I need the spiritual revival that comes from spending quiet time alone with Jesus in prayer and in thoughtful meditation on His Word.

One misconception is that if we follow God in the life of faith, and that means obedience - that we read His Word, we're obedient, we pray, we go to church, we do the right things - that somehow His blessing means we're going to be okay.

The blessing of my mother is that she is so interested, she is so bright, she never complains - the joy of the Lord just bubbles out of her. Anybody who's in her presence is blessed to be there.

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.

God knows that sometimes we lack words to express our feelings, heart-cry, thoughts. And so within the Bible he includes people's prayers as models to help our own.

It's sobering to contemplate how much time, effort, sacrifice, compromise, and attention we give to acquiring and increasing our supply of something that is totally insignificant in eternity.

When I was a teenager, I was trying to please people. I kept changing who I was to please the people I was with. And so once I just decided I wasn't going to do that anymore. I was going to live my life to please God. And so from that day to this, that's been my aim. Some people don't understand, but you can't please everybody anyway.