Books

We can’t always control what happens to us. But we can discover how to heal the hidden hurt it leaves behind.

If you’re like many of us, you carry a weight of buried pain. Despite looking put together on the outside, you feel secretly fractured within. While you appear strong and resilient on the outside, inside a storm brews of all the ways you’ve been hurt or harmed. There’s a constant churn of unprocessed feelings of shame, anger, grief, or loneliness. And your body tells the story of its struggles in a myriad of aches and ailments. Little by little, you find yourself becoming disconnected from who you truly are. Not knowing what to do with your suffering and fearing you'll be hurt again, you’ve learned to cope, to numb and suppress the ache within.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In Healing What’s Within, therapist and professor Chuck DeGroat invites you on a compassionate journey inward to return and retune to the life God created you to live. Along the way, you will discover how to:

-Gently consider and confront what’s keeping you stuck and blocking the path to joy and flourishing

-Better understand the relationship between your body and your emotions

-Experience God as a compassionate witness to your trauma―and his unconditional kindness to wherever you find yourself

-Discover real rest and renewal as you reconnect with God, others, and yourself.

It’s never too late to start healing. God’s heart is always ready to help you find your way Home.

Curt Thompson, psychiatrist and author of The Deepest Place

To gaze at ourselves, in all of our grief and carnage, is to gaze at a humanity that is terrified of being receptive to love—despite all of our clamoring to the contrary. For indeed, we are first too horrified to be in the presence of ourselves, and fear love's rejection of us once it finds us. Thanks be to God, for those who are courageous and vulnerable enough to risk becoming acquainted with themselves in order to become themselves. In Healing What's Within we have the book, and in Chuck DeGroat we have the guide of wisdom and humility who reminds us again for the first time that God's relentlessly, infinitely kind pursuit of us begins with who we are inside, and ends in the beauty and goodness of his kingdom that is surely coming.

Dr. Dan Allender, therapist, author, and founder of Seattle School of Psychology and Theology

Chuck DeGroat is a master chef/therapist who has set a table of such rich, wise, and nourishing truths that your life will never be the same once you taste this banquet. Healing What’s Within invites you to address the paths and voices that have taken you away from your true home and reorients you to what is the delectable delight you were meant to know as shalom. There is immense honesty, clarity, humility, and humor that will bring your heart a sweetness that will linger and help you live joyfully.

Tara Owens, author and founder and spiritual director at Anam Cara

I consider Healing What's Within to be akin to one of the cherubim God places to keep or tend (the word is shamar in Biblical Hebrew) the way to the Tree of Life. God's messengers come in many shapes, forms, and sizes and I believe Chuck DeGroat is one of them. Here, his words wave a bright sword of truth, not swung menacingly to kee out but joyously to welcome in, calling with the tender voice of Jesus, "Here! Here is the way home!"

Dan White, Co-founder of Kineo and author of Love Over Fear

What happens to our soul when we are hurt? Such a simple question but with profound implications. There are few others I trust with this atomic question than Chuck DeGroat. With exceptional tenderness, breathtaking human stories, theological depth, and therapeutic insight comes Healing What's Within. Really, this manifesto of healing is like finding that wise sage you've been desperate to have a conversation with. There's a breakthrough in every chapter. For those looking for answers, let the healing begin!

We’ve seen the news stories and heard the rumors. Maybe we ourselves have been hurt by a narcissistic church leader. It’s easy to throw the term around and diagnose others from afar. But what is narcissism, really? And how does it infiltrate the church?

Chuck DeGroat has been counseling pastors with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as well as those wounded by narcissistic leaders and systems, for over twenty years. He knows firsthand the devastation narcissism leaves in its wake and how insidious and painful it is.

In When Narcissism Comes to Church, DeGroat takes a close look at narcissism, not only in ministry leaders but also in church systems. He offers compassion and hope for those affected by its destructive power and imparts wise counsel for churches looking to heal from its systemic effects. DeGroat also offers hope for narcissists themselves―not by any shortcut, but by the long, slow road of genuine recovery, possible only through repentance and trust in the humble gospel of Jesus.

Curt Thompson

“In the work of the soul, we name things to tame things. And there is nothing that is more in need of taming than the rampant narcissism that is not just a part of our cultural landscape but is hiding in plain sight in my own life. With When Narcissism Comes to Church, Chuck DeGroat unflinchingly names the subject for the leviathan it is, while offering hope in real, embodied stories of redemption. Comprehensive in scope, accessible in application, and generously kind in spirit, this book will provide pastor and laity alike the wisdom and courage that is necessary for the healing and recommissioning of the church’s soul for years to come.”

Dan Allender

“Hiring (marrying, working with or for, being pastored by) a narcissist is like building a home in an alluvial plain. The ground is gorgeous but in due season the flood will devour all you have worked so hard to create. Chuck DeGroat pierces the glittering image of narcissism and brilliantly exposes the inner workings of an empty, shame-filled heart and the devastating consequences of Christians being so drawn to narcissists in the church and in politics. This is a landmark work, full of wisdom, tenderness, honor, and hope. If we want to offer a narcissistic culture hope in the gospel, we must tend to the narcissism deeply embedded in our own believing community. This is a profound call for a radical culture shift―truly a must-read.”

Allison Cook

“If you, like so many, have been lured in by the shiny veneer of narcissism only to be left shattered, confused, and filled with shame, you will find help in these pages. In When Narcissism Comes to Church, Chuck DeGroat nimbly pulls back the veil―exposing the many faces of narcissism and helping us see what lies underneath. Drawing on decades of experience, DeGroat writes with honesty, wisdom, and compassion, providing help for the wounded and hope for the church.”

Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Lent is from the Old English Lencten, meaning Springtime, that season in which we experience rebirth, growth, and goodness. Yet, we often view Lent as a morbid season, a season when we give up our favorite things. Instead, Lent is an invitation back to ourselves, back to the ground of our being as image-bearers, created “very good” even in our creaturely limitations. We are “enough” precisely because we’re God-breathed and God-imaged. And even when we sabotage our original goodness, hiding behind our fig-leaved and false-selved control strategies, God pursues us in Jesus, becoming human not to overcome humanness but to redeem and ennoble it.

INTRODUCTION – RETURN TO YOUR GROUND

WEEK 1 – DWELL WITH GOD

WEEK 2 – LIVE FROM YOUR TRUE SELF

WEEK 3 – IMAGINE THE KINGDOM

WEEK 4 – TAKE THE HUMBLE PATH

WEEK 5 – WRESTLE WITH GOD

WEEK 6 – FOLLOW JESUS

Whether they are used for Lent or in another season, these reflections will invite you into deeper union and communion with the One who is “more near to you than you are to yourselves” (Augustine).

Most of us lead busy, frenzied, fragmented lives. Our inner fragmentation keeps us from fully experiencing the wholeness and peace — the sense of flourishing — that our hearts so deeply long for.

In this book Chuck DeGroat invites readers to admit the exhaustion and fragmentation they experience on a daily basis even as he casts a vision for wholeheartedness. With wisdom gained through his years of pastoral care and counseling, he explores the phenomenon of human dividedness and wholeness through the Christian story, examines how others have experienced it, and looks at how psychologists and researchers suggest addressing it.

With insights derived from a rich diversity of sources, including poets, scientists, philosophers, psychologists, and the Christian tradition, DeGroat’s Wholeheartedness will enable readers to discover the remedy for their frenzied lives.

Micha Boyett – Author of ‘Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer’

“Chuck DeGroat blends psychology, theology, and poetry in a way that embraces the wisdom of both ancient and contemporary spiritual teachers. I believe his writing will do for you what it has done for me provoke and encourage and push you past the scarcity of anxiety and performance, and into a fuller, more beautiful life of faith.”

Steve Brown - Author of ‘Three Free Sins: God s Not Mad at You’

“Another great book from Chuck. His other books have made a difference in my life; this one came just in time to salvage this old cynical preacher from almost giving up on ever finding healing in this busy world. It will do the same for you. Read it and rejoice!”

John Ortberg – Author of ‘All the Places to Go …How Will You Know?’

“Chuck DeGroat has a deep commitment to living a life of wholeness… There is life in his words.”

The Exodus story is your story.

The Israelites’ liberation from Egypt and journey to the promised land is one the Bible’s most compelling stories a breathtaking account of competing wills, freedom and slavery, faith and doubt.

But the Exodus isn’t just a long-ago Bible story. It’s the overarching theme of every person’s life. We each find ourselves enslaved: to work, to destructive relationships, to food, to spending . . . but beyond our personal Egypt lies God’s promised land.

In Leaving Egypt, Chuck DeGroat shows how our wilderness journey helps us face our fears, receive our new identity, experience transformation, and live into our new found freedom.

Discussion questions for personal or small group use follow each chapter.

“Leaving Egypt is a welcome roadmap for anyone who is tired of taking two steps forward, three steps back whether you are lost in addiction, doubt, fear, shame, or religiosity. This book is a guide filled with directions not to a destination, but to stay on the path, because this journey is the Promised Land.”

– Sharon Hersh, M.A., LPC, speaker, adjunct professor in several graduate schools including Reformed Theological Seminary, author of “The Last Addiction” and “Begin Again, Believe Again”

“It’s a long and sometimes painful journey out of “Egypt,” the place of fear, enslavement, and distrust. I know–I’ve been there, and still visit on occasion. If you’re trapped in “Egypt” and know there should be something far better, this book will change your life. With profound biblical and theological insight, Chuck DeGroat has written a “travel guide” for human and flawed travelers who want to be free.”

– Steve Brown, professor at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, author, and teacher on the nationally syndicated radio program Key Life.