Showing results by author "Geoffrey Schmitt" in All Categories

Love Under Pressure: Faithful Living When Love Is Tested explores what it means to remain faithful when love is strained by suffering, loss, disappointment, fear, doubt, anger, silence, fatigue, and time. Drawing on Scripture, ministry experience, marriage, caregiving, aging, and seasons of unseen labor, Geoffrey Schmitt (Willingheart) reflects on love not as sentiment or success, but as endurance shaped by grace. This book does not offer quick solutions or spiritual shortcuts. Instead, it invites readers to discern when to stay, when to rest, when to speak, and when to let go—without ...

Untroubled Hearts: Christ’s Peace in an Anxious World is a pastoral, Scripture-anchored journey into a question many believers quietly carry: Is it truly possible to live with peace in a world that feels increasingly anxious? Rather than offering quick fixes or spiritual clichés, this book invites readers into a deeper, steadier way of faith—one shaped by presence, trust, and lived experience. Drawing from the teachings of Jesus, the wisdom of Scripture, and decades of pastoral ministry, the author explores peace not as the absence of trouble, but as the gift of Christ’s presence ...

Here I Am, As I Am is a gentle yet deeply honest spiritual study about learning to live from being rather than doing. Written out of a lifetime of ministry, grief, caregiving, and quiet discovery, this book invites readers to step off the treadmill of performance and rediscover faith as presence. The study begins with a simple, vulnerable question—“Can’t I just be?”—and God’s equally simple answer: “Yes—and I AM.” From that encounter unfolds a journey that reframes identity, worth, prayer, and spiritual growth. Rather than offering techniques for self-improvement, this ...

The Sword and the Cup: Prepared Without Losing the Soul is a pastoral exploration of faithful readiness in uncertain times. Rooted in Luke 22:36–38, this book examines what it means to walk forward with clarity and courage without surrendering tenderness, humility, or love. Rather than calling readers to fear, aggression, or withdrawal, Geoffrey Schmitt (Willingheart) traces a spiritually coherent path from being to readiness, from presence to discernment, and from strength to surrender. Through the paired symbols of the sword and the cup, the book explores preparedness without paranoia, ...

Seeing with the Heart: Biblical Faith and Human Awareness invites readers to rediscover faith not merely as belief or behavior, but as a way of seeing. Drawing from Scripture, pastoral experience, and lived prayer, Geoffrey Schmitt explores how the Bible consistently addresses human awareness—how we perceive God, ourselves, others, and the world. From creation’s first light to resurrection recognition, this book traces how awareness is given, distorted, healed, and renewed. It examines fear, anxiety, distraction, suffering, and trauma as forces that shape perception, and shows how Jesus...

Walking with God is one of the most familiar images of faith — and one of the most misunderstood. In Walking with the Lord: Learning to Share the Road — One Step at a Time, priest, chaplain, and writer Willingheart, Geoffrey Schmitt, invites readers into a deeply personal, pastorally grounded exploration of what it truly means to walk with God across a lifetime. Drawing from decades of ministry in congregations, prisons, hospice care, and ordinary daily life, this book traces the spiritual road through beginnings and callings, companionship and solitude, detours and valleys, stumbles ...

Bearing One Another’s Burdens: Faithful Love Along the Long Road is a pastoral, lived-faith reflection on what it truly means to love one another over time—through grief, aging, illness, friendship, prison walls, and the ordinary demands of daily faithfulness. Drawing from Scripture, decades of ministry, personal loss, and prison and hospice chaplaincy, Geoffrey Schmitt explores the biblical call of Galatians 6:2 with honesty and discernment. This book carefully distinguishes bearing burdens together from unhealthy co-dependency, showing how love can be both generous and wise, present ...

Set Apart for Love: Why God Calls Us to Be Holy reframes holiness as a life shaped by grace rather than perfection. Drawing on Scripture, pastoral experience, prison ministry, aging, suffering, and everyday faith, this study invites readers to see holiness as relational, compassionate, and deeply human. Through twelve chapters, readers are guided from God’s holiness to Spirit-led transformation, ordinary faithfulness, shared community, compassion, and finally a life offered in love. Written with warmth, honesty, and humility, this book speaks to seekers, longtime believers, and anyone ...

Kindness rarely makes headlines, yet it remains one of the most powerful forces in the world. In The Quiet Strength of Kindness, Geoffrey Schmitt weaves together Scripture, personal stories, pastoral wisdom, Kairos prison ministry experiences, and gentle reflections to reveal how small acts of compassion can shape souls in lasting ways. Across ten chapters, readers are invited to explore kindness that costs something, kindness that listens, kindness that heals, kindness that shows up, and kindness received as a grace from God. With Poems, Meditations, Prayers, and Smithy’s Forge practices...

The Blessing of Limits invites readers into a surprising truth: the boundaries of our humanity are not burdens but blessings. With pastoral warmth and lived honesty, Willingheart explores ten essential limits — time, strength, knowledge, control, capacity, resources, wounds, mortality, and more — revealing each as a doorway to deeper rest, dependence, humility, and love. Through Scripture, reflection, personal stories, prayers, and meditative exercises, this study shows how God uses our limitations not to diminish us but to draw us nearer to Himself. Rather than striving to be limitless...

Fear is a universal human experience, yet it is often misunderstood in the life of faith. Many believers assume that fear signals weak faith, while courage is reserved for the bold and fearless. In Faith and Courage: Standing Firm When Fear Presses In, pastor and chaplain Geoffrey Schmitt gently dismantles these assumptions, offering a wiser and more compassionate understanding rooted in Scripture and lived experience. This book explores the deep connection between faith and fear in the inner life, and courage and cowardice in outward action. Through biblical teaching, pastoral reflection, ...

In a world saturated with slogans, symbols, and noise, Christian faith is often seen before it is understood—and sometimes misunderstood before it is heard. Faith on Display: When Witness Helps — and When It Hurts invites readers into a thoughtful, pastoral exploration of how Christian witness functions in everyday life. Drawing on Scripture, lived ministry experience, and gentle cultural reflection, this study examines the benefits and dangers of visible faith—from crosses and Bibles to bumper stickers and slogans. It asks not whether faith should be visible, but how, when, and for ...

Walking Alone in Community: The Paradox of Faith explores one of the quiet tensions at the heart of the Christian life: faith is deeply personal, yet never meant to be lived in isolation. Drawing from Scripture, prison ministry, hospice chaplaincy, aging, suffering, and decades of pastoral walking, Geoffrey Schmitt guides readers along roads where solitude and companionship meet. From the Emmaus road to prison walls, from Communion to grief, from listening to responsibility, this book names what many feel but rarely articulate: some stretches of faith must be walked alone — and yet none ...

You Are Not Lost: Waiting Without Panic Until the Path Is Clear is a gentle, honest spiritual companion for anyone who has felt disoriented—on the road, in life, or in faith. Beginning with a simple, relatable experience of panic when losing one’s way while driving, Geoffrey Schmitt (writing as Willingheart) opens a deeper exploration of why uncertainty unsettles us so deeply. Drawing from Scripture, pastoral ministry, hospice work, prison ministry, marriage, and a lifetime of movement and change, he reframes panic not as failure, but as a doorway to trust. Through reflections on ...

We Hold These Truths explores the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the biblical moral imagination that shaped it — without claiming that America is a Christian nation or that Scripture belongs to any political system. Through careful reflection on truth, human dignity, unalienable rights, moral law, accountability of authority, liberty, responsibility, and formation, this book traces how biblical ideas influenced foundational American ideals — and how Scripture continues to judge, refine, and challenge those ideals today. Written from a pastoral rather than ...

Lives That Teach Character Lessons from the Bible is a reflective Bible study exploring how God forms character through real lives—faithful, flawed, and redeemed. Rather than presenting idealized heroes or simple moral lessons, this study invites readers into the honest, often complicated stories of people whose lives continue to teach because they mirror our own struggles with trust, fear, pride, mercy, repentance, and hope. Drawing from both Scripture and decades of pastoral, hospice, and prison ministry experience, Geoffrey Schmitt walks alongside biblical figures such as Abraham, ...

The Long Work of God is a reflective journey through faith formed not in moments of intensity, but over decades of living, loving, losing, and remaining faithful. Drawing on a lifetime of parish ministry, prison work, hospice chaplaincy, marriage, suffering, and accompaniment, Geoffrey Schmitt explores how God patiently shapes the human heart through ordinary days, detours, limits, and quiet endurance. Rather than offering quick answers or dramatic conversions, this book honors a slower, deeper formation—one marked by presence rather than proof. Through personal stories and pastoral ...

Courage to Be Gentle: Where Strength Meets Compassion explores the paradox at the heart of Christian character: that true strength is revealed not through force, but through restraint, kindness, presence, and love. Drawing from Scripture, pastoral ministry, prison work, marriage, aging, and personal stories, Geoffrey Schmitt invites readers to rediscover courage as something quiet and enduring. Each chapter offers reflection, prayer, poetry, and practical practices for living with strength shaped by compassion. This book is written for those who are weary of loud strength and longing for ...

We all carry wounds. Some come from loss, failure, disappointment, or sorrow; others arise from the simple challenges of being human. But when these wounds are touched by God’s grace, something extraordinary happens: they become wisdom. In Turning Hurt into Help: Wounds That Become Wisdom, Geoffrey “Willingheart” Schmitt reveals how our scars can become lanterns for others—lights that shine not because we are perfect, but because God has healed us in imperfect places. Through Scripture, personal narrative, prison ministry stories, and years of pastoral experience, he shows how ...

The Church in the World, but Not of It: Influence Without Compromise explores the timeless tension of Christian living: how to engage the world faithfully without being shaped by it. Through Scripture, teaching, meditation, personal stories from parish and prison ministry, and gentle pastoral wisdom, Geoffrey Schmitt guides readers into a deeper understanding of influence rooted in Christlikeness. Each chapter offers practices for shaping character, cultivating discernment, speaking truth with grace, serving without losing one’s center, and shining with hope in a cynical age. The book ...