Jan Kern

Jan Kern here . . . hoping to offer a few words of encouragement for those tough moments in a writer’s life.

Wherever you are in your writing journey, I’m going to guess that there is something going on right now that feels . . . well, impossible.

Could be pumping out that amazing, hard-to-turn-down proposal, or getting it into the right hands. Could be, now that you have the contract, the deadline feels impossible . . . or you’re staring at a flashing cursor going nowhere. Maybe the book is published, but effective marketing feels out of reach, either due to limited know-how or resources.

I’m going to take another guess . . .

At some level you have a deep sense you are pursuing a God-placed passion. You feel called to write, even if that means moving through the thick tangle of unknowns.

As writers who are also Christ followers, even knowing and believing God’s many assurances doesn’t guarantee we won’t have days that bring challenges that shake our confidence. Will God meet us in the impossible? We want to believe that he will.

Back to the grounding of what we can know:

God is there. He does not change. (Deut. 31:8; Psalm 90:2; Hebrews 13:8)

Our impossibilities do not thwart him. (Luke 18:27)

His plans may be different than ours, and they are better than we can imagine. (Isaiah 55:8; Jeremiah 29:11; Ephesians 3:14-21)

What other verses have become important to you in your relationship and journey with God? Bring those into your prayers and considerations for your current ‘impossibility.’

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A few more questions to consider:

What seems impossible to you right now?

What expectations or perceptions have you attached to this ‘impossibility’–expectations and perceptions that you need to cut loose?

If you prayerfully walked around and looked at this situation from a new angle, what options do you discover?

What else might God be doing?

Where can you move forward in what you do know?

After you’ve prayerfully considered the above, take another look at your impossibility. What do you see now?

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Jan writes nonfiction from her home in the foothills of the California Sierras. She is currently adding to her Live Free series for the teen/ya audience and also enjoys life coaching and mentoring writers. Visit her site at www.jankern.com.