Trust your imagination. Don't be afraid to fail. Write. Revise. Revise. Revise.
I revise and revise and revise. I'm not even sure "revise" is the right word. I work a story almost to death before it's done.
I imagine God to be like my father. My father was always the voice of certainty in my life. Certainty in the wisdom, certainty in the path, certainty always in God. For me God is certainty in everything. Certainty that everything is good and everything is God.
Your priorities must be God first, God second, and God third, until your life is continually face to face with God.
One great aim of revision is to cut out. In the exuberance of composition it is natural to throw in - as one does in speaking - a number of small words that add nothing to meaning but keep up the flow and rhythm of thought. In writing, not only does this surplusage not add to meaning, it subtracts from it. Read and revise, reread and revise, keeping reading and revising until your text seems adequate to your thought.
Your task, O preacher, is to make sure that you are faithful to the text, that you are faithful to the proclamation of that gospel, that you are faithful to set forth the whole counsel of God, and then step back and let it happen.
The goal in any God-centered relationship should be to continually point the other person towards Christ, not continually draw attention towards you.
If your knowledge of fire has been turned to certainty by words alone, then seek to be cooked by the fire itself. Don't abide in borrowed certainty. There is no real certainty until you burn; if you wish for this, sit down in the fire.
Jesus taught that your highest priority must be your relationship with Him. If anything detracts you from that relationship, that activity is not from God. God will not ask you to do something that hinders your relationship with Christ.
And nothing formed against me shall stand. You hold the whole world in Your hands. I'm holding onto Your promises. You are faithful. You are faithful. You are faithful. I know Who goes before me. I know Who stands behind. The God of angel armies is always by my side. The One who reigns forever, He is a Friend of mine. The God of angel armies Is always by my side.
The most important aspect of Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the surrounding influence and qualities produced by that relationship. That is all God asks us to give our attention to, and it is the one thing that is continually under attack.
In what concerns divine things, belief is not appropriate. Only certainty will do. Anything less than certainty is unworthy of God.
I write a line and then I revise the line and then I write two lines and then I revise lines one and two and then I write one, two and three and I revise one and two and then I write seven and eight and then I see that should be line four and I continually work it over as I go.
Tonight, no matter what you're going through... backtrack and remember all the places where God has been so faithful before in your life. And know. Know with assurance. And boldness. And confidence. He is the same faithful God.
I guess the thing I would say most fervently is that your original impulse to write something is an impulse you should trust, and that if it doesn't work on the first draft, which it hardly ever does, the commitment to revising ought to be something you embrace really early. And to revise and revise and revise.
God is faithful. God is faithful. 400 years might go by, but never count God out.