A Dream Come True

 I have always been a dreamer since a child. I have seen many of them come true. Like marrying Brenda. Like having sons, even though I never dreamed we would have four. The dream of owning our own home which has happened three times. The dream of coming back to Spring Creek as pastor. I dreamed of writing books. I wrote my first one titled Swimming in the Bathtub. Several volunteers spent an entire night copying the pages of that book on a copy machine and spiral binding them. That was way back in 1998. I gave most of them away. 

My next book titled Only Believe was put into book form. I could only afford to print 500 of them and they have long been out of print. The book focused on faith. The following year I wrote another book titled, Life on the Altar. We were able to print 1,000 of those copies. It is also out of print. 

I did not write another one for several years. In 2008 I published Behold the Faithfulness of God. I still recall when the book arrived. It was a Wednesday night in Paradise, TX. I had just finished teaching when I saw the truck arrive. Several men helped me unload those boxes of books. 5,000 in total. In 2022 I still have several boxes of those books left and I give them away in our visitor bags. 

The next book, Sitting with the Savior, can still be purchased at Amazon and through Xulon Publishing. The book is compiled of different blogs I wrote over the years. I call them meditations for life. It did not sell very well. 

My next book Weeping for a Night lived a short shelf life. The publishing company went out of business, and I no longer have any physical copies of the book. The book is about suffering. It had favorable reviews until the publishing company folded. 

After that last book I really had no desire to write another one. I contented myself to write these blogs. I It was so much easier. Less decisions like trim size, font, front and back cover designs and marketing. No money to raise. The blogs can reach around the world. 

In 2020 I felt stirred to write the next book. Maybe a better way to put it is I felt compelled to write it. It was to be a book on prayer. I made great initial progress, but a crisis of faith brought the project to a halt for the second half of 2020 and most of 2021. I picked it up again on a writing retreat at the end of 2021. Since then, I have been working with Xulon Publishing to get the book into print. 

That has been a challenging process. There have been numerous hoops to jump through. Editing. Brian Snow helped me immensely through the editing process in addition to his teaching and coaching duties. Then the Xulon team edited the manuscript some more.  Choosing the trim size, font, chapter lay outs, cover designs, and typeset edits. When I first went over the Xulon initial edits to approve, I lost the work. Eight hours of intensive meticulous reading, correcting, and rewording. I HATE THIS PART OF THE BOOK WRITING PROCESS. I did everything I could not to have to do it. I still had to begrudgingly to approve the edits Xulon made. When I forgot to save that work, my heart sunk. I could not bring myself to do all that work again. One month turned into two, three, and four. I finally buckled down and yesterday morning finished the typeset corrections. It took the better part of a week and several early mornings at this computer. Now we are one step closer to the dream coming true. 

The title of the book is Prayer: Ministry from the Secret Place. Much of what God has taught me about prayer over the past several decades is packed in the pages. While I do not have a definitive time as to the release of the book, I know that we have crossed the last hurdle with the typeset edits finished and approved. It won't be long. 

I have dedicated all the money from book sales to go toward funding the Spring Creek Community Park our church is in the process of planning for the Spring Creek Community. It is an ambitious project which will end up costing several hundred thousand dollars when it is completed. It is our gift to the Spring Creek Community. That is another dream we long to see come true. God still makes dreams come true. Soon I will hold my dream of this book in my hands. For that I praise God and rejoice that He still makes dreams come true even for this aging preacher.