Abraham is such a fascinating figure. Three world religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - all claim him as a patriarch. He was raised in a religious home. And yet he rejected religion in order to pursue a personal relationship with God.

Desperation compels us to pray with fervent, focused faith - especially when we have no one else to turn to. God honors our faith when we place it in him alone - with no back-up plan, no other recourse, no other way out. He hears and answers our desperate heart cry, because he loves to show himself strong on our behalf.

When Jesus says you must leave your family to follow Him, he doesn't necessarily mean physically. He means leave your dependence on them, make an emotional break with them.

Faith is like a tender plant, rooted in Christ alone, watered by the Spirit and the Word, strengthened by the winds of adversity and the sunshine of blessing.

For myself I never plan the way I deliver a message. I do prepare the content, and then I open my mouth and give it. And so the expression, the gestures, the emphasis on words, all of that just comes.

I believe that our heavenly Father, our Savior, saved my mother from loneliness because of her daily walk with the Lord Jesus, He was the love of her life. I saw that in her life. It was her love for the Lord Jesus, with whom she walks every day, that made me want to love Him and walk with Him like that.

Around 1998, I went through lots of pressures and struggles. My children got married within eight months of each other, my son was diagnosed with cancer and went through major surgery and radiation, my mother had five life-threatening hospitalizations where I stayed with her, my husband's dental office burned to the ground.