Study Guides
Christian Living
Practical wisdom for living out your faith in everyday life. These guides help groups think through purpose, calling, generosity, and what it means to follow Jesus in a distracted world.
The Best Yes
by Lysa TerKeurst
The Best Yes by Lysa TerKeurst is a book about one of the most quietly exhausting struggles in the Christian life: the inability to say no. Lysa argues that when we say yes to everything — out of people-pleasing, fear of disappointment, or the sheer rush of being needed — we rob ourselves of the ability to say a wholehearted, God-directed "Best Yes" to the things we were actually made for. Drawing on Scripture, personal stories, and practical wisdom, she walks readers through what it looks like to make decisions with a wisdom-based process rather than an emotion-driven reaction. The central conviction of the book is that our decisions shape our days, our days shape our lives, and a life with God at the center requires us to steward our yeses carefully.
View Discussion GuideDo Hard Things
by Alex Harris
Do Hard Things by Alex and Brett Harris is a rallying cry to a generation that has been told to sit down, take it easy, and wait until adulthood to do anything that really matters. Written when the twins were eighteen years old, the book challenges the modern concept of adolescence as a "vacation from responsibility" and replaces it with a bold vision: the teen years are not a holding pattern but a launching pad. Drawing on biblical truth, history, and the stories of real young people who are already doing extraordinary things, Alex and Brett introduce the concept of the "Rebelution" — a rebellion against low expectations that fuels genuine personal and social change. Their central thesis is simple but countercultural: doing hard things is not the exception for young people who follow Christ; it is the calling.
View Discussion GuideThe Next Right Thing
by Emily P. Freeman
Emily P. Freeman's The Next Right Thing (2019) offers a quiet, countercultural approach to decision-making in an age of overwhelming options and constant noise. Freeman's central thesis is simple but profound: rather than striving to discover "God's perfect will" for every major life choice, we are invited to practice the habit of doing the next right thing in love — one small, faithful step at a time. Drawing on her own experience of decision fatigue, as well as the wisdom of spiritual directors, contemplative writers, and everyday moments of ordinary life, Freeman builds a practical and deeply spiritual framework for soul-care in the midst of uncertainty. The book is organized around a series of short, accessible practices — like "becoming a student of yourself," "naming your arrow," and "building a rule of life" — that gently clear the inner clutter and make space for God's voice to be heard.
View Discussion GuideWhen Helping Hurts
by Steve Corbett
When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert challenges Christians to rethink the way they engage in poverty alleviation. The book's central thesis is that much of what the church does in the name of helping the poor actually makes things worse — not because of bad intentions, but because of a fundamental misdiagnosis of poverty itself. Rather than seeing poverty primarily as a lack of material resources, the authors argue that poverty is rooted in broken relationships: with God, with self, with others, and with the rest of creation. True poverty alleviation, they contend, requires restoring those relationships, which means that "development" — walking alongside people as they grow in dignity and capacity — is almost always preferable to "relief," which should be reserved only for genuine crisis situations.
View Discussion GuideNot a Fan
by Kyle Idleman
Not a Fan by Kyle Idleman is a frank, searching invitation to examine whether you are truly a follower of Jesus Christ — or merely a fan. Drawing on his experience as a teaching pastor, Idleman distinguishes between fans who admire Jesus from a safe distance and followers who have surrendered their entire lives to him. The book's central argument is that Jesus never called anyone to be a fan: he called people to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him — and that anything less is a counterfeit Christianity that leaves both us and the world around us unchanged. Idleman weaves together personal stories, honest self-examination, and the red-letter words of Jesus to confront the comfortable, consumer-minded faith that fills many church pews today.
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 GuideCultivate
by Lara Casey
Lara Casey's Cultivate: A Grace-Filled Guide to Growing an Intentional Life is an honest, hope-filled invitation to trade the frantic pursuit of a perfect life for the slow, faithful work of growing a good one. Drawing on her own story of broken relationships, miscarriage, business pressures, and a garden that taught her more than she expected, Casey argues that meaningful growth is never instant — it is cultivated. The central thesis is deceptively simple: the same principles that turn a barren patch of dirt into a thriving garden apply to every area of our lives. We prepare the soil, we plant seeds with intention, we pull weeds, we water with patience, and we trust God for the harvest. The result is not a picture-perfect Instagram life, but something far better — a life deeply rooted in what actually matters.
View Discussion GuideThe Cost of Discipleship
by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote The Cost of Discipleship in 1937 — from the context of a Germany sliding into totalitarianism and a church being seduced by compromise — and its central argument has lost none of its urgency. The book's thesis is announced in its very first line: "Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church." Against the comfortable Christianity that demands nothing, Bonhoeffer sets the call of Jesus Christ, which demands everything. True discipleship, he argues, is not a religious program layered on top of ordinary life; it is a new kind of existence, born in obedience to a living Person. The book moves in two major movements: a theological examination of grace and call (Part One), followed by a sustained, verse-by-verse meditation on the Sermon on the Mount and the missionary discourse of Matthew 10 (Part Two). Together, they form one of the most searching challenges to comfortable Christianity ever written.
View Discussion GuideUninvited
by Lysa TerKeurst
Uninvited by Lysa TerKeurst is a deeply personal and biblically grounded exploration of one of the most universal human experiences: rejection. From the sting of being left out of a social gathering to the soul-level wound of abandonment by someone who should have loved us, rejection has a way of writing stories over our hearts — stories that tell us we are unwanted, not enough, and destined to be on the outside looking in. Lysa TerKeurst dismantles those stories with gut-honest vulnerability, pointing us instead toward a love that is handpicked, intentional, and completely unshakeable. Her central thesis is this: we are not defined by the rejections we experience, but by the One who chose us before the foundation of the world. When we learn to live from that truth rather than react from our wounds, everything changes.
View Discussion GuidePresent Over Perfect
by Shauna Niequist
Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequist is a deeply personal memoir-meets-manifesto about leaving behind the exhausting pursuit of busyness, achievement, and performance in order to return to a slower, more connected, more honest way of living. Niequist writes from the middle of her own unraveling — a season when the life she had carefully built (full of yes's, travel, productivity, and public presence) began to collapse under its own weight. Her central argument is deceptively simple: the frantic, "more is more" pace many of us have accepted as normal is not just unsustainable — it is a kind of soul-sickness. And the antidote is not a better schedule or a smarter self-help strategy, but a genuine return to what is most alive, most true, and most beloved in our lives. This is a book for anyone who has ever arrived at a season of exhaustion and wondered how they got there.
View Discussion GuideRadical
by David Platt
David Platt's Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream is a passionate, uncomfortable, and ultimately liberating call to reconsider what it means to follow Jesus in a culture saturated with comfort, consumerism, and self-advancement. Platt argues that American Christianity has, often without realizing it, reshaped the gospel to fit the values of the American Dream — a gospel of health, wealth, personal happiness, and minimal sacrifice. Drawing on the actual words of Jesus, Platt invites readers to compare what Jesus said discipleship would cost with what we typically ask of ourselves, and then to have the courage to close that gap. The book is not a guilt trip; it is an invitation into something far more exciting and far more costly than the comfortable Christianity many of us have settled for.
View Discussion GuideCrazy Love
by Francis Chan
Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God by Francis Chan is a passionate call to abandon the lukewarm, comfortable Christianity that has become the norm in much of the Western church. Chan's central thesis is simple but unsettling: God loves us with a wild, all-consuming, "crazy" love — and the only sane response is to love Him back with our whole lives, holding nothing in reserve. Drawing on the awe-inspiring scale of the universe, the warnings of Jesus, and the radical lives of ordinary Christians, Chan challenges readers to stop playing it safe and start living the kind of life that only makes sense if God is real.
View Discussion GuideThe Purpose Driven Life
by Rick Warren
The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren begins with one of the most disarming sentences in modern Christian literature: "It's not about you." From that opening provocation, Warren unfolds a 40-day journey through five God-given purposes that every human life is designed to fulfill — worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry, and mission. Drawing on more than 1,200 Scripture references from 15 different Bible translations, Warren argues that you cannot discover the meaning of your life by looking inward; you must look to the One who made you. True purpose, he insists, is not found but received — a gift from the God who created you for His glory.
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