Re-Believing
I saw a friend of mine a couple of days ago. It’s been a while since we talked. When she saw me, she beamed with excitement and said, “I didn’t know that you wrote a book!” In fact, Playing Chase with God has been out for just a little over forty-five days. My heart warmed to her genuine excitement. She said, “I’ve been reading it slowly because that’s how I like to read.” But then she gave the best of compliments when she said, “I can hear your voice in my head when I’m reading. It’s like you are reading it to me.” I love that she is having that experience.
Several others have said the same and it always prompts joy in my soul. I wanted the book to be less like a classroom and more like a conversation. Less like a list of directions in your Waze App and more like the person who gives directions by saying, “When you see the oak tree that lost a giant limb in the storm last week, there will be a big white dog that runs after your car — after you see that take your next left.”
The point is we all want help from someone who has been there themselves. We want them to commend their journey to us without embellishment but with authentic detail. Most of us think we want a “How to” but in reality, we want someone to lead us toward a discovery that feels instructive but allows us the space to paint the details for ourselves. That’s what I tried to do and according to some, it worked.
Re-Believe
The journey of putting out a book has been a learning endeavor. As you can imagine, I laid it down many times, only to eventually pick it back up. Like all of us, I would doubt the credibility of my voice and walk away. But I kept coming back to the ideas in the book and re-believing. Slowly it took shape, and eventually got to the place that I was satisfied enough to put it out.
Life is like this isn’t it?
A life well-lived is built from the resolve of re-believing — A battle with the voice of self-doubt. The voice that makes a very persuasive case for me to resign to a lesser existence. A temptation to fold up my higher aspirations and head for the safety of the hills called mediocre. It’s the inward battle where uncertainty wields a powerful sword trying to slay my desire to make a difference.
You see, I knew the ideas were good . . . I just didn’t know if I could write a good book. I knew that I’d proven these prayer rhythms in the laboratory of my life, but what I didn’t know was whether I could write sentences that conveyed the conviction of my heart.
Are you living a similar experience in other areas of your life? Are you trying to find the courage to finish? Is there a path that you wanted for your life, and you are not living on it? Has resignation to a lesser life set up camp and taken control of your life? I’ll only suggest what I had to do to finish this project:
Re-believe. Begin again. Don’t give up.
This is what I had to do, and my journey is still unfolding.
Out of the Hazy Clouds
The good news is, I’m more confident now. I’ve heard back from enough of you to know that this book is helping those who read it. I knew it wouldn’t be for everybody, but mainly for those who have an honest desire to build history with God. For those who want to bring prayer out of the hazy clouds and down to the red dirt clay of earth where we live lives of devotion toward the things we want most.
Many years ago I stood in the middle of pasture in a moment of prayer and told God that I wanted a life built from the ground up with something more than what the preacher said at church last Sunday – I said I want to know you and hear you speak in a way that is as real as any other fact of my experience. Maybe that is you too? If so, my book was written for you. Humbly, I commend it to you. May God meet you somewhere in its pages!
