In my last post on in this series, I shared the first lesson I learned in my extended time away from blogging. What I discovered was that it’s not just in my writing voice I was trying to duplicate others but in my ministry and faith as well. What I discovered, over a longer period of time than I would care to admit, was that I was getting frustrated and defeated easily because I was trying to duplicate someone and something God never intended me to be.
Lesson #2 Write
This sounds simple and a “Well, duh” kind of statement when looking at a blog. But it goes deeper than that. Once you realize that God has given you a unique voice, you have to do something with it. For me this journey is not just about this blog but about what I am called to do in both my personal and professional life.
With the blog, I need to create. I need to write and not for the one or two people who might read this but I must write for myself. I have to take what God has laid on my heart and share it so that I see where God is taking me. I was too busy trying to write for an audience that I have or wanted that I was no longer writing to keep myself challenged. While trying to write for someone else I was quickly losing the desire to write at all.
This is true about every aspect of life. When you are trying to be something for someone else it can get very tedious and you can lose sight of the original vision that excited you in the first place. Whether it be in ministry, in faith, in your career, in your education, when you are trying to live up to another individual’s expectations you can become very frustrated especially when you don’t know what those expectations might be.
As a youth pastor the last thing I want my teens to do or try and become is a miniature Robb. The last thing the world needs is another someone like me running around out there. What I want my teens to become are duplicates of Christ. To do this they have to “write” and I use that term to capture the various things they might be called to do. They need to realize that God wants them to do a very specific thing in their lives and that only they can fulfill that plan with the voice He has given them.
Yet, in that deep longing for my teens I haven’t followed my own advice. In ministry, in faith, and in writing I was trying to perform, if you will, for an audience that was out there and not for the audience of One and self that really matter. In trying to please others I was disappointing myself and it lead to not doing anything. I was getting all these great ideas bouncing around in my head and on paper, but nothing being done to flesh them out. Instead of giving them life, I was allowing them to build up and stagnate in this perpetual state of non-motion.
Regardless of whether or not you see yourself as a writer or a creative or an artist, there is something you have been designed to do. When you try and please this audience that is out there or even around you, what you find is dissatisfaction with what you are producing or creating. As you give the crowd what you think they want, you will do something not intended for you or you will stop doing anything. In either scenario if you do it long enough you will lose the very thing that makes you, you.
So write for yourself. Experience God in the way He has wired you. Don’t try and recreate what others have done. Please the only audience that matters, God first and self second. And if no one ever reads what you have done as long as Christ is pleased with what you have done and you are satisfied with what you have created for Him and Him then it is a success.
And if no one ever reads this post my heart is content because I am using MY voice to write what I need to hear and read.
