A Passion for Writing Stories

A Passion for Writing Christ-rooted Stories

My Most Profound Passion

My most profound passion is Christ—knowing, loving, and living Him. My passion for Christ is the heart of my passion for story and informs my writing. The solid realities of my relationship with Him are the foundation stones of all of my stories. Are they preachy? Not at all! They are engaging stories rooted in the reality of who I am and how I view and assess the world around me.

Christ’s Great Passion Is My Passion

Christ’s great passion was to touch people’s lives with truth and to see lives changed for the good via restored relationship with God by faith. He had a heart for fallen mankind, a passion for their restoration that would take Him to Calvary…to die for them. Christ is the ultimate story!

In His passion for restoring mankind He not only preached sermons, such as the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain, but it appears that more often He told stories. Why stories? Because stories illustrate truth, and give it practical application that hits home in a way that discourse often does not.

With discourse I might say, “Wow! That is a great truth!” With story I say, “Wow! So that is how that truth works. That is how truth applies to the way I live.” That is at the heart of my passion for writing stories. When I stand in the pulpit I preach. When I sit down at my computer I tell stories. Oh…I also tell stories when I preach. They give my sermons graspable relevance.

My passion for Story Writing

Christ informs my passion for story writing, but that passion began before I came to faith in Christ. As far back as I can remember I had a passion for story. Stories always seemed to be moiling about in my mind. I would act them out in my play or create them with my “little men.” And from my youth, playing the Authors card game I wanted to become an author. I had a passion to write stories. The passion was not fully fulfilled until later in life, but it was there. Oh, I wrote stories early on, but they were pretty pitiful.

I got serious about writing after my two sons were born. I wrote stories, beginning with The Helot, with the purpose of illustrating life principles in a way they could enjoy, grasp, and to which they could respond, that would stimulate discussion about their lives. I wrote and I wrote—Dark Danger, Terminus, and others—but it was only a few years ago that I began to pursue the publication of my stories. I do not write to make money. I write to touch lives. That is my passion!

What is your passion? Why do you read stories? If you write, why do you write stories?