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Hi Linyang ( @devastate-lasting ),

To your question:

My overall theme is “Lordship”.  I find that one lacking in the myriad offerings of Christian fiction.  “Redemption” is always the more prevalent one since the story arc is fairly clear, but I wanted to take it further than just into the “saving” of the MC or ancillary characters.  To me, salvation is the beginning of life for the redeemed.  It is a powerful and compelling story to be sure, but the real challenge that influences the wider world is seeing how that redemption is worked out into the person’s life and the difference it makes in how they adjust to the renewing of their mind.

Romans 12:2 says:
“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what [is] that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

If the difference doesn’t show in the rebirth, one wonders whether true repentance actually occurred.  The walking into the “newness of life” is what gets people’s attention.  It is not just in securing salvation, by faith alone, but by the evidence of the fruit that comes out of learning to abide as a newly grafted branch into The Vine.  What fruits are in the DNA of The Vine, should show up in the grafted branch, but there is a pruning that God as “The Vinedresser” does to us.  See the following:

“Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every [branch] that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. [John 15:2 NKJV]

When we are saved by grace, our spirit is reborn and we are called a “new creation”, but we are awakened onto a battlefield, where the Enemy of our soul has just suffered a defeat and loss of us as his possession.  He declares war on us, but greater is He that is IN us, than “he” that is in the world, so the outworking is our realization of who we NOW are in Christ, and how we have to reassess our old way of living according to the flesh and yield to the urgings of the new nature that is placed within us.  Jesus is not just the Savior of our lives, He wants to be Lord of it, and as we learn more of this new faith, we learn to rely on Him more and not our old way of doing things.  We find greater liberty in that and greater freedom, because we are no longer in bondage to the chains of sin that held us, prisoner, for so long.  In that Lordship walk, we are met with temporary defeats, because we are fledglings, infants in our new discoveries.  But as we gain momentum by learning to take all of our cares and directions from Him in His patient teaching and things revealed to us in Scripture and our own personal learning curve, we develop, we grow, we become more battle-ready and battle-hardened with each building experience of God’s evident power meeting us in each challenge and difficulty we face.  As we surrender the old ways and strongholds, He takes Lordship over them, and that is a powerful transformation to witness.  This is what my WIP is about.  Finding and discovering the implications of our newborn faith, employing these conclusions in the conflicts.  Taking back territory that the enemies of our souls have stolen, under the authority of He who now lives in us, and wants to transform our lives by living through us, even if it means storming the very gates of hell.

For this reason, my principal characters are all believers in various stages of maturity in their new life.

I wanted to address the creditability issue of Christian messaging.  I have often thought, how can I tell a lost person that Jesus is THEIR answer, if I am not learning that He first is MY answer in a real and meaningful way that transforms me and cause me to bear fruit in evidence of my heart change.

It struck me that the Great Commission always begins in the immediate spot where it lands and only then it is charged to expand outward.  If Jesus isn’t making a difference in Me then I will always have a problem convincing someone else that He can make a difference for them.  What is needed is for me to grow up in experiential and experimental faith walking, and letting God be Himself through me.  My focus then is for those who are Jesus’s sheep.  We are told to make disciples, not converts.  God does the converting.  But we are called to join with one another and encourage one another to live out loud this freedom and liberty that now comes from making Him Lord.  That is my WIP mission.  It is for Christians, like me, to find that sweet spot, where God does amazing things through a yielded vessel that seeks His sufficiency and not their own.

I know I give long answers, but it is because I respect the question and the questioners too much not to give a thoughtful and considered reply.  I hope you and all the others can be patient with me.