Why I write
The first thing I remember of this world is a dream. I was three years old, perhaps four. A Man clothed in white stood above me, and I knew who He was. A child does not reason his way to God; he recognizes Him. I never forgot that dream. For years it waited in me, the way a seed waits.
I came to the Lord late, later than I care to admit. That He existed I never doubted; few men truly do. But a man may carry the name of God all his life and never once meet Him. Mine was the religion of the open hand: when I needed, I came, I asked, and I went my way. Certain things that befell me were plainly not chance, and I knew it, and still I did not seek His face.
Then He met me, many years ago now, and the meeting overturned my life. The God whose name I had always known is alive. Let a man once see that, and nothing afterward stands where it stood. If He is alive, then prayer is not a message thrown into the sea: Someone hears. If He is alive, then nothing that touches me has slipped His hand, and what I called disappointment may be His will, wearing clothes I did not expect. When I understood it, I handed over the controls, and I have not asked for them back.
Where I met Him
All my life people had told me that God is good. The words meant nothing to me until the trials made them true. I met Him where most of His children meet Him: at the bottom. It is a hard door into His presence. I have found no truer one. And there, where everything had gone quiet, the silence began to speak. He opened His heart about the things that matter to Him. He gave me work. He asked me for these books. I write them hoping first that they please Him, and then that they bless whoever opens them.
What these books are for
What I ask of every page is that it be of use. Our shelves are full of books that inspire and do not help, and to the man in the fire, a beautiful abstraction is a stone offered for bread. He prays, nothing changes, and some comforter tells him his faith was too small. I will not say that to you. God is not far away and hard of hearing. He stooped to my level; He will stoop to yours. He gives keys, not riddles. And sometimes the key arrives by a book, a tool, a stranger who answers the question you had put to God alone.
Neither are we copies of one another. We are different flowers in one garden. If He made you overflowing, joyful, always talking, He is not calling you to silence; if He made you quiet, you fail nothing by not shouting. He calls each of His children in their own tongue, and He will speak to you in yours. That conviction runs through every page I write.
One confession more, for it is not glorious, and it may help somebody. At the start of my walk I watched those who heard God, and I envied them. Why them, I said, and not me? I wanted to hear Him for my own life, not through another man’s ear. So I went looking; I stumbled; and by the stumbling I learned. Hear what the stumbling taught me: brothers and sisters may hold your arms up, but your pillar is God Himself. Whoever knows Him only by hearsay will not stand when the road turns hard. Your own testimony of Him is the strength that holds.
“And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.”Revelation 12:11
That verse is the reason this page keeps a place for testimonies, and the reason I read every one. If these books strengthen one heart that was giving out, or reach one soul who does not yet know Him, they will have done the thing they were written for.
Morgan Wynn
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