Latest project: Choosing to See: A Journey of Struggle and Hope (Revell/Baker Publishing Group), with Ellen Vaughn.

Where did the title of your book come from? As most people know in the Christian music industry, in 2008 my husband and I lost our youngest daughter (Maria) in an accident involving our youngest son (Will Franklin). That obviously was a horrific time in our life. … There’s really deep places of hurt and disappointment and wrestling with God where the whole idea of “choosing to see” came out.

When we lost our little girl, she left some art on the art table, and my husband and two boys and I after the accident really started praying, “God, will (you) let us see you in this horrific time in our lives and in this deep place of sorrow?” When we went home the next day after the accident to gather some things up for the memorial service is when we found this piece of art that she left for us with her little six-petal flower, and when you turn the paper over, she had written, I love mommy, I love daddy and her name, but she had never written this word before, and it was the word “see.”

In Steven’s foreword, he says the working title of your book was Mary Beth vs. God. Is that how it’s been much of your life? Yes, that is a very appropriate working title. I am a work in progress to where God is really just showing me that I can completely rest in Him, that He is sovereign and He does have a plan for me. Sometimes it’s not a plan that we necessarily like.

How have your family members grieved the loss of Maria? It has been a little over two years now, and I’m interviewing with you today as I’m in China and I’m sitting in a place called Maria’s Big House of Hope. It is a special-needs orphanage, a foundation that Steve and I founded. We help about 150 special-needs orphans and are able to provide care, and we also have a floor for severe special-needs orphans who will probably never be adopted. We dedicated that one year ago this summer, and it was a year after Maria left, and that has been a huge source of healing for us, turning our grief into something that can be used to help. …

I believe the enemy comes to destroy, and I will not understand all of the reasons why it had to be this way or what God’s plan is because it doesn’t feel like a good plan at all, but I do believe that when this is all said and done and we can see the whole picture that it will be unbelievable what was built from what happened to our family.

You’ve had a battle with depression through the years. What is that like? I have probably struggled with depression since my teen years and didn’t even talk about it until I adopted our second child (Stevey Joy) and I did an interview. It was that place of, “If I’m going to do this, then I’m going to be authentic and open, and I can’t put the smile on my face and pretend.” With God, I’m going to win it, and I just want to be authentic about the fact that I know that I know that I know that He’s going to be showing me more about Himself through it, but I also know that there are professionals that can help me. If there’s been a battle, and it’s ongoing, then it’s better to praise God. Obviously when I lost my daughter, it knocked it back a few hundred miles, and we still have these deep places of sadness, and I, of course, being more prone to the depression, tend to kind of feel a little bit deeper. But God always meets me.

On a lighter note, you tell on yourself in this book, some embarrassing stories? God has a way of making us not take ourselves so seriously. I thought, well, I should put something funny in there because we have so many funny stories we could tell on ourselves.

More than a decade after spotlighting the consequences of negative thinking in her best-selling Battlefield for the Mind, popular Bible teacher and author Joyce Meyer returns to the topic with specific strategies for those caught in the conflict.

Power Thoughts: 12 Strategies to Win the Battle of the Mind (978-0-446-58036-6, $21.99, FaithWords), releasing Sept. 14, presents lessons and insights Meyer has gathered in the years in between, including details of scientific research that underscores how much thoughts can impact physical and mental health.

“The mind is definitely the battle ground where we do war with Satan and his evil, deceptive thoughts,” she writes. “If we do not war against them, they will turn into actions and our lives will be ruined.”

Though developing a positive outlook on problems and challenges may not alter circumstances immediately or directly, it can bring about a brighter attitude that makes it easier to go through tough times and can lead to changes in situations, she says. Forgiveness is also essential, she adds.

While advocating an aggressive approach to one’s thought life, Meyer emphasizes that she does not believe “that we can think into existence anything that we want.” That is humanism, she says, but “simply recognizing the fact that thoughts are powerful is ... quite biblical.”

After reviewing the importance of right—God-centered—thinking, Meyer mixes biblical examples with stories from the business world and her own life—including the hurdle of starting a gym regime at age 64—to illustrate a dozen Power Thought chapters. Each focuses on what Meyer says is a key foundation, such as, “I will not live in fear” and “I am disciplined and self controlled.”

Providing space to answer “Think About It” questions in each section, she encourages readers to work through the chapters a week at a time in a three-month period or a month at a time in the course of a year.

For more information, visit www.faithwords.com. To order, call 800-759-0190.

Best-selling author challenges Christians to follow lead of the early church

Mega best-selling author Max Lucado celebrates his 25th year of publishing—appropriately—with his 25th book, Outlive Your Life: You Were Made to Make a Difference, describing it as “a call to compassion” for Christians.

Examining life in the first church according to the book of Acts, Lucado said: “The assumption of the book is that we can do what they did. We still have the same God, the same Spirit, I wonder if we might have the same impact. The whole theme of the book is, let’s just do our best to do what they did.”

Challenging believers to live in such a way that their lives will make a difference for generations to come and even will be talked about in heaven, Lucado says the early church addressed both spiritual and physical concerns.

“You’re not even out of Acts chapter 2 before you realize that they were helping each other meet each other’s needs in the community as they reached out to one another,” he said. “We come with a message of the heart and the message of the body.”

Practicing what he preaches, Lucado is seeing that all proceeds from the book’s sales go to World Vision to build water wells in northern Uganda and to the James 1:27 Foundation to minister to the needs of single mothers.

He emphasizes that every Christian can have an impact when exercising compassion. “Not one person can do everything,” he said. “Bill Gates can’t do everything. Barack Obama can’t do everything. Not one person can do everything. Everybody can do something. All I do is challenge people to identify one personal mission that you have.

He encourages “a tri-focal view of the world”—meeting the immediate needs in our own community, addressing the needs in our region and then remembering needs around the world “because the truth of the matter is, some people are born in the conditions that are simply overwhelming.”

Wisdom as to where resources should go is necessary, however, as “some people are poor because they’re lazy and I’m not talking about those people,” he said. “Some people are poor because they were simply born in the wrong place and born on the wrong latitude, born in a place where the government does not provide clean water or good roads—those are the kinds of people that we can help.”

Rather than putting hope in government or a large organization, Lucado rests in God who is in control of all things. “I am big about contributing the holiness that is in each of us and trust that the sovereignty of God is going to redistribute that according to His plan and use that to reach the people around the world,” he said.

Lucado says he hopes that every reader will identify his or her own strategy for dealing with the needs of the poor around the world, “that every single person would put the book down and say, OK, I cannot do everything, but I can do something. Here’s my something. Here is the thing I’m doing. … If enough of us do one thing, then God will take all of our one things and build something that’s greater than all of us.”

Companion products, including a teen book and curriculum, will be released. Lucado also will travel on the Make a Difference fall tour with Michael W. Smith, Third Day, TobyMac and Jason Gray, where concert-goers will be challenged to be one of 25,000 new World Vision sponsors.

To order, call 800-251-4000, or visit www.thomasnelson.com.

Though best known as a leadership expert, pastor Bill Hybels believes that the greatest fruitfulness is found in a Christian life open to the quiet "nudges" from God that can sometimes upend the best-laid plans and programs.

The founder and leader of the famed Willow Creek Community Church looks at how to become more sensitive to the gentle leading of the Holy Spirit in The Power of a Whisper (978-0-310-32074-6, $22.99), releasing this month from Zondervan.

Hybels shares stories from his own life and the lives of many members of his congregation, intertwining them with lessons from the ways God spoke to Bible characters such as Elijah, Samuel and Paul, to illustrate how it is possible to detect what he describes as "the quiet whisper of the transcendent God."

Subtitled "Hearing God. Having the Guts to Respond," the 400-page book suggests that those inner promptings that can all too easily be dismissed are often intended to offer affirmation, admonition or a call to action. Hybels also presents a five-part filter of discerning questions: Is it from God? Is it Scriptural? Is it wise? Is it in tune with your character? What do others you trust think about it?

Far from encouraging over-dependence on feelings, Hybels contends that straining to hear God's whispers should cause Christians to press deeper into His Word to seek confirmation of what they are sensing.

Drawing on personal experiences as a parent and times of struggle and challenge in his ministry, Hybels also reveals how "divine direction" has been the catalyst for Willow Creek's taking pioneering stands on issues like women in ministry, immigration and racial reconciliation. He asserts: "When people hear from heaven, they are rarely the same again."

For more information, visit www.zondervan.com. To order, call 800-727-3480.

Authors of 'One Month to Live' return with a new 30-day challenge

The New York Times best-selling authors of One Month to Live are back with another 30-day plan in Love At Last Sight: Thirty Days to Grow and Deepen Your Closest Relationships.

The new book by Senior Pastor Kerry Shook and Chris Shook, co-founders of Woodlands Church in The Woodlands, Texas, helps readers focus on their key relationships—spouse, children, close friends—with the aim of deepening each. Instead of what they call "love at first sight," the authors are encouraging a "love at last sight" mentality.

With regard to marriage, Chris Shook said: "Love at first sight is the idea that you meet that one and fall in love and that's it. As Kerry and I found out in our 26 years of marriage and in raising four children, we found that love is really what happens in the in-between times, what you do in the tough times and in the times when you aren't filled with butterflies and roses and music.

"We want the last time that we see each other, we want us to be more in love than ever before," Shook added. "Since that's our goal, it means working on that every day."

Readers are challenged "to think of three key relationships in your life—and it could be family members, friends, co-workers—and tell them they are important to you," Shook said. "Find people in your life that mean a lot to you and then really focus on those three relationships during the first 30 days, and we hope that after that month, this will become a lifestyle, a 'love at last sight' lifestyle."

The book divides the 30 days into four weeks and the four keys behind the "love at last sight" lifestyle: being all there, acting intentionally, risking awkwardness and letting go.

The first key encourages being "totally engaged in the moment," Shook said.

"Kerry and I are just normal, average people, and it's so easy to get distracted by everything that is going on around us and not being fully there for the people we love, to really give them our full attention. I think of times when our kids were little and I might be reading or looking at the computer, and they would ask a question or they needed to talk and I wasn't really all there for them. I'm just kind of giving half an answer or helping them at the same time I'm thinking about something else. Multitasking isn't the most efficient way to do relationships."

In the "Crowded" chapter related to the second key, the Shooks talk about the importance of intentionally creating space to build relationships.

"If you're not willing to make plans with intentionally scheduling your own life, there are plenty of people who would be so happy to do that for you," Shook said. "Our list gets so filled up with things that other people thought we should be doing, our responsibilities and schedules and appointments, and we really weren't doing things that were important to our relationship—because the bottom line is, our relationships are the most important things in our lives."

As with their previous book, Love At Last Sight can be used by an individual, group or whole church. Drumming up interest among churches, Shook said: "There are actually many churches who did a campaign for One Month to Live who have already expressed a lot of interest in doing this as well, so we will be launching and meeting a lot of churches this fall with churches across the country."

As one part of the book's launch, the Shooks are encouraging participation in a Facebook Fast on Aug. 25.

"We do feel like it's really important to recognize that we're becoming too dependent on social-networking sites to conduct everyday affairs of relating to each other, to the people we love," Shook said. "So we are encouraging a national Facebook Fast where for a day you don't go to social-networking sites and only use your computer for necessary things that day for work or school or whatever—not texting if possible, but calling people or seeing them face to face."

For more information, visit waterbrookmultnomah.com or www.lastsightchallenge.com. To order the book in hardcover, e-book or audiobook format, call Random House at 800-733-3000.

Latest project: Unburdened: The Secret to Letting God Carry the Things That Weigh You Down, SaltRiver (Tyndale House Publishers).

Resides in: Atlanta.

Currently reading: Bandits, Prophets & Messiahs: Popular Movements in the Time of Jesus by Richard Horsley and The Supernatural Ways of Royalty by Kris Vallotton and Bill Johnson.

Some authors write to teach themselves; was that the case with Unburdened? "Yes there's a whole lot of that in there. In fact, that's one way you can interpret that, that this is a serious message to myself. … I think an awful lot of Christians struggle with this, struggle with being burdened."

Is it really possible in this life to give our burdens to God and walk free in "weightless living"? "It does seem impossible. At the same time, in Scripture it tells us … 'Don't worry about your life. Look at the lilies in the field, look at the birds in the sky.' I've got to believe that (Jesus) didn't tell us to do something that is impossible, so it's an ideal, but I don't know if I really know anyone who is attained that yet. But I do know some people who seem to live much more carefree and much more weightlessly than other people."

If believers would really learn this, it would be quite an example to the world, don't you think? "I do, because I think it's one of the answers that people are looking for. The gospel is good news, and a lot of the world looks at us and thinks, 'Well, they don't really live in a way that's different than me. They have the same worries and anxieties that I have.' And again it's not to say that we have become unrealistic or idealized people who don't struggle with life, but I think there is a certain weightlessness that if we lived that way, the world would look at us and go, 'Wow, there really is a God who can carry their burdens. They really do have a source of help that I don't know about.' "

How can God become what you call our "stress-free occupation"? "The more preoccupied we become with God, the less these things really weigh on us. We can try to carry all our burdens ourselves, or we can turn our focus to God, be fully preoccupied with Him and still carry those burdens, but if we are focused on Him, then the stress of those other burdens starts to dissipate. We realize how big He is, how caring He is, how compassionate He is."

What can we learn from Jesus' example? "He went through days seeing opportunities that God put before Him and somehow discerned those from the obligations that God did not put on Him, and I think that's what we need to try to do. We take on a lot onto ourselves that we feel is our obligation that is not necessarily from God. And we miss a lot of opportunities because we are so focused on our agenda or so focused on our schedule we miss a lot of opportunities that He puts before because we are carrying all these things we weren't designed to carry."

How have you, personally, learned to yield your troubles to God? "It's been a process and I certainly don't write this book as someone who has mastered it. … I think we all have massive trust issues with God. We trust Him in certain areas, but then there's those really deep desires in our hearts, there's really important relationships or dreams that we have that we have a really hard time of letting go and trusting Him. I've learned to ask myself that question, 'What is it about this situation that I don't trust God with?' Even asking that question has helped me kind of take a deep breath, let the muscles loosen in my neck and assume a position of trust. Little by little I think we can do that, and that's how it's working for me."