Staying engaged with God is absolutely essential for getting through a tough time.

The idea of a spiritual heart transplant is a vivid image to me; once you have the heart of somebody else inside you, then that heart is there. Jesus' heart is inside me, and my heart is gone. So if God were to place a stethoscope against my chest, he would hear the heart of Jesus Christ beating.

Deflating inflated egos is so important to God that He offers to help.

Be patient. God is using today's difficulties to strengthen you for tomorrow. He is equipping you. The God who makes things grow will help you bear fruit.

But it is in storms that God does his finest work, for it is in storms that God has our keenest attention

I work in theology and Christian books all day long, when Im studying, so its just kind of nice to pick up something different. The books that have influenced me, theres not just one book that was a watershed, although Mere Christianity was as much as any.

It's important to preach like there's a broken heart on every pew. That's always been a phrase that stuck with me. Not everybody is having a tough time, but you can bet your buck that there's a good tenth of your church that's going through a hard season. There really is a broken heart on every pew.