If you lead, you will eventually serve with Judas or Peter.
Every addiction is an attempt to slay hope.
One of the best sources of perspective is enemies. If we can learn from them, then we can profit from anyone.
Beginning with the first day of life outside the womb, every child is asking two core questions: 'Am I loved?' and 'Can I get my own way?' These two questions mark us throughout life, and the answers we receive set the course for how we live.
The work of restoration cannot begin until a problem is fully faced.
What originally led us to serve others by leading them seldom remains our North Star.
Elizabeth Turnage is a woman of grit and grace who lives into the stories of those who join her in this odd journey of seeking God. She honors the complexity of life without ever losing sight of the simple glory of the cross. Her grasp of the mundane and miraculous and their interplay gives a depth and honesty to her story that tugs at the heart and gives us hope our story can matter. Her book will be a clarion call to bring our broken, holy, troubled, and glorious life to the author of all stories: Jesus.
The more you openly name your struggles, the less people can use your silence as a back door to blackmail you, to sabotage your leadership, or to subvert relationships within the organization.
A reluctant leader is highly suspicious of people who work to accumulate and hoard power.
In order to reclaim the joy and passion of leadership, we must walk the valley of the shadow of death and name the cost of leadership.
You may obey a leader who has power and authority, but you will not strive to serve her or the cause of the organization unless you respect and care for her in addition to the ones with whom you serve.
If we want to create a different future, we must have the courage to look at the past.
Bold love is courageously setting aside our personal agenda to move humbly into the world of others with their well-being in view, willing to risk further pain in our souls, in order to be an aroma of life to some and an aroma of death to others.
Idealism may get us into the fray, but it is the loss of all we cherish that begins to form in us a heart capable of leading others reluctantly and humbly.
The more we walk the path first while becoming last and least in our organizations, the more we become like the Alpha and Omega whom we long to serve.
To dream alone is fantasy if it doesn't move the heart to act.
[Biblical counseling] Must insist that the image of God is central to developing a solid view of personality; that our sinfulness, not how we've been sinned against, is our biggest problem; that forgiveness, not wholeness, is our greatest need; that repentance, not insight, is the dynamic in all real change.
Reconciliation is not to be withheld when repentance—that is, deep, heart‐changing acknowledgement of sin and a radical redirection of life—takes place in the one being rebuked. Nor is reconciliation to be extended to someone who has not repented.
Healing comes when our story is raw, bone-deep and full of hunger for what only Jesus can offer.
Christ never intended to cover up the dark side of life, but rather to illuminate a path through it.