Ten Habits of the Spiritually Tough: Faith Development for the Twenty-first Century

Ten Habits of the Spiritually Tough is a book which redirects men and women of any faith tradition – but Christians in particular – away from the futile search for faith in God by exposing as false the doctrine of spiritual strength. As human beings, we are meant to search for God. In order to do this, though, we have to use the correct linguistic foundation. This foundation cannot be built using the conceptional blocks fashioned from the world’s strength language. This language is predicated on the belief that in order to please God, we must actively fight against those we perceive to be God’s enemies. The Judeo-Christian faith tradition represented by the Bible offers a far different model for faith development: overcoming the world and those we perceive to be our enemies by enduring pain and suffering rather than by doing battle. This model is patterned from the way God himself has chosen to deal with his sinful children: through spiritual toughness. God has overcome our sins and even his own righteous anger toward us by absorbing them into his love and forgiveness at the cross of Jesus Christ. If we want to improve our faith-lives, we need to begin learning and modeling spiritual toughness. To this end, Truman takes the reader through ten habits which – either separately or in combination –have the ability to transform our prior futilities in our search for the Almighty into a rock-solid foundation of faith which is able to help us weather the storms of this life and prepare us for a glorious and holy eternity.