The audience I must please is the one true God. Jesus Christ gave me life, and I must honor Him in all I do--failing and falling at times, only to have Him rescue me again, set me right, lavish His forgiveness on me, and assure me of His divine love.
Writing fiction is the passion of my heart in this phase of my life. It is essential to make the stories resonate with those who escape to literature, search for meaning in literature, or desire to connect with characters in a place where perhaps their emotions, their spirituality, or even their physical desires are captured in a way that makes the reader feel as though they know these people personally. Connection is the desire of most readers, be it for fun and entertainment or for challenge and conviction.
In the process of creating these stories I write, these characters that live both in my head and in my heart, I must point out arrive from the Lord because I have not one single idea until the Lord through His Spirit imparts these novels to me. I'm just not that creative.
But these novels I write are not written for those who are easily offended by the sinful goings on of our lost world. People in all stages of their humanity are portrayed in the pages of my novels, and you will see the warning on each of my stories: "This book is for adult readers."
My goal is to contrast the sinful to the divine, to capture the world in its inherent sinfulness and ugliness while effectively making the contrast of living for Christ both plausible and desirable in a powerful way.
In life and in story there will be those who reject the Lord, who remain in opposition to the truth of His claims as well as to those who proclaim His love and forgiveness to them. There will be those who insist they’re good people and that they’ve never hurt anybody. There are those who are so invested in the secular lifestyle they see no need for a personal redemption from whom they perceive as an impersonal God.
In life and in story the need for redemption is not optional to an eternal life which beckons beyond this unpredictable existence on this planet. Because of that fact, I cannot be coy about the Gospel of Jesus Christ within the pages of my novels. So, if you’re uncomfortable with characters who know Him, come to the place of wanting to discover Him, or pray within the context of the story and exhibit other behaviors that are genuinely “Christian” alongside those characters who have no knowledge, desire, or behavioral evidence of Christianity, you are not “my audience”.
One would never intentionally put off potential readers, but more importantly is the awareness of what my novels contain in order to ward off unwarranted criticism. I take the role of writer as a “call” from God. It isn’t a coincidence that I write, compose stories, create books. It is much like a ministry to me to reach out to any reader who desires to experience Christianity in the environment of “story” and to recognize the transparency of sin in our lives and in those lives we come in contact with daily. Not to condemn but to expose, explain, exemplify the choices involved in deciding where one intends to spend eternity.
Father, I love you and my hope is in you. That hope, that assurance, that deliverance that your love and forgiveness provide through your Son Jesus Christ is too critical, too wonderful, too necessary not to share. Yes, it offends the perishing in its purest form, but your Holy Spirit draws people to Jesus in unfathomable and often unpredictable ways, so my desire is that somehow you will elect to use what you have given me to write to amplify and increase your kingdom, in the Name of Jesus, Amen.