How Mike prepares his messages — text-first exegetical process

Mike describes spending 15-40+ hours per message depending on complexity. For verse-by-verse Bible study: he pastes the text into a Word document, separates thoughts, looks up original language words, gathers cross-references, and exhausts his own understanding before consulting commentaries. Commentaries serve as a check on his own reading rather than a first resort. For apologetics-heavy topics he researches multiple sources and confirms every point from several resources so it is reliable when repeated.