Yesterday I made my February 1 deadline for the Courageous novel. I sent it off 11:56 p.m. Pacific time—hated to waste 4 minutes, but I needed a margin in case it got stuck in my outbox and I had to reboot. :)
Many thanks to all of you who prayed. There’s still much editing to come, but I’m grateful for God's grace and kindness in an exhausting project that has consumed the last four months. Now I’m hoping to have days of rest and fun times with Nanci and the grandkids!
I’ve been asked before if I view my writing as a ministry. I believe it is, because ministry is service, and every aspect of our lives is to be a service that glorifies our Lord:
"Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31).
"And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Col 3:17)
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men...It is the Lord Christ you are serving” (Col. 3:23-24).
Is writing included in the “whatever” I do? Yes. And therefore, I do it with all my heart, to the glory of God, as a service to the Lord first and to others second, aware that I must seek to please the Audience of One, whose judgment seat is the only one I'll stand before, and whose opinion of my life is the only one that matters. I do this service giving thanks to God for the privilege of being his errand boy, his messenger, his servant. By viewing writing as a ministry first and a vocation only second, I remind myself it's not about me, it's about Him.
In this video, I talk about the process of writing fiction and how that has changed since the era of typewriters:
