Are you a writer who's praying about their writing today? For some of us, it’s not often that our writing is the subject of our public prayer requests or even the focus of our prayer times. I want to encourage you to change that.
Whether you are a veteran writer, aspiring, or new author—if you are writing on God’s behalf, you must pray, and you must hear from Him. There are so many distractions and difficulties that come against our being able to write, and prayer is an important defense that guards our inspiration and motivation to keep at it.
So, here are four ways to approach prayer concerning your writing.
Pray, believing…
God is on your side
He wouldn’t have given you the assignment if He Himself didn’t have faith in you
He has and will give you what I need to do the job well
He has a special reason for your being where you are at this particular time
How to Even Get to Believing
Sometimes, we are in such a place of doubt (in ourselves, the industry's reception of our ideas, and, honestly, in God too) and discouragement in our writing that getting to the above 4 approaches is hard.
When I get in a place like this, I think about David and how, on the worst possible day of his life (remember Ziklag?), He encouraged himself in the Lord (1 Samuel 30:6). He built himself up in his most holy faith (Jude 1:20). We have to do the same, and, to me, this is about actively participating with the Spirit of God to assume the right heart posture. How you think and believe as you engage with God is important. So here are three heart postures that help me approach God about my writing in the four ways I mentioned above.
A posture of faith
Jesus said that when you pray, believe that you will have what you pray for (Mark 24:11). I like to flip this around a bit and remind myself that God wants good things for me (Jeremiah 29:11), that He desires to give me good things (Matthew 7:11), and that He is willing to give me what I need (Luke 5:12–13, NLT). This is, for me, a posture of faith.
A posture of boldness
The next posture is boldness. Once you realize that God wants good things for you, that He wants to give them to you, and He holds an unlimited supply, you can come right up to Him and say, "Father, help..." Hebrews 4:16 says, "Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need."
A posture of humility
The final posture is humility. To find the grace you need in times of need, you need to be humble, bowed low before God, not thinking more highly of yourself than you should—confident but knowing where your strength comes from. The Bible says that “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6, NLT). Another version of the Bible says, "God resists the proud..." (NKJV). I don't know about you, but when I pray, I'd rather not have God opposing or resisting me—and I need His grace super bad.
Divine grace is an important thing to have because it is the supernatural empowerment of God to do the things He's called us to do. Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words says that grace is "the power and equipment for ministry." Writing is ministry—you ever think about all the ways this is true? You need grace to minister help, healing, encouragement, and hope through the words you write to your readers, whether you write fiction or nonfiction. Grace is a "divine means of help or strength"—an "enabling power." Another source says that "grace, then, is the power with which the human being then performs his or her gifted task."
Writer, we have a gifted task to write!
With this knowledge, I want you to believe that God wants to give you whatever power, provision, and access you need to write and publish. His glory is attached to your success. Pray from this place. Remain in this place of prayer concerning your writing. If you have my book, Pray Hear Write: 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting for Breakthrough in Your Writing, you will find affirmations throughout it that you can use to adjust any self-talk that gets you out of these postures of faith, boldness, and humility. (If you don’t have my book, get it!)
If you need even more help, accountability, and reinforcement, I am hosting a live 12-week book writing mentorship course called Write with Me. Click here to learn more about it and to register. I sure hope you’ll join me.
We often want to see God do the unusual or the miraculous in our lives and through our writing. Now let’s put forth the spiritual and practical action we need to see Him do it. Let’s join with Him in the process of completing the works He’s begun in us.