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Showing posts from May, 2023

The World’s Choice, God’s Choice

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  by Bart Denny Read: Esther 2 When Image Shines, but Providence Reigns Ever been picked last? Maybe it was dodgeball in school. Or being passed over for a promotion. Or just scrolling through social media and feeling like everyone else has it more together, more admired, more chosen. We live in a world obsessed with image. A world that tells us your worth depends on how you look, what you post, and how many people applaud. But thankfully, that’s not how God chooses. Esther 2 might look like just another chapter in a Bible story, but it holds a mirror up to the way our world works—and how radically different God’s kingdom is. Chosen for All the Wrong Reasons? In Esther 2, we meet a young Jewish woman named Esther—strikingly beautiful, orphaned, raised by her cousin Mordecai, and now swept into a morally compromised “beauty contest” to become queen of Persia. Esther wasn’t chosen because of her faith or her wisdom. She was chosen by the world’s standards—for her...
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Dear Self-Published Christian Author

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by Bart L. Denny, Ph.D., Th.M.  Dear Self-Published Christian Author, I am rooting for you. I admire you. I have no doubt that you have a message that needs to be out there. I’m glad you think your book would look good on the shelves of the Christian bookstore for which I buy inventory. If we sell your book, you win and we win. So, I am writing to ask, as Tom Cruise’s character, Jerry Maguire, so famously pleads with his client, “Help me help you!” I want to lovingly disabuse you of a few notions as I get rolling. The first one is that because you are local to the store, customers will automatically be interested in your book. I’m sorry, but they won’t. Not only that, but you have a lot of competition from other local, self-published authors and plenty of local authors that publish traditionally with the major Christian publishing houses. You must have at least some local notoriety—and a way to let people know your book is available locally at fine Christian bookstores. Second is t...
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