Into the Fire

Passionate thoughts about the world of writing and the Power of God

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Passionate: right or wrong. Writes love stories with a passion. Raw Romantic Redemptive

  • Involved in . . . The Chase

     

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    DiAnn Mills is a prolific bestselling author. You don't get to be either of those things without having a solid and abundant audience. The Chase is my first Mills' novel, and in reading this romantic suspense, not heavy on the romance, I can understand why she has steady readers. Reviewed here for the CFBA Tour, The Chase keeps what starts out as two simple plotlines evolving into complex issues with two primary conflicted characters leading the way.

    FBI Special Agent Santiago Harris (Tigo) is the classic rogue player who will if necessary barge headlong into situations that could easily take him down. Successful author of women's fiction and former news anchor Kariss Walker has pursued the case of a young Hispanic girl coined "Cherished Doe" found starved to death near a Houston low-rent apartment district for several years. A now cold-case, she wants to write a novel about the girl, making it a suspense, and her uppity New York literary agent refuses to back her new effort. In order to re-investigate the case and do the proper research, Kariss engages her old friend in the FBI. He assigns her to the reluctant agent Tigo who's way deep in an investigation of gun running by a powerful Houston gang. Trying to figure out all the players through his informant turns out badly. When Kariss is inadvertently involved in a gang shooting at the hospital, Tigo now has to figure out how to protect her along with everything else.

    A mutual admiration develops between the two with each one recognizing certain likable qualities in each other while respect forms. It isn't heavy-handed or silly attraction but it's there for both of them to fight off and deny. The wide net of all suspected involvements by wealthy investors into this gang activity presents the frustrating problem of connecting all the links in this complex chain. During this process, Kariss aids and hinders the investigation making some stupid and life-threatening choices because of her desire to rectify some serious wrongs.

    If I had to fault the story, I might suggest Kariss's parents came off a little too spiritually dogmatic and stereotypical, and Kariss as a co-protagonist wasn't easy to warm up to which was probably intentional. Some of her decisions might have conjured up her journalistic history with TV reporting, but, really?

    For DiAnn Mills' fans I'm sure The Chase will provide satisfying entertainment. It's cleanly written with a variety of well-illustrated characters, and as the investigations seem to merge, the intensity escalates. DiAnn knows her audience, and this one will provide them with what they want and expect.

     

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Chase-Novel-Crime-Houston/dp/0310333172/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332732700&sr=1-1

    Father, you've given DiAnn multiple stories to tell. I pray you would continue to bless her in every area of her career and life pursuits. May she always look to you for all of her needs. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.   

  • Sunday’s Offerings

     

    Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world – the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does – comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

    1 John 2:15-17 (NIV)

  • ****Political Update****

     

    From the ACLJ:

    Earlier today, Jay and I spent most of Jay Sekulow Live! discussing ObamaCare’s new $1 abortion surcharge. It struck us during the conversation that the bureaucratic and legal complexities of ObamaCare were making the issue difficult to understand. So here’s how you can understand the controversy in three easy steps.

    Step 1: As most people understand, ObamaCare requires every American to purchase insurance. This requirement – the individual mandate – is the legislation’s most notorious feature and will be the subject of intense argument at the Supreme Court next week. However, the mandate is only the tip of the ObamaCare iceberg.

    Step 2: Under the provisions of ObamaCare, the federal government dictates what is and is not insurance acceptable to meet the mandate’s requirements. In other words, the Department of Health and Human Services has very broad rulemaking power to define what insurance will – and will not – cover and the cost of that coverage. This rulemaking power is the source of the now-famous battle over contraception mandates.

    Step 3: As part of its rulemaking power, HHS is proposing a $1 abortion surcharge that will require individuals who purchase certain health insurance plans to pay an additional monthly surcharge for abortion coverage. According to early reports, individuals enrolled in those plans would not be able to opt out of the surcharge alone and would only be informed of its existence during enrollment. If you opt out of the surcharge, you would have to opt out of your plan entirely and may not be able to find a suitable replacement.

    If all this sounds complex, it is. And if you think it’s a clever gimmick to both compel and deceive millions of Americans into directly subsidizing abortions, you’re right. The Obama administration is one of the most radically pro-abortion administrations in American history. After all, President Obama is the same person who – as a state senator – voted against born-alive infant protection in Illinois, his administration is attempting to force states to fund Planned Parenthood and he’s now using the fine print of ObamaCare to subsidize abortions.

    But the battle is not over. Pro-life members of Congress are mobilizing, and you can lend them vital support if you sign our petition today.

     

    God, help us, please. We're truly desperate for you. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

  • Bastion

     

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    What comes to mind? A castle? A bunker? A fortress? A citadel?

    Probably not the bastion of the mind. The place where we hide things we can't face. Or the place where we deposit painful experiences because we know the protection sustains those things not easily accessed.

    Some are constructed hastily. In the moment. Others take years to build as we add onto the structure piece by hurtful piece. Containment. It's what we expect from our bastions. Protection from the life-thwarting daggers of certain episodes in life.

    Who would've thought we'd need to erect a stronghold to keep us from ourselves? To deny us passage into the dark corridors we'd rather not admit exist.

    Writing forces us to charge the barricade, to demand the drawbridge lowered, to storm into the chilling entance and stand transfixed by gaining entry. We look with wonder, our torches high and flaming, surveying what we've become and what we've failed to overcome. The story gushes forth like a frothy, foaming poison threatening to douse us in its liquid death, but since we seem planted – even paralyzed – by both its beauty and its horror, we stand still, and it comes right to us and infuses our nostrils with its hot danger but subsides before forcing us to breathe its annihilation.

    We've trespassed our hidden limits. And survived. Recorded our innermost fears. Revealed our pungent emotions. Wondering who will be offended by our truths.

    The bastions of writers: conquered. Again.

    Father, we need you to reveal who we are at our core. You know us where we've hidden. We're desperate for you, Lord. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.  

  • Confess . . .

     

               PRAY

    Guilt, real or perceived, eats us up from the inside out. If we choose to set it aside, attempt to ignore it, compartmentalize it, or blow it off, bad things happen. Maybe not right away. And maybe not to the point where some of us truly recognize the damage, but that collision of right and wrong causes reactions in the visible and invisible.

    Doing something wrong is common to all of us from the time we're told "no" and do it anyway right up until the end of our lives. Maybe we get better at minimizing our wrongdoing, but we never quite master it. Hovering around those actions of error is confession.

    The crux of crucifixion presented the horrific display of what guilt warranted and how the punishment delivered a sealed proclamation that the actions which produced guilt were no longer binding. Forgiveness was issued. In full. Requirement? Confess. Repent. Receive.

    Writing fiction gives us an opportunity to confess. We bring characters to the page with all kinds of flaws and we commit them to errors, to cruelty, to joy, to devotion, to hatred, to . . . humanity. And in that humanity we openly display ourselves and reveal those things which must be confessed as wrong, as errant, as sin. We confront the depravity and the sweetness of the human soul and we allow readers to consume us. Some will spit us out, and others will hold the flavor of our words like their favorite Lifesavers. We may be what we eat, but we most certainly are what we write. Maybe not in physical demonstrations but in mental exercises. We simply must abide in those things we write in order to capture a measure of reality in the painted pictures of our chosen words. Think of the fragments of a broken mirror which remain in its frame. Look into that mirror and see the pieces of who you are: fractured, divided, still connected. It  must be duplicated on the page.

    Because at some point, we all must confess. 

     

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    Father, I confess my struggles with sin everyday. And everyday I ask that you would continue to work in me, continue to forgive me, and I thank you for doing just that. Amazing love, how can it be . . . In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

  • Crows . . .

     

    Whether or not you like the black birds, they demonstrate multiple antics which both amaze and repulse different people. Often viewed as more intelligent than the average bird, their quirky personalities and squawking calls have entertained and annoyed, depending on one's feelings for the symbolic creatures.

    In the background of this short video which is shot from the south end of Emerald Downs – the racetrack which attempted to replace the hallowed Longacres, both places where we raced for many years - you will see the georgous and stately Mt. Rainier reigning over our general area and visible for miles and miles as well as from the racetrack.

    Enjoy the phenomenon.

    http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/picturethis/2017734021_symphonyofcrows.html

     

    Father, your creation never ceases to amaze. Thank you for its many beauties. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

  • Climb . . .

     

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    Higher, farther.

    Oxygen sucked from air and words disappear in vapor.

    Clawing at the cliffs of experience.

    Waiting for the memory to form from the present

    And the make believe.

    Knowing perfection cannot come

    But hoping its cousin will delight on the page.

    Crushing the fingers pressing on keys.

    Exhales that sound like the pounding

    and whooshing of waterfalls.

    The climb to the pinnacle vacillates

    Between folly and failure.

    Hoping for fanfare.

    Receiving a whiff.

    God, needing you in it all. So much. Always. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

     

  • Broken . . .

     

     

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    "I write for adults who might have been broken along the way, who faced sexual temptations and failed, who clung to their purity but succumbed to what they thought was love; to those who feel passion but wonder how God feels about it; who've partaken of what the world offers and come up empty; for those who've stayed faithful, and for those who are waiting for the one God has for them no matter how lonely it can be."

    I wrote the above description a few years ago. It still applies. Even in my new effort which is a police procedural, this general theme surfaces throughout the story. It's been said – and debated – ad nauseam "write what you know". I know what it's like to have noble intentions only to watch them erode and crumble away like the stalwart cliffs that meet the ocean's incessant pounding.

    Life doesn't easily accommodate our best intentions. We, as individuals and collectively, continue to place obstacles in our paths because of our imperfections from our sin nature. Those who don't recognize Christianity's definition of the fallen state of man continue to believe in an attainable utopia where all things they think are possible can be accomplished by them with the cooperation of others.Oftentimes when things go wrong, it's the fault of others who fail to see things the way they do. There is nothing quite so arrogant as a staunch belief in one's own abilities or in the overall capabilities of mankind.

    When you attempt to achieve love without the Creator, you find a self-serving relationship laden with sacrificial tendencies, usually one moreso than the other. Human love is rife with imbalance, narcissism, convenience, resentment, finger-pointing, and martyrdom.

    Christian love is difficult enough. All the tendencies of human love warring against the kind of love that puts another before oneself grind on the souls of those who attempt to truly love. People break down in the process. They stumble, fall, and refuse to stand; some never recover, abandoning their character and returning to the mire of failure, of the world's version of love sans any form of sacred union. Others reach out for forgiveness and start the long and arduous trek back to spiritual solvency, to gain that sacred trust once again and to rebuild the shredded sinews of the heart of love. 

    I've stumbled so many times before and after Christ. I've contemplated staying in the mire, but when Jesus rescued me the contrast was so distinct the decision was made to never return. Sometimes the devastation of falling is so severe, I've doubted I could stand again, but submitting to the strength of heavenly arms willing to hoist me up and clean me off is unequaled to anything the world offers.

    So. What am I really saying? I write for me. And people like me . . .

    God, thank you is never enough. Jesus, thank you for being real. Holy Spirit, thank you for the whispers of truth. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

  • Sunday’s Offerings

     

    But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them – bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.

    2 Peter 2:1-3 (NIV)

  • ****Political Update****

     

    Taking HHS to Federal Court in Defense of Religious Liberty

     

    The ACLJ filed suit in federal court on behalf of a business owner arguing that President Obama's abortion pill mandate violates religious liberty by forcing abortion coverage.

    Read it at the ACLJ's Docket Blog

     

    Pastor Youcef Alive as ACLJ Launches Tweet for Youcef Brazil

     

    Our contacts on the ground in Iran confirmed as of Friday afternoon that Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani is alive just as the ACLJ launched a new Tweet for Youcef campaign for Brazil in Portuguese.

    Read it at the ACLJ's Docket Blog

     

    ObamaCare's Abortion Funding Rule Finalized

     

    The Obama Administration finally admits that ObamaCare will use taxpayer money to fund abortions.

    Read it at the ACLJ's Docket Blog

     

    Majority Of Americans Oppose Obama's Abortion Pill Mandate

     

    A recent poll reveals that a majority of Americans agree that no one should have to choose between their religious beliefs and breaking the law.

    Read it at the ACLJ's Docket Blog

     

    Engaging Iran at the United Nations to Free Pastor Youcef

     

    Pastor Youcef's imprisonment is being brought before the UN at the Human Rights Council where Iran finally admitted the case against Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani involves his Christianity.

    Read it at the ACLJ's Docket Blog

     

    Father, we pray for your mercy on our nation. We pray you will intervene as you hear our prayers of repentance. Lord God, we're still and always desperate for you. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.