As one of the most revered Baptist preachers of his time, Charles Haddon Spurgeon's eventful and prolific life and career offer outstanding inspiration for all Christians to this day. In the first volume of Spurgeon's autobiography, we witness his rise from modest obscurity, embarking on a long road toward fame and admiration as a representative of God on Earth. A lengthy, lively and detailed biography is helped by the fact that Spurgeon was an effusive and prolific talker and author of many documents: he would recount incidents of his life on paper and in speeches regularly. We find in this volume the famous instance in which the young Spurgeon encountered his call from God. When Spurgeon was aged fifteen, a violent snowstorm forced him from his route into a Methodist church where he felt the Lord beckon him to service. After this, he undertook parochial study with great fervor, and quickly became a respected teacher in his local Sunday School, gaining the nickname 'the boy-preacher of the Fens'.

R. Donald Shafer knows life is a story and that all of our stories are different. This memoir spans seven decades of his life as a son, brother, friend, husband, father, pastor, bishop, church administrator, and grandfather. Shafer chronologically and topically narrates his unique journey with the hope that his stories will encourage others to look up, laugh, love, and ultimately lift their spirits to accept all that life has to offer.

Shafer begins with his birth in a little Pennsylvania village where he tells of peaceful times growing up near his grandparents. With four siblings, caring parents, an affirming pastor, and fascinating neighbors, life is exciting. During his adolescence Shafer decides to follow Jesus, a decision that changes his life forever. Working at mowing lawns, delivering newspapers, dancing at the high school prom, and a few car accidents are escapades of his youth. Shafer details his college life and love stories of meeting his future wife. Beyond his expectations, he becomes an ordained pastor, church leader, bishop, and even a public relations man. Contemporary church planting on a shoestring and relational caring for pastors marked this church administrator's career.

"Laugh, Love, and Lift" shares one man's uplifting journey through life as he discovers the importance of loving relationships, unyielding faith, and hope for the future.

" The cop busted through the door and I dove out the window and into the cold night air. It was 4am, mid-December, and all I was wearing was my underwear. A thin swirl of snow circled the ground, three floors below.

With his gun in one hand, the cop grabbed my leg as soon as I was out the window. He held me in place, and I stood perpendicular to the outside wall of the building. I tried to kick off the wall with the foot that was free, but I kicked the cops hand instead, and he dropped his gun and loosened his grip on my leg.

I pulled free and flew away, and as I floated in the air, time played a cruel trick on me. It let me fall so slow that I had plenty of time to think how bad it was going to hurt when I landed.

I calmly wondered if I would be alive once I hit the ground. I was comforted by the thought, that; if I wasn't, I would have made good my escape. The cops would certainly have me then; but, at least I would be free.

It felt good, sailing through that black void, expecting what was to come. Because, in that period of time, I was free ... I was as free as a bird in captivity."

'On Life' and 'What is religion?' were published by the Fee Age Press in England; a publishing house set up to side-step the censorship of Tolstoy in Russia, and to give him an international voice. So what is life? 'Life is the sum of functions which resist death, ' says the scientist. But is it more than that, asks Tolstoy in 'On Life' - a philosophical and religious search for an understanding of life beyond scientific formulae. For Tolstoy, the basic contradiction for humanity is this: people aim solely for their own well being, but discover along the way that their own well being depends also on the well being of others. A further discovery by such people is that decay, old age and death attend their every step. Such basic human truths are the context for Tolstoy's search for happiness, in which Buddhist, Jewish, Stoic and Christian views are considered, as well as those of science. Tolstoy believes that fear of death is merely the consciousness of the unsolved contradiction of life; a sign of a carnal or animal mentality, which mistakenly takes part of life to be the whole. Tolstoy believes that individual well-being must be renounced and replaced by our 'reasonable consciousness', which points the way to true happiness, and brings human re-birth. 'What is religion?' is a collection of articles and letters written by the mature Tolstoy of 1901 and 1902. Here is a variety of subject matter, including a book review of a German novel; Tolstoy's response to his excommunication by the church; an attack on army recruitment and training and reflections on a recent political assassination. The title piece - 'What is religion?' is the most substantial, in which Tolstoy provides the following definition: 'True religion is the establishment by man of a relation to the infinite life around him; as long as connecting his life with this infinitude and directing his conduct, is also in agreement with his reason and human knowledge.'

Many times in our lives things happen to us that we know without a shadow of a doubt that God intervened. Matthew 1: 23. Most of the time we do not realize until after the experience for months and years later that God intervened. Without the Holy Spirit we could miss the work of the Lord altogether. Over a period of years, I have been a witness of the Lord. The Lord has spoken with me to write down these experiences to bless, encourage and build faith in many. To stay humble, anointed, stating each experience, and the miracle way the Lord himself has performed them in my life. Most of all let them know. I am alive: yes Jesus is alive and working the same miracles today as He did when He was on earth. He is the same yesterday, today and forever more. He is Omnipresent, Omnipotent, and Omniscient.

The book of Soulties is about a litte girl who from the beginning of her life of entering into the world is faced with some very difficult challenges. This is the first time that God began performing miracles, but it would not be the last Thankfully she comes from a family of believers who knew how to go before the Lord and have the faith to believe that He would perform miracles, but as she grew up her life began taking turns that would lead her astray until her life was plagued with some serious health issues and after being told to prepare for her funeral did she learn that this was the first time in her life that she had to go to God for herself. This book is about why the enemy tries to attack as soon as we enter into this world and how God is fighting for us to make the right decisions because he knows what He has in store for our lives It's all about exposing the enemy and moving forward into the things of God.

UK Christian Book Award finalist (2003)

The first half of this two part book tells the story of an ordinary boy enriched by his mother's faith yet torn apart by a bitter divorce. Maintaining his religious underpinnings, Mark struggles through the divorce and graduates from college with a degree in finance. This takes him to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange where he makes millions of dollars, marries his wife and retires at the age of 36. Shortly after, Mark received a Master's degree in Theology setting the foundation for the remainder of his life. The first half of the book ends with the death his forth child, Kevin, which becomes the catalyst for a tremendous spiritual conversion.

The second half of the book walks the reader through that conversion documenting the steps taken to accomplish it. A discussion of physics is used to set up a foundation for further explanations in theology. This discussion results in a need to re-evaluate the meaning of Mark 8:29 when Jesus asks: "Who do you say that I am?" The result is a shift from orthodox religion to a focus on Sophian Gnosticism. Time is spent focusing on Kabbalah and The Tree of Life, and on a special sign Mark created called the "Sign of the Tree." Kabbalistic teachings on reincarnation and suffering are explored. Mark applies these teachings to his life by leaving the material world behind, going to work at a homeless shelter, and becoming a hospice volunteer.

Satish Kumar and his friend EP Menon embarked on an 8,000-mile peace pilgrimage from India to Washington, from the grave of Mahatma Gandhi to the grave of John F Kennedy. Walking at the height of the cold war, taking no money with them and declining all offers of transport and donations, they talked to heads of state around the world and met with peace activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. along the way. Kumar, author of No Destination and Earth Pilgrim, tells the story of their pilgrimage in this autobiography. When the philosopher Bertrand Russell was imprisoned for his anti-nuclear activities, this was a call to action for Kumar. If a 90-year-old man would go to jail for peace, what could Kumar contribute to the struggle? So he set out to walk to the four nuclear capitals of the world - Moscow, Paris, London and Washington. A young Georgian woman he met along the way gave him packets of tea to give to the leaders of these countries, so that they would stop and have a cup of tea when they might "get the mad impulse to press the nuclear button". He was determined to deliver a packet of this Peace Tea to each of the leaders. From New Delhi to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and the Soviet Union, through Poland, East and West Germany, Belgium, France and England, to the US and finally Japan, Kumar and Menon walked for two and a half years. They faced severe challenges - walking illegally without a visa in the Soviet Union, imprisonment in France and experiencing the Jim Crow laws in the USA - but everywhere they were met with incredible generosity from the people who housed and fed them. Pilgrimage for Peace is a book about trust - in yourself, your companions, and humanity - about confidence, resilience and the courage to stretch your limits. It is an ode to the power and the solace of pilgrimage, to peace, disarmament and hospitality. It is an adventure story that shows how travel can bring people together in hope and help them understand one another. It demonstrates how you don't always need money to see the world, just time and patience. With conflict and war constantly in the news today, this book is a timely testament not only to these pilgrims for peace, but to the many people who cheered them on their way, seeing in them the harbinger of a new peaceful future.

During a career spanning sixty years, the Reverend Billy Graham s resonant voice and chiseled profile entered the living rooms of millions of Americans with a message that called for personal transformation through God s grace. How did a lanky farm kid from North Carolina become an evangelist hailed by the media as America s pastor ? Why did listeners young and old pour out their grief and loneliness in letters to a man they knew only through televised Crusades in faraway places like Madison Square Garden? More than a conventional biography, Grant Wacker s interpretive study deepens our understanding of why Billy Graham has mattered so much to so many.

Beginning with tent revivals in the 1940s, Graham transformed his born-again theology into a moral vocabulary capturing the fears and aspirations of average Americans. He possessed an uncanny ability to appropriate trends in the wider culture and engaged boldly with the most significant developments of his time, from communism and nuclear threat to poverty and civil rights. The enduring meaning of his career, in Wacker s analysis, lies at the intersection of Graham s own creative agency and the forces shaping modern America.

Wacker paints a richly textured portrait: a self-deprecating servant of God and self-promoting media mogul, a simple family man and confidant of presidents, a plainspoken preacher and the Protestant pope. America s Pastor "reveals how this Southern fundamentalist grew, fitfully, into a capacious figure at the center of spiritual life for millions of Christians around the world."