Do you Minimizie God or your Problem? From Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power

Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power…

Happy Friday to you …. Thanks for coming by for our Power Friday and a little coffee break. I know many of you are busy with Harvest/Halloween celebrations, whether with/for your kids or yourselves, so I won’t keep you too long today. Grab your coffee and come on in.
Several weeks ago, I submitted a curriculum to a new publisher that I know that I know that He wrote through me. It’s about hurts, habits and hang-ups and we (CPM) have actually been using it in our Transform Trench Classes. I was super excited about working with this new publisher for a few reasons: they are a division of Thomas Nelson/Zondervan, the largest traditional publishers in the world, and so our curriculum would have their logo on it, or so I was assured. In addition, the sales rep explained that every manuscript I submitted would increase my chances of being picked up as an author for Thomas Nelson/Zondervan. Well, let’s really inundate them, I though and in my zealous self, I actually gave them one of my Cup books to re-publish, thinking now I have two chances!
In the process, I’ll have to confess, there have been a few warning lights going off; you know, that yellow light you try and speed through before it turns red? Oh, how true it is that hindsight is 20/20 but His grace is sufficient for me! [2^nd Corinthians 12:9]
Anyway, right before I blew completely through the light getting ever so orange, I put the brakes on and asked a couple of questions, questions that caused me to skid in the intersection of this move!
See, I discovered through a series of events and a conversation that I insisted on having with my project coordinator, that I had been mislead. Yes, the same people that look at content for Thomas Nelson and Zondervan are the same people that look at the manuscripts from this publisher … AFTER the work is published and they determine how well it’s selling.
Disappointment poured through every cell of my body as I hung up the phone, preventing me from speaking, but giving my eyes permission to well up. I won’t edify the enemy by sharing some of the most negative thoughts that ran through my soul like tiny spiders growing bigger by the moment, but I will say I was able to step back within a few moments and seek Him for direction.
I didn’t hear a loud audible voice giving me directions with specificity and an exact route to go, but I will say just that morning, before even having this conversation with my contact person at the new publisher’s, I was reminded of something I’d heard a couple of years ago about how God will promote that which He’s written. Later on that night I received a confirmation along that very same directive, and it helped me to truly step back, not be in a hurry and go a different direction.
Once I took that new direction, I felt a peace and knew I was on to something, and I can’t wait to see what transpires because of it. I am doing my homework and letting God do the rest. That is where this power thought comes from:

We minimize God when we maximize our struggles!

See, for a while, my focus was on getting published by a traditional publisher, and of course with the right intentions in mind: To help others with their hurts, habits and hang-ups, but oh, how easy it was to blow through that yellow light and lose focus by maximizing that goal/struggle.
How many times have we run ahead of God whining about our troubles and struggles, minimizing our God’s sovereignty and will for our lives ultimately maximizing ourselves?
Father, forgive me for running ahead of you and losing focus, for thinking I had to find a publisher for your curriculum. I just want it to happen yesterday! Thank you for gently reminding me that you have my best interest at heart, that your ways are not my ways, and for nudging me ever so gently, then pulling me back so that my focus is not on the daunting dilemma of publishing and getting this curriculum into the hands and hearts of those struggling with hurts, habits and hang-ups, but on maximizing all that you have given me in the area of writing because my heart is entwined with yours.
Oh, that we would maximize our God!

Evinda

Faith-Filled Friday @ Coffee Hour with Chicklit Power

Thanks for joining me for our Faith-Filled Friday! I am looking forward to discovering things from the Hall of Faith that strengthen your faith and mine. Let’s grab our coffee and our faith and begin.

We are finally at the actual recorded Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11! Let me tell you, I hope you are hungry! Grab a big plate and some good utensils to feast with because there is a lot of meat here! I’m sure we’ll find our vegetables and lots of sweetness along the way as well. 

So the very first portion/verse says that “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” And what’s the difference between faith and hope? Hope is innate while faith is His gift to us upon confessing that we are a sinner in need of a savior! Even an atheist has an inclination toward hoping for certain things.

Have you ever witnessed hope come to life in the midst of a tragedy? Recently, a friend of mine who is a sweet sister in the Lord experienced tragedy in her family and it involved her nephew. He had been involved in a serious car accident that left him with extensive brain damage. Death was knocking on his door. While he lay in a coma, many of his family members surrounded him, cemented by his bedside with hope. I don’t know how many or who of those in his family were at that moment in their lives without a relationship with Christ, but when this young man showed signs of actually feeling pain, their hope was renewed that maybe, just maybe death would leave and life would remain intact.

Their hope turned them toward the possibility of faith in Christ. Were they searching more for a miracle than they were for the miracle maker? That’s not for you or me to ascertain; it was just a reminder to me that often, for a nonbeliever, hope stirs up our faith. And for those of us who have been walking with the Author of our Faith for awhile, the reverse is also true: Faith reminds us to hope and in “Whom” to hope!

What is an example of “the evidence of things not seen”? Well, in fact, every example in the Hall of Faith is unseen by us, but our faith accepts each example in the Hall of Faith as true. We know and understand that the common thread in the Hall of Faith is the Author of their faith.

But let’s narrow the lens to things not seen in this life, our here and now. The very first thing that comes to mind is redemption. Another is transformation. Redemption and transformation are not physical things that we can grasp with our physical eyes; but they are the evidence of things seen with the eyes of our heart.

As I shared in the beginning of this series, my faith wasn’t just born full-grown and adult-like. I didn’t have that miraculous introduction where I came to Jesus and immediately had no more junk and was free from myself! No, He’s taken me through an unpacking process, to and through some things to strengthen, refine and purify my faith. And all the while, He remained behind the scenes, unseen.

Just because I can’t physically see Him working, the eyes of my heart are opened to His working all things together for my good and His glory, thus fulfilling His promise: to build me up and not tear me down, to give me a future . . .

What about you; what is He doing for you behind the scenes that can’t be seen with your physical eyes but you know in your heart you see?

Join me next Friday for more of this faith-filled series!

Evinda

Publication Update-From Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power

Thanks so much for joining me today for a little break and some publication news! Grab your coffee and come on in and get comfy. I may keep you a few minutes longer today.

Wow, I just realized I haven’t posted a publication update blog since May, and a lot has happened since then! Let me cut to the chase and give you the exciting news that the second in the “Cup” series has just been released, A Cup of Hope for the Day,” and its official release date for the press, bookstores, et cetera, will be January of 2013! You should see the book. It looks so amazing, thanks to my assistant/graphic designer, Jocelyn Fletcher! It will be a bit before it’s available through Amazon, but if you don’t want to wait, you can go through our website’s gift store or even schedule or attend a Girls’ Night Out (food, fun, fellow-shipping and snacks too with one to two women-owned businesses and myself. Just invite your friends, promote it and we’ll do the rest!)

It’s hard to believe that I have three books out in print! Now the task of partnering with Him to get them out there into hands and hearts! As this journey is nearing three years now, or more, I’m losing track, I have to admit I am a different person, a person who is minus several more layers, being emptied of me that more of Him may reach out to others needing encouragement and hope for the journey. This weekend was an incredible reminder of that emptying. I will never forget what it feels like to “feel” as though I don’t belong, like the mere presence of my books is an insult to the intellectuals in attendance at the C.S. Lewis Writers’ Conference. I can’t even tell you how many times I asked Him: “Why am I here,” only to hear, “Trust me,” which I did and I continue to do. Seriously, have you ever gone to like a Star Trek convention? Well, that is what this felt like, only based on C.S. Lewis and his works, which I am only beginning to delve into. I felt so out of place, like I was drowning in my lack of knowledge.

The reason I got here in the first place is nothing less than a divine appointment so I won’t bore you with those details. I came to the workshop to learn, to be of some help, to network, and for the chance opportunity to speak with the attending agent, Steve Laube. OMG, I just remembered that I began to pray about this whole agent thing a few months ago, whether that would be the route to take or…. It gives me goose bumps now that I think about it.

Anyway, every time I passed the book table loaded with many of C.S. Lewis’s works and Tolkin’s, too, and then look off to the corner to see Evinda Lepins, sticking out like a sore thumb with literature for chicks, I asked myself, Really? Why am I here? By Friday afternoon, I felt like a bull in a china cabinet every time I walked by and I said to Becka, the books store manager, “My books don’t belong here.”

She says, “What do you write?”

I went on to explain to her that my “cups” are sort of like Chicken Soup for the Chick’s soul, and that I had my first novel release in June of this year and I gave her the 30 second version about it being about a girl who goes through a painful divorce and a year later enters the dating world while juggling single parenting and a career and that’s about all I got out when she stopped me, her eyes growing big and suddenly sort of glassy, like water.

“My very good friend has just gone through that, and her divorce is almost final.” She was so stuck on emotion, she could barely get all the words out and then she continued. “She will be here tomorrow.”

Her words worked like a push and this time it was my turn for glassy, watery eyes. I thanked her and walked away, heading to my next workshop, reminded that I had not gotten here of my own and maybe it wasn’t about what He was going to do for me, but what I was willing to do for Him, and where I was willing to go for Him.

It didn’t help that we had little to no signal so I couldn’t really reach out to anyone so instead, I reached up, which is exactly what I needed to do. I met some amazing people. Diana Pavlac Glyer taught my favorite writing class of the day. She is an amazing woman of God, a professor at Azusa Pacific University, the one who started the potter’s hands ministry, and has just released a devotional entitled “Clay in the Potter’s Hands,” which I bought and can hardly wait to begin. She has such a gentle, humble spirit and as I listened to her share and teach, uncontrollable tears of wisdom and revelations trickled like a slow stream down my face and onto my notes. I found such solace and encouragement in the reality of the truth that writing is a process and by the time we reach the end of the project, we are nowhere near the same person we were in the beginning.

By dinner time Friday, I was at peace, knowing I didn’t need a reason to be here; I just needed to be there in all the moments, soaking them all up, because my treasures weren’t coming in book sales, but in learning more of the art in writing more books for His glory and edification and not my own!
Please join me tomorrow for more on this update, which I know has turned into sort of a short story – sorry about that – but there really is something more to do with publication news having everything to do with this journey’s twists and turns of adventure and growth!

Joyfully,

Evinda

P.S. Join me and Steve today for Blog Talk Radio as we continue on in the Breaking Free from Co-Dependency series of our Destination? Joyful! ™ show.