Go forth with Faith

As a writer, there are plenty of times when I feel like I just need to give up. Sometimes it's a bad review, sometimes, it's the fact that there are no sales. Other times, the very thought of putting myself out there for the whole world to see is so scary that I just want to run back into my house and hide. And writing is not the only thing that I want to give up on sometimes. I had such a stress filled day at work yesterday that it took every ounce of energy in me not to burst into tears. As it stands, I still need a miracle before 9:00am Monday. But, my hope and faith is not in myself.

Whenever I'm giving a difficult task, my boss says, Joana, "I have faith in you". Luckily for me, I take that statement with a grain of salt...I don't trust myself with any task. I give it to God. My faith is in him. I have no doubt that he's placed a tremendous amount of talent in me, but without his input, everything I put out there would be pure rubbish. I bring the effort and God brings the genius. That is why I will not give up on writing or on any of the other things I tend to want to give up on.

 Last night, I was reminded of why I write YA, and why I won't give up. I spent the evening with my church youth group, which I helped lead for a few years. Last night, I was not a leader, but an observer and a helper. I saw people I helped lead to Christ now leading others. I saw young ladies I counselled and mentored, now counselling others. It was an awesome feeling and it reminded me that God has given me something to say to young people through my stories.

So, to you I say, Don't give up. There will be naysayers and the like giving you bad advice. Trust God and have faith in his abilities, not yours. Know where he's taking you and why he's taking you there. Use that knowledge as your reason to go on. It takes faith to move forward when you're not seeing results. But faith is the biggest ingredient in the recipe of Christianity. "Without faith, it is impossible to please God."

Go forth with Faith! 


Joana James - Author of Nightmare at Emerald High & Alana and Alyssa's Secret

Trusting God

Trust is a small word with five little letters; yet a mountain to climb. Trust involves giving away control of some degree or aspect of your belongings, your emotions or your life.

It’s relatively easy to trust someone with your belongings. We lend our friends our books, our cars or even our houses. Trusting others with our emotions might be a little bit more difficult however, we eventually get to the point where we give in. With our lives – that’s whole other ball game. To give over control of the direction your life takes to somebody else is sometimes unfathomable.

But, that is what God requires of us. Proverbs 3:5-6 says to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding.  Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.” Can we really wait for God to tell us which path to take? If you’re impatient like me, you probably don’t like that scripture verse very much. Sometimes I feel like God is taking too long to make stuff happen and I want to do it myself. I’ve found that I always make a bigger mess of things. Exercising a little bit more patience and trust in the one who engineered me always brings the right result at the right time. So why do I/we always try to go back and take control of stuff again, even after we’ve seen God work on our behalf? It’s because, even with evidence of the contrary, letting go of your own destiny and allowing someone else to fulfill it feels like suicide.

So, like hamsters on a wheel, we take control, we mess things up, we give it to God and when he fixes it, we try to take it all back. Over and over and over, we do the same things until something drastic happens to us and God gets our attention.

At the end of the day, if we look back, we’ll see that it would have been so much easier just to trust God in the first place. He’s our creator and he has our best interest at heart.  He also knows the best way to fix any situation in our lives. We trust mechanics with our cars because they know more than we do about how a car functions. God knows much more about us and about how our lives should function than we could ever imagine. Trust Him and watch him come through for you. 

Joana James  - Author of Nightmare at Emerald High & Alana and Alyssa's Secret

Nightmare at Emerald High - The Journey

Before I wrote Nightmare at Emerald High, I thought I’d never be able to write a full length novel. I always loved to write and I’ve written many a short story, but I never broke the novella barrier. Nightmare at Emerald High started off as a project to prove to myself that I could go further and do better. I wrote every waking moment, plotted and worked on my characters whilst on my day job and even stopped to jot down notes during sermons (yes, I made notes for my book during church ). I was determined to make this one happen.

One of the things that helped me most was the fact that I loved my story. Malcolm (my protagonist) was a lonely, geeky teenager who loved computers. In other words, he was the male version of me as a teenager. I put Malcolm through the ringer and had him jumping over boxes and running through never ending hallways and I loved it. That, for me, was the key to breaking the novella barrier. I loved the story. It was something I would pick up from a shelf and buy because it sounded like a fun book. It took me about six weeks to bang out the first draft and I was so proud of myself. Part of me wanted to just print the darn book and place a copy in a frame somewhere!

But of course the hard work had only just begun. After several edits, it was finally ready for the public. My first full length novel and I felt like I’d won a Nobel prize!

So here it is – Nightmare at Emerald High – the synopsis.
Malcolm Drake is one year away from the end of high school when a tantalizing scholarship offer comes his way. Malcolm and several other classmates eagerly join a program called Alternative Science that promises to open their minds to new ways of thinking and of course, help them win that scholarship. Little did they know that this program would change their lives forever. The class is riddled with eerie séances, encounters with spirit guides and a slow desensitization of the teens towards everything evil until they become completely entangled in the world of the occult.

With the program being run by the town's most influential people, the kids have a hard time getting out. Teachers that they trust hold them against their will and try underhanded tactics to convince them to remain in the program. Will good prevail over evil? Will the kids escape with their innocence?

Staci Stallings - Talking to Mountains

Talking to Mountains

By: Staci Stallings

I have a new favorite preacher. He comes on on Sunday morning when I'm getting ready for church. I can get more out of listening to him for three minutes than I get out of most in 30. I'm constantly going, "Man, that's good. I've got to write that down!"

One of the latest revelations from one of his sermons was this: In the verse, "If you had the faith of a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, 'Be thou removed and be cast into the sea,' and it would obey you..." God says we can talk to mountains and command them to move. I've heard this verse many times before, but when Dr. Simpson said, "Understand, in this situation, somebody is talking to somebody," I stopped like slamming on the brakes. "You see, either you are talking TO the mountain, or the mountain will be talking to YOU, but somebody will be doing some talking!"

I'd never thought about it quite like that before, but think for a minute about the attributes of a "mountain." It's BIG for one. Also, we don't normally think of mountains as being on wheels--i.e. they are tough if not impossible to move. Finally, mountains are just "there." They don't seem capable of listening or even caring what we think. They simply stare down at us, proving our smallness to all the world.

Dr. Simpson went on to this effect: You have your own mountains, and you hear them talking. Maybe it's in the middle of the night when you can't sleep. They are talking--telling you that you can't handle this, you are not strong enough to cope with this, that THIS is something you can't ever fix or find a solution for. That mountain continually taunts you to believe in your smallness. In short it says, "This is too big for you."

It's a mountain all right.

I don't know what your mountain is. It might be a financial mountain of debt. It might be a mountain of health problems or social problems. Your family might be your mountain or your lack of faith. Your mountain might be going back to school or deciding to stay home and raise your kids. It might be a friend or former friend. It might be someone who's hurt you terribly. It might even be a dream you thought you had to have but is now slipping from your grasp.

Or maybe it's another kind of mountain--drugs or alcohol, a habit you simply cannot break, a love you can't let go of even though you know it's killing you. Maybe your mountain is your spouse or your children. Maybe it's yourself.

Whatever your mountain is, I'm quite sure you know its voice well. "You can't..." "What's wrong with you..." "Why does this work out for everyone else but never for me..." "Why me...?" "This isn't fair..." "It's just not right..." "If only..."

You've heard your mountain's voice. There's almost no doubt about that. The question is: Has that mountain heard YOUR voice, or even better GOD'S voice?

In order to talk to your mountain, you need some words from The Word--yes, that means The Bible, but it also means The Word that became flesh and dwelt among us. In other words, you need to start hearing the words of Jesus, spoken into your life on a continual basis, so you will learn what to TELL that mountain.

"Mountain, you do not control me because although compared with me, you may be big, compared with my GOD, you are nothing but a grain of dust. Understand me. I am now giving you to my God (that's the having the faith of a mustard seed part--not trying to deal with this on your own, but learning to give those mountains in your life over to God and His wisdom). I am putting you in God's hands. I am trusting in God's love for me more than in the illusion of your power over me. God, please break the illusion of power that this mountain tries to exert in my life. Set me free..."

Talk to that mountain. Talk TO that mountain.

And it will be cast into the sea.

Copyright Staci Stallings, 2008


Staci Stallings, the author of this article, is a Contemporary Christian author and the founder of Grace & Faith Author Connection. Staci has a special surprise for you today and tomorrow only...

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Her blog is at: http://spiritlightbooks.wordpress.com

Praise God in Advance!

Our praise is one of the most powerful weapons that we as Christians have. There are many things that we can accomplish through our praise that we could never accomplish one our own. But what is praise really? Praise is the act of expressing approval or admiration. It is also the offering of grateful homage in words or songs as an act of worship. When we praise God we are telling him that we admire Him, we admire his intervention in our lives and we admire his creations.

When we praise, we confuse the enemy

In 2 Chronicles 20 we see that the Israelites were being threatened by the Moabites, the Ammonites and the Meunites. All these armies came together to fight against them. They formed a very large army and Jehoshaphat did not think that he would be able to beat them. Before he did anything, Jehoshaphat inquired of God what his next move should be. In verse 15-17 God sent his word to Jehoshaphat comforting him. The Lord said to Him “Do not be afraid! Don’t be discouraged by this mighty army, for the battle is not yours, but God’s.”

When I read that verse, I was comforted in my Spirit. The Lord was saying to Jehoshaphat that he need not fight, the battle was not his, but God’s.

Jehoshaphat heeded the word of the Lord and assembled his people, but he did something very pivotal, he placed the singers in front first. Not the warriors, but the singers, the praisers, those who would usher in the presence of God. Jehoshaphat knew that God resides in the praises of his people so he set up a praise. By the time they neared the enemy, their camp was in disarray. The allied army began to fight among themselves. God used the praises of his people to confuse the enemy and they were defeated without even having to fight.

Praise also moves the hand of God

In Joshua 6 we see how the Israelites marched around Jericho for seven days upon the counsel of the Lord. On day seven, when they shouted, the wall of the city came tumbling down. Now, it is not the shout of the people that brought down the wall, but, upon hearing the praise, God moved on their behalf.

Praise God in Advance

Sometimes it is necessary to praise God in advance. We may see a problem that seems insurmountable and nothing that we could ever do would get us out, but praise unto God in spite of our circumstances lets him know that we trust him and we trust his judgment. It says “God, I know that you have my best interest at heart and that you will move on my behalf.” It also says “God, even if you don’t do what I want you do for me, I will still praise you.”

Praise solidifies our relationship with God and shows him that we appreciate his goodness. I encourage you to praise God in advance of your victory and watch the hang of God move on your behalf. Watch him confuse your enemies and watch your situation turn around!

PRAISE GOD IN ADVANCE!


Joana James - Author of Nightmare at Emerald High & Alana and Alyssa's Secret