Purging fires of a Manuscript

Every time an author is sent the cover of a new book there is great excitement. That long sweated over manuscript is actually going to be a book! 

Not long ago Ray had this happen for the fourth book in his 31 Day Devotional Meditation series. He has been very busy with emails going to and fro from his wonderful publisher, Rochelle Manners at Even Before Publishing. 

Today he shares a little of what he is feeling today as BETHLEHEM'S WARRIOR BABY goes to print.

And yes, while Ray is rather reluctant to add having his own blog to his busy programme, it will happen - when time permits. Until then he continues to share his thoughts here with us on my/our blog and I trust you are blessed and challenged as much as I am. 

Ray writes:

Oh, if only I was inspired in my writing!

To sit at the computer and type away confident that every word falls into place, every illustration is apt, every quote is accurate. Oh, what bliss I imagine that would be.

Alas, I’m not inspired. I’m just a writer with conviction and a desire to see my thoughts in print so I write. However what I write has to be put through various ‘fires’ before the manuscript emerges complete. Only then can the invisible imprint be scorched into the book. What are the ‘imprints’? ABH (approved by heaven) and ATP (acceptable to publisher)!

May I share with you some of those purging fires through which I have to travel with my manuscript?

There are the flames which consume the concepts of the themes I have in mind. So many ideas are burnt as being unnecessary or repetitive. That which emerges now needs hammering into chapters.

Here is the next furnace. Facts and quotes, illustrations and verses are subjected to their appropriateness for specific chapters as well as the necessary format. In essence these initial ‘fires’ are cool compared to what is ahead.

Oh, the burning sensations I endure as my manuscript is tested by various rewrites, preliminary drafts and quality control inspections!  How many times am I expected to endure such heat? Guess that depends on how much dross remains after each application of the searching flame.

As if that wasn’t enough I have to hand my hard, scorched work over to an editor and proof reader. Their oven seems to be seven times hotter than mine. Their boiler room reveals misplaced commas, inconsistent settings, unnecessary jargon and irrelevant verbosity. These people have sharp eyes, quick minds geared to language usage and the ability to see the impact such words will have on the readers. This is really the most purifying part of the process through which my manuscript must emerge.

The last fire my manuscript endures is called ‘the final check’. Actually that term is a misnomer for I’ve had to do my ‘final check’ a few times.

All of this takes time and effort. It is perspiring work. It leaves me (and others associated with the various fires) weary. However as I handle the completed manuscript ready to be printed I am thankful and appreciative of those who have stoked the flames to their most effective temperature.

Now I must wait to see how the readers respond to the purging my writing and I have endured.  Whatever their reaction this I know, I’m not inspired but I have a desire to write. It continues to take me through the various fires to produce a manuscript with ‘ABH’ and ‘ATP’ scorched into it!

Raymond (with scorch marks) N. Hawkins

Need a special, different Christmas present for someone? Keep Bethlehem's Warrior Baby in mind. And may the fire purge not only our manuscript's mistakes but our very hearts before our Holy God who sent His Son to be that Warrior Baby.

Ray on Monday - Jesus was a Fundamentalist

Whoa! Hold on. Don’t jump to unfounded conclusions. He wasn’t a terrorist but He was and remains a fundamentalist.

The unfortunate fact in society is the corruption of language. Someone apparently aligned the word terrorist with fundamentalist by stating how one leads to another. To lock every political theory and religious belief into such a link is unfair and unfounded.

Fundamental simply means foundational, essential. What did Jesus consider foundational for His ministry? The Jewish scriptures from Genesis to Malachi. ‘It is written’ was His conviction. People and events considered as fictitious by some critics Jesus endorsed as real. Such critics make excuses for Jesus’ conviction as simply being a man of his time. Any attempt to squeeze Jesus into a mould of conforming to the age actually undermines His total credibility. Where would you stop?

By faith based upon biblical knowledge and historical certainty, Christians believe Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God. Therefore we hold what He believed and said as well as what He did as fundamental to our understanding and appreciation of Him.

To be a Christian fundamentalist is to live according to the teaching of Christ. How can you link Him to terrorism when He said, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven…’ Matthew 5:44-45. He practiced this when He was unjustly crucified. Remember His prayer, ‘Father forgive them, they know not what they do!’

There are groups whose fundamental beliefs allow for and encourage death, deceit and destruction. Such are terrorists. No fair-minded person would place Jesus and His teachings anywhere near such perverted ideologies.

Jesus the fundamentalist offers abundant life, not death. He gives power to leave the kingdom of evil and join in His kingdom of grace and love. He promises to be with His disciple, unseen yes but nonetheless real, as the disciple walks in the light of Christ’s words. Such fundamentalism is good for time and eternity. I guess that makes me a fundamentalist.

Ray (a disciple of Christ) Hawkins.

RAY ON MONDAY - Whether We Like It Or Not

God is getting bad press, again! He rules in heaven but earthlings delight in expressing their independence of Him. When their plans go wrong, God is at fault. When a debate arises about qualifying for entrance into glory God seems to be expected to defend His standard. Why? Because it discriminates against personal assessments of their perfection! God is unfair, unjust, unloving, unkind to exclude anyone from Heaven.

It’s interesting that so many demand the right to independent action even when it is contrary to a set standard of God’s revealed word. Complaints stream from their mouths when things go wrong and consequences roll over them. When you explain that God’s standards would have prevented such repercussions they object. Why? God is seen as a ‘party pooper.’

If God imposed His will over us, He would be viewed as a tyrant. If He lets us have free range He is fun, until we crash. Then the Lord is uncaring. When He offers us a choice of destinies and the one chosen leads to an eternal sadness, we criticise Him for having two roads. Sometimes when our choice leads to an eternal joy the human heart can too often think they have earned it.

Whether we like it or not we have the right of choices. We do not however have power over the consequences. There are many illustrations dealing with choices in the Bible. Perhaps the best is Matthew 7:13-14. There is the Broadway and the Narrow way. The former is rejection of and indifference to Christ Jesus, the cross and Godly living. The fun offered at the beginning becomes despair and poison along the way to destruction. The narrow way appears stark and demanding, yet opens up to the traveller meaning, hope, joy and the companionship of the Lord God.

One day we will all appear before Heaven’s Judge, whether we like it or not. The decision He makes about each person’s destiny is easy. It will depend upon the road each has travelled, whether we like it or not.

How do you cross from the Broadway to the Narrow way? It is only possible by calling out to Jesus Christ to pull you out and place you in the acceptable way. This is a Faith issue whereby you make Him Lord and Saviour of your life and destiny. That is why Jesus is called ‘The Way, the Truth and the Life.’ He is the way to the Father’s presence. John 14:6.

Ray (on the narrow way) Hawkins.

Ray's three books of his 31 Day Devotional series, as illustrated on the right, are available at Christian bookshops - especially in Australia and New Zealand - as print books and also as E-books. (Captured By Calvary still to become available on Kindle, but all three on Koorong (Australia) and Word Australia websites.)
 All our books can be purchased from our website using PayPal. 
Cost: Ray's books are AUD$10 each and the Baragula books AUD$20 each - plus postage of course. Click here for our website and email us for more information

Ray on Monday - JESUS IN THE CRITIC’S TOMB

 Ever since the angel said ‘He (Jesus) is risen’ critics have sprung up to say it didn’t happen, couldn’t happen, wouldn’t happen or shouldn’t happen. Among the first were the group who arranged for Christ’s crucifixion. They are the ‘Hysterical Critics’. All they had to do was arrange daily tours to the sealed tomb to prove their point. If on the other hand the claim was the body snatchers had done their work, a trial would have won their day.

Since that first century we could call the next group of doubters the ‘Historical Critics’. As they look back on this event and put it into their perception of events from that era they come to two views. One view is Jesus didn’t exist. The other is He did exist but one way or another He died and His bones are still in the tomb.

Strange how these critics, with their inevitable sense of superior insights, call into question the character, veracity and suffering of those who agreed with the angel’s declaration. Remember, the apostles and others had no vested interest in promoting an untruth. Their conviction that Jesus had risen and ascended to glory, as Scripture foretold, landed them into all shades of strife. Disowned by family, ostracised by their nation, persecuted by foe and friend and ultimately ‘enjoying’ a horrible death must say something.

What do you think it says? They were deluded? All of them, all the time, under all types of testing? They knew the truth, experienced the wonder, and were willing to stand true to the facts!

As you read history and the numerous, sceptical critics comments about Christ Jesus and the empty tomb, one thing stands out! All want to put Him back in the tomb. He is less confronting there. The trouble comes when He keeps breaking out from their prison. Truth seekers still meet Him in the course of their search and rise up, sometimes at great personal cost, to prove the critics wrong.

“He is risen” is the testimony of history.
“He is risen” is the declaration of faith.
“He is risen” is the verdict of research.
“He is risen” is the challenge to critics.

Ray (convinced He is risen) Hawkins

Ray on Monday - GOLGOTHA

Question:
What does some outlaw bike group’s emblem, a pirate’s flag and Hitler’s elite army group have in common?

Answer. A skull!

This portrayal of death reveals a morbid fascination by many around the world. What are they trying to say? Death doesn’t frighten? It’s their destiny? They are in league with death’s partner, the Devil?

Are such people aware of the fact they are wearing a symbol mentioned in John 19:1?

‘Carrying his own cross, he (Jesus) went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha).’ Reading that you could almost imagine Nature belonging to the Death’s Head league.

On Golgotha death vented its fury on the Lord of Life. If rocks could smile I think the hill on which the cross was erected would have smirked. It would have seemed to onlookers that death had won. Golgotha had notched up another victim.

When the cross was driven into the top of Golgotha it was a death blow, not of the Nazarene, but of the skull. It symbolized Christ’s crushing of sin, judgement and death three days later. People have searched for the actual ‘place of the skull’. To my knowledge no place with any certainty has been found. Time, armies and development have eradicated the features. Another symbolic feature of defeat!

Golgotha is seeking a return to prominence today, pushed by the world, the flesh and the devil. The craving for power over the Lord of Life knows no abating. Its tactics are more than a mere tattoo. It includes opposition to the cross, or a sidelining of its importance. Groups exist with a determination to destroy the message of Calvary. On the 29th March this year, I read a report where the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia wants all Churches destroyed in the Arabian Peninsula. (I believe he would undoubtedly desire beyond there also.)

Bible believing disciples of Christ understand the ultimate destruction of the skull. In personal experience and at a future historical time the words of 1 Corinthians 15:54-57 are borne out.
Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where O death is your victory? Where O death is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our symbol is the cross and a stone door rolled away from the tomb. Our message is about new life in Jesus Christ in time and for eternity. So we celebrate Easter because in Christ Jesus we have cast away the emblems of the skull. Now we live in the power of the cross!

Ray (delivered from the skull) Hawkins
Ray is giving away a copy of his new 31 Day devotional book, Captured by Calvary, on the International Christian Fiction Wrters blog. CLICK HERE and scroll to The Centrefold of the Gospel post last Tuesday, March 27th. The draw will be this Thursday evening AESTime. To enter please remember you need to leave a comment on the blog.

It’s Time to Offend!

What is needed within the Church arena is a good dose of spiritual vitamin ‘C’. That is ‘C’ for the Cross. Paul put it bluntly to the Corinthians, ‘The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God…For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.’ (1 Corinthians 1:18, 21.) The Greek word used for ‘foolishness’ is folly (moria from which we get moron.)

If the preaching of the cross unleashes God’s convicting, converting power what does it say about the decline in Church growth and the powerlessness of preaching and worship? The cross is inseparable from Jesus Christ. Whenever the follower of the Lord seeks to divorce the one from the other, the blessing of the Lord is strangled. Within the Western Church we are breeding a generation of well meaning ‘do-gooders’ keen on ‘spirituality’ (however defined) but not bearing the cross, denying self and following Jesus.

The preaching of the cross was not only foolish in the Church’s beginning, it was foolish. The Greek word used means ‘scandal’. Why? Because Jesus was crucified as a blasphemer and political threat to Caesar! For us God endured all the worst that Humanity and the Powers of Darkness could do. The resurrection of Jesus crushed sin and death’s hold over humanity.

By the silence from the pulpit about the cross what is really being conveyed to the World? The preacher and that congregation are ashamed of the Lord Jesus as the crucified and risen One. Why then should the non-Christian be interested in becoming a disciple? Also, Jesus warned would-be disciples about being ashamed of Him. ‘If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.’ (Mark 8:38.)

The preaching of the cross has never been popular yet it has ever been the power of God to transform individuals, families and society. The Lord never called His servants to be popular but to be faithful in lifestyle and proclaiming the Gospel. Whenever the Church has taken its eyes off the Cross, it has sunk into the morass of ritualism and insipid moralizing. Renewal begins with a rediscovery of Romans 1:16, ‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jews, then for the Gentiles.’

May we be grabbed by the implications of the Apostle Paul’s love affair with Christ and the cross: “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” Galatians 6:14.

Ray (unashamed of the cross) Hawkins.
26/3/2012.

The Writing hammer, chisel and polishing

Ray is sharing some thought with you this Thursday for me while I stay busy preparing a Bible study for a women's conference elective, helping with organising the Romance Writers of Australia Tassie Roadshow as well as booking airfares for trips to Queensland in August and October - the October one nice and early to use our Frequent Flyer points!

If my Bible College English lecturer was alive I think she would faint at me being a writer. I gave her my first college chapel devotional to ‘edit.’ Bad mistake! There were more red lines than black when she had finished. I still have it stored away as a memento.

What fashioned me in my desire to write? The ‘hammer’ was the environment of College with its lectures, discussions, essays. Four years of being ‘hammered’ wasn’t always good for the ego, but it was beneficial for writing. The ‘chisel’ has to be the King James Version of the Scriptures. It’s beautiful language gouged out the uncouth and fashioned the appealing in understandable and pleasant ways. The ‘polishing’ could be seen in my attempts to regularly write the front piece for the church paper.

I have a strong conviction about the printed word. It is powerful. It hangs around long after the writer is dead and forgotten. It can come ‘alive’ at any moment when a person picks it up to read. Over the years I’ve made an effort to have something in the church paper to ‘bite’ members, visitors and people who may just pass by and pick it up out of curiosity.

As I matured in my ministry, I found great insights hiding in Greek words. So many contain pictures that make the text vibrate with meaning and clarity! I wanted to share these with others. This went beyond the pulpit and mid-week study. I wanted others to enjoy God’s word in more than a superficial, feel good way. I was challenged to this by writers like of Oswald Chambers, Watchman Nee and William Barclay. It is impossible for me to reach their stature in writing, but I enjoy being blessed by their shadows.

The final catalyst in getting me to put something out there to be published was my wife Mary. As you should already know, she is a multi-published inspirational romance author and my number one fan. Because I have a heart for expository teaching I used that to develop devotionals around themes I’m passionate about.
So out-flowed ‘Children – God’s Special Interest’ for anyone who loves children, “From Eden with Love” about the mystery and majesty of marriage, and ‘Captured by Calvary’, the heart of God as seen in the Cross of Christ. As any writer will tell you there are also others screaming to be ‘birthed onto paper.’ Whether that happens is yet to be determined.

I seek to make my writing sharp, succinct and scriptural so that the reader can have an encounter with the risen Lord. Do I succeed? You’ll have to read some and make your own assessment.

Ray (still polishing and hammering out the Word) Hawkins.
Ray's books are also available as E-Books from Amazon.

When the courier arrives...

No matter if it is your first book, third book or 19th title, when that truck arrives at last the excitement hits. Well, at least when I know it can’t be delivering anything else except those boxes of books at long last.

The weeks, months, even years coast by. The manuscript is thought about, even dreamed about, written, re-written, edited, re-edited and submitted at last to a publisher – or many publishers for my books! Then the edits arrive, the manuscript checked and checked and re-checked again. The release date is decided and the wait for that Courier truck starts!

Well, Ray’s boxes arrived today. He wasn’t at home so I had to sign for them. And of course, he took one look at my face when he arrived a little while later and said, “the books arrived!”

I already had the scissors ready for him to open the box on top. For the first time he held “Captured by Calvary” in his hand. We are delighted with the cover and the way Rochelle Manners at Even Before Publishing has presented it. Do click on the publisher's name and read more about the book and his first two books also of course. (There have not been enough comments on his Ray on Monday giveaway for "From Eden with Love" yet but we will only draw next Monday if we have four comments! Of course, there will be some giveaways of this new book too. Watch this space!)

A little time later an old friend arrived we had not seen for quite a long time. Need I mention he took home a signed copy?

Now the wait starts to see if our friend enjoys it, if reviews are positive and, above all, if Ray’s devotional book is used by God to bless and challenge all those who read it and meditate on its truths.