A Morning Call: Fire, Books, and the Long Road of the Gospel
This morning I sat quietly with my first cup of coffee, letting the day wake slowly around me. The early hours have always carried a different kind of atmosphere. The world has not yet reached its full volume. The noise of the day has not yet taken hold. In those quiet spaces it becomes easier to hear the deeper things moving in the heart.
And this morning my thoughts began to settle on the things God has placed before me.
The books I am writing.
The studies I am pursuing at Bible college at King’s.
The small publishing house I have begun building, Refined by Fire Press.
The strange and beautiful calling that seems to be unfolding slowly in my life.
Sometimes when I sit back and look at it all, it feels overwhelming in the best possible way. None of this was something I carefully mapped out years ago. Much of it has emerged slowly, piece by piece, through seasons of suffering, questions, failures, healing, and quiet persistence.
If someone had told me years ago that I would be writing books about faith, wrestling with theology, studying the Scriptures more deeply, and building a publishing house centered around the refining work of God, I probably would not have believed them.
But life has a way of unfolding in directions we cannot see at the beginning.
For me, the journey toward writing has never been about ambition or building a platform. It began as something far more personal.
It began as survival.
Writing became a place where I could wrestle honestly with the deepest parts of my story the trauma, the pain, the near-death experience that changed my life, the battles with addiction, the long seasons of questioning, and the quiet ways God slowly began to rebuild something inside me.
At first those reflections were private. They were simply a way of making sense of my own life.
But somewhere along the way something changed.
I began to realize that the stories we carry are not meant to remain buried forever. Sometimes the very things we survived become the things God uses to reach other people who are standing in the same darkness.
That realization is what eventually led to my memoir.
Kissed by Death.
That book was not written from a place of distance or polished reflection. It came from the raw center of my own experience. The story of surviving meningococcal disease, facing death at eighteen, and encountering the presence of Christ in the middle of that darkness is not something I can separate from my life.
It shaped everything that followed.
And writing that story opened something inside me that has continued to grow.
The second book, Refined by Fire, came from a different place. That work began to explore the deeper spiritual themes that had been forming through the years — suffering, transformation, redemption, and the mysterious ways God uses pain to shape a person’s life.
Fire has always been the central metaphor for me.
Not just because of my love for barbecue and cooking over open flame, but because fire seems to mirror something profound about the spiritual life.
Fire purifies.
Fire exposes.
Fire transforms.
Fire destroys what is weak but strengthens what can endure the heat.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that much of my life had been shaped by seasons that felt exactly like that.
Refined by fire.
And that realization eventually became more than a book.
It became the foundation for something else entirely.
Refined by Fire Press.
Starting a publishing house was not about creating a business in the traditional sense. It was about creating a place where stories shaped by suffering, faith, and redemption could be shared honestly. There are many voices in the world speaking loudly about success, self-help, and personal achievement.
But there are fewer spaces where people speak honestly about the refining process.
The places where faith is tested.
The places where doubt and belief collide.
The places where a person meets Christ not in comfort but in the furnace.
That is the kind of work I want Refined by Fire Press to represent.
Stories that are honest.
Stories that do not pretend suffering is simple.
Stories that show how grace often appears in the middle of brokenness rather than outside of it.
At the same time, my journey has also led me back into formal study.
Studying at King’s Bible college has been another unexpected chapter in this story. There is something humbling about sitting again as a student, opening the Scriptures with fresh eyes, and realizing how much depth there still is to discover.
The Bible is not a shallow book.
It is an ocean.
Every time I study it more carefully I realize how much I still have to learn. The historical context, the theology, the literary structure, the prophetic threads that run from Genesis to Revelation all of it reveals a story far larger than we often realize.
And that deeper study has only strengthened the conviction that sits at the center of my life.
The Gospel matters.
Not as a slogan.
Not as a cultural label.
But as the living announcement that Jesus Christ entered the brokenness of the world to redeem it.
Everything I am doing the writing, the studying, the publishing, the reflections I share publicly ultimately flows from that conviction.
I want to see the Gospel proclaimed to the ends of the earth.
That phrase can sound dramatic, but when you sit with it long enough it becomes deeply personal. It means that somewhere, someone who feels forgotten might hear that their story is not finished.
It means that someone who believes they are beyond redemption might discover that grace still reaches them.
It means that people standing in darkness might encounter the same light that changed my life.
And when I think about that calling, I realize something important.
The scale of the mission is enormous.
But the daily steps are often very small.
Writing a page.
Studying a passage of Scripture.
Publishing a reflection.
Answering an email.
Encouraging someone who is struggling.
None of those things look dramatic on their own. But over time they begin to form a path.
And that path leads somewhere.
The Gospel has always moved forward this way — through ordinary people faithfully carrying the message into the places where they live, work, and serve.
As I sit here finishing my coffee this morning, that thought fills me with both humility and gratitude.
I am not trying to build something impressive.
I am simply trying to be faithful with the things God has placed in my hands.
The books.
The studies.
The publishing house.
The stories.
The small daily opportunities to speak about Christ in a world that is often searching for meaning in all the wrong places.
And maybe that is enough.
Because when you look closely at the way God works throughout history, He rarely begins with grand institutions or massive movements.
He begins with a person.
A quiet moment.
A calling placed gently on the heart.
And then, step by step, that calling begins to grow.
That is where I find myself today.
At the beginning of something that still feels larger than I fully understand.
But I know this much with certainty.
The fire that has shaped my life is not finished with its work.
And as long as God continues to place words in my heart, I will keep writing.
As long as He continues to open doors for learning, I will keep studying.
As long as there are stories that speak of redemption, I will keep publishing.
Because the Gospel is worth carrying.
And if my small work can play even a tiny part in seeing that message reach further into the world, then every page written and every step taken will have been worth it.
One page.
One story.
One life at a time.
About the Author
Dylan Verdun Sullivan is the founder of Refined by Fire Press and an Australian author indexed in the National Library. As a Level 7 Local Guide with over 1.2M views on Google Maps, he documents the intersection of faith, recovery, and the "light in the mundane."
- Read the Memoir: Kissed by Death on Amazon
- Explore the Journey: Follow Dylan on Google Maps
- Connect on Instagram: @porkysparadise
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