18 Study Guides
Biography & Memoir
Learn from lives of faith lived out under real pressure. These guides walk groups through the stories of missionaries, martyrs, pastors, and ordinary believers, drawing out what their courage means for us today.
The Hiding Place
by Corrie ten Boom
The Hiding Place is the true story of Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch watchmaker's daughter who, along with her family, sheltered Jewish refugees in their Haarlem home during the Nazi occupation of Holland — and who paid for that choice with imprisonment in some of the most brutal concentration camps of World War II, including Ravensbrück. Written with John and Elizabeth Sherrill, the book is not simply a war memoir. It is a sustained meditation on faith: on what it means to trust God when trust costs everything, to forgive the unforgivable, and to discover that "there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still." Corrie's story moves from the warm, ordered life of the Beje — the family watch shop on a narrow street in Haarlem — through the horror of hiding Jews, arrest, interrogation, and finally the death camps, and emerges on the other side with a message of radical hope rooted in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
View Discussion GuideThrough Gates of Splendor
by Elisabeth Elliot
Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot is one of the most gripping missionary accounts ever written. Published originally in 1957 and reissued in 1986, it tells the true story of five young American men — Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian — who gave their lives in January 1956 while attempting to make peaceful contact with the Huaorani (then called "Auca") people of the Ecuadorian jungle. Elisabeth Elliot, widow of Jim Elliot, tells the story with remarkable restraint and literary beauty, allowing the men's own journals, letters, and radio communications to speak for themselves. The book's thesis is not simply that these men were heroes, but that their deaths were not a tragedy — they were a consummation. These men had counted the cost, had surrendered their lives fully to God, and when the moment came, they stepped through the gates of splendor into eternity. Their sacrifice ultimately bore tremendous fruit: the Huaorani people were later reached with the gospel, in part through the courage of Elisabeth Elliot and Rachel Saint themselves.
View Discussion GuideRedeeming Love
by Francine Rivers
Francine Rivers's Redeeming Love is a powerful retelling of the biblical book of Hosea, transposed from ancient Israel to the California Gold Rush of 1850. At its heart, the novel asks a single, searching question: Can a love that is unconditional, relentless, and entirely unearned actually change a person? Angel — born Sarah, sold into prostitution as a child, and convinced she is worthless and unlovable — is Rivers's Gomer. Michael Hosea is a farmer who hears God's call to pursue and marry her, not despite what she is, but knowing exactly who she is. Their story is not merely a romance; it is a sustained meditation on grace — the kind that pursues, waits, suffers, and refuses to give up even when it is rejected again and again. Like the original Hosea narrative, the book insists that God's love for us looks something like madness to the world, and that receiving it requires a transformation we cannot manufacture for ourselves.
View Discussion GuideSeeking Allah, Finding Jesus
by Nabeel Qureshi
Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus is Nabeel Qureshi's deeply personal memoir of growing up in a devout Ahmadi Muslim family and walking — slowly, painfully, and almost against his own will — toward faith in Jesus Christ. Nabeel was not a casual Muslim. He was raised to love Allah with his whole heart, trained to defend Islam against Christian arguments, and shaped by a family whose faith was the very fabric of their identity. The book's central argument is that the journey from Islam to Christianity is not primarily an intellectual one — it is a profoundly relational and spiritual one. Through his friendship with David Wood at Old Dominion University, his honest investigation of the historical evidence for the resurrection, and a series of extraordinary dreams and visions, Nabeel discovered that the cost of following truth might be everything he had ever loved. His story will unsettle comfortable assumptions on both sides: Muslims will encounter a careful, respectful engagement with Islamic scholarship, and Christians will be confronted with how high the price of conversion can be for those who come from the House of Islam.
View Discussion GuideA Grace Disguised
by Jerry Sittser
Jerry Sittser's A Grace Disguised is one of the most honest and ultimately hopeful books ever written about catastrophic loss. In September 1991, Sittser lost his mother, his wife Lynda, and his young daughter Diana Jane in a single car accident caused by a drunk driver. Rather than offering easy comfort or a tidy theology of suffering, Sittser invites readers into the full darkness of grief — and discovers there, slowly and painfully, a God who does not remove sorrow but transforms it. The book's central thesis is both counterintuitive and profoundly Christian: the soul can grow larger through loss, not despite it, and the life that emerges on the other side of catastrophic grief can be richer, deeper, and more compassionate than the life that came before. Sittser does not promise that grief ends; he promises that it can become a teacher.
View Discussion GuideConfessions
by Saint Augustine
The Confessions of Saint Augustine is one of the most remarkable books ever written — a sustained, searching prayer addressed directly to God, in which Augustine recounts the story of his own wandering, sinning, seeking, and ultimate conversion. Written around AD 401, roughly a decade after his baptism, the Confessions is at once a spiritual autobiography, a philosophical inquiry, and an act of worship. Augustine's central thesis can be heard in the book's most famous line, uttered in the very first chapter: "Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee." Every episode in the book — from infant envy to the stolen pears, from the seductions of Carthage to the garden in Milan — illustrates what happens when the human heart tries to rest in anything less than God. This study guide follows the nine books of this abridged edition, exploring Augustine's argument chapter by chapter.
View Discussion GuideA Voice in the Wind
by Francine Rivers
A Voice in the Wind is the first novel in Francine Rivers's beloved Mark of the Lion trilogy, set against the backdrop of the Roman Empire in the first century A.D. Through the story of Hadassah — a young Jewish slave girl who is one of the few survivors of the fall of Jerusalem — Rivers weaves a sweeping narrative about faith tested to its absolute limits. Hadassah is purchased into the wealthy Valerian household in Rome, where she serves the beautiful, restless Julia and quietly loves the conflicted Marcus Valerian. Around her swirl gladiators, courtesans, merchants, and philosophers — all searching for meaning in a world of power, pleasure, and violence. The novel's central argument is that the kingdom of God cannot be hidden, that the love and truth of Christ press outward even through the most trembling and frightened vessel, and that faith is not the absence of fear but the choice to trust God in the midst of it.
View Discussion GuideSame Kind of Different as Me
by Ron Hall & Denver Moore
Same Kind of Different As Me is the remarkable true story of two men who should never have met — Ron Hall, a wealthy international art dealer living in a world of million-dollar transactions and celebrity friendships, and Denver Moore, a man who grew up in conditions resembling slavery on a Louisiana plantation before spending nearly two decades as a homeless drifter on the streets of Fort Worth and Dallas. What brings them together is a woman named Deborah Hall, Ron's wife, whose vision for serving the poor at the Fort Worth Union Gospel Mission plants a seed that grows into one of the most unlikely and transformative friendships ever told. At its heart, the book asks a deceptively simple question: what does it actually cost to love someone you would never otherwise choose — and what do you receive when you do?
View Discussion GuideGod's Smuggler
by Brother Andrew
God's Smuggler is the remarkable true story of Andrew van der Bijl — known simply as "Brother Andrew" — a Dutch factory worker and former soldier who heard the call of God and responded with reckless, joyful obedience. Beginning with a deprived childhood in Alkmaar, Holland, moving through his reckless years as a soldier in Indonesia, and culminating in his audacious Bible-smuggling missions behind the Iron Curtain, the book traces one man's journey from restless aimlessness to world-changing faith. The central thesis is disarmingly simple: God is looking for ordinary people who will take Him at His word. Brother Andrew's famous "Customs Prayer" — asking God to make seeing eyes blind to the Bibles crammed into his little Volkswagen — became the signature image of a life built entirely on the conviction that God honors bold, obedient faith. Over ten million readers have been gripped by this story, and its challenge remains as urgent as ever: will you trust God enough to act on what you believe?
View Discussion GuideThis Present Darkness
by Frank E. Peretti
Frank Peretti's This Present Darkness is a landmark work of Christian fiction that pulls back the veil on the unseen spiritual realm operating all around us. Set in the small college town of Ashton, the novel weaves together two parallel storylines: one follows reporter Bernice Kreuger and newspaper editor Marshall Hogan as they investigate a mysterious conspiracy reaching into the highest levels of the town's institutions, and the other follows beleaguered pastor Hank Busch as he fights to keep his small congregation alive. Beneath both storylines, Peretti dramatizes the apostle Paul's declaration in Ephesians 6:12 — that our true struggle is not against people and politics, but against "the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness." The novel's central thesis is that prayer is not a passive spiritual exercise but an act of cosmic warfare: every intercession strengthens the angels, every compromise weakens them, and the fate of an entire community hangs in the balance.
View Discussion GuideThe Cross and the Switchblade
by David Wilkerson
The Cross and the Switchblade is the true story of David Wilkerson, a small-town Pennsylvania preacher who felt an inexplicable call from God to leave his quiet rural congregation and travel to New York City — a city he barely knew — to reach the violent street gang members whose trial photos he had seen in a magazine. What follows is a story of raw faith, supernatural courage, and the stubborn, pursuing love of God for teenagers that the rest of society had written off. At its heart, the book argues a single, audacious thesis: the Holy Spirit is more powerful than heroin, more transforming than gang loyalty, and more real than the steel of a switchblade knife.
View Discussion GuideGay Girl, Good God
by Jackie Hill Perry
Gay Girl, Good God is Jackie Hill Perry's honest, unflinching memoir of growing up fatherless, embracing a lesbian identity with her whole self, and then — at nineteen years old, alone in her bedroom — encountering the living God and being made new. The book's central argument is not that same-sex attraction is a simple problem with a simple fix, but that the gospel is powerful enough to reorient every desire toward its proper end: loving God. Jackie refuses both the therapeutic language of "fixing yourself" and the cheap grace of ignoring sin. Instead, she offers a third way — a costly, joy-filled surrender to a God who is genuinely good, and who calls His people to holiness precisely because He loves them.
View Discussion GuideThe Insanity of God
by Nik Ripken
The Insanity of God by Nik Ripken is the true story of a missionary couple's descent into some of the darkest corners of the world — and their unexpected discovery that the suffering church is not dying, but thriving. After devastating personal loss and years of exhausting ministry in war-torn Somalia, Nik Ripken found himself spiritually broken and full of questions: Can faith survive in places where following Jesus can cost you everything? Is God sufficient — not just in theory, but in the places where bullets fly and bodies pile up? The book follows Nik's remarkable journey through more than 70 countries, sitting with persecuted believers whose stories dismantled his doubts and rebuilt his theology from the ground up. The central thesis is both simple and shattering: God is not only present in the worst places on earth — He is most visible there, and the church He builds cannot be stopped by any human power.
View Discussion GuideTortured for Christ
by Richard Wurmbrand
Richard Wurmbrand's Tortured for Christ is one of the most shattering and convicting books of the twentieth century. Written by a Romanian Lutheran pastor who spent fourteen years in Communist prisons — including three years in total solitary confinement — it is at once a testimony of unimaginable suffering, a portrait of the underground church at its most radiant, and a prophetic challenge to comfortable Christianity in the West. Wurmbrand does not write to horrify; he writes to awaken. His central thesis is that the persecuted church behind the Iron Curtain discovered a depth of love, joy, and Christlikeness that is almost impossible to find in a Christianity untested by suffering — and that Western Christians, free from persecution, are in danger of a far subtler but no less deadly spiritual poverty.
View Discussion GuideHeaven Is for Real
by Todd Burpo
Heaven Is for Real by Todd Burpo (with Lynn Vincent) tells the remarkable story of Colton Burpo, a four-year-old boy from Imperial, Nebraska, who nearly died during an emergency appendectomy in March 2003. In the months and years that followed, Colton began sharing details about what he had experienced — describing events that happened in the operating room while he was unconscious, recognizing people he had never met, and painting a vivid picture of heaven that his parents had never taught him. Through the eyes of a pastor-father wrestling with grief, doubt, and wonder, the book invites readers to take seriously the biblical promise that heaven is not a myth or a metaphor, but a real place prepared for real people.
View Discussion GuideBonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
by Eric Metaxas
Eric Metaxas's Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy is a sweeping biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), the German Lutheran theologian who dared to stand against the rising tide of National Socialism when most of the German church capitulated or cheered. Metaxas weaves together two strands of one extraordinary life — the brilliant theologian wrestling with questions of costly discipleship and cheap grace, and the reluctant conspirator who eventually joined a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Drawing on personal letters, journal entries, and firsthand accounts, Metaxas argues that Bonhoeffer's courage was not incidental to his faith but a direct product of it. The book's central claim is that genuine Christian belief, formed deeply enough, produces people who cannot look away from monstrous evil — and that Bonhoeffer's life is a rebuke to every comfortable, accommodating Christianity that mistakes niceness for faithfulness.
View Discussion GuideKisses from Katie
by Katie Davis Majors
Kisses from Katie is the remarkable true story of Katie Davis, a homecoming queen from Brentwood, Tennessee, who at eighteen years old traveled to Uganda for a short mission trip — and never really came home. By the age of twenty-two, she had adopted fourteen Ugandan daughters and founded Amazima Ministries, a organization sponsoring hundreds of children's education and running a feeding program for Uganda's poorest citizens. But this is not simply an inspiring story about an extraordinary young woman. At its heart, Kisses from Katie is a book about what happens when an ordinary person takes Jesus at his word — and discovers that the life surrendered to God is far more beautiful, and far more costly, than anything she could have planned for herself. Katie's central conviction, repeated in different forms throughout the book, is that we are not called to change the whole world, but to change the world for one person at a time, and that in doing so, we are changed ourselves.
View Discussion GuideLove Does
by Bob Goff
Bob Goff's Love Does is not a theology textbook or a self-help manual — it's a collection of wild, funny, and deeply moving stories from a life lived with reckless, action-oriented love. Bob's central thesis is deceptively simple: love is not merely a feeling or a set of beliefs; love is something you do. Through tales of sailing the Pacific on a crate of canned meat, sitting on a bench outside a law school dean's office for seven days, eating ice cream with world leaders, and fighting for justice in Uganda, Bob argues that faith becomes real the moment it gets off the couch and into the world. Each chapter is a story, and each story is an invitation to stop merely admiring Jesus from a safe distance and start following Him into adventure.
View Discussion GuideBiography & Memoir Studies — Questions Leaders Ask
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