Character, not circumstance, make a man.

But to hit that target, we must come off the mountain, go through the valley, and begin to climb the next slope. It is in the valley that we slog through the lush grass and rich soil, learning and becoming what enables us to summit life's next peak.

You must come to the self-realization that even though you couldn't control any of the crazy things that have happened in your life, your choices in response to those things are what have led you down this path you don't like.

When confronted with a challenge, the committed heart will search for a solution. The undecided heart searches for an escape.

In times of adversity, you don't have a problem to deal with; you have a choice to make.

Circumstances do not push or pull. They are daily lessons to be studied and gleaned for new knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge and wisdom that is applied will bring about a brighter tomorrow. A person who is depressed is spending too much time thinking about the way things are now and not enough time thinking about how he wants things to be.

If the source were simply a few behavioral habits, you would have conquered them already.

So what's the deal with the desert? I don't know. But I do know the time between catching a glimpse of what God wants to do through us and the time when we are led to move out often feels like a desert experience. The desert always feels like a complete waste of time. It is only when we are able to look back that our desert experiences make sense.

We only get one shot at every season of life. Whether or not we learned anything becomes evident in the seasons that follow.

The desert always feels like a complete waste of time. It is only when we are able to look back that our desert experiences make sense.

One of our pastors, John Hambrick, has a saying that we've adopted organization-wide. He says, "We walk toward the messes." In other words, we don't feel compelled to sort everything or everyone out ahead of time. We are not going to spend countless hours creating policies for every eventuality.

For this reason it is the dark that provides the leader with his greatest opportunities. It is your response to the dark that determines in large part whether or not you will be called on to lead. For the darkness is what keeps the average person from stepping outside the security of what has always been.