In the years since, he has authored a string of books on faith and doubt that are widely regarded as classics, including three with physician Paul Brand (Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, In His Image, and Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants). His books have sold over fifteen million copies. Two of them, The Jesus I Never Knew and What's So Amazing About Grace?, won the ECPA Christian Book of the Year Award.

When Yancey was one year old, his father died of polio after ending life support in faith that God would heal him. This experience – and others growing up in a fundamentalist church – contributed to Yancey's long struggle to find faith and make sense of God’s ways. “I grew up confused by the contradictions. We heard about love and grace, but I didn’t experience much. And we were taught that God answers prayers, miraculously, but my father died…despite many prayers for his healing.”

“I write books for myself,” Yancey says. “I’m a pilgrim, recovering from a bad church upbringing, searching for a faith that makes its followers larger and not smaller. I feel overwhelming gratitude that I can make a living writing about the questions that most interest me.”

Yancey has served as an editor at Christianity Today and other Christian publications. Today he lives with his wife, Janet, in Colorado. He is one of the proud few who can boast of having climbed all fifty-four of Colorado's 14,000-foot-plus peaks.