Your Part in Making Him Known

I have a faded cartoon clipping in my Bible that depicts an operating room. A female patient is seen lying on a table, surrounded by a medical team. At her side is a shocked surgeon holding up a small book by a pair of forceps.

“What do you know?” he exclaims in the caption. “Mrs. Brown did have a book in her!”

While it pokes gentle fun at everyone who claims to have a book in them, I keep the funny as a reminder that I must plant myself in a chair and do the hard work of mining the words I believe Father God puts in me, or they’ll never see the light of day. As we say in this crazy industry, writing is easy. All you have to do is open a vein, and bleed on the page. Okay, that’s a tad strong. Blood-letting isn’t required every time.

Over the years, I’ve collected a ton of inspiring writing quotes that assist my writing efforts, like “Don’t get it right, get it written.” That one reminds me to mute my internal critic and get the words on the paper. You can’t edit what isn’t there. As a storyteller who pulls from the marvelous mundane of everyday living to try and point people to Christ, another great reminder for me has been the admonition to “write what you know.” If I try to write about something that isn’t born of my own personal experience, I’ll backspace the day away.

Which brings me to an important point. As a believer, you may or may not think you have a book in you, but the Bible teaches us that making Christ known is the calling of every child of God and adapting that last piece of writing advice to our individual testimonies can help us do just that. Why? Because we can sit in a pew our entire lives and quote Scripture ‘til the cows come home, but it will always be our own daily walk with God that moves those around us.

Let’s press in until we’re able to “preach what we know” and trust Jesus to give our loved ones ears to hear.

Hugs, Shellie