In churches, we see that getting people to show up for a prayer meeting is a lot more difficult than a concert or service project or just about anything else. So we were thinking, we're stepping into some unknown territory here that could be as profitable, or it could be a box-office flop, but there was a rightness about it. And so this whole idea of the war room being like a spiritual warfare room, a place of prayer where you get alone with God and you're making your decisions and you're dealing with your issues first in prayer.

Jesus communicated parables to the secular people around him and he used stories that were very relevant to their lives, and He was taking heaven's truth and packaging it in an earthly context.

Alex [Kendrick] and I started out the whole film-making journey as a desire to reach people for Christ and try to impact their lives for him.

There is an old story from the Eastern tradition that says that when the gods created the universe, they found a place for everything but the truth, and this created a problem, because the gods did not want this wisdom discovered right away. One of the gods suggested the top of the highest mountain, another the farthest star, a third spoke up for the dark side of the moon, and another for the bottom of the deepest ocean. Finally, they decide to place truth inside the human heart. In that way, we would search for it all over the universe, with the secret within us all the time.

With every movie, we will spend a season of prayer just asking God what's on his heart, and we spent about a year, two years, in prayer, trying to figure out the direction for the next film.

That word is 'willing.' It's an attitude and spirit of cooperation that should permeate our conversations. It's like a palm tree by the ocean that endures the greatest winds because it knows how to gracefully bend.

Often parents have a great desire and hopes, and aspirations for their kids but they don't have any practical plans of action.