Christianity

Finally, a Writing Update

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Sorry I have been dark so long. No blog posts. No newsletters. If not for a few tweets and Facebook posts, you guys might have decided I dropped off the face of the earth.

Other News first:

A Blog Series – I was recently part of a series of blog posts put on by the lovely Sarah Addison-Fox on what does it mean to write clean/Christian fantasy. You can read my post here, but it is worth reading all of them starting with the introductory post, then authors Hope Ann, Claire Banschbach, Serena Chase, Lauricia Matuska, and Kate Willis. Lots of different perspectives and food for thought!

Black Friday Sale – I will once again be a part of a Black Friday sale put together by fellow Christian indie authors. I think we have over 36 authors participating this year, which is huge considering we had about 7 of us the first year. Check back here on Friday for a link to the sale.

Thanks so much to everyone who took the time to answer the poll I posted a while back! Of the 90 responses I received, 62% mostly read fantasy (which is good. Fantasy is my first love and I struggle to write anything else). When asked if you would like to see more Blades of Acktar, over 75% answered either Yes, right away or Yes, but let’s see something new first. Very, very few said they don’t want to read anything more in The Blades of Acktar.

I was also surprised by the number of people who asked for either more about Ranson or more about Brandi and Jamie. Good news is, I have ideas for both of those characters that I would like to write someday, so there is a good chance you’ll see more about them in the future.

If you would like to still take the poll, here is a link to it.

If you took the poll, then you probably already guessed, but the current project I’m working on is a Christian allegorical fantasy. It has been a tough book to write, as allegorical elements are much harder to make sure they come across the way I intend since they aren’t as clear as writing full on Christian fiction the way I did with The Blades of Acktar.

But while this book is allegorical, it isn’t an allegory. What does that mean? Well, an allegorical book still has lots of story elements that aren’t necessarily part of the allegory. Think Chronicles of Narnia. A full allegory would be a book like Pilgrim’s Progress where nothing in that book doesn’t have some sort of symbol or meaning.

Due to the trickiness of writing allegorically, this book has been tough. My word counts have been drastically reduced compared to what I did each day when writing The Blades of Acktar. BUT I am ALMOST finished. If I keep on track, I’ll finish either before the end of November or early in December. That means I should be able to start telling you details, back cover blurbs, and stuff like that by the end of December or early January. Yay!!!

I’m both excited and nervous to share this book with you. Some days, I can barely write I’m so terrified this book will not only disappoint, but offend and turn away readers. That’s the chance every author takes with every book, but especially when I know many of my readers personally. I don’t want to disappoint a single one of you!

 

 

Turning Points – A Time to Rise Blog Tour

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I’ve been thinking a lot about turning points lately. It has been about two months since I posted on this blog, and most of that is due to stumbling across and purchasing a fixer upper house, moving, and making do without internet. A new house, a new turning point.

As I’ve posted about before, I’ve been into listening to history courses through the Great Courses lately. If you get them through Audible, they are pretty affordable. Recently, I listened to one on Turning Points in Medieval History, done by an English professor, not a history professor. Her perspective took on history as one big story, showing how each turning point isn’t a separate event standing all by itself, but interconnected with all the past turning points and influencing all the future ones. As a Christian, I could appreciate this even more because I believe the reason history is so interconnected and seems to be one story is BECAUSE it is one story. Christ’s story. God’s story.

Our own lives are also filled with turning points. Days and events that stick out to us as the moment something changed and set us on a new course. Often, these turning points are tragedy. But not always.

And sometimes, someone else’s turning point affects your own turning point.

Nadine Brandes has talked about several times how a turning point in her life started her on the path to writing her debut novel A Time to Die. In this novel, the main character Parvin experiences her own turning points when, with only a year left to live, she realizes she’s wasted her life, and she sets out to change that.

This was all a good three years before I even knew Nadine Brandes existed. I was partway through college, getting my degree in writing and dreaming about being a published author.

Fast forward a few years. I graduated college, was a year into a full time job, and was submitting a nonfiction manuscript I’d written and getting nowhere with it. I was frustrated that my dream of graduating college and having the time to write books hadn’t worked out. I felt like I had no time and would never have the time I wanted.

Honestly, I don’t remember what made me sit down and give myself a good shake from my pity party. One day, I realized that the reason I wasn’t a writer and wasn’t finishing books was that I was wasting time whining about my lack of time.

This was March 2014. That same month, I started writing Dare. Three months later, I had a completed book. I set it aside and started Deny.

During this time, I also turned my attention away from researching nonfiction publishing toward fiction publishing. I read blogs, books, articles. Traditional publishing. Self Publishing. All of it.

And this is where the turning point thing starts getting cool. I stumbled across Jill Williamson’s Replication as a free ebook. It was the first time I’d discovered the whole Christian speculative fiction world out there. I then went on to read her other books, and the Blood of Kings trilogy showed me that there was still such a thing as Christian fantasy besides Lewis and Tolkien.

Since I was researching publishing, I tracked down the publisher. It was Marcher Lord, right when it was transitioning to Enclave Publishing. I explored every inch of that website, and of course read the blog. Guess who had posted on the blog promoting the release of her debut book?

Yep, Nadine Brandes. nadine-early-release-2

The book sounded really cool, so I stalked her site. Learned she was an editor. Submitted Dare to her for editing. I was too late to officially join the blog tour for A Time to Die, but I unofficially joined it with a post of my own. It had to have been one of the first two or three posts I did on my blog, since I started my blog in August of that year, and that post is from September.

When I was finally able to read A Time to Die in October, Parvin’s realization of wasting time mirrored my own realization from a few months before. Wasting time. Waiting for something to plop out of the sky instead of actively pursuing God’s will.

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That idea of being active in pursing God’s will and glorifying Him stuck with me. It still resonated when, early in 2015, I sat down and had to decide how I should publish Dare. Traditional or indie? Through all my research, the indie route had tugged at me, but I wasn’t sure I dared do it. What did I really know? What if I messed all this up and Dare flopped and…and…

It was all my fear talking, and finally God made it clear indie was the route to go with these books. That moment I hit the publish button, I gave it all to Him. I’d sown the seed. The increase was His, no matter how large or small or whatever it might be.

But I wasn’t wasting time anymore. I was doing my best to actively pursue His will in a way I hadn’t before.

And He did bless the increase way beyond anything I had dreamed for that book.

Then the fall of 2015 came around. I was drained from the rewrites of Deny. Wondering if it would ever measure up to everyone’s expectations. Scared because everyone HAD expectations now, when they hadn’t with Dare.

Then A Time to Speak, Nadine’s next book, released. It was Parvin’s time to speak, to draw on the confidence of the lessons she’d learned in the first book. atimetospeak5

But it also pushed me to speak. To stop stuttering and stammering and hoping someone would change the topic when they asked about my books. To figure out how to keep giving it all to God now that this crazy ride was set in motion.

It’s strange to look back now and see how much a year and a half can change a person. In the year since publishing Dare and reading A Time to Die, I’ve become much more confident in how I interact with people. I’ve signed books at a craft sale. I spoke at a small Christian school. I’ve gone to two writer’s conferences and was able to relax instead of remain a bundle of introverted nerves in the corner. All of that confidence, those turning points, led to the turning point I started this whole post with: buying a house, moving. It wasn’t something I would’ve been ready to handle a year ago.

Looking back, I’m amazed at the way God used the turning points in my life to bring me to this point.

If I hadn’t gotten Replication as an ebook…

If A Time to Die hadn’t been releasing…

If I hadn’t stumbled across Nadine and found an editor and friend…

If A Time to Die and A Time to Speak hadn’t given me pushes when I needed them…

Would I have published Dare? Would I have gone to the writer’s conferences and made a whole bunch of writer friends?

And now, another turning point. A Time to Rise, the third and final book in the Out of Time series releases officially in 10 days, though Amazon is shipping it early if you want to order it now. You can read my review (also known as flailing fangirling) of the book here.

Yes, you all totally have the Out of Time series to thank, in part, for the fact that I ever published The Blades of Acktar.

Have you experienced turning points in your life? How have they affected you?

 

Want to connect with Nadine yourself? Because, after all, she’s an awesome human being.

Nadine is also the queen of Facebook parties, so you won’t want to miss the one she is hosting on October 18

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Want to check out the Out of Time series for yourself?

A Time to Die

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A Time to Speak

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A Time to Rise

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A Look Back

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I realized today that I haven’t blogged at all since Deny released. Not a good way to go about keeping up my social media presence.

At the beginning of December, my carpal tunnel syndrome started acting up again in my right wrist. I’m still not sure what set it off. You’d think spending 11 to 12 hours a day on the computer to get Deny out into the world would’ve caused problems, but it didn’t. But when I cut back my time on the computer to give myself a break, then it got bad again. So I cut out even more computer time (including blogging) until my wrist no longer hurt. Thankfully, the pain is gone now, so I’m back. 🙂

A New Year 2016

It’s the day after New Year’s, so it’s as good a time as any to look back and reflect. God did so many amazing things in my life this year, I’m still blown away. Especially once I started making a list.

This time last year, I had just finished writing three manuscripts for what I had called The Blades of Acktar. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them or what publishing route God wanted me to pursue. I was waiting for my first professional edit to come back on Dare from Nadine Brandes, an editor I was just beginning to get to know. I’d just connected with Angie Brashear online and began pestering her with questions on indie publishing. And I’d just heard of Jaye L. Knight. I’d only had a blog for a few months, and I wasn’t even on Goodreads yet, much less most of the other social media sites.

Crazy, when I think about it. Now I have so many writing friends online I’m blown away. I connected with the wonderful Kim Moss through a book launch team we were on together. Angie Brashear became a prayer warrior who helped pray Deny into existence. I don’t know what I’d do without Nadine as a friend and mentor. And Jaye’s encouragement has been amazing. All the other bloggers and fellow authors who volunteered for my launch team: Claire, Shantelle, Hope, Alyssa, Abigail, Jessica, Gabriela. Sierra, my amazing critique partner who helped so much. All the fans who have contacted me or written reviews or simply interacted in some way on line. I can’t believe that a year ago, I didn’t really know any of you.

I now have two published book and a third in the process of publication. My three book series turned into four. Dare hit #1 on Amazon’s bestseller list for Christian Fantasy (sharing the list with such estimable writers as Jill Williamson, Jaye L. Knight, and Patrick Carr. Seriously never thought I’d see my books anywhere near theirs on a bestseller list!). Deny hit the #1 Hot Newest Release in Christian Fantasy for the first month after its release, and both Dare and Deny are still bouncing around in the top 20 on the Christian Fantasy bestseller list. I am so blown away by the response to these books.

I’m excited to see what God does with 2016.

Take the Adventure That is Sent Us

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Recently, I finished my yearly read-through of The Chronicles of Narnia. Each time I read them or listen to them, something new strikes me.

This time, the concept of adventure stood out to me.

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In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Reepicheep is always harping on honor and adventure. The little mouse’s courage pushes everyone on the crew to greater heights of courage because they refuse to be outdone by a mouse. The others sometimes become annoyed with Reepicheep because everything is an adventure to him. Any time they want to turn back or be cautious, Reepicheep pulls the adventure card, and they can’t turn back.

“This is a very great adventure, and no danger seems to me so great as that of knowing when I get back to Narnia that I left a mystery behind me through fear.” Reepicheep in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

But for all his annoyance with Reepicheep, King Caspian seems to have remembered Reepicheep’s words because in both The Silver Chair and The Last Battle, descendants of King Caspian also emphasize adventure.

“Doubtless,” said the Prince. “This signifies that Aslan will be our good lord, whether he means us to live or die…let us descend into the City and take the adventure that is sent us.” – Prince Rilian in The Silver Chair

In the end, Eustace and Jill begged so hard that Tirian said they could come with him and take their chance–or, as he much more sensibly called it “the adventure that Aslan would send them.” – The Last Battle

The amazing thing about these quotes? They all happened, not when the characters were facing something fun and safe, but when they faced danger and a great possibility of death. Actually, death was the most likely outcome.

Death, an adventure?

Yes, that’s the point. Everything in our life is God’s adventure given to us. The good things. The bad things. The horrible things we’d rather never, ever face.

Let that sink in.

Life is an adventure.

Death is an adventure.

Everything in between is an adventure.

As Reepicheep would say, it is the greatest adventure that has ever been heard of.

But we don’t always treat life as an adventure. We live like it’s the dullest thing ever. A lot of times it is, but even epic voyages had long days of sailing on boring, empty seas with barely a breeze to push the ship along. But that’s still part of the adventure. You can’t get to the next island without the boring sailing in between.

This was something I’ve been thinking about even before re-reading The Chronicles of Narnia, which is probably why it struck me this time. I’ve been thinking about it ever since reading A Time to Die by Nadine Brandes, a book that asks the question: how you would live if you knew when you’d die. Would you live your time or would you waste it?

And when you find you have time, what do you do with it? That’s one theme of the sequel A Time to Speak that releases on October 16. You’ll be hearing a lot more about that book since I’m a part of Nadine’s launch team and it’s made me think a little more about what I’m doing with the time I’ve been given.

God has given me this life, this adventure. It can be scary. Overwhelming. Adventures usually are. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be a little bit more like Reepicheep and face it with courage and an adventurous spirit. Because what biggest regret is there than turning back and leaving an adventure undone?

What about you? What adventures has God given you?

Inspiration for Dare – World War II

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Only THREE WEEKS until Dare releases! Crazy how fast time flies when you have a book releasing!

To celebrate the book release, I’m going to look at a few of the things that inspired some of the themes or storyline in Dare. Dare is fantasy, so it isn’t directly based on any real history. But I’m a history buff. I like to explore the things I see in history in my own stories, even if I’m coming at them from a different direction.

One of my inspirations for the themes in Dare is World War II, specifically World War II as experienced by the Netherlands. About a year before I started writing Dare, I researched and wrote a nonfiction narrative about my great-grandparents’ life in the Netherlands and their immigration to Canada. My great-grandparents lived in the Netherlands during World War II, so I did a lot of research about what life was like in the Netherlands during that time.

World War II tore the Netherlands apart in many ways. Some people supported the Nazis. Some actively resisted in various ways, including forming the many groups that made up what is collectively known as the Dutch Resistance. Others didn’t like the Nazis, but felt they were the government God put over them and they should obey it. Neighbors were divided. Churches were divided. A person’s greatest enemies weren’t the Nazi occupiers, but their former friends, neighbors, and even fellow Christians who might turn them in. Thanks to the geography of the Netherlands, those on the run, whether Jews or Resistance members, had very few places to hide.

My great-grandparents were some of those that resisted. They were forced to flee their home to live in a different part of the Netherlands because of it. At the end of the war, the dyke protecting their home was bombed, and they lost everything they’d been forced to leave behind in the resulting flood. Because they chose to resist, they lost all their worldly possessions.

 Flooded Wieringermeer Polder where my great-grandparents lived.

If you’re interested in learning more about this time in history, Corrie ten Boom’s book The Hiding Place tells the story of her family. Another book that I highly recommend is Liz Tolsma’s Snow on the Tulips. While fiction, the book is based on a true story and very historically accurate. I’m also partial to it because it is set in Friesland, the province in the Netherlands where my great-grandparents spent part of the war.

Have you researched World War II? What do you find fascinating about it?

Confessions of a Recovering Perfectionist

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The girl in the chair next to me peeks at her graded paper. “I got a B+.” She smiles, clearly happy with her grade.

“Great job!” I tell her. I know she must have worked hard on it. She’s a recovering drug addict struggling to put herself through college. I’m genuinely happy for her.

She turns in her seat. “What did you get?”

My stomach drops through my toes and seeps into the floor. Embarrassment heats my face. “Good enough.” I hedge, hoping that she’ll drop it.

She doesn’t. No one ever does. “It’s okay. You can tell me.”

More than anything, I don’t want to tell her. I’m too ashamed to admit my grade. I spent a grand total of fifteen minutes the night before it was due working on this paper. Hardly any time at all. But I can’t avoid her questions. I know from experience that she’ll ask until I tell her. That’s what everyone does. Finally I stare down at the desk and mumble, “I got an A.”

“That’s more than good enough! That’s great!” She grins at me.

I stare at her. I’d been expecting a snide remark. Another “Well, of course you got a good grade” in a sarcastic tone. Not this. Fresh shame burns my throat. She shouldn’t be congratulating me. “You spent more time on this paper than I did.”

Perhaps she recognizes the shame in my eyes, in my voice. Her tone softens. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Nothing to be ashamed of. Why had it taken an ex-drug addict at a public college to tell me what no one else had? My grades were nothing to be ashamed of. It’s okay to be smart. It’s okay to get a good grade with little effort.

In my junior high and high school, I’d heard teachers tell the class over and over again: I wish I could grade by effort. The C and B students put more effort than the A students. I would hunch in my chair. I was one of those bad A students, the one that gets an A on a test I didn’t study for, the one that spent a total of four hours studying for all of my exams and got an A on all of them while another student studied four hours for each exam and got Cs. If school was graded by effort, I would have gotten an F.

My grades shamed me. If I got an A with no effort, then was I really giving my best? Most of high school was so easy that I rarely felt challenged. Even when I did pour effort into a project or a paper, shame still clung to me. Had I really given my best effort? Had I actually worked hard? Surely that C student sitting next to me still worked harder than I did.

I demanded perfection from myself. A single wrong answer would gnaw at me for a week afterwards like an infection eating away at my stomach. I wasn’t worthy of my grades. I hadn’t earned them. I didn’t deserve them. Still the pursuit of perfection consumed much of my high school years. Perfection was king. At times, I felt like it determined my self-worth.

I hated admitting my grades to other students. Sometimes, I would even put my test straight into my folder without looking at it so I could answer truthfully that I hadn’t looked.

When my freshmen year of college rolled around, I enrolled in the Honor’s College. On my very first paper, I got a B. I stared at that red letter B for several minutes, shocked to see that grade on the top of one of my papers. I’d never gotten that low of a grade on a paper before.

And it felt wonderful.

For the first time in years, I could actually put effort into something. I worked hard on revisions and upped my grade to a B+. It was the best B+ I’d ever seen.

It was a long, slow road from that first B+ to the moment I realized I didn’t have to be perfect. My self-worth was not dependent on my grades or how much effort I put into them. I couldn’t earn perfection. Jesus had already earned perfection for me. His perfections cover me, earned me the words “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” I don’t have to earn those words with my own pitiful efforts.

My gifts are given of God. I’m not to be ashamed of them. If I’ve been given the ability to take tests with little effort, then it would be wrong to put in more effort than necessary. I’d be wasting time and energy that I could spend elsewhere on my family. Friends. Neighbors. A person in my church in need. So many ways I could have used my time and energy in high school instead of the pursuit of perfection.

Writing is something that challenges me. Unlike history facts or science formulas, it is not something that can be memorized and declared learned. It is a constant learning and growing process. It is something that demands my hard work.

I don’t know what it is like to struggle in school. I don’t know the hardships that come with that. But I can understand the shame of hiding your grades. I can understand the fear that the teacher will call on you, fear so intense my shaking rattled my desk sometimes.

If someone from my high school reads this, then I am sorry if I ever made you ashamed of your grades. If I ever made you feel unworthy. It was not my intention. Most likely, I was too ashamed of my own grades to genuinely compliment you on yours.

I still struggle with perfectionism sometimes. If I mess up at work, I struggle to let go of the mistake and move on. It haunts the back of my brain, lingering, reminding me of all my failures. When I write, I have to write a really fast, messy drafts. If I stop to edit, then my perfectionism kicks in. I see all the mistakes, all the failures, and it clutters my mind so much that I can’t keep writing.

I have to keep my mind and heart focused on the Perfect One. I don’t have to be perfect because He is. I need to stop comparing myself to others and focus only on using my gifts in the way God would have me use them.

Why I Write Speculative Fiction

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The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is my favorite book in the Chronicles of Narnia. I always loved the thrill of the sea voyage. I could feel the sea breeze on my face, hear the creaking of the ship’s timbers, and touch the cold spray on my face. I was always sad when it ended and Edmund and Lucy had to leave Narnia for the last time.

But Aslan tells them that he is in there world too. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I knew Aslan’s other name. I knew C.S. Lewis referred to Jesus and I did know Jesus in our world.

As I began writing and telling my own stories, I realized Lewis was giving his reason for writing the entire Chronicles of Narnia in that quote. He hoped that his readers would get to know Christ a little in Narnia so that they could know Him better in their own lives.

This has become my goal as a writer. Like Lewis, I like to write speculative fiction, especially fantasy. Even if my fantasy doesn’t directly reference God or Christ, it still shows Christian morals and decision, much the same way that J.R.R. Tolkien showed Christ throughout The Lord of the Rings.

But my goal is always the same. I might be only showing a tiny aspect of Christ, a fragment of all the glories that He is, but my prayer is that God will use my small efforts to help readers know Him a little better.

Fantasy gives me the freedom to approach topics from different angles, much in the way that Lewis gave us different angles to Christ through Aslan. Historical fiction can only go so far. Fantasy can make us think about our faith differently.

What genre do you write? What is your goal in writing it?

Why Should Christians Write Fiction (Part Two)

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The fifth word in the Bible is created. 

We don’t talk about that a lot. We talk about the importance of the first 4 words: In the beginning God. But in that focus, we miss that God’s first action recorded in the Bible is the act of creation. The world we live in is the ultimate act of art, of imagination. God created the entire world as a beautiful piece of art for His own pleasure. The stars in the farthest reaches of space out of the sight, the sparkling fresh snow on a mountain top where no one but God will see it, the delicate flower that blooms and dies before any human comes across it…all of these beauties are enjoyed by God alone for His glory alone.

As humans, we have imagination. It is one of the things that separates us from the animals. When we create any art, we are mirroring God’s action of creation. We are projecting God’s glory back to Him. Art isn’t a waste of time. It is another way to give glory to God and show that glory to others.

As writers, we have a special kind of art. Words are a special part of God’s creating act since He created using speech, using words. He communicates to His people through the Bible, His Word. Jesus Himself is called the Word.

Few other types of art come as close to creating something out of nothing as writing. Writers take something as wispy as ideas and as intangible as words and uses them to build stories and worlds and characters (For more thoughts on this, check out this blog post).

When we write fiction, we are mirroring God’s work of creation. We are displaying the glory of God’s creation in our small and human work of creating. I think this is especially seen in writing speculative fiction stories. I could write more about this, but while I was brainstorming this post, Nadine Brandes wrote this beautiful post on this topic that sums it up much better than I can.

How do you mirror God’s act of creation in your writing?

Why Should Christians Write Fiction? (Part One)

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The Power of Story

Sometimes when I tell people in Christian circles that I’m a writer, they smile at me and reply, “That’s good. We need more good articles.” Their faces go from interested to shocked when I calmly explain that I write books. Not doctrinal, nonfiction books, but fiction books. They don’t know how to react.

It is ironic how the same people that decry the lack of good literature for their children don’t do anything about it. Nor do they understand when anyone else does something about it. Writing fiction is somehow…lower. It isn’t the worthy calling that writing nonfiction is.

Except that this idea isn’t true. Fiction writers are just as necessary as nonfiction writers. Because the Story format is important to convey empathy and characters in a way nonfiction articles struggle to do.

Look at the Bible for example. We talk about Bible stories. Most of the Bible is written in a story format. Even books like the Psalms or Ephesians, or any of Paul’s letters have the back story contained in the rest of the Bible. Would Psalm 51 have as much power if we didn’t know the story of David’s sin with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah?

Think of some of the phrases we learn as children. Dare to be a Daniel. Have faith like Father Abraham. Would these phrases even have meaning if we’d been told about Daniel in a factual lecture instead of as a story? As children, we learn about courage from the stories about Daniel or Joshua. We see the self-sacrifice that faith demands from the story of Abraham. We see the consequences of sin in the lives of many of the saints.

We learn through stories, through stepping into someone else’s shoes and walking with them for a while. We learn by the examples we see in stories better than we do through simply being told this is how you should live.

All those Bible stories are true, and perhaps the argument could then be made that Christians should only write nonfiction stories about real people and places. Except that Jesus himself told fiction stories. Jesus’ parables weren’t stories based on people that actually lived. They were fiction.

Fiction can be just as powerful as true stories at digging at a deeper meaning. In fiction, an author puts the reader inside another person’s head. The reader becomes that person, feeling their emotions, understanding their fears, desires, and dreams. Through reading, we learn empathy for others. We learn to see the pain that others who aren’t like us carry.

Stories can also shine the light on ourselves. In the Bible, Nathan the prophet didn’t get in David’s face when he confronted David about his sin. Nathan told a fictional story. David sympathized with the wronged man in the story, only to realize at the end that the bad guy in the story was him. It shook him in a way that nothing else could. That story had power.

What Bible stories hold the most power for you? Why does that story strike you?