Showing results by narrator "Mark Smeby" in All Categories

Depression is the number-one health issue in the world today, yet those who suffer are still sometimes stigmatized - especially followers of Jesus. Many assume God's peace, power, and protection should prevent us from ever feeling anxious, depressed, and afraid. But the Bible teaches otherwise, particularly in its depiction of the life of the Old Testament prophet Elijah. Chris Hodges uses Elijah's life to show us that everyone is susceptible to depression. Even when we're walking closely with God, we can still stumble and get lost in the wilderness of tangled emotions. 

While many churches talk about discerning calling and engaging in mission, very few are structured to make this their ministry focus. Underground Church is a new vision for the church rooted in its biblical mission to share the love of God and serve the poor. Sanders explores how to make structural changes, how to think about leadership, how to fund ministries, and how to truly engage people in God's mission. Filled with creative insights, he explains what it means to center the mission of the church around the callings of individuals to outward ministry.

What can you learn from the world’s most successful companies? The Marvel Studios Story will help you understand and adopt the competitive strategies, workplace culture, and daily business practices that enabled a struggling comic book publisher to parlay the power of myth and storytelling to become one of history’s most successful movie studios. 

In Telling a Better Story, author Joshua Chatraw presents a new and better way to do apologetics, an inside-out approach that is attuned to our late-modern moment and respectful of unbelievers, all the while remaining focused on Jesus. With chapters on cultural understanding, dealing with the difficult issues, and presenting Jesus in a holistic, contextual manner, Telling a Better Story offers a road map to effective apologetics both for experienced apologists and those new to sharing their faith with others.

A blunt wake-up call to salespeople and sales leaders that debunks the myths of the latest miracle solutions and refocuses your sales strategy on a proven approach that will drive the results you want. 

Any organization can win more customers and increase sales if they would only learn to be more strategic with their customer service. This audiobook draws on more than 30 years of research from companies such as 3M, GE, and Chick-Fil-A to teach listeners how to transcend a good business into a profitable word-of-mouth machine that transforms the bottom line. 

In Donald Miller's early years, he was vaguely familiar with a distant God. But when he came to know Jesus Christ, he pursued the Christian life with great zeal. Within a few years he had a successful ministry that ultimately left him feeling empty, burned out, and, once again, far away from God. In this intimate, soul-searching account, Miller describes his remarkable journey back to a culturally relevant, infinitely loving God.

Have you ever longed for a comeback? We all know what it feels like to have life disappoint us and not work out as we'd hoped. We all know what it's like to long for something different, something better, something more. The Comeback celebrates new beginnings. It offers encouragement and perspective, and it's for you if you feel frustrated or confused, if you're sorrowing or in pain, if you've made mistakes or are grieving, if you're disappointed or feel as though life doesn't make sense.

Authored by a millennial, The Passion Generation will guide you beyond the stats of what millennials are doing to why they’re doing it and how we can all move toward healthy community. With wit, compassion, and startling insights, this audiobook shares stories and studies drawn from Skeldon’s years of working to bridge generational gaps. In his signature conversational style, Skeldon offers researched strategies that will spark healthy connections and practical methods that will help you make disciples of the millennials you love. 

Don’t apologize for what you believe. In an age marked by uncertainty, the Unapologetic New Testament audio download has the tools you need to defend your faith—and share it with the people you love.

When Jeremy Camp lost his beloved wife, Melissa, just months after their wedding, the last thing he wanted to do was sing praise to God. But even as he struggled through unimaginable grief and fought to hold on to his faith, God had other plans: Pick up your guitar. I have something for you to write. Jeremy obeyed, pouring out his heart, writing about the hope that God was still there, even in his deepest grief. The song he wrote that day, "I Still Believe", has gone on to inspire millions around the world. This is the story behind that song and the movie that was inspired by it.

He helped save people every day - but he had no idea how to save himself. Jason Sautel had it all. Confident in his abilities and trusted by his fellow firefighters, he was making a name for himself on the streets of Oakland, California. His adrenaline-fueled job even helped him forget the pain of his childhood - until the day he looked into the eyes of a jumper on the Bay Bridge and came face-to-face with a darkness he knew would take him down as well.

Never Too Far celebrates new beginnings. It offers encouragement and perspective, and it’s for you if you feel frustrated or confused, if you’re sorrowing or in pain, if you’ve made mistakes or are grieving, if you’re disappointed or feel as though life doesn’t make sense. The good news is that God is in the business of giving fresh starts to people. He gives hope to the hopeless. Direction to the directionless. Help to those who need help. God is always good, all the time, and God’s plans will always prevail, even when our plans don’t.

While on a three-month-long tour, Jeremy met and built a friendship with the lead singer of another band. In a beautiful and inspiring story, their love unfolded taking them both by surprise. After 16 years of marriage, Jeremy and Adrienne have experienced devastating losses and incredible joy and have grown alongside each other. They continue to strengthen their friendship as they juggle life and frequent separations, due to tour schedules, with the demands and stressors of parenting their three kids. 

In Hero Maker you will learn how to bring real change to your church and community by developing the practical skills to help others reach their leadership potential. Drawing on five powerful practices found in the ministry of Jesus, Hero Maker presents the key steps of apprenticeship that will build up other leaders and provides strategies for how you can activate gifts, help others take ownership, and develop a simple scorecard for measuring your kingdom-building progress.

This is the story of David Wilkerson, the man who believed against the odds that God could do great things in the rejected and ignored of New York City, who refused to give up on those on the streets even when they had given up on themselves, and who saw in the eyes of the drug addicts and gang members what others failed to see - the love of Jesus Christ.

In Searching for God Knows What, best-selling author Donald Miller invites you to reconnect with a faith worth believing. With humor, intelligence, and his trademark writing style, he shows that  relationship is God's way of leading us to redemption. And our need for redemption drives us to relationship with God. "Being a Christian," Miller writes, "is more like falling in love than understanding a series of ideas."

Frustrated and disillusioned with his life as a Christian motivational speaker, Michael Yankoski was determined to stop merely talking about living a life of faith and start experiencing it. The result was a year of focused engagement with spiritual practices - both ancient and modern - that fundamentally reshaped and revived his life. By contemplating apples for an hour before tasting them (attentiveness), eating on just $2.00 a day (simplicity), or writing letters of thanks (gratitude), Michael discovered a whole new vitality and depth through the intentional life.

From the influential and ever-growing movement "I Am Second" comes a remarkable collection of well-known lives transformed from restless to happy by the power of God. 

Groundbreaking leaders share a passionate commitment to achieving their vision that borders and sometimes crosses the line into obsession. All In shows how obsession, if properly focused and managed, is both necessary and productive. Advances in any endeavor almost always depend on a small group of individuals who are completely consumed by the goal they’re pursuing. When these leaders and their teams are successful, everyone benefits from their singular focus and relentless drive.