I am drawing ever-closer to the deadline to hand my book to the publisher. The current word count is somewhere around 43,000 and the page count around 140 (though obviously the page count can change a whole lot based on the spacing, font selection and so on). As work continues and as the book draws closer to completion, I am becoming increasingly excited and, even better, increasingly convinced that this book may actually have something to say (imagine that!).
There have been a lot of pretty neat God moments along the way. A few weeks ago I had decided to focus a day’s writing on a passage in Hebrews, but did not have a lot in the way of Hebrews resources. The mail showed up just a few minutes after I had sat down at my desk and, when I opened it up, found a review copy of a newly published commentary on Hebrews. It addressed head-on the issues I was writing about that day and proved very helpful to me. Just yesterday I decided to focus on a particular passage in Ephesians. Once again the mail showed up and there, courtesy of a publisher, was an Ephesians study guide that I had not ordered and had not expected. And once again it proved very helpful. Since this project began I’ve seen irrefutable evidence of God’s assistance with this project; I’ve seen it time and again. These little moments, these little moments of providence, have been greatly encouraging to me.
I anticipate that the manuscript will be ready for me to send to the publisher around six weeks from now (eight weeks at the lastest). That may be a tad ambitious, but I do hope I can make that deadline. However, for that to happen, I think I am going to need a lot of prayer. My spring live-blogging schedule begins in just two weeks (with a trip to California for the Resolved Conference) and between then and the end of March I’ll be making yet another trip to California for the Shepherd’s Conference, a trip to Orlando for Ligonier and a trip to Atlanta to visit my family. And, of course, I have a lot of web design projects underway with new ones set to begin soon. If this book is going to be completed, I’ll have to be very careful with my time, something that has always given me trouble. I am also going to have to steal some time from my paying job in order to work on the book which could potentially introduce financial difficulties (especially with a particularly horrendous tax bill facing me not too long from now, for such are the joys of being self-employed). Despite a busy schedule I’m confident that I can keep all of these balls in the air, but only with God’s help.
And so I’d ask for your prayers. Please pray that God will continue to bless my efforts in writing this book; pray that God will help me organize my time and use my time wisely; pray that God will keep me from cutting into my time with Him in order to work on other projects; pray that God would provide for us financially. I covet your prayers and thank you in advance for them!
