A Weak Writer’s Prayer

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Bob Hostetler here, offering another prayer for writers: Abba, I am a weak writer: insecure, inadequate, in over my head. But you chose Ehud because of his weakness. You used him, not to mention Moses, David, Jeremiah, Paul, and others (though I did just mention them; see what I mean?). So grant me the faith to believe that you can choose me and use me too.

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Afraid God Won’t Help?

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Hello from Kathy Collard Miller, enjoying the beautiful winter in the desert near Palm Springs, California. During challenging times, we can begin to believe that God won’t help us. At times, He’s silent or seems to delay. We become afraid and hesitant to trust. Will God really come through for us? Hebrews 13:5-6 assures us God is our helper: “be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper;
 I will not fear; 
what can man do to me?” If we don’t believe and trust that…

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Nouns (A Prayer for Writers)

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Bob Hostetler here, offering another prayer for writers: I use too many adjectives and adverbs as I write; I want the lift a good noun gives to help a phrase take flight, like dandelion, balustrade, and cricket, poppy, trough, and foghorn, meadow, cannonade, assassin, scythe, and toff, and more, I pray, from You who gave each item, object, thing, and every single noun I have to make my writing sing. _________________ Bob’s latest book is The Bard and the Bible, available via www.bardandbible.com or at fine Christian retailers everywhere.

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Package or Present? When I Needed a Kick in The Pants

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“Nutty with a Dash of Meat” Jeanette Levellie here with a fun–but not at the time–story about how the Lord gave me a kick in the pants to help me learn humility. I hope you don’t need this lesson, but just in case . . . Playing the Comparison Game When our family performed a special music program on a Sunday night, the people in the congregation were effusive in their compliments. As I prayed after the concert, I found myself playing the comparison game. “Why can’t our people be like these, Lord? Why did you call us to pastor a…

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A Writer’s Confession

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Bob Hostetler here, offering another prayer for writers: Lord God Almighty, I confess that I have sinned against you through my own fault, in thought and word and deed, by what I have done and by what I have left undone. I confess that I have too often trusted my own strength instead of relying on yours; I have let my puny ability suffice when I could have and should have laid hold of your ready power. I confess that I have chased after mammon, and written for mere money, instead of seeking first your kingdom and your glory, and…

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Pray, Write, Pray

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Hi Everyone, it’s Judith Couchman. My assignment for this year focuses on blogging about writing: technique, practical pointers,encouragement, and such. I hope this helps you.   If you want to improve your prayer life, try writing. If you want to improve your writing life, try praying. —Ed Cyzewski If any profession produces anxiety, it’s writing. Writers fret about deadlines, the quality of their work, if they’ll publish, whether readers will buy their books, or if they’ll earn income. Potentially, the anxiety can paralyze getting the work done. Two thousand years ago a writer working under duress suggested an antidote for…

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Verbs

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Bob Hostetler here, offering another prayer for writers:   I write today, Lord. I will be using words, and some of them will be verbs. Inspire them all, God, but especially the verbs. Hover over them. Speak them into existence. Breathe into them the breath of life. All my verbs come from you. You are my “is.” My “am.” My “see,” my “know.” You are my “laugh” and “cry,” my “wake” and “sleep,” “shiver” and “sweat,” “think” and “speak,” “jump” and “skip” and “dance” and “bounce.” There is not an action in my day, a movement of my bones, a…

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An Opportunity Is Not Necessarily God’s Open Door

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Hello from Kathy Collard Miller in the Southern California desert where it actually can get cold! As I visited with my friend who complained about everything going on in her life and all she felt compelled to do, I could sense she expected me to volunteer to help. My heart went out to her but I’d really been seeking God’s will rather than responding to every need of others. It took every fiber of my trust in God to not offer to take some of the load from her, but in my heart, I knew God wasn’t calling me to this…

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Fruit (A Writer’s Prayer)

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Bob Hostetler here, offering another prayer for writers: Holy Spirit, cultivate and proliferate your fruit in my writing. Let love permeate my words. Help me experience joy in the writing, and let my readers experience joy in reading. Use my writing to spread shalom. Give me patience in the writing. Let goodness characterize what I write, and gentleness how I write it. Make and keep me faithful to you, to the publisher, and to the reader from beginning to end, and let God-given self control guide my every thought, impulse, and decision as I write, revise, edit, and review, in…

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Transform

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Bob Hostetler here, offering another prayer for writers: Lord Jesus, you turned a meager lunch into a banquet for thousands, a common lake trout into an ATM, a brash fisherman into a water-walker, a skeptical Thomas into a staunch devotee, and a grisly death into death’s defeat. Please turn my faulty thoughts and flailing words into something worth reading. Amen.

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