The Love Offering

What if my hope only leads to disappointment? What if I embrace joy only to have it ripped from my hands? What if my celebration is the cause of others' sadness? What if my joy takes me away from the God I knew so well in my pain? Author and marriage and family therapist Nicole Zasowski knows what it's like to take a blow that makes it difficult to look to the future with expectation and ask herse...

Internationally bestselling author Francine Rivers is on the show today sharing the impact of a story and about God’s redeeming love. Francine had a successful writing career in the general market for several years becoming a born-again Christian; she then wrote Redeeming Love as her statement of faith. A retelling of the biblical story of Gomer and Hosea set during the time of the California Gold...

A true story about making the most of your one incredible life–With an overwhelming mix of pride, excitement, and terror, Stacey and her children held hands and watched the rocket ignite and lift off for a nine-month mission to the International Space Station. This is the story of the astronaut’s wife—a journey full of unexpected twists and turns. While her husband orbited the Earth, Stacey was ab...

To ask for help feels like defeat. Yet when we try to do life all by our own strength, we end up depleted, lonely, and ineffective. Heather MacFadyen wants you to know that you are not meant to go it alone. She's on the show sharing how we can be empowered by God, supported by others, and connect in our relationships. With encouragement and insight, she helps you foster the key relationships you n...

Two's company, especially for those who love each other. So what happens when--due to retirement, working from home, or even running a business together--spouses find that being in the same space all the time is awkward, complex, annoying, and just plain challenging? How can partners co-exist without co-exhausting each other? Cynthia Ruchti and Becky Melby have written Spouse in the House. They kn...

As believers, we often struggle to let go of the things that keep us from reaching out to God. Valerie Woerner is on the show today teaching us that we don't have to limp through our prayer lives carrying the weight of every distraction. We can learn to pray boldly to the God of the universe who is beckoning us to come sit with him, share our needs and our hearts, and simply know him. Prayer invit...

Unfortunately, many people have a shallow, superficial idea of what marriage is. As a result, many marriages don’t last, and many more married couples are trudging along looking for something more. Love Like You Mean It gives husbands and wives a biblical understanding of what real love looks like in marriage by unpacking the ten attributes of genuine love listed in 1 Corinthians 13. Bob Lepine, m...

The enemy wants to steal and destroy your destiny, but you've already been made victorious in Jesus Christ. Now is the time, master the skills needed to defend your territory and walk in your full destiny by becoming a Victory Girl. Amy Elaine Martinez is on the show today helping us to: Suit up for battle, get your brave on, and walk in confidence as a warrior of victory. Pray with power, authori...

It is so hard to juggle work, home, and spiritual life. How can we be effective in our work, and stay committed to the Gospel? How can we be dedicated to our family, when our jobs are so demanding? Why are we working so hard, and still so unfulfilled? We see a culture that promotes success at all costs, and working women are falling for it. It's happening every day. Priorities are shifting. Things...

We were made for connection with other women. Yet too often our friendships are marked by drama, competition, betrayal, or unforgiveness. We can cause one another deep pain, creating wounds in need of healing, when what we really long to do is cheer each other on and fulfill our God-breathed purpose--together. Andi Andrew is on the show today helping us to navigate the complications that can come...

When we are in the darkness--whatever that is in our own particular story--the temptation is to believe that it's over, it's always going to feel this way, we will never be anywhere else or feel anything other than we do now. We fear the darkness, and for good reason. But it is in the darkness that new life begins. Leeana Tankersley is on the show sharing the darkest chapter of her own story, the...

Whether it’s a dream that isn’t coming true, a stretch of the journey that feels especially dark, or just the basic “busy and tired” each of us braves in the crazy chaos of the ordinary, have you ever faced a season where “life to the full” feels just out of reach, light seems like it it’s just over the horizon, or lies seem to crowd out the truth? If you’re anything like Ellie Holcomb, the answer...

If you were to pick one word for the year, what would it be? Invite . . . Abide . . . Balance . . . Simplify . . . ? Every January, many of us proclaim our word for the year, choosing something inspiring that will help us set our intention for the coming months. But what would happen if rather than choosing one word for an entire year (because let's face it, some of us forget by March), we focused...

Our hearts and the hearts of others are so important. God wants our whole hearts, but so does the enemy. That is why it is essential we identify and stay in tune with the lies we may be believing and replace them with God’s truth. Charity Rios is on the show today sharing about how to tend to our hearts and the hearts of the people in our lives. She is the author of My Heart's Garden, a children’s...

At the end of the day, can one person really make any impact at all? When the world's problems loom large and your ordinary life stretches you thin, it is still possible to be a difference-maker--one small, intentional, extravagant act of kindness at a time. Rather than telling you to do more, Becky Keife’s book The Simple Difference shows you how to see more: more of the people in front of you, m...

When it comes to disagreement, we are in perpetual fight-or-flight mode. Rather than respond with a posture of compassion and connection, we are encouraged to "resist" others. Either we engage in fruitless arguments with people who refuse to see things our way or we retreat to our echo chambers where everyone agrees with us. But the real resistance, the kind that helps us grow, is learning to love...

As a trauma-informed professional life coach, Janell Rardon spends a good deal of her day-to-day work with brokenness--broken families, broken relationships, broken hearts and souls. In response to the pleas of her clients, she developed a set of emotional-health tools to help them repair the broken parts of their lives. In Stronger Every Day and on today’s episode, she shares these powerful tools...

Our bodies are designed to heal. We fall off our bikes and skin our knees―and without effort on our part, the skin looks like new in a few days. But while our skinned knees easily heal, it can sometimes feel like our emotional and relational wounds are left gaping open, broken beyond repair. If our bodies instinctively know how to heal physical injuries, could they also help us understand how to r...

What would you do if the unthinkable happened? Where would you find the strength to endure? The Gordon family was confronted with that very challenge when their five-year-old son, Sawyer, known for his big blue eyes and vivacious spirit, cheerfully pedaled his bike onto their busy road. Moments later, a distracted driver, someone the family knew, stood over the motionless child—the unthinkable had...

Do you feel crushed by your circumstances? How do we hold onto hope in the midst of despair? Jackie Aviles says, “Hope isn’t a thing we grasp for, it's a person we connect with.” She is on the show sharing her story of never meeting her biological father, becoming a pastor’s wife, and being diagnosed with terminal cancer. On today’s episode we chat about: ▫️Marriage and motherhood in the midst of...

If we're honest, that's a sentiment we’ve all shared. Prayer can be challenging and confusing. Often we feel abandoned, betrayed, and anxious. We don't know what to pray for, we don't know the words to say, and sometimes it just feels like there's no one on the other side. Pastor and bestselling author Derwin Gray addresses all of these feelings and thoughts today on the show. Using his book “God,...

Emotions—love them or hate them, we’ve all got them. And we’ve all got to figure out what to do with them. But wait—can we do anything about our emotions? Can we learn how to identify, express, experience—and yes, sometimes wrangle—our feelings in order to live a vibrant, healthy, fruitful life for Jesus? Elizabeth Laing Thompson uses her experiences as a big feeler to encourage and equip differen...

The Lucky Few is a social awareness brand on the mission to make a more inclusive and loving world with an emphasis on shifting the Down syndrome narrative. Heather Avis is the founder and chief visionary officer of The Lucky Few and mom of three adopted children, two of which have Down Syndrome. She is on the show chatting about her children’s book titled “Different—A Great Thing To Be!” (WaterBr...

Anxiety and depression are on the rise. Michelle Nietert is the Clinical Director of Community Counseling Associates in Dallas, TX. She is a mom of two and a former school counselor with over 20 years experience in private practice. She is on the show sharing her expertise on how to protect our mental health and the mental health of our children. We chat about: Empowering our children to struggle...

We live in a polarized time. Christians are quick to conceive of themselves either as theologically-minded or worship-minded; either thinking Christians or feeling Christians. The results are damaging: theology without worship is muted, stifled, and cold, and worship without theology is ungrounded, unrooted, and uninformed. This is not the way it was meant to be. Amy Gannett is the author of “Fix...