Faith. Hope. Luck.
Luck.
Start at the end and cross the word luck off. I don’t believe in luck.
Hope.
Hope. John Piper wrote that hope is the desire for something good in the future, that thing in the future that we desire, and that hope is the reason why our hope might come to pass. And that biblical hope not only desires something good for the future — it expects it to happen.
Faith.
Faith is how we have expectations for anything in the future at all.
Also, scripture tells us that without faith it’s impossible to please God. But without faith, you can’t even know God — you can’t rock with Him so to speak. Faith is complete confidence and trust in God for today and for tomorrow.
The public library?
Getting back to the beginning of this post, no, I don’t believe in luck, and I don’t just hope for things. When I envisioned seeing my books in physical libraries, I didn’t know how it would happen, I just knew what I wanted.
I wrote my first novel and was thrilled and thankful it sold, but to my knowledge, it’s only available in online libraries. But three years ago, the missing ingredient to my vision was faith. I didn’t have any faith that a brand-new author, especially one writing Christian fiction, could convince a library system to provide precious shelf space for a book. So I didn’t even bother to ask God for help.
Completely faithless move on my part.
So I wrote another book and once it was published I prayed and had faith it would find it’s way to a library shelf. And then I did what all practical people do and I followed the right procedures for the Library of Congress. Oh yeah, and after that, I prayed some more.
And last week I walked into a Delaware County library and took the picture you see at the top of this post. The book is located in the fiction section, positioned right after Ellen Gilchrist.
Do I have even more faith now? You better believe I do!