Related articles and links |  1 of 3

Francine Rivers is an award-winning writer who was named to the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame in 1997. Her fiction often deals with real issues and causes readers to think through their own beliefs. Her books include The Atonement Child, Redeeming Love and the Mark of the Lion trilogy.

How did you get started as a writer?

Well, I always wanted to write from the time I was very little, and my mother encouraged me. She wrote a journal from the time she was 15 up until about the age of 76. So she was encouraging me to write stories.

You got your start in books by writing steamy romantic novels. How did that fit with your faith?

I had been raised in the church, but I wasn't a Christian. I had a lot of head knowledge but no heart knowledge. So it didn't really make any difference. But I was searching. I can see in the last couple of those novels that I was really searching for answers. They were dealing with God, touching on God and the search for God.

What were the titles of those books?

I'd rather not give the titles because I don't want people going out and looking for them. I have gotten all the rights back to those books, and they're no longer in print. I have friends that buy them. And they toss them.

Some of them are in libraries, but I see them as an opportunity for me to witness and say, "Well, this was the before. Then Christ came into my life, and everything changed after that in dramatic ways."

So there you are exploring spiritual yearnings in not-to-be-named steamy romance novels. What happened to change things?

We moved into a new house. An 8-year-old boy came over and said, "Have I got a church for you." And when I walked into that church, they were teaching from the Bible. New concept. I had grown up where they read the Bible, but it was like, "Here it is, and now let's talk about how to change the world."

This particular church was going through and teaching the Word, the historical aspects, and what it actually says.

Had you read the Bible much before this?

Not a lot. From my upbringing, you let the Bible open and the wind blows it and then you read where it stops. I had never read the entire Bible. I thought I knew what was in there.

Did you find it compelling?

Not to begin with. I had prayed about that. I met a gal that talked about how she wasn't interested. And her mother had said, "Would you pray to be interested?" And she said, "Well, not really. That wouldn't be honest."

So [the mother] said, "Would you pray to have an interest to have an interest?" And she said yes. So I thought, well, if it worked for her, maybe it would work for me. So I prayed that God would remove my interest in romance reading and replace it with a passion for his Word. And that prayer was answered almost immediately, because I read through the Bible every year. And to me, it's the most fascinating reading in the world.

How did that end up changing your life as a writer?

I started over from scratch. I had sold over three and a half million books in the general market, and I was making good money. So I had to make a choice. Am I going to be willing to step back and trust that God's going to do something with this—or am I going to go the way I've always gone? And I think if you trust God, he will take care of it. It was very scary.

I couldn't write for three years. When I became a born-again Christian, it was like it was shut off completely. I couldn't write anything. Nothing made sense. I would try to write. I'm stubborn—I wanted to write.

I felt later on that God had literally shut it off because he was saying to me, you know, you say you want to be a Christian, but you need to get to know who I am.

next page... |  1 of 3

August (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46