Okay, I made the list

FOUR CHRISTIAN BOOKS made the list this year. Only four broke through the numbers and, for the first time, hit the sales mark of half a million sold.

The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association identified the 2017 Gold Award winners as:

• What Happens When I Talk to God
  Stormie Omartian
  HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
• Uninvited
  Lysa TerKeurst
  THOMAS NELSON
• The Complete Guide to the Bible
  Stephen M. Miller
  BARBOUR PUBLISHING
• Do Hard Things
  Alex Harris and Brett Harris
  MULTNOMAH

I spent a year of my life writing The Complete Guide to the Bible. I’m awfully grateful that so many people found the book helpful.

It’s an odd feeling to get an award. This is the first one I think I’ve gotten that is based entirely on sales.

Others have been based on the quality of the content, as judged by different groups of people. Who’s Who & Where’s Where in the Bible got an award as the best nonfiction book of the year, as judged by owners and employees in Christian bookstores throughout the country. I was at a book convention when I got the news of that award. I still remember the publisher’s marketing person running up to me with the news, which shocked us both.

It’s pleasant and uplifting to get news like that.

But it doesn’t last.

I get the news, I smile and celebrate, and then I go back to work. It doesn’t change my routine. And I’m not sure it helps all that much with my self-esteem because I’m surrounded by people who love me. The one who has been cheering me on the longest and as one of the loudest is my mom, the redhead.

I got this latest news by email. It certainly made me happy. But I’m back at work writing this free blog article.

As I think about emails I’ve received over the years, if I had to rate them in the order of which ones I would like to receive most, an email about an award would be pretty far down the list.

I get emails from young adults who were raised in secular homes who thank me for putting the Bible into words they could understand. One reader described my writing as “simple but not stupid.” I like that.

I get emails from moms trying to figure out how to get my books to their sons in prison.

I get them from people who are sick and dying, who are thanking me for my books.

I’m still trying to decide what to do about the one email from someone in another country who wanted to give one of my books as a gift to someone outside the faith. But they couldn’t get it from their suppliers. I write especially for people outside the faith. So when someone wants to get one of my books into the hands of a person like that, I’m motivated to help them do that if I can.

So while it’s good to get any kind of an award, and it makes me happy enough that I want to share the news with my readers, it’s not why I write.

I write because there’s something inside me pushing.

Or Someone.

Blog subscriber who wins a book this week

• Tim Jones

I give away free books every week to randomly selected subscribers to my free blog or my quarterly newsletter.

Winners now get to choose from a stack of titles, including my two most recent: A Visual Walk Through Genesis and The One-Stop History of the Bible.

Note to the winner: send me an email and I’ll give you the full list of books from which you can choose.

The deal’s good for a month, or for as long as I have giveaway books available.

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