Grace

As the search continues for a publisher several people have been reviewing my book. Most have very favorably received it. I sent it to a good friend who happens to be one of the foremost preachers in America and you would easily recognize his name if I mentioned it. This pastor became saved at the age of nine and has led an exemplary life all of his days. I wanted an opinion from someone like him who had never so much as smoked a cigarette, drank a beer, or said a cussword, etc.

He read the first chapter and wrote me back and told me the book was just too “raw” for an exclusively Christian market or someone with a background similar to his own.

This confirmed what I suspected would be the case. When I first began writing the book in earnest my creative consultant told me that I needed to make up mind as to who my audience was going to be. Did I want to go exclusively to the Christian market or the non-Christian market?

Hmmm I told him, “Well I would prefer to go to both; however if I have to go to just one I want to go to the non-Christian market”. I had two main purposes in mind when I considered writing the book: I wanted to introduce the lost to Jesus Christ and hopefully evangelize them, and I wanted to provide renewed hope through Jesus Christ for those already saved, but hurting and perhaps disillusioned. Most important of the two was reaching the lost.

After much prayer and meditation I decided that the book simply would not be legitimate to the readers that I was trying to reach if it wasn’t written honestly and if it came across as some religious book written by someone who had not “been there and done that”. I’d read Nicky Cruz’s book, “Run Baby Run”, and it was nothing like life on the street. He was the leader of one of the fiercest gangs in NYC, but the book made it sound like he was teaching Sunday school instead of beating people senseless with a baseball bat. Having lived on those streets it just sounded phony to me.

Nicky is now a pastor and I understand why he cleaned it up. It was exceedingly difficult for me to write the early chapters of my book in an honest fashion, (using profanity and detailing the drugs, alcohol, depravity, violence, and death that I was living daily). In fact as my wife will share with you I was miserable when I wrote it and it was very nearly as bad as living those dark days again.

This book is how it really was back then and I think that being written in that fashion will be important to those who are experiencing similar problems. I wanted the readers to understand how far I’d sunk in order for them to truly appreciate how much of a miracle it was for me to accept Jesus as my Savior. More importantly if anyone reads this book, they will agree that if God could transform my life, He can transform anyone’s life. There is a way out of dark days whether saved or unsaved and it is through Jesus Christ.

If you are considering reading my book be forewarned it is powerful, gritty, uncensored and raw. If you would not watch an “R” rated movie, don’t read it. It is however a powerful true story of how Jesus Christ is more about compassion than condemnation. I deserved to spend my life in hell being punished for my many sins, but Jesus died for those sins and forgave me and I changed dramatically. I don’t understand grace but I am and will remain eternally grateful for it.

2 Cor 12:9
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.