The most important thing God ever taught me is to pray for what I lack. I've had to pray that above all else, he would give me a love for him, and a hunger and thirst for his Word. In my twenties, I was a Sunday school teacher, and I was pitiful. I just didn't know God's Word. So I prayed about it and signed up for a Bible doctrine class at my church that I just knew would be the most boring thing I ever attended.

Instead a man walked up - a former football player - who threw open the Bible and practically wept as he taught it. Never before had I met someone who had such a passionate relationship with God through the Word.

I told God, "I don't know what this man has, but I want it." And God began to birth that passion and hunger for his Word in me. As I continue to study the Bible, it's literally become life for me.

But when I first sensed God calling me into full-time ministry to speak and write Bible study materials, I felt a little like the Old Testament patriarch Jacob. At least in that I also wrestled with God until the point of surrender.

I'd been leading a church aerobics class for 12 years, teaching Sunday school and had begun to do some speaking when I felt God telling me, I'm calling you out for something different. And I kept telling him, "I'll leave my aerobics class when I don't like it anymore!"

Well, one morning, I got up to teach, and my hip was out of joint. I felt the Holy Spirit say to me, Am I going to have to break your leg to get you to listen to me? Let it go! So I pulled away from the aerobics, and the Lord began to show me what he had for me.