I've been writing for about ten years now. At times along the way, I wondered... why? I felt a calling to write things the way God allows me to see them... but I wasn't sure what to do with them, except to share them with others. Finishing a book has been on my list for a while now. Years, even. But every time I started, I stopped. Every time I resolved, "This time, I'm GETTING IT DONE"... it just didn't happen. Things would come up or time would slip by or, sometimes, I would try to side-step His plan. My self-discipline would be met with sabotage, it seemed, because of doubt or fear or any number of reasons I felt I wasn't qualified to do this thing. I would be ashamed of myself for stopping, praying to develop a stronger commitment each time I started again. But even then, most every day... I would write what I felt I was seeing and feeling and living, trying every day to view my world and my life more through His eyes.
I am full of great ideas and I can light the firecracker fuse to get things going... but a finisher, I was not. Or, at least, I didn't feel like it. Until now. And I didn't like that about myself. But I also have to realize... and remember... and now remind you... that life has its seasons. During some times, I just had to read and write and reflect when I felt I could find the time. At some points in my life, I hardly cracked a book much less inked a page. But during those moments, and even sometimes now, I think about how Joseph must have felt in the years between being stripped of his coat and saving God's people... how Daniel must have felt while an exile in Babylon... how Paul must have felt with every shipwreck and detour and imprisonment along his way to do what he knew he was supposed to do. I have to hold on to the knowledge that I must do what I can with the time I have, even if I'm not sure what will come of what I'm doing... or if I don't feel I have very long to get it done. I guess what I'm trying to say is...
Whatever you feel called to do. Just keep doing it. He will show you what you are supposed to do with it in His time. In the meantime... just keep doing it. And as I make the exciting announcement of actually finishing a book that has been ten years in the making, I think about a song I recorded even more years ago than that...a song rooted in Philippians 1:6 whose chorus reads a little something like this... Jesus, you are... you are Everything I'm not. You're everything that I want to be. Jesus, you are... you are the maker of my heart. Finish what you started in me. I also know that this is just the beginning of this book venture for me. I already have several more in the works and I pray it won't take me another ten years to finish one. But even if it does... I want every word to be more about what He has done in me (and can do in you) than about anything I might feel like I want to do or say on my own
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God dit not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." - John 3:16-17
Comments