Embrace Your Author Calling with Full Permission

You don't need a corporation, an editor, or anyone else to tell you that you can write and publish your book. The permission you've been waiting for was granted in the opening pages of Genesis.

Your Mindset Guides Everything

The mindset we bring to the author adventure is crucial. It guides everything we do — from the projects we choose to take on, to keeping the energy to finish them.

Today's mindset motivation might sound funny at first. But I think it's important, as Christian creatives specifically and creatives generally, to think about this point of mindset motivation that I'm going to share.

It is something that I've had to take to heart myself as I have pursued a vocation of creativity. Both as a mostly full-time professional writer, but also just as a creative person in my free time and as a hobbyist before I became a professional Christian creative and a professional writer.

It's not mind-blowing insight, but it is a shift that may not seem necessary. I assure you it is. Might even save your writing soul.

Here It Is: You Have Permission

Alright, here it is, the super important mindset shift that will set you well on your author adventure: You have permission.

Here it is again: You have permission to write.

You have permission to write.

Yeah, sounds basic. Sort of like, well, duh! Maybe even self-evident that you have permission. Of course we have permission to write, to create, to publish our books!

Except sometimes we need to hear that from somebody else. That you have all the permission you need to write your story, to write your Bible study guide, to write a series of devotionals, or to write a resource that will help Christians in their walk with Christ, their journey. Whether it's an academic sort of resource, or just a spiritual formation resource, whatever it is. Big story, short story — you've got permission.

You Don't Need a Corporation to Tell You

You don't need a corporation to tell you you can write and publish your book. You don't need an editor to tell you you can write and publish your book. You don't need another Christian — from your church or Bible study, or whatever — to tell you you can write and publish your book.

You have all the permission you need to go and create in Christ. All of which are rooted at the very beginning of the Bible. When God himself created, and then he created us in his image as co-creators with himself, giving us the mandate to go and create a whole bunch of stuff.

Two Hebrew Words for Your Calling

There are a number of Hebrew words in the opening chapters to the Book of Genesis that mark our identity as co-creators of God's world. Specifically Chapter 2, there are two great Hebrew words that have great bearing on your calling and your gifting as a Christian creative.

Abad — To Till and Cultivate

The first one is abad. It is the Hebrew word that is used when Yahweh God commissions Adam and Eve, the first ancestors of humanity, to go and work the world.

It carries with it this very agrarian, tilling and cultivating sense. And it's this idea that we have been sent out into the world to work creation. To take the stuff of creation, the stuff of this world, and to shape it in a number of different ways. Whether that's creating Apple Watches or iPhones, or clay pots or amazing buildings, or taking the stuff of life, the words of life — the stories of life — and crafting books and resources and fantastical tales.

This is the sense we get at the very front end of our vocation as human beings. We have been created in the image of God to go and create, to abad, to cultivate the stuff of this world.

What better way to cultivate and till the stuff of this world than to do so with the words and stories of this world?

The real stories of real lives, real people — cultivating and tilling them in a direction that fosters their development as humans. Their intellect, their insight, their wisdom, their journey toward a relationship with God.

What a huge responsibility and calling! It's also a huge point of permission that at the beginning we were called to abad. To till and cultivate the stuff of this world.

Shamar — To Guard and Keep

We're also called to guard it, to shamar this world. To keep it safe, to go and keep people's stories safe, to keep people themselves safe.

I can't think of a better way than to guard the world, the people living in the world, than to tell stories, to write studies, to create guides and devotionals and resources that will encourage, inspire, and offer insight for people's journey. It's a way that we can guard the world and guard the people in the world.

Abad and shamar. Two super important words at the very front end of our human story, right after we've been created in the image of God himself. Called to create alongside him in the world.

So Go and Till and Guard

So I bid you to do what God himself has done, what God himself has called you to do — to abad and shamar this world.

To till and cultivate the stories and the words and the insights and the resources that you have because of your own story and your own life. To till and cultivate all of that for the sake of God's glory and human flourishing.

And then to take seriously that calling to shamar this world. To guard it, to guard people, and guard the way God intended things to be when it comes to issues of justice and rightness, truth and beauty, mental health and marriage, human identity and flourishing, and a whole host of things that are in desperate need of keeping safe, protecting, and guarding in this world.

Genesis Says So

Creative Christian: you have been created to create. You have all the permission you need because you have been created to create, from the beginning of our human existence.

To till and cultivate and guard creation — in any number of ways, including writing stories and studies and resources. Genesis says so!

Which gives you all the permission you need to go create and write that book.

So, go create for Christ!