Mentoring in secret places

Japan-based missionary Marty Woods wants to build a mentoring movement that allows Christians to live the lives they were made for, listening to their spirit and drowning out the noise of the flesh.

“My commitment is to help develop each mentee’s understanding of their spirit and assist them to hear God,” says the author of A Willing Spirit.  Read the full story here.

Women who fought for the Lord through suffering

Rachel Ciano wrote her new book, Ten Dead Gals You Should Know, during a really difficult year of strain and mental anguish. But diving deep into these women’s lives brought her great comfort.

“The Lord doesn’t deliver many of these women from hardship, but they know that the Lord is with them,” says the co-author of Ten Dead Gals You Should Know. Read the full interview here.

A surgical pioneer

Leprosy Australia CEO Greg Clarke was very moved by reading about the life-changing work of Australian surgeon Grace Warren in her autobiography, Doctor Number 49.

Dr Warren’s innovative work in hand, foot and facial surgery helped turn around attitudes that leprosy was a lifelong disease and restored sufferers to a useful, functional life. Dr Warren, now a sprightly 94, recently welcomed Clarke at her home in a retirement village in Sydney. Read all about the encounter here.

A nursing missionary

Describing herself as a “lamb that wrestled rather than nestled,” as she grew up in Adelaide with a half-Jamaican father and English mother, Elizabeth Robertson overcame many obstacles in her career as a nursing missionary in Sudan, a social worker and a nonagenarian author of a sparkling memoir, Into the Light. Read a summary here.

A seminal Christian book

“An enlightening and absorbing read for anyone wanting to deepen their appreciation of how the Bible addresses our world here and now. To reframe debates and culture wars, you will regularly return to this resource.” This was how the judges described Christopher Watkin’s 600-page book, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture, which won the 2023 Sparklit Australian Christian Book of the Year. Read the story here.

Surprised by Oxford

“Say Jesus and people either get happy or they get mad. They either smile or a cloud comes over their faces. They are either elated or irritated. Embarrassed, they try to change the subject or walk away. Or engaged, they pursue deeper conversation and connection. No other name has such potency,” says Mark, a character in the book Surprised by Oxford by Carolyn Weber (nee Drake). Read Eternity‘s review of the new film compared with the book here.

Lessons from the coalface

Bruce Robinson, a respiratory oncologist, packs practical insights and wisdom gleaned from his many years of practice and Christian witness into Behind the Tears: Understanding, Surviving and Growing from Suffering, which was shortlisted for the 2023 Sparklit Australian Christian Book of the Year. Eternity talked to Robinson here.

The high cost and calling of bringing forth life

Midwife and mother of three Jodie McIver brings together inspiring insight into the goodness of giving birth in pain along with practical advice in Bringing Forth Life: God’s Purposes in Pregnancy and Birth, another shortlisted title for the Sparklit Australian Christian Book of the Year 2023. She tells Eternity about it here.

Acclaim for debut novelist

Claire van Ryn’s debut novel, The Secrets of the Huon Wren, is a dazzlingly accomplished and emotionally compelling story set in two time periods in Tasmania. The writing style, character evocation and storytelling reveal a natural-born novelist with a bright future. Claire talked to Eternity here.

Finding God in the midst of tragedy

Barbara and Paul Ireland were thrown into a stormy sea of questions and accusations against God when their three-year-old daughter, Laura Grace, was killed in a car fire.

As they journeyed through grief and anger over the loss of her bubbly little daughter, Barb “let loose on God,” as she describes in her moving memoir, Daddy Will Carry Me. They talk to Eternity here.

Why do things hurt?

In writing a children’s book about her granddaughter Lucy’s journey with a runny nose, snoring and having her tonsils out, Ruth Oates used coloured Plasticine to create the delightful illustrations.

Why Do Things Hurt? is for anyone going through hard things and asking why God lets hard things happen and if he really cares about our pain and suffering. Read about her journey here.

The father wound

In his new book, My Father’s Son: A Generational Journey, published by Acorn Press, Pastor Wayne Alcorn maps out a healing pathway for men who feel an underlying resentment towards God because of troubles in their relationships with their earthly fathers and encouraged them to write a new family tree. Read more here.

A glimpse of God’s heavenly promise

Dani Treweek has grappled with a theology of singleness for the past 16 years. In her new book, The Meaning of Singleness, she makes the case for singlehood as a foretaste of heaven and pleads for the church to understand that it needs single people – not just to fill gaps in the rosters, but as a pointer to community. Read more here.

Faith and fashion

Fashion designer Jules Coles brings together the wisdom of her 50-year fashion career in Faith and Fashion to show the doubters that her work in clothing people is as much gospel ministry as anything else because “you are a reflection of Christ in whatever you do.” Jules shares her views on faith and fashion here.