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.
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In our thirst for significance we, like the Teacher in Ecclesiastes, give our lives our time, talents, strength, heart to anything we think will give us worth and purpose: Power. Relationships. Money. Pleasure. Work. But worshiping these idols has a high cost and still doesn't bring the fulfillment we long for.

In Breaking the Idols of Your Heart Dan Allender and Tremper Longman illuminate for us the Teacher's warnings and, after all his activities, his final radiant conclusion: Meaning and purpose come only when God is truly the center of our life and the object of our hope. Using a compelling fictional narrative at the start of each chapter to encourage reflection on our own life and the lives of family and friends, the authors lead us through Ecclesiastes to help us recognize and exchange cheap pursuits for the only One worth pursuing.

Ecclesiastes is not an easy book to read, because transferring our worship from money, power and fame to God is not an easy road to travel. But as the Teacher discovered and wrote down for us, it leads to one conclusion: life lived abundantly, in freedom, hope, purpose, meaning.

Market/Audience

• Laypeople
• Accountability groups

Endorsements

"Dan and Tremper and ancient wisdom are a winning team! This book dethrones idols, and points us toward what is worth giving our life to." JOHN ORTBERG, author and pastor, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church

"This book uses the category of 'idols' as a creative way to understand not only a difficult biblical book (Ecclesiastes) but also the very way our hearts work. It brings a great deal of clarity where there has been confusion. Recommended." TIM KELLER, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City

Features and Benefits

• Authors bring experience as a psychologist and a Bible scholar to bear
• Fictional narrative follows a Bible study group, and group discussion questions are included

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Would you willingly overlook clear direction from God that speaks directly to you and where you are in life right now?

God’s guidance is near at hand. He is not only your Authority, he is also your Author. As God writes the stories of your life, he uses your past to open up your future.

It is your privilege to listen to your own story so you can live boldly for the sake of the Greatest Story, the good news of Jesus Christ. God reveals himself to you–and to others–through the story he has written in your life.
In this insightful and compelling book, Dr. Dan B. Allender shows you how to read the stories of your life. He helps you understand the meaning that God has written into every detail of who you are. As a result, you can share your story with others and listen to their story, revealing unique aspects of God’s hand at work.

Starting today, you can find deeper meaning in your story–a story To Be Told.


From the Hardcover edition....

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....

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...