The Message in the Bottle.....................by Ruth Johnson

‘… I (Jesus) pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”  John17:20-21

I have tried to bring the strands together for the finale of my fourth book, but none have seemed right.  The first would have gone beyond the 165,000 words and four hundred pages.   The second felt boring. If I’m bored so would be the reader.  I re-read my last book and was astonished at how I’d woven the plot and it had come together. I really feel I write the words, but the Lord brings forth the plot. 

So when spending time with the Lord and believing He desired me to revisit and finish book four, I asked for a plot download and also spoke to Him of the poor sales in recent years and needing encouragement of fresh interest in the books already published. 

In August on hearing I wrote books a woman asked to buy them.  In September a man said he’d read ‘Jane’ and asked had I written others - he's now read ‘Jill’ and ‘David’.  In October, still awaiting that ‘download’ from the Lord, I was reminded seven years previously He’d shown me hundreds of my books  floating on an empty sea and said they were life rafts. At the time I bemoaned there wasn’t anyone in the sea to want a life raft. His reply was the life raft is like a message in a bottle, you don’t always know where it will go.  My retort to that reminder was, “They can land where they like, but I need those who read and enjoy them to spread the word.”  I sited, ‘The Shack’ and ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ and pointed out it was twenty years since I’d instigated worldwide selling of my first book in a Word document so people could read them on their computers. That didn’t take off, but today we have Paypal and Kindle. 

Three hours later an email arrived from Nicky, the title line, ‘Jane’. She introduced herself as a friend of Chelsea (our cruise consultant) who, the previous weekend, had told her about my books.  Nicky wrote she’d been kept up on three nights to 5.00 am reading ‘Jane’ which she couldn’t put down.  I’d only told Chelsea about my books two weeks earlier, she hadn’t read them, but on Nicky’s recommendation will now do so.  “Thank you Lord for answered prayer, and I loved the fact that Nicky lives in Malta, a very apt place to receive a message in a bottle (via Kindle!).

Days later came the Lord’s plot input, in two parts. I wrote the first, and He added another. It is extraordinary that the book already contains the right location, scenario in place; timing perfect; and ‘seeing’ it I can now draw the plot to its climax.  All I have to do is write it in a way to grip the reader, leave them gasping, and wanting to read the next book!  The only downside is the Lord dropped the plot in, but left me to do the research so I can bring reality into fiction.