Study Guides
Spiritual Growth & Disciplines
Deepen your spiritual life through the practices that have shaped Christians for centuries. These guides walk groups through prayer, fasting, solitude, simplicity, and the rhythms of a life with God.
Spiritual Leadership
by J. Oswald Sanders
J. Oswald Sanders' Spiritual Leadership, first published in 1967, remains one of the most beloved and enduring books on Christian leadership ever written. Sanders' central thesis is simple but radical: spiritual leadership is not an achievement of natural talent, ambition, or organizational skill — it is the product of a life wholly surrendered to God. True spiritual leaders are not self-appointed; they are Spirit-appointed. Drawing on the lives of biblical figures, church fathers, and missionary heroes such as David Livingstone, Samuel Brengle, and Hudson Taylor, Sanders paints a portrait of leadership that looks nothing like the world's version — one marked by sacrifice, prayer, servanthood, and a willingness to bear costs that others will not.
View Discussion GuideCrash the Chatterbox
by Steven Furtick
We all have a chatterbox — that relentless inner voice that whispers (and sometimes screams) that we are not enough, that our situation is hopeless, that God is distant, and that our failures define us. In Crash the Chatterbox, Pastor Steven Furtick of Elevation Church argues that the greatest battle of your life is not fought on a visible battlefield but in the six inches between your ears. Drawing on Scripture, personal stories, and sharp pastoral insight, Furtick identifies four core lies the enemy uses to silence us — "God won't," "You can't," "You don't deserve it," and "It won't last" — and shows how the living Word of God is the only weapon powerful enough to silence those voices for good.
View Discussion GuideYou Are Free
by Rebekah Lyons
In You Are Free, Rebekah Lyons writes from the hard-won place of personal exhaustion, anxiety, and striving — and from the surprising discovery that Jesus has already declared freedom over every one of those struggles. The book's central thesis is simple but radical: Christ does not say you can be free or might become free. He says, in the present tense, you are free. Drawing on her own story of battling anxiety, depression, and the relentless pressure of performance, Rebekah unpacks the many forms of bondage that quietly hold women captive — people-pleasing, self-condemnation, ungrieved loss, fear of failure — and then sets each one against the liberating truth of the gospel. The result is both a personal memoir and a theological call to action: freedom is not a destination you earn; it is a gift you receive, and then courageously give away.
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 GuideA Praying Life
by Paul Miller
A Praying Life by Paul E. Miller begins with a disarmingly honest confession: prayer is hard, and most of us don't do it very well. Rather than offering another set of techniques or disciplines to master, Miller diagnoses the deeper problem — we have stopped being needy. We have learned to live as "functional atheists," managing our lives with skill and self-sufficiency while leaving God largely out of the picture. The book's central argument is that the solution is not more willpower but a recovery of childlike dependence — learning to bring our real selves, with all our mess and confusion and longing, into honest conversation with a Father who loves us.
View Discussion GuideHaving a Mary Heart in a Martha World
by Joanna Weaver
In Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World, Joanna Weaver uses the familiar New Testament story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38–42) as a lens for examining the tension every woman feels between doing and being — between the kitchen and the living room, between busyness and intimacy. Weaver's thesis is simple but piercing: God does not want us to choose between loving Him and serving Him, but He does want us to get the order right. "Living-room intimacy" with Jesus must come first; "kitchen service" will then flow out of it naturally, joyfully, and without the resentment and exhaustion that so often plague busy Christian women. Drawing on her own story, Scripture, and the lives of women throughout Christian history, Weaver offers both theological grounding and practical strategies for women who feel they are never quite godly, loving, or doing enough.
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 GuideSacred Marriage
by Gary Thomas
Gary Thomas opens Sacred Marriage with a question that reframes everything: "What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?" That single question is the engine of the entire book. Thomas argues that marriage is not primarily a romantic arrangement for personal fulfillment — it is a spiritual discipline, as rigorous and transforming as fasting, prayer, or solitude. Every frustration, every moment of tenderness, every season of boredom or passion in a marriage is raw material in God's hands for shaping us into the image of his Son. Sacred Marriage does not promise a better marriage by the time you finish it; it promises a better you — and a richer, more honest relationship with God.
View Discussion GuideForgotten God
by Francis Chan
Francis Chan's Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit (2009) begins with a disarmingly honest question: if the Holy Spirit were completely removed from your church, would anyone notice? Chan argues that most Western Christianity has domesticated, ignored, or quietly sidelined the third person of the Trinity — and that this neglect is not a minor omission but a catastrophic loss. The book is a passionate, pastoral call to recover a living, dangerous, transforming relationship with the Spirit of God — not as a theological concept, but as a personal, powerful divine presence who was promised to believers and who makes the Christian life actually possible.
View Discussion GuideThe Practice of the Presence of God
by Brother Lawrence
The Practice of the Presence of God is one of the most beloved spiritual classics in Christian history. Written by a seventeenth-century French Carmelite lay brother named Nicholas Herman — known in the monastery as Brother Lawrence — it is a slim but inexhaustible book about a single, revolutionary idea: that any person, in any circumstance, can walk in continuous, conscious communion with God. Brother Lawrence did not develop this practice in a quiet study or a peaceful garden. He discovered it in the noise and clutter of a busy monastic kitchen, while rolling over wine casks on lame legs and repairing the worn sandals of over a hundred brothers. His testimony is that God is not reserved for the chapel or the prayer closet, but is available — and eager — in every moment of every ordinary day.
View Discussion GuideSpiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life
by Donald Whitney
Donald S. Whitney's Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life is built around one compelling thesis: God has given us specific, time-tested practices — the spiritual disciplines — as the means by which we "train ourselves to be godly" (1 Timothy 4:7). Whitney argues that godliness is not the result of passive waiting or emotional experience alone; it requires intentional, Spirit-dependent effort. Drawing on the Puritan tradition and the broader sweep of church history, he walks through disciplines such as Bible intake, prayer, worship, journaling, fasting, stewardship, and evangelism, showing how each one becomes a channel through which the Holy Spirit transforms us into the image of Christ. The goal is never discipline for its own sake — it is always Christlikeness.
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 GuideThe Ragamuffin Gospel
by Brennan Manning
Brennan Manning's The Ragamuffin Gospel is a passionate, unflinching meditation on the grace of God — a grace so extravagant, so unconditional, and so scandalous that most of us spend our lives half-believing it. Manning's central thesis is simple but revolutionary: God's love for us is not earned, managed, or maintained by our performance. It is freely given to the bedraggled, the beat-up, and the burnt-out — to ragamuffins. The book is both a theological argument and a personal confession, drawing on Manning's own struggle with alcoholism, self-contempt, and the long journey toward receiving rather than just preaching grace. It challenges the comfortable Christianity of the respectable and invites broken people to sit down at the table they feared they'd been excluded from.
View Discussion GuideDesiring God
by John Piper
John Piper's Desiring God opens with a thesis that many Christians find simultaneously liberating and unsettling: the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever. Piper calls this "Christian Hedonism" — the conviction that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. Drawing on hundreds of Scripture passages, and standing on the shoulders of Blaise Pascal, Jonathan Edwards, and C. S. Lewis, Piper argues that the pursuit of joy is not a distraction from worship but the very heart of it. To seek your deepest pleasure in God is not selfishness — it is the one pursuit that simultaneously honors God supremely and satisfies your soul completely.
View Discussion GuideThe Pursuit of God
by A.W. Tozer
A. W. Tozer wrote The Pursuit of God in a single sitting on a train, and the urgency of that moment pulses through every page. The book's central argument is deceptively simple: God is not merely a doctrine to be affirmed but a living Person to be known, pursued, and experienced. Tozer believed that the greatest crisis of the modern church was not theological error but spiritual dryness — an orthodoxy full of correct opinion yet empty of conscious communion with God. Against that dryness he set the testimony of the great saints across the centuries, and the invitation of Scripture itself: taste and see, draw near, seek His face. This study guide follows Tozer's ten chapters, plus his Preface, across twelve weeks, ending with a final week of review and reflection.
View Discussion GuideKnowing God
by J.I. Packer
J. I. Packer's Knowing God (1973) is one of the most beloved works of Christian theology written in the twentieth century. Its central thesis is deceptively simple: there is an enormous difference between knowing about God and knowing God personally — and that difference makes all the difference in the world. Drawing on the great Reformed tradition, Packer moves through the attributes and acts of God — His majesty, wisdom, love, wrath, grace, and more — not as dry doctrinal categories but as living realities meant to transform the believer's heart. The book famously opens with the claim that "the most important thing about a Christian is not what they do, but what they think of God," and every chapter is a sustained invitation to upgrade our vision of who God is and how He deals with His people.
View Discussion GuideThe Screwtape Letters
by C.S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters is one of the most original and penetrating works of Christian apologetics ever written. Cast as a series of letters from the senior demon Screwtape to his bumbling nephew Wormwood, the book turns the usual perspective on temptation inside out: we see humanity not through the eyes of a saint or a pastor, but through the eyes of hell. The result is both darkly comic and deeply convicting. Lewis's central argument is that the Enemy (God, from hell's perspective) is relentlessly pursuing the love and free will of every human soul, while the demons work not through dramatic supernatural horror but through the quiet, corrosive power of distraction, self-deception, and spiritual complacency. Written against the backdrop of World War II, the letters expose how ordinary life — marriage, friendship, politics, pleasure, and even church attendance — becomes the battlefield for the soul.
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 GuideEmotionally Healthy Spirituality
by Peter Scazzero
Peter Scazzero's Emotionally Healthy Spirituality begins with a confession most of us quietly recognize: it is entirely possible to be deeply involved in church, committed to the Bible, and actively serving God — and still be emotionally immature. Scazzero, a pastor who built a growing congregation in Queens, New York, discovered through a painful personal and marital crisis that his spiritual life had a gaping hole in it. He had been using ministry to run from himself, suppressing his anger and sadness in the name of Christian niceness, and leading others while his own soul was starving. His central thesis is both simple and radical: emotional health and contemplative spirituality are not optional add-ons to discipleship — they are its very foundation. You cannot be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature.
View Discussion GuideCelebration of Discipline
by Richard Foster
Richard J. Foster's Celebration of Discipline is widely regarded as one of the most important books on Christian spirituality written in the twentieth century. Its central thesis is both simple and revolutionary: the spiritual life is not a matter of trying harder but of training wisely. Foster argues that the classical spiritual disciplines — practices like prayer, fasting, meditation, confession, and worship — are not burdensome rules for the religious elite but are, in his memorable phrase, the "path to spiritual growth." They are, he insists, a means of grace: ways of placing ourselves before God so that He can transform us from the inside out. Organized into three movements — the Inward Disciplines, the Outward Disciplines, and the Corporate Disciplines — the book invites readers into a whole-life spirituality that touches solitude and service, simplicity and celebration alike.
View Discussion GuideGentle and Lowly
by Dane Ortlund
Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers by Dane C. Ortlund is a book with one simple, stunning thesis: the deepest impulse of Jesus Christ's heart is not frustration, disappointment, or reluctant tolerance — it is tender, zealous, and inexhaustible love for sinners. Drawing on Matthew 11:29, where Jesus describes himself as "gentle and lowly in heart," Ortlund mines the Old and New Testaments and draws heavily on the Puritan writers — Thomas Goodwin, Richard Sibbes, John Bunyan, John Owen, and others — to show that the gospel does not merely change what God does for us; it reveals who God is toward us. The book is not primarily about what we must do but about what kind of Savior we actually have.
View Discussion GuideThe Ruthless Elimination of Hurry
by John Mark Comer
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer is a passionate, pastoral argument that the greatest threat to the spiritual life in the modern West is not heresy or persecution — it is hurry. Drawing on the wisdom of Dallas Willard, the rhythms of Jesus, and the ancient practices of the church, Comer contends that we have mistaken busyness for productivity and noise for meaning. The cure, he argues, is not merely time-management but a wholesale apprenticeship to the unhurried Jesus — learning to live the way he lived, at the pace he lived it. The book is structured in two movements: first diagnosing the disease of hurry and its spiritual consequences, then prescribing four ancient practices — Sabbath, simplicity, slowing, and silence/solitude — as the path back to a life with depth, joy, and genuine connection with God.
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