Leaping off a Cliff to Avoid God--Not Recommended

Fay Lamb is my guest today. She fought against the very career that would bring her happiness until one day after her grandmother passed away.

Not Recommended: Flinging Yourself Off a Cliff 
to Avoid God's Will

God does work in mysterious ways, but one secret He has never kept from me is His plan for me to write for Him. Well, let me rephrase that…I’ve never doubted I would write. Even when I wanted to throw it all away, I understood that words were in my blood and characters were my best friends. And then one day following the loss of maybe the dearest person in my life—my grandmother, God whispered in my ear and said, “You will write for Me.”

I hadn’t been living a life that would make Grandma proud, and I surely wasn’t glorying God with the choices I’d made and even those I would make afterward. My life was filled with sorrow, pain, and grief, but God had a purpose for me, no matter how much I railed against it. And I knew it.

God didn’t use a big fish to swallow me whole and spew me out. Nothing that simple. Instead, He allowed me to rush headlong toward a high cliff and to plunge over it. But God often provides a way out of the dilemmas in which we find ourselves. I’m convinced the limb sticking out from the side of the rock face was there only so that I’d have to hold on and gaze upward to see the hem of Christ’s garment. I hung there for a while, wondering how I could both cling to the limb and take hold of the safety Christ afforded.

Faith, though, required my release of what I considered my safe hold in order to grasp the hem of my dear Savior’s garment. He pulled me up, placed me on solid ground, and began to walk away from the cliff with me securely tucked in His loving arms. I didn’t look back, and I surrendered my words to Him.

However, deciding to write for the Lord doesn’t mean the journey became an easy one. I struggled, wondering if I’d ever see publication, and why God would call me to write for Him.

For so long, I was stuck on the thought that I’d never really done anything, never been anywhere, and what could I truly write about that would be interesting to anyone.

Writers who declare, “Write about what you know” weren’t being flippant. The advice runs deep into the core of why Christian fiction authors write. You have to look beyond the surface of those words. I did, and God led me to the perfect scripture that put it all into perspective for me.

Romans 8:28 says, And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

What things work together for good? All things? Do you mean, Lord, that my self-inflicted wounds, my losses, my grief, my happiness, my triumphs and my failures…All those things that I know about, those are what you want me to share?

Yes. To write what I know as a Christian writer is to offer balm for a hurting world—both those who know Christ and those who do not. In the process, too, God covers my wounds with his healing power.

I don’t recommend you try to sail away from God in stormy seas or fling yourself off a cliff to avoid His will for your life. Writers, more than most, cannot escape their calling. Words ring in our ears. Characters play in our minds. Accept the fact that God has placed them there. And write about all the things that God has allowed you to experience…the good and the bad and know that God has always purposed in your life for all things to work for good—for you and for others that your life—your words—may touch.

To contact Fay:

FB: https://www.facebook.com/fay.lamb

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/FayLamb

Website: www.faylamb.com

  

Thank you Fay for joining us this weekend!

This post has been brought to you by the one-word: NoEscapingGod

Reader, What event/s have deepened your faith in your journey?