How the book came together
The first concept of this book was to be a mentoring guide for walking in the Spirit.
It was in answer to a self-proposed question: if I could teach young women one thing that would equip them to continue following Christ after leaving Emmaus Bible College, what would that be?
I quickly realized that I would first have to understand what it meant to walk by the Spirit. How could I teach what, for me personally, had always ended in frustrated failures?
This time my approach would be different. This time I would start by taking out the opposition, i.e. the flesh.
Study guide questions needed more explanation. The explanations needed explanations. That’s when I felt the nudging of the Lord to do something I had never dreamed of doing – write a book.
This book has been entirely the Lord’s idea. Every step has been a walk of faith, and along every step He has shown Himself to be faithful.
The outline was His. I know this because it just spilled out onto the page.
Some of the subjects, like the flesh, humility, repentance, love and spiritual gifts already had a beginning to work with. They came from previous messages or devotionals I had worked on. Others like weakness and suffering were a blank page. I sat down to write wondering what in the world would I say. They ended up being so long I had to divide them into multiple chapters.
My free-lance editor, Helen Wieger, was a gift from the Lord. My publisher, ECS Ministries, was a divinely opened door.
Even now as I contemplate the reality that this book is done, I know that it was all of the Lord. As a recovering perfectionist, I could never have written this. My natural self could never have handled the number of rewrites, edits and deletes that I have made over the four years it has taken to do this. It has been a God thing from start to finish. May He receive all the glory!
It was in answer to a self-proposed question: if I could teach young women one thing that would equip them to continue following Christ after leaving Emmaus Bible College, what would that be?
I quickly realized that I would first have to understand what it meant to walk by the Spirit. How could I teach what, for me personally, had always ended in frustrated failures?
This time my approach would be different. This time I would start by taking out the opposition, i.e. the flesh.
Study guide questions needed more explanation. The explanations needed explanations. That’s when I felt the nudging of the Lord to do something I had never dreamed of doing – write a book.
This book has been entirely the Lord’s idea. Every step has been a walk of faith, and along every step He has shown Himself to be faithful.
The outline was His. I know this because it just spilled out onto the page.
Some of the subjects, like the flesh, humility, repentance, love and spiritual gifts already had a beginning to work with. They came from previous messages or devotionals I had worked on. Others like weakness and suffering were a blank page. I sat down to write wondering what in the world would I say. They ended up being so long I had to divide them into multiple chapters.
My free-lance editor, Helen Wieger, was a gift from the Lord. My publisher, ECS Ministries, was a divinely opened door.
Even now as I contemplate the reality that this book is done, I know that it was all of the Lord. As a recovering perfectionist, I could never have written this. My natural self could never have handled the number of rewrites, edits and deletes that I have made over the four years it has taken to do this. It has been a God thing from start to finish. May He receive all the glory!
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