So immediately I'm trying to think: What are some of these times when we feel we're losing our hold on Christ, and what's the fear we're trying to address? I try to get into that quickly.

Not everybody can create a foundation that's worth a billion dollars, but all of us can figure out those things we do. I really think God loves us too much to give us an assignment we don't enjoy doing.

If we think that this life is all there is to life, then there is no interpretation of our problems, our pain, not even of our privileges. But everything changes when we open up to the possibility that God's story is really our story too.

Where we might think of sin as slip-ups or missteps, God views sin as a godless attitude that leads to godless action.

Every time we equip the church with a verse, chapter or a story from the Bible, we're really placing another weapon in the hands of the Holy Spirit that He uses to challenge and strengthen the church. I think that's very important.

Well, I think the main message is there is more to your story. There is more than what happens between the crib and the grave, and that is what I am really trying to speak to, this idea that all of life is this life and that there is nothing more than what we see and experience right here on this earth.

I don't think God is a gender. He presents himself as a father but he comes to us with the tenderness of a mother. In some of the parables, he is the housewife who cleans the house looking for the lost coin.

I think we pray, we make a clear-headed decision, and then we quit being so mean to each other. We've got to stop that.

About four days a week, I do pretty good at having a morning prayer time. But even at that, it's a rambling sort of thing. What I have learned to do better is to try to keep my mind turned toward God and ear inclined toward God throughout the day, and I think I'm doing better at that ,but I've got a long way to go.