Writing to the Unbeliever

One of the programs I gave at the Christian Writing Workshop last weekend was "Using Fiction to Spread God's Word." The main theme of the program was recognizing the difference between writing fiction to a primarily Christian readership, and writing with the hopes that it would go into the hands of an unbeliever and plant a seed that might sprout if further nourished. The latter requires subtleness, drawing the reader into the story before any faith content creeps in. Why? Because all believers know what it feels like to come under conviction, and this is what causes people to pull away when they start hearing a faith message.

Coming under conviction is never comfortable, and people very often deal with it by shutting it out. In our case that means putting the book down and we lose our chance to witness to them. Our task is to get them so strongly involved in the story that they do not put it down when they realize the message is there, then to keep it subtle enough that it does its work without pushing them out of the story. It is to plant seeds that do not attempt to do the job all at once but to open the door that can later lead to the Holy Spirit finishing the job, leading the person where the fruit can be brought to fruition.

The second theme was "if we are writing for God we have to do it in His time." We are studying the Book of Jeremiah in church today. One thing that struck me was how long he had to prepare to do his ministry and how long he worked at it, over 40 years, seeing little success. He is not alone. Look what God did to prepare Moses, Abraham, Joseph, David, the Apostles, even how long Jesus prepared before he began to fulfill his earthly mission.

Why would we think we could just decide to write and our very first effort bear tremendous fruit, be published and achieve amazing success? Why would we think we could do it without God preparing us for our task, experiencing the heartaches and rejections that teach us what He wants us to learn? Without patiently learning our craft, over and over, the way those in the paragraph above had to be prepared, failing and learning, understanding what it is we need to do to get it right? We have the writing seed planted in us but we expect it to grow fruit immediately without the preparation God always expects His people to go through. Sometimes we circumvent the process to get a book out there without all of this difficulty and then are disappointed when it does not do what we hoped it would do.

If we want to write for the Lord we have to turn it over to Him, have to undergo the preparation He always uses to get us ready . . . and we must do it in His time.