate. She wakes up in the middle of the winter and decides to explore. And what she finds is absolutely incredible. Hiro: Winter and Marshmallows continues a [...]
The post Hiro: Winter and Marshmallows – Marine Schneider appeared first on Life Is Story.
Snow is falling. The temperature is dropping. And animals throughout the woods are going into their long winter’s rest. But Badger has other ideas. The Most Beautiful Winter tells the story of a badger (who [...]
The post The Most Beautiful Winter – Cristina Silja Rubio appeared first on Life Is Story.
A Star Shines Through is a story that will wreck you. Based on the real-life and present-day story of author and illustrator Anna Desnitskaya, it tells a story about a family displaced by war struggling [...]
The post A Star Shines Through – Anna Desnitskaya appeared first on Life Is Story.
As the leaves turn their hue, the temperature softens, and the sun sets earlier and rises water, our thought turn toward fall and beyond that the inevitable winter. While winter is not my favorite season, [...]
The post Counting Winter – Nancy White Carlstrom and Claudia McGehee appeared first on Life Is Story.
My five-year-old daughter loves to pretend to be a cat. For three months last year, she woke up; got dressed; and clipped on a cat tail to her tights, put a toy collar around her [...]
The post The Cat Way – Sara Lundberg appeared first on Life Is Story.
Bless Our Pets is the perfect book for anyone who loves both poetry and pets. Edited by acclaimed poet Lee Bennett Hopkins shortly before his death in 2019, this book brings together fourteen poems from [...]
The post Bless Our Pets – ed. Lee Bennett Hopkins, illus. Lita Judge appeared first on Life Is Story.
The theme of It is Okay is spelled out on the final panel of the book: “Goat and Bunny are very different. But it is okay.” The story is about two unlikely friends who first [...]
The post It is Okay – Ye Guo appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book has delightful photographic illustrations. The author and illustrator, Michelle Olson, has built an entire world around her button main characters, and the found-object illustrations are full of interesting details that will appeal [...]
The post Emily Was SO Embarrassed – Michelle Olson appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is part of a series that collects significant writings from different figures in church history. Jesus Changes Everything offers twenty-five readings from Stanley Hauerwas, a well-respected theologian. The book begins with an introduction [...]
The post Jesus Changes Everything: A New World Made Possible – Stanley Hauerwas appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is the first in a new series of fictionalized biographies for children. The Angel Orphan covers the life story of Charlotte Mason, highlighting her character, her accomplishments as a teacher, and the ways that [...]
The post The Angel Orphan: Charlotte Mason Finds Her Way Home – Leah Boden appeared first on Life Is Story.
Let me preference this with how my heart cried when I read the words “final installment” in The Beijing Betrayal’s synopsis. As an avid reader of Brad Thor and Vince Flynn, the character of Marcus [...]
The post The Beijing Betrayal – Joel C. Rosenberg appeared first on Life Is Story.
When Riley Kehoe was a child, she experienced the 2004 Thailand tsunami. Her family was visiting relatives in Thailand for Christmas when the tsunami hit, and this book begins by recounting their experiences fleeing from [...]
The post Three Seconds of Courage: How Small Acts of Bravery Lead to Big Change – Riley Kehoe appeared first on Life Is Story.
This new installment in the Jesus Moments series covers the story of Esther, describing some key events from that narrative and highlighting connections with the story of Jesus. Alison Mitchell’s writing is engaging and conversational, [...]
The post Jesus Moments: Esther: Finding Jesus in the Story of Esther – Alison Mitchell and Noah Warnes appeared first on Life Is Story.
This Easter devotional features powerful, timeless reflections from nineteenth century preacher Charles Spurgeon. Editor J. A. Medders curated these readings from Spurgeon’s vast history of sermons, choosing excerpts that relate to the theme, and which [...]
The post The Risen King: 40 Devotions for Easter – Charles H. Spurgeon and J.A. Medders appeared first on Life Is Story.
Tim Chester encourages his readers to truly recognize and dwell on the ways that Jesus loves us and is present with us in our everyday lives. Each chapter in this book is about a different [...]
The post Enjoying Jesus: Experience the Presence and Kindness of the Son of God in Everyday Life – Tim Chester appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have come to expect Janice Cantore books to be either a hit or a miss. Sometimes I love her novels; others, not so much. Unfortunately, Every Deadly Suspicion by Janice Cantore falls in the [...]
The post Every Deadly Suspicion – Janice Cantore appeared first on Life Is Story.
Hold on to your hats, and make sure your shoes are secure. Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister will knock your socks off. Camilla’s life is forever changed when her husband, Luke, goes missing on [...]
The post Famous Last Words – Gillian McAllister appeared first on Life Is Story.
Sahara O’Saughnessy’s life is in shambles. Her father is dead and she’s the one responsible. Not directly, not directly enough. And the way they left things, the final things she said to him, the things [...]
The post Rift – Steven James appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Your Magnificent Mouth, Abbey Wedgeworth teaches preschool-aged kids to appreciate what God created their mouths to do, such as sing, talk, eat, blow bubbles, and play instruments. She then highlights how God created the [...]
The post Your Magnificent Mouth: A Training Young Hearts Rhyming Book – Abbey Wedgeworth and Emma Randall appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book encourages Christian women to forge ahead into their God-given callings, even when they are struggling with self-doubt or waiting for someone else to give them an invitation to use their gifts. The authors [...]
The post Ready As You Are: Discovering a Life of Abundance When You Feel Inadequate, Uncertain, and Disqualified – Brittany Maher and Cassandra Speer appeared first on Life Is Story.
Remi Grant is running from an incident in her past—one she can’t even remember. Working at an isolated lodge has helped to keep her mind clear and focused on her new responsibilities. Hawk Beckett saves [...]
The post Storm Warning – Elizabeth Goddard appeared first on Life Is Story.
Emily Wilde and Wendell Bambleby are off on another adventure in Faerie in Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett. Fawcett’s “Emily Wilde” series is unique in the fantasy genre in that it [...]
The post Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales – Heather Fawcett appeared first on Life Is Story.
I immediately downloaded Grave Empire by Richard Swan as soon as I possibly could. His last trilogy, “Empire of the Wolf”, was one of the best fantasy series I have ever read. I did not [...]
The post Grave Empire – Richard Swan appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’m not sure how I missed Target Acquired, but I’ll need to go back and read it. Please forgive me for skipping to from book one to book three of Lynette Eason’s “Lake City Heroes” [...]
The post Serial Burn – Lynette Eason appeared first on Life Is Story.
A Crown So Silver by Lyra Selene continues the tale of Fia and Irian from A Feather So Black. Both have gone through severe trauma. The question is, will that suffering bring them together or [...]
The post A Crown So Silver – Lyra Selene appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book retells the biblical story of the Battle of Jericho in a way that is faithful to the source material, while greatly simplifying the plot for a very young audience. Tim Thornborough writes [...]
The post Joshua and the Very Strong City – Tim Thornborough and Jennifer Davison appeared first on Life Is Story.
Ben Lansing and D. J. Marotta run a popular social media account that celebrates faithful Christians from throughout global church history. Each post includes an illustration of someone along with a notable quote from them, [...]
The post Our Church Speaks: An Illustrated Devotional of Saints from Every Era and Place – Ben Lansing and D. J. Marotta appeared first on Life Is Story.
This unique study of D. L. Moody’s life combines biographical elements with a focus on specific themes from his ministry. Gregg Quiggle explores how this well-known nineteenth-century pastor and evangelist served others throughout his ministry, [...]
The post Bread and Bibles: D.L. Moody’s Evangelism and Social Action – Gregg Quiggle appeared first on Life Is Story.
For many years, Tieler Giles believed that she was one step away from unlocking the life hack or principle that will change everything. She was willing to try any strategy that she thought would bring [...]
The post How to Ditch the How-To: Embracing Grace in Place of Self-Improvement – Tieler Giles appeared first on Life Is Story.
Horses of Fire by A.D. Rhine did not receive the highest ratings from me, though as I read it a year ago, I could not begin to tell you why. Based off how long it [...]
The post Daughters of Bronze – A.D. Rhine appeared first on Life Is Story.
Leaders frequently carry heavy burdens for others, in addition to dealing with their own personal challenges. In this book, Nicholas Rowe and Sheila Wise Rowe share compassionate care for leaders, validating their struggles and encouraging [...]
The post Healing Leadership Trauma: Finding Emotional Health and Helping Others Flourish – Nicholas Rowe and Sheila Wise Rowe appeared first on Life Is Story.
This short, simple Bible study is perfect for people who want to develop a daily Bible reading habit, but don’t know where to start. There are lots of books available about how to read the [...]
The post The Quiet Time Kickstart: Six Weeks to a Healthy Bible Habit – Rachel Jones appeared first on Life Is Story.
There are lots of family discipleship books on the market, but as the author of this one points out, many of them point back to glory days that never existed, causing modern parents to feel [...]
The post Family Discipleship That Works: Guiding Your Child to Know, Love, and Act Like Jesus – Brian Dembowczyk appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book explores an often-neglected Christian doctrine, explaining what it means for Christians to be “one with Christ,” and not just disciples and followers of Christ. Sam Allberry writes in a conversational, engaging tone, reflecting [...]
The post One with My Lord: The Life-Changing Reality of Being in Christ – Sam Allberry appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have read a number of books about Scripture’s reliability, and this one stands out as a particularly excellent one. This book is just 140 pages long, but it covers thirteen different arguments for why [...]
The post Trustworthy: Thirteen Arguments for the Reliability of the New Testament – Benjamin Shaw appeared first on Life Is Story.
Over the Edge by Irene Hannon follows the romantic growth between two flawed, traumatized characters as they try to solve a murder. Personal chef Lindsey Barnes survived a mass shooting nearly two years ago, and [...]
The post Over the Edge – Irene Hannon appeared first on Life Is Story.
Hakara wants to save her sister. Nothing else matters. The god Kluehnn’s “Restoration” separated them, and Hakara will do anything to get back to Rasha…assuming she’s even alive. Restoration may cause plants to grow, but [...]
The post The Gods Below – Andrea Stewart appeared first on Life Is Story.
I had high hopes for The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave. After swallowing The Last Thing He Told Me whole, I couldn’t read Dave’s newest novel fast enough. It sounded intriguing enough. A [...]
The post The Night We Lost Him – Laura Dave appeared first on Life Is Story.
Swing Low is destined to be the definitive history of the Black church in America for decades to come. Written in two volumes, Swing Low gives readers both the historical overview and access to the [...]
The post Swing Low: An Anthology of Black Christianity in the United States (Vol. 2) – William Strickland appeared first on Life Is Story.
Swing Low is destined to be the definitive evangelical history of the Black church in America for decades to come. Written in two volumes, Swing Low gives readers both the historical overview and access to [...]
The post Swing Low: A History of Black Christianity in the United States (Vol. 1) – William Strickland appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book explores the church’s potential as a place where anxious people can find support and healing, alongside other interventions and therapies. J. Michael Jordan explains that even though attending church services can feel overwhelming [...]
The post Worship in an Age of Anxiety: How Churches Can Create Space for Healing – J. Michael Jordan appeared first on Life Is Story.
In recent years, more people have recognized the reality of spiritual abuse, but confusion remains about what it can look like in different settings, and what kinds of behaviors and patterns qualify for this label. [...]
The post Understanding Spiritual Abuse: What It Is and How to Respond – Karen Roudkovski appeared first on Life Is Story.
I greatly enjoyed Twelve Classic Christmas Stories, and I am thankful that I had the chance to review this. I had only encountered two of these stories before, and the rest were new to me. [...]
The post Twelve Classic Christmas Stories: A Feast of Yuletide Tales – Timothy Larsen (Editor) appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this board book, Abbey Wedgeworth teaches kids about what God made our feet for. She gives examples like dancing, running, and pedaling a bike, and then she writes about things that we shouldn’t do [...]
The post What Are Feet For? Board Book – Abbey Wedgeworth and Emma Randall appeared first on Life Is Story.
“The bottom line is truth and love go hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other. Because Jesus is both truth and love.” Lethal Standoff by DiAnn Mills follows the investigation of Carrington [...]
The post Lethal Standoff – DiAnn Mills appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this book, the founders of the Risen Motherhood ministry share insight into how mothers can apply the gospel to their daily lives. Emily A. Jensen and Laura Wifler explain that even though mothers naturally [...]
The post Gospel Mom: How to Make Biblical Decisions and Discover the Mom God Created You to Be – Emily A. Jensen and Laura Wifler appeared first on Life Is Story.
This unique graphic novel biography tells the story of Arvo Pärt, an Estonian composer who was passionate about innovative, different types of music and chafed against the restrictions of the communist regime. The story begins [...]
The post Between Two Sounds: Arvo Pärt’s Journey to His Musical Language – Joonas Sildre and Adam Cullen appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book connects common Christmas traditions to the spiritual realities that they represent. Things like putting up lights and spending time with family are an inherent part of the holiday for most people, to the [...]
The post It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas: Joys That Make the Season Special – Andrew Wilson appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is the second in a series about Abigail, a creative nine-year-old who grows and learns through her experiences at school, at home, and at church. Bethany McIlrath writes from a child’s perspective in [...]
The post Abigail and the Career Day Catastrophe – Bethany McIlrath and Katie Saunders appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book presents the Heidelberg Catechism in a format designed for devotional reading. Because the original Q&A format is more of a call-and-respond experience and doesn’t feel natural for personal reading, the editor has split [...]
The post My Only Comfort: The Heidelberg Catechism for Devotional Reading – Amanda Martin (Editor) appeared first on Life Is Story.
A Christmas Carol dates back to 1843, but its message and themes are timeless, and the story speaks to people of all ages. This illustrated edition lightly adapts the novel for young readers, imagining the [...]
The post Little Christmas Carol: The Illustrated Edition – Charles Dickens and Joe Sutphin appeared first on Life Is Story.
This Christian living book celebrates the Fruit of the Spirit, exploring what these virtues look like in everyday life. Kristin Elizabeth Couch shares stories from her life to illustrate love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, [...]
The post Deep Roots, Good Fruit: Seeing the Fruit of the Spirit through Story & Scripture – Kristin Elizabeth Couch appeared first on Life Is Story.
This paperback picture book retells the Christmas story in simple, kid-friendly language, and its unique selling point is that the illustrations are photos of Lego builds. The brick builds from Joshua Whitehouse are intricate, action-packed, [...]
The post The Christmas Story Brick by Brick – Rachael Hood and Joshua Whitehouse appeared first on Life Is Story.
This Advent devotional by Alistair Begg features short daily readings that explore the Christmas story in its full biblical context, from Genesis to Revelation. Each reading is about four to six pages long, and they [...]
The post Let Earth Receive Her King: Daily Readings for Advent – Alistair Begg appeared first on Life Is Story.
George MacDonald was a pastor and prolific writer who lived in Scotland in the nineteenth century. He published nonfiction, novels, and poetry, and Diary of an Old Soul is a lengthy poem that MacDonald originally [...]
The post Diary of an Old Soul: Annotated Edition – George MacDonald and Timothy Larsen appeared first on Life Is Story.
This gentle, meditative book explores the role that The Book of Common Prayer has played in the author’s faith formation. Julie Lane-Gay offers a series of reflections about how the prayer book has deepened her [...]
The post The Riches of Your Grace: Living in the Book of Common Prayer – Julie Lane-Gay appeared first on Life Is Story.
Weakness is hardly a popular topic in society, or in the church. We prefer to hide our weaknesses, or to tell inspiring stories about how we have overcome them. Even when people study or teach [...]
The post The Good Gift of Weakness: God’s Strength Made Perfect in the Story of Redemption – Eric M. Schumacher appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this book, Rick Lawrence reflects on ways that the American church has “edited” Jesus to fit with contemporary cultural sensibilities. He notes that lots of people are leaving the church or feel bored with [...]
The post Editing Jesus: Confronting the Distorted Faith of the American Church – Rick Lawrence appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Last Tiger reads like a forgotten Aesop’s fairy tale. Short, simple, evocative, and with an animal friend as its protagonist, The Last Tiger is a straightforward parable about the danger of pride and the [...]
The post The Last Tiger – Petr Horacek appeared first on Life Is Story.
The natural world is stunning in its breadth and depth. God’s creation is vast in scope and there are any number of animals who aren’t just different from one another but absolute opposites. Fast Cheetah, [...]
The post Fast Cheetah, Slow Tortoise – Bette Westera and Mies van Hout appeared first on Life Is Story.
I began my review of Broker of Lies, the first Travis Brock novel, with the line “Steven James never disappoints.” This is what writers call foreshadowing. Fatal Domain released in April 2024 and I had [...]
The post Fatal Domain (Travis Brock #2) – Steven James appeared first on Life Is Story.
Reconciliation isn’t enough—or rather, reconciliation without reparation is incomplete. Think of it, to reconcile means to bring two disparate things back together. A connection has been broken and reconciliation reforges the connection. But what if [...]
The post Empowered to Repair – Brenda Salter-McNeil appeared first on Life Is Story.
Over the past several years, I’ve been deconstructing. Not because I wanted to be trendy. Not even necessarily because I found myself hurt by the church—which has been the case for so many that I [...]
The post Holy Hell: A Case Against Eternal Damnation – Derek Ryan Kubilus appeared first on Life Is Story.
In 2015, staff members in the alumni office at Adrian College found a box in a supply closet filled with an assortment of objects—newspaper clippings, a photo of a former president of the college, a [...]
The post Awakening to Justice – The Dialogue on Race and Faith Project appeared first on Life Is Story.
Memoir can be a difficult genre. Every life is story. Some stories are more interesting than others. Some stories deserve to be written down and known beyond the general circle of family and friends. But [...]
The post From Chains to Change – Steven Allen Young and Eric Wilson appeared first on Life Is Story.
New International Commentaries are the one commentary set of which I own every volume and it has become my constant companion in biblical exegesis and sermon preparation. Even when I don’t agree with the conclusions, [...]
The post The Book of Micah (NICOT) – James D. Nogalski appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Gifford Lectures were established in 1887 at the four ancient universities of Scotland—St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh—to promote the study of natural theology. Speaking at a Gifford is one of the most prestigious [...]
The post The Disappearance of Ethics – Oliver O’Donovan appeared first on Life Is Story.
For all that it does, Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies doesn’t really do what the title says. Gushee acts as a historian rather than a social commentator. He gives readers a diagnosis, but not [...]
The post Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies – David Gushee appeared first on Life Is Story.
Humility is lacking in today’s society—Christian and secular. From influencers to celebrity pastors and more, technology has allowed us to showcase ourselves and society has often rewarded the most arrogant. Michael W. Austin’s Humility: Rediscovering [...]
The post Humility – Michael W. Austin appeared first on Life Is Story.
It’s the best-selling book of all time. Go to virtually any bookstore and they’re bound to have a copy somewhere. Millions are printed every year in various bindings, in various translations, with various study guides [...]
The post An Introduction to the Making and the Meaning of the Bible – Michael B. Shepherd appeared first on Life Is Story.
The truth of a matter is often more complex than perceived on its surface. Particularly in historical matters, where there is a wide array of context and nuance, the complexity of truth can become flattened [...]
The post Paul & Imperial Divine Honors: Christ, Caesar, and the Gospel – D. Clint Burnett appeared first on Life Is Story.
A Quilted Life: Reflections on a Sharecropper’s Daughter is a beautifully woven autobiography that intertwines personal history with cultural commentary. Writing with the experience of a lifetime, Catherine Meeks reflects on her journey from sharecropper’s [...]
The post A Quilted Life: Reflections of a Sharecropper’s Daughter – Catherine Meeks appeared first on Life Is Story.
If you’ve ever had a pet, then most likely you’ve had to navigate the loss of that pet. The human lifespan is immense in comparison to the natural lifespans of most domesticated animals and our [...]
The post Broken Heart, Shared Heart, Healing Heart – Barbara Allen appeared first on Life Is Story.
Stare too closely at the American justice system and you’ll soon be confronted with the reality that it is anything but just. Preston Shipp entered the system as a full believer in law and order. [...]
The post Confessions of a Former Prosecutor – Preston Shipp appeared first on Life Is Story.
Eric Wilson has had a roller coaster of a writing career. His debut novel came 20 years ago with Dark to Mortal Eyes and he proceeded to publish a novel a year for seven years. [...]
The post Taming the Beast – Rory Holloway with Eric Wilson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Structured like a series of letters—based on actual correspondence between Amy Orr-Ewing and a mentee—Lead Like the Real You is a collection of personal, thoughtful, and conversational essays on leadership particularly as it pertains to [...]
The post Lead Like the Real You – Amy Orr-Ewing appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book teaches kids about what it means to be a Christian. It goes through the alphabet from A to Z, introducing different concepts, such as Christians being adopted, forgiven, light, new creations, pilgrims, [...]
The post C is for Christian: An A-Z Treasury of Who We Are in Christ – Alistair Begg and Emma Skerratt appeared first on Life Is Story.
This board book features eight double-page spreads with illustrations of scenes from the Old Testament. Sarah Parker introduces each story in a brief paragraph, and she includes both the Bible reference and a simple takeaway [...]
The post Seek and Find: More Old Testament Bible Stories: With over 450 Things to Find and Count! – Sarah Parker and André Parker appeared first on Life Is Story.
This new installment in the Do Great Things for God series features Joni Eareckson Tada, a famous author, artist, and advocate for people with disabilities. This picture book biography highlights aspects of her early life, [...]
The post Joni Eareckson Tada: The Girl Who Learned to Follow God in a Wheelchair – Kristyn Getty and Hsulynn Pang appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have read more books about writing than I care to admit, and this is one of the best ones. It is specifically for a Christian audience, so it is more niche than most, but [...]
The post The Storied Life: Christian Writing as Art and Worship – Jared C. Wilson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Put a horse on a book cover, and you immediately have my attention. Sometimes, this does not work in my favor. Until Our Time Comes by Nicole M. Miller did. I read Elizabeth Letts’ The [...]
The post Until Our Time Comes – Nicole M. Miller appeared first on Life Is Story.
I would be the first to admit, I have waited far too long to write this review. I eagerly opened Born of Gilded Mountains by Amanda Dykes, and it embraced me like a warm hug. [...]
The post Born of Gilded Mountains – Amanda Dykes appeared first on Life Is Story.
Most critiques of Christian nationalism give off the same vibe as Jesus’s parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. I’ll be reading something that is thoughtful and true, but which also conveys the attitude, [...]
The post Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor – Caleb E. Campbell appeared first on Life Is Story.
Cameron Lee Small wrote this book to help adoptees reclaim their voices, tell their stories, and heal from trauma. He outlines common struggles that adoptees experience, such as questioning their identity, experiencing grief and loss [...]
The post The Adoptee’s Journey: From Loss and Trauma to Healing and Empowerment – Cameron Lee Small appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book of prayers for children goes with the God’s Big Promises Bible Storybook, and it’s also great as an independent resource. The book contains 100 short, kid-friendly prayers, and the graphic design layout is [...]
The post God’s Big Promises Bible Story Prayers: 101 Prayers for Children – Carl Laferton and Jennifer Davison appeared first on Life Is Story.
People talk a lot about how polarized America is and how increasingly uncivil our public discourse has become, but people rarely suggest substantive solutions for how to deal with this. In Claiming the Courageous Middle, [...]
The post Claiming the Courageous Middle: Daring to Live and Work Together for a More Hopeful Future – Shirley A. Mullen appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is part of the Love Your Church series, which is designed to help individuals and small groups grow in love for their fellow church members and cultivate healthy cultures within their congregations. This [...]
The post Honor: Loving Your Church by Building One Another Up – Adam Ramsey appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is full of practical, helpful advice for Christian women in corporate leadership positions. As Peggy Bodde explains at the beginning, it is rare for these leaders to get the support that they need, [...]
The post Sacred Work: A Christian Woman’s Guide to Leadership in the Marketplace – Peggy Bodde appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book of prayers is designed for Christian parents who are going through a child’s medical crisis or facing the death of their child. Eric M. Schumacher and Jessika Sanders wrote this book from their [...]
The post In His Hands: Prayers for Your Child or Baby in a Medical Crisis – Eric M. Schumacher and Jessika Sanders appeared first on Life Is Story.
The dog does not die in this one. We can go ahead and get that out of the way, because the author assures her readers of this on the dedication page. However, the dog is [...]
The post Operation: Happy: A World War II Story of Courage, Resilience, and an Unbreakable Bond – Jenni L. Walsh appeared first on Life Is Story.
Throughout this book, Aimee Byrd shares some of her own journey through church trauma, and she explores topics and themes that will resonate with many other people who have experienced disillusionment with the church, whether [...]
The post The Hope in Our Scars: Finding the Bride of Christ in the Underground of Disillusionment – Aimee Byrd appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is the first installment in a new chapter book series for elementary-aged kids. The main character, Abigail, is a nine-year-old who has just moved to a new house with her family and is [...]
The post Abigail and the Big Start Over – Bethany McIlrath and Katie Saunders appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this thoughtful book, Elizabeth Oldfield explores how the Seven Deadly Sins and Christianity as a whole help to explain the human condition. She writes that even though postmodern, secular cultures have lost the concept [...]
The post Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times – Elizabeth Oldfield appeared first on Life Is Story.
Everyone has experiences of feeling like their life will never change. Transitional periods between life stages, jobs, and relationships seem to drag on forever. Suffering feels like it will never end. A more fulfilling, meaningful [...]
The post Now and Not Yet: Pressing in When You’re Waiting, Wanting, and Restless for More – Ruth Chou Simons appeared first on Life Is Story.
A couple years ago, I reviewed the picture book I’m So Glad You Were Born. That bestselling book is now available in a board book format, and I decided to review it because I wondered [...]
The post I’m So Glad You Were Born: Celebrating Who You Are (Board Book) – Ainsley Earhardt and Kim Barnes appeared first on Life Is Story.
As a child, I really enjoyed the Berenstain Bears series, and even though all of the stories in this treasury are new to me, returning to the familiar characters and settings brought back a lot [...]
The post The Berenstain Bears Let’s Go Play Collection: 6 Books in 1 – Jan Berenstain and Mike Berenstain appeared first on Life Is Story.
This cute, colorful picture book celebrates girls and shares an empowering message through simple, rhyming text. The book says that “the girls of the world are ready to go,” makes a brief nod to how [...]
The post Girls of the World: Doing More Than Ever Before – Linsey Davis, Michael Tyler, and Lucy Fleming appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book has cute, colorful illustrations, and it shows Kit the kangaroo adjusting to life after her family moves to a new home. She depends on her notebook to help her with her anxiety, [...]
The post Kit and the Missing Notebook: A Book About Calming Anxiety – Chris Andrew Wheeler, Lindsey Erin Wheeler, and Carmen Saldaña Gutierrez appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book provides instructions for thirty different crafts and activities related to Bible stories. At the beginning of each section, Zonderkidz introduces the Bible story related to that craft, briefly describing key events from the [...]
The post The Beginner’s Bible Craft and Activity Book: 30 Fun Projects Based on Bible Stories – Zonderkidz appeared first on Life Is Story.
There are lots of picture books about the concept of kindness, but it can be difficult to find ones that are actually good. Kindness books are often boring, schmaltzy, or overly metaphorical, and sometimes they’re [...]
The post Race to Kindness – Orion Jean and Darshika Varma appeared first on Life Is Story.
Mimetic Theoy and Middle-earth. Don’t let the title scare you, Matthew Distefano’s perspective on JRR Tolkien’s legendarium through the lens of mimetic theory isn’t some academic text about some obscure philosophy. Instead—read the subtitle—this is [...]
The post Mimetic Theory and Middle-earth – Matthew J. Distefano appeared first on Life Is Story.
Several years ago, my wife and I began donate monthly to Compassion International to sponsor a child. Over the years, we’ve exchanged letters and watched that kid grow to adulthood. Giving money can sometimes feel [...]
The post What Are You Going to Do – Eric Wilson & Matt Bronleewe appeared first on Life Is Story.
My six-year-old is a world traveler. In the short time he’s been alive, we’ve lived in six houses in six different cities across three states and two countries and had holidays in even more. As [...]
The post Here & There – Thea Lu appeared first on Life Is Story.
Home is the perfect example of using various media to make learning come to life. The art is absolutely stunning. Even with no text, only as a book of art, this would be a book [...]
The post Home – Isabelle Simler appeared first on Life Is Story.
What Makes Us Human? At first this seems like a simple enough question, but ponder it long enough and that’s when things begin to get a bit tricky—particularly when speaking from a purely secular and [...]
The post What Makes Us Human – Victor D.O. Santos and Anna Forlati appeared first on Life Is Story.
Water. It’s the stuff of life. Following their previous book, Wind, Russian author and illustrator Olga Fadeeva takes young readers into an informative and engaging conversation about the liquid of life. Each two-page panel in [...]
The post Water – Olga Fadeeva appeared first on Life Is Story.
In 2013, I accepted a job as a youth pastor at a church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and served there until 2020. Across town in Tulsa, at a different church, there was very much a similar [...]
The post De-Sizing the Church – Karl Vaters appeared first on Life Is Story.
A few years ago, I enjoyed reading Marvin Olasky’s book Lament for a Father, in which he explored the family history and generational trauma that shaped his childhood. In this memoir, he writes about his [...]
The post Pivot Points: Adventures on the Road to Christian Contentment – Marvin Olasky appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book explores how Christians can find hope and rest in God, even when they are dealing with broken dreams and questioning why God would let something bad happen to them. Kat Shultis writes in [...]
The post My Lowest for His Highest: Fixing Our Eyes on Jesus in the Midst of Broken Dreams – Kat Shultis appeared first on Life Is Story.
This guide for mental health professionals explores how they can partner with churches to provide quality mental health care to a broader number of people. As the authors explain, the need for mental health services [...]
The post Beyond the Clinical Hour: How Counselors Can Partner with the Church to Address the Mental Health Crisis – James N. Sells, Amy Trout, and Heather C. Sells appeared first on Life Is Story.
This reflective, personal book explores the theme of belonging, with each chapter addressing different topics about identity and community. Sarah E. Westfall writes in a vulnerable way about her struggles to feel like she belongs, [...]
The post The Way of Belonging: Reimagining Who We Are and How We Relate – Sarah E. Westfall appeared first on Life Is Story.
Katija feels her soul is deteriorating from the inside out. Omen rot is creeping through her body one inch at a time, starting from her ruined tattoo. Now that she has friends and family, she [...]
The post The Fire Within Them – Matthew Ward appeared first on Life Is Story.
This Bible study explores the story of Elijah, alongside some other Scripture passages about prayer. Liz Ditty designed this for study groups to use together, but she also suggests modifications for people who are studying [...]
The post Hear My Prayer: Learning from the Faith of Elijah―A 6-Week Bible Study Experience – Liz Ditty appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have enjoyed Jay Y. Kim’s other books about Christian spiritual formation in the digital age, and this one builds on the previous books’ themes in a different way, focusing on what it truly means [...]
The post Listen, Listen, Speak: Hearing God and Being Heard in a Noisy World – Jay Y. Kim appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book of written prayers engages with topics from everyday life, reflecting lots of different concerns and common requests to God. In the introduction, W. David O. Taylor describes his experience writing daily prayers throughout [...]
The post Prayers for the Pilgrimage: A Book of Collects for All of Life – W. David O. Taylor and Phaedra Taylor appeared first on Life Is Story.
Ivy Elliott lives in Florida with her mother, who is battling cancer. To fulfill a family dream, Ivy travels to Alaska to purchase a Jack London manuscript. She met Nolan Long by chance some time [...]
The post Hidden in the Night – Elizabeth Goddard appeared first on Life Is Story.
Si vis pacem, para bellum. “If you want peace, prepare for war.” Broker of Lies was easily one of my favorite books last year, as evidenced by my glowing review. I cannot say the same [...]
The post Fatal Domain – Steven James appeared first on Life Is Story.
This new installment in the Tales that Tell the Truth series retells the story of Zacchaeus. Although many of the other books in this series focus on lesser-known Bible stories that rarely appear in children’s [...]
The post The Man in the Tree and the Brand New Start: A True Story about Zacchaeus and the Difference Knowing Jesus Makes – Carl Laferton and Catalina Echeverri appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this powerful book, Ryan George shares his personal story about surviving spiritual abuse and coming to know the real Jesus through genuine Christian community. He explains that even though he experienced great harm in [...]
The post Hurt and Healed by the Church: Redemption and Reconstruction After Spiritual Abuse – Ryan George appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this concise, thoughtful book, Stacy Reaoch explores tough topics about body image, food, and exercise through a biblical lens. She encourages Christian women to exchange negative cultural messages for the truth of Scripture, and [...]
The post Beautiful Freedom: How the Bible Shapes Your View of Appearance, Food, and Fitness – Stacy Reaoch appeared first on Life Is Story.
It’s generally acknowledged in Christian circles that being a pastor is an incredibly demanding job, and that it’s difficult to balance the always-on pressures of ministry with personal needs. For example, people talk a lot [...]
The post The Unhurried Pastor: Redefining Productivity for a More Sustainable Ministry – Brian Croft and Ronnie Martin appeared first on Life Is Story.
This hardcover treasury features eight stories from the Little Me, Big God series by Steph Williams. The stories include narratives about Jesus’s life and ministry, along with some stories about parables he told. The words [...]
The post Little Me, Big God: Stories about Jesus: Eight True Stories from the Bible – Steph Williams appeared first on Life Is Story.
This beautifully written memoir tells the author’s story of surviving Christian patriarchy, the Stay at Home Daughters movement, and her father’s emotional abuse. She directs her story both to people with similar backgrounds in the [...]
The post Rift: A Memoir of Breaking Away from Christian Patriarchy – Cait West appeared first on Life Is Story.
What is it about Jaime Jo Wright’s books that are so entrancing? Is it the characters? The paranormal? The danger and the crime? All of the above, I tell you. Night Falls on Predicament Avenue [...]
The post Night Falls on Predicament Avenue – Jaime Jo Wright appeared first on Life Is Story.
How did we get the Bible? That’s a huge question and the answer is way more complicated than I went to the local Christian bookstore.” But even when we try to go deeper—to talk about [...]
The post Gospel Media – Nicholas Elder appeared first on Life Is Story.
To understand being here: Prayers for Curiosity, Justice, and Love you have to understand two things: liturgy and living in the moment. For me, this book was a personal journey on learning about both. I [...]
The post being here – Pádraig Ó Tuama appeared first on Life Is Story.
When I told my wife the title of this book, Surviving God, she asked “Do they mean that God survives bad interpretation of who they are or that people survive bad interpretations of God?” It’s [...]
The post Surviving God – Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Susan M. Shaw appeared first on Life Is Story.
In July 2018, Nia Chiaramonte came out at transgender to her wife, Katie, after years of marriage and five children. It sounds like a marriage death knell, doesn’t it? How does one remain married to [...]
The post Embracing Queer Family – Nia and Katie Chiaramonte appeared first on Life Is Story.
In 2012, fresh out of seminary, I—a white man speaking zero Mandarin—took the position of youth pastor at a Chinese Church. At the time, I knew nothing about Chinese culture, little about Asian-American Christianity (did [...]
The post Jingjiao: The Earliest Christian Church in China – Glen L. Thompson appeared first on Life Is Story.
They say we are trash people. White trash. That’s the opening to Cedar Monroe’s memoir/study of how white supremacy and capitalism has harmed poor white rural America—all while convincing them it is their savior. Monroe [...]
The post Trash: A Poor White Story – Cedar Monroe appeared first on Life Is Story.
In the introduction to Everything Good About God is True, Bruce Chow-Reyes writes that “We can no longer abdicate the Chrisian story to hate, violence, and oppression. Those of us who occupy this more loving, [...]
The post Everything Good About God is True – Bruce Chow-Reyes appeared first on Life Is Story.
The one place I have always wanted to go is the National WWII Museum in New Orleans…and promptly spend a week inside its walls. My father instilled in me a love of history from a [...]
The post The British Booksellers – Kristy Cambron appeared first on Life Is Story.
Several years ago, I interviewed Christian author Jerry Jenkins about a novel he wrote and he told me the story about a gang member he interviewed for the book who gave his life to Christ [...]
The post Forged: Following Jesus into a New Kind of Family – TC Moore appeared first on Life Is Story.
It’s no secret that the subject of missionary work is growing increasingly controversial in discussions of religion, cultural identity, and national sovereignty. Much has been said about the wrong turns and misguided efforts of Westerners [...]
The post What Are You Doing To Do? – Eric Wilson and Matt Bronleewe appeared first on Life Is Story.
I grew up in the Church of Christ, but never really got into its history. The independent nature of the denomination (to the point some still wince at it being called that) means that the [...]
The post Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America – Richard T. Hughes and James L. Gorman appeared first on Life Is Story.
Little House on the Prairie remains a cultural phenomenon ninety years after their publication and fifty years after the popular television show loosely based on the books. Over sixty million copies have been sold and [...]
The post A Prairie Faith: The Religious Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder – John J. Fry appeared first on Life Is Story.
In 2020, I was living in Philadelphia for a few months just down the road from St. Edwards church, an abandoned cathedral that, in 1995 housed the homeless and is where Shane Claiborne and his [...]
The post Gone for Good: Navigating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition – ed. Mark Elsdon appeared first on Life Is Story.
Every night, as I put my son to bed, we say what he calls the “Dear God.” We talk to God, tell them about our day, thank them for creating our family, and share about [...]
The post Thank You, God – J. Bradley Wigger and Jago appeared first on Life Is Story.
Andy Serkis almost made me go to the wrong college. As a middle-schooler, I was entranced with Lord of the Rings. I came to the series backward, first watching the movies and then reading the [...]
The post Gollum: How We Made Movie Magic – Andy Serkis appeared first on Life Is Story.
Wisdom from the witch of Endor? Growing up in a conservative denomination, the story of Saul consulting a witch in order to get the advice of a dead Samuel was—well, it was never really spoken [...]
The post Wisdom from the Witch of Endor – Tikva Frymer-Kensky appeared first on Life Is Story.
In 1992, a Baptist pastor named Gary Chapman published a book called The Five Love Languages and a revolution was born. In the thirty years since, the concept of a “love language” has become almost [...]
The post Loving Adopted Children Well – Gary Chapman and Laurel Shaler appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have followed Travis Thrasher’s career for as long as I’ve been reviewing books and was sent an advance copy of Thrasher’s then-upcoming novel from FaithWords called Ghostwriter. I was hooked. Thrasher’s Solitary Tales series [...]
The post Midnight – Travis Thrasher appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this unique book, Sylvie Vanhoozer explores the church calendar and the seasons of the year through the lens of santons, small clay figures that represent people bringing gifts to baby Jesus based on their [...]
The post The Art of Living in Season: A Year of Reflections for Everyday Saints – Sylvie Vanhoozer appeared first on Life Is Story.
This powerful novel explores themes related to celebrity culture in the church, the reality of abuse, and issues related to power and privilege. The suspenseful story follows a young woman who has started working as [...]
The post The Surface of Water: A Novel – Cynthia Beach appeared first on Life Is Story.
There are lots of great books on the market about pastoral ministry, and about how ministry families can deal with the unique pressures that come with always being on call and in the spotlight. This [...]
The post Pastors’ Wives Tell All: Navigating Real Church Life with Honesty and Humor – Stephanie Gilbert, Jessica Taylor, and Jenna Allen appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is a reissued classic from Don Freeman, the author and illustrator best known for Corduroy. I grew up enjoying a number of different books by this author, but I had never heard of [...]
The post Come Again, Pelican – Don Freeman appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book originally appealed to me because of the beautiful cover, and I found the book relaxing, comforting, and encouraging. Jodie H. Grubbs shares her personal story of driving herself to burnout and then learning [...]
The post Live Slowly: A Gentle Invitation to Exhale – Jodie H. Grubbs appeared first on Life Is Story.
This unique memoir combines the author’s love of birding with her reflections on grief and loss, and even though it sounds like an incredibly niche book, it deals with universal topics in a way that [...]
The post Looking Up: A Birder’s Guide to Hope Through Grief – Courtney Ellis appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book flows from the authors’ experience counseling church leaders whose congregations are going through periods of organizational change. Kevin G. Ford and Jim Singleton have consulted with a great variety of churches in many [...]
The post Attentive Church Leadership: Listening and Leading in a World We’ve Never Known – Kevin G. Ford and Jim Singleton appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Sexpectations, Carol Tanksley shares advice as both a doctor and a Christian minister, helping Christians rethink their stories about sex, relationships, and God to work towards greater holiness and wholeness. She is honest about [...]
The post Sexpectations: Reframing Your Good and Not-So-Good Stories about God, Love, and Relationships – Carol Tanksley MD, DMin appeared first on Life Is Story.
This thoughtful, well-written book explores how lawyers can integrate their faith with their work. Richard F. Cochran Jr. writes from the perspective of an attorney and a law school professor, and he shows that even [...]
The post The Servant Lawyer: Facing the Challenges of Christian Faith in Everyday Law Practice – Richard F. Cochran Jr. appeared first on Life Is Story.
I grew up in a small, rural town in Indiana. I remember once my mom saying that she thought it was a small town without much racism when she was growing up: “We all loved [...]
The post Beyond Ethnic Loneliness – Prasanta Verma appeared first on Life Is Story.
This new addition to the 5 Love Languages series focuses on adoptive families, with insights for how parents can better understand their adopted children’s needs and show clear expressions of love. This book is [...]
The post Loving Adopted Children Well: A 5 Love Languages® Approach – Gary Chapman and Laurel Shaler appeared first on Life Is Story.
Many Christians struggle with perfectionism in their faith, and it can be especially difficult for people to recognize this form of perfectionism as what it really is. After all, we need to strive for holiness, [...]
The post Peace over Perfection: Enjoying a Good God When You Feel You’re Never Good Enough – Faith Chang appeared first on Life Is Story.
This thoughtful book explores how Christians can maintain a gentle, soft spirit even when they are suffering in ways that would normally lead to harshness, cynicism, and resentment. Charaia Rush reflects on her own experiences, [...]
The post Courageously Soft: Daring to Keep a Tender Heart in a Tough World – Charaia Rush appeared first on Life Is Story.
This graphic novel adaptation of the bestselling memoir The Hiding Place is incredibly powerful. It will introduce a new generation to Corrie ten Boom’s powerful testimony of faith, perseverance, and resistance against evil, and the [...]
The post The Hiding Place: A Graphic Novel – Corrie ten Boom, Elizabeth Sherrill, John Sherrill, Mario DeMatteo, and Ismael Castro appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book addresses a variety of timely topics related to how Christians can think about the church’s role in a swiftly changing, secularizing society. Stephen McAlpine encourages his readers to consider ways that the church [...]
The post Futureproof: How to Live for Jesus in a Culture That Keeps on Changing – Stephen McAlpine appeared first on Life Is Story.
A Feather So Black by Lyra Selene introduces readers to a new world among an overabundance of “faerie” fantasies. Which, maybe this segment of the genre isn’t my fancy, so perhaps I am not the [...]
The post A Feather So Black – Lyra Selene appeared first on Life Is Story.
“I will never fall again.” Landry Hutton and Callum Shaw both promised themselves that. Their hearts have been trampled by bad relationships, and they won’t let it happen again. But they never could have anticipated [...]
The post Never Fall Again – Lynn H. Blackburn appeared first on Life Is Story.
“‘What you have, Oaken, is a vision problem. You see things through the lens of your own perspective, your own goals and hopes and fears. But when you open your eyes to God’s view, you [...]
The post One Last Shot – Susan May Warren appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this brief book, Helen Thorne shares themed lists of prayer prompts that people can use to pray for suffering loved ones. Each list focuses on a different theme, such as praying for your friend [...]
The post 5 Things to Pray for a Suffering Friend: Prayers That Change Things for Friends or Family Who Are Walking through Trials – Helen Thorne appeared first on Life Is Story.
This new installment in the Do Great Things for God series features Susannah Spurgeon, the wife of the famous pastor Charles Spurgeon. This picture book biography highlights her personal story, showing how she came to [...]
The post Susannah Spurgeon: The Pastor’s Wife Who Didn’t Let Sickness Stop Her – Mary Mohler and Cecilia Messina appeared first on Life Is Story.
This powerful book explores what forgiveness can look like for trauma survivors, without unhealthy pressures to prematurely forgive or return to an abusive situation. Susannah Griffith shares a biblical theology of forgiveness alongside her personal [...]
The post Forgiveness after Trauma: A Path to Find Healing and Empowerment – Susannah Griffith appeared first on Life Is Story.
Brian Zahnd explores the crucifixion of Christ in a multifaceted way in this book, with each chapter focusing on a different aspect of the cross. Zahnd writes about theological topics related to what Jesus accomplished [...]
The post The Wood Between the Worlds: A Poetic Theology of the Cross – Brian Zahnd appeared first on Life Is Story.
I stumbled on Audrey Blake quite by chance; Blake’s first novel came up as a suggested read on Amazon. Yes, I know “Audrey Blake” is technically two authors, but it’s easier to write the review [...]
The post The Woman with No Name – Audrey Blake appeared first on Life Is Story.
JRR Tolkien was not only a writer, but he loved to illustrate as well. From 1973-1979 (with a gap in 1975), a series of calendars were published that used Tolkien’s paintings, drawings, and designs. 1973 [...]
The post Pictures – JRR Tolkien appeared first on Life Is Story.
The one thing that has kept me in the faith is deconstructing from the brand of Christianity in which I was raised and trained and, amid the smoke and ashes, finding it but one cramped [...]
The post A Faith of Many Rooms – Debie Thomas appeared first on Life Is Story.
Holy Runaways is a memoir of and blueprint for reconstructing a new and vibrant faith after walking away from toxic religion. Specifically, it is a handbook that recounts Matthias Roberts journey away from his evangelical [...]
The post Holy Runaways – Matthias Roberts appeared first on Life Is Story.
One of the things that I have attempted to do this is read books that are challenging to the status quo of my beliefs. Raised in evangelicalism, I was taught to question everything (unless it [...]
The post God’s Monsters – Esther Hamori appeared first on Life Is Story.
She was a girl braver than most. She was brave because she had a lion. The opening lines of Colter Jackson’s Everyday Brave introduces readers to a wild, self-confident, courageous, and brave young girl whose [...]
The post Everyday Brave – Colter Jackson appeared first on Life Is Story.
What could possibly be said about JRR Tolkien that has not already been said? In the decades since Tolkien’s death, he has become an enduring figure in literature. Christopher Tolkien heavily expanded his father’s legacy [...]
The post JRR Tolkien: Christian Maker of Middle-earth – Jeremy Johnston appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Infinity Rainbow Club continues! The first two installments of this series were among my favorite middle grade books I read last year. The series features a group of kids with various neurodivergences and tells [...]
The post Connor and the Taekwondo Tournament (The Infinity Rainbow Club #3) – Jen Malia appeared first on Life Is Story.
Zion Learns to See is the story of a young girl who goes with her father to the community center where he works and discovers a passion for helping those less fortunate than herself. The [...]
The post Zion Learns to See – Terence and Zion Lester appeared first on Life Is Story.
I knew going into this book that it would present me with some challenging viewpoints. I grew up within fundamentalist purity culture and for all that it got wrong and for all the convictions that [...]
The post Beyond Shame – Matthias Roberts appeared first on Life Is Story.
“Good trouble” was the phase coined by the late civil rights activist John Lewis to describe the work of activism. It’s work that’ll get you into trouble with the principalities and powers of the age, [...]
The post Troubling the Water – Ben McBride appeared first on Life Is Story.
Mara has new, hot pink hearing aids. She loves them, but she’s a bit nervous about what her friends will think. It’s her first day at school wearing them. Mara Hears in Style takes readers [...]
The post Mara Hears in Style – Terri Clemmons and Lucy Rogers appeared first on Life Is Story.
This board book is a new installment in a series that introduces young children to key themes from Christian theology. Each book features simple rhyming text from Kristen Wetherell and soft, colorful illustrations from Grace [...]
The post God Rescues Me – Kristen Wetherell and Grace Habib appeared first on Life Is Story.
This board book is a new installment in a series that introduces young children to key themes from Christian theology. Each book features simple rhyming text from Kristen Wetherell and soft, colorful illustrations from Grace [...]
The post God Came Near to Me – Kristen Wetherell and Grace Habib appeared first on Life Is Story.
Books about productivity are a dime a dozen in the publishing world, and they typically cover a lot of the same advice. This book stands out as a particularly good option for Christians, since the [...]
The post Make the Most of Your Productivity: A Guide to Honoring God with Your Time – Ana Ávila appeared first on Life Is Story.
This powerful biography tells the story of how Everett Swanson founded the ministry that is now known as Compassion International. The biography begins with his childhood and teen years, and portrays his experiences with faith [...]
The post What Are You Going to Do?: The Inspiring Story of Everett Swanson and the Founding of Compassion International – Eric Wilson and Matt Bronleewe appeared first on Life Is Story.
Searching for Home is a simple story about a house-sprite named Noa. He likes his house, but it doesn’t have any friends in it. Noa is good at finding things, so he goes off in [...]
The post Searching for Home – Chantal Bourgonje appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have a desperate longing to share Middle-earth with my children. My oldest is maybe, just about at the age where we could start reading through The Hobbit—but not quite. I had hoped that there [...]
The post Goodnight Hobbiton – Steven Giesbrecht and Anika Loewen appeared first on Life Is Story.
The concept behind Jesus Moments: David is that the Old Testament offers a foreshadowing of Jesus, particularly in the lives and actions of other important and messianic figures. David, as the shepherd-king of Israel and [...]
The post Jesus Moments: David – Alison Mitchell and Noah Warnes appeared first on Life Is Story.
Tales That Tell the Truth remains one of my favorite children’s Bible story series ever. My only problem with them? My kids loved them a bit too much. While they’re older now, I really could [...]
The post The God Contest | Tales That Tell The Truth Board Book appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Story of Kullervo is the second of three non-Middle-Earth JRR Tolkien tales to receive a literary overview from noted Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger. Flieger had written several books about Tolkien and Tolkien’s legendarium, including [...]
The post The Story of Kullervo – JRR Tolkien (ed. Verlyn Flieger) appeared first on Life Is Story.
Before Tolkien was the Master of Middle-Earth, he was a humble academic specializing in medieval English literature and philology. The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun comes from this non-Middle-Earth academic side of Tolkien merging with [...]
The post The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun – JRR Tolkien (ed. Verlyn Flieger) appeared first on Life Is Story.
Valentine’s Day! It’s all hearts and cupids and 30 tiny cards your kid gets at school and heart-shaped pizzas from chain stores and fancy dinners and even more…but what is it? Where did it come [...]
The post Saint Valentine the Kindhearted – Ned Bustard appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this clever retelling of Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son, Ginger Blomberg tells a story about two brothers who are very different from each other. The younger child is wild and rambunctious, and gets [...]
The post Charlie and the Preschool Prodigal – Ginger Blomberg and Samara Hardy appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this upbeat, colorful picture book, gospel singer Kierra Sheard-Kelly tells a fictional story based on a formative event in her childhood. In this story, Kiki feels out of place at school and is excited [...]
The post Kiki Finds Her Voice: Be True to You and Embrace Your God-Given Gifts – Kierra Sheard-Kelly, Molly Hodgin, and Paul Kellam appeared first on Life Is Story.
At the beginning of this picture book, the authors share the Bible verses from Numbers 6:22-27 that inspired them to write this book, and then they share a blessing that they have written for children. [...]
The post This Special Blessing for You – Eric Schrotenboer, Meredith Schrotenboer, and Denise Hughes appeared first on Life Is Story.
This board book is part of a spin-off series related to The Jesus Storybook Bible. Each book adapts the text of a different Bible passage, simplifying it for young children. In Strong: Psalm 1, Sally Lloyd [...]
The post Strong: Psalm 1 – Sally Lloyd Jones and Jago appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book devotional features forty daily readings for the Lenten season. It also includes occasional fully illustrated double page spreads that tell the story of Jesus through a poem in the structure of “‘Twas [...]
The post ‘Twas the Season of Lent: Devotions and Stories for the Lenten and Easter Seasons – Glenys Nellist and Elena Selivanova appeared first on Life Is Story.
Good friendships are hard to find. They’re even harder to keep. In this short volume, using the book of Philemon, Bryan Loritts walks readers through the value of Enduring Friendship. Loritts begins with his own [...]
The post Enduring Friendship – Bryan Loritts appeared first on Life Is Story.
This cute picture book is about Fiona, the famous hippo from the Cincinnati Zoo. In this story, she is planning an Easter egg hunt for her friends, and is also helping a swan mother prepare [...]
The post Fiona and the Easter Egg Hunt – Zondervan and Richard Cowdrey appeared first on Life Is Story.
This Easter picture book introduces the events of Holy Week to young children, starting with Jesus’s ride into Jerusalem and ending with his resurrection. Glenys Nellist dramatizes the story in her own words, using short [...]
The post Easter Love Letters from God: Bible Stories – Glenys Nellist and Sophie Allsopp appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this accessible, engaging guide to the Bible, Susan C. Lim shares her personal testimony of coming to know Jesus and the story of her “second confession,” when after years of faithful Christian living, she [...]
The post Light of the Word: How Knowing the History of the Bible Illuminates Our Faith – Susan C. Lim appeared first on Life Is Story.
It is no exaggeration to say this book will save lives. Using practical wisdom from her own journey of parenting and advocacy, Jamie Bruesehoff offers readers a personal, practical, and holy perspective on raising and [...]
The post Raising Kids Beyond the Binary: Celebrating God’s Transgender and Gender-Diverse Children – Jamie Bruesehoff appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this spiritual memoir, Mike Cosper reflects on key experiences and turning points in his life that took him to thrilling highs and crushing lows. Over recent years, Cosper has spoken and written a great [...]
The post Land of My Sojourn: The Landscape of a Faith Lost and Found – Mike Cosper appeared first on Life Is Story.
Mike Cosper first came to my attention a while back when he hosted the podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, a podcast documentary chronicling what the title suggests, offering specific condemnations of founding [...]
The post Land of My Sojourn – Mike Cosper appeared first on Life Is Story.
Daniel Reinhardt is a former police officer, and because of his vocational experience, he has an especially helpful perspective. A lot of people have big opinions about this topic without really understanding the issues at [...]
The post Rethinking the Police: An Officer’s Confession and the Pathway to Reform – Daniel Reinhardt appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this Bible study for kids, Adam Griffin helps kids explore the topic of wisdom and what it means to make good choices in different areas of life. Each day in this eight-week study begins [...]
The post When Wrong Seems Right: A Kids Bible Study on Making Good Choices – Adam Griffin appeared first on Life Is Story.
This unique Old Testament storybook shares snapshots from David’s early life and then connects aspects of David’s story to Jesus. At the beginning of the book, the author explains that if you look closely, you [...]
The post Jesus Moments: David: Finding Jesus in the Story of David – Alison Mitchell and Noah Warnes appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is a board book adaptation of The God Contest Storybook: The True Story of Elijah, Jesus, and the Greatest Victory. This board book is simplified and shorter for babies and toddlers, briefly presenting the [...]
The post The God Contest Board Book: Jesus Is the Real God! – Carl Laferton and Catalina Echeverri appeared first on Life Is Story.
How Ableism Fuels Racism explores how racism and disability justice issues intersect and intertwine, particularly within the American church. Lamar Hardwick writes from his perspective as an autistic Black pastor, and his recent battles with [...]
The post How Ableism Fuels Racism: Dismantling the Hierarchy of Bodies in the Church – Lamar Hardwick appeared first on Life Is Story.
This unique, thoughtful book explores the significance of metaphors for the human life. Joy Marie Clarkson explains that the way we think and talk about ourselves shapes our expectations and affects how we live. For [...]
The post You Are a Tree: And Other Metaphors to Nourish Life, Thought, and Prayer – Joy Marie Clarkson appeared first on Life Is Story.
This sticker and activity book supplements the God’s Big Promises Bible Storybook. However, someone doesn’t need to own the original Bible storybook to fully enjoy this activity book. Carl Laferton shares the story of Easter [...]
The post God’s Big Promises Easter Sticker and Activity Book – Carl Laferton and Jennifer Davison appeared first on Life Is Story.
Clint Watkins shares important spiritual truths about lament in this book, alongside his personal story of losing his firstborn child due to a tragic prenatal diagnosis. He reflects on how difficult it was for him [...]
The post Just Be Honest: How to Worship through Tears and Pray without Pretending – Clint Watkins appeared first on Life Is Story.
This Lent devotional explores the story of Jesus’s transfiguration. As Tim Chester explains at the beginning of the book, many Christians aren’t very familiar with the gospel accounts of the Transfiguration or don’t know what [...]
The post Our Radiant Redeemer: Lent Devotions on the Transfiguration of Jesus – Tim Chester appeared first on Life Is Story.
Based off The Book of Doors, Gareth Brown will be a writer to watch. The novel opens up readers to a world of Gareth’s imagination, one page at a time. When a customer passes away [...]
The post The Book of Doors – Gareth Brown appeared first on Life Is Story.
Elizabeth Camden. When I see her name, I know I’m going to read the book. Topic doesn’t matter. Time period, I couldn’t care less. Elizabeth Camden has my attention from the first word, and she [...]
The post While the City Sleeps – Elizabeth Camden appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’d been looking forward to One Final Target by Janice Cantore since I first heard of its existence. The novel has the perfect amount of mystery and thrill, flavored with a dash of romance. When [...]
The post One Final Target – Janice Cantore appeared first on Life Is Story.
Brian Zahnd begins The Wood Between the Worlds: A Poetic Theology of the Cross with the words “I dare to write about God, which is, admittedly, an audacious undertaking.” This sentence, I think, encapsules the [...]
The post The Wood Between the Worlds: A Poetic Theology of the Cross – Brian Zahnd appeared first on Life Is Story.
I can always count on Patricia Bradley to provide romantic suspense novels that will leave me guessing. Books that will have me looking around every corner, questioning the motives of every character who enters a [...]
The post Fatal Witness – Patricia Bradley appeared first on Life Is Story.
You know the viral meme from the Titanic film? Of an elderly Rose, saying “It’s been 84 years?” That’s how I felt waiting on The Trials of Empire by Richard Swan. I cannot say this [...]
The post The Trials of Empire – Richard Swan appeared first on Life Is Story.
When someone tells me they want to start reading historical fiction, I always direct them to two authors: Kate Quinn and Kristin Hannah. For historical fiction, Kristin Hannah is easily one of the most talented [...]
The post The Women – Kristin Hannah appeared first on Life Is Story.
As I read through Leading Christian Communities, the thought I kept coming back to was that the content seemed better placed in a magazine or blog. After finishing the book, I did some research and, [...]
The post Leading Christian Communities – C. Kavin Rowe appeared first on Life Is Story.
Harriet’s Reflections is actually the story of a lion’s reflection. The lion was old and died, leaving his reflection behind. The reflection didn’t know where to go and wandered around until he saw Harriet. He [...]
The post Harriet’s Reflections – Marion Kadi appeared first on Life Is Story.
Whenever I get new picture books for my kids, after reading them to make sure they’re okay for my kids to read, I put them in a stack on top of their bookshelf in the [...]
The post Brown Girls Rules – Ashok Banker and Brittney Bond appeared first on Life Is Story.
The social message that young kids often receive is “Be yourself…so long as yourself isn’t too different.” In Be Your Own Bird, Russ Willms shows kids how being different can help everyone out. Pickles is [...]
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The egg is warm. The egg is safe. The egg isn’t all that exciting, but it’s all that Peg’s ever known. But then…CRACK! And a whole new world opens up. Peg Gets Crackin’ is a [...]
The post Peg Gets Crackin’ – Jo Renfro appeared first on Life Is Story.
This workbook connects with The Wisdom of Your Body by the same author. As Hillary McBride explains in the introduction, although she designed this as a practical supplement to her previous book, it also works [...]
The post Practices for Embodied Living: Experiencing the Wisdom of Your Body – Hillary L. McBride, PhD appeared first on Life Is Story.
This unique book shares theological insights and practical ideas for how churches can empower people with disabilities to take leadership roles in the church. The authors reflect on how well-meaning disability ministries often end up [...]
The post Disabling Leadership: A Practical Theology for the Broken Body of Christ – Andrew T. Draper, Jody Michele, and Andrea Mae appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is one of the best books that I have read about body image issues. Heather Creekmore carefully analyzes societal messages and skewed ideas in the church, delves deep into Scripture, and shares nuanced perspectives [...]
The post The 40-Day Body Image Workbook: Hope for Christian Women Who’ve Tried Everything – Heather Creekmore appeared first on Life Is Story.
This 30-day devotional offers encouragement for Christian mothers as they deal with life’s challenges. Sarah Walton wrote this with her mother, Linda Green, and they each cover different topics from their own perspectives, speaking to [...]
The post He Gives More Grace: 30 Hope-Filled Reflections for the Ups and Downs of Motherhood – Sarah Walton and Linda Green appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this board book, Abbey Wedgeworth teaches kids about what God made our ears for. She gives examples like listening to music and hearing directions, and then she writes about things that we shouldn’t do [...]
The post What Are Ears For? Board Book – Abbey Wedgeworth and Emma Randall appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this board book, Abbey Wedgeworth teaches kids about what God made our eyes for. This book feels more abstract than previous installments in the Training Young Hearts series, but she gives specific examples of [...]
The post What Are Eyes For? Board Book – Abbey Wedgeworth and Emma Randall appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have greatly enjoyed the Do Great Things for God series so far, and this is another wonderful installment. K.A. Ellis shares Fannie Lou Hamer’s powerful story in a way that is age-appropriate for young [...]
The post Fannie Lou Hamer: The Courageous Woman Who Marched for Dignity – K.A. Ellis and Shin Maeng appeared first on Life Is Story.
This series of small board books introduces young children to favorite hymns, promises from God, and prayers from Scripture. Each book is small and brief, making this appropriate for babies and toddlers, and Hannah Estes [...]
The post Tiny Hands Hymns | Tiny Hands Promises | Tiny Hands Prayers – Hannah Estes and Jessica Hiatt appeared first on Life Is Story.
This Bible study book for kids includes lots of teaching content, interspersed with many different puzzles and activities. This book includes six sections with thirty chapters total, and they cover the creation narrative from Genesis, [...]
The post Bible Investigators: Creation: Puzzles and Activities for Independent Learning – Danika Cooley appeared first on Life Is Story.
This board book introduces Easter to young children, with simple text from Carl Laferton and colorful illustrations from Jennifer Davison. This contains adapted material from the God’s Big Promises Bible Storybook, simplifying the content for [...]
The post God’s Big Promises: Easter for Little Ones – Carl Laferton and Jennifer Davison appeared first on Life Is Story.
Courtney Reissig explains that when she experienced her darkest moments, she found the psalms uniquely helpful. When she was dealing with pregnancy complications, fearing her own death and the death of her unborn child, the [...]
The post Teach Me To Feel: Worshiping Through the Psalms in Every Season of Life – Courtney Reissig appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this book, Emily Hunter McGowin writes about the origins of Christmas and reflects on profound, meaningful themes from Christ’s coming. I enjoyed her eloquent writing and thoughtful reflections, and even though I have read [...]
The post Christmas: The Season of Life and Light – Emily Hunter McGowin appeared first on Life Is Story.
This thoughtful, nuanced guide to a contentious topic will appeal to Christian men and some women who want to rethink masculinity in light of cultural controversy. This book is pretty basic, but it covers a [...]
The post Reclaiming Masculinity: Seven Biblical Principles for Being the Man God Wants You to Be – Matt Fuller appeared first on Life Is Story.
Although many picture books retell stories from the Bible, this unique book swiftly covers a variety of different characters and incidents from Scripture, sharing a message about the Bible as a whole. The author includes [...]
The post The Greatest Book Ever – Teresa Joyelle Krager and Jesús López appeared first on Life Is Story.
Every time I read a DiAnn Mills book, she reminds me why I enjoy her work. For me, she stands alone in the romantic suspense genre for her storytelling. Facing the Enemy by DiAnn Mills [...]
The post Facing the Enemy – DiAnn Mills appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book features forty reflections on how people can connect their faith and work. Barry L. Rowan shares from his personal journey, explaining how even though he struggled to find purpose and meaning in his [...]
The post The Spiritual Art of Business: Connecting the Daily with the Divine – Barry L. Rowan appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this short book, Kevin DeYoung shares a refreshing, helpful take on what it really means to follow Jesus. He writes with a pastoral heart for people who feel discouraged, overwhelmed, and beaten down in [...]
The post Impossible Christianity: Why Following Jesus Does Not Mean You Have to Change the World, Be an Expert in Everything, Accept Spiritual Failure, and Feel Miserable Pretty Much All the Time – Kevin DeYoung appeared first on Life Is Story.
The History of the Hobbit is a massive work. At nearly one thousand pages and almost three inches thick, John Rateliff’s work of literary archaeology stands alone—literally and figuratively. Originally published in 2007 as a [...]
The post The History of the Hobbit – John Rateliff appeared first on Life Is Story.
This vibrantly illustrated Bible storybook emphasizes God’s promises, showing how God has made and kept different promises throughout redemptive history. These include the obvious, such as God promising to send a savior, along with more [...]
The post God’s Big Promises Bible Storybook – Carl Laferton and Jennifer Davison appeared first on Life Is Story.
Melissa L. Johnson writes about the harmful effects of modern American beauty standards, sharing sobering statistics, her personal story of overcoming anorexia, and encouragement for other women dealing with shame and feelings of inadequacy. She [...]
The post Soul-Deep Beauty: Fighting for Our True Worth in a World Demanding Flawless – Melissa L. Johnson appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this Bible study for kids, Catherine Parks takes her readers through Colossians 3:1-14, helping kids understand what it means to put on Christlike character. There are eight lessons in the book, each with material [...]
The post What to Wear: A Kids Bible Study on Looking Like Jesus (Colossians 3:1-14) – Catherine Parks appeared first on Life Is Story.
The glory of creation is something that we often miss in our modern day. Our dependence on technology and man-made infrastructure has taken us farther away from the natural world and led us to appreciate [...]
The post God, Right Here – Kara Lawler and Jennie Poh appeared first on Life Is Story.
Bold lines, simple illustrations, and a twist you won’t see coming, The Biggest Mistake is a playful story of perseverance that you’ll want to revisit again and again. The plot of the book goes like [...]
The post The Biggest Mistake – Camilla Pintonato appeared first on Life Is Story.
Part of the Good Book Company’s Training Young Hearts series, What are Hands For? and What are Mouths For? are colorful and straightforward lift-the-flap style books meant to teach children to differentiate between positive and [...]
The post What are Hands For? | What are Mouths For? | Training Young Hearts – Abbey Wedgeworth appeared first on Life Is Story.
As a young adult, I was never much for nature. Outdoors was what someone experienced as they walked between the building they were in and their vehicle. I think that’s the result of outdoors = [...]
The post Collisions of Earth and Sky – Heidi Barr appeared first on Life Is Story.
Of course, I know of Beth Moore! Everybody in evangelical circles knows of Beth Moore! But truth be told, I really didn’t know that much about Beth Moore, particularly pre-2016 Beth Moore. I’m not exactly [...]
The post All My Knotted-Up Life – Beth Moore appeared first on Life Is Story.
Jon Ward was a child of the Evangelical movement, particularly of the Southern Baptist brand and even more particularly the strain surrounding Sovereign Grace Ministries and Covenant Life Church. As such, his memoir, Testimony: Inside [...]
The post Testimony – Jon Ward appeared first on Life Is Story.
Oral Roberts is probably one of the most overlooked and understudied figures in American evangelicalism. His legacy—particularly within Tulsa, Oklahoma—is as big as his personality. Not quite as irenic as Billy Graham, not quite as [...]
The post Oral Roberts and the Rise of the Prosperity Gospel – Jonathan Roots appeared first on Life Is Story.
This board book about emotional coping skills has cute illustrations and a nice message, modeling how parents can help their children process difficult feelings. In You Count, a mother bear helps her bear cub calm [...]
The post You Count: A Five-Senses Countdown to Calm – Champ Thornton and David Creighton-Pester appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this picture book, authors Nate Davenport and Luke Freshwater use an example from nature to teach children about choosing courage and overcoming fear. Bison run through storms together instead of scattering, and this gets [...]
The post Bryson the Brave Bison: Finding the Courage to Face the Storm – Nate Davenport, Luke Freshwater, and Richard Cowdrey appeared first on Life Is Story.
This board book is part of a series related to The Jesus Storybook Bible. In each of these books, Sally Lloyd-Jones paraphrases a passage from the Bible, and soft, gentle illustrations from Jago show diverse [...]
The post Happy: A Song of Joy and Thanks for Little Ones, based on Psalm 92 – Sally Lloyd-Jones and Jago appeared first on Life Is Story.
Wrong Place Wrong Time enraptured me. It sucked me in from the first page and never let go. Evidently, I wasn’t the only one, as it was a Goodreads nominee for Best Mystery & Thriller [...]
The post Just Another Missing Person – Gillian McAllister appeared first on Life Is Story.
It has been way too long since I’ve read a Lynette Eason book! She is easily one of my favorite authors of the romantic suspense genre. Her books never fail to entertain, and Countdown is [...]
The post Countdown – Lynette Eason appeared first on Life Is Story.
This Sunday school curriculum is based on The Christmas Promise storybook by Alison Mitchell. The authors mention which pages of the original book to read during different sessions, but this curriculum can also work as [...]
The post The Christmas Promise Sunday School Lessons: A Three-Session Curriculum With a Family Service Outline – Lizzie Laferton, Carl Laferton, and Catalina Echeverri appeared first on Life Is Story.
This family devotional by Katy Morgan is inspired by the Any Time, Any Place, Any Prayer storybook by Laura Wifler, and the readings go through fifteen different Bible passages related to prayer. Each devotion features [...]
The post Any Time, Any Place, Any Prayer Family Bible Devotional: 15 Days Exploring How We Can Talk with God – Katy Morgan and Catalina Echeverri appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is another great installment in the Big Questions series for tweens and teens. Chris Morphew is a teacher and school chaplain at a Christian school, and his experience interacting with kids comes through clearly [...]
The post How Can I Be Sure What’s Right and Wrong? – Chris Morphew appeared first on Life Is Story.
This juvenile novel about a girl starting middle school tackles tough themes in relatable ways, exploring the pain of changing friendship dynamics and social exclusion. In this story, Elita feels cast adrift after her best [...]
The post This Seat’s Saved – Heather Holleman appeared first on Life Is Story.
The thesis of Paul M. Gould’s A Good and True Story is really quite simple: “Our identity is wrapped up with the story of our lives: the story we tell, the story we live in.” [...]
The post A Good and True Story – Paul M. Gould appeared first on Life Is Story.
When it comes to the work of advocacy, there’s so much to do that it can be overwhelming to know where to start or how to feel effective. I’ve watched protests and felt like I [...]
The post The Everyday Advocate – Ross Murray appeared first on Life Is Story.
The back cover of Finding Phoebe: What New Testament Women Were Really Like reads “Forget What You Think You Know About Women in the Early Church.” That’s a pretty bold claim, especially considering that different [...]
The post Finding Phoebe – Susan Hylen appeared first on Life Is Story.
Transitions. Whether you’re four or forty, transitions can be difficult. Planned on unplanned, transitions often take us from someplace stable into something unknown. Hopefully they’re good and needed, but that doesn’t make the movement any [...]
The post Recalibrate Your Life – Kenneth Boa and Jenny Abel appeared first on Life Is Story.
When I was growing up, there was this anti-drug program that advocated “Just Say No to Drugs.” Police would come into schools or churches with small amounts of various drugs, show you what they looked [...]
The post Addiction Nation – Timothy McMahan King appeared first on Life Is Story.
Resisting Apartheid America is Miguel A. De La Torre’s third and final book in the Badass Gospel trilogy. Burying White Privilege talked about how racist hierarchy has been maintained in our systems of government, economics, [...]
The post Resisting Apartheid America – Miguel A. De La Torre appeared first on Life Is Story.
Decolonizing Christianity is the second of Miguel A. de la Torre’s Badass Christianity trilogy, sandwiched between Burying White Privilege and Resisting Apartheid America. Each volume builds on the other, with Decolonizing Christianity being written—in de [...]
The post Decolonizing Christianity: Becoming Badass Believers – Miguel A. De La Torre appeared first on Life Is Story.
Burying White Privilege is the first of Miguel A. de la Torre’s Badass Christianity trilogy, preceding Decolonizing Christianity and Resisting Apartheid America. I had not read de la Torre before and let me tell you, [...]
The post Burying White Privilege: Resurrecting a Badass Christianity – Miguel A. De La Torre appeared first on Life Is Story.
In undergraduate school, I had to take a class on evangelism. Evangelism 101 with professors Kirk Cameron (yes, that one) and Ray Comfort. They weren’t really the professors, but it was their The Way of [...]
The post Trauma-Informed Evangelism – Charles Kiser and Elaine Health appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is not just a book you read; it’s a book that you live. Search the shelves and you’ll see a glut how-to books, living better books, finding identity books and none of them will [...]
The post Living Resistance – Kaitlin Curtice appeared first on Life Is Story.
At the beginning of this book, Dan and Anna Martin share their story about losing one of their twins shortly after birth. They share about their experiences grieving their son’s diagnosis and eventual death, and [...]
The post Near to the Broken-Hearted: The Comfort of Jesus in the Grief of Losing a Child – Dan Martin and Anna Martin with Chris Mouring appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book biography introduces a favorite Christian author and apologist to children. It goes through C.S. Lewis’s life from his childhood to his death, highlighting his journey to faith and some of his major [...]
The post C.S. Lewis: The Writer Who Found Joy – Daniel DeWitt and Marcin Piwowarski appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this very accessible book, Gregg R. Allison shares insights about the Holy Spirit, helping Christians better understand this member of the Trinity and the Spirit’s work in their lives. Allison begins by writing about [...]
The post God, Gift, and Guide: Knowing the Holy Spirit – Gregg R. Allison appeared first on Life Is Story.
This board book adapts the picture book His Grace is Enough for even younger children. The book includes some of the same rhythmic text from Melissa Kruger and cute illustrations from Isobel Lundie, and it flows [...]
The post His Grace is Enough Board Book – Melissa Kruger and Isobel Lundie appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book collects essays from Christian women about vocational work. Each one is about a different topic, such as the connection between work and bearing God’s image, what it means to be called, and practical [...]
The post Women and Work: Bearing God’s Image and Joining in His Mission through our Work – ed. Courtney Moore appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this parenting book, Ed Drew shares insights from the Bible and from his personal experiences, highlighting ways that parents can help their kids thrive by instilling confidence in them and helping them ground their [...]
The post Raising Confident Kids in a Confusing World: A Parent’s Guide to Grounding Identity in Christ – Ed Drew appeared first on Life Is Story.
This new installment in the Do Great Things for God series is about Maria Fearing, an African-American woman who survived slavery, supported herself as a seamstress, and fulfilled her dream of becoming a missionary to [...]
The post Maria Fearing: The Girl Who Dreamed of Distant Lands – K. A. Ellis and Taylor Barron appeared first on Life Is Story.
This new installment in the Do Great Things for God series features Amy Carmichael, a famous missionary who served in India for many years and adopted children from desperate situations. I enjoyed learning about Amy [...]
The post Amy Carmichael: The Brown-Eyed Girl Who Learned to Pray – Hunter Beless and Héloïse Mab appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Valuable, Liz Carter emphasizes that even though Christians often focus on what people do for God, God loves us for who we are, not for what we do. She dismantles harmful or unhelpful ways [...]
The post Valuable: Why Your Worth Is Not Defined by How Useful You Feel – Liz Carter appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this middle grade novel, Sierra longs for a place to call home, but she faces continued upheaval due to her mother’s wartime PTSD and struggles holding down a job. This story tackles a lot [...]
The post Hotel Oscar Mike Echo: A Novel – Linda MacKillop appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this book, Sarah J. Hauser shares about some of her struggles and how she has found rest in her relationship with God. She writes about dealing with depression and feelings of failure as a [...]
The post All Who Are Weary: Finding True Rest By Letting Go of the Burdens You Were Never Meant to Carry – Sarah J. Hauser appeared first on Life Is Story.
Is it too cliché to call a book about baseball a home run? Is it too pretentious to call a book featuring 1950s Americana a Great American Novel? Even if they are, can I do [...]
The post The All American – Susie Finkbeiner appeared first on Life Is Story.
This activity book supplements the Tales That Tell the Truth storybook The Prisoners, the Earthquake, and the Midnight Song. The activity book includes text from Bob Hartman and some of Catalina Echeverri’s original illustrations, which [...]
The post The Prisoners, the Earthquake, and the Midnight Song Coloring and Activity Book – Bob Hartman and Catalina Echeverri appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book introduces key concepts about prayer, teaching children how to talk to God. The bright, colorful illustrations feature familiar Bible characters in the Beginner’s Bible art style, and the book explains what prayer [...]
The post The Beginner’s Bible Let’s Learn to Pray: Talk to God about Anything and Everything – Zonderkidz appeared first on Life Is Story.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one of my personal heroes, and this picture book biography is an amazing way to share his story with children. Molly Frye Wilmington tells Bonhoeffer’s story in a way that kids can [...]
The post Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The Teacher Who Became a Spy – Molly Frye Wilmington and Marcin Piwowarski appeared first on Life Is Story.
Many people forget about rural areas. Most church resources assume a suburban context, and people often think that if you want to really have an impact, then you need to change the world through urban [...]
The post Pastoring Small Towns: Help and Hope for Those Ministering in Smaller Places – Ronnie Martin and Donnie Griggs appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is absolutely wonderful, and it is everything that a biographical anthology about biblical figures should be. Sarah Parker Rubio did an amazing job with the written profiles and illustrations, and I love how [...]
The post Her Story, Her Strength: 50 God-Empowered Women of the Bible – Sarah Parker Rubio appeared first on Life Is Story.
Katie Westenberg writes about the important role that memory plays in our spiritual lives, especially as we deal with so many competing claims for our attention in the modern world. She reflects on our cognitive [...]
The post But Then She Remembered: How to Give God Your Full Attention in a Distracted World – Katie Westenberg appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book shares different Bible stories in chronological order, from Genesis to Revelation. Every page has multiple things to color, and this will be fun for a variety of ages. The publisher is recommending this [...]
The post My Epic, Doodletastic Bible Storybook: 60 Bible Stories to Read, Color, and Draw – Bob Hartman and Gareth Williams appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this picture book, Caroline Saunders explores the theme of home as it appears in the Bible. The book begins with Adam and Eve living in a perfect home in the Garden of Eden, and [...]
The post The Story of Home: God at Work in the Bible’s Tales of Home – Caroline Saunders and Jade Van Der Zalm appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book biography is about Thomas Edison’s childhood. It focuses on his scientific curiosity, his mischievous nature, and the ways that his mother believed in him and encouraged him when no one else did. [...]
The post The Unexpected Light of Thomas Alva Edison – Raymond Arroyo and Kristine Gehrmann appeared first on Life Is Story.
This large board book has adorable illustrations and a sweet message. The story by Lucille Williams is about a young turtle who compares himself negatively to his friends, wishing that he could do all the [...]
The post Turtle Finds His Talent: A Slide-and-Find Book: Discovering How God Made You Special – Lucille Williams and Amanda Gulliver appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have loved most of Robert Whitlow’s novels, and Double Indemnity is no exception. Liz Acosta comes to a small town in Georgia to work at a law firm. At first, Liz thinks the firm [...]
The post Double Indemnity – Robert Whitlow appeared first on Life Is Story.
When I saw Labyrinth’s Heart by M.A. Carrick was FINALLY available on NetGalley, I squealed like an excited puppy with a new toy. I read The Liar’s Knot in 2021. Since the day I finished [...]
The post Labyrinth’s Heart – M.A. Carrick appeared first on Life Is Story.
World War II history fascinates me. I see too many similarities in today’s sentiments as what ran rampant during World War II. And with each news story, my heart breaks. I don’t want today’s society [...]
The post The Last Secret of the Secret Annex – Joop van Wijk-Voskuijl and Jeroen De Bruyn appeared first on Life Is Story.
Patricia Bradley introduces her new “Pearl River” series with bang with Counter Attack. A serial killer strikes; Alexis and Nathan must team up to stop him before more lives are lost. The unsub leaves clues [...]
The post Counter Attack – Patricia Bradley appeared first on Life Is Story.
A few months ago, I came across a 1980 debate between then-Presidential candidates Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. I was floored with how both Republican candidates spoke about the need for open borders to [...]
The post The God Who Sees – Karen Gonzalez appeared first on Life Is Story.
From 2013-2020, I served as a pastor at a primarily Asian-American church. Growing up in an almost exclusively white environment, I was not at all prepared to suddenly be working with a congregation that had [...]
The post Learning Our Names – Sabrina Chan, Linson Daniel, E Daniel De Leon, and La Thao appeared first on Life Is Story.
There are a lot of books on how to do church. And a lot of ways that the word “do” gets defined. Some books are about ecclesiology, some books are about marketing, some books are [...]
The post Adaptive Church – Dustin Benac appeared first on Life Is Story.
For nearly fifty years, New International Commentaries have been the evangelical standard for a commentary set. Intended for clergy and biblical scholars, the NIC is an academic commentary that understands that not all of its [...]
The post The Book of Ruth (NICOT) – Peter H. W. Lau appeared first on Life Is Story.
For nearly fifty years, New International Commentaries have been the evangelical standard for a commentary set. Intended for clergy and biblical scholars, the NIC is an academic commentary that understands that not all of its [...]
The post The Book of Deuternomy (NICOT) – Bill T. Arnold appeared first on Life Is Story.
For nearly fifty years, New International Commentaries have been the evangelical standard for a commentary set. Intended for clergy and biblical scholars, the NIC is an academic commentary that understands that not all of its [...]
The post The Book of Numbers Second Edition (NICOT) – Timothy R. Ashley appeared first on Life Is Story.
Every so often, a book comes along that is transformative, which moves and alters your perception of spiritual life. Under the Wings of God by Cornelius Plantinga is one such offering. Plantinga, a seasoned theologian, [...]
The post Under the Wings of God – Cornelius Plantinga appeared first on Life Is Story.
In her latest book, Join the Resistance, Michelle Ferrigno Warren rallies a call to arms for justice, equality, and societal change. Warren, a seasoned advocate and activist, leverages her years of experience and heartfelt passion [...]
The post Join the Resistance – Michelle Ferrigno Warren appeared first on Life Is Story.
Some biographies come from historians. There’s usually a theme, a particular perspective or interest, some sort of driving reason for the author’s time and talents spent in research and writing. Other biographies come from individuals [...]
The post Unruly Saint – Dorothy Day’s Radical Vision and its Challenge for Our Times – D.L. Mayfield appeared first on Life Is Story.
Lysa TerKeurst has always been exhortative and inspirational. As the founder of Proverbs 31 ministries, she’s been one of those women who have been able to create a niche for themselves within a predominantly male, [...]
The post You’re Going to Make It – Lysa TerKeurst appeared first on Life Is Story.
How the Sea Came to Be is an exploration of primordial evolution. In rhyming verse, Jennifer Berne begins with a burning, volcanic earth that over millions of years cools and builds up steam that finally [...]
The post How the Sea Came to Be – Jennifer Berne and Amanda Hall appeared first on Life Is Story.
I really wanted to like this book. I read books every day. That plural, “books,” is no exaggeration. I’m always in the middle of a physical book (for my dedicated reading time), an e-book (for [...]
The post Reading for the Love of God – Jessica Hooten Wilson appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to put my thoughts about Touch the Earth into words. Part of that struggle has simply been time constraints in my current schedule. Part of it is that [...]
The post Touch the Earth – Drew Jackson appeared first on Life Is Story.
I think we’ve all been there. It’s those moments what Mother Teresa called “the dark night of the soul” where God’s presence simply isn’t felt. When God Seems Gone is a brief exploration, based on [...]
The post When God Seems Gone – Adam Mabry appeared first on Life Is Story.
Ever since Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ in the 1990s, a whole subgenre of apologetics has popped up with various professions using their expertise to evaluate Christianity or critique the competition. This is one [...]
The post Religion on Trial – W. Mark Lanier appeared first on Life Is Story.
Over my years in ministry, I found myself accidentally an Anabaptist. Most of this had to do with practical theology and shifting political alignments in my own personal philosophy that led to an increased emphasis [...]
The post Anabaptist Essentials – Palmer Becker appeared first on Life Is Story.
The summary attached to Feminist Prayers for My Daughter reads that the book is a “book of prayers for mothers.” While that emphasis on its intended audience does show through—Shannon K. Evans is a mother [...]
The post Feminist Prayers for My Daughter – Shannon K. Evans appeared first on Life Is Story.
Whenever I think of Rich Mullins, I think of the Old Testament prophet Enoch. Scripture tells us that Enoch left this earth at a relatively early age for his day, that he walked with God [...]
The post Rich Mullins: An Arrow Pointing to Heaven – James Bryan Smith appeared first on Life Is Story.
We all know that Jesus told his followers that they should have “faith like a child,” but what does that mean? Throughout this book, Lacy Finn Borgo shares her perspective on how we can develop [...]
The post Faith Like a Child: Embracing Our Lives as Children of God – Lacy Finn Borgo appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’ve been a Lord of the Rings fan for just over twenty years now, and if you’re realizing that coincides with the Peter Jackson movie trilogy, you’d be absolutely right. A love of the books [...]
The post The Battle of Maldon: Together with the Homecoming of Beorhtnoth appeared first on Life Is Story.
Zachary Wagner covers a dizzying array of issues in this book, unpacking the implications of evangelical purity culture on men’s internal experiences, perception of their sexuality, and relationships with women. Wagner makes space for a [...]
The post Non-Toxic Masculinity: Recovering Healthy Male Sexuality – Zachary Wagner appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Sober Spirituality, Erin Jean Warde shares her perspective as an Episcopal priest with a former alcohol problem, explaining how struggled to change her relationship with alcohol because of the drinking culture in her church [...]
The post Sober Spirituality: The Joy of a Mindful Relationship with Alcohol – Erin Jean Warde appeared first on Life Is Story.
Tarah-Lynn Saint-Elien shares her story of processing challenging life realities and turning to God for emotional healing. She writes about how she was able to overcome lies that she believed about God and herself, and [...]
The post She Reigns: Conquering Your Triggers, Fears, and Worries With God’s Truth – Tarah-Lynn Saint-Elien appeared first on Life Is Story.
This compassionate, insightful book is about the reality of mental suffering. Alan Noble makes it clear from the beginning that this is not a memoir, but it is a deeply personal book. He shares thoughts [...]
The post On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living – Alan Noble appeared first on Life Is Story.
This emotional awareness picture book is great for Christian families to use together. It guides children in understanding their feelings on a bad day, reassures them that everyone has days like this, and models how [...]
The post Count Yourself Calm: Taking BIG Feelings to a BIG God – Eliza Huie and Mike Henson appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Sky is Not the Limit is visually stunning. If this book was just a series of art panels with no text, it would still be worth the cost just to appreciate Jeremie Decalf’s exploration [...]
The post The Sky is Not the Limit – Jeremie Decalf appeared first on Life Is Story.
In a book called Wind: Discovering Air in Motion, the illustrations are paramount. Wind is invisible. You don’t see it, but you see what it does. Translating the effect of wind to pictures is the [...]
The post Wind: Discovering Air in Motion – Olga Fadeeva appeared first on Life Is Story.
We Are Human Animals is an exploration of the way humans are connected to the earth. With beautiful illustrations as her backdrop, author/illustrator Rosie Haine takes readers back thousands of years to a time when [...]
The post We Are Human Animals – Rosie Haine appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Miracle Seed is an incredible story. In 1963, archaeologist Yigael Yagin and his crew excavated Masada, where they found—among other things—a clay pot containing seeds of the extinct Judean date palm. The clay pot [...]
The post The Miracle Seed – Martin Lemelman appeared first on Life Is Story.
How have I not read a Steven James novel until now?! It makes no sense to me whatsoever, because Broker of Lies by Steven James was everything I wanted and more. “Stop the Terrorists” is [...]
The post Broker of Lies – Steven James appeared first on Life Is Story.
Carolyn Lacey begins this book by acknowledging how often we all, herself included, struggle to say the right thing. She reflects that when she was growing up in church, teachings about the tongue tended to [...]
The post Say the Right Thing: How Your Words Can Glorify God and Encourage Others – Carolyn Lacey appeared first on Life Is Story.
Lyndsey Medford shares her chronic illness journey in this book, writing about the ways that her body has challenged her deepest assumptions about faith, the world, and what it means to be successful. She acknowledges [...]
The post My Body and Other Crumbling Empires: Lessons for Healing in a World That Is Sick – Lyndsey Medford appeared first on Life Is Story.
This excellent book addresses an important topic in a timely, compassionate way, giving church leaders and members the information they need to better understand and support people struggling with mental health issues. The first section [...]
The post Mental Health and Your Church: A Handbook for Biblical Care – Helen Thorne and Steve Midgley appeared first on Life Is Story.
Pastor and author J.D. Greear explains the basic story of Christianity in this book, summarizing the gospel in ten words, exploring biblical teachings from Romans, and focusing on different foundational elements of faith in each [...]
The post Essential Christianity: The Heart of the Gospel in Ten Words – J.D. Greear appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have been eagerly waiting for Blind Trust by Natalie Walters. Lyla and Nicolás are complex characters, and while the previous books in “The SNAP Agency” trilogy hint at who they are, Blind Trust opens [...]
The post Blind Trust – Natalie Walters appeared first on Life Is Story.
My biggest complaint about Code Name Edelweiss by Stephanie Landsem is that it had to end. I fell in love with Landsem’s characters, and I did not want to part with them. Code Name Edelweiss [...]
The post Code Name Edelweiss – Stephanie Landsem appeared first on Life Is Story.
Richard Swan does it again. The Tyranny of Faith is in one word, mystifying. Each page introduces a new trial for Helena and company. New questions to answer. New moral dilemmas that often lack clear [...]
The post The Tyranny of Faith – Richard Swan appeared first on Life Is Story.
I believe I have mentioned this in a previous review, but I will say it again: As an adult, fantasy is a hard genre for me. My imagination may be vivid and overreactive, but I [...]
The post The Stardust Thief – Chelsea Abdullah appeared first on Life Is Story.
I admit, it took me far too long to read The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan. Fantasy is not a genre I can read often. Do I enjoy it? Absolutely, but I must pace [...]
The post The Justice of Kings – Richard Swan appeared first on Life Is Story.
You want high stakes? How about the president coming to your city for an event, and you’re responsible for his protection? Oh, and by the way, people have threatened him…and you. What was never simple [...]
The post Under Fire – Lynn H. Blackburn appeared first on Life Is Story.
Cold Light of Day by Elizabeth Goddard joins the ranks of romantic suspense novels set in the frigid north of Alaska. At this point, I couldn’t tell you how many Alaska books I have read, [...]
The post Cold Light of Day – Elizabeth Goddard appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’ve followed Eric Wilson’s career through its ups and downs ever since being hooked fifteen years ago by Field of Blood, the first in his Jerusalem’s Undead trilogy. If it has Eric Wilson’s name on [...]
The post American Leftovers – Eric Wilson, Shaun Wilson, and Heidi Wilson-Messner appeared first on Life Is Story.
This brief book isn’t a theological treatise or a memoir, but is a fellow sufferer’s reflection on important things to remember in the midst of suffering. Adam Mabry writes about the experience of feeling like [...]
The post When God Seems Gone: Finding Hope When Nothing Makes Sense – Adam Mabry appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have been impressed with each book in the Big Questions series so far, and this is another great installment. Chris Morphew is a teacher and school chaplain at a Christian school, and his experience [...]
The post How Can I Feel Closer to God? – Chris Morphew appeared first on Life Is Story.
This engaging, photographically illustrated book introduces kids to fun facts about animals and explores the role that animals played in Scripture, both in terms of their participation in Bible stories and their inspiration as metaphors. [...]
The post All about Bible Animals: Over 100 Amazing Facts about the Animals of the Bible – Simona Piscioneri appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this devotional, Adam Ramsey explores the words of Jesus. Each reading begins with a short quote and its Scripture reference, and then Ramsey unpacks its meaning and implication over a few pages. The readings [...]
The post Truly, Truly, I Say to You: Meditations on the Words of Jesus from the Gospel of John – Adam Ramsey appeared first on Life Is Story.
This in-depth look into C.S. Lewis’s later years is the final volume in a biographical trilogy, and it covers many of the themes and topics that Lewis fans find the most interesting, such as his [...]
The post The Completion of C. S. Lewis (1945–1963): From War to Joy – Harry Lee Poe appeared first on Life Is Story.
This new installment in the Do Great Things for God series features Helen Roseveare, a medical missionary who served in the Congo for many years. This picture book biography introduces young children to key elements [...]
The post Helen Roseveare: The Doctor Who Kept Going No Matter What – Laura Caputo-Wickham and Cecilia Messina appeared first on Life Is Story.
Rich Mullins: An Arrow Pointing to Heaven originally came out in 2000, three years after Mullins died in a car accident. This new, reissued edition honors the twenty-fifth anniversary of this Christian musician’s death, and [...]
The post Rich Mullins: An Arrow Pointing to Heaven – James Bryan Smith appeared first on Life Is Story.
At the beginning of this book, Kia Stephens shares that when she first started talking about her father wounds, other women in all kinds of contexts would open up about their own, making her realize [...]
The post Overcoming Father Wounds: Exchanging Your Pain for God’s Perfect Love – Kia Stephens appeared first on Life Is Story.
Look at me, venturing into the nonfiction genre! For the most part, I review fiction for Life is Story. Every so often, though, I come across a nonfiction book that piques my interest, and The [...]
The post The Watchmaker’s Daughter – Larry Loftis appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’ve never felt so beat up and so energized by a book all at the same time. Dear Revolutionaries is Lenny Duncan’s invective epistle is a follow-up/corrective to their previous book, Dear Church. Published in [...]
The post Dear Revolutionaries – Lenny Duncan appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’m a huge fan of Tales that Tell the Truth. As the series has expanded in length, it has also expanded in depth adding board book versions, activity books, and devotionals. The Friend Who Forgives [...]
The post The Friend Who Forgives Devotional – Katy Morgan appeared first on Life Is Story.
When I was your age, I had to walk to school uphill both ways! is one of those jokey phrases that gets used as an example of how old people talk about their own childhood [...]
The post 9 Kilometers – Claudio Aguilera and Gabriela Lyon appeared first on Life Is Story.
Sometimes we focus too much on the Otherness of God. Not that it’s inherently a bad thing, but it can make God seem distant or absent. Sure, we can understand that God becomes human in [...]
The post God is Just Like Me – Karen Valentin and Antonieta Munoz Estrada appeared first on Life Is Story.
With all the current discussion about pronouns and gender identity, it begs the question What is God’s gender? On a surface level, we might immediately say that God transcends gender, but He certainly present Himself [...]
The post Women and the Gender of God – Amy Peeler appeared first on Life Is Story.
Growing up as a conservative evangelical, I knew we were supposed to be suspicious of global warming. There were two reasons for this: First, God wouldn’t let the earth be destroyed until it was his [...]
The post Following Jesus in a Warming World – Kyle Meyaard-Schaap appeared first on Life Is Story.
One pressing question in New Testament—and particularly Pauline—literature is the relationship between early Christianity and the Roman Empire. We know from history that Rome’s initial indifference to Christianity gave way to persecution and then eventually [...]
The post The Apostle and the Empire – Cristoph Heilig appeared first on Life Is Story.
In my own pastoral life, I’ve always broken down Christian doctrine into three tiers: foundational doctrines, secondary doctrines, and preferences/opinions. Foundational doctrines are Essential Christianity. Take a doctrine away—like the Resurrection of Jesus—and you no [...]
The post Essential Christianity – JD Greear appeared first on Life Is Story.
Kingdom Conversations is a series of book published by NavPress, in partnership with MissioAlliance, that seeks to bring together the best of evangelical scholarship to talk through some of the most pressing issues of public [...]
The post Kingdom and Country (Kingdom Conversations #2) – Angie Ward appeared first on Life Is Story.
James Patterson’s collaborations with Emily Raymond have wandered somewhere in between mediocre (Injustice) to absolutely awful (Little Black Dress, Humans Bow Down, and pretty much the rest of their collabs). The Girl in the Castle [...]
The post The Girl in the Castle – James Patterson and Emily Raymond appeared first on Life Is Story.
Gwendy’s Button Box was a bit of an outlier for Stephen King in that he co-wrote it—not something he typically does—but it was otherwise vintage King. Young child? Check. Mysterious stranger? Check. A parable about [...]
The post Gwendy’s Final Task (The Button Box #3) – Stephen King and Richard Chizmar appeared first on Life Is Story.
Understanding religion isn’t always easy. Most religious systems focus on having their children learn their system and really don’t encourage learning about other worldviews, or, if so, within the context and confines of comparison against [...]
The post Religion Around the World – Sonja Hagander, Matthew Maruggi, Megan Borgert-Spaniol, and Chester Bentley appeared first on Life Is Story.
Is Easter Unbelievable? is a short booklet that asks four questions that everyone should ask about the Resurrection story: Did Jesus really live in history? While there isn’t much debate about this at the academic [...]
The post Is Easter Unbelievable? – Rebecca McLaughlin appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Good Book Company hit my radar several years ago with their excellent children’s books—Tales that Tell the Truth, in particular. They’ve recently expanded into middle grade/YA literature beginning with The Songs of a Warrior, [...]
The post The Songs of a Warrior – Katy Morgan appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Love Your Church series is a new series from The Good Book Company and Acts 29 focusing on creating flourishing local church congregations. The Acts 29 network is currently headed by Matt Chandler, but [...]
The post Love Your Church (Welcome, Gather, Belong) – Jen Oshman, Tony Merida, Barnabas Piper appeared first on Life Is Story.
Ask a little kid about St. Patrick’s Day and the answer you get will inevitably be something about wearing green or else you get pinched. Ask an adult and the day is all about getting [...]
The post Saint Patrick the Forgiver – Ned Bustard appeared first on Life Is Story.
When I first posted a photo on social media of myself reading Martin Marty’s The Mystery of the Child, the response was predictable: “Let me know when you figure it out!” But the whole premise [...]
The post The Mystery of the Child – Martin Marty appeared first on Life Is Story.
The American healthcare system is broken. Whether it’s insurance being tied to employment, high deductibles, lack of access to services, refusal of coverage even if you have insurance, long wait times, or any other of [...]
The post Care: How People of Faith Can Respond to Our Broken Health System – G. Scott Morris appeared first on Life Is Story.
Welcome to Humanity! You’re really going to enjoy it! Matt Forrest Esenwine’s A Beginner’s Guide to Being Human is a guidebook full of heart and humor that showcases the best of the human experience by [...]
The post A Beginner’s Guide to Being Human – Matt Forrest Esenwine and Andrew Geolin appeared first on Life Is Story.
Moving to a new place can be scary. Moving to a new place where everyone is different from you and doesn’t speak the same language as you is even scarier. Yuna and her family have [...]
The post Yuna’s Cardboard Castles – Marie Tang and Jieting Chen appeared first on Life Is Story.
One day, in the middle the woods, a box appears. The Box is small, with holes in it, and the whole forest is curious. How did it get here? When did it arrive? Hey! I [...]
The post The Box – Isabella Paglia and Paolo Proietti appeared first on Life Is Story.
Madani is a young boy who plays soccer barefoot. He’s the best player, the hardest worker, and always has the most fun. Everyone loves to watch Madani play. But the one person he wants to [...]
The post Madani’s Best Game – Fran Pintadera and Raquel Catalina appeared first on Life Is Story.
FINALLY. I have been waiting for this book. Thank you, Lynette Eason, for delivering another exciting addition to the genre of romantic suspense. And let me tell you, this one is a zinger! Grace Billingsley [...]
The post Critical Threat – Lynette Eason appeared first on Life Is Story.
Throughout this book, Jen Oshman shares biblical teaching and practical encouragement for how Christians can make their churches more welcoming to outsiders. She shares her personal story of coming to know Christ when a teammate [...]
The post Welcome: Loving Your Church by Making Space for Everyone – Jen Oshman appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this book, Barnabas Piper explores how Christians can experience belonging and build meaningful relationships in their local churches. He begins by sharing a story about his experience visiting a new church while suffering from [...]
The post Belong: Loving Your Church by Reflecting Christ to One Another – Barnabas Piper appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this book, pastor Tony Merida explains why corporate worship is so important for the Christian life. He writes about why embodied gathering is essential for the church, and goes through different elements of the [...]
The post Gather: Loving Your Church as You Celebrate Christ Together – Tony Merida appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this devotional, Tim Chester covers a variety of topics that are fundamental to the Christian faith, church life, and personal holiness. Each section includes an imaginary anecdote, a Scripture reading and explanation, comprehension questions, [...]
The post Life with Jesus: A Discipleship Course for Every Christian – Tim Chester appeared first on Life Is Story.
This beautiful devotional book features Leland Ryken’s selections of fifty historic devotional readings, along with his explanations of them. The readings are usually less than two pages long, and Ryken’s explanations are often equal in [...]
The post The Heart in Pilgrimage: A Treasury of Classic Devotionals on the Christian Life – Leland Ryken appeared first on Life Is Story.
This novel retells the biblical narrative of Saul and David. I previously read Katy Morgan’s Nativity retelling, The Promise and the Light, and this one takes a similar approach. Morgan stays true to the biblical [...]
The post The Songs of a Warrior: Saul and David: A Retelling – Katy Morgan appeared first on Life Is Story.
The first time I ever really felt at home was in an online forum. The year was 2008 and I signed up to play an online game hosted by my favorite author where the winner [...]
The post IRL: Finding Our Real Selves in a Digital World – Chris Stedman appeared first on Life Is Story.
On the back cover of In Transit: Being Non-Binary in a World of Dichotomies, the book lists its Library of Congress categorization: Social Science / LGBT Studies / Transgender Studies. In the conversation about gender, [...]
The post In Transit: Being Non-Binary in a World of Dichotomies – Dianna E. Anderson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Every year approximately five thousand volumes about Advent are published. I don’t know if that’s true, but it certainly feels like it. Every year, right around Advent, I find my TBR pile filled with review [...]
The post The First Advent in Palestine – Kelley Nikondeha appeared first on Life Is Story.
Hi. My name is Josh. And I used to be one of the Red State Christians. It was something I grew up in, being raised in rural Indiana where being a Democrat meant you were [...]
The post Red State Christians – Angela Denker appeared first on Life Is Story.
Martin Luther King Jr said “A riot is the language of the unheard.” Throughout history, we’ve seen how protests have turned into rioting as anger and grief over injustice have expressed themselves in very physical [...]
The post The God Who Riots – Damon Garcia appeared first on Life Is Story.
This family devotional book is designed to go with The Friend Who Forgives by Dan DeWitt. However, this works perfectly well as a standalone, as Katy Morgan takes readers through the biblical story of Jesus’s [...]
The post The Friend Who Forgives Family Bible Devotional: 15 Days Exploring the Story of Peter – Katy Morgan and Catalina Echeverri appeared first on Life Is Story.
This short, highly readable apologetics resource addresses four key questions that people should ask to fully understand the Easter story and the Christian faith. These questions are about the historicity of Jesus’s life, whether or [...]
The post Is Easter Unbelievable? Four Questions Everyone Should Ask About the Resurrection Story – Rebecca McLaughlin appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’ve met a lot of orphaned believers in the past ten years. People who grew up in the church, usually the evangelical church, and now as adults find that they can no longer be associated [...]
The post Orphaned Believers – Sara Billups appeared first on Life Is Story.
Alex Cross returns! In what, by now, is an expected annual adventure, Cross is about to hang it all up and resign from the Washington DC Police Force when John Sampson lures him back for [...]
The post Four Blind Mice (Alex Cross #8) – James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Violets are Blue puts aside some of the relational melodrama for a second and instead puts all the focus on a weird, macabre set of killers who seem more animal than human. It’s over-the-top, but [...]
The post Violets are Blue (Alex Cross #7) – James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
The success of the Alex Cross novels allowed James Patterson to experiment. His previous non-Cross novel, When the Wind Blows, was a sci-fi, the non-Cross novel that followed this one—The Jester—was historical fiction. This one [...]
The post Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas – James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
This concise, highly readable book shares encouragement for Christian mothers who are suffering. Katie Faris shares some about her own experiences, and she includes varied examples about other things mothers might be dealing with, such [...]
The post God Is Still Good: Gospel Hope and Comfort for the Unexpected Sorrows of Motherhood – Katie Faris appeared first on Life Is Story.
This short, highly readable book is filled with encouragement for Christians who are struggling with doubt, temptation, and self-defeating thoughts. Judy Dunagan shares biblical teaching and personal stories to illustrate the freedom we can experience [...]
The post The Loudest Roar: Living in the Unshakable Victory of Christ – Judy Dunagan appeared first on Life Is Story.
This thirty-one day devotional for women is about finding peace and quietness in the midst of a fast-paced, hectic world. The author, Denise J. Hughes, writes about her own challenges with social media overuse and [...]
The post Sanctuary: Cultivating a Quiet Heart in a Noisy and Demanding World – Denise J. Hughes appeared first on Life Is Story.
It’s Alex Cross vs. The Mastermind. Roses are Red is Alex Cross’s sixth adventure and he’s up against the cleverest killer he’s faced yet. There’s also a lot of personal fallout from the events of [...]
The post Roses are Red (Alex Cross #6) – James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
In a major departure from James Patterson’s previous work, When the Wind Blows is a sci-fi thriller that thrives on the fantastical. The story is about Frannie O’Neill, a young veterinarian, trying to grieve the [...]
The post When the Wind Blows – James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
I think the first NakedPastor cartoon I ever saw was one of his most famous. It’s simple. Three women on the left, a crowd of men on the right, with the caption “So ladies, thanks [...]
The post Flip It Like This – David Hayward (NakedPastor) appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’ve long believed in the power of telling stories. It’s one of the reasons for this website and definitely the reason why it was named Life is Story. When we think of our life as [...]
The post Between the Listening and the Telling – Mark Yaconelli appeared first on Life Is Story.
In the acknowledgements at the end of this book, Molly Phinney Baskette writes that working title of this book was God is Not an Asshole. I really wish they had kept that title. Don’t get [...]
The post How to Begin When Your World is Ending – Molly Phinney Baskette appeared first on Life Is Story.
Hide and Seek was James Patterson’s first non-Alex Cross novel after finding fame with Among Came a Spider in 1994. (Just look at how prominent his name is on this first edition cover!) After two [...]
The post Hide and Seek – James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Even though the first two Alex Cross books were the ones turned into movies starring Morgan Freeman, it’s the third Alex Cross novel—Jack and Jill—that’s most deserving. Two killers (you can surmise what they call [...]
The post Jack and Jill (Alex Cross #3) – James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
After the success of their unscientific, fearmongering, marketing-disguised-as-research book The Day America Told the Truth, James Patterson and Peter Kim reunited for a second non-fiction title using a similar premise. The Second American Revolution reveals [...]
The post The Second American Revolution – James Patterson and Peter Kim appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is the book that would make James Patterson famous. Along Came a Spider was Patterson’s seventh novel and was published seventeen years after his debut in 1976’s The Thomas Berryman Number. If I was [...]
The post Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross #1) – James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Trivia time: What was the first James Patterson book made into a movie? You might think that the answer is Along Came a Spider, where Morgan Freeman played Patterson’s famous cop Alex Cross. You would [...]
The post Child of Darkness, Child of Light – James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
In The Thrill of Orthodoxy, Trevin Wax argues that even though Christian denominations can vary in their opinions on secondary issues, it is vital for Christians to hold fast to the orthodox tenets of Christianity. [...]
The post The Thrill of Orthodoxy: Rediscovering the Adventure of Christian Faith – Trevin Wax appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this well-researched, carefully argued book, Michael J. Kruger takes on the thorny problem of spiritual abuse. He defines the nature of spiritual abuse, explains how and why churches often overlook it, and explores the [...]
The post Bully Pulpit: Confronting the Problem of Spiritual Abuse in the Church – Michael J. Kruger appeared first on Life Is Story.
This activity book supplements The Big Wide Welcome storybook, including text from Trillia Newbell and converting Catalina Echeverri’s original illustrations into coloring pages. The book focuses on the lesson in James 2 about favoritism, using [...]
The post The Big Wide Welcome Art and Activity Book – Trillia Newbell and Catalina Echeverri appeared first on Life Is Story.
This board book adaptation of God’s Very Good Idea introduces babies and toddlers to the idea that “God made everyone with value and worth,” and that we are all different. Unlike the original book, this one [...]
The post God’s Very Good Idea Board Book: God Made Us Delightfully Different – Trillia Newbell and Catalina Echeverri appeared first on Life Is Story.
Not seeing much success in the fiction writing department, James Patterson turned to his advertising career and non-fiction to keep his name on bookstore shelves. In 1991, he—along with advertising associate Peter Kim—published a book [...]
The post The Day America Told the Truth – James Patterson and Peter Kim appeared first on Life Is Story.
A Costume for Charly is the story of a young non-binary person figuring out what to wear for Halloween. Specifically, Charly is bigender and thinks of themselves as being equally male and female. As they [...]
The post A Costume for Charly – CK Malone and Alejandra Barajas appeared first on Life Is Story.
Brave Like Mom is a personal, heartfelt tribute to mothers facing serious acute or chronic diseases who embody strength amid continual and sometimes failing battles. The author, Monica Acker, mentions in the afterword that her [...]
The post Brave Like Mom – Monica Acker and Paran Kim appeared first on Life Is Story.
Every year, pretty much every children’s book publisher—Christian-based or not—publishes at least one book about the Nativity. It can be difficult for individual books to stand out amid the masses and, since the story can’t [...]
The post Lift-The-Flap Christmas Stories for Young Children – Naomi Joy Krueger and Megan Higgins appeared first on Life Is Story.
From 1981-1993, James Patterson published only two novels. For those familiar only with his current prodigious output, that seems impossible to believe. What did Patterson do during those eleven years? He found his voice as [...]
The post The Midnight Club – James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Black Market continues James Patterson’s movement into conspiracy thrillers, giving readers the story of a secret militia group out to destroy the American economy and Federal Agent/Wall Street Lawyer duo that has to take them [...]
The post Black Market / Black Friday – James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Virgin has the distinction of being James Patterson’s first book to be made into a movie. Granted, it was a TV movie with a budget to match, but it shows a development in Patterson’s pre-Alex [...]
The post Virgin / Cradle and All – James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
After two fairly small-scale novels in The Thomas Berryman Number and Season of the Machete, James Patterson crafts a novel about a global conspiracy involving Jewish people which…well, makes the plot not exactly age gracefully, [...]
The post The Jericho Commandment / See How They Run – James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Just over a decade ago, I was getting my start as a book critic and came across this little Christian spec-fic publisher that was just getting started called Marcher Lord Press. One of their early [...]
The post Drawn in Ash (A Legacy of Ink #1) – John Otte appeared first on Life Is Story.
James Patterson followed up his Edgar Award-winning debut novel, The Thomas Berryman Murder, with a second novel about a sadistic husband-and-wife killing team who will stop at nothing to take down their target. The Season [...]
The post The Season of the Machete – James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
It is shocking how un-James Patterson-esque The Thomas Berryman Number is. James Patterson’s debut novel is almost anti-Patterson—long, lingering descriptions; a complex plot with crisscrossing flashbacks, a literary flair—it’s nothing what you’d expect. And this [...]
The post The Thomas Berryman Number – James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Radically Whole goes through the biblical book of James, drawing out each theme and exploring important implications for our lives. At the beginning, David Gibson addresses ways that Christians have often misunderstood James, and he [...]
The post Radically Whole: Gospel Healing for the Divided Heart – David Gibson appeared first on Life Is Story.
When it comes to major Christian publishers, it can be difficult to know which of their offerings are truly Christian books. Of the three books I am currently reviewing from Zondervan, one is completely mainstream, [...]
The post I’m So Glad You Were Born: Celebrating Who You Are – Ainsley Earhardt and Kim Barnes appeared first on Life Is Story.
This short, simple board book draws on concepts from Psalm 139 to teach children about God’s nearness and love. The simple text from Sally Lloyd-Jones will be easy for very small children to understand, and [...]
The post Known: Psalm 139 – Sally Lloyd-Jones and Jago appeared first on Life Is Story.
This colorful, affectionate board book is all about a mother’s love for her son. Stay This Way Forever for Little Ones is a board book adaptation of Linsey Davis’s original picture book, which she [...]
The post Stay This Way Forever for Little Ones – Linsey Davis and Lucy Fleming appeared first on Life Is Story.
“I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.” We all know that line from John Newton’s “Amazing Grace.” A former slaver turned Christian and abolitionist. Newton once said, “‘It [...]
The post All the Lost Places – Amanda Dykes appeared first on Life Is Story.
Eric Costanzo, Daniel Yang, and Matthew Soerens begin Inalienable: How Marginalized Kingdom Voices Can Help Save the American Church with an incisive look into why the American church is in the position of needing saved. [...]
The post Inalienable – Eric Costanzo, Daniel Yang, and Matthew Soerens appeared first on Life Is Story.
All Will Be Well is a story of learning to trust God’s love in times of loss. Lacy Finn Borgo wraps her story around a quote from Julian of Norwich, a 12th century English mystic [...]
The post All Will Be Well – Lacy Finn Borgo and Rebecca Evans appeared first on Life Is Story.
I grew up in a majority white, rural small town in Indiana. When I graduated from seminary, I took a youth pastor position at a primarily Asian-American church that had more Asian-Americans in the church [...]
The post Doing Asian American Theology – Daniel D. Lee appeared first on Life Is Story.
There’s a Christian tradition that speaks of the impassibility of God. No, that doesn’t mean that you can’t go around God on the interstate. Impassibility means that God does not experience emotional change. Augustine, Luther, [...]
The post The Emotions of God – David Lamb appeared first on Life Is Story.
When We Belong is a story about Christianity on the margins. Not on the margins of faith or of faithfulness, or on the margins of God’s love or grace, but a Christianity on the margins [...]
The post When We Belong – Rohadi Nagassar appeared first on Life Is Story.
With every adoption journey that my family has taken, people have always asked what they can do to help. My answer has always been the same: prayer and money. While Fostering Hope won’t necessarily help [...]
The post Fostering Hope – ed. Robert W. Lee appeared first on Life Is Story.
Jaime Jo Wright just continues to get better. The Premonition at Withers Farm is the latest on Wright’s climb up the echelon of Christian fiction, showcasing her now-characteristic dual timelines, eerie atmosphere, and well-written characters. [...]
The post The Premonition at Withers Farm – Jaime Jo Wright appeared first on Life Is Story.
I picked up The Wonders of Creation the week after having visited Oxford. After spending the weekend running around to behold all the haunts of Tolkien and Lewis, it felt only natural to retreat with [...]
The post The Wonders of Creation – Kristen Page appeared first on Life Is Story.
The title of A Grace Disguised is somewhat a reference to classic C.S. Lewis book, A Grief Observed. In that book, Lewis collects essays written in the wake of his wife’s death from cancer. It’s [...]
The post A Grace Disguised – Jerry Sittser appeared first on Life Is Story.
What if you did everything right and it all still fell apart? What if you believed with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and still you felt disconnected? What if you loved God and [...]
The post Gaslighted by God – Tiffany Yecke Brooks appeared first on Life Is Story.
I love to read. You might have already gathered that from the fact that I run a book review website as a hobby. I also like to learn from what I read. The best fiction [...]
The post On Reading Well – Karen Swallow Prior appeared first on Life Is Story.
Justo Gonzalez is a one of the most influential Hispanic theologians in Church history. He’s a prolific author and church historian, and his contributions to the development of Latin American theology is unparalleled. I had [...]
The post The Bible in the Early Church – Justo Gonzalez appeared first on Life Is Story.
The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind. I was in my mid-teens when I first read that scathing opening line of Mark Noll’s The Scandal of [...]
The post The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind – Mark Noll appeared first on Life Is Story.
Churches are almost famously bad at communication. We’re talking about an institution where, in 2022, the primary method of information is still the printed bulletin. The secondary method, of course, being the church sign. Churches [...]
The post Church Communications – Katie Allred appeared first on Life Is Story.
Christian denominations vary widely about whom they will baptize and under what conditions they will baptize them. (Also in who can perform baptisms, how they should be performed, when they should be performed, the significance [...]
The post Becoming the Baptized Body – Sarah Jean Barton appeared first on Life Is Story.
Pretty Little Pieces is another splendid romance by Carmen Schober. Relatable characters, an entertaining plot, and strong messages of faith and second chances make for a novel that readers will not want to put down. [...]
The post Pretty Little Pieces – Carmen Schober appeared first on Life Is Story.
Susan May Warren is my favorite author of the romantic suspense genre. Hands down. I can always depend on her books to capture me. Wrap me in their plots and characters and not loosen their [...]
The post Sundown – Susan May Warren appeared first on Life Is Story.
This Advent devotional features twenty-five readings that focus on God’s grace and the wonderful gifts we receive from Him. Each daily reading begins with a line or a phrase from a classic Christmas hymn, the [...]
The post Gifts of Grace: 25 Advent Devotions – Jared C. Wilson appeared first on Life Is Story.
This moving memoir shows how one man left behind patterns of abuse and dysfunction to find life and healing on the other side. Although I had never heard of the author, this book caught my [...]
The post Exit the Cave: Embracing a Life of Courage, Creativity, and Radical Imagination – Blaine Hogan appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this book, Graham Beynon and Jane Tooher share insight into how churches can help men and women flourish in ministry together while still holding to a complementarian view of gender. They argue that since [...]
The post Embracing Complementarianism: Turning Biblical Convictions into Positive Church Culture – Graham Beynon and Jane Tooher appeared first on Life Is Story.
This new installment in the God’s Word for You series focuses on the gospel of Mark, going through it verse by verse in fairly short, readable sections. This book is longer than some of the [...]
The post Mark For You – Jason Meyer appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have enjoyed Amy Lynn Green’s two previous novels, and this third one is excellent as well. Although each of her books so far focuses on World War II, they all cover unique and different [...]
The post The Blackout Book Club – Amy Lynn Green appeared first on Life Is Story.
This highly readable, encouraging book offers paradigm shifts and practical advice for pursuing meaningful conversations. Heather Holleman, a professor, author, and speaker, shares stories and social science research about how essential it is for people [...]
The post The Six Conversations: Pathways to Connecting in an Age of Isolation and Incivility – Heather Holleman appeared first on Life Is Story.
This charming picture book introduces children to famous authors and some of their work. Sophie Corrigan tells her fictional story from the perspective of William Shakesbear, and as he searches for inspiration to write his [...]
The post Literary Critters: William Shakesbear’s Journey for Inspiration – Sophie Corrigan appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book came out in May 2022, months before the Queen’s death, and it is one of two picture book biographies that I have read about her recently. They both cover similar content, but this [...]
The post Queen Elizabeth II: The Queen Who Chose To Serve – Alison Mitchell and Emma Randall appeared first on Life Is Story.
There are always new books published about Jesus, and this one is ahead of the game by not claiming to say anything radical. Rebecca McLaughlin focuses on the gospel accounts about Jesus’s life, adding more [...]
The post Confronting Jesus: 9 Encounters with the Hero of the Gospels – Rebecca McLaughlin appeared first on Life Is Story.
This brief book addresses the core things that people desire, showing how hope, peace, purpose, and confidence are central to our ideas of the good life even when we disagree about how to get there. [...]
The post The Ultimate Christmas Wishlist: What If You Could Get What You’re Really Hoping For? – Rico Tice appeared first on Life Is Story.
Melissa Zaldivar reflects on her experiences with loss in this powerful memoir, showing how profoundly her best friend’s death upended her world. Throughout the book, she draws parallels between her grief experiences and what Louisa [...]
The post What Cannot Be Lost: How Jesus Holds Us Together When Life Is Falling Apart – Melissa Zaldivar appeared first on Life Is Story.
This well-designed reference guide introduces children to the historical context for Christmas, moving through the account in the gospel of Luke. The book explains key concepts, defines vocabulary words, and shares background information. The sidebars [...]
The post All about Christmas: Over 100 Amazing Facts behind the Christmas Story – Alison Mitchell appeared first on Life Is Story.
This small paperback book tells the Christmas story for toddlers. Steph Williams writes in simple, child-friendly terms, and her dynamic, exuberant illustrations will appeal to little ones, especially since she overstates surprise and emotion in [...]
The post The Christmas Surprise – Steph Williams appeared first on Life Is Story.
This activity book accompanies the large-format board book Seek and Find: The First Christmas, recreating some of the illustrations as coloring pages and including other activities. There are some matching, counting, drawing, and maze activities [...]
The post Seek and Find: The First Christmas Activity Book: Packed with Puzzles, Mazes, Counting, and Activities! – Sarah Parker and André Parker appeared first on Life Is Story.
This large board book features eight double-page spreads with scenes from the Nativity. At the beginning of each one, Sarah Parker cites the Bible passage that inspired it and briefly summarizes that part of the [...]
The post Seek and Find: The First Christmas: With over 450 Things to Find and Count! – Sarah Parker and André Parker appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this powerful memoir, Tori Hope Petersen shares about her experiences growing up in an abusive, unstable home and rotating through different foster care placements. Throughout the book, she shares about her faith in God [...]
The post Fostered: One Woman’s Powerful Story of Finding Faith and Family through Foster Care – Tori Hope Petersen appeared first on Life Is Story.
When popular bloggers write books, a common critique is that each chapter seems like a blog post. Shannan Martin avoids that common problem in Start with Hello, building on her theme in a sequential way [...]
The post Start with Hello (And Other Simple Ways to Live as Neighbors) – Shannan Martin appeared first on Life Is Story.
This delightful new installment in the Do Great Things for God series features Fanny Crosby, a famous blind writer who wrote thousands of hymns during her lifetime. I remember learning about Crosby’s story as a [...]
The post Fanny Crosby: The Girl Who Couldn’t See But Helped The World To Sing – Laura Caputo-Wickham and Jess Rose appeared first on Life Is Story.
This powerful true story is hard to put down. Peter Mutabazi shares about his childhood suffering from his father’s abuse, his years living on the street in his home country of Uganda, and the powerful [...]
The post Now I Am Known: How a Street Kid Turned Foster Dad Found Acceptance and True Worth – Peter Mutabazi appeared first on Life Is Story.
Throughout this book, Phillip Cary addresses common evangelical beliefs, showing how mantras like “let go and let God” create unnecessary stress and anxiety for people who believe them. He approaches this topic from his vantage [...]
The post Good News for Anxious Christians: 10 Practical Things You Don’t Have to Do – Phillip Cary appeared first on Life Is Story.
Air. Water. Earth. Fire. In Greek philosophy, these were the four elements that comprise the Universe. Using that concept, The Story of Us offers a Creation retelling that purposefully connects humanity intimately to the universe [...]
The post The Story of Us – Mitali Perkins, Kevin and Kristen Howdeshell appeared first on Life Is Story.
Every daddy is different. In a world where manliness and masculinity are often stereotyped under certain headings, Some Daddies introduces children to two different concepts: First, not all dads are like my dad. Second, dads [...]
The post Some Daddies – Carol Gordon Ekster and Javeria Mac-lean Alvarez appeared first on Life Is Story.
The prevailing cultural image of God in Western Christianity is that bequeathed to us by Michelangelo as displayed on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: an older, light-skinned man with a long, curly, white beard. [...]
The post Mother God – Teresa Kim Pecinovsky and Khoa Le appeared first on Life Is Story.
Let me preface this by saying I rarely review audiobooks because they often fail to leave a mark. They are unmemorable. I finish one, and I already have the next one waiting in the wings. [...]
The post Horse – Geraldine Brooks appeared first on Life Is Story.
How do you review a novel with such a bittersweet ending? A novel that leaves your heart feeling both warm and broken? Where the Blue Sky Begins was my first Katie Powner novel, and she [...]
The post Where the Blue Sky Begins – Katie Powner appeared first on Life Is Story.
Before I read Body of Evidence by Irene Hannon, it had been over a year since I’d picked up a novel by this particular author. I did not enjoy Labyrinth of Lies as much as [...]
The post Body of Evidence – Irene Hannon appeared first on Life Is Story.
I went through a Left Behind phase growing up. Read the adult books before the kids books. Read the prequels and sequel and non-fiction associated the Tim LaHaye School of Prophecy. Eventually even went to [...]
The post Upside-Down Apocalypse – Jeremy Duncan appeared first on Life Is Story.
Since its release in 2020, Wondrously Wounded: Theology, Disability, and the Body of Christ has become the textbook for disability theology. Let’s begin with Dr. Brock’s credentials for this book. Brian Brock is the editor-in-chief [...]
The post Wondrously Wounded – Brian Brock appeared first on Life Is Story.
A few years ago, Eerdmans Books for Young Readers has published a book called Mexique that chronicled the story of children who were sent to Mexico as refugees of Spanish Civil War. Different tells the [...]
The post Different: A Story of the Spanish Civil War – Mónica Montañés and Eva Sánchez Gómez appeared first on Life Is Story.
A Head Full of Birds is the story of neurodiverse friendship. The opening panels introduce us to Nanette, who exhibits some autistic symptoms such as having a deep inner life of imagination. Later, we’re introduced [...]
The post A Head Full of Birds – Alexandra Garibal appeared first on Life Is Story.
There have been droves of books on antiracism, both for the general market and specifically designed for the Christian market. Silencing White Noise is the latter, written by Willie Francois III, president of the Black [...]
The post Silencing White Noise – Willie Francois III appeared first on Life Is Story.
In 2019, Miroslav Volf presented the University of Birmingham’s Cadbury Lectures, speaking on the topic of the world as God’s home. That content has been reworked with Ryan McAnnally-Linz into book form and released as [...]
The post The Home of God – Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz appeared first on Life Is Story.
I saw a photo the other day of a police officer writing a person experiencing homelessness a citation for experiencing homelessness while the tagline “SERVE AND PROTECT” was prominently emblazoned on the police cruiser in [...]
The post Grace Can Lead Us Home – Kevin Nye appeared first on Life Is Story.
I am a white, male American pastor. When I consider my academic training—B.S. in Religion, M.A. in Theological Studies, D.Min. in Ministerial Leadership—and reflect on my professors, they are almost exclusively also white, also male, [...]
The post Abuelita Faith – Kat Armas appeared first on Life Is Story.
Prayer is simultaneously the most spiritually-rich discipline and the one most facetiously offered. We’ve all been on the end of an “I’ll pray for you” where we’re pretty sure no prayer ever happened. We’ve all [...]
The post Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools – Tyler Staton appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Premonition at Withers Farm by Jaime Jo Wright was book 112 of 2022 for me. And throughout those 112 books, I have tried to read different genres. Nonfiction, fantasy, romantic suspense, and general fiction. [...]
The post The Premonition at Withers Farm – Jaime Jo Wright appeared first on Life Is Story.
Favio Chavez is an Argentinian musician and environmental technician who combined his two loves into one by forming the Recycled Orchestra, an orchestra composed of Paraguayan child musicians who play instruments created out of scraps [...]
The post Building an Orchestra of Hope – Carmer Oliver and Luis Uribe appeared first on Life Is Story.
Eerdmans Books for Young Readers publishes a refreshingly eclectic range of illustrated books. While some fit the theme of typical children’s books, there are also those that I would classify more as illustrated poetry. That’s [...]
The post A World of Praise – Deborah Lock and Helen Cann appeared first on Life Is Story.
Proverbs says “Train up a child in the way they should go, and when they are old, they will not depart from it.” If you want to get very technical, I think a better translation [...]
The post The Lord’s Prayer (FatCat #3) – Harold Senkbeil appeared first on Life Is Story.
Proverbs says “Train up a child in the way they should go, and when they are old, they will not depart from it.” If you want to get very technical, I think a better translation [...]
The post The King of Christmas (FatCat #2) – Todd Hains appeared first on Life Is Story.
I remember when I was a kid in the halcyon days of the 1990s. One of my grandparents’ favorite Christmas gifts was a personalized book that took a generic story—a had one about Noah’s Ark, [...]
The post Mama, Sing My Song – Amanda Seibert appeared first on Life Is Story.
I waited a while before providing feedback on Concrete Evidence by DiAnn Mills. Not because I disliked the book but rather because I wanted to contemplate my words. I have enjoyed every DiAnn Mills book [...]
The post Concrete Evidence – DiAnn Mills appeared first on Life Is Story.
I recently enjoyed the new Katelyn Beaty book Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits are Hurting the Church, and The Call to Follow immediately appealed to me as a related read. Richard Langer [...]
The post The Call to Follow: Hearing Jesus in a Culture Obsessed with Leadership – Richard Langer and Joanne J. Jung appeared first on Life Is Story.
Even though I’m not a pastor, I still found this book refreshing. Jonathan K. Dodson is emotionally honest about the challenges that he has faced while leading his church in recent years, and he addresses [...]
The post The Unwavering Pastor: Leading the Church with Grace in Divisive Times – Jonathan K. Dodson appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is filled with great practical advice for Christian parents, and the author’s unexpected death before its publication gives it even greater poignancy, especially when he talks about how little time you’ll have left [...]
The post Write It On Their Hearts: Practical Help for Discipling Your Kids – Chris Swain and Melissa Swain appeared first on Life Is Story.
At the beginning of this journal, Sophie Killingley explains that during a time when she was struggling with her mental health, she started doodling or lettering Bible verses as a way to still maintain a [...]
The post Draw Near: Your Creative Spiritual Journal – Sophie Killingley appeared first on Life Is Story.
Susie Larson writes about facing spiritual challenges and periods of hardship with faith and courage, sharing stories from her own life and delving into relevant Bible passages. Each chapter focuses on a different main theme, [...]
The post Strong in Battle: Why the Humble Will Prevail – Susie Larson appeared first on Life Is Story.
I greatly enjoyed the picture book version of The Awesome Super Fantastic Forever Party, and this board book simplifies it for younger children. It leaves out some of the higher-level content from the other book, [...]
The post The Awesome Super Fantastic Forever Party Board Book: Heaven With Jesus is Amazing! – Joni Eareckson Tada and Catalina Echeverri appeared first on Life Is Story.
Wherever You Go, I Want You To Know is a book about a parent’s desire for their child to know and love Jesus, no matter what they do when they grow up. I haven’t read [...]
The post Wherever You Go, I Want You To Know Board Book – Melissa Kruger and Isobel Lundie appeared first on Life Is Story.
This colorful board book introduces the concept of prayer to little children. It explains what prayer is and emphasizes that we can talk to God anywhere, at any time, about anything. The illustrations are close-ups [...]
The post Any Time, Any Place, Any Prayer Board Book: We Can Talk With God – Laura Wifler and Catalina Echeverri appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this colorful, inviting picture book, pastor and author Andrew Wilson imagines a child’s experience witnessing aspects of Jesus’s life and ministry. Many books showcase a single miracle or just one moment in time, but [...]
The post The Boy from the House of Bread – Andrew Wilson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Back in 2020, I greatly enjoyed Analog Church, Jay Y. Kim’s prescient book about the importance of church gatherings and the physical elements of the Christian faith. In this follow-up book, he addresses themes from [...]
The post Analog Christian: Cultivating Contentment, Resilience, and Wisdom in the Digital Age – Jay Y. Kim appeared first on Life Is Story.
This unique Advent devotional features Bette Dickinson’s beautiful art and brief daily reflections on the Nativity story from Luke. This first appealed to me because of the beautiful cover design, and every reading begins with [...]
The post Making Room in Advent: 25 Devotions for a Season of Wonder – Bette Dickinson appeared first on Life Is Story.
This encouraging book pushes back against cultural pressures to dream big dreams, achieve amazing goals, and impress everyone. Seth Lewis starts out by saying that he’s nobody you’ve ever heard of, but that saying you’re [...]
The post Dream Small: The Secret Power of the Ordinary Christian Life – Seth Lewis appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have read a vast number of books about managing life in the digital world. Technology changes so quickly that there are always new things for authors to say, but all the same, I’ve gotten [...]
The post Following Jesus in a Digital Age – Jason Thacker appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Hold that Thought, Gem Fadling encourages Christian women to recognize that they are more than their thoughts. She shares psychological information and spiritual wisdom to reframe common thought patterns, identifying them by names like [...]
The post Hold That Thought: Sorting Through the Voices in Our Heads – Gem Fadling appeared first on Life Is Story.
An updated edition from the original 2011 text, Christian Apologetics is a massive tome that comprehensively covers apologetics from a classical, evangelical perspective. Douglas Groothius divides the book into three parts: apologetic preliminaries, the case [...]
The post Christian Apologetics – Douglas Groothius appeared first on Life Is Story.
Historical fiction rises and falls with the author’s ability to convey the historical settings in a way just unfamiliar enough to leave the reading hanging on every work, but also just familiar enough that they [...]
The post The Barrister and the Letter of Marque – Todd M. Johnson appeared first on Life Is Story.
For a long time, Christian military/prophetic fiction has really only had one voice: Joel Rosenberg. Others have tried it. Mel Odom wrote a military-themed spinoff trilogy in the world of Left Behind to tepid success. [...]
The post Operation Joktan – Amir Tsarfati and Steve Yohn appeared first on Life Is Story.
During his earthly ministry, Jesus was deeply and personally involved in the lives of the disabled. In all four Gospels, from the beginning of his ministry to the end, Jesus heals the disabled—but more importantly, [...]
The post Jesus and Disability – Chris Hulshof appeared first on Life Is Story.
The goal of a book review is to offer readers an objective overview of a book’s contents and interact with some salient portions the reviewer thinks their audience will find interesting. I’ve written this review [...]
The post My Body is Not a Prayer Request – Amy Kenny appeared first on Life Is Story.
Technology is inherently amoral. It’s a tool that empowers people and intensifies their moral abilities. People who would lie to dozens can now lie to thousands. Evil can be spread quickly, easily, and anonymously. But [...]
The post Following Jesus in A Digital Age – Jason Thacker appeared first on Life Is Story.
There’s an old apologetics story, meant to get people to think critically about their concept of God that goes something like this: During a flight, a man asks his seatmate what he does for a [...]
The post Let the Light In – Colin McCartney appeared first on Life Is Story.
I read a lot. Fiction. Non-fiction. Lifeisstory.com was started an outlet for that obsession for stories—real and imagined—and how they effect and change individuals and societies. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more cognizant of [...]
The post Reading Black Books – Claude Atcho appeared first on Life Is Story.
In an era of political polarization and increasing Christian nationalism, a contingent of moderate evangelicals have decried the politicization of faith and sought out compromise, believing that unity will come only when we put choose [...]
The post Jesus Takes a Side – Jonny Rashid appeared first on Life Is Story.
Where does the church go from here? It seems like anywhere you turn, the American evangelical church is undergoing a reckoning as its abuses, racism, patriarchy, nationalism, and lust for power. People who grew up [...]
The post Next Sunday – Nancy Beach and Samantha Beach Kinley appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this unique book about grace, David Zahl encourages his readers to embrace a “low anthropology” of human nature. Although this sounds very academic, Zahl wrote this at the popular level, and he defines our [...]
The post Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others (and Yourself) – David Zahl appeared first on Life Is Story.
Fallout is my third Carrie Stuart Parks novel. Let me start this by saying that everyone has different tastes in books. With this third book, I think it is safe to say Carrie Stuart Parks’ [...]
The post Fallout – Carrie Stuart Parks appeared first on Life Is Story.
Growing up, I wanted to be Ravi Zacharias. I read all his books, listened to all of his radio programs, could quote his most quotable quotes, and made plans to one day attend his apologetics [...]
The post Celebrities for Jesus – Katelyn Beaty appeared first on Life Is Story.
Sarah and Beth have different political beliefs, but are still friends. And in a very politically polarized age, that’s somewhat incredible. As civically-minded people who have spent their lives engaged in politics and community organizing, [...]
The post Now What? – Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers appeared first on Life Is Story.
If there’s one thing the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 taught me, it was that the way we did church was a routine more than it was worship. It wasn’t that we just went through the [...]
The post Reawakened – Glen Guyton appeared first on Life Is Story.
James Patterson has published over three hundred books and this is easily in the top five. Joining with J.D. Barker, Patterson weaves a paranormal thriller that keeps the pages turning and the light on. Death [...]
The post Death of the Black Widow – James Patterson and JD Barker appeared first on Life Is Story.
The past half-decade, and probably longer, has seen an increasing number of people raised in the church pack their bags and leave. The reasons are multifaceted but the result is the same. Many are leaving [...]
The post The Road Away from God – Jonathan Martin appeared first on Life Is Story.
Like several of the recent New International Commentary releases, Hannah K. Harrington’s The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah replaces an older volume on those books in the series, offering a more in-depth analysis with updated [...]
The post The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah (NICOT) – Hannah K. Harrington appeared first on Life Is Story.
For nearly fifty years, New International Commentaries have been the evangelical standard for a commentary set. Intended for clergy and biblical scholars, the NIC is an academic commentary that understands that not all of its [...]
The post The Books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah (NICOT) – Thomas Renz appeared first on Life Is Story.
Two long-time friends, one Black and one white, join together for a conversation about race. While the content of Not So Black and White can be found in any number of books, it’s the camaraderie [...]
The post Not So Black and White – Reggie Dabbs and John Driver appeared first on Life Is Story.
A 2021 Ipsos poll found that Gen Z individuals were four times as likely to identify as transgender, nonbinary, gender-fluid, or some other genderqueer categorization. Gender identity has become part of the culture wars with [...]
The post Gender Identity and Faith – Mark Yarhouse and Julia Sadusky appeared first on Life Is Story.
It’s been ten years since Peter Enns released The Evolution of Adam, a groundbreaking work that explored the possibility that a faithful reading of Scripture could be aligned with evolutionary theory. Now, in a revised [...]
The post The Evolution of Adam – Peter Enns appeared first on Life Is Story.
Social media (and the Internet at large) has pushed human behaviors to the extreme while making more people more aware of those behaviors. It’s easier than ever to share information (and lies), to make friends [...]
The post Terms of Service – Chris Martin appeared first on Life Is Story.
I had some amount of hope for Stand Up, Stand Strong before reading it. A call to bold faith? Needed. The way of Christ is countercultural? Absolutely. Engage culture with the redemptive story of the [...]
The post Stand Up, Stand Strong – Sara Barratt appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’ve always been an exegetical preacher. Not to the extent that some people are—because if you go to some theological circles you’ll find those that think it’s heresy to preach any other way—but it’s my [...]
The post Topical Preaching in a Complex World – Sam Chan and Malcolm Gill appeared first on Life Is Story.
An artful story of contrasts, Black and White is about the interplay between light and darkness. The story begins as White wakes up and spreads through the sky, pushing Black away. But we soon begin [...]
The post Black and White – Debora Vogrig appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’ll Say Goodbye is a story about death and loss. Told in the first-person perspective of a young child, we see him with his uncle Mike on the beach where they discover a hermit crab. [...]
The post I’ll Say Goodbye – Pam Zollman appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is a book that I felt viscerally, deep inside me. it’s so difficult follows the story of a person who struggles to participate in society. The first words of the book read “When I [...]
The post It’s So Difficult – Guridi appeared first on Life Is Story.
Been in the Struggle is the reflections of two individuals who have spent the last few decades cultivating an antiracist spirituality while tearing down systemic racism. In a lot of ways, this felt similar to [...]
The post Been in the Struggle: Pursuing an Antiracist Spirituality – Regina Shands Stoltzfus and Tobin Miller Shearer appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’ve read a lot of books on racial relations, particularly from a Christian perspective, and after a while you begin to recognize the familiar beats. Most books are written to rally the troops. Some books [...]
The post Talking About Race – Isaac Adams appeared first on Life Is Story.
The latest Ted Dekker series is here! And it’s not a serial killer novel or an epic fantasy. This time, Ted has paired with his daughter, Kara Dekker, and illustrator Shelby Kirby to create a [...]
The post Barton the Dream Jumper – Kara and Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
The latest Ted Dekker series is here! And it’s not a serial killer novel or an epic fantasy. This time, Ted has paired with his daughter, Kara Dekker, and illustrator Shelby Kirby to create a [...]
The post Monty and the Tree of Light – Kara and Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
The latest Ted Dekker series is here! And it’s not a serial killer novel or an epic fantasy. This time, Ted has paired with his daughter, Kara Dekker, and illustrator Shelby Kirby to create a [...]
The post Lulu the Lost Rubber Ducky – Kara and Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
Tony Dungy doesn’t know it, but his coaching style had quite the effect on my own. I read his first book, Quiet Strength, just after he retired from coaching the Indianapolis Colts. Growing up in [...]
The post Uncommon Influence – Lauren and Tony Dungy appeared first on Life Is Story.
At the beginning of Celebrities for Jesus, Katelyn Beaty differentiates fame from celebrity, showing that even though fame can be a worthwhile byproduct of a virtuous life, celebrity is a different beast. At this point, [...]
The post Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits Are Hurting the Church – Katelyn Beaty appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Mothering by the Book, Jennifer Pepito shares personal stories about how different books have encouraged her during challenging times. She references favorite classics like All of a Kind Family and The Hiding Place, drawing [...]
The post Mothering by the Book: The Power of Reading Aloud to Overcome Fear and Recapture Joy – Jennifer Pepito appeared first on Life Is Story.
This beautifully bound book collects historic ecumenical and Reformed documents that articulate the Christian faith. Before each one, Chad Van Dixhoorn shares a brief introduction, explaining the document’s origins, historical context, and significance throughout time. [...]
The post Creeds, Confessions, and Catechisms: A Reader’s Edition – Chad Van Dixhoorn appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this devotional collection, Leland Ryken shares his considerable literary expertise to explore Christian hymns as poetry. Each reading begins with the text of the hymn, and then Ryken offers literary analysis, spiritual reflections, and [...]
The post 40 Favorite Hymns of the Christian Faith: A Closer Look at Their Spiritual and Poetic Meaning – Leland Ryken appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book initially appealed to me because of the title, and Nick Turner’s short, punchy chapters live up to the unique premise. In the introduction, he explains that even though God is omnipotent, omniscient, and [...]
The post 12 Things God Can’t Do …and How They Can Help You Sleep at Night – Nick Tucker appeared first on Life Is Story.
My familiarity with the book of Nehemiah mainly stems from my childhood church’s building campaign, and I read Nehemiah For You: Strength to Build for God with one of the “Let us rise up and [...]
The post Nehemiah For You: Strength to Build for God – Eric Mason appeared first on Life Is Story.
Originally, I was going to take a break from reading romantic suspense novels. I tried…for two weeks. Patricia Bradley drew me back into the genre with Deception, the final novel of her “Natchez Trace Park [...]
The post Deception – Patricia Bradley appeared first on Life Is Story.
Once again, Lynette Eason has blown me out of the water. She took my heart through a roller coaster of emotions with Crossfire. Rapid paced with enough mystery to keep my mind spinning, this ride [...]
The post Crossfire – Lynette Eason appeared first on Life Is Story.
While I have only read one other Janice Cantore book, I enjoyed it because of its accuracy. Code of Courage is no exception. The novel is complicated without being confusing. It keeps readers connected to its [...]
The post Code of Courage – Janice Cantore appeared first on Life Is Story.
We’ve all seen the really cringey gender reveal parties: guns or glitter, ruffles or rifles, wheels or heels, touchdowns or tutus, bows or baskets. And most of us rightfully recognize these false binaries for the [...]
The post Buried Talents: Overcoming Gendered Socialization to Answer God’s Call – Susan Harris Howell appeared first on Life Is Story.
There is never a bad time to pray for your country but, especially now—with the partisanship and vitriol, with increasing polarization and decreasing civility, with the cold culture war rising to the brink of a [...]
The post A Prayer for Our Country – Barry Black appeared first on Life Is Story.
Welcome back, Elizabeth Goddard! I have missed you and your work. From the first Goddard book I read, she set my expectations high…and she surpassed them tenfold with Critical Alliance. Thank you for bringing me [...]
The post Critical Alliance – Elizabeth Goddard appeared first on Life Is Story.
I had been super hyped for Josey Johnson’s Hair and the Holy Spirit ever since IVP Kids first announced it. I was a huge fan of Esau McCaulley’s Reading While Black, but had no idea [...]
The post Josey Johnson’s Hair and the Holy Spirit – Esau McCaulley appeared first on Life Is Story.
I love a good debate, which is probably why I own all of the Counterpoints books and have read most of them. Biblical/theological positions aside, the Counterpoints books stand as an example of how to [...]
The post Four Views on Heaven (Counterpoints) appeared first on Life Is Story.
Rick Hamlin says he doesn’t consider himself an expert on prayer, even though he’s written several books and articles about it. His focus on writing about prayer comes from the desire to improve in his [...]
The post Even Silence is Praise – Rick Hamlin appeared first on Life Is Story.
3:16: the Numbers of Hope might be the quintessential Max Lucado text. It’s should be no surprise that one of the most well-known Christian author’s book on the most well-known verse in the Bible is [...]
The post 3:16 The Numbers of Hope – Max Lucado appeared first on Life Is Story.
In his High Priestly Prayer in John 17, Jesus prays for something that remains unfulfilled—he prays for unity. Although we see glimmers of this unity within the early church, the saga of history is a [...]
The post That We May Be One – Gary Agee appeared first on Life Is Story.
The story of the early church is the story of a marginalized and oppressed people. It should come as not surprise, then, that the Gospel message is quite concerned about the presence of injustice and [...]
The post Might from the Margins – Dennis Edwards appeared first on Life Is Story.
Hermeneutics is a big word, but basically it just means a method of interpretation. At some level, everything is interpretation. We experience nothing objectively, but everything is subject to some form of interpretation and it’s [...]
The post In All the Scriptures: The Three Contexts of Biblical Hermeneutics – Nicholas Piotrowski appeared first on Life Is Story.
Little Prayers for Ordinary Days is a liturgy of prayers for young people to read, recite, and reflect upon, helping them learn to express themselves in prayer and come to God in any situation. Written [...]
The post Little Prayers for Ordinary Days – Tish Harrison Warren, Flo Paris Oakes, Katy Hutson, Liita Forsyth appeared first on Life Is Story.
An explosion of color that reveals the mysteries of the tiny animal world, A Perfect Spot details the life of a ladybug as it flits from here to there in an attempt to find a [...]
The post A Perfect Spot – Isabelle Simler appeared first on Life Is Story.
A cute little picture book about the influence of stories, The Book that Kibo Wrote is the story about a story that makes its way around the world. It all begins with Kibo, a rhino [...]
The post The Book that Kibo Wrote – Mariana Ruiz Johnson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Any immigrant will tell you that part of one’s cultural identity is found in food from the motherland. All Ukrainians are supposed to love borsch, but what if (gasp!) you don’t? I Hate Borsch! Is [...]
The post I Hate Borsch! – Yevgenia Nayberg appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Writer is the story about a man too busy writing to have much of a social life—which means it’s all up his dog to help him find friends. If I hadn’t just watched 101 [...]
The post The Writer – Davide Cali and Monica Barengo appeared first on Life Is Story.
“CGIS.” One acronym, and Dani Pettrey drew me into The Deadly Shallows. I had never read any of her work; to be honest, I had not heard her name. I have read so many books [...]
The post The Deadly Shallows – Dani Pettrey appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this highly readable, engaging book, Glen Scrivener shows that Christianity is “the air we breathe” within Western society, regardless of our individual beliefs. He shows that core Western moral convictions, such as the idea [...]
The post The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality – Glen Scrivener appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have read many different books about miscarriage and child loss, but they are all written by women and to women. Normally, authors will include one chapter about the dad, but they usually still address [...]
The post Ours: Biblical Comfort for Men Grieving Miscarriage – Eric Schumacher appeared first on Life Is Story.
This parenting book focuses on specific challenges that boys face in understanding and regulating their emotions. David Thomas shares both general information and examples from his counseling practice to show how many boys’ problematic, destructive [...]
The post Raising Emotionally Strong Boys: Tools Your Son Can Build On for Life – David Thomas appeared first on Life Is Story.
If I could pick one book to teleport back in time to my teenage self, this would be it. God was faithful and present in my journey with intrusive thoughts, and I wouldn’t want to [...]
The post A Still and Quiet Mind: Twelve Strategies for Changing Unwanted Thoughts – Esther Smith appeared first on Life Is Story.
Throughout this book, Lindsey Carlson emphasizes how important it is for women to feel encouraged in genuine, meaningful ways. She contends that Christian women are often at a loss for how to encourage themselves and [...]
The post A Better Encouragement: Trading Self-Help for True Hope – Lindsey Carlson appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this devotional collection, Katie Faris shares meaningful reflections on persevering through suffering. There are twenty different readings, and each one is approximately eight pages long. Faris begins with a story or example from her [...]
The post He Will Be Enough: How God Takes You by the Hand Through Your Hardest Days – Katie Faris appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Dear Susan, licensed counselor Ronda Barney shares short reflections for women facing chronic or terminal illnesses. Her own history with illness contributed to her writing this book, but she keeps the letters general enough [...]
The post Dear Susan: Letters of Comfort, Hope, and Peace for Women Facing a Life-Changing Illness – Ronda Barney appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book teaches children about God’s grace, emphasizing that even when we fail and feel ashamed because of it, God will always forgive us and love us. The text from Melissa Kruger has a [...]
The post His Grace Is Enough: How God Makes It Right When We’ve Got It Wrong – Melissa Kruger and Isobel Lundie appeared first on Life Is Story.
Ever since Lee Strobel’s now-classic The Case for Christ, the atheist-turned-Christian apologetics-themed memoir has popped up from time to time to varying levels of success. Confessions of a French Atheist by Guillaume Bignon is the [...]
The post Confessions of a French Atheist – Guillaume Bignon appeared first on Life Is Story.
When I saw who endorsed Among the Innocent by Mary Alford, I instantly agreed to read it. I usually avoid anything to do with Amish fiction, but based off the synopsis, it seemed more of [...]
The post Among the Innocent – Mary Alford appeared first on Life Is Story.
Emily Raymond is a longtime James Patterson collaborator, particularly on books meant for middle or high schoolers. The Runaway’s Diary is no different, except for it being a graphic novel. Conceptually, I loved this book. [...]
The post The Runaway’s Diary – James Patterson, Emily Raymond, and Valeria Wicker appeared first on Life Is Story.
“‘And hello, maybe you’re exactly where you are supposed to be….Maybe God used your issues to give you exactly what you wanted.'” To think, I had never read Susan May Warren prior to a couple [...]
The post Sunburst – Susan May Warren appeared first on Life Is Story.
Hi, Mr. Hannibal? Yes, I would like to lodge a complaint. No, nothing serious. I was just very disappointed in Elysium Tide’s ending. What did I not like? Well, that is easy to explain. You [...]
The post Elysium Tide – James R. Hannibal appeared first on Life Is Story.
Chris Grabenstein has been James Patterson’s primary go-to author for middle-grade fiction and you don’t have to read too far into Ultimate Quest, the 8th Treasure Hunters book, to see why. Patterson and Grabenstein craft [...]
The post Ultimate Quest (Treasure Hunters #8) – James Patterson, Chris Grabenstein, and Juliana Neufeld appeared first on Life Is Story.
“Who is my neighbor?” That is the question the rich young ruler asked Jesus as a means of justifying himself. And in response, Jesus told the story of a very unlikely person being a very [...]
The post Neighborliness – David Docusen appeared first on Life Is Story.
Everyone has likely had their lives touched by suicide at some point in their lives. Yet, in my personal experience, clergy are often unprepared and unsure how to handle a death in that manner. For [...]
The post The Preacher’s Guide to Suicide – H.C. Johnson appeared first on Life Is Story.
One of my key takeaways from this book, one that is rather tangential to the actual subject matter but crucial to an understanding of modern theology, is just how influential Augustine was and how his [...]
The post Signs of Change: The Bible’s Evolution of Divine Non-Violence – Anthony Bartlett appeared first on Life Is Story.
In an era of megachurches, CEO pastors, and church growth strategies—alongside a consumeristic mentality that has an eye for entertainment—the modern American church has lost its identity as family. I’m in the middle of a [...]
The post Reclaiming the Church Family – Matthew Kimbrough appeared first on Life Is Story.
I don’t think I’ve ever had to drag myself to the end of a David Baldacci book. I have read every single Baldacci novel. Not all of them are good, but all of them have [...]
The post Dream Town (Aloysius Arthur #3) – David Baldacci appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Is God Still Awake?, Sheila Walsh introduces young readers to big questions about God. Young Poppy has been learning about prayer and how it’s simply talking to God, but…is it really that simple? Can [...]
The post Is God Still Awake – Sheila Walsh appeared first on Life Is Story.
About eleven years ago, Joe Gibbs—former NFL coach and current NASCAR owner—wrote a book called Game Plan for Life. Sports-themed memoir/devotionals are a popular niche in the Christian market and this one proved to be [...]
The post Game Plan for Loss – Joe Gibbs appeared first on Life Is Story.
Stephen King’s latest short story is a Scribd original, making it—at least for now—exclusive to that platform. King has always played around with different publishing avenues, particularly for his short stories, and it’s interesting to [...]
The post Finn – Stephen King appeared first on Life Is Story.
I first noticed Count the Nights by Stars because of the beautiful cover, and even though I don’t often read Christian fiction, the premise appealed to me as well. I wasn’t sure what to expect [...]
The post Count the Nights by Stars – Michelle Shocklee appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book combines lyrical text and unique, earthy illustrations to share the gospel story with children. Unlike some books, which focus on simple language and concepts, The Sower takes a metaphorical approach, using imagery [...]
The post The Sower – Scott James and Stephen Crotts appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is a reissued publication of B. B. Warfield’s 1912 essay “The Emotional Life of Our Lord.” Now with a foreword by Sinclair Ferguson, this brief book is accessible to a new audience. In [...]
The post The Emotional Life of Our Lord – B. B. Warfield and Sinclair Ferguson appeared first on Life Is Story.
This concise, easy-to-read book is full of great advice for dealing with anxiety and intrusive thoughts. Jason Cusick shares a wealth of information in a way that feels genuine and personal, distilling what he has [...]
The post The Anxiety Field Guide: Healthy Habits for Long-Term Healing – Jason Cusick appeared first on Life Is Story.
This concise book shares practical advice for how Christians can better understand their gifts and use them to bless others. Don Everts encourages Christians to avoid an overly narrow focus on spiritual gifts, and to [...]
The post Discover Your Gifts: Celebrating How God Made You and Everyone You Know – Don Everts appeared first on Life Is Story.
There were only two things I did not like about Project Solomon by Jodi Stuber and Jennifer Marshall Bleakley, and I would say only one is a critique: It was disjointed in some instances. The [...]
The post Project Solomon – Jodi Stuber and Jennifer Marshall Bleakley appeared first on Life Is Story.
I don’t know that I’ve ever read a book that misrepresented itself so badly through the title and back cover synopsis. Given the lengthy and specific title, The Truth and Beauty: How the Lives and [...]
The post The Truth and the Beauty – Andrew Klavan appeared first on Life Is Story.
In typical Christian interpretation, if the Gospels had an overarching villain it wouldn’t be the Herods or the Caesars or even the Sanhedrin—it would be The Pharisees. Throughout history, the Pharisees have been much maligned [...]
The post The Pharisees – ed. Joseph Sievers and Amy-Jill Levine appeared first on Life Is Story.
John Goldingay has long been a prolific writer and premier First Testament scholar. When he retired from professorship at Fuller Theological Seminary in 2018, he did so with the intention of focusing on writing. Since [...]
The post The Book of Jeremiah (NICOT) – John Goldingay appeared first on Life Is Story.
I read Fight Like Jesus over the course of Holy Week this year. It’s eight chapters—an introduction, then daily chapters from Palm Sunday to a combined Holy Saturday/Easter Sunday—and I read one chapter from the [...]
The post Fight Like Jesus – Jason Porterfield appeared first on Life Is Story.
I don’t remember when I first realized that the interpretation of the Samaritan woman of John 4 that I’d heard my whole life was wrong. I do remember that it was after I had been [...]
The post The Samaritan Woman’s Story: Reconsidering John 4 after #ChurchToo – Caryn Reeder appeared first on Life Is Story.
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, [...]
The post God Behaving Badly – David T. Lamb appeared first on Life Is Story.
We are in the middle of a clergy crisis. I knew that before beginning my doctoral studies on clergy loneliness, mental health, and burnout, but having inundated myself in the literature I’ve become even more [...]
The post The Flourishing Pastor – Tom Nelson appeared first on Life Is Story.
When you read a lot of romantic suspense like I do, many of the stories blur together. You forget details because plots are so similar, and characters have the same types of backgrounds. The Catch [...]
The post The Catch – Lisa Harris appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Prisoners, the Earthquake, and the Midnight Song Board Book is a toddler-friendly adaptation of a longer picture book from the Tales That Tell the Truth series. Both books tell the story of Acts 16, [...]
The post The Prisoners, the Earthquake, and the Midnight Song Board Book: A True Story about How God Uses People to Save People – Bob Hartman and Catalina Echeverri appeared first on Life Is Story.
As soon as I learned about this book, I knew that I wanted to review it. C.S. Lewis has been my favorite author ever since I was nine, and I have read so many of [...]
The post The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind – Jason M. Baxter appeared first on Life Is Story.
In My Body is Not a Prayer Request, Amy Kenny writes with passion and urgency, challenging ableist norms in the church and in society at large. She shares personal stories about facing both active discrimination [...]
The post My Body Is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church – Amy Kenny appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this beautifully illustrated picture book, Joni Eareckson Tada teaches children about heaven and Jesus’s return, presenting this through the metaphor of us receiving an invitation to a wonderful, eternal party. She uses concrete language [...]
The post The Awesome Super Fantastic Forever Party Storybook: A True Story about Heaven, Jesus, and the Best Invitation of All – Joni Eareckson Tada and Catalina Echeverri appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is the fourth book in Chris Morphew’s Big Questions series, in which he answers kids’ common questions about life and Christianity. Who Am I and Why Do I Matter? addresses a deeply universal issue, [...]
The post Who Am I and Why Do I Matter? – Chris Morphew appeared first on Life Is Story.
Welcome to BibleWorld cleverly imagines different parts of Scripture as a theme park, with each section of the park representing a subset of the Bible, such as the Minor Prophets, the gospels, and Paul’s letters. [...]
The post Welcome to BibleWorld: Explore All 66 Books of the Bible – Mike Nappa and Emilano Migliardo appeared first on Life Is Story.
Natalie Walters does it again with Fatal Code, the second novel of her “SNAP Agency” series. I always love her books, because they have a unique sense of humor that I’ve rarely found in other [...]
The post Fatal Code – Natalie Walters appeared first on Life Is Story.
I was about thirty pages into Skin the very first time I read it—the day it released—when I began to have this sense of déjà vu. We’ve been here before, haven’t we? A group of [...]
The post Skin – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
It was a collaboration between the established trailblazer nearing the end of his career and the young, idealistic upstart whose recent work followed in his footsteps. Theoretically, it was a no-brainer: put the top two [...]
The post House – Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti appeared first on Life Is Story.
A couple of years ago, I left the church I had been working at with the intention of traveling the country and finding what God had next for our family. I had worked at a [...]
The post Disarmed: The Radical Life and Legacy of Michael “MJ” Sharp – Marshall V. King appeared first on Life Is Story.
What will heaven be like? The cultural concept of heaven is usually envisioned as a walled city in the clouds where ethereal figures wear halos and play the harp. That’s…not a very appealing picture. Of [...]
The post The Case for Heaven Young Reader’s Edition – Lee Strobel appeared first on Life Is Story.
Kristin L. Kellen is a counselor and an assistant professor of counseling at a seminary, and she wrote this book for both lay and professional Christian counselors. It is academic but very readable, and is [...]
The post Counseling Women: Biblical Wisdom for Life’s Battles – Kristin L. Kellen appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is full of encouragement for people who struggle to reconcile the joy and the suffering that they experience personally and see in the world around them. Joy Marie Clarkson provides a stirring defense [...]
The post Aggressively Happy: A Realist’s Guide to Believing in the Goodness of Life – Joy Marie Clarkson appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book released a few years ago, but I never got around to reading it, partly because I knew it dealt with heavy topics. I finally read it this past week, and loved it so [...]
The post Forward Me Back to You – Mitali Perkins appeared first on Life Is Story.
I will admit, I sat on Malicious Intent by Lynn H. Blackburn for an extended period of time before I finally opened it. I had too many romantic suspense authors already in my stack; I didn’t need more. [...]
The post Malicious Intent – Lynn H. Blackburn appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’ve been told for some time that I needed to read David Bentley Hart. Not knowing quite where to start (though his That All Shall Be Saved is on my shelf), I ended up beginning [...]
The post Tradition and Apocalypse – David Bentley Hart appeared first on Life Is Story.
Becker divides To Be Made Well into three categories: that nature of healing, barriers to healing, and participation in healing. The first part sets the foundation for the type of healing the book is going [...]
The post To Be Made Well – Amy Julia Becker appeared first on Life Is Story.
In 2004, Brenda Salter McNeil and Rick Richardson released the first edition of The Heart of Racial Justice. Now, eighteen years later, IVP has rereleased the book as part of their Signature Collection. To add [...]
The post The Heart of Racial Justice Bible Study – Brenda Salter McNeil, Rick Richardson, and Steve Tamayo appeared first on Life Is Story.
Soul change leads to social change. That sentence is the driving factor of The Heart of Racial Justice. Cowritten by Brenda Salter McNeil and Rick Richardson, this now-classic book provides a model of racial reconciliation [...]
The post The Heart of Racial Justice – Brenda Salter McNeil and Rick Richardson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Ever since Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ, apologetic via non-theologians have become increasingly in vogue. Strobel used his journalistic experience to investigate the claims of Scripture, treating the life and resurrection of Jesus like [...]
The post Person of Interest – J. Warner Wallace appeared first on Life Is Story.
Before there was Kristin Kobes Du Mez and Beth Allison Barr, there was Carolyn Custis James. I don’t know what the general reaction to the original 2015 version of Malestrom: How Jesus Dismantles Patriarchy and [...]
The post Malestrom – Carolyn Custis James appeared first on Life Is Story.
God is my Father who made everything. And I am a little explorer of the wide world. From its very first lines, Near, a children’s reflection on Psalm 139 from Sally Lloyd-Jones and Jago. You [...]
The post Near – Sally Lloyd-Jones and Jago appeared first on Life Is Story.
Our past matters. We are a product of where we come from. If life is story, then the stories of our ancestors are the prologue that sets the context for our own lives. Some of [...]
The post Translating Your Past – Michelle Van Loon appeared first on Life Is Story.
You’ve probably heard of Rebecca St. James and for KING AND COUNTRY. What you may not know (or at least I didn’t) was that FK&C duo were related to Rebecca and that behind all three [...]
The post Behind the Lights – Helen Smallbone appeared first on Life Is Story.
On the day that I read this book, a man in a gas mask got on the northbound N train in Brooklyn and fired a gun 33 times, injuring 29 people. That was April 12. [...]
The post Collateral Damage – James E. Atwood appeared first on Life Is Story.
“You are young, gifted and black” / We must begin to tell our young / There’s a world waiting for you / Yours is the quest that’s just begun. Nina Simone’s Civil Rights anthem To [...]
The post Young, Gifted, and Black – Sheila Wise Rowe appeared first on Life Is Story.
Peanut Butter and Dragon Wings is a unique, artistic, soulful, and poignant look at parenthood (motherhood, specifically) that offers readers permission to be real about their own needs, shortcomings, struggles, and doubts. Mostly memoir, somewhat [...]
The post Peanut Butter and Dragon Wings: A Mother’s Search for Grace – Shari Zook appeared first on Life Is Story.
Say…doesn’t this one seem familiar? And the answer is yes. After the success of the Circle Trilogy, Thomas Nelson immediately got to work reprinting Ted Dekker’s early novels. Most of these books just got a [...]
The post Blink of an Eye – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
Robert Whitlow has been and always will be one of my favorite authors. While his books are rarely suspenseful, his plotlines are exceptional, and his characters are fantastically thought-out and well-written. That being said, however, [...]
The post Relative Jusice – Robert Whitlow appeared first on Life Is Story.
Following the release of the Circle Trilogy Visual Edition, Ted Dekker and Thomas Nelson continued the graphic novel trend by releasing a graphic novel version of the first four books in the six-book Lost Books [...]
The post The Lost Books Visual Edition – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
Recovering Racists positions every person who is called White as a beneficiary of racism. And already the arguments begin—“Racism exists, but I’m not racist.” “It’s racist to say that all white people are racist.” “I [...]
The post Recovering Racists – Idelette McVicker appeared first on Life Is Story.
The women of Scripture are often overlooked and, even when they are considered, what we’ve been told about them isn’t always correct. Eve is given the title of first sinner, the reason all of this [...]
The post The Most Misunderstood Women of the Bible – Mary DeMuth appeared first on Life Is Story.
In 1989, Mission City Press released the very first Beginner’s Bible©. They had no idea what was to come. The book was so popular that they turned to Zondervan to distribute the book, which led [...]
The post Beginner’s Bible I Can Read: Read Through the Bible appeared first on Life Is Story.
In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins refers to the Old Testament God as a “vindictive bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic racist, an infanticidal, genocidal, philicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” In other words, [...]
The post The Destruction of the Canaanites – Charlie Trimm appeared first on Life Is Story.
Only Os Guinness could write a book on discovering meaning in life and fully and comprehensively cover the topic in 120 pages. The Great Quest is an invitation to living an examined life. Dr. Guinness [...]
The post The Great Quest – Os Guinness appeared first on Life Is Story.
The World is Awake for Little Ones is a board book adaptation of Linsey Davis’s 2018 children’s book The World is Awake. Using the same storyline and theme as the original, the board book is [...]
The post The World is Awake for Little Ones – Linsey Davis with Joseph Bottum and Lucy Fleming appeared first on Life Is Story.
1 Corinthians 13 is one of the most famous chapters in the Bible. Known as “The Love Chapter,” this 13 verse treatise on love from Paul to the church in Corinth has been the subject [...]
The post Love is – Paola Escobar appeared first on Life Is Story.
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas is a Christmas classic. Originally written in 1823 by Clement Clarke Moore, the poem became foundational to the Santa Claus mythology that would, over the course of a century, sweep [...]
The post Twas the Morning of Easter – Glenys Nellist and Elena Selivanova appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is part of a new series by Amy Gannett, which focuses on common questions that children ask about God. These concept books are short, simple, and easy for kids to understand, and the [...]
The post Did God Learn His ABCs?: A Book About God’s Knowledge – Amy Gannett and Nate Farro appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is part of a new series by Amy Gannett, which focuses on common questions that children ask about God. These concept books are short, simple, and easy for kids to understand, and the [...]
The post Does God Go on Vacation?: A Book About God’s Presence – Amy Gannett and Nate Farro appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is part of a new series by Amy Gannett, which focuses on common questions that children ask about God. These concept books are short, simple, and easy for kids to understand, and the [...]
The post Does God Sleep?: A Book About God’s Power – Amy Gannett and Nate Farro appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this unique, well-argued book, sociologist George Yancey pushes back against the excesses and inherent flaws in colorblindness and antiracism mindsets, arguing that we need to be able to engage in “collaborative conversations” to move [...]
The post Beyond Racial Division: A Unifying Alternative to Colorblindness and Antiracism – George Yancey appeared first on Life Is Story.
This children’s devotional book focuses on Jesus’s many names and titles, explaining what they mean and why they are important. The readings are generally about two pages long, with full-color illustrations, and they conclude with [...]
The post The Magnificent Names of Jesus: Prayers and Praises to Love Him More – Jimmy Dodd, Sally Dodd, and Paran Kim appeared first on Life Is Story.
Jessica Hooten Wilson challenges common misconceptions about reading fiction, arguing that even though many Christians prioritize nonfiction reading and think of stories as frivolous, reading about literary characters can spur us on to greater holiness [...]
The post The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints – Jessica Hooten Wilson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Jedidiah Johnson is returning to action, training with the elite warriors known as the Shepherds. He thinks he knows what he’s getting himself into, but finds himself placed among the raw recruits. As he struggles [...]
The post Dark Angel – Andrews and Wilson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Kingdom Race Theology: God’s Answer to Our Racial Crisis is an adapted version of Tony Evans’ larger work, Oneness Embraced. Specifically, the four chapters of this book come from chapters 10, 12, 15, and 16 [...]
The post Kingdom Race Theology – Tony Evans appeared first on Life Is Story.
It’s been 45 years since Joni Eareckson Tada’s eponymous memoir, Joni: An Unforgettable Story, was first published by Zondervan in 1976, just seven years after the injury that left her paralyzed from the neck down. [...]
The post Joni: An Unforgettable Story – Joni Eareckson Tada appeared first on Life Is Story.
Originally published in 2006 with publisher Little, Brown as a Christmas story, Little One, We Knew You’d Come has been repackaged and repurposed by Sally Lloyd-Jones and Zonderkidz to tell a more general story of [...]
The post Little One, We Knew You’d Come – Sally Lloyd-Jones & Eve Tharlet appeared first on Life Is Story.
Ten Little Fireflies is a 20-page board book, so as you might imagine, there are two panels that count down from ten to one. Each page begins with the number (Ten! Nine! etc.), followed by [...]
The post Ten Little Fireflies – Deb Gruelle & Gabi Murphy appeared first on Life Is Story.
Growing up, I thought that racism was a thing of the past. Like, I understood it was recent past. My (white) mom talked about how a Black family she babysat for in the late 70s [...]
The post How to Heal Our Racial Divide – Derwin Gray appeared first on Life Is Story.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen brown angels in a children’s Bible before. That alone sold me on the book. I think we’ve come to an understand in Christian art that Jesus and the other [...]
The post The Tiny Truths Bible for Little Ones – Joanna Rivard & Tim Penner appeared first on Life Is Story.
From the beginning of the evangelical movement, the New International Commentaries have served as a premier academic resource for evangelical Bible scholars, theologians, and clergy. After an initial focus on the New Testament, the first [...]
The post The Book of Lamentations (NICOT) – John Goldingay appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is a tremendous story. It is one of those books that is difficult to know where to start to write an adequate review. I loved Shiloh. It’s a satisfying continuation in this captivating series [...]
The post Shiloh – Lori Benton appeared first on Life Is Story.
Action packed and full of excitement, Colleen Coble’s A Stranger’s Game has lots of mystery, suspense, and action. But…it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Did I like it? Yes! Yes, I did. And I highly recommend [...]
The post A Stranger’s Game – Colleen Coble appeared first on Life Is Story.
The mystery in Trace of Doubt is quite an intriguing one. I found it refreshingly different from most romantic suspense novels I’ve read. Shelby Pearce, the heroine, is an ex-con, and has just been released from [...]
The post Trace of Doubt – Diann Mills appeared first on Life Is Story.
Antonio Vivaldi was a 16th century Italian composer, violinist, and…you may not know this one…a priest. I, Vivaldi is an immersive, beautifully-illustrated, imaginative first-person biography of the virtuoso aimed at upper elementary age kids. Perfect [...]
The post I, Vivaldi – Janice and Tom Shefelman appeared first on Life Is Story.
Separation anxiety is a totally normal thing in young children. As babies, they have no understanding of themselves as distinct entities. As they grow, they begin to develop independence and the understand of themselves as [...]
The post I’ll Always Come Back to You – Carmen Tafolla and Grace Zong appeared first on Life Is Story.
Ten years ago, John C. Lennox penned a small book called Seven Days that Divide the World, an introductory yet academically robust volume that explored the tension between Scripture and science when it comes to [...]
The post Seven Days that Divide the World – John C. Lennox appeared first on Life Is Story.
Wanna trip, baby? Following the breakout success of The Circle Trilogy, Dekker returned to a book he’d had rejected multiple times, cleaned it up, and pitched it to Thomas Nelson as the first book in [...]
The post Showdown – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
Who am I? Where do I come from? To whom do I answer? Why am I here? How to I embrace and use my talents and gifts? – These are all universal questions but they’re [...]
The post Saint – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
In 2005, Ted Dekker turned to non-fiction as a means to explore the heart of his writing journey. The Slumber of Christianity is, in many ways, Ted’s real-life version of Jan Jovic’s Dance of the [...]
The post The Slumber of Christianity – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
I went back and forth regarding rating The Mozart Code by Rachel McMillan. Four or five stars? For or five stars? I finally settled on a happy medium—4.5. Outside of novels by Kate Quinn and [...]
The post The Mozart Code – Rachel McMillan appeared first on Life Is Story.
The protagonists of this book are a mortician at a secret military base and a military artist-in-residence called upon to bear witness to the horrors of war. With characters like that, there’s a lot that [...]
The post The Lightning Rod – Brad Meltzer appeared first on Life Is Story.
The plot thickens as the twisted alliances between Johnis, Shaeda, the Shataiki, and Sucrow (the latest Horde high priest) begin to unravel and reform. Each one is out for their own personal gain and will [...]
The post Elyon (The Lost Books #6) – Ted Dekker and Kaci Hill appeared first on Life Is Story.
Five years have passed since the Chosen One and his crew were last in Other Earth. Chaos ended triumphantly, with them successfully thwarting Alucard’s evil plot to destroy our earth, and the last page turned [...]
The post Lunatic (The Lost Books #5) – Ted Dekker and Kaci Hill appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Lost Books were released two books at a time with each pairing forming their own distinct story arc. Chosen introduces readers to the world of Other Earth and sets up the characters and the [...]
The post Chaos (The Lost Books #4) – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
Renegade is where the Lost Books start to go off the rails a little bit. That’s not all a bad thing. Dekker does a full-on deep dive into the Circle mythos, revealing a complex story [...]
The post Renegade (The Lost Books #3) – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
No sooner than the four young heroes return home, having saved the Forests and accomplished their secret mission, that they are again hurtled on another adventure. Johnis’ mother, thought to be killed by the Horde [...]
The post Infidel (The Lost Books #2) – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
In the three years following the release of the Circle Trilogy, nearly everything Ted Dekker wrote had some connection to the world of the Circle but Dekker—despite the clamoring of fans—taken the plunge back into [...]
The post Chosen (The Lost Books #1) – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
One of the first books I ever reviewed for Life is Story was the picture book How Much is a Little Girl Worth? I thought it was wonderful, but I also wished that there could [...]
The post How Much Is a Little Boy Worth? – Rachael Denhollander, Jacob Denhollander, and Marcin Piwowarski appeared first on Life Is Story.
Obsessed may be Ted Dekker’s most overlooked novel. Coming just a few months after the conclusion of the Circle Trilogy, Obsessed was a return to the “old Dekker,” suspense thrillers with a theme taken directly [...]
The post Obsessed – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
For years, I’ve longed for a text to use with high-schoolers to introduce them to the Bible. Even if you’ve read the Bible your whole life, or perhaps especially if you’ve read the Bible your [...]
The post Seven Things I Wish Christians Knew About the Bible – Michael Bird appeared first on Life Is Story.
With evangelicalism fracturing and defined more by its politics and culture than its theological underpinnings, Denver Seminary president Mark Young surveys evangelicalism’s past to draw readers into the hope of a revitalized future. As a [...]
The post The Hope of the Gospel: Theological Education and the Next Evangelicalism – Mark S. Young appeared first on Life Is Story.
The First Nations Version is a New Testament paraphrase that retells the story of Jesus and the early church using First Nations cultural and linguistic thought patterns in order to make Scripture come alive to [...]
The post First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament appeared first on Life Is Story.
Leadership is changing. Accelerated by the pandemic, the work lives and personal priorities of people around the world have shifted and leadership is trying to catch up. With the “Great Resignation,” you hear stories every [...]
The post The Aspiring Leader’s Guide to the Future – Clay Scroggins appeared first on Life Is Story.
Are You Good with God? is a book that made more sense as a book in pre-Internet times, but in an online age would probably have been better off as a blog post. At about [...]
The post Are You Good With God? – D.A. Horton appeared first on Life Is Story.
Death is a difficult thing to introduce to children. We weren’t made for death, so understanding it is really an impossibility. Heaven is similar, except that it is what we were made for, but an [...]
The post How High is Heaven? – Linsey Davis appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is going to be a weird review, because I want to talk about the implications of Domestic Enemies more than I do the actual plot. Why? Because the actual plot isn’t that noteworthy. It’s [...]
The post Domestic Enemies – Kent Wyatt appeared first on Life Is Story.
It’s not often that I review a book that has been out for some time and it has zero Amazon reviews, zero Goodreads reviews, zero reviews anywhere on the internet that I can find. The [...]
The post The Cave Chamber (A Soul’s Warfare #2) – Rosemary Althoff appeared first on Life Is Story.
Time traveling back to Bible times isn’t new in Christian fiction, but it’s rarely done well. Indeed, the only positive example I can think of comes from Madeline L’Engle’s Time Quartet novel, Many Waters. Incidentally, [...]
The post The World Before the Flood – John Thomas appeared first on Life Is Story.
Despite this book’s heavy topic, I found it to be a quick and easy read. David E. Clarke writes in a very concise and clear style, and each chapter is brief, well-organized, and to-the-point. Over [...]
The post Enough Is Enough: A Step-by-Step Plan to Leave an Abusive Relationship with God’s Help – David E. Clarke and William G. Clarke appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this new installment in the Tales that Tell the Truth series, Trillia Newbell addresses the issue of favoritism, sharing the message of James 2:1-26 at a child-friendly level. She provides context for the time [...]
The post The Big Wide Welcome Storybook: A True Story About Jesus, James, and a Church That Learned to Love All Sorts of People – Trillia Newbell and Catalina Echeverri appeared first on Life Is Story.
Forgiveness is a difficult and complicated topic, especially since people have so many different definitions for what forgiveness means. Wendy Alsup is clear and biblical, and she is realistic about the differences between forgiveness and [...]
The post I Forgive You: Finding Peace and Moving Forward When Life Really Hurts – Wendy Alsup appeared first on Life Is Story.
It’s been 18 years since Sarah Young published Jesus Calling, the bestselling devotional that broke barriers with its simplicity, authenticity, and comforting message. It was a message that was both general enough to apply to [...]
The post Jesus Listens – Sarah Young appeared first on Life Is Story.
Life has seasons. That’s something I’ve been reflecting on recently as I’ve gone through a sort of extended period of transition, following God and figuring out what the next steps in life are. Sometimes I [...]
The post The Six Seasons of Calling – Brian Sanders appeared first on Life Is Story.
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr is one of the most unique books I have ever read. Considering how ardent a reader I am, that is saying something. Let me preface this review by saying [...]
The post Cloud Cuckoo Land – Anthony Doerr appeared first on Life Is Story.
This was my first David Abraham book. The summary caught my attention, so I thought I would dip my toe into another epic fantasy series. I try not to read other people’s reviews before beginning [...]
The post Age of Ash – David Abraham appeared first on Life Is Story.
Imagine a scene with two children and one child does something to the other that’s intentionally or unintentionally mean or rude. Cuts in line. Takes their toy. Shoves them. You get the idea. We’ve all [...]
The post The 5 Apology Languages – Gary Chapman and Jennifer Thomas appeared first on Life Is Story.
All thriller. No filler. James Patterson is known for his utilitarian writing style and blazingly fast plots. Many of his books have multiple plots all threaded together, and, at least in the case of the [...]
The post The Medical Examiner (Women’s Murder Club #16.5) – Maxine Paetro and James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
All thriller. No filler. James Patterson is known for his utilitarian writing style and blazingly fast plots. Many of his books have multiple plots all threaded together, and, at least in the case of the [...]
The post The Trial (Women’s Murder Club #15.5) – Maxine Paetro and James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Always be careful what you wish for. If you’ve read the reviews I’ve done for the last few books in this series, you’ll have noticed that I continually hit upon two themes: 1) Lindsay’s family [...]
The post 15th Affair (Women’s Murder Club #15) – Maxine Paetro and James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
It’s Claire Washburn’s birthday and there’s been another murder. As Lindsay and the rest of the cop crew head off to investigate, Claire remarks that this is the third birthday in a row where there’s [...]
The post 14th Deadly Sin (Women’s Murder Club #14) – Maxine Paetro and James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Unlucky 13 is the continuing saga of the Women’s Murder Club, although the series has long ago become less about the women coming together to solve a murder and more about each member of the [...]
The post Unlucky 13 (Women’s Murder Club #13) – Maxine Paetro and James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
There’s the old saying that says “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” There’s a lesser-known saying that says “If it’s broke and nobody notices, it ain’t broke.” The twelfth Women’s Murder Club novel feels [...]
The post 12th of Never (Women’s Murder Club #12) – Maxine Paetro and James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is really a tale of two books. There’s plotting and there’s characterization. In terms of plotting, 11th Hour is a step ahead of most of the Women’s Murder Club novels. The primary plot is [...]
The post 11th Hour (Women’s Murder Club #11) – James Patterson and Maxine Paetro appeared first on Life Is Story.
The quality of the Women’s Murder Club series is best defined as a roller coaster. With all the ups and downs, twists and turns, you never know what you’re going to get. Patterson and Paetro [...]
The post 10th Anniversary (Women’s Murder Club #10) – Maxine Paetro and James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Every time I’m about to give up on this series, James Patterson and Maxine Paetro actually deliver a good novel. The 9th Judgment isn’t devoid of soap opera style drama that’s been slopped over the [...]
The post The 9th Judgment (Women’s Murder Club #9) – Maxine Paetro and James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Eight novels into the Women’s Murder Club and five novels into Maxine Paetro’s co-authorship, the series has begun to develop into more than a series of disparate storylines. While every novel ends with the case [...]
The post The 8th Confession (Women’s Murder Club #8) – Maxine Paetro and James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
After the disappointment that was The 6th Target, pretty much any plotline that makes the good guys look like the good guys would look stellar in comparison. 7th Heaven is almost return to form for [...]
The post 7th Heaven (Women’s Murder Club #7) – Maxine Paetro and James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
2007 was a big year for Other Earth. It’s three years after Ted Dekker’s breakout Circle Trilogy—about a million copies sold—and he’s just about to release the first two in what will eventually become a [...]
The post The Circle Trilogy Visual Edition – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
You’ve not read a marriage book like this one. Choosing Us is less marriage manual and more marriage memoir. It’s the story of Gail Song Bantum and Brian Bantum, the challenges they’ve faced, the lessons [...]
The post Choosing Us – Brian and Gail Song Bantum appeared first on Life Is Story.
White begins seamlessly where Red, left off—with the Raison Strain beginning to wreak its havoc with no known cure in sight in one world, while in another world the Circle copes with a radical new [...]
The post White (The Circle Series #3) – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
Attached to God is the type of book you can’t grasp in one reading. I had a difficult time writing this review because every time I sat down to parse out just how I felt [...]
The post Attached to God – Krispin Mayfield appeared first on Life Is Story.
Black leaves the reader with one world torn apart by Shataiki. Paradise is lost on Other Earth while this earth begins to suffer the effects of the Raison Strain. Red wastes little time plunging the [...]
The post Red (The Circle Series #2) – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
The first sentence of the back cover blurb should have told me everything I needed to know about this book: Kaity Anderson was a new bride on her wedding day. That’s right. She was a [...]
The post Starganauts – C.E. Stone appeared first on Life Is Story.
It all began with a single, silenced bullet out of nowhere…And with that sentence my life changed. I don’t make that statement lightly. The Circle Trilogy served as the catalyst that threw me back into [...]
The post Black (The Circle Series #1) – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
The times, they are a’ changing. The last couple of years has seen global disruption economically and politically as the world navigated a response to a pandemic that threatened our health and livelihood. The world [...]
The post 10 Leadership Virtues for Disruptive Times – Tom Ziglar appeared first on Life Is Story.
For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. – Matt. [...]
The post Heavy Burdens: Seven Ways LGBTQ Christians Experience Harm in the Church – Bridget Eileen Rivera appeared first on Life Is Story.
Right around the time I became a pacifist—thank you to Nonviolence: The Revolutionary Way of Jesus by Preston Sprinkle for that—I began to seek out other, more academic writings on Christian nonviolence and quickly ran [...]
The post A Field Guide to Christian Nonviolence – David Cramer and Myles Werntz appeared first on Life Is Story.
It first caught my eye in a bargain bin at Walmart in 2004. An inauspicious start to be sure…especially considering that it had released less than a year prior. But the story, one about a [...]
The post Blink – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
There have been a lot of books about the history of race in the United States. There are several good books that push back against the established whitewashed narrative of history that downplays the atrocities [...]
The post Fortune – Lisa Sharon Harper appeared first on Life Is Story.
“Body-positive” is one of those buzzwords that people use to mean all kinds of things. Jennifer Taylor Wagner focuses her definition on helping women love themselves, let go of anxiety and harsh self-judgment, and pursue [...]
The post Your Good Body: Embracing a Body-Positive Mindset in a Perfection-Focused World – Jennifer Taylor Wagner appeared first on Life Is Story.
Food-related and body-image issues have been particularly controversial in recent years, as many people push back against “diet culture” and other people push back against them for going too far. This book lands somewhere in [...]
The post Food Triggers: Exchanging Unhealthy Patterns for God-Honoring Habits – Amber Lia appeared first on Life Is Story.
This sensitive, compassionate book includes thirty daily readings and reflection prompts for Christian women who are pregnant again after miscarriage or stillbirth. Throughout the book, Jenny Albers shares her personal story, emphasizing the constant sense [...]
The post Courageously Expecting: 30 Days of Encouragement for Pregnancy After Loss – Jenny Albers appeared first on Life Is Story.
Kevin Parson escaped a twisted childhood and found some sense of normalcy in the outside world. He’s assimilated. Built his own life outside of the cultish confines of his stepparents’ household. Graduated from college. Is [...]
The post Thr3e – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Gift is a sweet and simple book about a dad who gives his son the gift of artistic expression. Well, it’s simpler than that—it’s just a pen—but what that pen can do opens up [...]
The post The Gift – Alain Serge Dzotap and Delphine Renon appeared first on Life Is Story.
I wish I could tell you how I stumbled upon @dinosandcomics, but that happy accident has been relegated to the mysteries of time…and the Instagram algorithm. It soon became one of my favorite parts of [...]
The post Dinosaur Therapy – @dinosancomics (James Stewart and K Romey) appeared first on Life Is Story.
I was afraid this would happen. After James Patterson and Maxine Paetro showed us what the Women’s Murder Club series could be in The 5th Horseman, they returned to the same implausibly sensational storylines with [...]
The post The 6th Target (Women’s Murder Club #6) – Maxine Paetro and James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is what I wanted out of this series. Maxine Paetro’s second Women’s Murder Club novel—the fifth overall—showcases the potential this series has always had but never lived up to. The 5th Horseman sees Lindsay [...]
The post The 5th Horseman (Women’s Murder Club #5) – Maxine Paetro and James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Up to this point, the Women’s Murder Club series has been a somewhat uneven story about a San Francisco homicide detective and her friends. 1st to Die brought them all together—a cop, a medical examiner, [...]
The post 4th of July (Women’s Murder Club #4) – Maxine Paetro and James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
When it comes to being lonely, you’re not alone. The Loneliness Epidemic begins with the numbers. 36% adults say they feel lonely sometimes or all the time. 34% of Americans aged 18-35 say they feel [...]
The post The Loneliness Epidemic – Susan Mettes appeared first on Life Is Story.
Life is story. It’s the founding premise of this whole website. The more stories I read and the more people I talk to, the more I’ve realized that my theology, politics, and whole general paradigm [...]
The post Family of Origin, Family of Choice – Katie Hays and Susan Chiasson appeared first on Life Is Story.
I love relational novels, novels that are just the stories of people. Don’t get me wrong. I like speculative fiction and thrillers, but sometimes you just want to settle in with a book that is [...]
The post Paint Me Fearless – Hallie Lee appeared first on Life Is Story.
Margaret Wise Brown wrote over 100 children’s books. Even if you don’t know her name, you probably know some of her work, with Goodnight Moon being her most beloved classic. What you probably don’t know, [...]
The post Only Margaret: A Story About Margaret Wise Brown – Candice Ransom appeared first on Life Is Story.
One Million Oysters on Top of the Mountain is a beautifully illustrated ode to geology that centers itself on the question “How did those oysters even get there?” Our guide is Alex Nogues, a Spanish [...]
The post One Million Oysters on Top of the Mountain – Alex Nogues & Miren Asiain Lora appeared first on Life Is Story.
I spent a lot of time reflecting on how I felt about this one. The American Dream of Braven Young is an illustrated children’s book by Brooke Raybould (known as @thesouthernishmama on Instagram) that follows [...]
The post The American Dream of Braven Young – Brooke Raybould appeared first on Life Is Story.
There are not enough good things to say about Rachel Held Evans. She was best known for how she authentically shared her story in a way that encouraged others to take the same journey toward [...]
The post What is God Like? – Rachel Held Evans & Matthew Paul Turner appeared first on Life Is Story.
Let me preface this review by saying I am a horse person. I own a horse. I have been riding for close to 20 years. Granted, I’ve mostly ridden in a Western saddle, not English, [...]
The post The Horsewoman – James Patterson and Mike Lupica appeared first on Life Is Story.
Holt and Penny started out as friends, nothing more. They had occasional phone calls, a few casual get-togethers, but little more then the little, surface-level conversations. But then there’s a serial killer…who happens to be [...]
The post Life Flight – Lynette Eason appeared first on Life Is Story.
I read Sunrise by Susan May Warren and Life Flight by Lynette Eason back to back, not realizing that both books featured pilots—though the male character is the aviator in Sunrise, and the female in [...]
The post Sunrise – Susan May Warren appeared first on Life Is Story.
As tension mounts between Israel and the surrounding Arab nations, David ben Solomon is convinced the only way for it to dissipate is to take it to the boiling point. Muslims have been in control [...]
The post A Man Called Blessed – Ted Dekker and Bill Bright appeared first on Life Is Story.
You probably didn’t know that Ted Dekker owes part of his career to Tim LaHaye and the Left Behind franchise. As the Left Behind series was booming the late 1990s, Campus Crusade for Christ founder [...]
The post Blessed Child – Ted Dekker and Bill Bright appeared first on Life Is Story.
By 2005, Ted Dekker was turning himself into a household name in Christian fiction circles. The previous year had been billed “The Year of the Trilogy” with the release of Black, Red, and White and [...]
The post The Martyr’s Song – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
Thunder of Heaven was Dekker’s third published novel and the conclusion to his loosely-connected trilogy, The Martyr’s Song. While the connections between Heaven’s Wager and When Heaven Weeps were already tenuous (the latter being the [...]
The post Thunder of Heaven – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Women’s Murder Club is back! Andrew Gross returns for a second collaboration with James Patterson and this time the story revolves around stopping a terrorist group that’s fighting for economic justice. I’m going to [...]
The post 3rd Degree (Women’s Murder Club #3) – Andrew Gross and James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
After 1st to Die released to poor reviews from critics (but still hitting #1 on the NYT list), James Patterson did what he does best: hand it off to a different author. Andrew Gross had, [...]
The post 2nd Chance (Women’s Murder Club #2) – Andrew Gross and James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Women’s Murder Club began because James Patterson got tired of getting outsold by John Grisham on the West Coast. The result has been two decades of novels, a TV series, a movie, and—inexplicably—five different [...]
The post 1st To Die (Women’s Murder Club #1) – James Patterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
As many as one in four women and one in nine men are victims of domestic violence. In all likelihood, you either know someone who has been abused or have experienced it yourself. And unfortunately, [...]
The post Hope for Healing from Domestic Abuse – Karen DeArmond Gardner appeared first on Life Is Story.
It’s January and the gyms are full of people trying to get a strong start on their New Year’s resolution: lose weight. Eat healthier, eat less, exercise more, or some combination of the three, weight [...]
The post I’ll Start Again Monday – Lysa TerKeurst appeared first on Life Is Story.
Tony Evans has been a respected voice for decades. His calm demeanor, engaging writing, and quiet wit has made his books accessible, readable, and understandable. In Hope for the Hurting, Evans lends his traditional style [...]
The post Hope for the Hurting – Tony Evans appeared first on Life Is Story.
What comes to mind when you hear the world Dwelling? For me, I get this impression of burrowing in, a deep sort of residing, a warm and inviting presence of permanence. For Donna Lane, Dwelling [...]
The post Dwelling – Donna Lane appeared first on Life Is Story.
Jason Thompson is the discipleship pastor at Renovation Church in Simpsonville, South Carolina. Being a pastor was never his goal or part of his academic training, he just followed God’s lead and was given opportunities [...]
The post Worth No Less – Jason Thompson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Shattered, Stirred, and Shaken is a memoir of sorts from Michele McCarthy the explores her growth in faith and reliance on the Holy Spirit. It’s a deeply personal look at McCarthy’s faith journey, the lessons [...]
The post Shattered, Stirred, and Shaken – Michele McCarthy appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Greatest Wave is the latest in a series of Bible studies from Cho Larson, an Arizona-based Christian author and teacher. This particular book focuses on Christ’s righteousness and has thirty different chapters divided into [...]
The post The Greatest Wave – Cho Larson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Unraveling the Lie-Knot is the kind of book that’s not bad, but its lack of audience clarity and amateur formatting present it in a way that makes it less compelling than it actually is. It’s [...]
The post Unraveling the Lie-Knot – Sheryl Giesbrecht Turner appeared first on Life Is Story.
Throughout Love Me Anyway, Jared C. Wilson writes in an engaging, personal style, sharing stories from his life to help illustrate his messages about love, our struggles to feel or express love, and the perfect [...]
The post Love Me Anyway: How God’s Perfect Love Fills Our Deepest Longing – Jared C. Wilson appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is the best book I have read about technology, and I have read a vast number. I first became interested in social commentary about the digital world in 2013, alarmed by rapid changes in [...]
The post Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age – Felicia Wu Song appeared first on Life Is Story.
I read the first chapter of The Girl Who Could Breathe Under Water, then put the book away for a bit. Part of it was to process the magnificent opening. Most of it was because [...]
The post The Girl Who Could Breathe Under Water – Erin Bartels appeared first on Life Is Story.
Ted Dekker has written over fifty books and sold millions of copies, but back in May 2000 his debut novel was just one of a number of books sitting spine-out on the Christian fiction rack. [...]
The post Heaven’s Wager – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
Just about a year ago (in January 2021), Jemar Tisby released How to Fight Racism, a practical book filled actionable ideas to make real substantive change in one’s community. Now he’s gone back and adapted [...]
The post How To Fight Racism: Young Reader’s Edition – Jemar Tisby appeared first on Life Is Story.
These days, John Grisham sells books on the basis of his name rather than the basis of his stories. While his writing is strongest when he sticks with proper legal thrillers, Grisham has the penchant [...]
The post The Judge’s List – John Grisham appeared first on Life Is Story.
In the preface to The Heaven Trilogy, a 3-in-1 re-release that includes Heaven’s Wager and Thunder of Heaven, Dekker remarks that many readers—even those who aren’t fans of any of his other books—find When Heaven [...]
The post When Heaven Weeps – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
It’s been four years since Francine Rivers last released a novel and longer than that since she’s delivered a historical romance similar to her enduring classic, Redeeming Love. To say that The Lady’s Mine is [...]
The post The Lady’s Mine – Francine Rivers appeared first on Life Is Story.
Daniel I. Block is the Gunther H. Knoedler Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Wheaton College. He has lectured and taught extensively on the Old Testament and covenant theology for many, many years. He’s written [...]
The post Covenant – Daniel Block appeared first on Life Is Story.
At the beginning of Billy Graham’s ministry in the 1940s, he instituted what would become known as the “Billy Graham Rule.” The rule was simple: never be alone with a woman. The intentions were good, [...]
The post Together in Ministry – Rob Dixon appeared first on Life Is Story.
I picked up this book because I thought I would disagree with it. I’ve specifically preached, in the past, that God does not get everything God wants and the title of this book is the [...]
The post God Gets Everything God Wants – Katie Hays appeared first on Life Is Story.
It’s a common trope that kids “bounce back” from whatever it is that bothers them. But it’s not so much that kids are adaptable or resilient as much as they often have little agency to [...]
The post Forming Resilient Children – Holly Catterton Allen appeared first on Life Is Story.
We live in a world where we would rather move on from the atrocities of our past, where a common cultural religion tells us to “forgive and forget.” Amid all of that, Miroslav Volf calls [...]
The post The End of Memory – Miroslav Volf appeared first on Life Is Story.
I grew up as a young earth creationist. Ken Ham came and talked to my homeschool group level of young earth creationist. My first Bible was a KJV Defender’s Study Bible with study notes by [...]
The post The Genealogical Adam and Eve – S. Joshua Swamidass appeared first on Life Is Story.
I am a product of evangelicalism. I was born into evangelicalism. Grew up in evangelicalism. Studied in evangelicalism. Ordained in evangelicalism. Taught in evangelicalism. And while the cracks in the foundation had made themselves known [...]
The post Struggling with Evangelicalism – Dan Stringer appeared first on Life Is Story.
Have you ever listened in on a conversation with two people who were definitely smarter than you? Like, you were smart enough to follow the conversation and understand most of what was being said, but [...]
The post Five Things Theologians Wish Biblical Scholars Knew – Hans Boersma appeared first on Life Is Story.
Deconstruction. It’s a word I’ve heard over and over again as more and more young people distance themselves from the faith in which they grew up. And many times, what I’m seeing is that deconstruction [...]
The post When Everything’s on Fire: Faith Forged from the Ashes – Brian Zahnd appeared first on Life Is Story.
I don’t think that I really understood the way in which some forms of Christianity and some aspects of culture take a low of the human body until I read this book. It’s something that [...]
The post The Wisdom of Your Body – Hillary McBride appeared first on Life Is Story.
Have you ever listened in on a conversation with two people who were definitely smarter than you? Like, you were smart enough to follow the conversation and understand most of what was being said, but [...]
The post Five Things Biblical Scholars Wish Theologians Knew – Scot McKnight appeared first on Life Is Story.
Have you ever felt like the universe cracked? Whether globally, like in the rise of nationalism and racism, or personally like the loss of a friend or family member? We’ve all gone through those times [...]
The post When the Universe Cracks – ed. Angie Ward appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Quest of the Historical Adam is the result of over half a decade of work by theologian and philosopher William Lane Craig to explore the question of human origins and reconcile Scripture with modern [...]
The post In Quest of the Historical Adam – William Lane Craig appeared first on Life Is Story.
Spiritual Leadership was borne out of a series of lectures that J. Oswald Sanders delivered to the leaders of Overseas Missionary Fellowship in 1964 and 1966 as the organization—which had been known as China Inland [...]
The post Spiritual Leadership – J. Oswald Sanders appeared first on Life Is Story.
More so than any book in history, the Bible and its authority has been misused and weaponized to oppress and demean. From that foundation, Black womanist theologian Angela Parker embarks on an exploration of what [...]
The post If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I? – Angela Parker appeared first on Life Is Story.
For much of church history, the voices of women have been relatively silenced, stifled under cultural patriarchy that dismissed the importance of women in the church and a Christian humility by women who didn’t seek [...]
The post Women in the Mission of the Church – Leanne Dzubinski and Anneke Stasson appeared first on Life Is Story.
For years, Mark Yarhouse has been the leading conservative evangelical scholar for LGBTQ+ issues. While he does not describe himself as affirming theologically, his practical academic understanding of sexual identity has led him to a [...]
The post Listening to Sexual Minorities – Mark Yarhouse with Janet Dean, Stephen Stratton, and Michael Lastoria appeared first on Life Is Story.
As a pastor, I don’t think it is possible for one to preach with authenticity without recognizing the pain the members of one’s members might be going through—or indeed, without recognizing and acknowledging one’s own [...]
The post Preaching to People in Pain – Matthew Kim appeared first on Life Is Story.
Christian distrust of science is noticeable in the current pandemic response and climate change, but the root of that distrust—even though the historical rift goes back to the Middle Ages—is the debate between creation and [...]
The post Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark – Janet Kellogg Ray appeared first on Life Is Story.
As postmodernity roils on and Christianity moves out of the cultural limelight, Christians are left with a horrifying reality: they are no longer the “default.” Particularly in America, white Christianity has been the default culture [...]
The post Wisdom from Babylon – Gordon Smith appeared first on Life Is Story.
Despite four hundred years of slavery, America as a system—and America as white Christian culture—have never really seriously considered reparations for the enslavement of our Black brothers and sisters. It’s been considered too late (after [...]
The post Reparations – Duke Kwon and Gregory Thompson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Jack and the Fantastical Circus is a colorful exploration of virtues as told through a circus train, as dreamed by a young boy on the way to see his grandpa. The story-within-a-story is a bit [...]
The post Jack and the Fantastical Circus – Ariel and Michael Tyson appeared first on Life Is Story.
If you’re like me, it seems like all of your friends are having babies and baby shower gifts are a necessity. Again, if you’re like me and your go-to gift is a book, you’re left [...]
The post I Grew With You – Sarah Molitor appeared first on Life Is Story.
There’s been a lot of ink spilled in recent years about emotional, spiritual, and sexual abuse by clergy—and all of it well justified—but a part of the conversation that often goes unspoken are all the [...]
The post Church Abuse of Clergy – Gene Fowler appeared first on Life Is Story.
The world is a rather tense place. From the way we talk about politics to the way we treat service workers, there seems to have been an influx of conflict—and not just disagreements but disagreements [...]
The post The Space Between Us – Betty Pries appeared first on Life Is Story.
Ainsley and Lincoln face a crime with twists and turns that would leave even the brightest minds baffled. On top of that, they have a history together—of misunderstandings and love left behind. Can they look [...]
The post Crosshairs – Patricia Bradley appeared first on Life Is Story.
I picked up Autopsy by Patricia Cornwell due to its intriguing summary. I had no idea it was the 25th book in a series until after I had already started the novel. Autopsy stands well [...]
The post Autopsy – Patricia Cornwell appeared first on Life Is Story.
I waited a while before writing this review, as I wanted time to absorb The Liar’s Knot by M.A. Carrick. I liked its precursor, The Mask of Mirrors, but the second book of Carrick’s Rook & Rose series deserves [...]
The post The Liar’s Knot – M.A. Carrick appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this raw memoir, Philip Yancey shares about his life experiences growing up in an abusive home and a legalistic church environment. The book covers much of his life, going into great detail about his [...]
The post Where the Light Fell: A Memoir – Philip Yancey appeared first on Life Is Story.
As a church leader, one of the most difficult parts of ministry is getting volunteers. The old adage rings true: 20% of the people will do 80% of the work. What I’ve found is not [...]
The post Empower – Jeff Martin appeared first on Life Is Story.
As a young, white evangelical I read every single book on apologetics I could get my hands on. Not only did I read Evidence That Demands a Verdict, I read the books Josh McDowell cited [...]
The post Urban Apologetics – ed. Eric Mason appeared first on Life Is Story.
By and large, the church has not proven itself to be a reliable resource when it comes to the treatment or acre of mental health. Ignorance is often at play—pastors and church members simply aren’t [...]
The post Not Quite Fine – Carlene Hill Byron appeared first on Life Is Story.
It is no longer a secret that the face of Christianity is changing. It is getting browner, gayer, and more feminine. In light of this long overdue development, one must ask, what is the value [...]
The post Queering Wesley, Queering the Church – Keegan Osinski appeared first on Life Is Story.
This board book features eight double-page spreads with vivid depictions of scenes from the New Testament. Sarah Parker introduces each story in a brief paragraph, and includes the source reference to each Bible passage. The [...]
The post Seek and Find: New Testament Bible Stories – Sarah Parker and Andre Parker appeared first on Life Is Story.
This small, staple-bound paperback tells the story of Jesus meeting Zacchaeus and changing his heart. Steph William’s simple, energetic text and colorful pictures convey the core themes of the story in ways that are accessible [...]
The post The Little Man Whose Heart Grew Big – Steph Williams appeared first on Life Is Story.
This small, staple-bound paperback retells Jesus’s parable of the Prodigal Son. Steph William’s simple, energetic text and colorful pictures convey the core themes of the story in ways that are accessible to young children, emphasizing [...]
The post The Dad Who Never Gave Up – Steph Williams appeared first on Life Is Story.
Amy Gannett writes in an approachable, conversational style throughout this book, sharing insights into God, the Bible, and Christian theology. This book is great for new believers or Christians who want to learn more about [...]
The post Fix Your Eyes: How Our Study of God Shapes Our Worship of Him – Amy Gannett appeared first on Life Is Story.
It’s difficult to summarize the plot of Smoke Screen. I’ve tried a dozen different ways and keep coming up short. Terri Blackstock has delivered a full story with a complex plot that proves to be [...]
The post Smoke Screen – Terri Blackstock appeared first on Life Is Story.
The London House is an incredible novel. While it’s not your typical dual-time novel, it does span two different time periods, and it’s historical aspect is strictly epistolary and beautifully depicted. In the present day, [...]
The post The London House – Katherine Reay appeared first on Life Is Story.
Under the Magnolias is absolutely amazing – Raw, filled with authenticity, with realistic characters. It’s the first T.I. Lowe novel I’ve read, but definitely won’t be the last! Set in the 1980s, Under the Magnolias is the [...]
The post Under the Magnolias – T.I. Lowe appeared first on Life Is Story.
Liberation Theology gives us tools with which to recontextualize the scriptures in ways that make sense to the hurting. These meanings which emerge from the scriptures under a liberation lens are neither new nor novel, [...]
The post Child Theology: Diverse Methods and Global Perspectives – Marcia J. Bunge appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Two Cities is two thousand years of political history packed into just under 400 pages. Taking its title from Augustine’s The City of God, where he posits that there are two cities: Rome, which [...]
The post The Two Cities – Andrew Willard Jones appeared first on Life Is Story.
I read a lot of Christian fiction, so when I heard about Daniel Silliman’s Reading Evangelicals: How Christian Fiction Shaped a Culture and a Faith, I was immediately intrigued. Silliman selects five books as cultural [...]
The post Reading Evangelicals – Daniel Silliman appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have no other words to describe God Speaks Through Wombs than has a beautiful act of worship from Drew Jackson. Drew is a pastor, poet, and peacemaker from New York City with degrees in [...]
The post God Speaks Through Wombs – Drew Jackson appeared first on Life Is Story.
A bright and colorful book for young readers and pre-readers, The O in Hope is designed to draw attention to the roundest of letters—and the goodness of God’s gifts of hope and love. Poet Luci [...]
The post The O in Hope – Luci Shaw appeared first on Life Is Story.
My family is in the minority, but we’ve made a decision not to participate in the Americanized cultural myth that is Santa Claus. Part of it is secular consumerism overtaking the focus on the Christ [...]
The post Saint Nicholas the Giftgiver – Ned Bustard appeared first on Life Is Story.
Isaiah has a lot to worry about. His mom works hard but doesn’t make a lot of money. His dad lives by himself in another place. His sister has been rebellious and argues a lot [...]
The post Isaiah and the Worry Pack – Ruth Goring appeared first on Life Is Story.
For many in the Western church, Jesus is a Western construct. We don’t always realize it, because it’s been the case since virtually the Romanization of Christianity with Constantine and evolved as the Europeanization of [...]
The post Jesus of the East – Phuc Luu appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is one of those books you have to take your time working through. Relational Spirituality: A Psychological-Theological Paradigm for Transformation is an intimidating title, but at the heart of its message is simply that [...]
The post Relational Spirituality – Todd and M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall appeared first on Life Is Story.
In 1996, Craig Keener wrote a book called 3 Crucial Questions About the Holy Spirit. Five years later, that content got significantly reworked into the first edition of Gift and Giver: The Holy Spirit for [...]
The post Gift and Giver – Craig Keener appeared first on Life Is Story.
I had no clue how David Baldacci was going to write his way out of the increasingly convoluted overarching storyline in his Atlee Pine novels. Mercy, the fourth and final book in the series is [...]
The post Mercy (Atlee Pine #4) – David Baldacci appeared first on Life Is Story.
Unlike most pastors I know, I love the Old Testament. And I love the Old Testament because I love stories. (This website is called Life is Story, after all.) But preaching Old Testament narrative isn’t [...]
The post The Art of Preaching Old Testament Narrative – Steven Mathewson appeared first on Life Is Story.
There are approximately a million books on Christian leadership. I know this because I’m a doctoral candidate working on a degree in pastoral leadership and I’ve had to read most of them. The truth is [...]
The post Leadership in Christian Perspective – Justin Irving and Mark Strauss appeared first on Life Is Story.
Early on in the book, Brian Brock writes that the majority of pastors, when asked how their church accommodates individuals with disabilities, respond with some form of “Oh, we don’t have any members with disabilities.” [...]
The post Disability: Living into the Diversity of Christ’s Body – Brian Brock appeared first on Life Is Story.
“I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.” This provocative, well-argued book presents a solid case for why the words [...]
The post You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World – Alan Noble appeared first on Life Is Story.
This timely book, which Sally Clarkson wrote during COVID-19 lockdown, is full of understanding and encouragement for women who feel overwhelmed with life’s suffering. Clarkson shares illustrations from her own life, ranging over multiple decades, [...]
The post Help, I’m Drowning: Weathering the Storms of Life with Grace and Hope – Sally Clarkson appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this short, accessible philosophical reflection, Gregg Ten Elshof clarifies the meaning of shame and encourages his readers to recognize its value within society. He communicates from the beginning that he does not want to [...]
The post For Shame: Rediscovering the Virtues of a Maligned Emotion – Gregg Ten Elshof appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is one of those cases where you really can judge a book by its cover. When I first saw this book advertised, I was delighted with the guy on the cover giving his friend [...]
The post How Should a Christian Date?: It’s Not as Complicated as You Think – Eric Demeter appeared first on Life Is Story.
I am a horse person. Have been since I sat on a horse as a little girl. My mother recently found a photo of two- or three-year-old me on a pony. There is also a [...]
The post Mini Horse, Mighty Hope – Debbie Garcia-Bengochea and Peggy Frezon appeared first on Life Is Story.
I believe I have mentioned this before in a review: “America is the best” novels are some of my favorites. The genre hooked me from the moment my mother introduced me to Brad Thor and [...]
The post Lights Out – Natalie Walters appeared first on Life Is Story.
I went into this book with limited knowledge of the Allender Center and its work, but I knew enough to expect that I would find the book insightful, helpful, and deeply ministering. Unfortunately, Redeeming Heartache: [...]
The post Redeeming Heartache: How Past Suffering Reveals Our True Calling – Dan B. Allender and Cathy Loerzel appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book spoke to me deeply because of the author’s sensitivity, honesty, and raw reflections about life and faith. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book, since it doesn’t have an obvious thesis [...]
The post The God of the Garden: Thoughts on Creation, Culture, and the Kingdom – Andrew Peterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Throughout this book, Daniel Strange builds on work by the twentieth century Dutch pastor and missionary J. H. Bavinck, who studied anthropology and psychology. Bavinck offered insight into the core, universal elements of human experience [...]
The post Making Faith Magnetic: Five Hidden Themes Our Culture Can’t Stop Talking About… And How to Connect Them to Christ – Daniel Strange appeared first on Life Is Story.
This Advent devotional focuses on Matthew’s account of the Nativity story. Sinclair B. Ferguson delves into both the popular and the difficult elements of these historical events, and throughout the book, he provides insight into [...]
The post The Dawn of Redeeming Grace: A Daily Advent Devotional – Sinclair B. Ferguson appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is part memoir and part exposition of Romans 8, as Noe Garcia uses his personal story to illustrate how God rescues us from our sin, gives us a new life, and frees us [...]
The post Repurposed: How God Turns Your Mess into His Message – Noe Garcia appeared first on Life Is Story.
I almost never read women’s devotionals, because I expect them to be fluffy, vaguely uplifting books that I don’t relate to. However, because Ellie Holcomb’s music has been such a blessing to me over the [...]
The post Fighting Words Devotional: 100 Days of Speaking Truth into the Darkness – Ellie Holcomb appeared first on Life Is Story.
When I first learned about this book, I thought it sounded interesting, but then I learned that the specific mental illness that Sarah Clarkson struggles with is OCD. My interest immediately increased a hundredfold, because [...]
The post This Beautiful Truth: How God’s Goodness Breaks into Our Darkness – Sarah Clarkson appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have known the Nativity story all my life, but I still felt eager to get back to reading this book each night, because I wanted to know what happened next. The Promise and the [...]
The post The Promise and the Light: A Christmas Retelling – Katy Morgan appeared first on Life Is Story.
With vivid imagery, a strong message, and an engaging story, Ted and Rachelle Dekker give young readers an adventure they’ll not be able to put down. And They Found Dragons is an intense, thought-provoking, mind-opening, [...]
The post And They Found Dragons – Rachelle and Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’m convinced that everyone loved Rachel Held Evans, even those that hated her. Her winsome personality, passionate living, and way with words; her honesty, vulnerability, and transparency; her poignant insights, deep questions, and unbridled love—so [...]
The post Wholehearted Faith – Rachel Held Evans appeared first on Life Is Story.
There is a battle of monumental proportions raging just beyond the skin of this world. Inevitably, this battle seeps into what we can see in this physical realm and confronts us, confounds us, and disturbs [...]
The post Dark to Mortal Eyes – Eric Wilson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Are these the shadows of things that must be, or are they the shadows of things that might be? – Ebenezer Scrooge After a mysterious encounter with an even more mysterious individual, Clay Ryker finds [...]
The post Expiration Date – Eric Wilson appeared first on Life Is Story.
He was a killer from the very start. He couldn’t stand the truth because there wasn’t a shred of truth in him. – John 8:44 Black is back in a whole new adventure. Less than [...]
The post A Shred of Truth – Eric Wilson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Don’t let evil get the best of you. get the best of evil by doing good. – Romans 12:21 “Live by the Sword” – “Die by the Sword” Aramis Black’s former creed is tattooed into [...]
The post The Best of Evil – Eric Wilson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Going to try to turn off my romantic-suspense cynicism for this review, because Deadly Target by Elizabeth Goddard does not deserve it. While unrealistic in many ways, Goddard’s second installment of her Rocky Mountain Courage [...]
The post Deadly Target – Elizabeth Goddard appeared first on Life Is Story.
After She Falls by Carmen Schober is not the type of book to which I would normally be drawn. I’m an equestrian, not a fighter. One of my coworkers trains in mixed martial arts, but I [...]
The post After She Falls – Carmen Schober appeared first on Life Is Story.
Beautiful and artful, A Perfect Day is the perfect book for a young nature lover. While many children’s books exist because of their text—usually in sing-songy rhythm—A Perfect Day is primarily about the art and [...]
The post A Perfect Day – Jennifer Yerkes appeared first on Life Is Story.
Bear with me while I get a little bit philosophical. In seminary, one of the first things they teach you (or should teach you) is the necessity of reading Scripture in its context. That means [...]
The post Seek and Find New Testament Stories – Sarah Parker appeared first on Life Is Story.
One of my pet pastoral peeves is that the famous parable in Luke 15 is called “The Prodigal Son,” because the focus shouldn’t be on the son. It’s about the father and his two (not [...]
The post The Dad Who Never Gave Up – Steph Williams appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Little Man Whose Heart Grew Big is a simple retelling of the story of Zacchaeus in language accessible and appropriate for young readers and bright, bold illustrations. Steph Williams gets to the heart of [...]
The post The Little Man Whose Heart Grew Big – Steph Williams appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Paris Betrayal is a stunning novel of spies, espionage, and action! Did I mention danger? It jumped out at me from every page! I felt like I was in the middle of The Bourne [...]
The post The Paris Betrayal – James Hannibal appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Mask of Mirrors by M.A. Carrick caught my attention first due to its cover–and after reading the novel, the title couldn’t be more perfect. Some of my favorite stories involve masks, so of course a [...]
The post The Mask of Mirrors – M.A. Carrick appeared first on Life Is Story.
I Can Help is a story of redemption. Not a typical one and, if I’m honest, not as satisfying as I’d hoped, but an authentic one. It’s a story about how self-preservation can cause us [...]
The post I Can Help – Reem Faruqi and Mikela Prevost appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is a book about The Very Hungry Plant. It’s a simple tale. First, there is a carnivorous plant. Then, it eats everything. Renato Morigoni’s painted narrative grows more and more absurd as the plant [...]
The post The Very Hungry Plant – Renato Morigoni appeared first on Life Is Story.
Last year, Skye Jethani (you might know him from The Holy Post podcast) released a book called What If Jesus Was Serious? It was a light-hearted, colorful, fun discussion of what it means to actually [...]
The post What if Jesus was Serious about Prayer – Skye Jethani appeared first on Life Is Story.
One of the most important lessons that seminary taught me was how critical it is to read Scripture in its appropriate context. Because of the didactic nature of Paul’s letters, they can often be read [...]
The post An Illustrated Guide to the Apostle Paul – Alan S. Bandy appeared first on Life Is Story.
Life is story. Memoir that shifts between personal reflection and theological musing is one of the best sort of stories you can get as the author seeks to connect their story to the larger story [...]
The post No Longer Strangers – Gregory Coles appeared first on Life Is Story.
Ask any addict: recovery is difficult. It requires vigilance. It requires retraining your mind, your body, your habits. It’s not just an acute problem, resolved by one decision to quit or go to rehab or [...]
The post Freedom Starts Today – John Elmore appeared first on Life Is Story.
Early North African Christianity begins by defining what he means by Africa, or as the title puts it, North Africa: He will be dealing with that northernmost region of the African continent while it was under [...]
The post Early North African Christianity – David Eastman appeared first on Life Is Story.
There are a lot of people who are coming to a realization that evangelical Christianity has to be different. More than ever, I am finding people from evangelical backgrounds who are clinging to faith but [...]
The post On Love and Mercy: A Social Justice Devotional – Stephen Mattson appeared first on Life Is Story.
You may have heard this story before. A boy and his father need to take their goods into town. The father rides with the good on the donkey and the boy walks behind. The townspeople [...]
The post Nasreddine – Odile Weulersse appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is the story of one bird, which is something you might not expect from a book called 189 Canaries. It’s the story of this one bird’s journey from the mines of Germany to a [...]
The post 189 Canaries – Dieter Boge, Elsa Klever, Laura Watkinson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Do you like bears? If yes, this is not a book a for you. Bear With Me is a book about a bear who is not wanted and will not leave. Not if you ask [...]
The post Bear with Me – Noemi Vola appeared first on Life Is Story.
It’s time for Carnaval and Clara is excited. Her Bisa (great-grandmother) takes her shopping for all the supplies and helps her make a beautiful costume. But when it comes time to go, Bisa stays home. [...]
The post Bisa’s Carnaval – Joana Pastro and Carolina Coroa appeared first on Life Is Story.
With warm, inviting illustrations and a lyrical narrative, Bright Brown Baby is the perfect book for celebrating Black and brown families and the joy babies bring. Husband and wife team Andrea and Brian Pinkney have [...]
The post Bright Brown Baby – Brian and Andrea Davis Pinkney appeared first on Life Is Story.
If You Miss Me is the story of a little girl who moves away from her grandma. They did so many things together, dancing especially, but then Charlie had to move to the city. Her [...]
The post If You Miss Me – Jocelyn Li Langrand appeared first on Life Is Story.
My son is enamored with the moon. Last winter, we lived with my parents for a few months while preparing for an international move and every night, my son and my dad would traipse out [...]
The post The Children’s Moon – Carmen Agra Deedy appeared first on Life Is Story.
Terri Blackstock has been a banner name in Christian fiction for over twenty years. I’ve found some of her books riveting and some of her books lacking. Recently, I decided to go back to some [...]
The post Line of Duty (Newpointe 911 #5) – Terri Blackstock appeared first on Life Is Story.
Terri Blackstock has been a banner name in Christian fiction for over twenty years. I’ve found some of her books riveting and some of her books lacking. Recently, I decided to go back to some [...]
The post Trial by Fire (Newpointe 911 #4) – Terri Blackstock appeared first on Life Is Story.
Terri Blackstock has been a banner name in Christian fiction for over twenty years. I’ve found some of her books riveting and some of her books lacking. Recently, I decided to go back to some [...]
The post Word of Honor (Newpointe 911 #3) – Terri Blackstock appeared first on Life Is Story.
Terri Blackstock has been a banner name in Christian fiction for over twenty years. I’ve found some of her books riveting and some of her books lacking. Recently, I decided to go back to some [...]
The post Shadow of Doubt (Newpointe 911 #2) – Terri Blackstock appeared first on Life Is Story.
Terri Blackstock has been a banner name in Christian fiction for over twenty years. I’ve found some of her books riveting and some of her books lacking. Recently, I decided to go back to some [...]
The post Private Justice (Newpointe 911 #1) – Terri Blackstock appeared first on Life Is Story.
A book like Leaving Silence is difficult to read because it forces readers to face the harm of sexualized violence—and not just as something perpetrated by “the world” but as a recurring theme in the [...]
The post Leaving Silence – Susannah Larry appeared first on Life Is Story.
There is a misconception that practicing non-violence means being a doormat and letting people walk all over you. Along with that is the misconception that pacifists preach a utopist Gospel that sees everyone as a [...]
The post How to Have an Enemy – Melissa Florer-Bixler appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’m writing this review a few days after news reports surfaced of US Border Patrol on horseback, chasing down Haitian refugees at the southern border. With that backdrop, let me simply say that Refuge Reimagined [...]
The post Refuge Reimagined – Mark and Luke Glanville appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Bible says it. I believe it. And that’s good enough for me. This was a common phrase I heard growing up in the Church of Christ—a staunchly evangelical denomination born out of the Restoration [...]
The post Every Leaf, Line, and Letter – ed. Timothy Larsen appeared first on Life Is Story.
Cradling Abundance is an African story of an African Christian who, within her highly patriarchal culture, fought to empower women and resist systemic poverty and injustice. Monique Misenga Ngoie Mukuna is a lay leader in [...]
The post Cradling Abundance – Monique Misenga Ngoie Mukuna & Elsie Tshimunyi McKee appeared first on Life Is Story.
This magnificent biography by Harry Lee Poe covers the middle years of C.S. Lewis’s life. The Making of C. S. Lewis (1918–1945): From Atheist to Apologist is the second book in a planned trilogy, and [...]
The post The Making of C. S. Lewis (1918–1945): From Atheist to Apologist – Harry Lee Poe appeared first on Life Is Story.
I grew up reading World magazine, which Marvin Olasky contributes to and edits, and I appreciate his investigative journalism and opinion pieces. Because I remember him writing some about his frustrations and strained relationship with [...]
The post Lament for a Father: The Journey to Understanding and Forgiveness – Marvin Olasky appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is conversational and easy to read, helping readers consider ways that C.S. Lewis’s perspective and methods could help them in their efforts to have spiritual conversations with friends. Randy Newman shares his own [...]
The post Mere Evangelism: 10 Insights From C.S. Lewis to Help You Share Your Faith – Randy Newman appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is full of compassionate wisdom for mothers and fathers dealing with pregnancy loss, stillbirth, and early infant death. The author, Rachel Lewis, writes with raw emotion and tender compassion, sharing about her own [...]
The post Unexpecting: Real Talk on Pregnancy Loss – Rachel Lewis appeared first on Life Is Story.
Denisse Copeland bases this book on the story of Mary and Martha from Luke 10:38-42. She writes that even though this story can seem discouraging to driven, Type-A women, its true message doesn’t focus on [...]
The post Set Apart: Stop Comparing, Own Your Giftedness, and Rest in Jesus – Denisse Copeland appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this powerful memoir, Blair Linne writes about her experiences with fatherlessness, sharing about how deeply it impacted her to grow up without a dad in the home. As she writes about her childhood, teenage [...]
The post Finding My Father: How the Gospel Heals the Pain of Fatherlessness – Blair Linne appeared first on Life Is Story.
This devotional book features twenty-five daily readings, which are all brief and easily attainable for busy families. Each reading involves a quick preview of where the story is heading, a prayer, an opening prompt, and [...]
The post The Adventure of Christmas: A Journey through Advent for the Whole Family – Ed Drew appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book opens and closes with powerful illustrations from Doctor Who, so of course I loved it. However, even if someone doesn’t connect with the pop culture references that contrast with or illustrate Christian concepts, [...]
The post Is Christmas Unbelievable? Four Questions Everyone Should Ask About the World’s Most Famous Story – Rebecca McLaughlin appeared first on Life Is Story.
This charming picture book involves a brother and sister playing in their clubhouse and imagining all of the amazing things it could be. The rhyming text and intricate illustrations bring to life the different settings [...]
The post The Clubhouse: Open the Door to Limitless Adventure – Nathan Clarkson, Joy Clarkson, and Joshua Taylor appeared first on Life Is Story.
Ruth Chou Simons combines memoir elements with biblical reflection in this book, writing about her lifelong struggle to feel good enough. She weaves in stories from her childhood experiences in an immigrant family, her young [...]
The post When Strivings Cease: Replacing the Gospel of Self-Improvement with the Gospel of Life-Transforming Grace – Ruth Chou Simons appeared first on Life Is Story.
As the dad of two adopted kids, I have an uncomfortable relationship with the adoption community. There’s a sense of “saviorism” that can permeate the culture and parents can be ignorant or even purposefully dismissive [...]
The post Securely Attached – Mike and Kristin Berry appeared first on Life Is Story.
If Star Trek cared as much about linguistics as Tolkien, you’d end with something like No Road Among the Stars. A. Walker Scott’s stunning debut novel is a deeply immersive journey into a vast world [...]
The post No Road Among the Stars – A. Walker Scott appeared first on Life Is Story.
Freedom: The True Perspective about Women in Ministry caught me with its rather provocative title. Christians have debated the topic for generations and, although I’m solidly convinced that there’s an abundance of evidence for the [...]
The post Freedom: The True Perspective about Women in Ministry – Clement C. Butler appeared first on Life Is Story.
I should begin this review by saying that I’m a pastor, not a psychologist, therapist, or counselor. However, I believe that it is important for clergy to understand mental health because, in their pastoral or [...]
The post Treatment of Childhood Disorders: Evidence-Based Practice in Christian Perspective – Sarah Hall and Kelly Flanagan appeared first on Life Is Story.
For the past few years, I’ve sought an answer to the question of how white peacemakers, zealous for justice but new to the pursuit, could join with minority brothers and sisters in a way that [...]
The post Dear White Peacemakers – Osheta Moore appeared first on Life Is Story.
Christian Egalitarian Leadership is the latest book in the House of Prisca and Aquila series, an eclectic series that focuses mainly on egalitarian issues in theology. The book’s editors are Aída Besançon Spencer, Senior Professor [...]
The post Christian Egalitarian Leadership – ed. Aída Besançon Spencer and William David Spencer appeared first on Life Is Story.
Gosh darn it, I love DiAnn Mills! Her work never fails to entertain and satisfy. Trace of Doubt is no exception. After spending fifteen years in prison, Shelby Pearce is ready to begin a new life, in a [...]
The post Trace of Doubt – DiAnn Mills appeared first on Life Is Story.
A Midnight Dance is a beautiful ballet theatre story with hints of mystery woven in, just one more stunning masterpiece by the talented writer Joanna Davidson Politano. I loved reading about Ella and her life [...]
The post A Midnight Dance – Joanna Davidson Politano appeared first on Life Is Story.
Labyrinth of Lies by Irene Hannon is a typical Christian romantic suspense novel: Fast-paced. A crime of some variety forces two characters together who have a…complicated history. One, never truly gave up on the relationship, even with [...]
The post Labyrinth of Lies – Irene Hannon appeared first on Life Is Story.
I will be perfectly honest and say historical fiction isn’t typically my genre. Suspense novels draw my attention immediately because they have certain qualities that make them in a word, exhilarating. But every so often, [...]
The post Yours is the Night – Amanda Dykes appeared first on Life Is Story.
This vibrantly illustrated board book by Janet Surette tells the story of the wise men’s quest to follow the star to Bethlehem. It focuses on different elements of their journey, emphasizing the sense of excitement [...]
The post The Christmas Quest – Janet Surette appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this book, Adam Ramsey writes about the importance of knowing God through both theory and experience, instead of only prioritizing theological knowledge or emotional response. Throughout the book, he writes about different aspects of [...]
The post Truth on Fire: Gazing at God Until Your Heart Sings – Adam Ramsey appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book shares a fictional story surrounding the events of Jesus’s baptism. The book’s opening page explains to children that even though God has blessed us with the truth of His Word, He has [...]
The post Birds of the Air: Seeing the Hidden Value that God Sees – S.E.M. Ishida and Wendy Tan appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book and teaching tool explores perceptions of body image, helping children learn that they are made in God’s image and therefore have dignity and worth, no matter how they feel about their bodies. [...]
The post God Made Me in His Image: Helping Children Appreciate Their Bodies – Justin S. Holcomb, Lindsey A. Holcomb, and Trish Mahoney appeared first on Life Is Story.
I am always a stickler when it comes to books about being yourself. Many books with this theme are saccharine and derivative, and they typically elevate the reader’s feelings and desires above all else, without [...]
The post God Made You to Be You – Jamie Ivey, Tana Fortner, and David Creighton-Pester appeared first on Life Is Story.
This thought-provoking book tackles the subject of technology in a unique way through its dual authorship. Jason Byassee and Andria Irwin write from their respective experiences as a digital immigrant and a digital native, and [...]
The post Following: Embodied Discipleship in a Digital Age – Jason Byassee and Andria Irwin appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book shares brief reflections about how Christians who type as Fives in the Enneagram personality system can move towards a state of emotional and spiritual health in their everyday lives. The daily readings are [...]
The post Forty Days on Being a Five – Morgan Harper Nichols appeared first on Life Is Story.
When I started this book, I didn’t realize that it was by the same Andrew Wilson who wrote God of All Things, another recent release that I greatly enjoyed. Once again, I appreciated this author’s [...]
The post 1 Corinthians For You – Andrew Wilson appeared first on Life Is Story.
When I was a kid, Betty Greene was one of my favorite historic Christian missionaries, because I thought that aviation was fascinating and admired her adventurous life. As soon as I learned that this book [...]
The post Betty Greene: The Girl Who Longed to Fly – Laura Caputo-Wickham and Héloïse Mab appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book biography is a wonderful introduction the life of Gladys Aylward, a young woman who became a missionary to China. The simple text from Laura Caputo-Wickham expresses complex realities in basic terms that [...]
The post Gladys Aylward: The Little Woman With a Big Dream – Laura Caputo-Wickham and Jess Rose appeared first on Life Is Story.
I always enjoy books from the Tales that Tell the Truth series, and even though this book focuses on prayer instead of telling a particular Bible story, it is still narrative-driven. Laura Wifler opens the [...]
The post Any Time, Any Place, Any Prayer: A True Story of How You Can Talk With God – Laura Wifler and Catalina Echeverri appeared first on Life Is Story.
When I first became aware of this book, I expected it to be like the gun control threads that I have read on Twitter. The memoir element of the book greatly interested me, but I [...]
The post When Thoughts and Prayers Aren’t Enough: A Shooting Survivor’s Journey into the Realities of Gun Violence – Taylor S. Schumann appeared first on Life Is Story.
Thousands of years ago, a wager in heaven centered on the soul of one man. Virtually overnight, the man blessed with plenty saw his life crumble before his eyes as wealth, health, and even family [...]
The post One Step Away – Eric Wilson appeared first on Life Is Story.
For twenty years, Joel Rosenberg has had his finger on the pulse of the Middle East. His fiction career began with The Last Jihad where the opening scene depicts terrorists hijacking an airplane—published nine months [...]
The post Enemies and Allies – Joel Rosenberg appeared first on Life Is Story.
Growing up, I don’t think I was never explicitly told that Republicans were Christians and Democrats weren’t, but that was certainly the impression I received as a child of the 1990s. It was something I [...]
The post The Politics of the Cross – Daniel Williams appeared first on Life Is Story.
Our churches have lost a sense of community. The majority of church attenders do so for a couple hours a month and never really invest themselves into the community of the church. At other times, [...]
The post Good Works – Keith Wasserman and Christine Pohl appeared first on Life Is Story.
We are a divided and divisive people. I’m writing this review amid the United States’ tumultuous exit from Afghanistan and the day after an ISIS suicide bomber killed a dozen US military personnel and several [...]
The post I Am Not Your Enemy – Michael McRay appeared first on Life Is Story.
My experience with Orson Scott Card up to this point had only been through his classic Ender’s Game saga. I wasn’t sure what to expect from him outside of that genre and those characters and [...]
The post Duplex – Orson Scott Card appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Coming Race Wars was first published in 1993. It is an indictment on the United States of America that it can be republished nearly thirty years later with minimal adaptation. In many ways, we’ve [...]
The post The Coming Race Wars – William Pannell appeared first on Life Is Story.
Gender identity has become one of the most contentious social issues in contemporary culture. Unfortunately, the conversation that tends to exist about the issue is always in the realm of hyperbolic extreme. They’re conversations that [...]
The post Emerging Gender Identities – Mark Yarhouse and Julia Sadusky appeared first on Life Is Story.
In 2013, Sally Gary published a memoir entitled Loves God, Likes Girls. It focused a lot on her early life, her conservative upbringing in the Church of Christ, and the tension she held between reconciling [...]
The post Affirming – Sally Gary appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Good Book Company is my go-to publisher for quality children’s books. Everything they publish is well thought out, age-appropriate, colorful, diverse, and just all-around quality. Building on this incredible foundation, they’ve just released two [...]
The post God’s Very Colorful Creation – Tim Thornborough and Jennifer Davison appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Good Book Company is my go-to publisher for quality children’s books. Everything they publish is well thought out, age-appropriate, colorful, diverse, and just all-around quality. Building on this incredible foundation, they’ve just released two [...]
The post Esther and the Very Brave Plan – Tim Thornborough and Jennifer Davison appeared first on Life Is Story.
Any time a book promises an “honest look” at anything, especially when it does so on its cover, the reader should immediately be on guard, because non-fiction, especially historical non-fiction, should be defined by its [...]
The post Bullies and Saints – John Dickson appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Gifford Lectures are sponsored by a bequest to several Scottish universities by Adam Lord Gifford in the late 1800s. These lectures are meant to promote the thinking about and study of Natural Theology. Numerous [...]
The post In God’s Image – Michael Welker appeared first on Life Is Story.
People learn in different ways. The typical church experience is geared toward those who learn by listening (to the sermon) and reading (the Bible). That hasn’t always been the case. In the past, when most [...]
The post The Visual Word – Patrick Schreiner and Anthony Benedetto appeared first on Life Is Story.
A few years ago, Ron Sider wrote a book called If Jesus is Lord, which was a thorough and comprehensive examination of the doctrine of nonviolence. The next year, Sider worked that academic book into [...]
The post Speak Your Peace – Ron Sider appeared first on Life Is Story.
Whenever I read a physical copy of a book, I will take pictures of quotes that stood out to me and type them into a document later. As a pastor and public theologian, you never [...]
The post Born Again and Again – Megan Westra appeared first on Life Is Story.
Matt Mikalatos is one of my favorite people that I’ve never met in person. As someone with a lot of online friends, that’s not a categorization I take lightly. His words are constantly gracious, loving, [...]
The post Journey to Love – Matt Mikalatos appeared first on Life Is Story.
Turns out that the nature of small birds is to fly. It’s no different for our kids. And, whether I’m aware of it or not, it’s the nature of God to see every dip and [...]
The post The Nature of Small Birds – Susie Finkbeiner appeared first on Life Is Story.
In 2013, I moved from rural Indiana—which had a sum total of 26 Asian people in the 2000 census—to Tulsa, Oklahoma to be the youth pastor of an Asian church. My new church had more [...]
The post Becoming All Things – Michelle Ami Reyes appeared first on Life Is Story.
This was a heavy read. It’s a needed weight. Galatians says to carry each other’s burdens and for far too long, the weight of a stolen land has been around the necks of indigenous peoples [...]
The post The Land is Not Empty – Sarah Augustine appeared first on Life Is Story.
Evangelicalism has had a rather odd relationship with the Mormon church throughout its history, ranging from outright castigation as a cult to acceptance within the pantheon of Christian denominations. Despite its growth, and despite its [...]
The post Passport to Heaven – Micah Wilder appeared first on Life Is Story.
This well-written, thoughtful book encourages Christians to think beyond their church’s specific system for group gatherings to recapture a vision of being a “close spiritual family.” Ben Connelly writes from the perspective of a church-planting [...]
The post A Field Guide for Genuine Community: 25 Days and 101 Ways to Move from Façade to Family – Ben Connelly appeared first on Life Is Story.
Juni Felix encourages trauma sufferers to pursue healing over the long haul, taking tiny, gradual steps towards wellness and spiritual wholeness. Felix is forthright about her own difficult background, but shows the reader how her [...]
The post You Are Worth the Work: Moving Forward from Trauma to Faith – Juni Felix appeared first on Life Is Story.
Enthralling. I have no other words to describe Legacy of Light by Matthew Ward. Fantasy has never been my genre of choice, as now that I am older, I have trouble turning off the logical [...]
The post Legacy of Light – Matthew Ward appeared first on Life Is Story.
Walter Brueggemann has long established himself as one of the most thoughtful, reflective scholars in the Christian tradition. There are few people who can make the Old Testament come to life with contemporary application like [...]
The post Delivered Out of Empire – Walter Brueggemann appeared first on Life Is Story.
Kathy Tyers has been a familiar name in science fiction for nearly forty years. While she’s best known for her short stories and novels in the Star Wars Extended Universe, she’s also written a number [...]
The post Crystal Witness – Kathy Tyers appeared first on Life Is Story.
What this book lacks in plot, it makes up for many times over in atmosphere. The only criticism I have of The Door on Half-Bald Hill is that the story—a fairly standard journey narrative—is overshadowed [...]
The post The Door on Half-Bald Hill – Helena Sorensen appeared first on Life Is Story.
Lindsay Franklin’s The Weaver Trilogy began with Tanwen weaving stories into crystalline figures, hoping to become Royal Storyteller for the King. By the trilogy’s end in The Story Hunter, she must rescue the Queen, unmask [...]
The post The Story Weaver – Lindsay Franklin appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this book, Steve Carter encourages his readers to consider the deeper reasons behind why they do what they do. As he points out in the opening chapter, no one wakes up one day and [...]
The post The Thing Beneath the Thing: What’s Hidden Inside (and What God Helps Us Do About It) – Steve Carter appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this book’s introduction, Ashley Chestnut shares some of her story of how she first became invested in understanding women’s experiences with sexual sin. This all started within her discipleship circles, as girls that she [...]
The post It’s Not Just You: Freeing Women to Talk about Sexual Sin and Fight It Well – Ashley Chestnut appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book retells the biblical story of Esther in a way that is faithful to the source material while simplifying details of the plot for young children. Tim Thornborough writes in a kid-friendly style, [...]
The post Esther and the Very Brave Plan – Tim Thornborough and Jennifer Davison appeared first on Life Is Story.
This vibrant picture book features beautiful art and joyful text that celebrates color and God’s creativity. The book adapts the creation account from Genesis for a young child’s level, and focuses on the beauty and [...]
The post God’s Very Colorful Creation – Tim Thornborough and Jennifer Davison appeared first on Life Is Story.
This timely book features chapters from different Christian women writers, beginning with Hannah Anderson. They all write about a different phrase from the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, exploring how Jesus’s counterintuitive wisdom speaks to our [...]
The post World on Fire: Walking in the Wisdom of Christ When Everyone’s Fighting About Everything – Hannah Anderson and Others appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have read both theoretical and practical Christian books about the body, but I have never before read a book that combines both focuses so well. In this book, Sam Allberry presents a theology of [...]
The post What God Has to Say about Our Bodies: How the Gospel Is Good News for Our Physical Selves – Sam Allberry appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have read many books and articles about body-image issues, and they are often quite fluffy, tending towards shallow reassurance and pulling Bible verses out of their full context to tell the reader how beautiful [...]
The post Breaking Free from Body Shame: Dare to Reclaim What God Has Named Good – Jess Connolly appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this book, J. Garrett Kell writes that even though most Christians trapped in sexual sin believe that they need greater willpower to overcome their problems, lasting change occurs in relationship to Christ and through [...]
The post Pure in Heart: Sexual Sin and the Promises of God – J. Garrett Kell appeared first on Life Is Story.
Grab a steaming cup of coffee, tea, or mulled wine. Settle into a comfortable chair in your pandemic pants and fuzzy socks. Prepare yourself for a story of excitement, heartbreak, intensity, and high stakes. A [...]
The post A Most Clever Girl – Stephanie Marie Thornton appeared first on Life Is Story.
To understand just how much I anticipated Legacy of Steel by Matthew Ward, allow me to quote messages I sent to a friend regarding the first book, Legacy of Ash. “SHE ISN’T DEAD. I KNEW [...]
The post Legacy of Steel – Matthew Ward appeared first on Life Is Story.
I put some big shoes on A Brutal Justice when I effusively praised its predecessor, A Gentle Tyranny. The two books comprise the Nede Rising duology and tells the story of Raina Pierce, granddaughter of [...]
The post A Brutal Justice (Nede Rising #2) – Jess Corban appeared first on Life Is Story.
As I sat and mused over Under the Bayou Moon, still holding it in my hand, my daughter asked me, “Are you crying?” No, I said, just thinking….and this is definitely one of those books [...]
The post Under the Bayou Moon – Valerie Fraser Luesse appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’m always blown away by the detailed suspense written by Carrie Stuart Parks. What an adventure! I loved the setting. Yellowstone Park and the surrounding area is just beautiful. I had the privilege of visiting [...]
The post Woman In Shadow – Carrie Stuart Parks appeared first on Life Is Story.
Provenance by Carla Laureano is a stand-alone book, and the back cover copy, along with my previous love of all books by Ms. Laureano, had me eagerly waiting my chance to read. I absolutely loved [...]
The post Provenance – Carla Laureano appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Dancing Realms came to me with highest praise. The back of the book contains endorsements from fantasy authors like Wayne Thomas Batson and Jill Williamson, with the key endorsement coming from NYT bestselling author [...]
The post Forsaken Island – Sharon Hinck appeared first on Life Is Story.
Manna Reign is one of those books where the pieces fit together a little too nicely, the characters are little too flat, and the plot twists a little too predictable. It’s not a terrible book, [...]
The post Manna Reign – Dineen Miller appeared first on Life Is Story.
Early on in my first long-term pastorate, I had a meeting with a parishioner who lived in the adjoining neighborhood. The overwhelming majority of the church lived outside the neighborhood and the church didn’t have [...]
The post Praying With Our Feet – Lindsey Krinks appeared first on Life Is Story.
Richard Sterns has been a leader for a long time. He’s been the president of Parker Brothers (the board game company). He’s been the CEO of Lenox (a company that makes fine china). But he’s [...]
The post Lead Like It Matters to God – Richard Sterns appeared first on Life Is Story.
Friendship and the Fathers is a unique look into the development of the early church and what it thought and wrote about friendship. Mike Aquilina relies heavily on original writings, bringing them to life through [...]
The post Friendship and the Fathers – Mike Aquilina appeared first on Life Is Story.
Leadership, God’s Agency, and Disruptions is one of the most profound books on leadership that I’ve been privileged to read. Mark Branson and Alan Roxburgh develop a theology of leadership that stands apart as unique [...]
The post Leadership, God’s Agency, and Disruptions – Mark Branson & Alan Roxburgh appeared first on Life Is Story.
The book of Titus is one of Paul’s most personal letters. It’s written to a young pastor on Crete charged with the leadership position of developing the church. As such, it’s a wealth of wisdom [...]
The post Leadership for Growing Churches – Clarence Bouwman appeared first on Life Is Story.
Crafted out of ten cohorts of doctor of ministry students, Leadership in the Way of the Cross is what Sherwood Lengenfelter and his classes learned from telling their own stories of ministry trials and challenges. [...]
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Martin Luther, the Great Reformer, is one of the most well-known leaders of an era and yet very little has been written specifically on his practical or theoretical outlook on leadership. Luther’s writings and his [...]
The post Luther on Leadership – ed. David Cook appeared first on Life Is Story.
If you’re a part of any Christian organization, I guarantee that you’ve heard of the term “servant leadership.” First coined in the secular sphere by Robert Greenleaf in the 1970s, servant leadership has become a [...]
The post Friendship Leadership – Matt Messner & Rachel McMurray Branscombe appeared first on Life Is Story.
I haven’t always been the best on social media. I need to begin this review by admitting that. Ever since about 2015, social media has been divisive. I mean, life has been divisive. Politics have [...]
The post Posting Peace – Douglas Bursch appeared first on Life Is Story.
Sanctification can sometimes be reduced in popular theology to discipleship. Justification is God’s work—we are saved by grace through faith—but sanctification is sometimes perceived as “our part” of salvation. Theologian Don J. Payne tackles that [...]
The post Already Sanctified – Don Payne appeared first on Life Is Story.
Any reader of this novel will find themselves ending the book with the feeling of having made new friends… I feel so very privileged to have had the opportunity of reading an early reader’s version [...]
The post The Nature of Small Birds – Susie Finkbeiner appeared first on Life Is Story.
There is nobody else in Christian fiction who writes the kind of stories Shawn Smucker is writing. Shawn’s stories are ethereal, evocative, full of symbolism and magical realism. The narrative isn’t always straightforward. Not everything [...]
The post The Weight of Memory – Shawn Smucker appeared first on Life Is Story.
Heavy—that’s how I would describe If It Rains by Jennifer L. Wright. I will also preface this by saying that this is not a happy novel. This is a story you should ingest slowly to [...]
The post If It Rains – Jennifer L. Wright appeared first on Life Is Story.
I sat for 10 minutes prior to writing this review, attempting to find an appropriate simile for Lisa Harris’s The Chase. Whirlwind. Roller coaster. Hurricane. Nothing seems to fit! The best on which I can [...]
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I went back and forth between four and five stars for Breach of Honor by Janice Cantore for a long while, thus I decided to settle on a happy medium: 4.5 stars. Officer Leah Radcliff [...]
The post Breach of Honor – Janice Cantore appeared first on Life Is Story.
If you grew up as a Christian in North America or Europe, there’s a good chance that you not only know who evangelicals are, but that you attended a church that prided itself on being [...]
The post Every Leaf, Line, and Letter – Timothy Larsen appeared first on Life Is Story.
This profoundly moving memoir tells the story of Vaneetha Rendall Risner’s life, and how God has been with her in the midst of excruciating loss, physical suffering, and emotional pain. Because of the heavy topics [...]
The post Walking Through Fire: A Memoir of Loss and Redemption – Vaneetha Rendall Risner appeared first on Life Is Story.
This quick, encouraging read is full of hard-won wisdom, engaging humor, and vivid stories. Throughout the book, Justin McRoberts challenges his readers to work towards justice, wholeness, and healing wherever they are, instead of taking [...]
The post It Is What You Make of It: Creating Something Great from What You’ve Been Given – Justin McRoberts appeared first on Life Is Story.
The name Melanie Dickerson is synonymous with Christian fairytale retellings. Over the past few years, Dickerson has been able to recreate numerous fairytales and her newest retelling, a twist on the Ugly Duckling, is a [...]
The post Castle of Refuge – Melanie Dickerson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Pastor and author Timothy Keller wrote this book on resurrection hope during 2020, and it shows in the best way possible. He defends the grounds of Christian hope in a way that is immediate and [...]
The post Hope in Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter – Timothy Keller appeared first on Life Is Story.
Hard-Working Mermaids seeks to revolutionize mermaid mythology for a new generation. Gone are the Ariels of Disney (or even Hans Christian Andersen) fame. Swept away are the seductive sirens of ye olde pirate tales. These [...]
The post Hard-Working Mermaids – Kellen Roggenbuck appeared first on Life Is Story.
It seems like every kid goes through a dinosaur phase. Some never leave it and we call those people paleontologists. Dinosaur movie and dinosaur books abound, but none are quite like Kellen Roggenbuck’s The Awkward [...]
The post The Awkward Dinosaurs – Kellen Roggenbuck appeared first on Life Is Story.
Probably the longest and most humbling journey in my Christian faith has been a constant development on how I use my money. I’ve been in the camp of Dave Ramsey “everybody can be a millionaire” [...]
The post Money Matters – R. Paul Stevens & Clive Lim appeared first on Life Is Story.
In my experience, churches put a whole lot more emphasis on justification than sanctification. Getting saved is the priority and takes work, but growing in faith is usually reduced to attend church, tithe, and serve [...]
The post After I Believe – James Emery White appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have watched the past few years as the prevailing cultural expression of American Christianity—white evangelicalism—has absolutely destroyed its credibility and witness. Looking back, I can tell that the cracks had been there for a [...]
The post Radiant Church – Tara Beth Leach appeared first on Life Is Story.
Evangelism has kind of gotten a bad reputation. First, you have the connection to evangelicalism—which is increasingly seen as a polarizing political identity more than a theological one. Then you have all the ways in [...]
The post Tongue-Tied – Sara Shenk appeared first on Life Is Story.
The hardest step on a long journey is the first step. In Start Where You Are, Rashawn Copeland encourages readers to forget about preparations. Don’t wait for the perfect moment. No need to get it [...]
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This board book is breathtaking. The Moon Speaks celebrates God’s creation, showing how nature reflects His glory and power. The first page quotes from Psalm 19:1, about how “the heavens declare the glory of God,” [...]
The post The Moon Speaks – Jason G. Duesing and Chiara Fedele appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have been looking forward to this book for months, and it was just as excellent and helpful as I had hoped. Why Do I Feel Like This?: Understand Your Difficult Emotions and Find Grace [...]
The post Why Do I Feel Like This?: Understand Your Difficult Emotions and Find Grace to Move Through – Peace Amadi appeared first on Life Is Story.
This simple, well-organized book shares Scriptural insight and practical ideas for how Christians can love and invest in the local church. In Love Your Church: 8 Great Things about Being a Church Member, Tony Merida [...]
The post Love Your Church: 8 Great Things about Being a Church Member – Tony Merida appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book, which is by a British pastor, shares insight for Christians who need encouragement to endure as they face personal discouragement and external opposition to their faith. Throughout Faith for Life: Inspiration From The [...]
The post Faith for Life: Inspiration From The Ordinary Heroes Of Hebrews 11 – Richard Coekin appeared first on Life Is Story.
When I was younger, I loved fantasy. I thrived on traveling into a new world, my imagination turning the words on the page into colorful, vibrant pictures. In really good books, I would create a [...]
The post Legacy of Ash – Matthew Ward appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Rose Code by Kate Quinn is historical fiction, set during and after WWII. It follows the friendship between three women, all working at Bletchley Park, the top-secret home of England’s brightest codebreakers. Osla, Mab, [...]
The post The Rose Code – Kate Quinn appeared first on Life Is Story.
And so we come to the end of The Sunlit Lands. After two years, Matt Mikalatos is finally giving readers the long-awaited conclusion to The Sunlit Lands with The Story King. Where to even begin? [...]
The post The Story King (Sunlit Lands #3) – Matt Mikalatos appeared first on Life Is Story.
Attention: contains spoilers for The Crescent Stone (The Sunlit Lands #1) Okay. The most difficult part of writing a review for The Crescent Stone was not spoiling the great big twist that serves as the [...]
The post The Heartwood Crown (Sunlit Lands #2) – Matt Mikalatos appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Sunlit Lands had been on my radar for a while, but I had missed The Crescent Stone when it first came out and, as a reviewer, it’s often difficult to get back to old [...]
The post The Crescent Stone (Sunlit Lands #1) – Matt Mikalatos appeared first on Life Is Story.
Maya Angelou is best known as a poet and, within that, best known for the poem—and the line—“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” What few might know, however, is the personal experience that gave [...]
The post Rise: From Caged Bird to Poet of the People, Maya Angelou – Bethany Hegedus appeared first on Life Is Story.
Hinge Moments. They’re the key points of opportunity that change our lives—whether we realize it or not. Some hinge moments we see coming years in advance. As a youth pastor, I helped students navigate one [...]
The post Hinge Moments – D. Michael Lindsay appeared first on Life Is Story.
One of the things that I’m working on with my three-year-old is the concept of emotions. Learning how your body and mind feel and then how to express that is a task that we as [...]
The post What Do I Do With Worry? – Christi and Josh Straub appeared first on Life Is Story.
I begin this review with a content warning, but also with the realization that those who need that warning are also those who need this book. Hope Beyond an Empty Cradle deals with child loss [...]
The post Hope Beyond an Empty Cradle – Hallie Scott appeared first on Life Is Story.
When my wife as was a teenager, she served as a Sunday School volunteer for a well-known megachurch. One of the children in her class had special needs and the church—though it is one of [...]
The post Disability and the Church – Lamar Hardwick appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Moon Speaks is about much more than just the moon. It’s about the stars, the sun, clouds, snow, a stream, mountains, trees—all creation speaks to God’s glory. Author Jason Duesing and illustrator Chiara Fedele [...]
The post The Moon Speaks – Jason Duesing appeared first on Life Is Story.
Permission to be Black wasn’t written for me, but I learned from it. Writing to Black Americans, A.D. Thomason encourages them to tear off their task, do the hard work of processing their generational trauma, [...]
The post Permission to be Black – AD Thomason appeared first on Life Is Story.
Chariline has always been different, her caramel skin and dark, curled hair easily identifying her as part Cushite. When she overhears that her birth father is still alive—a fact about which her relatives had lied—she [...]
The post Jewel of the Nile – Tessa Afshar appeared first on Life Is Story.
Some books are marathons. Others are a flat-out sprint. Aftermath is the latter: a focused, pulse-pounding, action-packed thriller that will make you wish you could read faster then leave you exhausted, satisfied, yet a bit [...]
The post Aftermath – Terri Blackstock appeared first on Life Is Story.
Brave by Faith is subtitled God-sized Confidence in a Post-Christian World. The primary theme of Begg’s teaching is that, even as the world grows more secular, we should hold on to our faith because God [...]
The post Brave by Faith – Alistair Begg appeared first on Life Is Story.
Prayer doesn’t always come easy (cue some Christian shouting in the background that praying is just talking to God and that shouldn’t be hard), despite those who would tell you otherwise. Scripture even says that [...]
The post Five Things to Pray for Your Parents – Chelsea Stanley appeared first on Life Is Story.
Seven Reasons to (re)Consider Christianity isn’t the kind of book I thought it would be—and that’s a good thing. Books like this tend to rehash the same things over and over, giving readers a fairly [...]
The post Seven Reasons to Reconsider Christianity – Ben Shaw appeared first on Life Is Story.
I am not the target audience for A Brief Theology of Periods. Yet, the title intrigued me and I’m all for destigmatizing and demystifying the cultural taboos that keep us from being healthy, well-educated, confident, [...]
The post A Brief Theology of Periods – Rachel Jones appeared first on Life Is Story.
Even though I don’t listen to the radio that much anymore (you can thank podcasts, audiobooks, and the lack of a commute for that), the K-LOVE jingle will forever be imprinted in my memory from [...]
The post The Way of the Father – Michael W. Smith appeared first on Life Is Story.
Max Lucado’s words to adults are inspirational, heart-warming, comforting, and wise. But did you know that he’s also written forty-three books for children and teens? Where’d My Giggle Go? is a whimsical, sing-songy exploration of [...]
The post Where’d My Giggle Go? – Max Lucado appeared first on Life Is Story.
Gulp! My heart was in my throat as I read this book…Let It Be Me touched me way down deep. I just love this series by Becky Wade! These stories about the kids on a [...]
The post Let It Be Me – Becky Wade appeared first on Life Is Story.
Paint and Nectar is an enchanting story. I loved revisiting Charleston and these lovely people. While you will definitely want to read the first book – The Dress Shop on King Street – it isn’t entirely [...]
The post Paint and Nectar – Ashley Clark appeared first on Life Is Story.
This small book is about a hundred pages long, and shares succinct encouragement for people dealing with anxiety. Helen Thorne writes to an audience of both Christians and seekers, and explains how core Christian beliefs [...]
The post Hope in an Anxious World: 6 Truths for When Things Feel Overwhelming – Helen Thorne appeared first on Life Is Story.
Chris Morphew, a teacher and school chaplain from Australia, has written a series of short books to answer kids’ common questions about Christianity. Why Does God Let Bad Things Happen? addresses a question essential to people’s [...]
The post Why Does God Let Bad Things Happen? – Chris Morphew appeared first on Life Is Story.
Chris Morphew, a teacher and school chaplain from Australia, has written a series of short books to answer kids’ common questions about Christianity. What Happens When We Die? addresses a question that everyone asks, and [...]
The post What Happens When We Die? – Chris Morphew appeared first on Life Is Story.
Chris Morphew, a teacher and school chaplain from Australia, has written a series of short books to answer kids’ common questions about Christianity. How Do We Know Christianity Is Really True? addresses one of the [...]
The post How Do We Know Christianity Is Really True? – Chris Morphew appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is yet another evangelical book about Daniel, but Alistair Begg explores the biblical narrative in a way that keeps God at the center. Instead of focusing on key parts of the story to highlight [...]
The post Brave by Faith: God-Sized Confidence in a Post-Christian World – Alistair Begg appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this book, Ben Shaw shares reasons why people should reconsider Christianity, or else consider it for the first time. He says that in his conversations, he has found that people often dismiss Christianity because [...]
The post Seven Reasons to (Re)Consider Christianity – Ben Shaw appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book shares brief reflections about how Christians who type as Ones in the Enneagram personality system can move towards a state of emotional and spiritual health in their everyday lives. The daily readings are [...]
The post Forty Days on Being a One – Juanita Campbell Rasmus appeared first on Life Is Story.
Forty Days on Being a Four shares brief reflections about how Christians who type as Fours in the Enneagram personality system can move towards a state of emotional and spiritual health in their everyday lives. The [...]
The post Forty Days on Being a Four – Christine Yi Suh appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this small book, Chelsea Stanley shares short, themed lists of prayer prompts. Each list is based on a particular Scripture passage or book of the Bible, and Stanley organizes each of the five points [...]
The post 5 Things to Pray for Your Parents: Prayers that Change Things for an Older Generation – Chelsea Stanley and Tim Challies appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this refreshingly realistic book, Jimmy and Kristin Scroggins explain why formulaic approaches to parenting almost always end in disappointment and frustration, and they provide an adaptable, big-picture alternative. Instead of promoting a specific formula, [...]
The post Full Circle Parenting: A Guide for Crucial Conversations – Jimmy Scroggins and Kristin Scroggins, with Leslee Bennett appeared first on Life Is Story.
In A Brief Theology of Periods, Rachel Jones shares insight into the role of periods in women’s lives. She acknowledges the widely varying range of experiences that women have based on their ages, life situations, [...]
The post A Brief Theology of Periods (Yes, Really): An Adventure for the Curious Into Bodies, Womanhood, Time, Pain and Purpose–And How to Have a Better Time of the Month – Rachel Jones appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Aftermath by Terri Blackstock, our hero, Dustin, appears to have been framed for a crime he did not commit: setting off a bomb at a political rally that killed over twenty people. Who is [...]
The post Aftermath – Terri Blackstock appeared first on Life Is Story.
Never Miss is Melissa Koslin’s first published novel, and what an entrance it was! She did not slip into the fiction field quietly. Instead, Koslin presents a breathless adventure with exceedingly high stakes and ten [...]
The post Never Miss – Melissa Koslin appeared first on Life Is Story.
I only have two words for The Paris Betrayal by James R. Hannibal: HOLY SMOKES. This novel kept my heart jumping into my throat and my gut twisting. The Paris Betrayal was my thirty-third book [...]
The post The Paris Betrayal – James R. Hannibal appeared first on Life Is Story.
My favorite thing about Eerdmans’ Books for Young Readers is that they do not shy away from important and complicated issues, nor do they treat these issues as anything but the nuanced and complex things [...]
The post Facing Fear: An Immigration Story – Karen Lynn Williams & Sara Palacio appeared first on Life Is Story.
A perfect bedtime book, Sleep Like Me explores the different ways animals sleep as seen through the eyes of a young boy trying to find the perfect sleeping position. You and your children will laugh [...]
The post Sleep Like Me – Tatia Nadareishvili appeared first on Life Is Story.
Courtney Walsh does it again. I laughed, I cried, I empathized. I loved these people. Louisa Chambers was a heroine I absolutely loved. And her relationship with Cody Boggs…smashingly sweet. They’d been best friends growing [...]
The post Is It Any Wonder – Courtney Walsh appeared first on Life Is Story.
Night Bird Calling is such a bittersweet story with many hard things – A story that is both really good and very difficult to read. Good because it is so very well written. I just [...]
The post Night Bird Calling – Cathy Gohlke appeared first on Life Is Story.
Hello Earth! is a collection of poems to the earth, written by Joyce Sidman and illustrated by Miren Asiain Lora. This is a big book—each panel is the size of an 8.5”-11” standard size piece [...]
The post Hello Earth! – Joyce Sidman & Miren Asiain Lora appeared first on Life Is Story.
A few months ago, I reviewed a children’s book called Mexique that chronicled the story of a ship laden with children on a journey to escape the Spanish Civil War. Displaced in Mexico, few of [...]
The post Ninos: Poems for the Lost Children of Chile – Maria Jose Ferrada & Maria Elena Valdez appeared first on Life Is Story.
Corporate Worship: How the Church Gathers as God’s People is a recent entry in the 9Marks: Building Healthy Churches series. Each of these books introduces the biblical basis for a particular topic, emphasizing the value [...]
The post Corporate Worship: How the Church Gathers as God’s People – Matt Merker appeared first on Life Is Story.
When I was a teenager, I always felt suspicious of any book adapted for teens. Generally, authors watered down the original material, included stereotyped illustrations, and talked down to the reader, assuming that they would [...]
The post 10 Questions Every Teen Should Ask (and Answer) about Christianity – Rebecca McLaughlin appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this book, literature professor Leland Ryken joins with writer and speaker Glenda Faye Mathes to encourage Christians to recover healthy reading habits in a digital age. In the first part of the book, they [...]
The post Recovering the Lost Art of Reading: A Quest for the True, the Good, and the Beautiful – Leland Ryken and Glenda Faye Mathes appeared first on Life Is Story.
Faithful Leaders and the Things That Matter Most is just over a hundred pages long, and packs a powerful punch in short form. Rico Tice writes about the importance of rightly defining success in Christian [...]
The post Faithful Leaders and the Things That Matter Most – Rico Tice appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this concise, well-organized guide to Christian hospitality, Carolyn Lacey encourages her readers to step outside of their comfort zones and welcome other people into their homes and lives. She writes about the biblical basis [...]
The post Extraordinary Hospitality (for Ordinary People) – Carolyn Lacey appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Aging with Grace: Flourishing in an Anti-Aging Culture, Sharon W. Betters and Susan Hunt share their personal stories, explore Scripture passages related to flourishing in old age, and engage with biblical narratives about faithful [...]
The post Aging with Grace: Flourishing in an Anti-Aging Culture – Sharon W. Betters and Susan Hunt appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this book, Jen Wilkin explains that even though many people aren’t able to remember all of the Ten Commandments, much less recite them in order, they remain essential to our understanding of right living. [...]
The post Ten Words to Live By: Delighting in and Doing What God Commands – Jen Wilkin appeared first on Life Is Story.
When I think of a good death, there is a phrase and a person who comes to mind. The phrase comes from Scripture, one repeated five times throughout the Old Testament: “old and full of [...]
The post The Art of Dying – Rob Moll appeared first on Life Is Story.
Pastors should be aware that Wilson is Southern Baptist and Gospel-Driven Ministry reflects that background. In the opening pages of Wilson’s introduction to the calling and work of a pastor, he is overtly clear that [...]
The post Gospel-Driven Ministry – Jared C. Wilson appeared first on Life Is Story.
A thoughtful mind-trip of a thriller, Play Dead is the Dekker novel you’ve been craving. It’s been two years since Ted Dekker’s last non-children’s book and nine years since his last real solo thriller. It’s [...]
The post Play Dead – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
A Piece of the Moon is a love letter to old-time small-town radio wrapped within a character-driven story of brokenness and redemption that takes place amid an enthralling treasure hunt. The hunt itself is almost [...]
The post A Piece of the Moon – Chris Fabry appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Making of Biblical Womanhood will kill Christian evangelical patriarchy, if we let it. Unfortunately, the very premise of Beth Allison Barr’s incisive work is that we won’t—or, at least, we haven’t—in nearly two thousand [...]
The post The Making of Biblical Womanhood – Beth Allison Barr appeared first on Life Is Story.
Gayle Fisher-Stewart begins her introduction to Preaching Black Lives (Matter) with the not-so-simple question of “What is it to be Black and Christian; to be Black and Episcopalian; to be Black and a member of [...]
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This picture book biography shares the story of Betsey Stockton, a young Black woman who chose to become a missionary to Hawaii after she gained freedom from slavery. The story emphasizes her deep love for [...]
The post Betsey Stockton: The Girl With a Missionary Dream – Laura Caputo-Whickam and Eunji Jung appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book biography introduces children to Corrie ten Boom and her courageous rescue of Jews during World War II. The end of the book briefly alludes to her postwar ministry, and the two-page timeline [...]
The post Corrie ten Boom: The Courageous Woman and The Secret Room – Laura Caputo-Whickam and Isobel Munoz appeared first on Life Is Story.
There is probably no bigger or more contentious discussion in the church today than issues surrounding same-sex sexual behavior and same-sex marriage. This is more than a theological issue. For many, it’s a matter of [...]
The post Marriage, Scripture, and the Church – Darrin Belousek appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Quokkas, the Snails, and the Land of Happiness tells the story of two very different families. The Snail family has a sticker chart. Every time they do something good—help a neighbor, do a chore, [...]
The post The Quokkas, the Snails, and the Land of Happiness – Evie and Eric Geiger appeared first on Life Is Story.
Finding good children’s books is like finding a needle in a haystack. There are so many children’s books published. Most of them aren’t bad. But, in my experience, most of them aren’t good either. Children’s [...]
The post You’re More Than a Sprout – Jill Roman Lord appeared first on Life Is Story.
Literature professor Karen Swallow Prior is creating a classics series with B&H Publishing, adding her own introduction, reader’s guide, reflection questions, and footnotes to classic novels to make them more accessible to modern Christians. I [...]
The post Jane Eyre: A Guide to Reading and Reflecting – Charlotte Brontë and Karen Swallow Prior appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is actually two books, joined together in a slipcover. Jamie Ivey wrote one and Aaron Ivey wrote the other. This is a very creative approach to a marriage book, since both spouses are [...]
The post Complement: The Surprising Beauty of Choosing Together Over Separate in Marriage – Aaron Ivey and Jamie Ivey appeared first on Life Is Story.
This beautifully designed hardback book features watercolor art and life reflections from Emily Lex, a popular blogger. In this book, Lex strikes an inviting balance between long-form focus and a series of blog posts, sharing [...]
The post Freely and Lightly: God’s Gracious Invitation to a Life of Quiet Confidence – Emily Lex appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Heart of Anger is insightful, clear, and well-organized, providing deep insight into human anger, God’s righteous anger, and the ways that Christ can change our hearts. The authors provide case studies and examples of [...]
The post The Heart of Anger: How the Bible Transforms Anger in Our Understanding and Experience – Christopher Ash and Steve Midgley appeared first on Life Is Story.
Hebrews for You is a Bible study supplement that’s clear and well-written, with a deep attention to historical context. Michael J. Kruger breaks down this complicated book of the Bible into smaller groups of verses, [...]
The post Hebrews For You – Michael J. Kruger appeared first on Life Is Story.
The potential for A Gentle Tyranny’s premise to go horribly wrong is tremendous, but it’s a calculated risk that pays off enormously at the end. I feel it’s only right that I mention that at [...]
The post A Gentle Tyranny (Nede Rising #1) – Jess Corban appeared first on Life Is Story.
Like I feel most books of this era will be, Free is tinged with the collective trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic. Butcher makes references to it a couple of different times, but only matter-of-factly My [...]
The post Free – J. Kevin Butcher appeared first on Life Is Story.
Present Danger is the first novel of Elizabeth Goddard’s “Rocky Mountain Courage” series, and what a way to kick it off! I woke up at 4:00AM one morning, so I opened this novel on my Kindle. [...]
The post Present Danger – Elizabeth Goddard appeared first on Life Is Story.
Shay Mitchell’s life has fallen apart. The trauma of losing your mother before you ever knew her really never goes away, but Shay and her dad had built a life for themselves together. Then he [...]
The post Searching for Normal – CJ Darlington appeared first on Life Is Story.
Pepper Basham does it again! I was enchanted almost from the first page. This is an incredibly beautiful story, one that ties together the past, and the present. This is a story of love, and [...]
The post Hope Between The Pages – Pepper Basham appeared first on Life Is Story.
Unity is something that’s hard to come by in the church. And when you think of this lack of unity, you might immediately jump to differences related to how to do ministry amid the COVID-19 [...]
The post Until Unity – Francis Chan appeared first on Life Is Story.
As a novelist myself, I know just how much time, heart, and research goes into writing a novel like Night Fall by Nancy Mehl. It hurts me to negatively review books, but Night Fall disappointed [...]
The post Night Fall – Nancy Mehl appeared first on Life Is Story.
Tov (טוֹב): to be pleasing or good. Tov is a Hebrew word that absolutely explodes with meaning. While the word tov isn’t employed much within the book, the concepts contained in tov are explored thoroughly. [...]
The post A Church Called Tov – Laura Barringer & Scot McKnight appeared first on Life Is Story.
It was bad timing for this book to arrive when it did. The Atlanta massage shootings occurred on March 16th and this book arrived on my doorstep on March 17th. For a book with a [...]
The post More Than A Battle – Joe Rigney appeared first on Life Is Story.
Les Miserables is a beautifully poignant story of love and freedom that has lasted through the ages. From the first time it was published by Victor Hugo until today, it has enjoyed continuous success in [...]
The post Les Miserables An Engaging Visual Journey – Victor Hugo appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book is a perfect blend of Scriptural and social reflection, as Brett McCracken describes the world around us, explains how we got here, and provides insight for how Christians can make wise decisions in [...]
The post The Wisdom Pyramid: Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World – Brett McCracken appeared first on Life Is Story.
This short book has simple, easy-to-read chapters that pastor’s wives can fit into their busy schedules. Each chapter is full of encouragement and hope, as Jani Ortlund writes from her decades of experience as a [...]
The post Help! I’m Married to My Pastor: Encouragement for Ministry Wives and Those Who Love Them – Jani Ortlund appeared first on Life Is Story.
In More Than a Battle: How to Experience Victory, Freedom, and Healing from Lust, pastor and author Joe Rigney shares insight into how men can defeat lust and experience healing from their sin. In just [...]
The post More Than a Battle: How to Experience Victory, Freedom, and Healing from Lust – Joe Rigney appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Charitable Writing, two English professors share insight into how Christian writing programs can encourage students to glorify God and love their neighbor through their writing. Richard Hughes Gibson and James Edward Beitler III taught [...]
The post Charitable Writing: Cultivating Virtue Through Our Words – Richard Hughes Gibson and James Edward Beitler III appeared first on Life Is Story.
Trillia Newbell designed this book for children from the ages of eight to twelve, and invites them to consider how they can learn to love people who are different from them. She writes in an [...]
The post Creative God, Colorful Us – Trillia J. Newbell and Chase Williamson appeared first on Life Is Story.
The End of Me is a well-written, insightful book that encourages overwhelmed Christian mothers to find hope and acceptance in the gospel, instead of trying to prove themselves through their own strength. Liz Wann explains [...]
The post The End of Me: Finding Resurrection Life in the Daily Sacrifices of Motherhood – Liz Wann appeared first on Life Is Story.
Forty Days on Being a Nine shares brief reflections about how Christians who type as Nines in the Enneagram personality system can move towards a state of emotional and spiritual health in their everyday lives. [...]
The post Forty Days on Being a Nine – Marlena Graves appeared first on Life Is Story.
The real review of this book will come in six months and in the form of whether or not I have a finished manuscript, but until then, this review will have to do. The Power [...]
The post The Power of Writing It Down – Allison Fallon appeared first on Life Is Story.
For longer than I’ve been alive, sexual orientation and gender identity have been at the forefront of the so-called “culture wars” and been a hot-button issue within religious and political circles. Many on the conservative [...]
The post Those Seven References – John F. Dwyer appeared first on Life Is Story.
Soul Raging picks up right where the story left off: Leif, our hero, has been activated from sleeper status by the Armageddon Coalition. The hero has become the villain…or has he? As the team deals [...]
The post Soul Raging (Book of the Wars #3) – Ronie Kendig appeared first on Life Is Story.
Taking off right where Ronie Kendig left us in book one, and with just as much fury and speed, Kings Falling continues the story of Leif, Iskra, and their teams as they seek to find [...]
The post Kings Falling (Book of the Wars #2) – Ronie Kendig appeared first on Life Is Story.
Ronie Kendig has long self-styled her thrillers as Rapid-Fire Fiction and, whatever else Storm Rising and the rest of The Book of the Wars series is or isn’t, rapid-fire is definitely a good description. Kendig [...]
The post Storm Rising (Book of the Wars #1) – Ronie Kendig appeared first on Life Is Story.
Roots of Wood and Stone is a beautiful debut story about….roots. Yes, roots of wood and stone, but it goes so much deeper than that. It’s all about roots of… love, family, friendship, and most [...]
The post Roots of Wood and Stone – Amanda Wen appeared first on Life Is Story.
A Dance in Donegal is a lovely debut novel set in the enchanting country of Ireland back in the early 1900s. Deibel brings Ireland to life with its lush, green countryside. Ireland has long been [...]
The post A Dance in Donegal – Jennifer Deibel appeared first on Life Is Story.
I found Facing the Dawn to be an incredibly beautiful, painful, bittersweet story. It shows hope, forgiveness, love, and so much more. It shows us the unshakeableness of God in hard times. This was a [...]
The post Facing the Dawn – Cynthia Ruchti appeared first on Life Is Story.
I love suspense novels, especially ones about law enforcement agents, and this one is a really good one! The first is Lynn Blackburn’s Defend and Protect series, Unknown Threat, delivers a high level of action and causes lots of [...]
The post Unknown Threat – Lynn Blackburn appeared first on Life Is Story.
Active Defense is one of those novels that is a high level of excitement from the first page to the very last. What a ride! This is another amazing story from Lynette Eason. I’m always [...]
The post Active Defense – Lynette Eason appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’m writing this review the day after RZIM released an initial report from their investigation that the sexual abuse allegations against the late Ravi Zacharias are truthful. I’m heartbroken. For the victims and their trauma. [...]
The post Prey Tell – Tiffany Bluhm appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’ve been a fan of the Marcus Ryker series from the beginning. It’s one of the best characters that Joel Rosenberg has created and the events—like much of his writing—has been eerily accurate. Joel’s grasp [...]
The post The Beirut Protocol (Marcus Ryker #4) – Joel Rosenberg appeared first on Life Is Story.
Easy Target is a good example of a novel that never quite understood the kind of tone it wanted to set. At the outset, we’re thrown into a world set from the kid-perspective, where parents [...]
The post Easy Target – Tim Shoemaker appeared first on Life Is Story.
Chandra Crane adds a significant perspective to current conversations about race, highlighting the experiences of multiethnic and multicultural people. She writes to them directly throughout the book, while also encouraging monoethnic people of different races [...]
The post Mixed Blessing: Embracing the Fullness of Your Multiethnic Identity – Chandra Crane appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Hurting Yet Whole, Liuan Huska shares about her personal experiences with chronic illness, what she has learned from the struggle, and how her bodily pain has clarified her faith and theology. She seamlessly combines [...]
The post Hurting Yet Whole: Reconciling Body and Spirit in Chronic Pain and Illness – Liuan Huska appeared first on Life Is Story.
With this book, Patricia Bradley remains one of my favorite authors in this romantic suspense genre. I loved this story! I loved the characters, and I also loved the setting. This book has it all [...]
The post Obsession – Patricia Bradley appeared first on Life Is Story.
I found in the pages of The Orchard House a story I didn’t even know I needed to hear. Heidi Chiavaroli’s amazing tale started out a bit slowly for me, but its tremendous lesson spoke [...]
The post The Orchard House – Heidi Chiavaroli appeared first on Life Is Story.
I would not say I am the biggest Robert Whitlow fan, but I will say I am a big one, as I’ve read all of his books. That being said, maybe I entered into reading [...]
The post Trial and Error – Robert Whitlow appeared first on Life Is Story.
Amy Lynn Green’s Things We Didn’t Say avoids common pitfalls for Christian fiction, provides a nuanced and realistic look at faith, and has mainstream appeal. The characters are very compelling, and Amy Lynn Green does an [...]
The post Things We Didn’t Say – Amy Lynn Green appeared first on Life Is Story.
A few years ago, I led my high school youth group through the Everybody Always video series. We watched the first week’s video and I asked if anyone had questions. A hand shot up immediately: [...]
The post Everybody Always for Kids – Bob Goff appeared first on Life Is Story.
According to a recent CNBC poll, nearly 2/3rd (63%) of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck. More people than ever need financial help and fewer people than ever seem to be in a position to help. Many [...]
The post Faithful in Small Things – Kevin Wiebe appeared first on Life Is Story.
Christian dating books are usually exceptionally cringey, so when I say that JP Pokluda’s Outdated is only moderately cringey, please understand it as a compliment. Seriously, the sex/love/dating books that tend to get popular in [...]
The post Outdated – JP Pokluda appeared first on Life Is Story.
During the past few years, I have read a good amount of biblical retellings of the story of Miriam, the sister of Moses. In spring 2021, Jill Eileen Smith will join this group with her [...]
The post Miriam’s Song – Jill Eileen Smith appeared first on Life Is Story.
As I continue on my faith journey, I find myself drawing ever closer to the description of “Anabaptist.” I grew up in a Christian Church/Church of Christ, went to college/seminary at a Baptist school, then [...]
The post The Jesus Way: What is the Church – David Fitch appeared first on Life Is Story.
Like all biblical fiction reviews, let me recap what I think makes for good biblical fiction. First, it doesn’t blatantly contradict anything in Scripture. Second, it tells its own story while being faithful to the [...]
The post Miriam’s Song – Jill Eileen Smith appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Jesus Way is a series of short introductory theologies on various foundational topics written by a diverse community of pastors and scholars from the Anabaptist tradition. As I’ve grown in my own faith, I’ve [...]
The post The Jesus Way: What is God’s Mission in the World? – Juan Francisco Martinez & Jamie Pitts appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Jesus Way is a series of short, introductory volumes of Anabaptist theology. I happened upon them by accident, having been introduced to the publisher, Herald Press, through the work of Drew Hart. Whether you’re [...]
The post The Jesus Way: Who Was Jesus? – Nancy Elisabeth Bedford appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Jesus Way is a series of short introductory theologies on various foundational topics written by a diverse community of pastors and scholars from the Anabaptist tradition. As I’ve grown in my own faith, I’ve [...]
The post The Jesus Way: What is God’s Kingdom? – Cesar Garcia appeared first on Life Is Story.
Mister Rogers died on February 27, 2003. His life’s work—Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood—debuted in 1968 and had its last show in 2001, both pivotal years in American history. His effect on generations of kids, now adults, [...]
The post The Mister Rogers Effect – Anita Knight Kuhnley appeared first on Life Is Story.
Although I’m a big fan of legal thrillers—I’ve read everything Randy Singer has ever offered and am currently working my way through John Grisham’s oeuvre—I had only read a couple of Robert Whitlow novels, and [...]
The post Trial and Error – Robert Whitlow appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Prince of Spies by Elizabeth Camden is the third book of her Hope and Glory series. As it concludes the series, I expected happy endings for all involved—Nathaniel and Caroline, Gray and Anabelle, and [...]
The post The Prince of Spies – Elizabeth Camden appeared first on Life Is Story.
My colleague, Rosalyn Schlabach, already reviewed A Gilded Lady by Elizabeth Camden (her review here). In preparation for the third part of the author’s Hope and Glory series, I read the first two books before [...]
The post A Gilded Lady – Elizabeth Camden appeared first on Life Is Story.
For the most part, I primarily read romantic suspense novels for Life is Story, but I decided I needed a break from the genre. The Spice King by Elizabeth Camden caught my attention, despite my usual [...]
The post The Spice King – Elizabeth Camden appeared first on Life Is Story.
Network of Deceit by Tom Threadgill was an entertaining read, but it left much to be desired. Amara Alvarez is a new homicide detective, determined to prove herself as an investigator. When a high schooler [...]
The post Network of Deceit – Tom Threadgill appeared first on Life Is Story.
Patricia Bradley’s Obsession was her third book I’ve read, and goodness, what a thrill ride it was! I absolutely loved this novel. All Emma Winters wants to do is use an imaging tool to document the [...]
The post Obsession – Patricia Bradley appeared first on Life Is Story.
Evelyn Brand had done a crack bit of journalism, and she hadn’t even had to dress like a man to do so. – This is the first line of Sarah Sundin’s WWII romantic thriller When [...]
The post When Twilight Breaks – Sarah Sundin appeared first on Life Is Story.
I am a pastor and a gymnastics coach. Over the past several years, I have seen both of these areas explode with revelations of abuse of power. Gymnastics, of course, has been rocked with physical [...]
The post Redeeming Power – Diane Langberg appeared first on Life Is Story.
A 2018 Pew Research survey found that 68% of white evangelical Protestants believe that the United States has no responsibility in accepting refugees. It’s a baffling position, given the repeated instructions in the Old Testament [...]
The post Finding Jesus at the Border – Julia Lambert Fogg appeared first on Life Is Story.
At the beginning of When You Don’t Like Your Story, Sharon Jaynes shares her personal story, showing how she overcame shame over her dysfunctional childhood household and came to see that God could use her [...]
The post When You Don’t Like Your Story: What If Your Worst Chapters Could Become Your Greatest Victories? – Sharon Jaynes appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Being the Bad Guys, pastor and author Stephen McAlpine explains how Western culture came to view Christianity as repressive and dangerous, rather than simply one option among many others in a pluralistic society. He [...]
The post Being the Bad Guys: How to Live for Jesus in a World That Says You Shouldn’t – Stephen McAlpine appeared first on Life Is Story.
This board book adaptation of The Garden, the Curtain, and the Cross simplifies the original book’s contents, making it accessible to younger children. The book features the same illustrations from Catalina Echeverri, but is several [...]
The post The Garden, the Curtain, and the Cross Board Book – Carl Laferton and Catalina Echeverri appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this small, staple-bound picture book, Steph Williams shares the Easter story with small children, emphasizing that Jesus came to fix our broken world. The story conveys different character’s emotions well, and shows that because [...]
The post The Easter Fix – Steph Williams appeared first on Life Is Story.
This small, staple-bound paperback tells the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand, and does so in an unusually engaging and memorable way. The author and illustrator, Steph Williams, presents the story in a way [...]
The post The Boy Who Shared His Sandwich – Steph Williams appeared first on Life Is Story.
In An Ocean of Grace, author Tim Chester shares historic Christians’ prayers, poems, and other reflections. He designed this book as a devotional that leads up to Easter, and each day’s reading begins with a [...]
The post An Ocean of Grace: A Journey to Easter with Great Voices from the Past – Tim Chester appeared first on Life Is Story.
Hours to Kill by Susan Sleeman is the final book in her Homeland Heroes trilogy. Out of the three novels, this one was definitely my favorite, though maybe it was in part due to my partiality [...]
The post Hours to Kill – Susan Sleeman appeared first on Life Is Story.
Terrorists targeting the United States? Millions of lives potentially endangered? One week to stop the attack? A sprinkling of romance? Minutes to Die by Susan Sleeman seemed right up my alley. Unfortunately, this book didn’t exceed [...]
The post Minutes to Die – Susan Sleeman appeared first on Life Is Story.
“One mistake. That was all it took to put Dustee’s life on the line–death right on her heels.” Well, that’s one way to draw in your readers! Seconds to Live by Susan Sleeman was the first [...]
The post Seconds to Live – Susan Sleeman appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Dress Shop on King Street by Ashley Clark is really a surprising novel for a debut. I found it to be an incredible story that is a richly woven tapestry of textures and designs. [...]
The post The Dress Shop on King Street – Ashley Clark appeared first on Life Is Story.
Carrie is perhaps better known for what it started than what it is. Although Stephen King had written three novels prior to Carrie (those being Rage, The Long Walk, and Blaze), Carrie was his first [...]
The post Carrie – Stephen King appeared first on Life Is Story.
Thousands of years and vast cultural barriers separate the modern, Western, first-world reader from the situational and cultural context of Scripture. American Christianity, in particular, has been conditioned through centuries of colonialism and civil religion [...]
The post Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes – E. Randolph Richards & Richard James appeared first on Life Is Story.
Reading While Black had been on my radar for quite some time and it’s to my regret that I didn’t pick this one up earlier. While the book is hardly the first to mix exegetical, [...]
The post Reading While Black – Esau McCaulley appeared first on Life Is Story.
One of the problems that I’ve experienced within the local church is the lack of community. Or, even more specifically, the lack of the interior community of the church to engage with the exterior community [...]
The post Uncommon Church – Alvin Sanders appeared first on Life Is Story.
I like books that start with bangs. Explosions, that is. Lynette Eason no doubt delivers this in both the figurative and literal sense with the third book of her Danger Never Sleeps series. The first [...]
The post Active Defense – Lynette Eason appeared first on Life Is Story.
Dreams for our Daughters is the companion book to Songs for Our Sons, and it’s just as beautiful, poetic, heart-felt, and magical. Ruth Doyle and Ashling Lindsay share their talents once again to craft an [...]
The post Dreams for Our Daughters – Ruth Doyle & Ashling Lindsay appeared first on Life Is Story.
I rarely cry over children’s books. I have cried repeatedly while reading Songs for Our Sons to my son. It’s something different every time. Let me tell you about them. The first time was the [...]
The post Songs for Our Sons – Ruth Doyle & Ashling Lindsay appeared first on Life Is Story.
Finding a new Bible can be overwhelming. There are dozens of translations, with and without study notes, with and without commentary, and the list goes on. What makes the Love God Greatly Bible stand out? [...]
The post Love God Greatly Study Bible appeared first on Life Is Story.
Charles Martin maybe best known for The Mountain Between Us, a story of survival and romance that got turned into a movie with Kate Winslet and Idris Elba in the starring roles. For his whole [...]
The post They Turned the World Upside Down – Charles Martin appeared first on Life Is Story.
At the end of Blessed are the Nones, I was left trying to determine if my feelings of unmet expectations were legitimate. It’s always difficult to criticize someone else’s story. It’s not like fiction. You [...]
The post Blessed are the Nones – Stina Kielsmeier-Cook appeared first on Life Is Story.
I didn’t know what to expect from a Dekker family team-up. Now I don’t know if I want them to do anything else. That was one of the concluding lines of my review of the [...]
The post Millie Maven Trilogy – Rachelle and Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
The final volume in the Millie Maven trilogy picks up six days the completion of the trial in Millie Maven in the Golden Vial. This time there are no trials. This time is not a [...]
The post Millie Maven and the White Sword – Rachelle and Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
The second Millie Maven book opens with Millie yet to discover her gift, but in possession of something much greater: a bronze medallion from the Great Teacher himself. It’s caused some consternation among some of [...]
The post Millie Maven and the Golden Vial – Rachelle and Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
The first book in the Millie Maven trilogy introduces us to Millie. Millie is, like so many young people in these kinds of stories, an orphan with a strict, loveless caretaker. Mother—actually her aunt—has very [...]
The post Mille Maven and the Bronze Medallion – Rachelle and Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
All Through the Night by Tara Johnson is a beautiful story about nursing during the Civil War. It was my first Tara Johnson novel, but it definitely won’t be my last! Bringing to life the realities [...]
The post All Through the Night – Tara Johnson appeared first on Life Is Story.
“Love welled up inside her, and she stood to her feet. Her knees weren’t even wobbly. She picked up the bag she had packed, straightened, and held her head up, meeting his eye. She put [...]
The post The Peasant’s Dream – Melanie Dickerson appeared first on Life Is Story.
As a pastor I often receive any number of unsolicited books in the church office addressed to myself. Often these are missives warning against the secularization of theology or explaining why it is we have [...]
The post A Republic Under Assault – Tim Fitton appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is definitely not my usual reading genre, but because I am a huge fan of Ronie Kendig’s, I knew I had to read Brand of Light! This book is Sci-fi at its best! A [...]
The post Brand of Light – Ronie Kendig appeared first on Life Is Story.
Any new book by Ronie Kendig is an automatic “must read” for me. And…in spite of the fact that space opera is not my favorite genre, this series is one that I absolutely love! Brand [...]
The post Dawn of Vengeance – Ronie Kendig appeared first on Life Is Story.
Over the past few years, I have appreciated Kaitlyn Schiess’s unique voice as a young, seminary-educated woman who is devoted to the essentials of an orthodox faith while also pushing back against false narratives that [...]
The post The Liturgy of Politics: Spiritual Formation for the Sake of Our Neighbor – Kaitlyn Schiess appeared first on Life Is Story.
Darryl Strawberry was living the dream. The first overall MLB draft pick in 1980, Strawberry quickly moved through the ranks to become a fan-favorite perennial all-star whose career track was compared to Hank Aaron. But [...]
The post Turn Your Season Around appeared first on Life Is Story.
“Where there is wealth and power, there is also someone who is willing to do anything to take it.” In medieval England, there was very little middle class. You were either poor or rich and [...]
The post Court of Swans – Melanie Dickerson appeared first on Life Is Story.
All Through the Night is a Civil War novel following characters that one would not commonly expect to be hero and heroine. Tara Johnson’s writing style is absolutely enthralling and the backdrop of battles, wounded, [...]
The post All Through the Night – Tara Johnson appeared first on Life Is Story.
It’s been ten years since Melanie and Olivia have had any meaningful sisterly interactions. It’s also been ten years since their parents were killed in crash that sent their car over a mountain. These two [...]
The post All That We Carried – Erin Bartels appeared first on Life Is Story.
How to Fight Racism should be required study for the white evangelical church. Jemar Tisby writes with razor-sharp clarity and precision, defining each and every one of his terms in exacting manner. Tisby doesn’t just [...]
The post How to Fight Racism – Jemar Tisby appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’m pretty sure I begin every review of Biblical fiction with this phrase: Biblical fiction is hard to write. If you stray too far from what’s known of the biblical story, readers will shout at [...]
The post The Shepherd’s Wife – Angela Hunt appeared first on Life Is Story.
David Baldacci has kind of a thing for developing dual plots. One plot will start and end during the book; the other is an overarching plotline that is slowly resolved throughout the series. The Atlee [...]
The post Daylight (Atlee Pine #3) – David Baldacci appeared first on Life Is Story.
I am a pessimist. I freely admit it. It’s difficult to not be a pessimist (in my opinion) in this day and age. Thanksgiving doesn’t come naturally for me. (Obligatory note that Thanksgiving was instituted [...]
The post The Grumbler’s Guide to Giving Thanks – Dustin Crowe appeared first on Life Is Story.
It is likely that, in some way, your life has been touched by suicide. For some, it was a family member. For others, a friend or a family member’s friend. And we can all recite [...]
The post I Understand – Vonnie Woodrick appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Kingdom Encounters, Tony Evans leads readers on a journey to seek God beneath the superficial and to develop a real, substantial, experiential relationship with their Creator. Too often, our Christian faith lives in the [...]
The post Kingdom Encounters – Tony Evans appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have to admit, I wasn’t quite sold on A Christmas Carol-themed Advent books. As the tradition of Advent as become more popular outside of liturgical denominations and contexts, Advent devotionals have become sought-after ways [...]
The post Keeping Christmas – Allison Pittman appeared first on Life Is Story.
The majority of Christians live in the shadows. Not that they’re “secret” Christians. Not that they don’t want to be outed as Christian. Not that they blend in with the world so much that you [...]
The post Shadow Christians – Jeff Iorg appeared first on Life Is Story.
Divorce. It’s a devastating word, particularly within the church. Divorce can bring shame or guilt. It brings stress and anxiety. It’s a cause for grief and sadness. A relationship that should never have been broken [...]
The post Whole – Vicki Losson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Back in March, the very same week that the world went into lockdown amid efforts to curtail COVID, I read through an advance copy of Max Lucado’s book You Are Never Alone. That book took [...]
The post Begin Again – Max Lucado appeared first on Life Is Story.
If I had to provide a review of Liberation is Here and convince you read Nikole Lim’s powerfully visual and poetic story of seeking justice and finding hope amid the world’s brokenness, it would be [...]
The post Liberation is Here – Nikole Lim appeared first on Life Is Story.
Sex/Love/Dating books are always a bestseller in Christian markets, not because the people buying them are reading them, but because they’re giving them to their children/youth group hoping that a book will replace the difficult [...]
The post Chasing Love – Sean McDowell appeared first on Life Is Story.
Brandon Stanton started off just as a guy with a camera in New York. He started asking people their stories. They shared them. He shared them with the world. Humans of New York has become [...]
The post Little Humans – Brandon Stanton appeared first on Life Is Story.
Identity formation begins even before birth, as children absorb who they are from those around them. In the first few hours after birth, they can tell one smell from another, one voice from another, one [...]
The post The World Needs Who You Were Made To Be – Joanna Gaines appeared first on Life Is Story.
The story of Deborah is beautiful, complex, and nuanced. Its story has been misused and abused, with Deborah being portrayed as only in her position because there were no competent men, with Barak being portrayed [...]
The post Deborah and the Very Big Battle – Tim Thornborough appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’ve started to write this paragraph three times and each time end up erasing it out of fear that I’ve not captured the essence of this book. Mexique is a children’s book, but it’s more [...]
The post Mexique – Maria Jose Ferrada appeared first on Life Is Story.
A lot of modern children’s books are brightly, flashy, rhyming, and intended to be read over and over and over again to the point of annoyance. Looking back to older children’s books, there seems to [...]
The post The Bear and the Duck – May Angeli appeared first on Life Is Story.
Many children who have speech or language delays are fully able to nonverbally communicate and understand verbal instruction. One of the best things you can do for a nonverbal child to help develop their language [...]
The post Talking is Not My Thing – Rose Robbins appeared first on Life Is Story.
As the parent of two young children (ages 3 and 1), I read a lot of children’s books. Like. A lot. Sometimes the same book over and over and over twelve times a day. Who [...]
The post Night Wishes – ed. Lee Bennett Hopkins appeared first on Life Is Story.
My three-year-old loves spaceships. Why is this relevant to a review of a book about Moses and the Very Big Rescue? Because counting down to blast-off is his absolute favorite. I would guess that he [...]
The post Moses and the Very Big Rescue – Tim Thornborough appeared first on Life Is Story.
After pastor and author Mel Lawrenz lost his beloved adult daughter to a traumatic medical event, he began to post some of his reflections about grief on Facebook. The reception there led him to contemplate [...]
The post A Chronicle of Grief: Finding Life After Traumatic Loss – Mel Lawrenz appeared first on Life Is Story.
Companions in the Darkness shares biographical sketches of seven different faithful Christians who endured long and recurrent periods of depression. The author, Diana Gruver, has struggled with depression herself, but even though she occasionally mentions general [...]
The post Companions in the Darkness: Seven Saints Who Struggled with Depression and Doubt – Diana Gruver appeared first on Life Is Story.
Shine the Light is the book equivalent of a Hallmark movie. I really don’t need to say much more than this. There’s over-the-top all-too-easily resolved drama. There’s cheesy and easy romance. There’s several stock characters [...]
The post Shine the Light – April McGowan appeared first on Life Is Story.
Hearts Set Free is a novel that’s difficult to categorize. Part allegory (or at least so heavy-handed in its messaging that I’m going to call it allegory) and part historical fiction, the novel follows three [...]
The post Hearts Set Free – Jess Lederman appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Awaking Wonder, homeschool education pioneer Sally Clarkson shares wisdom for parents who want to create a secure, wonder-filled home environment for their children. She emphasizes the importance of cultivating children’s sense of wonder, and [...]
The post Awaking Wonder: Opening Your Child’s Heart to the Beauty of Learning – Sally Clarkson appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this picture book, a boy talks about how scary the darkness can be, and then narrates the story of the Bible to show how even though darkness and evil came into God’s good creation, [...]
The post The Bright Light and the Super Scary Darkness – Dan DeWitt and Rhea Zai appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have greatly enjoyed Russell Moore’s work for years, and this book was no exception. Like his other books, The Courage to Stand: Facing Your Fear without Losing Your Soul is vivid, biblical, and counter-cultural. [...]
The post The Courage to Stand: Facing Your Fear without Losing Your Soul – Russell Moore appeared first on Life Is Story.
The title is Burden of Proof. The cover shows a man in a suit walking down stairs while talking on a cell phone. The novel’s summary says something like “Ethan must face his past and [...]
The post Burden of Proof – Davis Bunn appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Search of the Beloved is written by Marian Rizzo, a Pulitzer Prize nominated journalist. Unfortunately, Rizzo can’t seem to shake her journalist roots, resulting in a book that is written as a series of [...]
The post In Search of the Beloved – Marian Rizzo appeared first on Life Is Story.
Normally when a book is bad, I just don’t review it. The Love Scam is different. It’s so bad I had to review it. The Love Scam is a poorly-written pile of cringeworthy sentences that [...]
The post The Love Scam – Jeffrey McClain Jones appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Haunting at Bonaventure Circus is a story told in two times, in two halves. The past storyline is a reasonably told tale of mystery, deceit, and death (with just the right amount of kitsch). [...]
The post The Haunting at Bonaventure Circus – Jaime Jo Wright appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Escape begins with a bang and never lets up. That becomes its biggest strength and greatest weakness. US Marshals Madison James and Jonas Quinn find themselves unlikely partners on a prisoner transport mission. They’ve [...]
The post The Escape – Lisa Harris appeared first on Life Is Story.
There was a time in the early 2010s that well-known authors and publishers were flirting with the concept of ebook-only short stories/novellas that either brought additional flavor to well-known characters, added depth to well-known stories, [...]
The post Bullseye: Will Robie/Camel Club Crossover Short Story – David Baldacci appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Sowing Season—the story about a gruff old man who befriends a young teenage girl in a Hallmark movie kind of way—isn’t exactly my typical reading fare. But sometimes you just need something different and [...]
The post The Sowing Season – Katie Powner appeared first on Life Is Story.
New Morning Mercies has been a Paul David Tripp classic since it was first published in 2014. In his inimitable style, Tripp leads readers in short, easily-digested devotionals that are meant simply to refocus readers [...]
The post Forty Days of Grace & Faith – Paul David Tripp appeared first on Life Is Story.
Get ready for a marriage book unlike anything you’ve seen before. An Impossible Marriage is the story of Laurie and Matt Krieg and their experiences dealing with past sexual trauma, pornography addiction, and mixed-orientations within [...]
The post An Impossible Marriage – Laurie and Matt Krieg appeared first on Life Is Story.
Big Theology for Little Hearts is a book series that believes you’re never too young to learn about our faith or the words we use to express it. Each book in the series focuses on [...]
The post The Gospel (Big Theology for Little Hearts) – Devon and Jessica Provencher appeared first on Life Is Story.
This vibrant picture book shares the biblical story of Deborah, emphasizing the way that this prophet listened to God and led others at a time when most of the Israelites were worshiping idols. The text [...]
The post Deborah and the Very Big Battle – Tim Thornborough and Jennifer Davison appeared first on Life Is Story.
This picture book tells the story of the Exodus. Author Tim Thornborough writes in an engaging style with lots of action words, and Jennifer Davison’s illustrations are simple, colorful, and ethnically accurate. The book emphasizes [...]
The post Moses and the Very Big Rescue – Tim Thornborough and Jennifer Davison appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this short, simple book, J.D. Greear explains who Jesus is, using the titles prophesied by Isaiah to show how Jesus is our wonderful counselor, mighty God, prince of peace, and everlasting father. Greear writes [...]
The post Searching for Christmas – J.D. Greear appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Ruth For You: Revealing God’s Kindness and Care, pastor and author Tony Merida explores the book of Ruth through expository teaching. He goes through the biblical book from beginning to end, and also includes [...]
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In If Only, Jennie Pollock encourages Christians to find contentment within their hard circumstances, knowing that God is with them, loves them, and has their good in mind. To illustrate this, she shares her personal [...]
The post If Only: Finding Contentment in the Face of Lack and Longing – Jennie Pollock appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Sacred Overlap challenges the tribal mindsets in our culture, helping Christians see the importance of being a “both/and” people, instead of grabbing hold of one particular idea and making it mutually exclusive. J.R. Briggs does [...]
The post The Sacred Overlap: Learning to Live Faithfully in the Space Between – J.R. Briggs appeared first on Life Is Story.
Christmas is Coming! Christmas is usually the most-anticipated holiday of the year for all the wrong reasons. This beautifully illustrated and wonderfully written book resets our Christmas anticipations by focusing on the promise of Jesus [...]
The post Christmas is Coming – Tama Fortner appeared first on Life Is Story.
We are a fan of Little Bible Heroes in the Olds household. The little flipbook Bible stories are cute, accurate, and my kids have absolutely devoured them. (Literally in one instance, no lie.) This book [...]
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Seek and Circle Christmas Stories from B&H Kids is a wonderful tool to get your little ones—and even not-so-little ones in the mindset of Christmas. Using a write-on, wipe-off marker, you can play a seek-and-find [...]
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The Bright Light and the Super Scary Darkness uses the imagery of darkness and light as a metaphor for the Fall and redemption. The opening panels present to your little ones what we all know: [...]
The post The Bright Light and the Super Scary Darkness – Dan DeWitt appeared first on Life Is Story.
I knew Bryan Litfin from his scholarly work, his professorship at Moody Bible Institute, and his work with The Gospel Coalition. When I saw that he was writing a historical fiction trilogy set within the [...]
The post The Conqueror – Bryan Litfin appeared first on Life Is Story.
Dada, Mama, now baby. Jimmy Fallon completes (?) his children’s book trilogy with This is Baby, an introspective look at the nature of Baby and their relationship with the world. The first few panels introduce [...]
The post This is Baby – Jimmy Fallon appeared first on Life Is Story.
Everything is Mama is the hit follow-up to Jimmy Fallon’s #1 NYT bestseller Your Baby’s First Word Will be Dada. While the latter hit the NYT list based on name recognition and not for its [...]
The post Everything is Mama – Jimmy Fallon appeared first on Life Is Story.
Your Baby’s First Word Will Be Dada is a simple, animal sounds board book that portrays different animal dads trying to get their little ones to say “Dada!” Each two-panel set has one the dad [...]
The post Your Baby’s First Word Will Be Dada – Jimmy Fallon appeared first on Life Is Story.
Big Theology for Little Hearts is a book series that believes you’re never too young to learn about our faith or the words we use to express it. Each book in the series focuses on [...]
The post God (Big Theology for Little Hearts – Devon and Jessica Provencher appeared first on Life Is Story.
Big Theology for Little Hearts is a book series that believes you’re never too young to learn about our faith or the words we use to express it. Each book in the series focuses on [...]
The post Jesus (Big Theology for Little Hearts) – Devon and Jessica Provencher appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Cul-de-Sac War by Melissa Ferguson is a humorous and lighthearted story about neighbors who are at war with each other. This is one story where you really cannot go by first impressions…or can you? [...]
The post The Cul-de-Sac War – Melissa Ferguson appeared first on Life Is Story.
“My given name was Jesus. I never liked that name, even as a boy. It didn’t fit me somehow, and my later infamous connection to the son of Joseph the Carpenter made it unbearable. So, [...]
The post I Was Called Barabbas – M.D. House appeared first on Life Is Story.
Who Will Be a Witness? is one of those books I’ll come back to time and time again. Deeply theological yet deeply practical, Drew Hart offers an outright manifesto of the church’s need to be [...]
The post Who Will Be A Witness? – Drew Hart appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have to admit that I wasn’t sure about White Lies. I had the same feeling when I read through White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo? With so many people of color—Jemar Tisby, Brenda Salter McNeil, [...]
The post White Lies – Daniel Hill appeared first on Life Is Story.
Diane Langberg is a psychologist with decades of counseling experience. In her latest book, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church, she presents a strong call for Christians to reevaluate their understanding of [...]
The post Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church – Diane Langberg appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Defiance by Laura Gallier is the latest in the author’s “The Deception” series. The poor teenagers in these novels experience spiritual warfare in the physical sense. They see it, and it can affect their bodies. [...]
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The Deception by Laura Gallier is book #2 of The Delusion series, and it picks up not long after The Delusion concludes…if you could call the first book’s cliffhanger ending a “conclusion.” The Deception also ends in a cliffhanger, just a [...]
The post The Deception – Laura Gallier appeared first on Life Is Story.
Where do I start with The Delusion by Laura Gallier? Fans of Ted Dekker’s more thrilling books like Adam and The Bride Collector will like this novel. If you’re a Frank Peretti fan, too, The Delusion is right up your [...]
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Earlier this year, I reviewed another Barnabas Piper book, and I enjoyed it so much that as soon as I learned about this book, I knew that I wanted to read it too. Once again, [...]
The post Hoping for Happiness: Turning Life’s Most Elusive Feeling into Lasting Reality – Barnabas Piper appeared first on Life Is Story.
In The Christmas We Didn’t Expect, David Mathis shares twenty-four short devotions reflecting on the birth of Christ and what it means for us. Even though I read this book in October for the purposes [...]
The post The Christmas We Didn’t Expect: Daily Devotions for Advent – David Mathis appeared first on Life Is Story.
Many years ago, Stacy Henagan lost her one-year-old daughter to a brain tumor after bouts of aggressive treatment. She and her husband had earnestly prayed for a miracle, but despite their pleas and continual prayer [...]
The post Breathe Again: Choosing to Believe There’s More When Life Has Left You Broken – Stacy Henagan appeared first on Life Is Story.
As I close this book, and lay it down, I’m left sitting here in awe and amazement. I’ll be honest, I only chose to read this book because I kept hearing glowing recommendations. The cover…well, [...]
The post The Sowing Season – Katie Powner appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this charming, offbeat picture book, a little girl who stars as Mary in a Christmas pageant becomes increasingly aggravated with the strange props that keep showing up to change the show. She insists that [...]
The post There’s a Lion in My Nativity! – Lizzie Laferton and Kim Barnes appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Disconnected, Thomas Kersting shares research data and anecdotes to show how negatively smartphones are affecting children’s mental health, social skills, and emotional development. His work as a psychotherapist has given him the opportunity to [...]
The post Disconnected: How to Protect Your Kids from the Harmful Effects of Device Dependency – Thomas Kersting appeared first on Life Is Story.
Motherhood without all the Rules is full of wisdom and encouragement for Christians moms who are struggling with comparison, judgment, and a sense of defeat. Maggie Combs pushes back against unhealthy standards in secular culture [...]
The post Motherhood Without All the Rules: Trading Stressful Standards for Gospel Truths – Maggie Combs appeared first on Life Is Story.
Dear J.S. Bailey, please stop killing characters in dramatic ways that rip my heart out of my chest. And then run my heart over with a full cement truck. Then blow up the cement truck [...]
The post Salvation (Chronicles of Servitude #5) – J.S. Bailey appeared first on Life Is Story.
J.S. Bailey does it again with Solemnity, book four of “The Chronicles of Servitude” series. This supernatural thriller left me wiggling in my seat with mentions of the occult and its tactics. I may have been [...]
The post Solemnity (Chronicles of Servitude #4) – J.S. Bailey appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Surrender, J.S. Bailey picks up where she left off with Bobby Roland. A bad guy wants to kill Bobby, one who can play with his mind. He’s come across his first demoniac to cleanse, but [...]
The post Surrender (Chronicles of Servitude #3) – J.S. Bailey appeared first on Life Is Story.
I could not open Sacrifice by J.S. Bailey fast enough. After the end of Servant, I had to keep going, and this one…oh, wow, Bailey did not disappoint. I swallowed up the pages like the novel was [...]
The post Sacrifice (Chronicles of Solitude #2) – J.S. Bailey appeared first on Life Is Story.
Servant was my first exposure to J.S. Bailey’s work, and I must say, I am impressed. From the very first page, Bailey drew me in and had me asking questions. Who were Bobby, Phil, Randy, [...]
The post Servant (Chronicles of Servitude #1) – J.S. Bailey appeared first on Life Is Story.
I grew up in a tradition that valued the intellectual aspect of Christianity. I was (and am) very truth-oriented in my approach to Christianity, something that has led to a keen interest in apologetics. But [...]
The post Love Matters More – Jared Byas appeared first on Life Is Story.
Jane Hardy is back and things are just as convoluted as ever. (WARNING: SPOILERS FROM BOOK 1.) Things seem to have changed a bit from One Little Lie, with Jane not as close to Reid [...]
The post Two Reasons to Run (Pelican Harbor #2) – Colleen Coble appeared first on Life Is Story.
When Jane Hardy was appointed interim sheriff in Pelican Harbor—following the surprise retirement of her father—there are a few unsolved crimes, but nothing out of the ordinary. That soon changes when a shrimp boat reels [...]
The post One Little Lie (Pelican Harbor #1) – Colleen Coble appeared first on Life Is Story.
The fire behind him had finished burning. But in his soaked white suit he looked like a snowman, already starting to melt. I looked up from Alex Pavesi’s The Eighth Detective and toward my wife [...]
The post The Eighth Detective – Alex Pavesi appeared first on Life Is Story.
If you understand the Church, then you know that it comes in many different forms. You have the ritual and tradition and see/smell/taste physicality of high church denominations like Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. You have [...]
The post Gary Thomas – Sacred Pathways appeared first on Life Is Story.
One of the things that I’ve become more aware of in the past few years is that diversity and assimilation are not substitutes. Too many primarily white evangelical churches long for diversity, but what they [...]
The post For God So Loved the World – ed. Walter Strickland and Dayton Hartman appeared first on Life Is Story.
God on the Brain is a heavy read. Of course, the subtitle: What Cognitive Science Does (and Does Not) Tell Us about Faith, Human Nature, and the Divine could have told you that. As humans [...]
The post God on the Brain – Bradley Sickler appeared first on Life Is Story.
I went into Alisa Childers’ Another Gospel not knowing how I’d feel about it. In many ways, here journey mirrors mine. Grew up deeply entrenched in conservative evangelicalism. Lived in a conservative, white bubble. And [...]
The post Another Gospel – Alisa Childers appeared first on Life Is Story.
My first interaction with the refugee crisis came in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where our local jail was being used as an ICE detention facility. Over a dozen asylees were released near midnight with only their clothes [...]
The post The House that Love Built – Sarah Jackson appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Love Note is another amazing story from Joanna Davidson Politano. This is a story of a lost love letter, and its vast impact, bringing much chaos, but ultimately pushing each finder to be their [...]
The post The Love Note – Joanna Davidson Politano appeared first on Life Is Story.
Just the cover of The Key to Love made me want to read it. I found the story to be slightly less appealing than the cover, but still – it’s an overall sweet story. Abrielle, (Bri) is [...]
The post The Key to Love – Betsy St. Amant appeared first on Life Is Story.
As the Enneagram has surged in popularity, so have the books that utilize it. In The Enneagram for Spiritual Formation, AJ Sherrill writes with a realistic view of the Enneagram, supporting it as a tool [...]
The post The Enneagram for Spiritual Formation: How Knowing Ourselves Can Make Us More Like Jesus – AJ Sherrill appeared first on Life Is Story.
I wanted so badly to love this book and for three hundred and fifty-nine pages that is exactly what I did. The Edge of Belonging is a story of discovering identity and finding family. You [...]
The post The Edge of Belonging – Amanda Cox appeared first on Life Is Story.
Where is God in all the Suffering? It’s a question both easy and difficult to answer. The easy answer, the typical answer, comes in the line from that old Footprints poem “It was then that [...]
The post Where is God in All the Suffering – Amy Orr-Ewing appeared first on Life Is Story.
So…I’m not quite sure what to do with this book. John Lennox is a bona fide genius (PhD, DPhil, DSc, Professor Emeritus at Oxford). He’s the intellectual that comes out to dispute Dawkins, Harris, and [...]
The post 2084: AI and the Future of Humanity – John Lennox appeared first on Life Is Story.
Every church that I’ve ever worked in has struggled with its educational ministry. There’s a loose idea that we should be teaching, a general idea of how to teach, but rarely anything that coheres into [...]
The post The Educational Ministry of a Church – J. Jonathan Kim Charles Tidwell appeared first on Life Is Story.
We all have hidden hurts. They’re the losses that we’ve buried deep within ourselves. The childhood traumas that we’ve consciously forgotten. The pent-up anger and frustration of some unmet expectations. Jon Chasteen uses the imagery [...]
The post Half the Battle – Jon Chasteen appeared first on Life Is Story.
We live in a busy world. Even as technology has made our lives more productive, we’ve continued to push ourselves past normal limits in a way completely derogatory to our mental health. To push back [...]
The post Deeper Still – Linda Allcock appeared first on Life Is Story.
Experiencing a miscarriage can be one of the loneliest experiences a mother can go through. Even if the grief is shared—with friends, family, or the father—the loss for the mother is tangible in a way [...]
The post Held: 31 Biblical Reflections on God’s Comfort and Care in the Sorrow of Miscarriage appeared first on Life Is Story.
I was ten years old when I first read Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell. It was my first attempt to parse an academic work. I probably didn’t understand a lot of it. [...]
The post The History of Apologetics – Benjamin Forrest, Joshua Chatraw, and Alister McGrath appeared first on Life Is Story.
Dear White Christians is one of those books that it took me a while to get through. (My apologies to Eerdmans, who is probably convinced I forgot all about them.) In the wake of George [...]
The post Dear White Christians – Jennifer Harvey appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have read several novels centered around the story of Rahab, and each one has left me both convicted and filled with an intense warmth that can only come from God. Pearl in the Sand [...]
The post Pearl in the Sand – Tessa Afshar appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Way of the Brave by Susan May Warren was a book I could not put down once I got a few chapters into it. I never thought I would enjoy a novel about climbing [...]
The post The Way of the Brave – Susan May Warren appeared first on Life Is Story.
The first thing I said when I opened The Price of Valor by Susan May Warren was “FINALLY!” I couldn’t start reading it fast enough. The first two books of the “Global Search and Rescue” [...]
The post The Price of Valor – Susan May Warren appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Heart of a Hero is the second novel in Susan May Warren’s “Global Search and Rescue” series, and she did not disappoint! Readers first meet Aria Sinclair and former SEAL Jake Silver in The [...]
The post The Heart of a Hero – Susan May Warren appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is a breathtaking novel that leaves you pondering, in awe and amazement. How does one begin to put words together to adequately describe this glowing story of starry light?! Set the Stars Alight is [...]
The post Set the Stars Alight – Amanda Dykes appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is my first experience with reading anything written by Lori Benton, and I am completely amazed and astounded at the raw talent that is this story. I first picked up the book and began [...]
The post Mountain Laurel – Lori Benton appeared first on Life Is Story.
When I was a teenager, I attended some church youth retreats that emphasized memorizing and meditating on Scripture. I was the type of nerd who thought that this was a wonderful experience, and even though [...]
The post Deeper Still: Finding Clear Minds and Full Hearts through Biblical Meditation – Linda Allcock appeared first on Life Is Story.
There’s something comforting and familiar about a Max Lucado book. I’ve read enough that I can hear his voice and intonation in the pages. He has his distinct style down to absolute perfection. You know [...]
The post You Are Never Alone – Max Lucado appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this academic work, pastor and professor Glenn Packiam explores contemporary worship through the dual lenses of theology and sociology. He seeks to understand the reality of Christian hope through Scripture, but he also investigates [...]
The post Worship and the World to Come: Exploring Christian Hope in Contemporary Worship – Glenn Packiam appeared first on Life Is Story.
C.S. Lewis is my favorite writer and historical figure, and I love Dorothy L. Sayers’s mystery novels and Christian nonfiction. As soon as I learned that this book existed, I knew that I wanted to [...]
The post Dorothy and Jack: The Transforming Friendship of Dorothy L. Sayers and C.S. Lewis – Gina Dalfonzo appeared first on Life Is Story.
Kim Erickson’s oldest son died when he was three years old, and in the wake of that loss, she came to know God for the first time. In this book, she shares her personal testimony, [...]
The post Surviving Sorrow: A Mother’s Guide to Living with Loss – Kim Erickson appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book elevates friendship as the definitive human relationship experience. Victor Lee Austin pushes back against common secular and Christian assumptions about human nature, arguing that even though sexual love is deeply important, it is [...]
The post Friendship: The Heart of Being Human – Victor Lee Austin appeared first on Life Is Story.
Could I just…self-proclaim myself as DiAnn Mills’ biggest fan at this point? Long Walk Home is unlike any other novel I have ever read. It reminds me more of a nonfiction book in its topic–missionary work in [...]
The post Long Walk Home – DiAnn Mills appeared first on Life Is Story.
Where Tomorrow Leads by DiAnn Mills picks up where its prequel, Long Walk Home, ends. A couple years have passed, and the population of southern Sudan is hesitantly hopeful for peace. Authorities have negotiated a new peace [...]
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Rachelle Dekker’s writing journey has bounced through literary genres. Most authors find a genre and stick to it. Some may play around the edges, but most find that readers want to know what they’re getting [...]
The post Nine – Rachelle Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
Becoming Us is a story of friendship, which is good because Emily Winslow needs friends. Moving to California was supposed to be a new start. Instead, all it had done is removed their support structure [...]
The post Becoming Us – Robin Jones Gunn appeared first on Life Is Story.
When the 2016 presidential election kicked off, I was cautiously optimistic. After having slowly grown to appreciate some aspects of Obama’s presidency, while being critical of others, I thought that both parties had an opportunity [...]
The post The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump – ed. Ron Sider appeared first on Life Is Story.
Emo Philips was kind of a weird, surreal type of comedian in the 1970s and 80s. He was famous for his use of paraprosdokians—a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence, [...]
The post When Doctrine Divides the People of God – Rhyne Putman appeared first on Life Is Story.
It has existed since long before 2016, though that’s when it began to come into full focus for most people. The great American experiment seemed to have lost its way, lost its soul. Not just [...]
The post American Awakening – John Kingston appeared first on Life Is Story.
The year is 1944. Dolly Chandler’s last hope to same the generational family home is to turn it into a boarding house for those coming to Blackberry Springs to work in the munitions plant. They’ve [...]
The post Almost Home – Valerie Fraser Luesse appeared first on Life Is Story.
If you’ve ever opened a Bible for any length of time, chances are that you’ve come across some weird stuff. Not weird stuff like this is my body, broken for you or weird like a [...]
The post Murder-Bears, Moonshine, and Mayhem – Luke Harrington appeared first on Life Is Story.
As COVID-19—the sociopolitical and economic arguments—continues to ravage, philosophers and theologians have also continued to pick up their pens and write their responses to a pandemic unlike anything any of us have seen. As these [...]
The post God and the Pandemic – NT Wright appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’ve always been a “writing pastor.” In my early years, I stuck woodenly to my full manuscript. In later years, I learned to deviate from and return to the script with ease, as the situation [...]
The post Writing for Life and Ministry – Brandon O’Brien appeared first on Life Is Story.
Scott Sauls’ A Gentle Answer sets out intending to explore how we can live in a way that refuses to live into what he names as a culture where hate has become “an asset.” He [...]
The post A Gentle Answer – Scott Sauls appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this gentle, life-affirming book, Gary Chapman and Candy McVicar provide guidance for parents who are grieving the loss of a baby. The authors primarily focus on miscarriage, stillbirth, and early infant death, but they [...]
The post Holding on to Love After You’ve Lost a Baby: The 5 Love Languages for Grieving Parents – Gary Chapman and Candy McVicar appeared first on Life Is Story.
Marilyn Vancil explains the Enneagram personality system in reference to Scripture, focusing on God’s commands for us to take off the old self and put on the new. She explains that when someone understands their [...]
The post Self to Lose, Self to Find: Using the Enneagram to Uncover Your True, God-Gifted Self – Marilyn Vancil appeared first on Life Is Story.
Is Jesus Truly God? This is possibly the most important question that could ever be asked. Indeed, the whole of the Christian faith hinges upon how this question is answered. Every other religion as their [...]
The post Is Jesus Truly God? – Greg Lanier appeared first on Life Is Story.
Can you love God and enjoy this world? It’s a question that most Christians, at some level, either feel guilty about or struggle with. Prosperity theology would respond with an unabashed yes, that God wants [...]
The post Strangely Bright – Joe Rigney appeared first on Life Is Story.
God created the family before he created the church. That line, which I first heard from Ravi Zacharias, became a guide for my time in youth ministry. The family is the central place of learning, [...]
The post Family Discipleship – Matt Chandler and Adam Griffin appeared first on Life Is Story.
Religion and politics are two subjects you’re not supposed to talk about at the dinner table. Over the past few years, how those two subjects intersect and overlap has been pushed center-stage into the forum [...]
The post The Bible and the Ballot – Tremper Longman III appeared first on Life Is Story.
The topic of the Holy Spirit can often be overwhelming. Churches and denominational traditions seem to either place the Spirit in a place of great prominence or very nearly downplay the Spirit into nonexistence, at [...]
The post The Holy Spirit (Theology for the People of God) – Gregg Allison & Andreas Kostenberger appeared first on Life Is Story.
As a social worker, Wren Crawford knows when to seek help. Still, knowing and doing are different and it takes all that she has to check herself into a psychiatric facility. She’s been overwhelmed with [...]
The post Shades of Light – Sharon Garlough Brown appeared first on Life Is Story.
Most children’s devotionals I’ve read are either too guided. The correct answers are telegraphed to the student to the point of absurdity. No real thought has to be given and, therefore, nothing is ever really [...]
The post Meeting with Jesus – David Murray appeared first on Life Is Story.
I pretty much checked out of this book after chapter one. With a title like Pandemics, Plagues, and Natural Disasters, you’d think Erwin W. Lutzer’s introductory chapter “The Crisis That Changed Everything” would focus on [...]
The post Pandemics, Plagues, and Natural Disasters – Erwin Lutzer appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Good Book Company first captured my attention with their Tales that Tell the Truth children’s book series. It’s so difficult to find children’s books that are both meaningful and not overwrought. My experience is [...]
The post Wherever You Go, I Want You to Know – Melissa Kruger appeared first on Life Is Story.
Two months ago, my wife and I pulled the trigger on a move we’d been planning for over two years. I had moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, seven years prior, taking on the positions of pastor [...]
The post What Now? – Mark Jobe appeared first on Life Is Story.
What comes to mind when you hear the term The Good Life? What is it that makes a life good? Family, friends, financial success? Is it having a job you love or enough free time [...]
The post The Good Life – Derwin Gray appeared first on Life Is Story.
Buried treasure. An election in the balance. A family history put into question. A Dazzle of Diamonds by Liz Johnson is a fascinating book from the moment you glance at the back cover. It features [...]
The post A Dazzle of Diamonds (Georgia Coast Romance #3) – Liz Johnson appeared first on Life Is Story.
A Life Once Dreamed by Rachel Fordham is a mildly enjoyable—although somewhat predictable—journey to an 1880s frontier town in the Dakota Territory. Fordham provides a glimpse into a past long gone for her readers, and [...]
The post A Life Once Dreamed – Rachel Fordham appeared first on Life Is Story.
“Sometimes you need someone to step in and save you from yourself.” I pulled the line above from Lynette Eason’s Acceptable Risk because it sums up the entire novel in one simple sentence. This romantic [...]
The post Acceptable Risk – Lynette Eason appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this deeply personal memoir, pastor’s wife Jennie Lusko shares hard-won wisdom about enduring through unimaginable hardship to still flourish in relationships and grow in Christ. In December 2012, her five-year-old daughter, Lenya, died in [...]
The post The Fight to Flourish: Engaging in the Struggle to Cultivate the Life You Were Born to Live – Jennie Lusko appeared first on Life Is Story.
Deep Extraction is my favorite of DiAnn Mills’ FBI Task Force series. Hands down. The FBI tasks Special Agent Tori Templeton to investigate a suspicious death. Her friend’s husband, Nathan Moore, had a heart attack, his [...]
The post Deep Extraction – DiAnn Mills appeared first on Life Is Story.
One shot–an assassination attempt. One death–a bodyguard’s life lost. A million questions. DiAnn Mills drew me into High Treason from the first page. The third and final book of the FBI Task Force series, I unfortunately [...]
The post High Treason – DiAnn Mills appeared first on Life Is Story.
Deadly Encounter is the third book by DiAnn Mills that I have read, and thus far – unfortunately – my least favorite. The first book of Mills’s “FBI Task Force” series was well written, and [...]
The post Deadly Encounter – DiAnn Mills appeared first on Life Is Story.
Christian books written from a sports background have always been a staple in Christian non-fiction, usually offered as the hook to get men to step inside the Christian book section, which is often overwhelmingly—for both [...]
The post The Uniform of Leadership – Jason Romano appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Living for What Really Matters, Teresa Swanstrom Anderson guides women through Philippians, drawing on both Scripture and external sources to provide spiritual, social, and political context for Paul’s writing. She provides guidance on how to [...]
The post Living for What Really Matters: 7 Weeks in the Book of Philippians – Teresa Swanstrom Anderson appeared first on Life Is Story.
After Goldstone Wood came to an ignominious end, Anne Elisabeth Stengl tried her best to keep the series going. Book seven, Golden Daughter, was published under Rooglewood Press, her own independent publisher. While a full-length [...]
The post Draven’s Light (A Goldstone Wood Novella) – Anne Elisabeth Stengl appeared first on Life Is Story.
I first discovered Goldstone Wood in 2013 with Dragonwitch. I immediately went back to books 1-4 (Heartless, Veiled Rose, Moonblood, and Starflower) and followed the series in lock-step until Anne Elisabeth Stengl put aside that [...]
The post Fallen Star (A Short Story of Goldstone Wood) – Anne Elisabeth Stengl appeared first on Life Is Story.
From the title alone, I knew that Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity would be something I needed to read carefully and consider deeply. I grew up in a rural midwestern [...]
The post Rediscipling the White Church – David Swanson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Letters to a Young Congregation is the companion book to Letters to a Young Pastor. Where the latter was written by Eugene Peterson to his son, Eric, this is written from Eric to his congregation. [...]
The post Letters to a Young Congregation – Eric Peterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Letter-writing is a lost art. In the age of emails and voice-to-text, it should be easier than ever, but, as a society, we’ve by-and-large put such conversations to the side and focused on more disposable [...]
The post Letters to a Young Pastor – Eric Peterson & Eugene Peterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
I had not read any of Carrie Stuart Parks’s work prior to Relative Silence. Based off this particular novel, I will be searching for more that she has written. I read Relative Silence in a [...]
The post Relative Silence – Carrie Stuart Parks appeared first on Life Is Story.
A historical fiction novel about a lady doctor. If this isn’t enough of a novelty, add in the fact that she’s part Native American. I really liked the idea behind Tracie Peterson’s The Way of [...]
The post The Way of Love – Tracie Peterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Elizabeth Camden’s A Gilded Lady is the continuing saga of the Delacroix siblings. This second book in the Hope and Glory series focuses on the beautiful Caroline. In the first book, The Spice King, you [...]
The post A Gilded Lady – Elizabeth Camden appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Weep with Me: How Lament Opens a Door for Racial Reconciliation, white pastor Mark Vroegop shares what he has learned from his church about how to have conversations across lines of difference without suspicion [...]
The post Weep with Me: How Lament Opens a Door for Racial Reconciliation – Mark Vroegop appeared first on Life Is Story.
Glenna Marshall opens with an analogy about her failed garden, explaining that just like her withered tomatoes, our spiritual lives require constant cultivation in order to flourish. She challenges women to seek “everyday faithfulness,” explaining [...]
The post Everyday Faithfulness: The Beauty of Ordinary Perseverance in a Demanding World – Glenna Marshall appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’ll never forget the evening that my family volunteered to drive just-released refugees to the airport. Our local county jail in Oklahoma was being leased as an ICE detainment center. Asylum seekers were detained at [...]
The post The Bible and Borders – M. Daniel Carroll R. appeared first on Life Is Story.
“On remote missions, she controlled her phobia with her mind. In and out, get the job done. She would learn to handle it with this case, too, and no one would learn the truth.” If [...]
The post Fatal Strike – DiAnn Mills appeared first on Life Is Story.
A few months ago, I picked up the fifth book in Tales of Goldstone Wood, Dragonwitch, and was immediately drawn into the series. It had been quite some time since I had read a fantasy [...]
The post Heartless (Tales of Goldstone Wood #1) – Anne Elisabeth Stengl appeared first on Life Is Story.
Veiled Rose is best described as a companion novel to Stengl’s 2010 debut, Heartless. The novel follows a few of the same characters and expands upon a storyline given a brief reference in Heartless. Near [...]
The post Veiled Rose (Tales of Goldstone Wood #2) – Anne Elisabeth Stengl appeared first on Life Is Story.
Veiled Rose ends with Prince Lionheart—or Leo the Jester—returning to his kingdom having bargained with, rather than fought, the dragon. He returns to Southlands as the Crown Prince, but the inhabitants of Southlands distrust the [...]
The post Moonblood (Tales of Goldstone Wood #3) – Anne Elisabeth Stengl appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Dragonwitch seeks the Flowing Gold of Rudiobus, and none save King Iubdan, Queen Bebo, and Lady Gleamdren know of its secret…and Lady Gleamdren would be the most easily captured and most likely to be [...]
The post Starflower (Tales of Goldstone Wood #4) – Anne Elisabeth Stengl appeared first on Life Is Story.
I have a confession. I dislike fantasy novels. Especially Christian fantasy novels. Well, let me clarify. Because of the popularity of the Lord of the Rings (and Hobbit) movie franchises as well as the enduring [...]
The post Dragonwitch (Tales of Goldstone Wood #5) – Anne Elisabeth Stengl appeared first on Life Is Story.
Up until this point in the Tales of Goldstone Wood, I would perfectly comfortable saying that you could read any novel as a standalone story, then retreat to the previous books. But Shadow Hand is [...]
The post Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood #6) – Anne Elisabeth Stengl appeared first on Life Is Story.
Officially, the Golden Daughters are a myth. Unofficially, they are one of the most elite sets of bodyguards ever trained. The best and brightest and most beautiful set aside and trained as the perfect weapons [...]
The post Golden Daughter (Tales of Goldstone Wood #7) – Anne Elisabeth Stengl appeared first on Life Is Story.
Don’t Keep Silent by Elizabeth Goddard is one of those books that would’ve quickly drawn my attention at any bookstore. The title piqued my interest, and when I read the synopsis the first time, there [...]
The post Don’t Keep Silent (Uncommon Justice #3) – Elizabeth Goddard appeared first on Life Is Story.
I write a lot. Book reviews. Ministry materials. Emails. I’ve written professionally in the past: a published book of Bible stories, a venture with NYT bestselling author Ted Dekker, and an upcoming novella. But when [...]
The post Your Story Matters – Leslie Leyland Fields appeared first on Life Is Story.
Dead Silence by Robin Caroll snagged my attention from the moment I saw the abstract. Elise Carmichael, who is an ex-model turned sign language interpreter, read lips automatically. This habit, however, leads to her seeing [...]
The post Dead Silence – Robin Caroll appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is not your typical historical fiction! I have enjoyed other books by Ms. Klassen, and rather expected this one to be similar. But, I had barely began reading when I discovered how different this [...]
The post The Bridge to Belle Island Julie Klassen appeared first on Life Is Story.
These Nameless Things is a Dante’s Inferno-esque tale that deals with one man’s personal hell and his struggle for redemption. Smucker doesn’t hide the connections. The entrance into the mountain cave bears the famous warning [...]
The post These Nameless Things – Shawn Smucker appeared first on Life Is Story.
Children’s books are everywhere. Children’s retellings of Bible stories are everywhere. And the quality…well…in my experience, the quality ranges. How are we supposed to sort through it all? Early on, with my kids, I developed [...]
The post The Prisoners, the Earthquake, and the Midnight Song (Tales that Tell the Truth #10) appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this book, Sarah and Jeff Walton share their hard-won wisdom about how to sustain a healthy marriage in the midst of life’s storms. Throughout their years together, they have faced chronic illness, financial troubles, [...]
The post Together Through the Storms: Biblical Encouragements for Your Marriage When Life Hurts – Sarah Walton and Jeff Walton appeared first on Life Is Story.
At the beginning of this book, Melissa B. Kruger addresses the general topic of mentoring, explaining what it can look like for different women in different life stages. She clears away misconceptions, establishes a biblical [...]
The post Growing Together: Taking Mentoring Beyond Small Talk and Prayer Requests – Melissa B. Kruger appeared first on Life Is Story.
In This Life We Share: 52 Reflections on Journeying Well with God and Others, Maggie Wallem Rowe encourages her readers with personal stories and Scriptural reflections. As an older woman, she is fulfilling her calling [...]
The post This Life We Share: 52 Reflections on Journeying Well with God and Others – Maggie Wallem Rowe appeared first on Life Is Story.
Airborne by DiAnn Mills caught my attention from the moment I saw the cover—“A killer virus is unleashed, and it’s up to her to stop it.” Part of me cringed. Another segment of me gave [...]
The post Airborne – DiAnn Mills appeared first on Life Is Story.
I know what you’re wondering: “Reviewing a disease-thriller during a global pandemic – isn’t that too on the nose? How morbid can this guy be?” The answers are “maybe,” and “morbid enough I guess.” I’m [...]
The post Outbreak – Davis Bunn appeared first on Life Is Story.
A week after I signed up to be on the Dream Big launch team, my wife and I quit our jobs and moved across the country to pursue an adventure. Her job would allow her [...]
The post Dream Big – Bob Goff appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Life Essentials Interactive Study Bible is the result of a lifetime of study and well over a decade of work. Originally published in 2011 after seven years of work, Dr. Getz’s text and video [...]
The post Life Essentials Interactive Study Bible (CSB) appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is going to be a rather rambling review. I picked up The Myth of the American Dream on the basis of the title alone. My whole early adulthood has been spent deconstructing my distinctly [...]
The post The Myth of the American Dream – D.L. Mayfield appeared first on Life Is Story.
It was a struggle to write this review because, in truth, Russell Moore is one of the few people within the SBC and evangelicalism in general that I still admire. Not always agree with, but [...]
The post The Storm-Tossed Family – Russell Moore appeared first on Life Is Story.
As you might guess by the title, Mother to Son: Letters to a Black Boy on Identity and Hope, I—a white male—am not exactly the target demographic for this book. But, in another sense, I’m [...]
The post Mother to Son – Jasmine Holmes appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Cross in Four Words is a simple, compact volume of just 91 pages meant to introduce readers to the core of the Gospel message. Kevin DeYoung, Richard Coekin, and Yannick Christie-Wahab come together for [...]
The post The Cross in Four Words – Kevin DeYoung, et. al. appeared first on Life Is Story.
This charming picture book celebrates God’s design for every person. Author Rory Feek created this book for a parent or grandparent to share with a child, and it encourages readers to see God’s hand in [...]
The post The Day God Made You – Rory Feek and Malgosia Piatkowska appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Seamless Life: A Tapestry of Love and Learning, Worship and Work is an attractively designed collection of short, photo-illustrated essays. The author, Steven Garber, shares personal anecdotes related to his upbringing, other experiences, and [...]
The post The Seamless Life: A Tapestry of Love and Learning, Worship and Work – Steven Garber appeared first on Life Is Story.
In Analog Church: Why We Need Real People, Places, and Things in the Digital Age, Jay Y. Kim shares a unique and helpful perspective on digital culture and Christianity, arguing that when churches adopt technology [...]
The post Analog Church: Why We Need Real People, Places, and Things in the Digital Age – Jay Y. Kim appeared first on Life Is Story.
I don’t often give five-star reviews, but A Dream within a Dream by Mike Nappa and Melissa Kosci gets one of my first of the year. And that’s saying a lot, because this particular novel [...]
The post A Dream within a Dream – Mike Nappa and Melissa Kosci appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Little Bible Heroes series has been a favorite in our house for quite some time. So much a favorite that the corners are dog-eared, the covers are ripped—and I’ll be honest, a page or [...]
The post Little Bible Heroes: Ruth appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Little Bible Heroes series has been a favorite in our house for quite some time. So much a favorite that the corners are dog-eared, the covers are ripped—and I’ll be honest, a page or [...]
The post Little Bible Heroes: Joshua appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’m not exactly a Greek scholar. Languages were never my forte and I’ve been quite content in my ministry to leave the job of parsing the Greek to people more qualified. Besides, every time I [...]
The post 2 Corinthians (B&H Exegetical Guide to the Greek New Testament) – Colin Kruse appeared first on Life Is Story.
“They’re like those Christian Y2K books that came out in 1999, but this time it’s actually based on a real thing.” – That’s becoming my go-to tagline for anyone asking me why I’m reading so [...]
The post 5 Things to Pray in a Global Crisis – Rachel Jones appeared first on Life Is Story.
Ronie Kendig continues to prove herself as the queen of military suspense and thriller. Kings Falling, book two of the gripping Book of the Wars series, is a can’t-put-down page-turner filled with action from the [...]
The post Kings Falling Ronie Kendig appeared first on Life Is Story.
Storm Rising is the first book in Ronie Kendig’s The Book of the Wars trilogy. For readers of her earlier series, it will be like meeting up with old acquaintances, because there are some familiar characters from [...]
The post Storm Rising Ronie Kendig appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Key to Everything by Valerie Fraser Luesse is a book that reminds me of storytelling at its finest. The book isn’t full of suspense or thrills. There are no real plot twists or overly [...]
The post The Key to Everything – Valerie Fraser Luesse appeared first on Life Is Story.
There’s great power in a good story. Stories bring us together, help us find common ground, take us on a common journey. In Stories That Bind Us, Susie Finkbeiner weaves a compelling relational narrative about [...]
The post Stories that Bind Us – Susie Finkbeiner appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’m sitting here with tears, trying to process all the layers of this amazing story. So much pain. Hope. Redemption. Forgiveness. Love. This story pretty much had me hooked from the very first page. (You [...]
The post Stay With Me – Becky Wade appeared first on Life Is Story.
Mary Connealy’s Woman of Sunlight is a fun read – humorous, intriguing, lots of unexpected events, some suspense, and even a bit of action and danger. This entire story is quite the adventure. Ilsa joins Mitch [...]
The post Woman of Sunlight – Mary Connealy appeared first on Life Is Story.
Anjuli Paschall encourages women to stay within the mess of their everyday lives instead of seeking shortcuts to wholeness, and since the COVID-19 shutdown requires us to literally “stay” right now, her advice on vulnerability [...]
The post Stay: Discovering Grace, Freedom, and Wholeness Where You Never Imagined Looking – Anjuli Paschall appeared first on Life Is Story.
In the introduction of this beautifully designed book, Barbara Rainey explains that during a recent period of suffering in her life, she began to write honest prayers in the spirit of the psalms, expressing her [...]
The post My Heart, Ever His: Prayers for Women – Barbara Rainey appeared first on Life Is Story.
I owe a lot to Ravi Zacharias. It was his books—Jesus Among Other Gods, first and foremost—that kindled an interest in apologetics that continue to this day. As a teenager, I spent hours on a [...]
The post Seeing Jesus from the East – Ravi Zacharias & Abdu Murray appeared first on Life Is Story.
A Sporting Chance tells the inspiring story of Ludwig Guttmann, the founder of the Paralympics. He was a German-Jewish doctor who escaped to England before WWII, and after years of patient care and research, he [...]
The post A Sporting Chance: How Ludwig Guttmann Created the Paralympic Games – Lori Alexander and Allen Drummond appeared first on Life Is Story.
Ta-Nehisi Coates has established himself as one of the top essayists of the 21st century. His article in the Atlantic on reparations pretty much single-handedly revitalized national discussion on the topic. Between the World and [...]
The post The Water Dancer – Ta-Nehisi Coates appeared first on Life Is Story.
Where the Crawdads Sing is one of the most beautiful, powerful novels I’ve ever read. It’s an absolute masterpiece that’s every bit as layered and filled with surprises as the marshlands that form its setting. [...]
The post Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens appeared first on Life Is Story.
What an absolutely amazing story! Before I Called You Mine is both inspirational and thought provoking. Nicole Deese inspires me to reach out in ways that might look impossible and just trust. Lauren is such a [...]
The post Before I Called You Mine – Nicole Deese appeared first on Life Is Story.
In 2010, Ted Dekker closed out The Lost Books in a stunning fashion, returning for a two-book salvo that picks up where the initial four-book set (Chosen, Infidel, Renegade, and Chaos) left off. These final [...]
The post The Lost Books: Looking Back with Kaci Hill appeared first on Life Is Story.
For those of you reading this in the distant future, somehow unaware of “these unprecedented times” (which, in truth, are very precedented, just not to this generation), the coronavirus pandemic continues to sweep the world. [...]
The post Virus as a Summons to Faith – Walter Brueggemann appeared first on Life Is Story.
Blast back in time to 2010 when Ted Dekker promised to give readers another trilogy in the vein of the Circle—but with a Tosca Lee twist. The Books of Mortals (Forbidden, Mortal, and Sovereign) take [...]
The post The Books of Mortals: Looking Back with Tosca Lee appeared first on Life Is Story.
I don’t typically read women’s fiction. I am, after all, a thirty-year-old man. I’m not the target demographic. And yet, when the publisher contacted me to ask if I’d consider reading this book, I took [...]
The post The Best We’ve Been – Beth Vogt appeared first on Life Is Story.
John Piper, over the course of his long career, has become an increasingly polarized figure within evangelical Christianity. I’ve long enjoyed Piper in many areas (his evisceration of the Prosperity Gospel for one) while respecting, [...]
The post Coronavirus and Christ – John Piper appeared first on Life Is Story.
Just recently, I posted a Facebook status offering some pastoral suggestion of how to handle the incoming government stimulus check. (For those of you reading this in the far future, a pandemic has shut down [...]
The post Kingdom Stewardship – Tony Evans appeared first on Life Is Story.
In In Want + Plenty, licensed professional counselor Meredith McDaniel writes about the Exodus story and about how God provided for the Israelites even when they were impatient, bitter, and didn’t know what to do [...]
The post In Want + Plenty: Waking Up to God’s Provision in a Land of Longing – Meredith McDaniel appeared first on Life Is Story.
Aiming for Love by Mary Connealy is the first book in the Brides of Hope Mountain series, and is a fun new historical fiction read. It’s the story of three sisters, the Nordegren girls, who [...]
The post Aiming for Love – Mary Connealy appeared first on Life Is Story.
The only criticism I have for You Are What You Do: And Six Other Lies About Work, Life, and Love is that shortening the title gives you absolutely the wrong impression. But maybe that’s the [...]
The post You Are What You Do: And Six Other Lies – Daniel Im appeared first on Life Is Story.
There is perhaps no bigger social and relational issue in the church right now than LGBTQ+ issues. It is imperative that our churches—pastors and laypeople—be able to define their theology of sexuality and gender identity, [...]
The post Gay Girl, Good God – Jackie Hill Perry appeared first on Life Is Story.
Shared humor is pretty much the foundation of my relationship with my wife. That’s not a joke. In 2010, three years before we were married, we both attended a Ted Dekker event where she one [...]
The post A Love That Laughs – Ted Cunningham appeared first on Life Is Story.
I’ve been reviewing books professionally for over ten years. Give me a non-fiction book and I can analyze it, deconstruct it, and put it back together in five hundred words. Throw me some fiction and [...]
The post Four Rules for Choosing a Bible Story Book appeared first on Life Is Story.
Children’s books are everywhere. Children’s retellings of Bible stories are everywhere. And the quality…well…in my experience, the quality ranges. How are we supposed to sort through it all? Early on, with my kids, I developed [...]
The post The Christmas Promise (Tales that Tell the Truth #1) appeared first on Life Is Story.
Children’s books are everywhere. Children’s retellings of Bible stories are everywhere. And the quality…well…in my experience, the quality ranges. How are we supposed to sort through it all? Early on, with my kids, I developed [...]
The post The One O’Clock Miracle (Tales that Tell the Truth #2) appeared first on Life Is Story.
Children’s books are everywhere. Children’s retellings of Bible stories are everywhere. And the quality…well…in my experience, the quality ranges. How are we supposed to sort through it all? Early on, with my kids, I developed [...]
The post The Storm that Stopped (Tales that Tell the Truth #3) appeared first on Life Is Story.
Children’s books are everywhere. Children’s retellings of Bible stories are everywhere. And the quality…well…in my experience, the quality ranges. How are we supposed to sort through it all? Early on, with my kids, I developed [...]
The post The Garden, The Curtain, and the Cross (Tales That Tell The Truth #4) appeared first on Life Is Story.
Children’s books are everywhere. Children’s retellings of Bible stories are everywhere. And the quality…well…in my experience, the quality ranges. How are we supposed to sort through it all? Early on, with my kids, I developed [...]
The post God’s Very Good Idea (Tales that Tell the Truth #5) appeared first on Life Is Story.
Children’s books are everywhere. Children’s retellings of Bible stories are everywhere. And the quality…well…in my experience, the quality ranges. How are we supposed to sort through it all? Early on, with my kids, I developed [...]
The post The Friend Who Forgives (Tales that Tell the Truth #6) appeared first on Life Is Story.
Children’s books are everywhere. Children’s retellings of Bible stories are everywhere. And the quality…well…in my experience, the quality ranges. How are we supposed to sort through it all? Early on, with my kids, I developed [...]
The post Goodbye to Goodbyes (Tales that Tell the Truth #7) appeared first on Life Is Story.
Children’s books are everywhere. Children’s retellings of Bible stories are everywhere. And the quality…well…in my experience, the quality ranges. How are we supposed to sort through it all? Early on, with my kids, I developed [...]
The post Jesus and the Lion’s Den (Tales that Tell the Truth #8) appeared first on Life Is Story.
Children’s books are everywhere. Children’s retellings of Bible stories are everywhere. And the quality…well…in my experience, the quality ranges. How are we supposed to sort through it all? Early on, with my kids, I developed [...]
The post Jesus and the Very Big Surprise (Tales That Tell The Truth #9) appeared first on Life Is Story.
By my count, there are approximately one million Easter-themed children’s books published every year. Probably a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s a fact that every publisher—Christian and secular—are all jockeying for position in the [...]
The post Jesus Rose for Me – Jared Kennedy appeared first on Life Is Story.
Why does God care who I sleep with? It’s a valid question. There are so many other big issues—war, poverty, famine, environmental disasters—why does God care so strongly about this personal and seemingly insignificant (on [...]
The post Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With? – Sam Allberry appeared first on Life Is Story.
In this book, British pastor Matt Fuller explores what it means to “Be True to Yourself.” He explains that even though people sometimes use this phrase to applaud integrity, those who resist peer pressure and [...]
The post Be True to Yourself: Why it doesn’t mean what you think it does (and how that can make you happy) – Matt Fuller appeared first on Life Is Story.
Worthy: Celebrating the Value of Women provides a thorough Scriptural background for understanding how God values women. The first ten chapters address women’s worth throughout creation, the fall, the promise, Israel’s history, and the life, ministry, [...]
The post Worthy: Celebrating the Value of Women – Elyse M. Fitzpatrick and Eric Schumacher appeared first on Life Is Story.
“Just as there’s death and life in the power of the tongue, there is death and life in the power of the touch.” In Handle with Care: How Jesus Redeems the Power of Touch in [...]
The post Handle with Care: How Jesus Redeems the Power of Touch in Life and Ministry – Lore Ferguson Wilbert appeared first on Life Is Story.
There is perhaps no bigger social and relational issue in the church right now than LGBTQ+ issues. It is imperative that our churches—pastors and laypeople—be able to define their theology of sexuality and gender identity, [...]
The post Born Again This Way – Rachel Gilson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Last words hold importance in culture throughout human history. They are the dying person’s final impartation to the recipient. One last declaration. One last admonition. One last request. One final articulated thought. Almost as long [...]
The post Last Words – Robert Nash appeared first on Life Is Story.
(ed. note: These reviews are written from the perspective of an adult comparing this series to the Circle. Someone coming at the story with no previous knowledge may have a different perspective.) The Dream Traveler’s [...]
The post The Final Judgment (Dream Traveler’s Quest #4) | Kara & Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Dream Traveler’s Quest is a four-book series written by Kara and Ted Dekker that pairs with Ted Dekker’s Beyond the Circle duology that released around the same time. Written for ages 7-12, The Dream [...]
The post The Garden and the Serpent (Dream Traveler’s Quest #3) | Kara & Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
(ed. note: These reviews are written from the perspective of an adult comparing this series to the Circle. Someone coming at the story with no previous knowledge may have a different perspective.) The Dream Traveler’s [...]
The post The Curse of Shadowman (Dream Traveler’s Quest #2) | Kara & Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Dream Traveler’s Quest is a four-book series written by Kara and Ted Dekker that pairs with Ted Dekker’s Beyond the Circle duology that released around the same time. Written for ages 7-12, The Dream [...]
The post Into the Book of Light (Dream Traveler’s Quest #1) | Kara & Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
If you haven’t heard of this series, you aren’t alone. The Dream Traveler’s Quest was released without much notice or fanfare in late 2018 and…well…that’s kinda been it. The four-book series is aimed at ages [...]
The post The Dream Traveler’s Quest | Kara & Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
This book has a lot going on in it. That’s my one-sentence review. Is that good? Is that bad? Eh. Think of the Fast and Furious movies, or, at least, the later ones. Their pacing [...]
The post Chasing the White Lion – James Hannibal appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Talking Points series is a collection of short books designed to help Christians think and talk about today’s hot button issues. Coming from a mostly conservative perspective, the series is meant to help educate [...]
The post Talking Points: Abortion appeared first on Life Is Story.
Join Mike Nawrocki (co-creator of VeggieTales) and Josh Olds as they sit down for a discussion of Nawrocki’s new and upcoming projects, from the latest books in the Dead Sea Squirrels to brand new VeggieTales [...]
The post VeggieTales & Dead Sea Squirrels | A Conversation with Mike Nawrocki appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Little Words Matter series is meant to engage your littlest of readers with the simplest of words, all while introducing them to Scripture! In Little Words Matter: David, the story of David and Goliath [...]
The post Little Words Matter: David appeared first on Life Is Story.
What do you think of when you hear the term “monastic rhythm”? Is it all chanting in Latin, burlap robes, and communal living in the medieval times? Or is there something from the Benedictines we [...]
The post Gravitas, Monastic Rhythms, and Leadership: A Conversation with Jerome Daley appeared first on Life Is Story.
This vibrantly illustrated picture book adapts text from Job 28, showing young readers that even though determined explorers can uncover the earth’s hidden treasures, they cannot find or buy wisdom. Wisdom is only available through [...]
The post Where Is Wisdom?: A Treasure Hunt Through God’s Wondrous World, Inspired by Job 28 – Scott James and Hein Zaayman appeared first on Life Is Story.
Joel Rosenberg has reached the point in his career where there has to be a specific disclaimer that his novels are not the result of inside information. They aren’t prophecies. They aren’t predictions. But they [...]
The post The Jerusalem Assassin (Marcus Ryker #3) – Joel Rosenberg appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Little Words Matter Bible Storybook is intended to introduce our littlest readers (and pre-readers!) to Scripture. Each Bible story is condensed into one simple paragraph of about six or seven sentences. Meant to be [...]
The post Little Words Matter Bible Storybook appeared first on Life Is Story.
In The Quiet Crazy Christmas Day, Jill Roman Lord turned the supposed Silent Night on end, painting a much more realistic picture of joyous celebration as Messiah entered the world as a baby. Now she’s [...]
The post The Quiet (Crazy) Easter Day – Jill Roman Lord appeared first on Life Is Story.
Such a small book for such a big question. Do Miracles Happen Today? In a palm-sized book of about ninety pages, Tim Chester—pastor of Grace Church in Boroughbridge, UK—provides a brief apologetic for the presence [...]
The post Do Miracles Happen Today? – Tim Chester appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is such a beautiful story. I wanted to cry through parts of it, I was that emotionally caught up in the story, and found so much I could relate to with Emily. I loved [...]
The post If for Any Reason – Courtney Walsh appeared first on Life Is Story.
The Land Beneath Us is the third book in Sarah Sundin’s Sunrise at Normandy series. It is the continuing story of the three Paxton brothers, Wyatt, Adler, and Clayton. This book gives us Clay’s story. [...]
The post The Land Beneath Us – Sarah Sundin appeared first on Life Is Story.
Memoirs are generally written by famous people, something Josh Roggie is decidedly not. (Sorry, Josh. Maybe someday?) But that lends a unique—or perhaps a better word is unconventional—aspect to his story. Shame: An Unconventional Memoir [...]
The post Shame: An Unconventional Memoir – Josh Roggie appeared first on Life Is Story.
Andrew Peterson is a singer-songwriter and author with a passion for helping fellow Christian artists glorify God with their talents. In Adorning the Dark, which is part memoir and part reflection on creative work, Peterson [...]
The post Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making – Andrew Peterson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Aquila and Priscilla rank as one of the most famously unknown couples in biblical history. What we know: They were kicked out of Rome—along with all other Christians—by the Emperor Claudius. They were tent-makers who [...]
The post Daughter of Rome – Tessa Afshar appeared first on Life Is Story.
It’s been not quite a year since Nathan W. Pyle graced readers with a four-panel comic strip of aliens trying to be human and exposing some of the weirdest quirks of life. The first strip [...]
The post Strange Planet – Nathan W. Pyle appeared first on Life Is Story.
A few years back, a school bus full of children collided with an oncoming train and the resultant explosion meant that there were no survivors. Nobody questioned this narrative. It was heart-wrenching. It was tragic. [...]
The post Collision of Lies – Tom Threadgill appeared first on Life Is Story.
Bestselling author, Lynette Eason is launching another series with the release of her latest book, Collateral Damage. This time Eason takes on the war in Afghanistan, and its after effects, dodgy orphanages, and shadowy assassins. [...]
The post Collateral Damage – Lynette Eason appeared first on Life Is Story.
Jonah is one of the most famous and misunderstand books of the Old Testament. Sunday School teachers paint it as a crazy-but-true Bible story meant for kids™. Critical scholars discount the whole thing as a [...]
The post Jonah (Gospel-Centered Life in the Bible) – Iain Duguid appeared first on Life Is Story.
I read this book immediately before embarking on 21 days of work without a day off. Bad choice. Or good choice. Probably good choice. As a bivocational pastor that also coaches gymnastics, the competition season [...]
The post Take the Day Off – Robert Morris appeared first on Life Is Story.
You would think that at the age of almost-one hundred, Betty White would be slowing down a bit. Enjoying retirement. Finally stepping out of the spotlight after a lifetime in the television business. (Literally, she [...]
The post If You Ask Me – Betty White appeared first on Life Is Story.
In February 2019, I embarked on a Facebook project to highlight a different African-American pastor or spiritual leader each day of the month. I subdivided the centuries into weeks, beginning in the 18th century, leaving [...]
The post Born For This – Bebe Winans appeared first on Life Is Story.
Westboro. I probably don’t even have to finish the church’s name for the images of protestors carrying signs with slurs to march through your mind’s eye. For thirty years, Westboro Baptist Church, under the leadership [...]
The post Unfollow: Loving and Leaving Westboro – Megan Phelps-Roper appeared first on Life Is Story.
I feel like I have to preface this review by saying that the previous three books in this series have been probably the three best books I’ve seen come from New Growth and are books [...]
The post God Made Boys and Girls – Marty Machowski appeared first on Life Is Story.
Susan May Warren’s books are synonymous with action packed suspense. This book, The Way of the Brave, is different from the last series I’d read of hers, a series full of danger, mystery and intrigue. [...]
The post The Way of the Brave – Susan May Warren appeared first on Life Is Story.
There aren’t enough superlatives to adequately express my overwhelming joy at God Made Me Unique and its view of disability, particularly within a church context. As a pastor, I’ve often been disappointed in how the [...]
The post God Made Me Unique – Joni and Friends appeared first on Life Is Story.
Advent is a time of thoughtfulness, reflection, and renewal. It’s also a crazy and stressful time of travel, extended family, financial burdens, and every performance/recital/concert known to man. (Oh, and finals, if you’re still in [...]
The post The Gift – Glen Scrivener appeared first on Life Is Story.
It’s always difficult to review a novelization. Even the most creative writer is ultimately bound by the confines of the movie’s plot and there are both overt and implicit expectations. Developing a book from a [...]
The post Overcomer – Chris Fabry appeared first on Life Is Story.
I feel the need to begin with a trigger warning. This is a book about child loss. I knew it was a book about God’s enduring goodness, even through difficult circumstances. I knew its central [...]
The post The Moon Is Always Round – Jonathan Gibson appeared first on Life Is Story.
Learning emotional control can be one of the most difficult things about early childhood (or late childhood…or adolescence…or adulthood). For little ones engaging with these emotions and these heart issues for the very first time, [...]
The post Gus Loses His Grip (Good News for Little Hearts) appeared first on Life Is Story.
“How much is a little girl worth?” Rachael Denhollander asked as former Olympic doctor Larry Nassar faced sentencing for his sexual crimes. She was the first woman to publicly accuse Nassar, and in this book’s [...]
The post How Much is a Little Girl Worth? – Rachael Denhollander appeared first on Life Is Story.
Learning emotional control can be one of the most difficult things about early childhood (or late childhood…or adolescence…or adulthood). For little ones engaging with these emotions and these heart issues for the very first time, [...]
The post Tori Comes Out of Her Shell (Good News for Little Hearts appeared first on Life Is Story.
In November 2018, just over a year ago, my family and I went through a disrupted adoption. We were four weeks away from moving, from my wife taking a job that would have us traveling [...]
The post Joy in the Sorrow – Matt Chandler (and Friends) appeared first on Life Is Story.
Learning emotional control can be one of the most difficult things about early childhood (or late childhood…or adolescence…or adulthood). For little ones engaging with these emotions and these heart issues for the very first time, [...]
The post Henry Says Good-Bye appeared first on Life Is Story.
Features include: Hundreds of verses illustrated in ready-to-color line art Thicker white paper for enduring note-taking Lined, wide margins for notes, reflections and art Complete text of the accurate, readable and clear New International Version [...]
The post NIV Beautiful Word Coloring Bible For Girls – Zondervan appeared first on Life Is Story.
Reading a good book is a nice way to settle in after a long day, relax, and transition into a good night’s rest. No wonder then, that bedtime is a popular time for parents to [...]
The post Why Do We Say Good Night? – Champ Thornton & Rommel Ruiz appeared first on Life Is Story.
In February 2019, I chose to celebrate Black History Month by highlighting an African-American pastor or religious figure every day on my Facebook page. It was an incredible experience for me to dive into the [...]
The post His Testimonies, My Heritage: Women of Color on the Word of God appeared first on Life Is Story.
This delightful picture book biography follows the stories of C.S. Lewis and his brother Warnie, showing how their lifelong bond helped inspire the Narnia series. The author does not mention Lewis’s Christian conversion in the [...]
The post Finding Narnia: The Story of C.S. Lewis and His Brother – Caroline McAlister and Jessica Lanan appeared first on Life Is Story.
If there was an award for oddest genre mashup, the Peril in Plain Space series just might take the top award. Following in the vein of books like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer or Pride and [...]
The post Amish Vampires in Space: An Interview with Kerry Nietz appeared first on Life Is Story.
Bug Man is back! Forensic entomologist Nick Polchak returnsfor his fifth adventure in Ends of the Earth. Building on the Nick’s history in the four previous books, Tim Downs sets the scene of a drug-related [...]
The post Ends of the Earth (A Bug Man Novel) – Tim Downs appeared first on Life Is Story.
I must begin this review with a confession that the existence of this books makes me a bit jealous. Here I am, a thirty-year-old seminary trained pastor with exactly zero devotionals published and yet here’s [...]
The post Above All Else – Chelsea Crockett appeared first on Life Is Story.
TODAY WE DO SELF PORTRAIT, Kathleen signed as the art teacher spoke. DRAW WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE. Who was I? That was not a question I could answer very easily anymore. I had ambitions [...]
The post The Silence Between Us – Alison Gervais appeared first on Life Is Story.
The old adage is true: It’s not about what you know, it’s who you know. And that used to frustrate me to an extent. Why could someone less knowledgeable, less competent, less passionate get an [...]
The post The Proximity Principle – Ken Coleman appeared first on Life Is Story.
There has never been a more hyped Dekker novel. After the release of Black, Red, and White in 2004, Ted Dekker expanded the world of the Circle into what became known as the Books of [...]
The post Green – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
Billy Rediger has spent the last dozen years running from his past. It was he who wrote Marsuvees Black into existence and nearly destroyed himself and Paradise in the process. His attempt to soothe his [...]
The post Sinner – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
This is one of those books that Ted probably wishes didn’t exist. For some reason, there was a brief moment when Dekker got caught up in the hysteria of right-wing conservatism and his writing during [...]
The post The Drummer Boy – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.
I really want to know whose idea it was for Christian suspense/thriller novelist Ted Dekker to write a couple of illustrated children’s/giftbook Christmas stories. I mean, around Christmas you see these kinds of books get [...]
The post The Promise – Ted Dekker appeared first on Life Is Story.