Sometimes You've Gotta Go with Your Gut

Be true to what God is leading you to do. Be bold to go in the direction he’s pointing you. Listen to others, certainly, and take earnest counsel, but in the end, you must follow what you believe to be God’s true path for your life.

Not doing so could be costly in more ways than one.

My first three books focused on spiritual formation. None of them sold even 15,000 copies during their first few years (though Sacred Pathways, my second book, has now gone on to sell well over 100,000 copies domestically, as well as being translated in several different languages internationally). The first book has now also passed 50,000 copies, in both of its incarnations (Seeking the Face of God became Thirsting for God).

My fourth book was also, in my mind, a spiritual formation book, but one that focused on marriage. As much as the spiritual disciplines can shape us, God used my marriage to shape me, so I decided to write about that. That book became Sacred Marriage. My agent at the time was a single woman who argued that the book should be about relationships, not marriage. We couldn’t get on the same page, so I went with another agent (an agent can’t market a book they’re not excited about). At the time, I’m sure my agent thought, “No big loss,” as my royalties couldn’t have purchased her much more than an occasional weekend away.