Leading Through Tough Times: Texas Governor Opens Up About Faith and Overcoming Adversity

WASHINGTON – Texas Governor Greg Abbott is a man of the headlines and most recently made national news when he visited Santa Fe High School where just days before eight students and two teachers were shot and killed.

After attending a church service Sunday, Abbott and his wife laid flowers at a growing memorial at the school.

"We're here today for a day of prayer," he told reporters. "We come here today with hearts that are aching, knowing there are parents today without children." 

In a recent interview with CBN News, Abbott opened up about his faith and how it's helped him govern through some very difficult times.

Abbott said faith prevailed through all of the hardship and devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey. 

"The aftermath of it was the horrific flooding that took place in Houston and there you saw literally the hand of God acting to benefit everyone who was there," he explained. 

Abbott said the same proved true when a gunman opened fire in a Sutherland Springs church, killing 26 people.

"I've never seen faith surface and reveal itself so much as in the aftermath of that horrific shooting," he said. "These people who experienced the worst of the worst, they lean on the thing that matters the most and that is God."

"It is their faith in God that led them through the pathway of the stormy seas, that led them to the road to recovery and had it not been for God, they would still be stuck in a quagmire," he continued.

Had it not been for God, Abbott said he too would still be stuck.

At age 26, his life changed when he was out for a routine jog. It was after a storm when a tree came crashing down on him, crushing his spine and leaving him paralyzed for life. 

"You do ask, 'God, why did this happen?' But what I found help me overcome that was when I calmed down and listened to God," Abbott said. "I was forced then more than ever to lean on God and to follow God and it was that pathway that led me out."

The governor wishes no one ever had to experience what he did or face any kind of tragedy, be it a shooting or natural disaster, but if they do, his prayer is that they come to find God. 

"All I could hope for, for anybody is for them not to have to go through that tragedy but for them to come to that same outcome and that is to let God lead their lives," he said.