Who We Are

About
Makarios.

Short, interesting, actionable books.
Read in an hour — be equipped for life.

Makarios Press was founded on a simple conviction: that a book you actually finish changes you more than a book you don't. We publish in a few non-traditional categories, with a focus on specific tools for your journey with Jesus. Transformation. Beauty. A selah — a holy pause — on every page.

mak
ar
ios

Our Name

Jesus used the word makarios in the Beatitudes.

Most translations read: "Blessed are the ___."

"You are in your happy place when…"

We want to be in that happy place ourselves. And we want you to be, too.

Isn't that interesting?

The Long Version

Sociologists suggest that people have a difficult time describing or even identifying something that they don't have the vocabulary for. Some even suggest that one can have a hard time experiencing something for which one has no corresponding word.

The Greeks had a word for the feeling one has when one is happy: makarios. It is a feeling of contentment, when one knows one's place in the world and is satisfied with that place.

We use idioms in English to try to approximate this experience. "My life has really come together." "I'm in a happy place." "Life has been good to me." We are not really discussing the details of our life — we are trying to describe a feeling we have. Happy sounds trite, so we avoid it. Actually, we are makarios.

In Matthew's Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that if you are a peacemaker, then you are makarios. Since English doesn't have a word for this feeling, translators have struggled to find one. What do you call it when you feel happy, content, balanced, harmonious, and fortunate? Well, translators have concluded: you are blessed.

Maybe the reason we North Americans struggle to find makarios in our personal lives is because we don't have a word in our native language to denote it.

— Misreading Scripture Through Western Eyes, p. 75

A Prayer

Lord God, I ask that you would give us a hunger to be in our happy place. Now that we have an idea of what is possible, may we move towards all that you have for us. Transform us, Lord, into your image. May we walk with you, Lord God, and be holy as you are holy.

Our Design

Books that feel good
in the hand.

Reading a Makarios Press book should feel peaceful and calming. Clean, elegant, with a good amount of white space on the page. God clothes the lilies of the field — presumably, aesthetics matter to him.

The Balloon Logo

What is the happiest image
imaginable?

A red balloon. Rising, pulling a book upward.

The logo captures everything we are: joyful, upward-moving, and always carrying something worth reading. It is the first thing you see on every Makarios book — and the feeling we hope you carry long after you finish the last page.

"Be in your happy place."

The Book Design

Beyond beautiful —
healing.

Makarios Press books have a clean and elegant design, usually with a good amount of white space on the page. The books themselves feel good in the hand.

But beyond comfortable and beautiful books, our founder Bob Perry has had a larger prayer — one he has carried for decades:

Acts 19:11–12

"God did extraordinary miracles through the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured."

Bob's Prayer

"Lord, if you could make a handkerchief a vector of healing, let even my books themselves bring peace and healing to the reader."

No ordinary titles, these.

Our Authors

The voices
behind the books.

Makarios Press books are written by people who have lived what they write. Decades of prayer, study, and faithful pursuit — released to the wider world in books small enough to carry, rich enough to return to.

Co-Founder · Intercessor · Teacher

Bob Perry

Bob Perry has prayed "Lord, teach me to pray" for forty years. He's been a passionate student of prayer — and mentored personally by some of the great leaders of prayer in this generation.

Bob brings an encyclopedic knowledge of scripture, a storehouse of wisdom on prayer, and decades of honing his skill as a powerful man of prayer. He has prayed in scores of nations and led tens of thousands of prayer calls.

Mentored by

Lou Engle — The Call Bill Johnson — Bethel Redding Loren Cunningham — YWAM Dick Eastman — Every Home for Christ Jack Hayford — Church on the Way And the saints of old

Co-Founder · Writer · Poet

Amy Lykosh

Amy Lykosh heard Bob say "I'm a fasting intercessor" and decided nothing sounded better than that. As Bob's protégée, she has been privileged to take the storehouses of treasure in Bob and release them to the wider world.

Amy brings a background in content creation, a gift for verse and story, and a deep passion for the word of God and prayer. She is the poet, the researcher, and the one who makes the complex beautifully simple.

Amy on the work

"Every Sunday I wax poetic from your inspiration. Prolific Amy — keep rocking the world!"

— Paul Van Hoesen

AboutMakarios.

Books that feel goodin the hand.

What is the happiest imageimaginable?

Beyond beautiful —healing.

The voicesbehind the books.