Showing results by narrator "Lyle Blaker" in All Categories

The morning! That is our watchword. Our evening prayers and songs are filled with hope. The morning adds hue to life, imparting color to that which is colorless, and freshening that which is faded. It is the essence of our hopes and dreams. Stars may help to make the sky less gloomy, but they are not the sun – and besides, clouds have now covered them so they are no longer visible. Torches and beacon lights do not help. Our own lights make no impression upon the darkness; it is so deep, so real, so unmistakable.

In The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy, Michael Mandelbaum offers a new framework for understanding the evolution of the foreign policy of the United States. He divides that evolution into four distinct periods, with each defined by the consistent increase in American power relative to other countries. His history of the four periods features engaging accounts of the major events and important personalities in the foreign policy of each era.

R. D. Hooker, Jr. was a combat soldier and leader in five wars. He then served as a senior Pentagon advisor and as a White House staff member in four different administrations. At the time of his retirement from the military in 2010, he was the most decorated colonel in the US Army. Beginning with his enlistment at eighteen in 1975, this memoir chronicles his experiences in the post-Vietnam Army as a young paratrooper, as a West Point cadet, and as a combatant in the many military conflicts which followed. 

Darfur, Sudan. 2009. Two doctors employed by NGOs stumble across a strange metallic cylinder, which has been embedded for perhaps millions of years in desert rock. Mystified by the object, they gather four of the world’s leading experts in science and technology a computer scientist, a physicist, a biochemist, and a genetic researcher and head to London to study it thoroughly. The six have barely begun running tests on the cylinder, when they suddenly disappear telling family members not to go looking for them.

What do you do when it feels like God isn’t there―when the state of the world, our own suffering, or the struggles of those we know suggest that God is absent? When you’ve experienced soul-crushing silence from heaven, despite your fervent supplications? Looking at Habakkuk, Job, David, and Jesus, as well as reflecting on his own experience of deep suffering, Adam Mabry examines the art of lament―how to cry out to God in desperation from a place of faith and hope. At the end, there are practical suggestions for what you can do to keep faith even in times of darkness and doubt.

Did you know you can read Jesus's Sermon on the Mount in about eighteen minutes? Yet packed into this short talk are more life-changing and startlingly original teachings than anywhere else in Scripture. Drawing from decades of study, Dr. Robert Jeffress breaks down Jesus's most well-known (yet least-followed) teachings about happiness, faith, relationships, sex, reconciliation, prayer, money, and more. He shows how we often misunderstand and misapply these verses and unpacks exactly what Jesus was teaching us about our own hearts and minds.

Conflict is inevitable, but peace, especially among Christians, is essential. When conflict turns into peace, frustration becomes clarity and turmoil becomes unity. When conflict turns into peace, God is glorified. But how do we find peace without ignoring our problems? How do we pursue unity without compromising on our principles? The Path of a Peacemaker offers a simple, proven path to a lifestyle of peace. It guides you through an examination of your own personal story, identifying the origins of your hopes and fears.

We all experience difficult relationships. Oftentimes we try to reconcile but the other person simply won't, or else we find they can't keep the commitments they made during reconciliation. How do we handle these tough relationships in a way that brings peace to our lives and glory to God?

Christians need to fight both big, obvious sins and commonplace, familiar sins which can sneak in and become the hardest to kill of all. Pastor and counselor Rush Witt defines such diehard sins, presents an understandable overall doctrine of sin, and lays out a method for change that pits Christ and his provisions against the subtle, elusive sins that seem so unkillable. 

In 52 Ways to Connect with Your Smartphone Obsessed Kid, author Jonathan McKee offers just the help you need to have meaningful interaction with your kids instead of always overreacting to their unhealthy consumption of technology and media. In a world where over 80 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds now own a smartphone, parents are searching for ways to pry their kids’ eyes from their devices and engage them in real, face-to-face conversation.

Scholars and citizens have often assumed that dispassionate rationality, reciprocity, and nonviolent tolerance are necessary conditions for the sustained development of democracy. Accordingly, they reject oppositional parties that spurn consensus and terms of mutual respect—and often use force to accomplish their political goals—denouncing extremists as antidemocratic.

Part travel journal but mostly spiritual guide, Finding Jesus in Israel takes an unvarnished look at the Holy Land with an off-the-bus peek into the people and places that make Israel such an amazing destination. We are shaped and transformed by the oceans we sail, the deserts, mountains, and valleys we wander, and the people we meet along the way. And as any traveler worth his salt knows, the real trip happens within.  

Embrace financial independence and generate consistent income with this strategic guide for entrepreneurs and investors looking to level up. If you’ve already built a profitable business but you’re ready to free up your time without sacrificing growth, this book is for you. In Scaling Smart, Rich and Kathy Fettke distill more than twenty years of business strategy into the perfect guide for entrepreneurs ready to scale a successful enterprise.

Blending hard science fiction with suspenseful military action, this novel is an exotic adventure set in a future colony in the Alpha Centauri star system. Finding the crew of a remote space station wiped out by a killer virus, the captain of a patrol vessel imposes a quarantine lockdown. But a fearful crew attempts a mutiny to flee with the ship, threatening to spread a pandemic across the nearby planets. Courage and duty clash with panic and desperation in a perilous struggle to survive.

Gavin and Nax are smugglers struggling to find work on a backwater space station, so when Lila, a highborn lady, hires them for a short jaunt to the nearest wormhole, they don't ask many questions. But Lila is fleeing the galaxy's mightiest empire, carrying knowledge of lost technologies that could reshape the stars. Now, this unlikely trio must learn to work together as they race between star systems and unravel forgotten mysteries while staying one step ahead of the imperial fleets and a ruthless prince.

Many listeners have heard C. S. Lewis's logical arguments for the Christian faith. Yet throughout his wide-ranging study and writing, Lewis often began with experience, intuition, and religious feeling rather than dogmatic assertions. The most profound questions of Lewis's own life, argues theologian and literary critic Jeffrey Barbeau, can be seen in his quest to understand the relationship between personal experience and the truth about the world around him.

A comprehensive guide to understanding your gut, its influence on your health, and what you can do to protect it. Digestion may be its primary job, but your gut is pulling double duty behind the scenes. Sometimes referred to as the body’s “second brain,” your gut plays an important role in...

A Guardian Best Book of 2021 A compassionate and captivating examination of evolving attitudes toward mental illness throughout history and the fight to end the stigma. For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In...

Postwar New York City famously expired in a tableau of burning Bronx tenements, subway graffiti, crushing debt, and the tabloid headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” The city reemerged from the ashes to reach new heights, whether in stock averages or the gleaming pencil towers punctuating midtown. But at ground level, the city’s basic institutions—its housing, its schools, its public safety—were cracking. The city was rebuilt on a foundation of deep inequality.

Bob Pisani is Senior Markets Correspondent for CNBC and has spent the past 25 years on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. He has been on the front line of finance for all the major events of the last quarter century, including the Asian Financial Crisis, the dot-com bubble and collapse...