OPEN A WINDOW INTO YOUR HEART.
Our dark emotions are much more than just uncomfortable feelings we struggle to control. They are windows into our heart. They are the cry of our soul. These emotions-the ones we tend to suppress and hide-actually have something important to tell us. They can reveal, in a very graphic way, where we are in our relationship with God.
So often we find ourselves caught between extremes. Either we feel too much or not at all. We tend to ignore our feelings or fight them off as if they were an enemy. But all emotion-whether positive or negative-can give us a glimpse of the true nature of God. We want to control our negative emotions and dark desire. God wants us to recognize them as the cry of our soul to be made right with Him.
Beginning with the Psalms, Dr. Dan Allender and Dr. Tremper Longman III explore what Scripture says about our darker emotions. In this ground-breaking work they reveal that often our attempts to control our emotions-far from an attempt to be Christlike-are really a form of rebellion against God or an attempt to flee from Him.
The Cry of the Soul is a penetrating look at the condition of the human heart. You won't find the kind of answers that alleviate struggle or help you overcome anger, jealousy, or despair in three easy steps. But you can encounter God Himself, who exults in using darkness to reveal the brilliance of His infinite goodness.
The result is joy. Not a superficial happiness that ignores the problems of our lives, but a profound emotion that can confront darkness with open eyes and confidence.
Allender and Longman add an important contribution to a new wave of Psalm studies. There is an enormous temptation for 'high faith' to deny the 'dark side' of life where 'things do not work.' Against that common propensity, they show how the Psalms make contact with the 'emotions of failure.' Such places in life become, by their sensitive reading of the Psalms, places of revelatory healing and transformation. Readers will be helped to fresh and faithful discernment of life and text. -Walter Brueggemann, professor of Old Testament, Columbia
Dan and Tremper have done us a fierce kindness. In a culture committed to either running from or wallowing in our emotions, The Cry of the Soul offers an excruciating but hopeful alternative-to listen to our own hearts (as did the psalmists) so we can better receive and worship the pursuing heart of God. -Nancy Groom, author of From Bondage to Bonding and Heart to Heart about Men
The Cry of the Soul offers insight after surprising insight into the unexpected relationship between our emotions and our view of God. A needed correction to the simplistic explaining away of pain and suffering. -Daniel Taylor, Ph.D., author of The Myth of Certainty and Letters to My Children
In The Cry of the Soul I hear an echo of my own heart-cry and that of the psalmists-to know God intimately and authentically, and to see Him powerfully at work in our broken world. -Luci Shaw, poet, teacher, author of God in the Dark and Writing the River
If we are to be rescued from the incessant tendency to psychoanalyze the gospel, this book will be a good start. Dan and Tremper give us not more psychological information, but biblical encouragement to be faithful. -Michael Card, singer, songwriter, and author of Immanuel: Reflections on the Life of Christ
