Books published by Word Alive Press

As number five in a family of seven children, Betty (Elizabeth) was an adventurous and mischievous toddler. An early fascination with fire left her tottering between life and death. Facing a lifetime of medical interventions and adjustments, she soon learned that scars, pain, and loneliness would leave her longing for peace-something that seemed well out of reach. Regrettable choices that included abortion and a broken marriage resulted in a downward spiral of hopelessness, shame, depression, and attempted suicide. Even the fame and potential fortune of her #1 hit on the Country Music charts left her empty and searching. Her dramatic journey to the cross and the naiveté of her newly discovered walk with Jesus will leave you both laughing and crying. Betty's story is one of God's amazing redemptive plan that has taken her across the globe, behind prison bars, and into healing, favour, and victory.

"In Big Challenges, Even Bigger God, Shireen shares her story with transparency and explores every moment in which she faced overwhelming trials. Her determination to walk through fires with faith is deeply inspiring. God's fingerprints and the evidence of His presence in these moments is explicit. How great is our God that He can reach His hands down from heaven to carry us through moments that seem insurmountable. Thank you Shireen for the courage you had to write this memoir that points back to our heavenly father and His deep resounding love." -Cyndi Desjardins Wilkens International Speaker and Author of Shine On: The Remarkable True Story of a Quadruple Amputee Sometimes life feels like it's just a constant series of trials, each season presenting us with a new challenge to work through. What do we do in times when things are going from bad to worse? Is it possible to still live in joy and see God at work in our lives? In Big Challenges… Even Bigger God!, Shireen shows that it is, sharing her own hard-learned understanding that, while life is hard, God is good. You too can live every day in the knowledge that this is true. That even when you fear that you are alone, and feel that He has left you, God is always at work in your life. Remember, the challenges that we face in life may be big, but God is bigger! It's time for everyone to experience the comfort of God's presence in even the darkest of times.

Jim, Nick, and Kirsten have always had a heart for their fellow believers behind the Iron Curtain. It's one thing to pray for their brothers and sisters in Romania, though, and another thing entirely to face hostile border guards with illegal Bibles hidden in their van. Only God can blind the eyes of those searching the vehicle so the three of them will be allowed to pass through safely. Someone in the underground Romanian church is an informer, and the three Bible smugglers want to know who. The brutal dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaüescu, the watching eyes of the secret police, and a personal vendetta being carried out by a colonel with a forty-year grudge have put them and all the believers in danger. As rumors of revolution swirl around them, Jim, Nick, and Kirsten face an impossible dilemma. If they can't trust those who call themselves Christians, who can they trust?

First-century Palestine is a hotbed of political, cultural, and religious intrigue. Caleb ben Samson, a carpenter from Nazareth, and Sestus Aurelius, a Roman centurion, both want peace. Can this unlikely partnership accomplish what nothing else has accomplished before? Can they bring about peace through the power of the cross? And what role will Caleb's childhood friend Yeshi play in a land that longs for hope?In The Cross Maker, Jack Taylor weaves a tapestry of creative history, powerful characters, and dynamic dialogue to bring to life a shadowy world. In a land where tragedy is as common as dust, triumph is about to make itself known.

"It's God who puts us in our family, and He really knows what He's doing," Grandma Terwilliger said to Ian.Ian is a sweet, kind-hearted boy who brings joy to everyone around him. He loves to spend time with Grandma and going to visit Great-Grandma with her. One day as they go to visit her, he learns how important it is to be kind and polite to everyone around him and how special it is to belong to a family.A Day for Family will encourage children to appreciate, care for, spend time with, and honour their families and encourage parents and grandparents to help children understand how special and important it is to have family and to belong. God puts families together for a reason!

<p><div align="center">Responding to failure in ministry is painful for all touched by it.</div><p><p>The journey toward failure is unchosen, undesired, and unplanned. When it occurs, we all ask ourselves this one question: why? The result of failure is the loss of many well-trained and adequately equipped men and women from churches. Often, they disappear into oblivion.</p><p>This has been true throughout history. It’s not a new problem. Witness the experiences of Abraham, David, Elijah, and Peter in Scripture. They served well, but they also failed, disappointing God and their associates. Modern pastors, too, become entrapped in situations of fear, loneliness, depression, and failure.</p><p>We must address ways to prevent failure and learn about possibilities for intervention in order to be the witnessing church that God intends us to be.</p>

Albert Gleeson, his pregnant wife Pam, and his young stepson are struggling to adjust to their life on an acreage in Georgia after their return to our world. However, on his way home from a long day of teaching, Al finds that his home has been ransacked-and his family kidnapped. The police initially suspect him of foul play. When he's finally cleared, with the help of his friends, Al pursues the kidnappers to Abaddon, a continent whose main land surface rests ten kilometres below sea level.Their search eventually forces them to cross an even deeper abyss, called Sheol, where the air pressure is so high that dragons fly. Fighting frustration and despair at his inability to locate Pam and his stepson, Al soon begins to understand that he has a role to play in rescuing the enslaved prisoners of Abaddon.

"In Closing the Floodgates, psychotherapist Dr. Ann Gillies has written a blockbuster of a book exposing the biased, unscientific, and corrupt methods used to promote the sexual revolution of the last sixty years. In her powerful and compelling analysis, she shows how the truth of scientific fact has been overturned in the interest of pleasure and personal feelings, and how a determined minority is using social engineering to reconstruct our social and moral worlds by redefining gender, sexuality and the family. She draws an alarming picture of the consequences: identity confusion among the youth; sexual abuse and victimization of children; soaring rates of suicide and sexually transmitted diseases; the embedding of false, unhealthy, and immoral teaching in the school curriculum; and the loss of freedom of speech and parental rights. While a few readers may find the level of detailed academic content challenging at times, Dr. Gillies is able to make professional findings understandable and real for the average person. For all the necessary research and statistical reporting, this is a gut-level book. In a time of culture wars, when the truth about gender and sexuality is under attack, this book sets the record straight. It issues a rallying cry to parents and others concerned for the future of the family and western society to be informed and take action before it is too late."-Dr. George R. Slater author of Along Comes God and Bringing Dreams to Life

Satisfied with a Grade 8 education? Not fourteen-year-old Allister McRuer. The first step to realizing his dreams requires high school, but will his father ever allow him to leave the farm and live in town to attend? Allister's one thread of hope for more education involves waiting for their one-room school to get a teacher with a high school diploma, and then persuading that teacher to help him study Grade 9. However, when fire spreads from Turtle Mountain towards the McRuers' farm and the school, Allister must work quickly to prevent this hope from disappearing into ashes.In the midst of his fight for an education, Allister meets Sam Pollack in the fall of 1896, an itinerant worker from Ontario who comes to the farm. He asks Allister a pointed question: "What do you want to do with your life?" Will answering truthfully change anything? And if he ever gets his wish to attend high school in Cherry Creek, what name should he ask his classmates and teachers to call him by? Certainly not Allister!

Is there a need for healing in your life? This book can help you access God's amazing healing power. Karen Henein explores the Bible's teaching about healing, referencing hundreds of verses and relating encouraging stories. Why not learn how to actively use every point of access to God's healing power? God loves you and wants to extend His kindness, compassion, mercy, and grace. In response to your prayers and other steps of obedience, God will choose the measure, method, timing, and duration of the healing He will provide for you and your loved ones. While generating faith for healing, God's Healing Power also explores why God allows seasons of suffering, what the Bible says about life span, obstacles to our healing, the reality of death, and the promise of eternal life. Hope for healing and hope for heaven can run simultaneously on side-by-side tracks. Those distinct hopes will merge at the believer's last earthly horizon. God will fully restore us some day, providing a resurrected body that's immortal, indestructible, and forever free from pain. Here or there, now or then, a positive outcome awaits each believer. Whether you need faith for healing, or peace and comfort as life nears its end, God's Healing Power will provide substantive help for your journey.

Bertha: Shine Like the Dawn is the true story of Bertha, the author's great-grandmother, born into relative wealth and comfort in 1860 Germany, orphaned as a baby, and begrudgingly raised by two sets of grandparents.Violated by her uncle at seventeen, Bertha becomes pregnant and is quickly married off to a man beneath her standing. After enduring years of domestic violence and forced pregnancies, she finally walks away with four young children and with only her grandmother in Berlin for support. Once there, Bertha finds love with a mysterious man-but will it last?Bertha, who lives through the turn of the century, the sinking of the Titanic, the First World War, the Spanish Flu, The Great Depression, and the Second World War, accepts whatever life gives her, with courage and passion, but most of all with love.This is a tender romance, filled with compassion and many unexpected turns in life. Bertha experiences unbelievable trials, tribulations, and triumphs, as well as great love and great loss. Readers will cheer for her, cry for her, and love with her.

Sports are a microcosm of life. They provide goals to be achieved and obstacles to be overcome, they yield their share of joy and pain, and they're a stage upon which the best and worst of humanity is displayed. They are also a gift of God, one that can be either treasured or abused.In this book, you will: Learn how to fit your sports pursuits into the larger context of life in a healthy way. Be encouraged to reflect on the presence and blessing of God in your sports endeavours. Be challenged to participate in sports in such a way as to bring glory to God. Learn how to change to become more of the athlete and person you want to become. Drawing from a lifetime in sports and over a decade as a pastor, Benno Kurvits shares his wealth of experience in Outrun the Bear, showing that there is a way for us to enjoy sports, and to seek to excel at them, while honouring both God and our fellow man in the process."Outrun the Bear makes a strong statement of the power of faith to shape and strengthen athletes, coaches, and everyone else in the sport experiences of life." -Dave Mantel Athletic Director, Redeemer University College

Joy is a sustaining force in the Christian life, giving us strength to endure the most difficult of circumstances. Grieving the death of her husband by suicide, and facing other life tragedies, Lorna Hanishewski discovered that great joy can be experienced in a relationship with Jesus Christ. Founded on the truths of the Word of God, this practical book identifies seven keys to accessing true Christian joy. The pages are filled with biblical and personal examples of how to live a joy-filled life, challenging and inspiring readers to take hold of this fruit of the Spirit available to all who believe.

Have you ever wondered about life and all its intricacies? Why are we here on planet earth? What's out there in deep dark space? Since time began, man has tried to explain the known world. Study and research have revealed many truths about the world, but many questions haven't yet been answered. While many Christians enjoy documentaries that ponder the many ways we may have "gotten here"-from the theory that alien transports dropped us off to the idea of a cosmic slime pit which one day came to life-the only authority we have as Born-Again followers of Jesus Christ is the Book of Genesis. Only God's inspired word, the Holy Bible, can answer the many questions at hand.In this book, we will journey into the heart and mind of our incredible Creator to learn the reason and purpose for our existence. Every created being will be considered, from the angels and lucifer to Adam and Eve and their eventual fall into sin. We will also contemplate God's masterful plan for the salvation of mankind and explore what we should expect from life after death.

Feeling alone and afraid, six-year-old Darlene hides under the porch, crying. When her sister finds her, Darlene is unable to explain the fear she faces at nighttime.Later, as a wife and a mother, she processes the impact of the sexual abuse while struggling with depression. Through this deep emotional pain, she recognizes that Christ has already won the victory over Satan. But can she forgive her father? And can she ¿nd peace as she sets out to learn the truth about her biological mother?

When Jesus came ashore, he saw a large crowd. He felt deep concern for them. He healed their sick people.(Matthew 14:14, NiRV)Looking at yourself today, would you consider to be just like the sick people in that crowd?Sickness is not always found in the body. It could be that your heart or mind hurts. Or it could be that you're suffering from anxiety because life has hit you with turmoil or stress. These things can cause us to experience a season of emotional sickness, when it's a struggle just to face each new day.Even Jesus was sometimes hit with deep emotional stirrings. In Matthew 14:14, it was because of the depth of concern He had for the sick; He wanted them to be made well. His response was full of life and victory; He healed them of their ailments.In A Pocketbook of Encouragement, you will experience the same encouragement and biblical principles that I did when I was in a dark place and was met with Jesus' compassion, and was healed.

Come and join us on the West Coast to find a hidden treasure. Shhh! It's a Surprise!Play this game with Michael, Rebecca, and their West Coast friends. Can you guess what their favorite animal will be on the beach in Victoria? Maybe it will be an orca whale, a baby sea otter, or a bunny.

" -Catherine Cameron, Psychotherapist"I would highly recommend this for any person who has children with mental illness in their world, whether among family or friends, in the classroom or congregation." -Jan Young Baker, M.D.When the doctor said those two crushing words-bipolar disorder-the only thing rolling around in Melody Leclair's head was confusion. This could not be happening… not again. With no documented family history of mental illness, the Leclairs now faced the unexpected diagnosis of bipolar disorder in not one, but two of their three children.When Lightning Strikes Twice is an unparalleled memoir with first-person accounts, family perspectives, and collective insights from an extraordinary community of friends and clinicians. Follow this family's heart-wrenching yet hope-filled journey of finding their new normal. With three teenagers in high school, the Leclairs' world now included hospitalizations, medication, self-care, and prayer on top of the typical challenges of raising teenagers.Read this heartfelt and authentic family experience of mental illness, punctuated with honesty and humour. You will undoubtedly be captivated, informed, and inspired.

What would you do if the Lord sent you a dream about a young woman, and then the next day, there she was-standing in front of you in the check-out line at your local gas station? Would you use this opportunity to witness, or would you shy away from following Holy Spirit because you don't feel adequately trained, or you fear rejection and embarrassment?In Journeys to Unknown Spiritual Frontiers, Helen Pasanen and her husband, Art, focus on Spirit-led experiences in which they have seen the Glory of God manifested as part of the routine of daily life. You will discover examples of how a shy, introverted scientist has been able to share the hope in Jesus in a simple, loving way by sharing His faith story.Included are Helen and Art Pasanen's testimonies of supernatural experiences as evidence of the Glory of God being manifested in our time, plus an account of Helen's call to prophetic intercession.

Twelve-year-old Allister McRuer can't wait to attend the brand new, one-room schoolhouse that he, his father, and brothers helped to build on a corner of his family's pioneer homestead in southwestern Manitoba.There was no school within walking distance when Allister and his family first arrived in May of 1892. More than a year has passed, and Allister worries that he has forgotten everything he learned at his school in eastern Canada. Will he and his twin brother, Jim, ever be able to catch up?Allister's excitement quickly turns to frustration. His new teacher doesn't seem to know how to handle sixteen children in Grades 1 through 8. What chaos! And his father continually pulls Allister and Jim out of school to help with the harvest or to build on their older brothers' homestead claims. How are he and Jim going to pass any grade?

"After the Immortal invasion, they take over every nation on earth and set themselves up as rulers without any accountability! I'd call that a pretty successful invasion," Tom summed up.Gizhaa was shaking his head involuntarily, but all he said was, "I've never heard this before." Nearly a thousand years after Earth has recovered from a catastrophic war, the conquering Immortals rule the world, demanding annual tribute in exchange for prospering rains. But not everyone is happy with the system. When siblings Gizhaa and Inaa accompany their father on a historic diplomatic journey to the capital, they find themselves at the centre of a plot to restore an ancient government.Someone doesn't want their journey to succeed, however, and they are soon entwined in political espionage. They must decide if they will help to overthrow the Immortals or trust their own gifts, which warn them of great danger ahead. When it seems Inaa's heart is compromised, leading her into a reckless relationship, Gizhaa wonders if he will lose her. But how much will it cost him… and the world?