In The Beginning

It all began as I sat uneasily in a high-back chair while 14 men in a semi-circle studied me intensely through dim candlelight rippled by rising smoke from white sage incense.

I was attending my first Christian men’s retreat. It was May 2015 a few days before my 65th birthday, and it was my turn to be in The Chair.

After long moments of silent prayer, each man, in turn, told me what the Holy Spirt was telling them to say as they studied me. I was not to respond – just listen and be present to their words.

Today, I can’t recall most of what was said in that room. What I do remember, because it struck such a powerful chord in me that night, was three of the men had said, “I see you as a tall shining beacon.”

I can assure you, up to that moment I didn’t see myself as anything close to a tall shining beacon – quite the contrary – but from that moment on I gradually began to see me as God intended. Something else happened that night in the cabin on the San Saba River in central Texas. Without me knowing it, the Holy Spirit had planted a seed that three years later would become my first novel, “The Hidden Saboteur.”

The seed began to sprout a single leaf the following year. At this time in my life, through the patient coaching of my wife and Bible study, I recognized how I was allowing my past to control who I was being. I had been believing a self-perceived lie that I wasn’t good enough for love, happiness, and success. I certainly wasn’t created that way by God – not good enough – so why was I believing it?

Once I realized the deception of that perception, it opened my eyes to how nearly everyone’s life is limited by similar lies – the “not good enough,” the “not worthy,” the “never can do it right.” I wondered what can I do to free people of the chains and limitations of the deception? That was the first leaf of the budding seed.

The second leaf sprung suddenly into my head one day while working in the yard. Three words, “the hidden saboteur,” summarized for me how Satan works inside each of us planting deceptive thoughts and beliefs that limit who we were created to be.

Weeks later, another leaf of the seed appeared. This time in the shape of a vision. I saw a tall lighthouse with its lantern shining brightly out to sea.

There it was. Awareness of self-limiting deception, three words out the blue, and an image of a lighthouse – three ways the Holy Spirit grabbed my attention. And then I understood – I had to write a book.

Eighteen months later, “The Hidden Saboteur,” was released to encouraging reviews, and better yet, more story ideas were forming inside my head.