What do you hope readers will take away after reading The Pages of Her Life?
Freedom. Always freedom. I want my stories to make people freer than when they started.
And in the case of The Pages of Her Life, I want women (in particular) and men as well, to stand up for themselves where they might not have ever before. I want them to understand their worth and strength. I want them to be bold in the person God has destined them to be.
As a speaker, more than one of your go-to topics revolve around pursuing our dreams and finding our purpose. Why is this so important to you?
A pastor friend of mine told me years ago, “Every pastor has one sermon, one main theme, and they simply preach that same sermon over and over again in different ways.” He’s right. It’s one of the things my son Taylor and I take our students through at The Rubart Writing Academy. We help them discover the theme of their lives (which many people don’t know) which helps them write stories from a rock solid foundation.
Once they discover it, every element of their lives change. Time and time again in Scripture, God changes people’s names (Abram to Abraham, Saul to Paul, James and John to Sons of Thunder, Peter to the Rock) and calls them into specific themes for their lives. I don’t think God has changed. I think He still wants us to discover who we are at our core, discover our theme or sermon so we can grow into all He longs for us to be.
How do we break out of our everyday existence to find who we’re meant to be?
It’s simple to tell and hard to do. The simple part: take time. The hard part: taking the time.
How long has it been since many of us truly took a day of Sabbath? How long has it been since we went a day without cell phone, internet, TV? What if were to unplug once a week for 24 hours? What if we were to find a quiet spot in the woods or in our home where we listened to God for 10 minutes, or 20, or an hour?
I believe God wants to speak, but His voice is more often the whisper, not the shout, so we need to put ourselves in a position to hear. Also, we find friends who want to know God rather than just know about Him and we explore together. We build things into our lives that do more than relieve, they restore.
Finally, I have a technique I started about 10 years ago. In simple terms, if someone tells me their three to five favorite movies, most times I can tell them the theme of their lives. It can take people a while to master the practice, but essentially you take your movies and look for one theme that is part of each film. They might be very different movies, but there will be one strong theme that’s the same in each. If you can pinpoint that theme, that’s also the theme of your life.
What’s your favorite thing about being a storyteller?
The letters from readers by far. When I get an email telling me I’ve utterly changed a life, or one of my stories went to their core and set them free of the past, I’m blown away and humbled and a big grin breaks out on my face every time. Amazing feeling to partner with the Lord and bring people hope and joy and freedom.
Visit James L. Rubart’s author page:
https://www.familyfiction.com/authors/james-l-rubart/
The Pages of Her Life
James L. Rubart
Thomas Nelson
How Do You Stand Up for Yourself When It Means Losing Everything?
Allison Moore is making it. Barely. The Seattle architecture firm she started with her best friend is struggling, but at least they’re free from the games played by the corporate world. She’s gotten over her divorce. And while her dad’s recent passing is tough, their relationship had never been easy.
Then the bomb drops. Her dad was living a secret life and left her mom in massive debt.
As Allison scrambles to help her mom find a way out, she’s given a journal, anonymously, during a visit to her favorite coffee shop. The pressure to rescue her mom mounts, and Allison pours her fears and heartache into the journal.
But then the unexplainable happens. The words in the journal, her words, begin to disappear. And new ones fill the empty spaces—words that force her to look at everything she knows about herself in a new light.
Ignoring those words could cost her everything—but so could embracing them…