Stay-at-home mom Julie Hadden was 5 feet 1 inch tall, weighed 218 pounds and was obese by medical standards when she pleaded with God to help her lose weight. She had no idea He would use the hit reality-TV show The Biggest Loser to help rid her of both the physical and spiritual weights that controlled her was able to shed the pounds and regain her self-esteem.

She shares her story and tells about being a contestant on season four (2007) in her new book, Fat Chance: Losing the Weight, Gaining My Worth (click here to purchase). To hear her inspiring testimony, listen to our podcast.

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By Nicole Seitz | Thomas Nelson | softcover | 320 pages | $

In Saving Cicadas, 8-year-old Janie Macy is a normal kid, as far as she knows. She lives in a small town with her mother, Priscilla Lynn; her older sister Rainey Dae, who has Down syndrome; and their grandparents. When her mother gets pregnant, though, her whole world changes.

Janie knows her mother is upset about being pregnant, but she only begins to understand what is at stake after her grandparents tell her about abortion and she and Rainey look it up online. When Priscilla Lynn schedules an abortion, Grandma Mona decides Janie must try to stop it. To help her do so, she tells Janie some closely held family secrets that change Janie’s world.

Nicole Seitz deals with the weighty issue of abortion through the innocent eyes of a child. The supernatural surprise at the end makes for a somewhat far-fetched story, though the book’s message is powerful and thought-provoking. Through Janie’s eyes, readers will see the abortion issue in black and white.

Click here to purchase this book.

By John B. Olson | B&H Fiction | softcover | 400 pages | $

John B. Olson delivers a supernatural thriller in Powers. Though it is a sequel to his novel Shade, it is a self-contained story.

Powers begins with Mariutza, who was raised in a Louisiana swamp by her grandfather, Purodad. He has trained her to be one of the Standing, a group to which God gives extrasensory powers against the Badness, Satan’s human presence.
When 10 cloaked men murder Purodad, his dying words send Mariutza on a quest for Jazzaniah the prophet and a treasure the Badness wants.

Meanwhile Jazzaniah, a struggling New Orleans musician, is experiencing strange visions that are leading him to Mariutza. Jazzaniah helps her find others in the Standing while dodging police, the FBI and shadowy government agencies convinced by the Badness that the Standing is a terrorist group.

The portions that are written from Mariutza’s viewpoint may throw some readers, since she does not understand everyday things such as automobiles and cell phones. Nonetheless, Powers offers a gripping plot that will keep the reader engaged.

Click here to purchase this book.

Fox Home Entertainment | $

The Hallmark Channel movie adaptations of Janette Oke’s best-selling book series Love Comes Softly are now available in one complete DVD set. Follow the story of Clark and Marty Davis and their family as they face hardships, tragedy, love and triumph.

This collection includes eight titles: Love Comes Softly, Love’s Enduring Promise, Love’s Long Journey, Love’s Abiding Joy, Love’s Unending Legacy, Love’s Unfolding Dream, Love Takes Wing and Love Finds a Home. Many well-known actors starred in the films, including Katherine Heigl, January Jones and Haylie Duff. Other famous guest stars such as Patty Duke, Cloris Leachman and Lou Diamond Phillips join the cast.

Viewers of all ages will appreciate the family-friendly stories of faith, hope and perseverance. And although the films vary a bit from Oke’s novels, her fans will enjoy seeing their favorite stories come to life on screen over and over.

Click here to purchase this set.

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Pastor Billy Joe Daugherty was remembered as a compassionate leader with a passion for evangelism during a four-hour memorial service held Monday in Tulsa, Okla.

Daugherty, founder of 17,000-member Victory Christian Center in Tulsa, died Nov. 22 of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was 57.

The memorial service drew 8,000 people to the Oral Roberts University (ORU) Mabee Center, and included remarks from such speakers as Bethany World Prayer Center pastor Larry Stockstill, ORU Board Chairman Mart Green and Nigerian Bishop David Oyedepo.

“Today we are celebrating a great man,” Lakewood Church co-founder Dodie Osteen said. “Billy Joe Daugherty—a man of faith, a man of God, a man of integrity. The Bible says if we walk in integrity we will not stumble. I never heard of Billy Joe Daugherty stumbling because he walked in integrity.”

“Everybody that I know in the world loved Billy Joe,” healing evangelist Oral Roberts said by video. “They were touched by his remarkable Christian life and his desire to touch them and lift them up. … His preaching was full of Jesus.”

Through 30 years of ministry, Daugherty helped plant ministries around the world and founded the International Victory Bible Institute, which has more than 900 campuses worldwide; the Victory World Missions Training Center; and the Tulsa Dream Center, which provides food, clothing and medical services to needy families.

He served on several boards, including that of his alma mater, ORU, and was Oklahoma director for Christians United for Israel.

Daugherty’s wife and Victory co-pastor, Sharon Daugherty, said her husband suffered with what seemed to be a virus in his throat in 1989. At that time, one specialist said Daugherty may have had a rare disease called chronic lymphatic leukemia, but the diagnosis was never firm.

Daugherty said three days later, while he was still in the hospital, her husband sensed God telling him he was healed. Soon after, Daugherty’s health improved, and he continued preaching.

He showed no signs of the illness again until a year and a half ago when his neck began to swell during a trip to Rwanda. He was treated by the same specialist he had seen nearly 20 years before, and his health again improved until this summer when he was hospitalized with what doctors initially believed was a virus.

In October, when he announced that he had been diagnosed with lymphoma, he told his congregation he was standing in faith for healing while cooperating with medical professionals.

“He’s the kind of person who wanted to stand strong and not cause people fear,” Sharon Daugherty said. “He didn’t want people to be shaken.”

Christians worldwide joined him in prayer, and during the memorial service Sharon Daugherty cautioned them not to lose confidence in the power of prayer.

“I know sometimes people think, well if prayers, if they don’t’ go the way we thought that they were going to go we just stop praying. No, that would be like stopping breathing,” she said.

“I just wanted to encourage you with Luke 18:1-men ought always to pray and not faint and not give up and not quit,” she added. “That’s very important because you and I need prayer. Prayer is communication with God the Father. No matter what we face in life, we need our communication with God.”

She said her husband was motivated by a passion to reach people with the gospel and see them empowered. “Whatever he did he did with a motive to reach people,” she said, adding that he launched the Bible schools and missions training center to that end. “He did it because he loved people.”

A video tribute of Daugherty shown near the end of the service closed with the pastor giving an invitation to salvation.

Bible teacher Kenneth Copeland told Sharon Daugherty that the ministry’s best years were to come.

“You thought you’ve seen something in the past; dear heart you haven’t seen anything yet,” Copeland said. “The word that came alive in your heart and your life has … grown stronger. So sorrow not, dear one, but rejoice. The greatest things are in your future.”

In closing the service, Bible teacher John Bevere echoed that sentiment. He said Daugherty’s life was given as a seed, and he challenged attendees to imitate the pastor’s commitment to reach the lost.

“We are all sons and daughters of Billy Joe and Sharon Daugherty,” Bevere said. “Now it is our responsibility to go and multiply his ways in Christ.”

“There will be more people come into the kingdom of God as a result of this man’s life going into the ground as a seed,” he continued. “More will come to the Lord than his entire years of ministry on this earth. And it will happen. I speak it in Jesus’ name.”

In addition to his wife, Daugherty is survived by his mother, Iru Daugherty, and his four children Sarah Wehrli, Ruthie Sanders, John Daugherty and Paul Daugherty.

A Florida-based ministry known
for its Bible translation work has taken aim at addressing one of the world’s
most pressing humanitarian crises: AIDS.

For the last four years,
Wycliffe Bible Translators has been educating African communities about the devastating impact of AIDS, which has orphaned some 14 million children in sub-Saharan Africa alone. So far, teams have translated Kande’s Story,
an AIDS awareness curriculum, into 90 languages in 12 African nations, including Kenya, Mozambique, Zaire, Cameroon and Congo.

“Surprisingly, Bible
translation-and the language development that is foundational to it-can be a
starting point for solutions to some of the world’s most pressing humanitarian
issues,” said Kathie Watters, coordinator of Wycliffe’s AIDS Education
Program in Africa.

Watters, a registered nurse and
linguist, experienced the devastation of AIDS firsthand. While Watters was
working in Cameroon as a Bible translator, her friend and housekeeper died of
AIDS. As a result Watters helped develop Kande’s Story, which tells the
true story of a girl whose parents die of AIDS, leaving her to care for a houseful
of orphans.

The curriculum, which includes
an audio version of Kande’s Story, uses the story as a springboard for
discussing medical facts about HIV/AIDS and Bible study lessons related to
sexual purity, compassion and caring for the sick.

Translated in areas where
Wycliffe’s Bible translation work already is under way, the materials often are
the first local-language AIDS education resources the communities have had,
Watters said.

She believes literacy is key in fighting HIV/AIDS, which is
a leading cause of death in most African nations. According the World Health
Organization, roughly 5 percent of the adult population in sub-Saharan Africa
is HIV-positive.

“It’s the gap in the whole AIDS
education [process] that I think Wycliffe is uniquely positioned to fill,”
Watters told Charisma. “Some people say they’ve heard the information in
English or French, but they never really understood it until they heard it in
their own language.”

Watters said one pastor in the
Congo thought he could contract AIDS by touching people with the disease or
going into their rooms. “Now, I know I can go there and I won’t get AIDS,”
Watters said the pastor told her. “And I see I should be going there and
talking with them and telling them to talk to God about their distress.”

In Cameroon, a man said he
thought AIDS was just a conspiracy concocted in the West. But after hearing Kande’s
Story in his language, he told Watters he believed AIDS was real and
planned to get tested. “And we see that many places,” she said.

Watters said AIDS still carries
a stigma in Africa, and many Christians are often reluctant to reach out.

“Even in the church, many of
those people [with AIDS] are thrown out, rejected,” Watters said. “In Kande’s
Story, people see a model of how the people reached out to these children.
That’s reinforced by the Bible studies, where they see … how Jesus was
compassionate toward lepers-people in that time who were stigmatized by their
disease.”

After just the first lesson,
Watters said a community in Kenya formed what they call the good neighbor
society. “They started caring for people with AIDS and prayed with them and
read Scripture to them,” she said. “Like the church did in Kande’s Story,
they reached out to orphans and helped them.”

The AIDS education materials are
also being used as part of an adult literacy program in Ethiopia, and there has
been talk of broadcasting audio versions of the story on FM stations.

Trans World Radio may adapt Kande’s Story into
a radio broadcast in the Burundian language, Watters said, and there are plans
to expand the materials into more nations and languages next year.

Pastor Billy Joe Daugherty was remembered as a compassionate
leader with a passion for evangelism during a four-hour memorial service held
Monday in Tulsa, Okla.

Daugherty, founder of 17,000-member Victory Christian Center
in Tulsa, died Nov. 22 of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was 57.

The memorial service drew 8,000 people to the Oral Roberts
University (ORU) Mabee Center, and included remarks from such speakers as
Bethany World Prayer Center pastor Larry Stockstill, ORU Board Chairman Mart
Green and Nigerian Bishop David Oyedepo.

“Today we are celebrating a great man,” Lakewood Church
co-founder Dodie Osteen said. “Billy Joe Daugherty—a man of faith, a man of
God, a man of integrity. The Bible says if we walk in integrity we will not
stumble. I never heard of Billy Joe Daugherty stumbling because he walked in
integrity.”

“Everybody that I know in the world loved Billy Joe,”
healing evangelist Oral Roberts said by video. “They were touched by his
remarkable Christian life and his desire to touch them and lift them up. …
His preaching was full of Jesus.”

Through 30 years of ministry, Daugherty helped plant
ministries around the world and founded the International Victory Bible
Institute, which has more than 900 campuses worldwide; the Victory World
Missions Training Center; and the Tulsa Dream Center, which provides food,
clothing and medical services to needy families.

He served on several boards, including that of his alma
mater, ORU, and was Oklahoma director for Christians United for Israel.

Daugherty’s wife and Victory co-pastor, Sharon Daugherty,
said her husband suffered with what seemed to be a virus in his throat in 1989.
At that time, one specialist said Daugherty may have had a rare disease called
chronic lymphatic leukemia, but the diagnosis was never firm.

Daugherty said three days later, while he was still in the
hospital, her husband sensed God telling him he was healed. Soon after, Daugherty’s health
improved, and he continued preaching.

He showed no signs of the illness again until a year and a
half ago when his neck began to swell during a trip to Rwanda. He was treated
by the same specialist he had seen nearly 20 years before, and his health again
improved until this summer when he was hospitalized with what doctors initially
believed was a virus.

In October, when he
announced that he had been diagnosed with lymphoma, he told his congregation he
was standing in faith for healing while cooperating with medical professionals.

“He’s the kind of
person who wanted to stand strong and not cause people fear,” Sharon Daugherty
said. “He didn’t want people to be shaken.”

Christians worldwide
joined him in prayer, and during the memorial service Sharon Daugherty
cautioned them not to lose confidence in the power of prayer.

“I know sometimes
people think, well if prayers, if they don’t’ go the way we thought that they
were going to go we just stop praying. No, that would be like stopping
breathing,” she said.

“I just wanted to
encourage you with Luke 18:1-men ought always to pray and not faint and not
give up and not quit,” she added. “That’s very important because you and I need
prayer. Prayer is communication with God the Father. No matter what we face in
life, we need our communication with God.”

She said her husband was motivated by a passion to reach
people with the gospel and see them empowered. “Whatever he did he did with a
motive to reach people,” she said, adding that he launched the Bible schools
and missions training center to that end. “He did it because he loved people.”

A video tribute of Daugherty shown near the end of the
service closed with the pastor giving an invitation to salvation.

Bible teacher Kenneth Copeland told Sharon Daugherty that
the ministry’s best years were to come.

“You thought you’ve seen something in
the past; dear heart you haven’t seen anything yet,” Copeland said. “The word
that came alive in your heart and your life has … grown stronger. So sorrow
not, dear one, but rejoice. The greatest things are in your future.”

In closing the service, Bible teacher John Bevere echoed
that sentiment. He said Daugherty’s life was given as a seed, and he challenged
attendees to imitate the pastor’s commitment to reach the lost.

“We are all sons and daughters of Billy Joe and Sharon
Daugherty,” Bevere said. “Now it is our responsibility to go and multiply his
ways in Christ.”

“There will be more people come into the kingdom of God as a
result of this man’s life going into the ground as a seed,” he continued. “More
will come to the Lord than his entire years of ministry on this earth. And it
will happen. I speak it in Jesus’ name.”

In addition to his wife, Daugherty is survived by his
mother, Iru Daugherty, and his four children Sarah Wehrli, Ruthie Sanders, John
Daugherty and Paul Daugherty.

1 John 2:1-17 In these last days before the Lord returns, it seems the world is increasing in evil. The Bible tells us this will happen. Timothy tells us that in the last days seducing spirits will be everywhere. We have this hopeful word in God’s Word that says where sin abounds, grace does much more abound. Sometimes my husband and I sit at our peaceful dinner table and remark to one another, “Things are really getting bad out there.” One only has to watch the news to see the corruption in our world and the steady descent into more darkness. Sometimes after watching the news I want to say, “Stop the world! I want to get off!!” Today’s reading gives us the reason the world is such a mess. We cannot blame it on God or even the devil. We only have to look at ourselves to find the answer to our predicament. Listen to what John says: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever” (vv. 15-17, KJV).

The world is waxing worse simply because more people are giving into their own lusts—the lust of the flesh (seeking to fulfill their five senses in an overindulgent way—drugs, alcohol, overeating, etc.); the lust of the eyes (greedy longings in the mind such as covetousness, greed, fantasies, pornography, etc.); and the pride of life (trusting in ourselves more than we trust in God). There is no question that our own lusts are the problem. The Bible says that in the last days men will be lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God (the lust of the flesh) and lovers of self more than lovers of God (the lust of the eyes and the pride of life).

The good news is that the world will pass away and all of its lusts with it. There will be a day when the Lord Himself will stop the world, and we will be able to get off. Let’s pray earnestly that all of our loved ones will be in a position to get off when things come to an end here on earth. The position we all need to be in when the Lord returns and stops the world as we know it today is on our knees humbly bowing and acknowledging that Jesus Christ is Lord of all even this corrupt world, and most of all, He is Lord of our lives.

Lord, I confess my own selfish lusts. So often I do put my own pleasure ahead of spending time with You. Many times I place more trust in myself and my own abilities rather than depending upon You and Your supernatural ability (Your grace). Forgive me for the prideful times in my life when I chose to put self on the throne rather than You. Help me to humble myself daily.

READ: Daniel 8:1-27; 1 John 2:1-17; Psalm 120:1-7; Proverbs 28:25-26

God has set goals for each of our lives. In fact, He recorded them in a book before time began.

“You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was
recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day
had passed” (Psalm 139:16, NLT).

That is phenomenal! Did you know a book was written about
you? It’s not just famous people who are featured in biographies. Your
story is in a book, too, and the Author is none other than God. He
wrote that book before you were conceived in your mother’s womb. What a
staggering thought—every moment of your life is recorded in that book. 

“For we are God’s [own] handiwork (His workmanship),
recreated in Christ Jesus, [born anew] that we may do those good works
which God predestined (planned beforehand) for us [taking paths which
He prepared ahead of time], that we should walk in them [living the good life which He prearranged and made ready for us to live]” (Ephesians 2:10, AMP).

God planned your paths beforehand, but notice that Paul writes “that we should walk in them.” It doesn’t say “that we would walk
in them.” There is a huge difference. Free will comes into effect here
because fulfilling these assignments isn’t automatic. We have to
cooperate in our labor.

God has set the goals, but it’s up to us to discover
through prayer, reading His Word, and other spiritual means what’s
recorded for our lives. Then by His grace we fulfill them. For this
reason Paul prays: “Since the day we heard about you, we have not
stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge
of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray
this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may
please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in
the knowledge of God,” (Colossians 1:9–10, NIV)

Knowing God’s will for our lives gives us the ability to
always please Him. However, it is not inevitable. God has set
extraordinary goals for us, and they will not be accomplished without
prayer, faith and fervent labor. 

Your life is unique, special and by no means an accident.
No one is common or menial. We all were created for a unique path that
is extraordinary.

Marked by boldness and passion, John Bevere delivers
uncompromising truth through his award-winning curriculum and
best-selling books now available in over sixty languages. His newest
book is Extraordinary: The Life You’re Meant to Live. More information is available at .

It is one thing for us to believe it once and be electrified and be thrilled, to have our world turned upside down, but quite another to keep believing it. The devil will come alongside and tell you that it can’t be true, and he appeals to our natural reasoning. He appeals to what we know to be true about ourselves, that we are sinners. If he can, he will bring us right back to our bondage.

It was Martin Luther who rediscovered the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith. Luther was a very conscientious person. He had a sensitive conscience and was known to go to confession not only every day but also sometimes two or three times a day, because after spending an hour confessing his sins, he would come back an hour or two later remembering there was a sin he didn’t confess.

But during these days he was also reading Romans, as well as Galatians and certain of the Psalms. Here he had a breakthrough, largely from Romans 1:17. When Luther saw that what Paul was saying was that faith alone pleases God, and it satisfies, to use Luther’s term, “the passive justice of God,” his world was changed. He, in fact, woke up the world by his own world being turned upside down. He did not know that he would turn the world upside down by simply trying to save his own soul. The interesting thing is that Paul too rediscovered this teaching. Paul realized that Abraham saw it long before, and David saw it.

The principal thing that we are to see is that we are justified by the combination of two things: what Jesus did for us and our own faith in Him. Or, to put it another way: His faith and our faith.

These two things must come together.

Excerpted from The God of the Bible (Authentic Media, 2002).