You'll never know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have. Are you in the wilderness? Find refuge in God's presence. Find comfort in his people.

The book, Max on Life, is really kind of a second chance to answer these questions.

I have a lot of special memories with my parents but my toughest one is, I had, as a teenager, a pretty insatiable appetite for beer. The first time I got drunk my father found me throwing up in the bathroom. I was 15, maybe 16, and the disappointment in his voice, I can hear it to this day, and the sorrow that that brought to him. He just felt like a failure as a father, and Id give anything to take that day back because that was so hard on him. In time, my life got better, and his did too, but that was really memorable, one of those memories Id like to forget.

I don't have a lot of time in the sermon anyway. The sermon is only 25 minutes, which to me is frighteningly short. So I feel as if I need to get into that pretty quickly and make it as practical and accessible as possible.

Indeed, baptism is a vow, a sacred vow of the believer to follow Christ. Just as a wedding celebrates the fusion of two hearts, baptism celebrates the union of sinner with Savior.

Our belief in God is not blind faith. Belief is having a firm conviction something is true, not hoping it's true.

Jesus humbled himself. He went from commanding angels to sleeping in the straw. From holding stars to clutching Mary's finger. The palm that held the universe took the nail of a soldier. Why? Because that's what love does. It puts the beloved before itself.