Today, I am here to tell you the tale of how I lost my writing. Yes, yes, I know, surprising, right?  But tis true, I lost control of my writing quite a few years ago. Though the losing has glitched in and out through the time (which means my rebellious side tried to takeover from time to time).

See, I didn’t always write.

I know, unspeakable!  Incomprehensible! But nonetheless true.

It was some years ago when brilliance struck me (it does happen sometimes y’know), I had a brand-new tablet PLUS an awesome story in my head = why not write it down?!  (I’m a genius).

So I did or I began to, and PEOPLE!  Do you know how incredibly slow and hard and horribly uncomfortable it is to write a story on a handheld tablet?

Dreadful, I tell you. (Fine, it wasn’t that bad).

Happy me started writing the beautiful story in my head when a huge catastrophic portal opened up, sucking everything into it and plunging us into utter darkness, despair, and a world with no ice cream.

Which goes to say, something wasn’t right.  Sure, I loved my story, I enjoyed seeing it down on the screen, I couldn’t wait to get further into the story, and was already dreaming of people reading it.

The problem?

I wasn’t fulfilling my purpose in life.

What is my life’s purpose?

To bring glory to God.

So when God pointed out to me that my current story did absolutely ZERO to bring glory to Him, I tried to ignore at first, but there’s only so much ignoring you can do before you gotta pull out the big guns.-

– Aka excuses.  (who here knows that excuses don’t work on God?)

“This isn’t a big deal, I’m just writing a little story, it’s not some life changing thing”

*******excuses. . . more excuses. . . excuses upon excuses******

All the while God patiently told me, “Give Me your writing”

At last I broke,  tossed my excuses out the window, and said, “FINE.  If you want my writing here it is. I give it to you, Lord.”

HUZZAH!

In that very moment, I lost control of my writing. Actually, I gave control over to God – and am I ever so thankful I did.  Because you know, I don’t think I would be writing the WIP (work in progress) I am if I hadn’t, not to mention life would be a great bit more unhappy — a great wad of my writing would be stuck between me and my Savior, and my flesh’s control issues would only be growing worse.

Of course it didn’t end there.

God wanted my writing, He got it, so since He owns my writing…..then shouldn’t I write FOR HIM? (see the verse, 1 Cor. 10:31 above)

Well, yeah.

So I’m sure you can already guess, I lost the story, too.  More like I gave it up, that thing didn’t bring glory to Jesus at all.  Sure, I considered trying to find a way to push and shove some of the plot around to fit in some sort of something that could point to Christ. But that’s not how it should be, God shouldn’t just be stuffed into the story like that, rather He should come first and the story come next — because remember, my first purpose as a Christian is to bring Him glory — so always in everything, God comes first!

So that story was scrapped, thrown off in some corner. Yes, it hurt to let it go, but you know what?  Dear writer, you haven’t the faintest idea of the joy of writing until you write something that revolves around Jesus and brings glory to God.

I will admit, one of my objections was no one would want to read something like that, if I wrote it in a way that would bring glory to God, but that just showed where my priorities were: they were focused on writing a story the world would like reading.  It was then I decided I was going to get my priorities off of writing for the world and onto writing for God.

My current WIP is Fantasy, but in whatever genre you write, Fantasy, Dystopian, etc, you can still point to Jesus — even without outright screaming it.  There is a way to write purely with a message that brings glory to God.

So that’s why I write the sort of stories I write, ones I hope point to Jesus, because I am a Christian, and God has called me to write for Him.

Who do you write for?

Meet the Writer:

Julia is a 15-year-old born again Christian who believes if the Bible says it it’s true, and a Bookworm who knows words have the power to change the world.   She juggles her small business, writing, and college while living on a farm in Texas with her parents, seven siblings and a ton of animals
Her goal in all she does is to bring glory to God and to live a life lit aflame for Christ.  She hopes to encourage others to do the same.