My parents, they were good, godly people, but they never said, You need to write.

See your enemies, not as God's failures, but as God's projects.

Pastoring the flock with words. I love that. We always have a prayer time in the middle of our service. We take about eight or ten minutes before I preach, after we've sung, and invite people to come forward for prayer. That's a tender moment to me. I don't preach much in that, but I like to speak to the people.

The Bible is full of stories of men and women who've found themselves in frightening situations but who chose to look up rather than look down - look up in faith - and God got them through it.

Gratitude is a dialysis of sorts... it flushes the self-pity out of our systems.

There is not a hint of one person who was afraid to draw near him [Jesus]. There were those who mocked him. There were those who were envious of him. There were those who misunderstood him. There were those who revered him. But there was not one person who considered him too holy, too divine, or too celestial to touch. There was not one person who was reluctant to approach him for fear of being rejected.

I think it's noteworthy that the Almighty didn't act high and mighty. The Holy One wasn't holier-than-thou. The One who knew it all wasn't a know-it-all. The One who made the stars didn't keep his head in them. The One who owns all the stuff of earth never strutted it.