I think in my earliest life, my earliest memories, the thing that God used to teach me about himself and about His Holiness was my mother. I remember my mother praying and we had what would be called today a dysfunctional family life when I was growing up. My mom had a very, very hard life. My dad was not kind to her at all and was cruel in many, many ways. And I remember one day I was probably about five or six years old coming out into the living room area of our house and she was on her knees in front of the couch and praying.

And I just sat there and listened to her. And it dawned on me that she really is talking to someone. And she believes someone's hearing her. And I don't know how long it lasted, but I was struck in that moment that there is a God in heaven and my mom knows Him. And she taught me the Bible, she made sure that I was in church, she helped me memorize scriptures, she would read the scriptures to me.

And God used that in my earliest life to begin to put me on a trajectory of knowing Him. And throughout the rest of my life it has been His kindness to bring people into my life, to keep bringing me back to the Word, to challenge me with the Word, and coming to the recognition as a young man that the Word of God is true, it's authoritative, this is what God has spoken, these are His words to us, put me in a right frame of reference to begin to learn, to want to always to learn, to humble myself before what that word says and to be willing to say, you know what, if God's Word says this then it is right, it is good, it is true, And if I have a controversy with it, the problem is with me, it's not with the Word. And so to begin to try to reorient my life, which has really been the whole rest of my life, was something that God helped me to see early on as a young adult that has given me a good standard to keep coming back to time after time as I've gone through all kinds of circumstances in my life.