Interview for Love Matters by Neil Tolsma

About the Book

Book: Love Matters

Author: Neil Tolsma

Genre: Non-Fiction

Release date: September 13, 2022

The Bible answers with one word: Love. What am I to do when my love is weak and in short supply? What difference does godly love make in the rush of everyday living? These are questions that Christians ask and need answered.

Love Matters answers these vital questions and others through a careful examination of what the Word of God has to say about reproducing God’s love in the exercise of personal faith. Love Matters is unique in developing this study of love in a redemptive-historical setting.

Love Matters is a biblical study of the divine call to love God and others wholeheartedly and the means by which the believer can overcome deficiencies in that call.

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Interview with Author Neil Tolsma

1. How long does it take you to write a book?
including research, it took me six years to write me first book, This Is Love. Love Matters, took six years as well. This doesn’t count the years of preparation behind my considering the subject of love in the Bible. It commanded my attention in biblical study of the subject in preaching, teaching and counseling.

2. What do you like best about writing non-fiction?
it has been the joy of my life to serve the Lord as a pastor and preacher for over 50 years, and to take the knowledge I’ve gleaned and translating it into books that I pray are faithful to the Word of God and bring him glory. After all the chief end of man is to glorify God as the Westminster Shorter Catechism reminds us.

3. What do you hope readers will take away from this story?
Allow me to share a paragraph from the Introduction to my first book, “I pray that this book will enrich your understanding of the love of God… I pray that you will be fired up to read your Bible and read it with a new appreciation… I pray that the love of Christ may be reproduced in your own life. Jesus loved us to the uttermost and calls us to love one another as he has loved us. If you are a stranger to the grace and glory of the love of God, I pray, the by means of this book, God will open your heart to receive that love, so that you too may come to love him, and your neighbor, as Jesus love you.”

4. What is something memorable you have heard from your readers?
One day an unexpected letter came. In it a college coed wrote that my book, This Is Love, changed her life. It was one of several indications of the impact my book has had on my readers by the grace of God. He alone does wondrous things.

5. How do you make non-fiction interesting and engaging while still being informative and writing the facts?
Illustratins tha fit the narrative. I’ve been told by more than one reader how helpful the illustrations have been.

About the Author

Neil Tolsma was born on February 5, 1935, Saddle Brook, NJ. Met his wife, Lenore Merop, at Garfield Community Church (where he had made his profession of Christ as his Savior at the age of 17) and they were married on August 29, 1959. They had both been part of the Billy Graham Choir that introduced the popular hymn, How Great Thou Art, to America the summer of 1957. He graduated from Shelton College, Ringwood, NJ, 1962 with A.B. And from Westminster Theological Seminary 1965, B.D./M.Div. Ordained by the Presbytery of the South, Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 1965. Served as pastor of Bethel Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 1965 to 1974, Falls Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, 1974 until his retirement in 2004. They are the parents of three daughters and 8 grandchildren. Neil is the author of This Is Love: Tracing the Love of God throughout the Biblical Story.

More from Neil

Why Another Book on Love

Walk into any bookstore, Christian or general market, big or small, and you’re sure to be inundated by books on love, both fiction and nonfiction. How to love your spouse or significant other. How to love your children. How to love yourself. Love, love, love. That’s all we seem to hear about today. Love in all its forms, both good and evil.

So, then, why would I write another nonfiction book on love? Aren’t there plenty to choose from already? Well, yes and no. There are many on the shelves. Have your pick. But how many of those talk about what real, biblical love is, why we are to love, and where our one and only source of love is?

So many people today don’t know what love truly is. We have romanticized versions of flowers, chocolates, and violins. We dream of being swept off our feet and spending every waking minute with someone who will cherish us above all else. One of the most popular sayings of the day is Love Is Love.

Is it really? How do we know what true love is? That understanding only comes from God and his word to us. Only through him and in him do we find pure, holy, agape love. Love that sacrificed his only Son for us to give eternal life to us sinners—the impure, unholy, and filthy.

And so that’s why I wrote Love Matters. Because it does. It matters to our lives today, in how we relate to our spouses, our children, our family members, and the world at large. It matters to our eternity in how we view our salvation and how we are to love our Lord. It matters when we’re old and when we’re young, when we’re at home and when we’re at work, when we agree with someone and when we disagree with them.

Throughout my fifty years of in-depth Bible study as a pastor and counselor, I was brought back time and time again to the Bible to discover what love is. Over and over, I returned to the command God gave in Exodus, that we are to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, strength, and minds, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Because God is love and love matters to him, it has to matter to us.