Staying the Course

Photo courtesy of arztsamui/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My church is currently working through a series that goes by the title of this post: “Staying the Course.” It’s a series of teachings aimed at providing some practical wisdom to persevering, to keep running the race.

This past Sunday, we had a guest Sy Rogers share his thoughts on the topic. As an aside, if you haven’t heard Sy speak do check him out. Besides having a fabulous personal salvation story that has framed much of his thirty-year ministry he is tremendously engaging and entertaining.

Sy emphasised the importance of understanding God’s character and highlighted the point that He is deliberately mysterious. This trait often causes us much frustration. “Why don’t you just tell me what to do, Lord?”

But it’s in the mystery where we find faith. Yes, God first pursues us but He too desires we pursue Him.

“Pursuit is the proof of your desire; you’ll never possess what you don’t pursue.”

Stay in the Pool

This topic made me reflect on the writing life. In fact, we really can relate it to most things: friendships, marriage, career, vocations, etc. When I wrote Angelguard I was continuously amazed how when I set out on most days I really didn’t know what I was going to write. (Yes, I’m a pantser). However, once I sat down at the computer, the characters would take over and that daily word limit would soon be complete.

That hasn’t been my experience second time round. I was relating this with another author the other day. Jim’s working on his seventh novel and he laughed at my comment and expressed he was experiencing the same even though he’d done it six times previously. He then proceeded to mention a similar conversation he’d had with another prolific author, who said even though he’d written in excess of thirty novels, he was finding the latest one the toughest yet.

I took great encouragement from that brief exchange.

One thing I’m absolutely sure of with both of those authors is, even though it’s tough going now, they’ll persevere and get the novel done. They’ll finish the race.

They will turn up every day.

We’ve all read the quotes about not waiting for inspiration before we sit down to create. The inspiration comes out of the work. The Holy Spirit has no one to guide if we’re not playing our part by turning up.

“You’ve just got to stay in the pool longer than the others.”

Michael Phelps, the champion swimmer, spoke those words. Don’t you just love that? One of the greatest swimmers of all time attributed his achievements to that work ethic.

The Christian walk is like that. We often go through a slump simply because we haven’t spent enough time in the pool with God. Life gets even busier, stuff happens; you know the drill.

And what about that manuscript, yes, Ian what about that manuscript? Have we spent too much time writing blog posts, reading another book on how to be a bestseller or getting lost down some research maze?

Keep turning up to write. God’s waiting for you and is ready to create some magic with you.

Ian Acheson is an author and strategy consultant based in Northern Sydney. Ian's first novel of speculative fiction, Angelguard, is now available in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. You can find more about Angelguard at Ian's website, on his author Facebook page and Twitter