Q: In your experience, what is the best and the worst thing about prayer?

A: The best thing about prayer is that through prayer we have the opportunity to connect with God in a truly transformational way. Through prayer, we can pour our hopes, dreams, doubts and fears. And in the process, we find that God in His kindness and love subtly or overtly replaces our own perspective with His own.

The worst, or rather hardest, thing about prayer is waiting for the answer. Sometimes the silence that follows prayer feels frigid and stark. The silence can raise more questions and doubts than we began with. But it can also raise a God-awareness that is hard to discover any other way.

Q: The Sacred Echo explores several different aspects of prayer and intimacy with God. Why did you choose to structure the “sacred echoes” as you did? In particular you start with Chapter 1, entitled i love you. Why start with i love you when writing about prayer and the Christian life?

A: “Sacred Echoes” is the phrase I use to describe God’s persistent voice in our life. I believe that when God speaks He speaks not just for information but transformation. He wants His Word alive in our hearts. So I structured the ten chapters of The Sacred Echo to each look at a different thing God has been speaking to my heart. Each chapter reveals how a particular echo came alive in my heart and led to changes in perspective, attitude, behavior and sometimes even action.

 Why start with “I love you”, well, because that is the most foundational and essential echo of all. God speaks “I love you” into all of our lives in more ways than we can count. And when “I love you” is alive in our hearts it truly transforms the way we treat, respond and interact with others.

Q: Chapter 3, how long, explores the time in between our prayer and the answer to prayer. Why do you think God makes us wait for answers to prayer a lot of the time?

A: Waiting is hard but it does so much. Waiting reminds us that it’s not all about us—we are part of something greater God is doing in our communities, world and even history. Waiting also beckons us to a deeper relationship with God. Waiting grows our faith, brings issues to the surface, and let’s us practice what we say we believe.

Q: Throughout the book you share some of your challenges with health, calling, and unanswered prayers. Is it difficult to be open and share about personal struggles?

A: Vulnerability does not come easily for me. My closest friends read my books and say, “Wow, I didn’t know that about you!” But over the years I’ve discovered that those moments of raw honesty are worth it when they help breathe hope into the lives of others.

Q: I found Chapter 9, bring them to me, the most difficult chapter to read because it confronts the question of suffering and the sovereignty of God, and why God heals some people, but not others. I appreciate your dialogue on this difficult subject. Do you think you’ve made peace with this question?

A: The peace with this subject comes and goes. Just when you think you have come to terms with the suffering, the brokenness, the ugliness that happens in this world, another situation or circumstance comes along that takes your breath away. That’s when I have to run back to God once again reminded that many of the things I see and encounter are beyond my ability to handle them. In those moments, I find God echoing, “Bring them to Me.” And I am so grateful.

Q: In Chapter 10, you are not alone, you mention how you recognized your need to share about your physical struggles and to receive prayer from friends, rather than hiding what you were going through. Can you share any further insights about how being in community helps heal our souls?

A: We need each other so much. And I think that’s something that I am still on the beginning of the journey of discovering. Sometimes I want all the healing, all the wholeness in my life to come from God in some mystical way, but the truth is that God uses all of His children to bring healing and wholeness. Kind words of a friend, encouraging notes, the love a husband change me in ways I still cannot express.

Q: What is the single most important lesson or truth you’d like your readers to take away from The Sacred Echo?

A: I hope readers find themselves connecting with God like never before and recognizing His voice in their lives in the mundane and the unexpected. I hope that people will find themselves diving into Scripture and getting to know God’s Word until it comes alive in their hearts and lives. I hope readers find themselves infused with the hope and joy that can only come from knowing God.