Our neighborhood was no longer quiet or safe. A group of rowdy teens had claimed it. After a night of their partying, empty beer cans littered our manicured lawns. It also was not at all uncommon to find paint sprayed on cars, flat tires, and smashed lawn furniture. The targets for their vandalism were those who dared to suggest that they quiet down or go someplace else.
“What next?” we wondered and worried, especially when it became evident that drugs were involved. We knew we should do something, but what? The police regularly patrolled, but they seemed as helpless as we felt.
One night the kid brother of a gang member climbed a pole by the trolley stop and was electrocuted by the wires above the tracks. He was only thirteen years old! “Oh God,” I wept, “was there something I could have done that might have saved his life?”
I’ve asked similar questions when I’ve viewed documentaries on world hunger, human trafficking, homelessness, orphans, AIDS, child abuse . . . But the problems are so big and I again feel so helpless.
The family—the most basic and important unit of society—is under attack. Christian homes are far from immune. Divorce, adultery, the battering of women and children, incest, and teen suicide happens in our homes, too. Immorality is rampant. Violent crime is increasing. Our environment is being destroyed. And our children, both before and after birth, are at risk.
Where is God? What is He doing about it? I believe He’s calling people like you and like me to: “`Write my answer on a billboard, large and clear, so that anyone can read it at a glance and rush to tell the others'” (Hab. 2:2, TLB).
When the Lord first brought this verse to my attention, I was not at all certain He was speaking to me. I knew Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I knew without a doubt that He is the answer to man’s deepest needs, but I doubted my ability to write that answer in a compelling and effective way. I had never gone to college or taken a course in creative writing. I also had never shaken the enormous inferiority complex I’d been carrying since childhood. It didn’t take me long to conclude that He must have meant that verse for someone else.
Then I recalled a familiar Scripture: “If anyone publicly acknowledges me as his friend, I will openly acknowledge him as my friend before my Father in heaven. But if anyone publicly denies me, I will openly deny him before my Father in heaven” (Matt. 10:32-33, TLB).
Certainly my refusal to write was not a denial of Him, or was it? “Lord,” I prayed, “You know I don’t ever want to deny You, but I don’t see how I . . .”
“It’s not a question of your ability,” I felt him assure me. “You really can do everything I ask you to do with the help of Christ who will give you the strength and power” (Phil. 4:13, TLB).
I tried a whole bunch of “but Lord” excuses. They all sounded hollow next to His promise to help me. “But,” I continued to argue, “I don’t even know what You want me to write. I know You’re the answer, but how do I say that in a way that someone will publish?”
“Write out of your life experiences,” I felt the Lord say to me. “Make yourself transparent and vulnerable so others can see what I have done, and am doing, in your life.”
The choice was clear. The Lord had given me my instructions. To refuse would be an act of disobedience. Yet, it wasn’t easy to admit on paper, for the world to read, that I often failed to handle both big and little problems in a Christ-like way. I didn’t want people to know that I’m not a model Christian, that my faith falters, and that some days I feel overwhelmed and inadequate. But I also knew the Lord had taught me many things through my struggles—lessons that could perhaps be used to help someone else.
I swallowed my pride and began to write about “Battling and Defeating Depression,” “Coping with Ingratitude,” and “Praying About Everything.” I discovered that the answers He’d given me could be a source of help and reassurance to others who also asked: “What’s the Matter with Me?” or “Do I Have to Be That Honest?”
Making myself more vulnerable, I began to write about my life as a wife and mother. I admitted that “It Takes Two to Tangle” and that sometimes I’m guilty of “Taking It Out On the Ones I Love.” I sensed that the most difficult things for me to share could be the very words someone else needed to read. Yet, the more prolific I became, the more my mailbox was stuffed with returned manuscripts. Sometimes they came back faster than I thought the U.S. Postal Service could deliver them! Others, like my first book manuscript, sat on an editor’s desk for five months only to be returned with a form rejection slip.
“Do you think it was easy for Me to go to the cross?” the Lord asked me one day when I grumbled about the mail. Stung by the truth of His words, I immediately apologized for forgetting how much He had suffered for my salvation.
“Neither is it easy for you to follow in My footsteps,” He said gently. “But what I ask you to do, and what I will enable you to do, is to `put aside your own pleasures and shoulder your cross, and follow Me closely. If you insist on saving your life, you will lose it. Only those who throw away their lives for My sake and for the sake of the Good News will ever know what it means to really live'” (Mark 8:34-35, TLB).
Real living—from the world’s standpoint, the life of a Christian writer hardly measures up. Few of us will achieve fame or fortune, or even earn a minimum wage for the hours we struggle to put words on paper. But in the light of eternity, long hours, poor pay, and rejection slips mean nothing if even one life is touched.
The needs are urgent and, I believe, the time is short. We dare not assume that we will always have the freedom to print and distribute Christian literature. “`All of us,'” Jesus said, “`must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent me, for there is little time left before the night falls and all work comes to an end'” (John 9:4, TLB).
I still feel inadequate. I still doubt my abilities, but I do not doubt the One who has called me. I am choosing to risk and persist, knowing that “Slowly, steadily, surely, the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled. If it seems slow, do not despair, for these things will surely come to pass. Just be patient! They will not be overdue a single day!” (Hab. 2:3, TLB).
Responding to God’s Call to Write
Do you believe God has called you to write his answer? Why or why not?
What issue most deeply concerns you? Is there something God may want to say through you?
What is the biggest thing that causes you to doubt that He can use you?
Choose, today, to give Him your doubts and say yes to His call to “write His answer.”
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Chapter 1 from Write His Answer—A Bible Study for Christian Writers. © 1990, 1999 Marlene Bagnull. For more excerpts and to order click here.
There is still time to register for the July 31-August 3 Greater Philly Christian Writers Conference.
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