Just because you’re “called” to write is no guarantee you will always know which direction to go. Even those who have been writing a long time and 
have experienced moderate success, still ponder their craft and career:
- Should I sign with this publisher?
- Should I wait and continue shopping my book?
- Do I need an agent?
- Is my agent really helping me?
- Maybe I should just self-publish.
- Was I wrong for self-publishing?
- Am I writing in the right genre?
- Is writing a waste of time?
And the questions go on.
You’re mistaken if you think that being “called” to write makes things clearer. It doesn’t.
Take Abraham, the father of the faith. He didn’t have all the details before he pulled up stakes.
By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going (Hebrews 11:8 NIV).
Hello? He “went… not knowing where he was going”? This grates against everything I am. I abhor agenda-less meetings and rudder-less vacations. I 
need maps, blueprints, and timetables. This faith stuff is taxing for a control freak like me.
But I’m beginning to wonder if faith isn’t the heartbeat of calling.
Blaise Pascal, in his delightful collection of musings entitled Pensees, suggested that God is both hidden and revealed. “If there were no obscurity,” Pascal says, “man would not feel his corruption: if there were no light, man could not hope for a cure.” So God reveals enough of Himself to make faith reasonable, but not so much of Himself, that faith is unnecessary.
The same might be true about calling — it’s both hidden and revealed.
God blesses us with individual talents and giftings, hunches and impulses. But He won’t force us to use those gifts and follow those hunches. In fact, we may “bury our talent” (Matt. 25) if we so choose. God points us in the general direction, but He won’t drag us along the path.
In other words, the “call” is not the “answer.”
I used to think that being resolved about my “call” to write would clarify things. It hasn’t. Heck, sometimes hearing the “call” only makes things worse. The apostle Paul felt “called” to Rome… where he was beheaded.
Okay. Do you still feel “called”?
For many of us, it’s not enough that we hear the “call” to write. What we really want is a blueprint for success, a map, a GPS, a telescope to see down the road, and a safety net to catch us if we fall. Meanwhile, we’re bleeding ourselves to death through introspection, worry, or indecision.
Some of you are pondering this question right now. The frustrations have piled up alongside the rejection slips. You’re questioning your talents, your story, your agent, your genre, the market… you’re questioning your call to write.
But the truth is, even if you ARE called to write, you will never have all the answers.
“The apostle Paul felt “called” to Rome… where he was beheaded.”
That made me spew coffee. Thanks for the exellent visual as I fret over where my writing career is “headed.”
Excellent, post, Mike!
“But the truth is, even if you ARE called to write, you will never have all the answers. ”
Well, that made my day. 😉
This post was dead-on. The book’s even OUT now, and I still have no idea what God’s got in mind :p Just a day-by-day journey, like Abraham.
I hear you, Greg. Since “The Resurrection” released, I believe I have more questions than when I first started. Things were definitely simpler, that’s for sure. Hey, good luck on the book!
Early in your post you used the word “success.” Each writer must ask themselves, “What does success as a writer mean for me?” The call comes, but to what end? Different writers might have different definitions of success but all writers must have a definition, and have one that is true to their unique call.
Do you think some people just have a gift of faith?
Take George Muller for instance. Some of the antics he pulled could be conceived as down right arrogant if taken out of context. Did he develop more faith, or was he given more faith to begin with? Or was he just that arrogant.
I know a pastor who began building a house without having all the funds to finish it, on faith. Five years later the house sat unfinished. The pastor eventually borrowed the money to try and get it finished, but couldn’t make the payments and it was foreclosed on a few years later. So much for the house that faith built.
Like you I couldn’t imagine just skipping down a path with an unknown destination, but maybe that has more to do with my lack of faith.
Couldn’t agree more, Mike. And if “beheading” comes, we must still follow that oblique call.
Definitely one of the spiritual gifts: faith. But you better make sure you’ve got it before you exercise it in that unique form. We’re required to have just enough faith to get us on track and then beg for it when we see no light ahead. The gifting of faith is something entirely different.
Human beings are capable of great delusions. Sometimes I wonder if I’m not called at all, but seriously deluded. It’s even possible my faith in God is a delusion. Several years ago, when I was desperate to know what to do about a medical issue, I cast lots, knowing that they did this in the Bible and it wasn’t considered superstitious or wrong. Looking back on it, what if the correct answer wasn’t on those lots I cast? The medical route I followed did little to improve my child’s health, but I did make a good friend out of the doctor. Was that the point of it? I don’t know–I do know that I had an intense faith, only partly born out of desperation.
I still have faith in God–don’t misunderstand me. I just wonder sometimes if I’m deluded. I need a voice from heaven to confirm or deny, a visitor who is an angel of the LORD. Somehow, I don’t think my life merits it, though. 🙂 It’s not as if I’m raising a nation from the promised seed, or leading captives out of bondage, or . . . I’m just writing books and raising a family. My children can get along in life with bad health, and I can get along even if I never find an agent and publisher–even if my writing is never good enough.
Sorry for carrying on. I’m feeling a little low today.
Jill, this makes me a little sad, but I can totally relate. I wonder sometimes if God purposely withholds a lot of things from us. So what we call “delusions” are part of a God-ordained quest. I don’t know. In the end, “raising a family” will have far more eternal significance than publishing a book. Cliched, I know. But please, don’t give up… on either count. Thanks for commenting.
Mike, I’ve always said talent is a gift from God with some assembly required. Just because you’re “called” doesn’t mean your writing is perfect. Far from it. When the Lord called me, (and yes, I was definitely called) I wrote plays first. I got good at dialogue. Then I wrote my first novel. Talk about stink-o? The only thing that was decent was the dialogue. 🙂 I had some assembly to work on. I worked hard to learn the craft to be worthy of the call.
“Is writing a waste of time?”
This seems to be where I am these days. Stupid, I know. But still true. And, halfway through “The Ressurection”, and I can honestly say you shouldn’t have too manu questions about whether or not YOU’RE supposed to keep writing. THAT seems pretty clear. (That you are supposed to, I mean).
I was feeling a bit like Jonah today. But I didn’t want to get stuck in the belly of the whale because of running away. And then I came here and decided the whale belly is better than the beheading. But a calling is a calling is a calling.
In other words, the “call” is not the “answer.”
What was the question? 🙂
Always remember – There are two ways out of the whale.
Regarding ‘faith’: I never thought it referred to some supernatural gifting that guarantees everything will turn out the way we think it should.
Whenever my ‘faith expectations’ get smashed by the waves of reality, it forces me to enlarge my image of God. Once I do, I discover He’s been there the whole time. I’m not “Oprah-fying’ either. Honestly, in 25 years of being a Christian very few things have turned out the way I originally anticipated. But they’ve always worked out – I just had to keep going.
Regarding writing: Just like I don’t get ‘answers’, I don’t get a warranty either. I have to keep going until He specifically gives me something else to do… whether or not I’m fully satisfied in the first 30 days.
Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly at first. I had to write my first book before I could write my second. That might sound like Captain Obvious, but I think starting is easy, continuing is hard work.
I ask myself almost daily if my “calling” wasn’t really a wrong number. I’ve felt in the past I was “called” to be the headmistress of a dayschool only to find out 2 months later I was pregnant and we were moving. It was the most stressful 6 months of my life and I wondered if God had really called me to do that job. Maybe that job wasn’t my calling but it lead me to a true calling. Because after that job I decided to stay home and eventually began homeschooling my 3 children. So my calling might not be to become a well-known writer, but this experience will lead me to another. For me the faith is following along knowing that God will eventually lead me to where I need to be.
-Great post:)
“Meanwhile, we’re bleeding ourselves to death through introspection, worry, or indecision.”
To which I can only say, AMEN.
Mike, I fully agree. There is an unknown destination that God has planned for us, and there’s no guarantee whether we’ll like the journey itself even (though assuming the best, we’ll be very happy with the destination).
And I’ve learned to trust that God will let me know if I’m off track. Verse in Isaiah (forget the reference) where he says whether you go to the left or the right, you’ll hear a “voice” whisper in your ear, “This is the way, walk in it.” The assumption is that if it isn’t the right way, if we’re listening, He’ll also say, “You missed it! Make a U-turn and take the next right” like some navigation thing. Well, maybe not that drastic, but you get the idea. Sometimes one has to trust God’s leading even when the “evidence” (as we might consider it evidence) isn’t there, when it doesn’t seem to be “working.”
But as a former minister, I do need to point out one thing about Abraham. Most assume that verse means he had no idea about the direction he was headed, but that’s not true. What it refers to is that he was going to a place he had no experience of, the general meaning of the Hebrew word to know, like to know a woman…we know what that means. 😉
If you read what happened to Abraham, or really Abram at the time, His father decided to move to the “Promised Land” (no, he didn’t call it that) so it was Abram’s father that pulled up stakes and left Ur for what would eventually become Israel. However, a stop over to visit relatives in a city about a third of the way there, Abram’s father died. After sitting in that city for a period of time, that’s when God told him to get up and get on with the journey, where his father was headed.
So he knew the direction of where he was going, he had never been there, however, so didn’t “know” it. It was a new land for him. In that sense, he’s actually a lot like us. We have an idea of what we’re doing frequently, we just don’t “know” the destination before we get there and when we arrive, we say, “I had no idea it would be like this!” For the good or bad, that depends on the person and what they were expecting.
Might there not be a difference between a calling and a vision? I’ve got a good vision for my writing (fictional world and characters and the business of it), and I couldn’t stop writing if I wanted to…but I never received a calling to do it.
When I go out to chop timber or clean a hog lot, I don’t feel particularly “called” either, and I’m not sure writing is much different than that, for me.
…Although that might also explain why my dialog is wooden and my pacing smells like crap! 😉
Great post. I missed it when it first came out for some reason.