An Offering of Words
I wrote The Forgotten Gospel by accident.
One blustery November afternoon, I sat down to prepare notes for a Bible study on Leviticus—nothing more. No outline or book proposal. No vision for a manuscript. Just an inner determination to understand a difficult book of the Bible well enough to help others through it.
My notes kept growing.
What I thought would be a couple pages became five, then ten. I remember looking up a few hours later and realizing I hadn’t prepared a lesson. I had stumbled into the early pages of a book.
Weeks of writing turned into months. I kept going.
At 20,000 words, I began to think this project might be worth finishing. At 30,000, I became acutely aware that I had no idea what I was doing.
So I did what I have always done when I find myself in unfamiliar territory. I read a book about it.
I studied structure, pacing, argument, tone. Having never written anything so long, I had to learn how to shape something cohesive out of something that had, until then, simply been pouring out.
At 65,000 words, I decided I needed help—an editor.
I didn’t know where to find one, or what that process looked like, but step by step I figured it out. I cut the manuscript down—too much, as it turned out—and nervously sent it to someone who was far more qualified than I was.
What came back was humbling. Pages of thoughtful feedback and rigorous queries left me a bit overwhelmed. My editor argued with nearly every point, which was exactly what I needed. His criticism forced me to see both the strengths and the gaps in what I had written.
So I went back in. I restored what I had cut too quickly and rebuilt the introduction from the ground up. I battled with chapter nine, again.
Notes became paragraphs. Paragraphs became the appendix I never planned to include. I wrote it in two days, a feat that still amazes me.
I wrote until there was nothing left to say. Slowly, a manuscript began to emerge.
By then, the project was no longer an accident.
It had become an offering.
An Offering of Words
At some point I made the decision to write something real—something serious, something weighty. Something worthy of the people who would read it. And something worthy of giving to the Most High God.
The accident became an offering of words.
Writing, as I quickly realized, was only part of the work. I needed a design that did right by the project. I needed to make publishing decisions, to seek endorsements, to place my work into the hands of influential people who did not know me and had every reason to dismiss everything I said.
And many did.
Doors closed. Emails went unanswered. Some did not take me seriously.
But others did. People from unexpected places—scholars, pastors, thoughtful authors and teachers—were willing to read and engage with the work I had done. When they emerged from it’s pages, their feedback made something very clear to me.
I had written something that, by God’s grace, was already beginning to serve others.
This book is not a product. It’s an offering. I trust that if these words carry weight, they will find their way into the hands of those who need them.
That principle is why I chose to publish this book independently. I wanted the freedom to be able to give it away electronically to those who lack the means to purchase it, a desire a traditional publisher may have found difficult to accommodate. I invite anyone who is moved by the same spirit of generosity to support this work so that it can continue.
God is faithful to multiply what is given back to him. While I have labored to shape this book, the words themselves are not mine. They are a gift I am humbled to be entrusted with.
The Fruit of a Curious Heart and a Gracious God
Everything about The Forgotten Gospel is, in its own way, a blessed accident.
I didn’t begin with answers or a plan. I started with questions about Leviticus, sacrifice, the temple. About how to make a book people dread come alive for the those gathered in my living room each week. I needed to know how its authority harmonizes with Jesus and his mission, not in vague or symbolic ways, but in the way he saw it.
More than anything, I wanted to hear the voice of Leviticus itself.
I didn’t want to make it fit a framework I had already decided was true. I wanted to understand what it was saying—and why so few of us are willing to listen.
So I kept asking.
Over time, asking became searching. Searching became studying. Studying—over years now—grew into understanding.
Then the words came. I wrote them down.
But the truth is I should never have made it this far.
I am no one remarkable. I have no formal training in the upper echelons of theology or a ministry platform on which to stand.
And yet—this seems to be the way of God. He delights in blessing the accidents. He strengthens those who have no strength of their own. He entrusts things to the ones no one expects.
The Forgotten Gospel is not the product of credentials. It is the fruit of a curious heart and a merciful God who refused to leave me behind.
It took years for me to see that Leviticus is not a detour in the story of redemption, but a window into the very heart of what God is doing—and will yet do.
In the end, the words just came as they always do.
Unbidden. Unforced. Already forming inside me long before they ever reached the page.
Sometimes the work we never intend to do becomes the burden we are asked to carry.
Laid Down in Gratitude
I have carried these words a long way—
from where they first began
to where they now come to rest.
I lay them down on the altar of this frail and earthly frame,
in gratitude—an offering to the One who first gave them.
May they rise, to you oh Lord,
and find favor in your sight.