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CBP: How does one write a devotional book?  Did you start with the specific Scripture passages you wanted to cover?

DAVID: We have a devotional magazine that goes out every month and we do a lot of devotional writing.  The way the devotional magazine is put together, we try to coordinate the devotional thought with what’s being taught on the radio. So we take a nugget out of the material that’s being taught on the radio and we create a devotional from that.  That’s how they got started.  And then we published 365 of these in a book called Sanctuary that came out a couple of years ago, and it sold 100,000 copies.  So everyone is saying, “When are you going to do another one?”  So Turning Points is kind of volume two of that genre.  

CBP: So this is not reprinted material that has been elsewhere in the magazine?

DAVID: No, this is material that is geared to help these people in their devotional walk every day.

CBP: What do you think is missing in the devotional market?

DAVID: You know that’s a hard question because what is the devotional market?  You know everybody has their own way of doing devotions.  And what we’ve tried to do with these devotional thoughts is not to make this a method thing.  We’re trying to say, “OK, here’s some thoughts to help you get jump-started this morning, to get into the Word of God, to meditate on Him.”  I think what’s missing in the devotional market is not in the market itself, it’s missing in the discipline of God’s people who don’t really want to take very much time to do anything at all. I can’t imagine that I’m writing a devotional book that people can and read in five or ten minutes, but frankly, if you don’t get that, you might not get anything.

CBP: That was going to be my next question. What about those people?  Aren’t you afraid that this kind of thing just feeds on itself and people are happy and content and that’s as far as they’re ever going to go?

DAVID: Well, I think that could be possible if you didn’t believe in the dynamic of the Word of God. If they read these passages and read these devotionals it forces them back to the Scripture.  If they have a heart that’s open toward God, sooner or later they’re going to develop a hunger that won’t ever be satisfied with a five-minute devotional reading.

CBP:  Which devotionals have you benefited from?

DAVID: I’ve always enjoyed Morning and Evening.  That’s what I grew up on.  There’s a little thing that Ann Graham Lotz did that was kind of a remake of something Baxter did years ago called Daily Light. And it’s not really a devotional, but they’ve taken a page and distilled the Scripture on individual subjects.  They’ve gone through the entire Bible and just found the verses and the phrases and then welded them together.  I always tell people that’s my morning Starbuck’s because it’s the distilled Word of God and it’s just so powerful.  If you read The Daily Light, the way it was put together, there was a morning reading and an evening reading. That has always been very exciting to me because it lends itself to prayer.  It’s the kind of thing you can pray back to God.  You can read those Scriptures and then turn them into prayers.  So I very much enjoy that.

CBP:  What other authors do you enjoy?  What are you reading?

DAVID: I read in a lot of different worlds.  Of course, if you’re into the disciplines you read Dallas Willard.  I have a book that’s been very helpful to me by Kent Hughes.  There are just an awful lot of books that help move you toward the disciplines.  I wrote a book on prayer and I was learning how to journal, and I tried to find some material on spiritual journaling and it was pretty sparse.  So there are some holes where there’s not a lot available.

CBP:  But that’s becoming more popular now, isn’t it?

DAVID: Yes, very much so.

CBP: What do you plan to work on next?

DAVID:  I’m working on a project on grace that’s a merging of the story of Amazing Grace by John Newton and the letters of Paul in the New Testament that have to do with grace.  Kind of looking at grace through the eyes of that song and then on into the Romans, epistles, Galatians, and trying to see grace back through the prism of John Newton’s song, Amazing Grace.