Why I Write: A Grace Story

A Dream Come True

Once upon a time stories filled a little girl’s mind. She’d sneak away with pencil in hand and write of daring adventures: of a young family braving the Oregon Trail, of a princess narrowly missing an assassination attempt, of a sibling duo who were superstars by night and students by day (this was before Hannah Montana, mind you).

The little girl would steal her mom’s floppy discs and story after story began to fill her binders. She never did finish a full story though. Just after she’d get started, new characters from another time would introduce themselves. The binder was in fact, a binder of story beginnings.

Deep in the little girl’s heart was the passion for storytelling. That little girl’s love still lives on in my twenty-something soul. For that reason, the little girl inside presented herself once again, when she finally saw her name in print, officially published in The Daily Grace Company’s Be Still Magazine.

A Story of Grace

As a storyteller, I love to journal (you can read more about why I think journaling is so important at this post and my favorite journaling tools on this one).

I’ve always seen writing as a spiritual gift of sorts. I’m a huge snail-mail lover and even sent my husband over 50+ handwritten letters during his deployment. There’s just something special to me about a clean page in a notebook and a really good pen.

Writing is my preferred means of communication. It’s how I learn what I think and how I best express myself. I love writing so much, and it comes so naturally to me that I majored in English in college (talk about a LOT of paper writing!) and I still write to this day as part of my career.

All of this gives you more background on why I like to write, but it doesn’t tell you WHY I write.

Writing has become to me more than just a way to compose my thoughts, it’s become a ministry.

Why I Write

Dark ink scrawled across my journal in a private conversation with God:

This morning I woke up hungry for you. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case – but I so long for it to be. I feel like the woman at the well: “Come and see the one who really does satisfy!”

In all my striving, my good-girl faith, all my dreams come true (husband, baby, home), I still lacked. But God, you FILL.

John 4:39 records that many people in the town believed in Jesus because of the testimony of the woman at the well. When I looked in the Greek, testimony is martyreo. In this particular verse, it is a present active participle, which means she presently, actively, and continuously testified about the reality of Jesus.

The root word of martyreo is martys and is used in Acts 1:8. “You will be my witnesses” it says. One who avers what he himself has seen or heard.

Our witness is personal. It is our grace story. The story of how we have seen and heard God. It is how we have experienced and known God for ourselves.

When Jesus teaches the disciples how to pray, he says “O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.” (John 17:25-26).

This is why I write. I journal to know him. I come to this space to make him known. This is why writing to me just isn’t something I do, it’s not just a hobby, it’s a ministry. It is to make Jesus known.

What is Your Grace Story?

The world may not know him, but I know him. And he’s changed my life.

That’s the point of our testimonies, of why I will write for him and about him until he takes my words away – so you can know him too. So you can know my Jesus, the one who fills, who satisfies. It is so you can have your own grace story – your own intimate, personal relationship with him.

As neat as it was to see my name in print, the prayer of my heart is for others to see Jesus. Like Moses, I long to be hidden in the cleft, in the shadow of God’s personal glory.

My mom made an album when we were younger. In it were all the grace-stories of our family. As an adult, it moves me every time I see it. On one page is my great-grandfather’s testimony. My grandmother’s is on another. And on another, mine. It’s a record of our spiritual heritage. Of who we once were and who we are now. It’s our personal “testifying” of what we have seen and heard. It’s the story of how Jesus changes lives.

When I think of Jesus, I can’t help but proclaim like David in 2 Samual 7:18, Who am I that you have brought me thus far? And because of that, because of who Jesus is “[I] am unable to stop speaking about what [I] have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20).

Do you have a grace story? Write it down. Have your loved one’s write theirs down. Revelation 12:10 says the enemy is defeated by the blood of the Lamb and the WORD of our testimony. After Jesus casts demons out of a man in Mark 5, he tells him “Go, and report all that the Lord has done for you”.

The life of a Christian is one big grace story of see what God has done.

Friends, it’s time to tell our stories.