Daddy's Delight Blog Tour - Day 2

Daddy’s Delight 

KARIA BUNTING is an expository Bible teacher whose mission is to communicate the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ so that people are saved, and disciples are developed. She is the founder of Focused Forward Ministries, a communication and media ministry, and a member of several community and ministry organizations. She also partners with her husband, George, in his management & financial consulting company.

Karia received her master’s degree from Dallas Theological Seminary and a doctorate from Louisiana Baptist Theological Seminary. She’s currently receiving a second doctorate from the University of Texas. She serves as an adjunct professor at Dallas Baptist University and enjoys ministering the Word and its’ principles through her lecture series and power lunches held throughout the year.

Karia and George, her husband of 26 years, live in Dallas, Texas where she teaches the Word weekly in the women’s Bible study at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship. Mother of three children, Karia is also a mentor to many young women. She enjoys reading, writing, and spending time with family and friends.

Visit her Dr. Karia online at focusedforwardministries.org.

List your published books

Daddy’s Delight:  Embracing Your Divine Design, is my first published book.  

Which book did you find the hardest to birth?

This is my first book, but it was not difficult to birth.  I had been taking notes on the subject of Spiritual Authority while I was working on my Doctorate in Theology, and the exegesis I did for that formed the basis for this book.

How would you describe you writing style?

I am an expository Bible teacher, so my writing style is expository.  What that means is that the framework, or outline, let’s say of my work is from a thorough exposition of scripture.  Then, I apply the Biblical principles to life, and explain the principles through a generous application of anecdote.  On occasion I create stories or characters with whom the reader can relate that demonstrate the principle.   

I suppose when it comes to the short vignettes, and the limited fiction embedded in the text, that was birthed in academia as well.  My second doctoral program is in humanities, and a part of that program is the study of literature, and of course writing plays, screenplays, and that kind of thing.  So, because I have practiced so much screenplay writing the creative side of the brain has been well-exercised!  Thinking of relevant vignettes just came for me, word after word, I think.  I never knew, in those, what the next word I wrote would be.  And those stayed pretty much verbatim, even through the editing process.     

Do you listen to music while you write?  If so, what kind?

Absolutely not!  Friend, I cannot stand to have any sound whatsoever around me when I write.  I am easily distracted.  The click of another keyboard in the room can help me loose a thought.  So I like to go to bed and get up really early in the morning before anyone else is up and write.  Or write when no one else is in the home at all. 

But recently, I have had to learn to do some writing with people are around, and go back and clean it up later.  But writing flows when no one is there,  and that is much easier for me. 

Tell us anything about you as a writer that you think might be interesting or unusual.

There was an old song from, maybe, the 80’s, and the words were,  “She’s strange, and I like it.  She’s strange – just the way she moves….”  I think it was sung by Cameo.  My husband sings that song to me.  And it probably is true.  I probably am strange, but I don’t care, really.  I lose everything .   I couldn’t organize a closet if you paid me.  So when I sit down to write, there is nothing organized about it.  After I make my exegetical outline based on the Word of God, I write whatever comes to mind in whatever order comes to mind, bringing into the manuscript whatever additional scripture  comes to mind.  The structure of the text of the work doesn’t really change from there.  And the structure works, it is clear.    I think I learned that from academia as well.  I have 17 years of graduate study under my belt.  So now, no matter what it is, I just sit down and write.  I’m trying to download all this stuff in my brain, and put it in a place where it can help someone else.    

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Read everything, and concentrate on something.  That way, you have more to say than your area of expertise.  You cannot write anything that you are not.  So be more.

And then be relevant.  Whether you are talking about modern fiction, or canonical works like that of Hawthorn,   good fiction is related to what is important to the culture at the time that it is written.  It is also sensitive to the constraints and the imagination of the culture.  What is the culture thinking that it has not articulated?  What are its’ pent up frustrations or fears?  In its’ greatest imagination, what would it do, and about what?  What does it really want?  Really need?  Investigate that, and if you are interested, talk about it. 

Now in inspirational non-fiction, this is the most important thing:  that you love your reader.  Love the reader enough, first, not to waste her time.  If you don’t have anything to add to what has already been said, wait until you do.  Expand your reader’s base of information.    Let their life be impacted by reading your book in a way that it can’t be impacted by any other book. 

If you don’t love your reader, you  can’t help her.   As for me, I pray that I love God’s people passionately.  You may have your own way.  But for me, the book is a means to an end – the end of the reader having a better life.

Love will make me sacrifice my time and sleep.  Love will drive me to give people what they need – what they really need.  Love makes my life not about me.  Being loved by God is how I live – how I get through.  And loving God’s people through my work is what I am called to do.  It has to be that way for anybody God will use to truly change people’s life through non– fiction.    Good non-fiction is love funneled through knowledge by means of language.  

Writers are often encouraged to write what they know.  Have you found that to be the case with your writing?

Yes.  I know the Bible, and that is really all I write about.  Communication of the Word is the point of what I do, without regard to genre.  And this book, particularly, I know not only epistemologically, but personally.  I have lived this book.  I know the Word as presented in this book is true, both because I trust the God who gave the Word, but as you will see as you read the book, because I have lived the principles over the course of my life. They work. 

About the Book

In Daddy’s Delight, Dr. Karia Bunting reminds women that they are God’s workmanship, His masterpiece, His “poema”. That God has intricately woven together every fiber of their being and created each one special and unique. That God, having completed His work of art, gave her to mankind as a gift.

Evident in this great care God took in fashioning woman is the importance and value of each one. So why do so many women struggle with God’s design, wishing they could change just this or that one thing about themselves?

Dr. Bunting challenges each reader to accept and embrace the truth that, regardless of what season of life she’s in, she is God’s masterpiece-not her own work of art. When God sees her, He sees His beautiful creation. A creation that yes, has some wrinkles needing to be smoothed out and yet, is one in whom is His delight to love to perfection.

View the blog tour schedule and read an excerpt at

http://bit.ly/DaddysDelight.