Audiobooks narrated by Jim Denison

The Cost of Ambition: How Striving to Be Better Than Others Makes Us Worse

Many people believe that ambition, understood as striving to be better than others, improves us as individuals and advances society. But what if the opposite is true? In The Cost of Ambition, world-renowned theologian and award-winning author Miroslav Volf argues that striving for superiority actually makes us worse. Working his way backward in time, Volf explores what three influential thinkers—Søren Kierkegaard, John Milton, and the apostle Paul—say about the cost of ambition. He also explores what the teachings of Jesus and the stories in Genesis say on the matter. Volf explains that striving to be better than others, though widely accepted as part of modern life, devalues our achievements, things that surround us, and relationships because it makes them into mere means to an empty goal. He reveals ambition's negative consequences in all domains of life, showing that it is at odds with the key convictions of Christian faith. After unpacking the toxicity of ambition, Volf uses contemporary examples to guide listeners to a better goal: striving for excellence.

Miroslav Volf (Author), Jim Denison (Narrator)

Audiobook

One Page Talent Management, with a New Introduction: Eliminating Complexity, Adding Value

You know that winning in today's marketplace requires top-quality talent. You also know what it takes to build that talent. Yet somehow, your company's beautifully designed and well-benchmarked processes don't translate into the bottom-line talent depth you need. Why? Talent management experts Marc Effron and Miriam Ort argue that companies unwittingly add layers of complexity to their talent-building models. Consequently, simple activities like setting employee performance goals become multi-page, headache-inducing time wasters that turn managers off and fail to improve results. Effron and Ort introduce a simple, powerful, scientifically proven approach to increase your ability to develop better leaders faster: One Page Talent Management (OPTM). Using the straightforward, easy-to-follow process described in this book, you will eliminate frustrating complexity, focus only on those components that add real value, and build transparency and accountability into every practice. One Page Talent Management shows you how to quickly identify high-potential talent without complex assessments; increase the number of 'ready now' successors for key roles; generate 360-degree feedback that accelerates change in the most critical behaviors; and significantly reduce the time required for managers to implement talent-building processes.

Marc Effron (Author), Jim Denison (Narrator)

Audiobook

You Were Never Meant to Do It All: A 40-Day Devotional on the Goodness of Being Human

Are you exhausted, anxious, and sick of feeling like you should always be doing one more thing? In You Were Never Meant to Do It All, Kelly Kapic is here to help—not with the latest time management advice but with a refreshing approach to embracing the truth that God never intended for us to do it all. Readers flocked to Kapic's award-winning 2022 book, You're Only Human. Now, Kapic's message is back in the form of forty daily devotions—each with a meaningful quote and reflection questions. Kapic shows that our human limitations are not sinful but rather that God purposefully designed humans to have limits and depend on one another. Rightly appreciated, these good limits promote freedom, joy, growth, and community. As listeners take this forty-day devotional journey, they will follow a path to more holistic living that fosters a vision for healthy self-understanding, life-giving relationships, and meaningful contributions to the world.

Kelly M. Kapic (Author), Jim Denison (Narrator)

Audiobook

Living the Good Life: A Beginner's Thomistic Ethics

Living the Good Life presents a brief introduction to virtue and vice, self-control and weakness, misery and happiness. The book contrasts the thought of Aquinas with popular views, such as moral relativism, values clarification, utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, and situation ethics. Following the Socratic dictum 'know thyself,' Steven J. Jensen investigates the interior workings of the human mind, revealing the interplay of reason, will, and emotions. Jensen ably guides listeners through Aquinas's philosophy and explains the distinction between the moral and intellectual virtues. The moral virtues train our various desires toward the true good, helping us discard our misguided cravings and teaching us to enjoy what is truly worth pursuing. The virtue of justice directs our hearts to the good of others, freeing us from egoism in order to seek a good shared with others. Most important, the virtue of prudence directs our deliberations to discover the true path of life. Intended as a text for students, beginners of philosophy will gain access to a key aspect of Aquinas's thought, namely, that true happiness is realized not in the animal life of passion and greed but only in the reasonable pursuit of human goods, in which we find true peace and rest from the distractions of this world.

Steven J. Jensen (Author), Jim Denison (Narrator)

Audiobook

Leaders Make the Future, Third Edition: Ten New Skills to Humanize Leadership with Generative AI

Over the next decade, all leaders will be augmented with some form of generative artificial intelligence, or GenAI. For the best leaders, this will mean dramatic improvement. For mediocre leaders, this will mean persistent confusion, distraction, and pretense. With futureback thinking—looking ten years ahead, then planning backward from future to next to now—this third edition of Leaders Make the Future shows how people can improve their leadership skills while expanding their human perspective. Now 75 percent revised and expanded with resources from the Institute for the Future, this new edition is organized around ten future leadership skills: augmented futureback curiosity, augmented clarity, augmented dilemma flipping, augmented bio-engaging, augmented immersive learning, augmented depolarizing, augmented commons creating, augmented smart mob swarming, augmented strength with humility, and human calming. AI-augmented leadership will be key for any organization to tackle the uncertainty of the future. And by incorporating practical methodologies, ethical guidelines, and innovative leadership practices, this book will help leaders develop their clarity and moderate their certainty.

Bob Johansen, Gabe Cervantes, Jeremy Kirshbaum (Author), Jim Denison (Narrator)

Audiobook

The God of Story: Discovering the Narrative of Scripture Through the Language of Storytelling

Many of us have been taught to read Scripture as a collection of information that needs to be categorized, systematized, and analyzed verse by verse, concept by concept. But the Bible isn't a jigsaw puzzle, and it wasn't written in just Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. It was also written in the language of story. And as with every good story, we get to meet colorful characters, unravel mysteries, and see the world from a different point of view. It all makes more sense when understood from the perspective of storytelling. In The God of Story, Daniel Schwabauer explores the narrative principles of theme, context, characterization, voice, and plot as a lens for understanding the cosmic story arc of God's relationship to humanity. By including creative retellings of biblical stories, he demonstrates how to engage Scripture with imagination. For a fresh approach to reading the Bible and discovering how its stories connect to your own, start by learning to see God as the master storyteller.

Daniel Schwabauer (Author), Jim Denison (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Creator's Wheel: 7 Phases of Godly Transformation

You are a good work in process—God's process. Our world demands faster speeds, quicker deliveries. We want change now, transformation in a moment. But God, who spoke galaxies into existence with a single word, took seven days to bring about His full and magnificent creation—and He takes His time with us. Peeling back the layers of God's creative process, Rick DuBose shows how, just as God reached into that dark and chaotic mess to form space and time, He reaches into the mess of our lives, initiating a process that transforms us into masterpieces. Through practical application and biblical insight, DuBose empowers you to understand and embrace God's process modeled in the seven days of creation; stop resisting the Holy Spirit's work and partner with Him; prepare for and recognize the seasons of change and growth in your life; and cultivate patience, appreciation, and perseverance. God took His time creating this world, layering on new complexities and drawing out order from the chaos. So, too, is He forming you into something truly good.

Rick DuBose (Author), Jim Denison (Narrator)

Audiobook

ReVERSED: From Culturally Woke to Biblically Awake

Biblical foundations for over 50 political topics, including: ESG, DEI, wokeism, "Christian Nationalism," transgenderism, transhumanism, the feminization of men, fatherlessness, antisemitism, anti-Zionism, the border, election fraud, Big Pharma, the loss of medical freedom, WHO (World Health Organization), WEF (World Economic Forum), Big Tech, cancel culture, Big Ag, the loss of food security, AI, genetic mutation, cloning, the 15-minute city, video screen addiction, fiat currency, CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency), CRT, energy dependence, homelessness, sex trafficking, reparations, pornography, abortion, homosexuality, global warming, extraterrestrials and UFOs, world population and more.

James L. Garlow (Author), Jim Denison (Narrator)

Audiobook

Wounded for Life: Seven Union Veterans of the Civil War

Most histories of wounded Civil War veterans construe them as feminized men whose manhood has suffered due to their inability to provide for and raise families or engage in business. Wounded for Life complicates this picture by examining how seven veterans—six soldiers and one physician—coped with their changed bodies in their postwar lives. Through these intimate stories, author Robert D. Hicks looks at the veteran's body as shaped by the trauma of the battlefield and hospital and the construction of a postwar identity in relation to that trauma. Through his research, he reveals the changing social circumstances of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as they impacted the traumatized veteran's body. This engaging book is equal parts Civil War history, disability and gender history, and the history of the body that discloses the impact of war on a wounded warrior.

Robert D. Hicks (Author), Jim Denison (Narrator)

Audiobook

Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins

Why did no other ancient society produce something like the Bible? That a tiny, out of the way community could have created a literary corpus so determinative for peoples across the globe seems improbable. For Jacob Wright, the Bible is not only a testimony of survival, but also an unparalleled achievement in human history. Forged after Babylon's devastation of Jerusalem, it makes not victory but total humiliation the foundation of a new idea of belonging. Lamenting the destruction of their homeland, scribes who composed the Bible imagined a promise-filled past while reflecting deeply on abject failure. More than just religious scripture, the Bible began as a trailblazing blueprint for a new form of political community. Its response to catastrophe offers a powerful message of hope and restoration that is unique in the Ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman worlds. Wright's Bible is thus a social, political, and even economic roadmap—one that enabled a small and obscure community located on the periphery of leading civilizations and empires not just to come back from the brink, but ultimately to shape the world's destiny. The Bible speaks ultimately of being a united yet diverse people, and its pages present a manual of pragmatic survival strategies for communities confronting societal collapse.

Jacob L. Wright (Author), Jim Denison (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Coming Revolution in Church Economics: Why Tithes and Offerings Are No Longer Enough, and What Y

Our entire understanding of funding and sustainability must change. Tithes and offerings alone are no longer enough to provide for the needs of the local church, enable pastors to pursue opportunities, or sustain long-term ministry impact. Growing financial burdens on the middle class, marginal increases in contributions to religious organizations, shifting generational attitudes toward giving, and changing demographics are having a negative impact on church budgets. Given that someday local churches may be required to pay taxes on the property they own and/or lose the benefit of soliciting tax-deductible gifts, the time to pivot is now. What's needed is disruptive innovation in church economics. For churches to not only survive but thrive in the future, leaders must learn to leverage assets, bless the community, empower entrepreneurs, and create multiple streams of income to effectively fund mission. You'll learn why you should and how to do so in The Coming Revolution in Church Economics.

Mark DeYmaz (Author), Jim Denison (Narrator)

Audiobook

How the Saints Shaped History

In every era of the Catholic Church, holy men and women have shaped history through their gifts and talents and, most importantly, through their resolute commitment to Jesus Christ. Some led armies, some founded monasteries, some lived a radical call to charity—and each one had a unique part to play. How the Saints Shaped History focuses on the essential role of the saints, as vessels of God's grace, in moving the Church (and the world!) through her two-thousand-year history. Written especially for everyday Catholics hungry to learn more about the Faith, this book is both comprehensive and accessible. It tells the story of how more than 180 saints, from Saint Mary Magdalene to Pope Saint John Paul II, led the Church through many crises and back to her spiritual roots. As our Church continues to face crises, this book reminds us that we still have reason to hope in our own time. As the providential hand of God worked through the saints to shape history, each of us is called to become a new saint to shape the history of the Church today.

Randall Petrides (Author), Jim Denison (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Jim Denison