Abraham wasn't perfect. He failed, made mistakes. But, he would go back, get right with God, and then just keep moving forward. He didn't quit when things got hard. He just kept on going. And everywhere he went, God was there. God was with him.

The devil resists serious, focused prayer because he's defeated by it. And so the devil will try to attack our concentration in prayer; he will try to confuse or contradict the content of our prayers; he will do his best to distract and/or divert us in prayer so that we're crippled by inconsistency.

The organized church sometimes puts boundaries on us that the Bible doesn't. So I'm living my life for an audience of one. I live my life to please God. Some people won't understand, but I don't give an account to some people.

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.

When life is good and we have no problems, we can almost let ourselves believe we have no need for God. But in my experience, sometimes the richest blessings come through pain and hard things.

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.

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.