Into the Fire

If you’ve ever had a flair for drama, you know the value of a supportive audience. As a live performer, you gain energy from an audience response or when you can sense their involvement, their rapt attention. As an actor in television or film, whether or not you say you care about reviews regarding your work, it has to add to the satisfaction when the reviews rate 3 or 4 stars for something you gave your all to. When you’ve laid it all down at the proverbial altar of performance and hear the resounding applause either with adamant hands clapping or the wonderful stroking of encouraging praise in verbal form, it has to be just this side of heaven.

Likewise, if you’re a writer, it is possible to get tremendous responses from your audience. Many authors are surprised by how far-reaching their audiences become, having originally intended their appeal to be to a more specific crowd of readers. It’s exhilarating to learn one’s book has “taken off”, capturing a much wider group.

The instruction remains for a writer to “know” his audience. And certainly this is true. If you write romance, you can readily accept your male audience will be small. If you write high-rolling, fast-paced action stories with few interpersonal relationships, your audience will more likely be male dominated. However, every now and then, an author connects with a mixed group of readers with a story that somehow touches all who read the book.

It has never been disproved that word of mouth is the bestseller of marketing. Even with movies. The pioneer readers or viewers spread the “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down” assessments and, as a result, others either flock to the stores or theatres or stay home and wait until a book is in the library if they still care about reading it, or in a film’s case, wait for the DVD if they still have some curiosity about the movie.

We all have our key words of evaluation for books and movies. We’ve learned who of our friends, relatives, associates and/or critics have similar tastes and can rightly tell us what we need to know before we invest in either. If we’ve established a “relationship” with a particular author and his books, a particular actor or director’s films, we become anxious to read or see the next one. We look for the release dates. And we are generally faithful until they disappoint us more than once.

The most important audience to a Christian writer is the original Author of all creativity. He reigns supreme, and His approval is far and away the most important of all. At least to me.

There is some liberality in the interpretation of writing for God—the opinions are as varied as the denominations in the faith. And since our Lord is not to be boxed into mere opinions of His preferences and what pleases Him, the best source of that information is His Word. The Bible points out that His entire relationship with people is borne out of love—He being the embodiment of Love, Truth, and the apparent Way to everything holy and righteous and valuable. Without knowing Jesus Christ, all of those things are unattainable. People just can’t have them in and of themselves. In fact, generally speaking, people don’t even want them unless God intervenes in their lives.

So, that leaves us writers with a lot of material for our novels. The human condition in all of its various states of disarray, dismay, dysfunction—never-ending without the touch of Jesus—can be captured honestly and still maintain a reverence for both the Audience of One and the specific—or not—readers who troll the bookshelves for something to enrich them with entertainment and enjoyment through challenges, humor, sorrow, sacrifice, or shame.

It just seems to me . . . that as a writer who is a Christian, above all others I want to honor the Lord with my writing. I don’t want it to be marginally directed toward that goal. I’m not the best writer, but I can give Him my best effort since He’s the one who’s given me the stories. I submit that effort to His direction, to His sovereignty, to the steps ordained for me in Christ. The answers to my questions, the results of my labors, any honor gained or ministry accomplished all belong to Him, the Creator, the Giver of good and perfect gifts.

Father, you have allowed me the privilege and pleasure of sharing words in story form. Thank you. Thank you for characters I can explore and learn to love. Thank you for life caught in story. Thank you for the ordinary and the supernatural. Thank you for spiritual Truth. May all that I do in obedience to you cause a smile and be a blessing to you. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.