I used to have a sign pinned up on my wall that read: Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us...It was all about letting go of everything.

Persecution is designed to make you run away from the Word (Matthew 13:21). Strong believers will run to the Word and not from the Word in times of attack.

Persecution is designed to make you run away from the Word (Matthew 13:21).

The wilderness creates unusual pressures and challenges.

Paradoxically, the challenges of our day-to-day existence are sustained reminders that our life of faith simply must have its center somewhere other than in our ability to hold it together in our minds.

my disruptive experiences are not outside impositions to or an attack on my faith, but are the soil out of which my faith matures and takes shape.

Grace grows best in winter.

Mother Teresa. According to her own journal, she was in her dark night more or less from 1948 until near the time of her death in 1997.

Perhaps her long dark night fueled her life, where she kept moving anyway, as an act of trust so deep it cannot be rationally explained—and indeed would look foolish if anyone tried. And the result was about as clear a Jesus movement as you can point to in recent history. Mother Teresa learned

I am amazed and encouraged by those who have lived through these moments of hell on earth and have continued on in the life of faith anyway. They have something to teach people like me: no matter what we think we know, no matter how sure we happen to think we are, suffering is the place where our sense of certainty about God's ways fades like a dream and forces us to consider that what we know may not be as central to our faith as we might think.

What is at stake is a faith that can actually remain sustainable and meaningful because it listens to the challenges of the present as we follow the God who is always out ahead of us, ready to surprise us.

As it was, the heat consumed me by day and the frost by night, and sleep fled from my eyes.