Quotes from Dan B. Allender

The absence of tumult, more than its presence, is an enemy of the soul. God meets you in your weakness, not in your strength. He comforts those who mourn, not those who live above desperation. He reveals Himself more often in darkness than in the happy moments of life.

To admit we are foolish, weak, and in need of repentance gives the vindictive and self-righteous camp plenty of ammunition to turn against us and to turn others against our leadership. But the alternatives to living in and living out truth are far worse: we either hide from truth or we choose to spin our sin and our story.

Speed is the ultimate defense, the antidote to stopping and really looking. If we really saw what we were doing and who we had become, we feel we might not survive the stopping and the accompanying self-appraisal. So we don't stop, and the faster we go, the harder it becomes to stop.

from chapter 3, What Makes A Good Story?) Our willingness to hold dear the moments of past shalom prepares us to imagine a new and better day, and, even more to move toward that day with passion and purpose.

Shalom is shattered by sin, by the intrusion of a lie, a distortion of the truth that mars the pleasure of being naked, transparent, trusting and true. ... shattering occurs when our dignity os assaulted and death enters to divide and destroy.

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.

Weariness is really about this core struggle to hope despite the circumstances and our limitations, and not so much about stress and being tired.

The reason for entering the struggle is a desire for more; a taste of what life and love could be if freed from the dark memories and deep shame. No one leaves the lethargy of denial unless there is a spark of discontent that pierces the darkness of daily numbness. To live significantly less than what one was made to be is as severe a betrayal of the soul as the original abuse.

When pain lumbers through the front door, squats down in the middle of your life, and makes itself at home day after day, year after year, it can make you choke. It can make you angry at God.

Disillusionment takes us to the question: what does it profit a man if he gains this world and loses himself? And disillusionment exposes that while we were supposedly serving the kingdom, we somehow became the king, and when we thought we were following Jesus, we inexplicably made him a servant of our dreams. The only real tragedy is the leader who never allows disillusionment to wear him to a nub and expose the godlessness of his busyness.

Repentance is an internal shift

A simple person must be encouraged to see the Christian life as a war, not only with the world, the devil, and the flesh, but with God Himself.

Sane, reasonable, play-it-safe people are not sufficiently engaged in life to generate great stories. Instead, they sit back and wait for a leader-storyteller to come along and get them caught up in a life worth living.

Time has become a precious commodity and the ultimate scarcity for millions of Americans. A 1996 Wall Street Journal survey found 40% of Americans saying that lack of time was a bigger problem for them than lack of money."6

Tension is the medium in which we breathe every day.

God is continually, literally, second-by-second covering our sin under His Son's blood and forgiving us our sins. God cannot love us unless He forgives us and cannot forgive us without a commitment to love us.

God's passion is to rig the world so that we are compelled to deal with whatever blocks us from being like His glorious Son.

2) The reason for looking inside is not to effect direct change of negative emotions to positive emotions. Instead, we are to listen to and ponder what we feel in order to be moved to the far deeper issue of what our hearts are doing with God and others.

We are to free the slaves because we were once slaves. Sabbath is a remembrance of the stale bondage of Egypt and the fresh air of our new garden given to us because of the faithfulness of God's covenantal love, not due to our capacity to make God happy. Yet God is more than happy with us — he adores us and lavishes us with freedom and joy.

God's sovereignty is not an invitation to passivity. Instead, it is a call to wise and risky creativity.

We will never know Sabbath delight unless God delivers us from drowning in the noise and grime of our soiled days.

Sabbath is not a break from work; it is a redefinition of how we work, why we work, and how we create freedom through our work.

When change is bumpy and messy, particularly if it impels others to change, it is viewed with suspicion and rancor usually reserved for the worst heretics.

It seems many people operate on the principle that whatever happened to them is not abuse, but if it had happened to someone else, or if it had been a bit more extreme, then it would have been abusive.