EmmanuelChurch

Personal Growth

The second part of our church's vision is to see people grow in Christ. We want to give you tools that will help you on your spiritual journey.

One-Year Bible Reading Plan - CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PLAN.

A number of people have taken Pastor Danny's One-Year Bible challenge. If you would like to participate, here are links to One-Year Bibles. These plans follow the same plan the church is going through together.

Daily SOAP Journaling System

SOAP journaling will help you take a scripture and apply it to your life.  Click here to read a full explanation.

Daily Bible Reading Plans

• Click here to purchase a one-year Bible. (This will take you to the One Year Bible on Amazon)
• Subscribe to online ESV Bible Reading Plan  

Pastor Danny's Recommended Reading

Sun Stand Still, by Steven Furtick

"This book is not a Snuggie. The words on these pages will not go down like Ambien. I’m not writing to calm or coddle you. With God’s help, I intend to incite a riot in your mind. Trip your breakers and turn out the lights in your favorite hiding places of insecurity and fear. Then flip the switch back on so that God’s truth can illuminate the divine destiny that may have been lying dormant inside you for years. In short, I’m out to activate your audacious faith. To inspire you to ask God for the impossible. And in the process, to reconnect you with your God-sized purpose and potential."
    —STEVEN FURTICK, from Sun Stand Still


The Good and Beautiful Life, by James Bryan Smith.

"I have never met a person whose goal was to ruin his or her life. We all want to be happy, and we want it all of the time."  So begins James Bryan Smith in The Good and Beautiful Life. The problem is, he tells us, we have bought into false notions of happiness and success. These self-centered decisions lead us further into the vices that cause ruin: anger, lust, lying, worry and judging. Eventually we find ourselves living a beautifully-packaged life of self-destruction.

Following the Sermon on the Mount, this follow-up to The Good and Beautiful God guides us to look behind these character flaws and to replace our false beliefs with Jesus' narratives about life in the kingdom of God.

Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis. 
This book never flinches as it sets out a rational basis for Christianity and builds compassionate morality atop this foundation. As Mr. Lewis clearly demonstrates, Christianity is not a religion of flitting angels and blind faith, but of free will, an innate sense of justice and the grace of God. 

The Life You've Always Wanted, by John Ortberg.

The heart of Christianity is about transformation--about a God who isn't just concerned with our 'spiritual lives,' but who wants to impact every aspect of living. It's realizing that God meets us not in a monastery, but on Main Street, and that all of ordinary, daily life has the potential to be lived as if Jesus himself were the one living it. Paved with humor and sparkling anecdotes, this book is an encouraging and challenging approach to a Christian life that's worth living.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, by Donald Miller

Years after writing a best-selling memoir, Donald Miller went into a funk and spent months sleeping in and avoiding his publisher. One story had ended, and Don was unsure how to start another. But he gets rescued by two movie producers who want to make a movie based on his memoir. When they start fictionalizing Dona's life for film, changing a meandering memoir into a structured narrative--the real-life Don starts a journey to edit his actual life into a better story. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years details that journey and challenges readers to reconsider what they strive for in life. It shows how to get a second chance at life the first time around.