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

Write today's worries in sand. Chisel yesterday's victories in stone.

All I did was collect a few of the questions I've been asked through the years, write up a brief response and put them in this publication. As a pastor, you get asked questions and receive emails. Many of them I had answered, but just in conversation. So we kind of re-crafted the question and answered it. It turned out to be an interesting exercise. I hope it's encouraging for people.

All my books come out of sermons, and I'm really a pastor who writes rather than a writer who pastors.

I noticed people would read these short articles I was assigned to write for our church bulletin and they would say, Boy, thats good stuff. I got letters from people around the country saying, Thats really good. And I thought, Is it really?

Listen carefully to the feedback your readers give you. Dont write unless people want you to write, a lot of people write just because they want to write.

You don't impress the officials at NASA with a paper airplane. You don't boast about your crayon sketches in the presence of Picasso. You don't claim equality with Einstein because you can write 'H20.' And you don't boast about your goodness in the presence of the Perfect.

I never told anybody I wanted to write, I kind of fell into it backwards.

I was never really lead by [my parents] and didnt sense any leading from the Lord to go into writing.