 Christian romance isn’t just one of the fastest-growing genres in publishing, it’s also changing lives in unexpected ways
In a kitchen somewhere in the Southeast, a woman kicks her work shoes into the corner behind the door, turns the oven to preheat for the garlic bread, sets the spaghetti water to boil and leans against the counter to read another chapter in a Christian romance while she waits. The story is unlike her own, its heroine a pioneer-era woman who hauls spring water in a bucket, battles grass fires and town gossip, and still finds joy in homemaking and being faithful to God. Yet as the spaghetti goes a touch beyond al dente and the reader escapes further into the fictional world, she finds fresh hope and perspective for her contemporary struggles. Meanwhile a single woman in Chicago struggles to hold out for a husband who loves the Lord like she does. She’s tired from swimming upstream in a sex-obsessed culture, yet after reading about the consequences of wrong decisions in the pages of a Christian romance, she recommits to waiting for God’s choice.
 How God can turn anyone—from a hit man to a drug-addicted rock star like me—into a new creation
I left the so-called good life. A life filled with beautiful girls, free beer, first-class plane tickets, fast cars, fancy houses, fame, fans—you name it and I had it. It was the ultimate rock-star fantasy life that, for some reason, came true for me. I had been the lead guitarist for the band Korn, traveling the world and making millions of dollars, all the while being hopelessly addicted to crystal meth. I had a daughter I was responsible for and I was failing her. I had a life I was throwing away, and I woke up each day wishing that some force would simply take me out of my misery. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. Instead of that force taking me out of my misery, I got a new reason to live. In January 2005, I found God, and I’ve never been the same since. Looking back on it now, I’m amazed at the distance that I’ve traveled.
 How a skeptical filmmaker ventured into the heart of darkness to test the depths of God’s ‘furious’ love
Have you thought about asking God for an idea?” That was the question Darren Wilson’s wife, Jenell, posed to him after he experienced what he called “an idea block.” At the time, Jenell’s query irritated Wilson. In fact, it initiated an argument. “I am not going to ask God for an idea,” Wilson replied. “That’s for people who aren’t creative enough to come up with their own ideas. Only noncreative people ask for help.” After all, if anyone knew about creativity, it was Wilson. An assistant professor at Judson University outside Chicago, he teaches multiple classes on storytelling and video production.
 God wants us to join Him in going after the thing He loves most: People
He is after me and He’s after you, from eternity past until this very moment. He is in a passionate pursuit of all we are. Wow! What a thought and what a truth. You know the following verse—you’ve read it countless times and could probably quote it while you’re in a coma (well, maybe): “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16, NKJV). If that is not a picture of God holding nothing back in pursuit of us, then nothing is. Let’s consider what it’s like to be in God’s place for just a few moments: You fashion a creation, making people in Your likeness. You invest Your life in them, giving them breath so they can share the very essence of life together with You. Then, with the incredible gift of free choice You have given them so they will freely love You, they choose to go their own way and leave You: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way,” Isaiah 53:6 says. Then they live life and do the things You never intended them to be or do.
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 Former lesbian turned evangelist Rosita Martínez is living proof that God’s love redeems and restores lives
Rosita Martínez grew up depressed, lonely and confused in a world of crippling contradictions. Ignored by her mother, overprotected by her father and sexually abused by her cousins, she seemed to be right in line with Satan’s plan of destruction for her life. But God had His own plan for her, and things are different now for Martínez, a former lesbian turned evangelist. Today she’s a product of God’s unfailing and unconditional love—and she can’t stop talking about it. Born in 1956 into a Roman Catholic family almost 10 years after her brother, José, Martínez realized early on from her mother’s coldness and father’s watchful eye that life was going to be anything but predictable.
 How God—that all-consuming, living flame of love—shows His unrelenting desire for people
God’s love is an intimidating topic to grasp because it is the very subject of God Himself. He is love, and everything He is and does is love. He is a vast, shoreless ocean of love, and we have only heard the mere whisper of His passion. As a student of His love I feel too small to even begin to try and describe Him. But on one aspect, I’ll try. As I began to study God’s love I found one of the characteristics that motivates me the most is His unrelenting love. His pursuit of my heart and His burning desire for me has changed my life entirely. I remember when I first began to see the God of burning desire—it was revolutionary. I was in a Bible school class in Kansas City in which Mike Bickle taught on the Song of Solomon. I’d never heard God described as one who had burning desire or a ravished heart for people. I had never heard love defined like that.
 Philip Cameron never planned on extending his family, nor had he envisioned creating a refuge for potential sex slaves. Yet his efforts to transform orphans into walking testimonies of God’s love are now transforming a country.
Natalie, a beautiful girl of 16, sat outside the orphanage where she had lived since she was 7 years old, wearing a t-shirt that read: “You Can Own Me For $3,500.” OK, so she wasn’t actually wearing the shirt—but she might as well have been. In fact, everything about her screamed the message to predators in the area. She had “aged out” of the government-run orphanage in Moldova and had no place to live and no way to make a living. She had no family, no one who would know or care if she vanished from the country known as “the engine of the sex trafficking machine” in all of Europe.
 God doesn’t need us yet desperately wants us. Why, then, do we who need Him often not want Him in return?
I was taught the song “Jesus Loves Me” as a young child: “Jesus loves me, this I know” Even if you didn’t grow up in a church, you probably know how it ends: “for the Bible tells me so.” If you’ve spent any time in church, you’ve heard expressed, in some form or another, the idea that God loves us. I believed this for years because, as the song puts it, “the Bible tells me so.” The only problem is that it was a concept I was taught, not something I implicitly knew to be true. For years I “got” God’s love in my head, checked the right answer on the “what God is like” test, but didn’t fully understand it with my heart.
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