Emotional and psychological pain were to become, perhaps, the most powerful force in molding the course of my life. For some people, pain and hurt breed bitterness and cynicism. For others it causes them to look deeply into themselves and into life itself in an attempt to understand the meaning beneath seemingly capricious or arbitrary happenings.

Pain and suffering are the dark strands through the tapestry of your life, providing the shadows that give depth and dimension to the masterpiece God is fashioning within you.

Joshua chose the simple life ... because it gave him the freedom to expand the breadth of his inner life.

The kind of prayer I am talking about is a detached kind of prayer in which you are not looking for anything, just putting yourself in God's presence and sharing with him what you are feeling or what you are suffering. It is the kind of prayer in which you just open your heart to God and say, "God, I'm here. I'm not asking for anything, God. I just want to be near you and open my heart to you."

The houses people live in reflect their opinions of themselves.

Only the individual knows to what God is calling him.

The poor never have enough for themselves ... but always have enough to give away.