Write what God tells you to write
by Richard Spillman
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| Image courtesy Pixabay.com |
As writers, we face more than our fair share of discouragement. We are rejected by agents. Our work doesn’t fit a publisher’s needs. Editors bleed all over our prose. And even if we have a hundred positive reviews as soon as that third or fourth negative review rolls in we feel crushed under its weight. We write alone and we are rejected alone. Or so it seems.
But as Christian writers (Christians who are writers not necessarily writers of Christian material) we feel we have a calling. We tend to pray over our writing and feel inspired by God to write. All the agents of discouragement are still there but one thing is different: we do not write alone. As such we should trust what God asks us to write and, even if there is discouragement along the way, we should write it, knowing that He will get us through the discouraging times.
I’m going to illustrate this with a story of a significant event in my life. It doesn’t deal directly with something God asked me to write but it is something God wanted me to say, which is not all that different.
Several years ago, I lead a small team to the Philippines on a short-term mission near the city of Davao. After 17 hours of travel, we landed at the Manila airport at 11:30 pm. Our flight to Davao left at 4:30 am. We had a long layover. We had to wait by the luggage check-in counter because without a ticket we were not allowed into the airport proper. But the counters did not open until 2:30 am. We weren’t alone. There must have been one hundred people (and only twenty-five seats). To top it off the air conditioning wasn’t working.
I was tired and hot. But I didn’t want to just sit there so I prayed and asked God if there was anyone I could minister to while waiting. After praying I looked up and surveyed the scene. I noticed a couple leaning on the wall about 50 yards to my left. That’s when I felt God tell me to walk over to that woman and tell her He knew her deep sadness. This was more than I expected or was ready to do. Questions flooded my mind. What if I was wrong? What if I insulted or frighten them and they called security? What if they laughed at me? It was too weird so, even though I had asked, I refused. Still, He kept drawing my attention to them.
At about 2:30 am the ticket/luggage counter opened so we were able to get our boarding passes and move on into the main part of the airport. I walked to my gate thinking I must have heard Him wrong. There was a sense of relief that I didn’t have to make a fool of myself.
As I sat at our gate for the remaining two-hour wait I started to pray asking God what He would have me do (I guess I hadn’t learned my lesson). Surprise, He told me to walk down the terminal to find that couple. Now we were at gate S1 at the west end of the terminal. After some internal argument, I decided to obey and started walking to the other end hoping that I wouldn’t find them. As I walked by Gate S10 I began to breathe a little easier. They weren’t there. Then Gates S11, S12 … S15 went by and nothing. I was sure I was safe, until the very last row of seats at the very last Gate.
There sat the couple. I had found them. There was no way out of this. I thought It’s now or never. I took a deep breath and walked up to the man. I introduced myself and shook his hand then I sat down in front of the both of them and said, "This might seem weird but God told me to talk to you.” As they looked at me through puzzled stares I knew they were thinking how do we get away from this guy. I turned to the woman and said, "God wants me to tell you that He knows and understands your deep sadness." No sooner had I got the words out of my mouth than I noticed the man's mouth open wide in stunned silence (throughout the rest of the conversation he remained frozen in that pose). The woman looked at me and said, "What did you say?" I repeated the message. Then she asked me, "Are you a priest?" I said, "No, I am a missionary."
What she told me next changed everything about the encounter. A tear formed in her eye as she said, "We are flying home from burying my father." Now I knew what was going on, so I told her "God grieves with you." She began to thank me over and over again. She wanted my address so I wrote it on a piece of notepaper and gave it to her. As I got up to leave I told her I would pray for her and she thanked me again. Her husband continued to stare at me with his mouth wide open as I walked away.
The lesson for me was clear. When God tells me to speak out, I need to trust him and speak out. And that lesson spilled over to my writing. When God tells me to write something, no matter how difficult it might seem, no matter how many times it is rejected by agents and publishers, I have to write it and submit it because I know that in the end, just like that woman whose spirit was touched by my words, God will see to it that what I write gets to those who He intended it for.
So, when God gives you something to write, it most likely will be something difficult, maybe even something that will face opposition. Write it anyway because there is someone out there who needs to hear what you are about to write. There is someone out there who’s life will change because you did what God told you to do.
THE AWAKENED Back cover Copy:
Everyone dies once. But what if a chosen few were raised from the dead?
Two thousand years ago Jesus resurrected his friend, Lazarus, who founded a secret organization: SOAR. Since then Jesus has added to the resurrected—The Awakened—to aid Lazarus in SOAR's battle against Satan's slaves, the UnVeilers. The threat is escalating. The UnVeilers have stepped up their attacks on mankind through a charming leader and a devastating series of bombings in Dubai and Tel Aviv.
But the invasion doesn't stop with international terrorism. The UnVeilers are searching for a secret that Jesus embedded in Lazarus’ journal that not even Lazarus knows—and it will determine the fate of mankind. After a failed cyber-attack against SOAR's computers, Lazarus and his team of experts must find the secret before the UnVeilers do. What clue is he overlooking that could turn the tide of this ageless conflict?
The souls fighting with Lazarus are weary, but the war against evil is far from won. Can Lazarus and his team set aside their longing for heaven and put a stop to these satanic attacks before it's too late?
Two thousand years ago Jesus resurrected his friend, Lazarus, who founded a secret organization: SOAR. Since then Jesus has added to the resurrected—The Awakened—to aid Lazarus in SOAR's battle against Satan's slaves, the UnVeilers. The threat is escalating. The UnVeilers have stepped up their attacks on mankind through a charming leader and a devastating series of bombings in Dubai and Tel Aviv.
But the invasion doesn't stop with international terrorism. The UnVeilers are searching for a secret that Jesus embedded in Lazarus’ journal that not even Lazarus knows—and it will determine the fate of mankind. After a failed cyber-attack against SOAR's computers, Lazarus and his team of experts must find the secret before the UnVeilers do. What clue is he overlooking that could turn the tide of this ageless conflict?
The souls fighting with Lazarus are weary, but the war against evil is far from won. Can Lazarus and his team set aside their longing for heaven and put a stop to these satanic attacks before it's too late?
Richard Spillman is a retired Computer Scientist who typically writes Christian non-fiction (Do What Jesus Did is available on Amazon) as well as a Christian blog (spillmanrichard.com). His latest passion, however, is Christian fiction. His first novel, The Awakened, will be released on October 1. The story asks the question: “What if Lazarus didn’t die a second time?” He was led to write it after avoiding being kidnapped by ISIS in the Philippines and then receiving death threats (to behead him in standard ISIS fashion) during the rest of his missionary service there. Besides the blog he is active web at spillmanauthor.com, on Facebook at bit.ly/spillmanauthor, on twitter (https://twitter.com/awakenedtrilogy) and instagram (http://ink361.com/app/users/ig-3176880720/spillmanrichard/photos) where you can see pictures from his missionary travels around the world.
