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| 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
