Listen to Your Yaysayer!

This article first appeared on Jennifer Dukes Lee’s, Tell His Story.

So, the naysayers told you that you can’t write? That your words are pedestrian, because rejection letters don’t lie? That you’ll never find an agent, much less a publisher? That writing isn’t a real job? That there’s more to life than just sitting around in your pajamas all day, popping bonbons and pecking away at a keyboard? That you’re just wasting your time—ergo, your life?

Then let me be your yaysayer. Let me encourage you to dust yourself off, pick up your pen, and pour out your soul. You are an author, created in the image of the one, true, mighty Author-of-life God, the one Who wrote the Bible through the pens of men.

You Are a Gifted Writer

God is a writer, so you are a writer—period!

And you are His ambassador. Did you catch that? His Ambassador.

Words are important to God, and He has given you the gifts of language, story, and the sacred mission of crafting and sharing them. Word-shapers are world-shapers; and you have the awesome—I repeat: the awesome privilege and responsibility to shape-change your world by writing truth about the Word, Jesus Christ. Oh my powerful writing friend, He has authorized and commissioned you to write.

How can you not?

Writing is your birthright. Words are continually building in your bones, beating in your heart, pulsing in your brain, coursing through your blood, whirling in your breath. Words are bubbling up from your artesian-well soul, and they cannot help but overflow to others, unless you stop the well and stop the writing.

Oh, but you won’t. I know you won’t. You’re a passionate Jeremiah who proclaims,

“His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot,” (Jeremiah 20:9 NIV).

Indeed, you must not.

Squelch the naysayers, be they loved ones, not-so-loved ones, strangers, professionals, or your own inner demons (translation: fear, failure, famine of words dubbed writer’s block). Send them all packing. I’d tell you to jam your fingers in your ears to block their doomsday prophesying about your calling, but you need your fingers to write.

Write to tell God’s truth. Write to tell your truth. Write to glorify and dignify, to clarify and justify, to beautify and satisfy. Write to evaluate and investigate, to elevate and liberate. Write to stimulate. Write to express and to bless, to question and inform, challenge and prod, comfort and cheer. Write to smash mediocrity and “mundanity.” Write to stash meaning and memories. Write to wake up or calm down, to fume or have fun. Write to dream, to imagine, to hope, and to help.

Your Ultimate Yaysayer

God is your agent and publisher, and He will get your words into print. Just write. Write anywhere and everywhere (except walls). Write on napkins, on bulletins, in margins, on paper (I’ve even written on toilet paper for goodness’ sake)! Write on screens and in journals. Write lists and post-its. Write letters and emails. Write articles and newsletters. Write poetry and blogs. Write books and E-books.

Write to write; it’s fun. Write to right; it’s rewarding.

Just write! Write like time is running out, because it is. Write like you have something to say, because you do. Write like you’ve been gifted to write, because you have. Write like God has called you to write, because He has. Write like He wants you to obey, because He does.

Come out from the shadows and let your light shimmer on the page and simmer on the screen. Write because the Holy Spirit Himself has lit a fire in your soul, in your sinews, in your bones, in your brain. Write the fire. Write the fervor. Write the freedom.

Write because He is worthy. And because He is, and because He has gifted you to write, your writing is worthy too. And remember that a life worth living is worth recording. Writing is life. Writing is for your life. And I daresay that no naysayers can say otherwise.

Just let them try because God is your ultimate Yaysayer. And He won’t take no for an answer!