December is the most difficult month. Medications for insomnia or depression go up during the month of December. A lot of people who experience loss feel that loss magnified in December. Everybody seems happy and you feel all alone. You're not all alone.

Do you understand what God has done? He has deposited a Christ seed in you. As it grows you will change. It's not that sin has no more presence in your life, but rather that sin has no more power over your life.

I don't have any desire to retire in the sense of not doing anything. Because as long as the Lord gives me strength I want to keep writing and keep preaching. I love what I do.

Kind of the bottom line for me, I don't think people come to the church where I preach to hear my view on politics.

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.

Theres a verse thats meant a lot to me ever since I was in my early 20s. 2 Timothy 2:8, Paul told Timothy to remember Jesus Christ, descended from David and raised from the dead. Thats a good principle, that if my theology, my whole life can be focused on remembering Jesus. Just trying to remember who He is, what He did, being strong in what He did and what He accomplished.

God's present is his presence. His greatest gift is himself.