Put your flawed foot forward.

Pick up most leadership books and you'll find strategies for leveraging your power and minimizing your areas of weakness. But rather than work against your weakness, why not draw from a deeper well of strength? God favors leaders who make the most of the power that comes from brokenness.

Go ahead and take full advantage of your flaws. The most effective leaders don't rise to power in spite of their weakness; they lead with power because of their weakness. It is their authenticity in limping leadership that compels others to follow them. Flawed leaders are successful because they're not preoccupied with protecting their image. They are undaunted by chaos and complexity. And they are ready to risk failure in moving an organization from what is to what should be.

If you are a leader-or if you have been making excuses to avoid leading-find out how to get the most from your weakness. A limping leader is the kind of person God uses to accomplish amazing things.

To go deeper, check out the Leading with a Limp Workbook.

What if you could experience a marriage that is not just good, but truly life-giving? Therapists Dan Allender and Steve Call show how deeper intimacy can bring more healing and delight.

God Invites You to Coauthor Your Future.
It Starts with Reading Your Past.

In this companion workbook to Dr. Dan Allender's groundbreaking book To Be Told, you will find practical, easy-to-follow exercises to help you explore and embrace the stories of your life. The exercises inside will equip you to:

-recall past experiences and find the meaning God has written there
-understand how individual events fit into the bigger themes of your life
-write down your stories in a way that reflects God's authorship of your life
-identify the passions that drive you, and see how God uses them to guide you into the future
-tell your story in a way that brings glory to God and reveals him to others

Learn how to read and study your story, and then start telling it to others. God invites you to co-author with him the rest of your life's story-a story that opens up your future and glorifies God.

God wants to reveal himself through your story. Discover how he has written your life so far, and how he is leading you into the rest of your story.

This is a book worth reading. To make sense of your life. To discover the role God is giving you in his story.--John Eldredge, bestselling author of Wild at Heart and Get Your Life Back

Everyone wants clearer guidance from God on what to do with their future. In this insightful book, therapist and professor Dan Allender shows you how to listen to the stories of your life and identify the themes that God has written there. As you begin to understand both the hope and the heartache, you will gain a clearer sense of the meaning that God has written into every detail of who you are. You'll also see how he invites you to join him in coauthoring the rest of your story. God is your Author, and he is showing you how to follow him into the future.

What would you do for twenty-four hours if the only criteria were to pursue your deepest joy?

Dan Allender's lyrical book about the Sabbath expels the myriad myths about this day of rest, starting with the one that paints the Sabbath as a day of forced quiet, spiritual exercises, and religious devotion and attendance. This, he says, is at odds with the ancient tradition of Sabbath as a day of delight for both body and soul. Instead, the only way we can make use of the Sabbath is to see God's original intent for the day with new eyes. In Sabbath, Allender builds a case for delight by looking at this day as a festival that celebrates God's re-creative, redemptive love using four components:

• Sensual glory and beauty
• Ritual
• Communal feasting
• Playfulness

Now you can experience the delight of the Sabbath as you never have before--a day in which you receive and extend reconciliation, peace, abundance, and joy.

The Ancient Practices

There is a hunger in every human heart for connection, primitive and raw, to God. To satisfy it, many are beginning to explore traditional spiritual disciplines used for centuries . . . everything from fixed-hour prayer to fasting to sincere observance of the Sabbath. Compelling and readable, the Ancient Practices series is for every spiritual sojourner, for every Christian seeker who wants more.

What if you could experience a marriage that is not just good, but truly life-giving? Therapists Dan Allender and Steve Call show how deeper intimacy can bring more healing and delight.

Every relationship has its highs and lows, but we often don't know what to do with our lows, or how we ended up there. What is creating friction, exacerbating our pain, and standing in the way of intimacy?

More often than not, it is the stories of our past drifting into the present. But if we are willing to look at them closely, we will be able to write a new story for the future.

With more than seventy years of therapeutic experience combined, Dan Allender and Steve Call demonstrate how God is inviting you and your partner to a wild faith journey with the hope of transformation. With personal stories, key psychological insights, and practical advice, The Deep-Rooted Marriage will help you:

• Address past trauma, giving you greater courage and compassion to engage your present struggles.
• Disrupt cycles of conflict based on shame, judgment, and resentment.
• Create safety when feeling threatened and offer attunement, empathy, and honor toward differences.
• Adopt humility, honesty, kindness, curiosity, defiance against what divides, and intention to bless.
• Learn practices that cultivate emotional intimacy, generating new goodness between you and beyond you.

Marriage is not about merely getting along or resolving conflict through compromise. It reveals who you are and invites you to who you can become. Marriage offers a space for you to experience what you are made for--honor and delight. And it is the ground from which redemption is meant to grow, where, together, you can reflect God's image more and experience a taste of heaven.

We've come to view love as being nice, yet the kind of love modeled by Jesus Christ has nothing to do with manners or unconditional acceptance. Rather, it is disruptive, courageous, and socially unacceptable. In Bold Love, Dr. Dan Allender and Dr. Tremper Longman III draw out the aggressive, unrelenting, passionate power of genuine love. Far from helping you get along with others, Bold Love introduces the outlandish possibility of making a significant, life-changing impact on family, friends, coworkers--even your enemies. Learn more about forgiveness, maturity, and seeing others through Jesus' eyes.

What if you could experience a marriage that is not just good, but truly life-giving? Therapists Dan Allender and Steve Call show how deeper intimacy can bring more healing and delight.

Every relationship has its highs and lows, but we often don't know what to do with our lows, or how we ended up there. What is creating friction, exacerbating our pain, and standing in the way of intimacy?

More often than not, it is the stories of our past drifting into the present. But if we are willing to look at them closely, we will be able to write a new story for the future.

With more than seventy years of therapeutic experience combined, Dan Allender and Steve Call demonstrate how God is inviting you and your partner to a wild faith journey with the hope of transformation. With personal stories, key psychological insights, and practical advice, this accompanying workbook to The Deep-Rooted Marriage will help you:

• Address past trauma, giving you greater courage and compassion to engage your present struggles
• Disrupt cycles of conflict based on shame, judgment, and resentment
• Create safety when feeling threatened and offer attunement, empathy, and honor toward differences
• Adopt humility, honesty, kindness, curiosity, defiance against what divides, and intention to bless
• Learn practices that cultivate emotional intimacy, generating new goodness between you and beyond you

This workbook experience will guide you into a deeper application of The Deep-Rooted Marriage principles and includes a video component.

Marriage is not about merely getting along or resolving conflict through compromise. It reveals who you are and invites you to who you can become. Marriage offers a space for you to experience what you are made for--honor and delight. And it is the ground from which redemption is meant to grow, where, together, you can reflect God's image more and experience a taste of heaven.

Dan B. Allender and Tremper Longman III have together written this brief, simple and engaging introduction to help couples build healthy and happy marriages. Following the leave, weave and cleave imagery of the Bible, they help couples learn how to leave their parents, weave a life together and cleave to each other.

Don't Waste Your Pain

None of us escapes the heartache and disappointments of life. To live is to hurt, and we all have the wounds to prove it. Regardless of how we've been hurt, we all face a common question: What should we do with our pain? Should we stoically ignore it? Should we just get over it? Should we optimistically hope that everything will work out in the end?

If we fail to respond appropriately to the wounds that life and relationships inflict, our pain will be wasted; it will numb us or destroy us. But suffering doesn't have to mangle our hearts and rob us of joy. It can, instead, lead us to life--if we know the path to healing.

Healing is not the resolution of our past; it is the use of our past to draw us into deeper relationship with God and his purposes for our lives. If you're ready to shape a future characterized by love, service, and joy, now is the time to step out onto The Healing Path.

In Intimate Allies, counselor Dan Allender and theologian Tremper Longman III merge their minds and skills to strip away cultural expectations and takes a fresh look at God's design for the marriage relationship. The authors focus on five foundations taken from Genesis 1-3 and include an extensive review of other biblical passages on marriage. Each section begins with a real-life story concerning an unresolved marriage issue and concludes with the same story built on the foundation of a godly marriage. With eloquence and wisdom, Intimate Allies will challenge readers to move their marriages out of the mundane and into the fulfilling and enriching experiences God intended.

Do you know how to listen to your spouse?How can you give life to your marriage with your words?Dan B. Allender and Tremper Longman III have together written this inductive Bible study guide to help couples build healthy and happy marriages. Through six study sessions for individuals, couples or groups, they help you explore differences that might hinder communication and learn strategies that can strengthen your marriage.Intimate Marriage Bible studies bring spouses into deeper communion with God and with each other. In marriage a man and a woman are called to leave their families of origin, to weave their individual lives into a unity and to cleave to each other. How can fallen human beings even begin to contemplate this ideal--God's ideal?These studies will help you take small but real steps toward honoring the image of God in each other and living out God's goal for marriage. As you explore and respond to Scripture together, you will discover strength and beauty in your marriage and become even more intimate companions.

In Hope When You're Hurting, Drs. Larry Crabb and Dan Allender consider four key questions people ask: What's wrong? Who can help? What will the helper do? And, What can I hope for? In answering these questions, Crabb and Allender shed light on the strengths and weaknesses of different counseling models. They consider the psychological, medical, and spiritual aspects of emotional pain. They examine the role of the church as a vital agent for restoration and growth. And most important, they offer guidance, choices, and hope for people struggling with spiritual and emotional pain.

DON'T WASTE YOUR PAIN. None of us escapes the heartache and disappointments of life. To live is to hurt, and we all have the wounds to prove it. Regardless of how we've been hurt, we all face a common question: What should we do with our pain? Should we stoically ignore it? Should we just get over it? Should we let it make us stronger? Should we optimistically hope that everything will work out in the end? If we fail to respond appropriately to the wounds that life and relationships inflict, our pain will be wasted; it will numb us or destroy us. But suffering doesn't have to mangle our hearts and rob us of the joy of life. It can, instead, lead us to life-if we know the path to healing.
Healing is not the resolution of our past; it is the use of our past to draw us into deeper relationship with God and his purposes for our lives. We don't have to be held captive by the hurts of our past. We can move from feelings of powerlessness, betrayal, and ambivalence into faith, hope and love. The Healing Path takes us beyond self-discovery to God-discovery, giving us the tools to excavate the riches that lay beneath the surface of our pain. If you're ready to use the experiences of the past and present to shape a future characterized by love, service, and joy, now is the time to step out onto The Healing Path.

Parenting with Humility...We often realize that we learn as much from our children as they learn from us. So why don't parents approach the task of child-rearing as a learning experience, rather than a mandate to make sure their kids succeed in life?

To reduce the pressure and enjoy greater closeness in your family, turn your parenting upside-down by allowing God to use your children to help you grow up. Imagine what would happen if you began to prize what you're being taught by your children's quirks, failures, and normal childhood dilemmas, rather than worrying about whether you're doing everything right as a parent. Now you can let go of the pressure to make sure your children succeed, and instead learn to grow into spiritual maturity by listening to your children.

We all want to know our life matters. Dan B. Allender and Tremper Longman III look at how we are tempted to find meaning in the various areas addressed in the book of Ecclesiastes: work, success, relationships, gaining knowledge, money, etc. A fictionalized narrative introduces each chapter, creating an ongoing story throughout the book.

It's time to turn your weaknesses into your greatest strengths as a leader.

We've been taught that leaders will never achieve greatness unless they overcome their limitations and minimize their mistakes. But the biblical pattern is just the opposite: God chooses people who have major flaws and makes them effective leaders, not in spite of their weaknesses but because of them.
This workbook takes you from the frustration of feeling hampered by your limitations to a place of effective leadership, where God uses all of who you are in leading others. Based on the core principles from the book Leading With a Limp, this workbook will guide you to:

-Gain a clear understanding of why God has placed you in leadership
-Recognize how God is powerfully using the very things you consider to be your worst qualifications for leadership
-Overcome feelings of being stuck or defeated by your mistakes
-Practice authentic leadership, which compels others to follow you.

You will discover powerful and unexpected insights as you work through personal inventories, studies in biblical leadership, revealing discussion questions, and stories from contemporary leaders who gained effectiveness through authentic brokenness. With this workbook as a guide, you can turn what you once considered to be major liabilities into the greatest assets you possess as a leader.

The companion workbook to Leading With a Limp, by Dan B. Allender, PhD