It's one thing to be discouraged. It's another thing to have despair. Despair is when you think there's just no end to this [suffering]. There's no solution for this. Despair is when you think that your suffering has no purpose, and your suffering has no end.

God has work for you to do.

You may be transferred, enlisted, commissioned, reassigned, or hospitalized - but brand this on your heart - you can never go where God is not.

I don't get asked a lot of questions about science and the Bible, for example. Probably people just know I'm not very smart and I don't have an answer to those anyway.

When all of earth turns against you, all of heaven turns toward you.

I think the hardest questions had to do with suffering. It had to do with all of our church members and friends passing through difficult times. Sometimes it's the global climate: tsunamis, earthquakes, radiation. I think these kinds of questions are absolutely the most difficult, yet we need to be ready to respond to them because we have to be able as pastors to walk people through these valleys, these tough times in their lives.

We need hope. There's nothing worse than to live a life of despair. For a person to have no hope just sucks the blue out of every sky.