Fear: Its role in the writer’s life

Fear: Its role in the writer’s life

by | Nov 2, 2016 | For Writers

Before I start, I want to address my non-writing readers. You will want to read to the end of this post and learn how you can win a $20 Amazon gift card from me!

Now, to those who write, want to write, are afraid to write, or are just curious about the mind of a writer…most of us battle fear. But what exactly do writers fear? Are all fears the same? How can we overcome fear and succeed?

First, there are different kinds of fear.

Fear of failure

Fear of Failure Questions:

  • What if I try my very best and it still isn’t good enough?
  • What if I pour myself into this dream and I never publish more than a blog post?
  • What if the stack of rejection letters don’t pave the road to traditional contracts but are, in fact, just rejections upon rejections that declare I am not good enough?

The Fear of Failure Lie:

  • If I never try—if I never put myself out there—I’ll not fail.

Fear of Failure Truth:

  • If you never try, you’ve already failed.

Fear of success

Fear of Success Questions:

  • If I do my best, battle the fear of failure, actually sell a book, will anyone read it?
  • If they do read it, what if the reviews are bad?
  • Can I handle criticism of my work?
  • Can I handle not being liked?

Fear of Success Lies:

  • I can protect myself from hurt by closing myself off from others.
  • I can control all aspects of life.

Fear of Success Truth:

  • Putting yourself out there is always a risk, but sharing your work helps you become a better writer.
  • Not all feedback is negative. Weed through it, apply the truth, and discard the rest.
  • If you’re looking for praise and adoration, you’re in the wrong career/hobby. Everyone has an opinion and the popularity of social media has made it easier to share those opinions.
  • Learn to differentiate between a criticism of your writing and a criticism of you. Comments are often not as personal as we make them.

Fear of self promotion

Fear of Self Promotion Questions:

  • How do I get the word out about my book without sounding prideful?
  • How do I spread the news beyond a repeated request for everyone who knows me to: Buy my book! Because that gets old. Quickly.
  • How do I, as a believer in the Lord, a person committed to the pursuit of making less of me and more of God, do something as self-promoting as talk about me? My book? My work? My yada-yada-yada?

Fear of Self Promoting Lies:

  • A grass-roots word-of-mouth publicity plan is enough.
  • Promoting my book and promoting me are the same thing.

Fear of Self Promoting Truths:

  • Word of mouth is GREAT. But sometimes, I have to speak first.
  • If I don’t care how my book is received, why will anyone else?
  • I am NOT promoting me. I am promoting a product or message that I believe can help/encourage/instruct someone else and ultimately draw them closer to the Lord.

One core fear

All the above sub-fears share one core fear: Fear of man. What will people think of me, my work, my message? But I am not called to fear man. I am called to fear God.

Do I fear the Lord?

The bigger question is: Do I fear the Lord? Because if I do, than I know my life isn’t about me. It’s about Him. The truth is, I will get some things wrong. I won’t always say it right, write it right, or be right. But God hasn’t called me to perfection. He has called me to repentance and obedience. He has called me to develop and use my gifts for His glory.

glorious-surrender-hr_final

I’ve battled all three of these fears in the weeks leading up to this Friday. This Friday, I am celebrating the release of Glorious Surrender. Getting to this point has forced me to surrender even more to the Lord.

  • I’ve surrendered my privacy by sharing some deeply personal illustrations with the desire that my experience will point you to the answers found only in Christ.
  • I’ve surrendered my writing preferences, because in many ways, fiction feels so much safer. This book is real. It’s raw. Sharing it has put me into an uncomfortable and vulnerable position. But if being in this spot helps you in your walk with the Lord, it is worth it. Because that’s what matters. More than comfort, more than preference, I want to see you deepening your faith and seeking the Lord.

Come on back Friday, Nov 4th to this blog and celebrate a social media book launch party! I will be hosting in three places: my Facebook writer page, twitter, and on my blog. Visit any of those places and comment about surrender between 10:00am and 9:00pm EST for your chance to win a $20 Amazon gift card. See full contest rules here

Conditional Blessings

by | Oct 20, 2016 | Devotionals, reflections, and encouragement

Solomon’s prayer dedicating the temple to the Lord  1 King’s 8:22-53 is full of requests for conditional blessings.  He prays: “If we pray, acknowledge, and turn from sin, THEN God hears and forgives.” “If we turn our hearts, repent with all our minds, and pray, THEN God hears, forgives and grants compassion.” Solomon made it abundantly clear in verse 46 that every person sins against the Lord.

“If they sin against you—for there is no one who does not sin—”(46)

Solomon didn’t just ask for blessings but made repentance a precursor to the blessing.

There is no forgiveness without repentance. There is no repentance without a desire to replace sinful habits and actions with God-honouring ones. And nothing changes until God grants the desire to pursue Him and the Holy Spirit transforms a heart.

How often do we pray for blessing and rescue but are unwilling to address our heart issues and repent? How often do we ask God for things, perhaps even good things—but still fail to repent of the actions, thoughts, and sin that prevent his blessing? I don’t know about you, but these questions are a timely heart check for me.

Oh, how I need to repent of the sin that prevents God’s power in my life! Oh, how I need to examine my choices.

  • What hobby or activity do I pursue more than Him?
  • What desire do I long for more than time in the Word?
  • What television program or novel pulls me from prayer?
  • What action do I KNOW I am called to act upon but have put off because of laziness, fear, or simple disobedience?

Oh God, open our eyes to hidden sin and misplaced priorities.I desire a closeness between us that will not tolerate sin or give it an opportunity to root. I want a soft heart so that as You reveal areas in need of surrender I will willingly release them.

It is not comfortable or easy to invite the Holy Spirit to expose our continual need for the gospel. But, it is good.

After salvation, isn’t something supposed to be different?

by | Oct 13, 2016 | Devotionals, reflections, and encouragement

“I asked God into my heart, but I don’t think that it worked,” he said, as if the words he prayed held magical powers inaccessible to him. “I don’t feel different. Nothing’s changed.”

His heartbreakingly honest confession was accompanied by a wide and fearful expression afraid to hope. Did he pray it wrong? Did he say the wrong words? Was he really saved for eternity? Wasn’t something supposed to be different?

Repent and believe

Mark 1:15: and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

How many people have, in a moment of conviction, walked to the front of the church aisle, repeated phrases fed to them, raised their hand or stood up only to wake the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, defeated because nothing feels different? How many people have wrongly believed that verses like John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life,” and Romans 10:9, “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved,” means the only requirement for salvation is to repeat some magic words?

Yes, the person who believes in Jesus Christ has eternal life and will be saved. I do not dispute that nor challenge the simplicity and beauty of that wonderful truth. However, the believing and confessing, which secures salvation, includes repentance, holy living, and dying to self. They go hand in hand and cannot be separated. “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” (Luke 6:46). Even Jesus questioned the people who claimed to follow Him but failed to obey His commands.

There is no forgiveness without repentance. There is no repentance without a desire to replace sinful habits and actions with God-honouring ones. And nothing changes until God grants the desire to pursue Him and the Holy Spirit transforms a heart.

Perhaps the problem plaguing young man from the beginning is not a failure for the “words to take” but more of a failure to understand what it means to count the cost, pick up his cross, repent, and follow Jesus. Perhaps it was a failure to acknowledge that he couldn’t continue on his merry way, relishing his sin, and making selfish choices. It was, perhaps, a refusal or unawareness of the need to die to self.

“Cheap grace seeks to hide the cost of discipleship from people. It seeks to claim that as long as we make a profession of faith, we are saved. God’s grace covers all our sins. Again, that is a wonderful truth! The apostle Paul says as much when he writes, “Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 5:20-21). Yet, right after writing that, Paul follows it with this: “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:1-2). Salvation by grace alone through faith alone is so much more than simply mouthing the words “Jesus is Lord.” We are not saved by a profession of faith. We are not saved by praying the Sinner’s Prayer. We are not saved by signing a card or walking an aisle. We are saved by a living and active faith (James 2:14-26), a faith that manifests itself in repentance, obedience and love of God and our neighbor. Salvation is not a transaction; it’s a transformation. Paul says it best when he says we are “new creations” in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).” 

GotQuestions.org

The Great Exchange

“Salvation is not a transaction, it’s a transformation.” Yes, I love that. But it is imperative to define “transaction” in that context. Salvation is not me putting out specific words and God putting in salvation because I parroted the right phrase. In that sense, salvation is not a transaction. But salvation is the exchange of my sin for the righteousness of Christ. In that sense, it is a transaction.

Self Examination

Have you been transformed? Or, like the boy from the beginning, have you only just begun to understand that God is calling you to do more than a repeat-after-me prayer? Don’t be fooled by cheap grace. Examine yourself and see if you are in the faith. Your confession of faith must be accompanied by repentance and change.

Answer the call, repent and believe.

*Click the block quote to be redirected to Got Questions and read the full explanation of how grace can be cheapened.

Glorious Surrender: the book

by | Sep 29, 2016 | Special Announcements

The book, Glorious Surrender, will, Lord willing, release in November 2016! I’m am grateful to the judges of the Women’s Journey of Faith contest that chose Glorious Surrender as their winner. I’m equally excited and fearful.

I’m excited because this project is my heart split open and spilling out on paper.

I’m nervous because this project is my heart split open and spilling out on paper.

Please pray that the edits are smooth and the Lord works through my editor, trimming the script down until it glorifies only the name above all names—Jesus.

Here is a sneak peek at early reviews for Glorious Surrender: find peace and joy in a life fully surrendered to God.

“Stacey Weeks writes with transparency about the tension and transformation that her role as a pastor’s wife played in bringing her to the place of ultimate freedom – one who seeks God’s glory above all else. She communicates with honesty about the messiness of real life in public ministry and takes readers on a journey through raw life topics including pride, living authentically, finding true rest in the chaos, and spiritual warfare. Her passion for God’s glory to preoccupy and transform everyday living accompanies every thought on every page. This book is not just for pastor’s wives, it is for any woman wanting to take a vulnerable look at the sins and deceptions that lurk within their minds and hearts, that can stall their progress toward finding true purpose. A must read!”   ~Andrea Keene, author of radio bible study Ruth: redeeming the darkness

“Often we sit in our seats and wonder what the life of our pastor is like, but forget that there is another person in that relationship that must honour the God given calling of that man. Glorious Surrender is more than Stacey’s story; it is about God’s ability to shape any ordinary person into the image of Him.” ~Kevin Miller, church elder at Harvest Bible Chapel Brantford

“If you want to glorify God in everything you think, say and do, I recommend that you spend time reading Glorious Surrender.” Tami Swartz, Biblical Counselor