I have many dear friends whose youthful experience in the church was fraught with anxiety over “I’ll never be good enough” and the warning that nineteen out of twenty kids are doomed to stay forever out of heaven.

Okay, you too?

On the cusp of college graduation and my new gig as a teacher in an Adventist school, two rescuing lifeboats floated my way. I began reading stuff by C. S. Lewis and also a pastor named Morris Venden – ironically my mom’s cousin!

Uncle Morrie recently passed to his rest, but for sure during my happy decade writing scripts for Voice of Prophecy, I claimed family privilege and borrowed liberally from his classic books.

It’s been fun folding in sports illustrations (and you haven’t really lived until you play eighteen holes in downtown Bangkok. I swear it’s true: I almost beaned Bob Hope one December afternoon.) But even for a disciple who enjoys the blessed assurance of Calvary grace, it’s still better to “aim for the pin” than the sand trip off to the right. Or muddy canal, as was more often the case in Asia. I’ve never bowled a 300 game, but rolling strikes is always the goal, never a gutter ball. For sure in our Christian walk, it’s wonderful that grace is our ticket to heaven . . . and yet it’s a good thing to joyfully obey God and observe His commandments as a way of bringing glory to Him.

For sure I must offer this cheerful golf tip: C. S. Lewis comfortingly talks about “obeying in a new way, a less worried way.” I’ve slept so much better ever since memorizing that line.

I invite you to also check out our Rachel Marie series of ten great love stories all set in my childhood home of Thailand. Volume one, “Love in a Distant Land,” is also a brilliantly performed audiobook by my genius friend Tonya Foster Yancey.

Other audiobook titles we offer include: “Once Saved Almost Always Saved,” “Simon and Mary,” “Behold, He Comes!,” “Of Fleeces and Faith,” “For Unto Us a Child Is Born,” “Missionary Girl on Loan,” and “The Time Portal."