Relaxing in the wait!

When you have at least two books waiting to go.
When you have an unpublished manuscript award for one and co-publisher deals for both, that if you go ahead will cost you dearly.
When you are writing another book.
When you feel God is saying wait and everything in you was rebelling in impatience. It is such a wonder to come to that place where at last you can give it all up and relax.

The timing is not mine. It is God's.There is no known sin holding things back. I'm eager for a continuing and growing intimacy with God and so the timing must be attached to mysteries unseen by me.

It takes me a long time to relax. There is always that tension between taking things into my own hands and not doing enough. Yet everywhere in the Bible, when God speaks in His unique way to a person, that person alway knows it is God. And they know exactly what He is saying.

All instincts may rebel, feelings of inadequacy may storm your senses as they did Moses, or doubt as they did Gideon - yet you still will know.

I know.
And for me it is to wait and watch!

The Perils of Publishing

I attended an interesting workshop last week all about the difficulties of being published, then being distributed - not to mention being bought before you are returned. And they didn't even menion the perils of actually writing in the first place.

Add to this the prospect that the p-book sadly seems to be diminishing and the e-book is on an expotential rise - and you have a sad state of affairs for all dreamy writers! We would far rather have our heads in the clouds, be tapping away at our computers or drinking hot chocolates in a cafe stirring our creative juices than worry about all this practical stuff. At least I would!

They also delved into the rewards of self-publishing balanced by the almost impossible refusal of distributors to act on behalf of individual authors. And the extra financial rewards of e-books with the lack of international law governing use and reuse.

Where does this leave us? I'm sitting on the edge of my hot chocolate bowl splashing my feet in the sweet warm liquid, watching the cinnamon swirl as I kick it and wondering whether to jump in! I wonder what God would say about all this?

New Understanding

While I was away on holiday soaking up the sun, sights and silence at Taupo God reminded me of a Scripture He had given me a few years ago to define what He wants me to do. It is in John 21 when Jesus is restoring Peter and giving him his ministry. After asking Peter three times if he loves Him, Jesus says 'Feed My lambs...Tend My sheep...Feed My sheep'. Hence my books 'Know God More' and 'Kick Addiction' and the ones I have written waiting to be published. I am answering my call to feed His sheep and I have also tended them for years through my counselling practice and 'Kick Addiction' courses to help people become free.

But now God was saying something new. Something I had not thought of before. He asked me 'Who are My lambs?'

Prior to this, for six months last year I had worked part-time as a counsellor at a Counselling Centre with mainly non-Christian clients and I had been amazed by the lack of basic wisdom within their lives. I was starting to see the need of writing a book for the secular market but somehow could not reconcile this with my calling.

God's question changed all this.
Who are His lambs? They are those people who are going to be His sheep. They just don't know it yet!! His lambs need to know more about His ways so when they are called to be His sheep they can hear His voice.

Once again God has surprised me!