Books like Windows of the Soul — picked by fans

I have read this book so many times. It is a classic! For those of us who have struggled with saying yes to everything, I was so thankful that I found this book. 

A heart of compassion and care can set you up for burnout, resentment, and going in directions that God doesn’t want you to go. The authors are brilliant, and they help Christians learn that it is okay to say No and that is actually good for us and others. Saying No when appropriate is a sign of good mental health.

This is one of my most highly recommended books for those struggling with baggage from the past, such as rejection, resentment, and perfectionism. 

Wright takes readers through a process of going back to work through past baggage, forgive past hurts, and then change future responses. For Christians committed to moving (and living) beyond their past, this book can help them do just that. Wright is a leading expert in grief, loss, and trauma and has a number of other invaluable books.

I love books that challenge our way of thinking and this book does that.  

Though God wants his people to be healed, sometimes that healing doesn’t come immediately. It is something to be chosen and then walked through. Arterburn helps Christians see that God wants to help us heal, but specific choices must be made. 

Ultimately, understanding that concept helps and deepens our relationship with God. He uses his own story of divorce and anger as he outlines ten critical choices that readers need to make. This is a journey of healing that will challenge you and encourage you.

Our world is filled with people who crave intimacy but don’t know what it means and don’t know how to do it. 

We build up walls trying to protect ourselves but ultimately, we are miserable because we want the closeness of another. Spoiler Alert – Intimacy isn’t sex! Hurst helps us see that intimacy is about knowing our real, authentic self and being willing to share that with others. Though first, we must know where our identity comes from. 

Good mental health requires us to know who we are and be willing to share that authentic self with God and others. Healthy people can do that freely.

What would happen if you started listening to your cravings instead of trying to silence them? If you’re tired of the same old messages of eat less and move more, this book is what you’ve been missing. You know “how to” get healthy… but now there’s finally a book to help you find your “want to” - the lasting emotional and spiritual motivation to meet your goals and stay healthy.

The reality is we were made to crave. Craving isn’t a bad thing. But we must realize God created us to crave more of him. Many of us have misplaced that craving by overindulging in physical pleasures instead of lasting spiritual satisfaction. New York Times bestselling author of It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way, Uninvited, and The Best Yes, Lysa TerKeurst, invites you to find the missing link between a woman’s desire to be healthy and the spiritual empowerment… show more.

Valerie Burtons gives great guidance enabling and encouraging change through the simplest form of your thoughts. Understanding how you think can lead to your success, she outlines the discovery that encourages and enable empowerment within ourselves. Her holistic approach through positive thinking and transparent coaching enable the cultivation of positive perspectives for all of life’s lessons. 

One of my favourite books of all time is the moving story of forgiveness by Palestinian cleric, Elias Chacour, Archbishop Emeritus of the Melkite church in Haifa.

I marvelled and wondered how Elias and his family chose to be non-violent and committed to promoting peace when Israelis seized their land in the 1948 war. Elias’ journey, for me, was heart-wrenching and gripping.

The integrity of his story is confirmed by my visits to Ibillin in northern Israel where I’ve spent time hearing more of his story and experiencing the fruit of his influence in the school and Peace Centre he has established.

The Shell is a peek into both the horrors and absurdities of totalitarian regimes told in the form of a prison diary kept by the author. Khalifa, a Christian by birth and an atheist, was mistaken (or perhaps not, given what I learned about the Assad regime in the course of my work) for a radical Islamist, arrested and locked up in the notorious Tadmor desert prison, more accurately a death camp. The book reveals the horrific consequences of the logic and methods of the Assad family and other dictators in the Middle East and beyond: Anyone suspected of harboring a hint of opposition to the ruler will be labeled a terrorist and traitor, crushed and turned into an example to instill fear in the wider population.

This book is amazing. I love how the author not only explains the reasons behind mentoring and the importance of mentoring and how God instructs older women in Titus 2 to mentor younger women, and older men to mentor younger men, but the reason behind mentoring.

This book reminded me a lot of Sisters in Christ especially how the author broke down Titus 2 as talked about above. I loved the stories and quotes shared by real mentoring relationships woven throughout the book. This made it more personal and also got me more excited.

I have been following this author’s blog for years and this book just felt like a giant hug from a friend. 

For me, Sheridan’s new book was a riveting read – a mind-opening reminder of how early Christians, unbelievably, converted a good part of the classical world and spread Jesus’ radical teaching of love, forgiveness, human equality, and fraternity in a world in which they were total nobodies, scorned, persecuted, tortured, and killed.

Attractively, the book also shows some modern countercultural Christian lives, based on the same Gospel teachings, still capable of acting as a leaven and a sign of hope in the spiritually disoriented Western world.

I found this book extremely refreshing and encouraging, and I have recently given it as a birthday present to a seventeen-year-old granddaughter to inspire her to set herself challenging and God-oriented goals worth living and dying for.