3LC Publishing featured me in an interview for their "In God's Image" series.

Over the course of the interview I talked about my writings, the Untold Podcast, and preaching with a creative flare. Head over here to check it out: http://www.3lcpublishing.com/2015/06/in-gods-image-author-podcaster-nathan-james-norman/

Summary: When a madman calling himself Nero abducts five strangers to a mysterious island, events are set in motion that may very well trigger the catastrophic events of the Book of Revelation. These five strangers quickly discover that Nero intends to torment these five people in his sadistic games as he asks the question, "Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?"

Review: Jason Brannon opens The Tears of Nero with explosive intrigue and action. The reader, like the protagonists, are thrown right into the conflict without reason or explanation. This is a gutsy move on Brannon's part. On the one hand, it grabs the reader's attention. On the other hand, though, it results in very little upfront characterization. Indeed, the opening chapters of the novel are propelled forward by plot and not by the characters. But something interesting happens as the five strangers traverse the dangers and traps of the island... as they get to know each other, we begin to bond with them. It took me time to care about most of the characters, but before I knew it, I really did.

The Tears of Nero is an amalgam of genres. Adventure, spy, supernatural tale, and esoteric religious thriller all accurately describe this story.

This book took me a long time to read. Not because it is massive (although it is long) or because it was boring. By no means! Personal life events severely limited my free time. The result, though, was that I was able to spend months inside this supernatural mystery. The story built over months, and the tension paid off in the end.

I only have mild criticisms for the book. The Nero character's timeline of life events didn't always seem to add up for me. And the main crux of the book, Why does God allow bad things happen to good people? has a reasonable answer by the end of the book, but as a theologian I anticipated a more robust response to this age-old "problem of evil."

Beyond those hiccups I enjoyed the world Jason Brannon has created. And while this is a stand-alone novel, Brannon sews into the narrative a few subplots that will work their way into a follow-up novel.

Fans of spy, cult-plots, supernatural warfare and religious thrillers should check out The Tears of Nero. It's a great book.

Rating: 4.5/5 (I REALLY Liked It!)

(Same name... Different Nero!)

This sermon wrecked me.
It ripped me apart, broke me in half and had me in tears during most of the prep work.

And I needed it.

You can listen to it at the Orchard Church.
You can also listen to a slightly better produced version on the Untold Podcast.
(Video is hopefully coming soon!)


*Spoilers after this*

The text was from Genesis 22. Yes. I preached "The Sacrifice of Isaac" on Easter Sunday. I'm going to share some insights from the first-person sermon, but I also want to share some personal things first.

Two weeks ago, I was furious at God. I seethed at him. From about my birthday, and through last week's sermon. I was so angry at him I didn't want to preach. I didn't want to step foot in church. I most certainly didn't even want to pray to him.

One day I will be at liberty to share the source of my anger. All I can say for now, is my anger stemmed from circumstances involving my family and my children. In this circumstance, I am absolutely powerless. There is nothing, nothing, nothing I can do to protect those who need to be protected. I have never felt so powerless in my life.

And God did nothing.

He has not intervened. He has not put a stop to it.

So I was furious. Fuming. Beyond rage.

And then I came to Genesis 22. We're preaching through Genesis this year at the Orchard Church. I had intended to take a break from the text for Holy Week. But months ago when I saw this text, I thought it would be perfect to relate this story to the story of the sacrifice and resurrection.

I knew it would be challenging to do a first-person sermon based on this text, but I knew if I could pull it off, the sermon would be incredibly emotional. So back in December I committed myself to the text.

But now I was angry with God. I'm not using hyperbole when I say I was (and still am) absolutely powerless in this situation. The only person who can help is God Almighty. And it's one thing to trust him with my own suffering. It's an entirely different thing to trust him with the suffering of someone else.

I started working on this text. Almost immediately I realized it was about my dilemma. I resented God for it.

But as I worked through the emotionality of Abraham, as I experienced his horror, his pain, and his utter powerlessness I was completely broke. From Tuesday on I wept. Often. I closed my office door working on this sermon and weeping. My notes are stained with tear marks. I closed the blinds in my office I wept so often.

And then I practiced the script.

At one point during practice on Friday, I came to the point when Abraham realized he was sacrificing the ram in Isaac's place and I wept on stage. I wept for five minutes straight. It's important to note, I was not emotional because God had intervened. He hadn't. (Not yet anyway). Nor was I given a prophetic vision of the future where everything turns out okay. No. My emotins poured out because like Abraham, God had placed me in an impossible situation, and the only thing I could do is trust him.

I'm no longer angry at God. Not right now anyway.The situation is still dire. Nothing has changed. Except... except my heart. My inner being.

The big idea of the text is: You should trust God when life is impossible because he has provided a ram. Because he has provided Jesus Christ. I don't think I changed because I heard that... or even chose to believe it. I think my heart has changed because the Holy Spirit used the living Word of God to change it with this timeless truth.

The onstage tears weren't a performance. They exposed my heart.

Insights

One of the reasons I love preaching first-person sermons is that it forces me to engage the text using my imagination. What did God's voice sound like? Why did Abraham haul wood on a three day journey? What did the Angel of Yahweh look like? How did Abraham bind Isaac? How did Isaac respond?

Here's a few of the "Easter Eggs" from the sermon:

1. I described the voice of God in the terms of contradictions. Sound and no sound. Fierce and calm.  I'd imagine something like this is completely unmistakable from some of the thoughts that idly run through our heads.
2. Traditionally Moriah is thought to be the mountain of Jerusalem. I took it a step further and described white stones coming out of the ground in a few places because Golgotha is thought to have been an abandoned white stone quarry. So I thought the subtle hint of sparing Isaac where Christ was crucified was poignant.
3. I have Abraham bring firewood along, almost as a stall tactic, but for a deeper reason too. He doesn't understand God. He's angry. And so he vents his frustration by chopping wood they would probably be able to find almost anywhere.
4. Abraham's speech is tricky. Some interpret him expressing faith that Yahweh would come through. Others see his statements as lies. Since I've been preaching through Genesis, if there's one thing I know about Abraham, it's that he's a liar. But I also saw a glimmer of faith (a mustard seed if you will), so I added both into the mix.
5. Hebrews 11 says Abraham believed God could raise Isaac from the dead. So that got mixed in there too.
6. I interpreted the text to mean that they had arrived in Moriah as the sun set. I was basing this on the Jewish understanding of the day, which begins at sundown. This would also explain why they walked with fire/a touch, and why Isaac called out to his father on the journey up the mountain.
7. I tend to think of "The Angel of Yahweh" in the Old Testament as the pre-incarnate Christ. The Second person of the Trinity. Because of this, I decided to describe him in terms of Revelation 1:12ff.
8. I owe popular atheist Richard Dawkins a debt of gratitude. I recalled him criticizing this story because of the kind of trauma Isaac would have experienced because of this incident. He's right! So I incorporated it into the sermon. Thank you Richard Dawkins for helping me preach the Word of God better!
   
   

There were plenty of other little gems in here, but I wanted to share some of my thought process that went into creating this dramatic sermon.

In the end, I hope lives were transformed through the preaching of the Word.

Last week I released the eighteenth story on the Untold Podcast!

I am pleased with the direction this podcast is taking. Our listenership is increasing and the stories I'm able to tell are consistently great!

This last episode was also a crossover episode featuring Ben Avery from the Strangers and Aliens podcast. In it, he and I talked about the importance of Christian storytelling. The conversation continued onto his show, where we talked about some great Christ artists who are making artwork out there.

I learned so much from this conversation and I am greatful for Ben Avery's perspective, wisdom and grace.

Give a listen:

Untold Podcast 18 - The Spigot

What Makes Christian Fiction Good? (CROSSOVER feat. Nathan James Norman) — SA111

Crossover Nexus Podcasts Crossover Nexus Podcasts

Untold Podcast – Episode 9

May 28, 2013

“Flood of Terror” by Justin Lowmaster was actually the first contemporary piece that the Untold Podcast got its hands on!

Through episode 4, all the podcast’s show either originated from my own works, or were pieces in the public domain. Now, I personally have enough works to keep the Untold Podcast in production for a decade, but I didn’t want it to be about me! I wanted other voices!

After the pilot episode was released I began contacting about half a dozen of my Christian writing friends, asking for stories. Most of them said they’d get something to me. But after four months, I hadn’t received a single story.

Not content to settle on public domain stories (although we will be featuring them from time-to-time) I began going through my personal library and “cold-calling” (via e-mail) various authors. Justin Lowmaster was the first because his story was featured in a compilation I had also been published through and I knew he retained the rights to his story.

I had inquired about “Flood of Terror” but he was also interested in having “Send In” featured on the show. So, I agreed to produce both of them (with episodes in between). So, in many ways, this was intended to be episode 5, but I think the order worked out very well.

***SPOILER ALERT***

(Listen to the story here first)

Concerning the story, while I was evaluating the story, I almost decided to pass over it. The theme of “God will never give us more than we can handle” features prominently in it. And, as I’ve blogged about before, that’s just plain bad theology.

But something deeper was going on in this story. Even though the protagonist said the phrase several times, when push came to shove, God did give him more than he could handle. At the height of the action, Charles was literally in over his head, about to drown and it wasn’t his karate, or his intellect that saved him. It was the Word of God. Period. Charles didn’t stop the cult. God did. God just briefly spoke through him.

I can’t believe I almost missed that.

If you like the show, please talk about it on social media. And please follow us on Twitter and like our FaceBook page.

This was an important episode for us. Brian Godawa graciously allowed the Untold Podcast to produce a portion of his book and present it as a stand alone story (which required some slight modifications).
I actually heard an interview with Godawa a few months ago on the Spirit Blade Underground Podcast. I went to his website, paid for a video seminar on Christians and the genre of horror, then bought his book Noah Primeval. After reading the book I sent him an e-mail thanking him for writing it, and exchanged a few thoughts about the genre of horror.

A few days later, I decided to be bold and asked him if he had any short stories we could use on the show.

He didn't.

But he did offer up the possibility of producing a chapter or two from Noah. I declined, because I wanted the podcast to contain stand alone stories only. The wheels were turning, though, so I went through Noah again and found a section I thought could work and Godawa agreed.

Now, I think the episode worked pretty well as a stand alone story (the main tension of Noah's belligerence and imprisonment is resolved), but I don't think I want to regularly pull stories out of larger novels.

It worked this time and I think it has helped increase the traffic to the podcast. And I was thrilled to have a larger name like Brian Godawa connected to the project!

Listen to it here if you haven't already! And be sure to share it on twitter, blog about it, facebook it . . . spread the goodness!

This episode of the podcast is actually a bonus episode. It contains a recording of the first-person sermon I wrote and preached on Easter Sunday.

Listen to it here.

SPOILERS from here on out!

In comparison to other first-person sermons I’ve done (King Darius, Roman Centurion, man possessed by Legion, Barabbas, King Herod, etc.) this was a quiet one. But it was emotionally charged. It came from the closing story in John 21 where Jesus restores Simon Peter.

There were a couple details I was thrilled to find and use in the sermon:

1. When Peter swims to shore, John recorded that Jesus was cooking fish and bread over a charcoal fire. It is a bizarre detail to include in the text. Who cares what kind of fire it was? But John, like all the biblical writers under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, was brilliant. When Peter denied Jesus the three times before the crucifixion, he did so in close proximity to a fire. And guess what kind of fire it was? That’s right! A charcoal fire! This was a wonderful detail for John to use in Peter’s restoration story because it subconsciously harkens the reader back to Peter’s betrayal . . . and I think communicates to us, that Jesus knew what Peter did.

2. Jesus concludes his restoration of Peter with two words, “Follow me.” Now, John doesn’t go into Peter and Andrew’s calling as much as Matthew, Mark and Luke do. So I cheated a little bit here. I went outside of John’s gospel to Mark’s (Matthew would have worked too) and I used Jesus’ first words to Simon Peter from this gospel to bookend the entire message. I don’t think this was necessarily wrong, though, because John wrote his gospel significantly later than the synoptics. Both John and the majority of his readers would have been familiar with the other gospels. So, when John records Jesus telling Peter “Follow me” at the conclusion of the story, most readers are going to remember Jesus calling Peter out of the boat three years prior. (In John, though, Jesus called Nathaniel and Philip with these two words as well.)

There wasn’t a lot of action in this story . . . but there was a ton of emotion. Peter failed Jesus and had to face him again! Amazing human drama. Praise God for restoration!

The sixth episode of the Untold Podcast has now been live and free for a couple of days.

The direct link is here.

"Forms of Destiny" by Stuart Vaughn Stockton is a quiet, but profound little story. It's also very bizarre, which just makes it all that much more awesome!

This episode was also a treat because it featured the gorgeous voice talent of my wife in the role of the story's protagonist, Mesh'iel.

With each episode launch our listener base is growing . . . and growing significantly. From the start I had hoped to get contemporary writers submitting their work production. Truth be told, I have personally written enough good short stories to tell for the next few years on the podcast.

But I didn't want it to become the "Nathan James Norman" show. I wanted the Untold Podcast to be more than self-promotion. I wanted the Untold Podcast to be a show featuring many voices and many viewpoints. I wanted the Untold Podcast to capture the culture's imagination!

And praise God . . . it's happening. And it's happening even faster than I had anticipated! We've had some amazing stories on the show already, and we've got several more great ones lined up!

If you're interested in any aspect of working on the show, from production, graphics, web design, to story writing and narration, now is the time to get involved! Head over to the podcast site, and drop us a line!

The fifth episode of the Untold Podcast "Send In" is now up and available for free download!

I have decided to blog on my personal website with each release and give some additional background and behind the scene information not available anywhere else.

This was a very important episode. This was the first episode that featured contemporary work from an author other than myself. This story "Send In" resulted from contacting Justin Lowmaster about using one of his other stories which appeared in a compilation book one of my own stories also appeared in. That other story (which I'm still planning on producing in May) led to this story, "Send In".

My vision for the podcast is to draw in many voices and perspectives to challenge and inspire Christian imagination. A key component to this vision is to have contemporary voices contributing to this endeavor. (And heads-up . . . next month will feature a story from another published author!)

I was also looking for a particular song to close out the story with (I won't reveal spoilers). That search led me to Joshua Popejoy. And when I contacted him, he was more than willing to not only let me use this song . . . but also gave me permission to use one of his brand new songs.

Personally, I am going to be checking out a ton of Joshua Popejoy's work. It really is awesome.

I also have to let you onto to a secret. My favorite line from the story isn't what I said it was in the podcast. I chose the line I did because it best complemented Joshua Popejoy's closing song.

If you want to see my real favorite line, look at the comments section of this post after listening to the podcast.

Click here to go to the Untold Podcast.

Episode 4 of the Untold Podcast is now live! The podcast features the classic, but often neglected, Brothers Grimm story "The Juniper Tree".

I decided to rate it 'PG' but like many of these stories, it is rather dark. A couple of the sound effects (which just follow the story) are particularly disturbing. I probably would have rated it 'PG 13' if it wasn't a classic.

Also, for the voice of the step-mom (who is interestingly called "mother" throughout the story, which I think is a little piece of unmerited grace she is given but pays no mind to), I decided to take on a cow-like voice. I think I did this so the ugliness of her soul was matched in some physical way.

Head on over to the Untold Podcast and listen for free!

And please share it with your friends!