I've never really prided myself as being quick on my feet. Maybe you've had the experience where somebody's asked you a question and you give an answer, then later in the day you think, "Oh, I wish I'd said that!" I tend to journal these things and put the answers in sermons.

Whether or not storms come, we can not choose. But where we stare during a storm, that we can.

All my books come out of sermons, and I'm really a pastor who writes rather than a writer who pastors.

Bread of Life? Jesus lived up to the title. But an unopened loaf does a person no good. Have you received the bread? Have you received God's forgiveness?

It was a matter of going back through a lot of sermons and remembering the questions and conversations, where these ideas came from. So the book [Max on Life] is really kind of a second chance to answer these questions.

I didn't want to just write stories that were entertaining. Nor did I want to be so scholarly that people couldn't digest it.

I never told anybody I wanted to write, I kind of fell into it backwards.