Being sick didn't give Rev. Howard Olds more to say, just time to say it. The senior pastor of Brentwood United Methodist Church in Brentwood, Tenn., said cancer didn't necessarily change his perspective, only confirmed it.

"What the cancer did was to prove that in the laboratory of life," Olds said. "It confirmed what I had preached and believed."

Olds has been advising audiences to, "Make it a good day," for 20 years in minute-long radio and television addresses that always end with that directive. Olds said creating a book from the broadcasts had been an idea that never materialized until last winter when he succumbed to a second bout with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Volunteers offered to help with the project then and Olds also took the time in recovery to add prayers to each message.

His words have become a hardbound book of daily encouragement entitled, "Faith Breaks."

"Faith Breaks" offers a positive Christian message, but no Scripture or prayer, nothing overtly preachy -- on purpose. The ministry has always been geared to reaching a different audience than Sunday pew warmers.

"The key is to get a message to a primarily secular audience that they can't get away from because it drops in the middle of sports and news," said Olds.

"I didn't intend for it to come across preachy." In fact, he said the scripts have been written, re-written, sorted and sifted so that they are even less preachy than when the program aired originally.

The tag at the end of the 60-second spot identifies the sponsoring church, but Olds said that is not an advertisement. He claims the radio messages are primarily missiological.

"They offer general truths of the Christian faith," Olds said, "so that people of any faith and even non-Christians can get a message."

But even if the idea for the radio messages is not about church growth, Brentwood does have visitors who find their way to the church through the radio addresses. Olds claims that is due more to the longevity of the radio program than the name of the church on the air. "It takes months before you get into the culture of the listener."

The "Why Me?" faith break asks a big question that seems to be about Olds' own life experience: "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

Olds' faith break answer sounds stronger considering his fight with cancer: "When I sink into that quagmire of self-pity, I find it's time to change the question. I begin asking not ‘Why me?' but ‘Why not me?' Why do good things happen to bad people? How come it rains on the unjust as well as the just? Why should my disease be curable when another is terminal? Exactly who else should get what I have?

"In the risky riddles of life, I've come to this conclusion: It's not what happens to us, but what we do with what happens to us that makes all the difference."

And his prayer: "There are many things, loving God, that our small minds cannot comprehend. So help us trust you where we cannot see, as we walk with you where we have not been, guided by your omnipotent hand. Amen."

"Faith Breaks" is available in the Church Central bookstore.