Dan B. Allender

The desert shatters the soul's arrogance and leaves body and soul crying out in thirst and hunger. In the desert we trust God or die.

Marriage requires a radical commitment to love our spouses as they are, while longing for them to be what they are not yet. Every marriage moves either toward enhancing one another's glory or toward degrading each other.

Too often we think sharing our weaknesses will cause us to lose respect. We think making our weaknesses know will cause us to lose the honour to be able to proclaim the Word of God in our congregations or our businesses. I know longer believe that is true. Not today, in our post modern culture. What I do believe is the more you tell the truth about yourself _ appropriately, winsomely, age-appropriately, within a context _ the more effective your leadership will become, the more you will develop a true leading character. The more you tell of your own failure of character, the more God will use that for His purposes.

Perhaps a better explanation for why it's so difficult to feel our feelings is that ALL emotion, positive or negative, opens the door to the nature of reality. All of us prefer to avoid pain -- but even more, we want to escape reality.