5 Ways to Know if God is Calling You to be a Christian Writer

Have you ever wondered if God is calling you to write?

In this episode of Anointed Scribe, I’m opening up about my own journey and the unexpected, sometimes difficult moments that eventually led me to recognize God’s hand guiding my path to full time writing. I’ll share how a piece of harsh feedback (complete with “poop brownies”) and a heart-wrenching confession from my best friend were all part of God’s way of redirecting me from a path of personal ambition to one of Kingdom purpose.

By the end of this episode, I’ll walk you through five questions that helped me, and may help you, discern if God is calling you to write for Him.

You’ll learn how to identify His guidance in your writing life and align your creative gifts with His purpose.

Listen closely, because you might discover that your journey to becoming an anointed writer has already begun.

✅ Subscribe or Follow so you don’t miss the next episode because I'm going to tell you a secret that will transform your writing . You won't want to miss it!

Transcript

Is God calling me to write a book? Or is this just my own dream stirring within me? What if I fail? And how can I be sure this calling is really from God?

If questions like these have been weighing on your heart, you're not alone. In today's episode of Anointed Scribe, I'll share how I almost missed my call to write and we'll uncover 5 powerful signs that God might be calling you to step into writing for his purpose.

So stay tuned for the insights and encouragement you need to discern God's voice and embrace his path for your writing journey. This is Episode two.

I'm Urcelia Teixeira, ex real estate agent turned award winning author of Christian fiction. It wasn't that long ago that I wrote my first novel on a bucket list whim, setting the course for a spiritual journey that transformed my life.

But the journey through self publishing hasn't been easy as I soon found myself obsessing over book sales rankings and getting to the top of the shelves, all the while trying to stay rooted in Christ and live out my purpose.

But God has graciously been teaching me how to navigate the spiritual pitfalls of the brutal book publishing industry and now I'm sharing them with you. Welcome to the Anointed Scribe podcast where each week I open my personal diary to share soul nourishing stories designed to inspire, uplift and equip you for your writing life.

If you're already a Christian author or one in the making trying to balance faith with business, you're in the right place because for such a time as this, you have been called to thrive as God's Anointed Scribe.

Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hello, it's your author friend, ur Celia and I am so glad you're here today.

I am really excited to dive into today's topic with you, albeit with a somewhat croaky voice from a bad case of bronchitis. But let me start by thanking you for being here and for taking the time to listen to something that I pray will be a blessing to your writing life today.

I also want to personally welcome you to the Anointed Scribe family. So if you're new here, stay tuned because and you'll hear me say this all the time, I don't believe you found this podcast by accident because everything you do in your life, everywhere you go, everything you hear or say, God has already planned for it to happen.

Yes, I believe with all my heart that you are exactly where you're supposed to be right now. Because we about to go deep into how you will know if God is calling you to be a writer.

There's also a handy printable checklist you can use alongside this episode in my resource library, so make sure you listen out for details on that, because by the time you reach the end of this episode, you will have at least five ways you'll be able to tell if God has called you to be a Christian writer.

But listen closely, because wherever you are in your writing journey right now, I don't want you to miss hearing from God today because I'm about to share with you how I almost missed the boat today.

I'm sharing the very entry in my diary of the day My not so humble house of cards came tumbling down and I ignored the first time God was nudging me towards my new godly purpose.

Are you ready?

Here we go.

April 8, 2019 can you believe this guy? I mean, the cheek. How dare he insult me like this. Who does he think he is?

Move along then and go find your perfect chocolate brownie without the **** if that's what you're after.

I'm on a diet anyway.

I have to laugh when I read this out loud again. Every time it cracks me up, but this was what I wrote in my journal after a sleepless night where I received an email from a reader who had told me a childhood story about how his mother would bake the most delicious, seemingly perfect chocolate brownies.

But to stop him and his friends from eating them, she told them she added 2 tablespoons of the best quality dog **** into the batch, her intentions, of course, being to turn them off eating the brownies she made for whatever the reason.

He went on to say that my book, which, to add injury to the insult, was a freebie, a reader magnet that I used was like his mother's brownies, and that it was impossible to remove the **** that was mixed in with the good ingredients, quote unquote.

I mean, I kid you not, I'm not making this up, so let me give you some context.

At the time, I had just finished writing my third book in my Alex Hunt archaeological thriller series and I was on fire. I mean, the writing bug had bit, the words were flowing, and I was well on the path to establishing what I thought was a somewhat successful career as a mainstream author.

I was already a committed Christian, and so I knew my writing was profanity free and that there was nothing unsavory in any of my books, by wholesome, worldly standards at least, because I had intentionally set out to avoid cussing, sex and blasphemy.

Even though the comp authors in the particular genre I was writing in had all these elements in their books, I stood firm in my Christian values.

So I walked away from this email thinking this was clearly some annoying, picky reader whose Christian standards were skewing toward the radical side. And so I shook it off and I got stuck into finishing the rest of the series that was going to make me lots of money and launch my new found writing career.

At least that was the plan. And it was a good one. Or so I thought at the time.

I was halfway through writing the fourth book in that series and had long since forgotten about the Brownie email when I suddenly found myself stuck in a writer's block spiral I just could not pull myself out of.

The words stopped flowing. I mean, it was as if someone had turned the tap off.

Suddenly the action scenes froze up on me and I found it a real struggle to finish even a chapter, much less the book.

Even after asking God to help me, there was nothing.

My creativity was as dry as an empty well. And it was as if from one moment to the next, my creative brain and my spirit were at war inside my heart.

My husband had no advice, so I called one of my best friends of 20 years in search of some spiritual encouragement. And you know what she said to me? Wait for it, my dear sweet sister in Christ.

My best friend told me that she'd been wrestling for months over whether or not to tell me that my books weren't honoring God.

Can you believe it? I mean, to tell you her confession took the wind out of my cells would be an understatement.

I was floored, gutted, and lost in a stormy ocean of water. And suddenly the path that had been so clear became murky and unstable in a matter of days.

Had it been anyone else like the man from the email, I would have taken offence again and I would have just kept stubbornly pushing ahead on my own path. You know, the path to profit and selfish gain.

But this time I paid attention because I trusted my friend and I knew her heart.

You see, I didn't one day wake up from a dreamy vision or or hear a voice from heaven telling me to leave my very successful real estate career and start writing faith filled fiction.

My call to writing came through what I now know were gentle whispers that I missed.

Clearly I had missed all God signs, including the one in the email from the Chocolate Brownie man. And I guess I'll never know of all the other times I wasn't paying attention to God's whispers.

I missed the signs.

I wasn't asking and I wasn't listening.

All I saw were dollar signs and neon lights.

All I saw was me.

It took God having to call my best friend into obedience, something she was wrestling with as well, by the way, to challenge me on the real motivation and purpose behind this new career I was creating for myself and to pull me back onto the path and the plan he had for me.

He knew I would listen to her because our friendship had already lasted the test of time.

We'd already been there for each other and yes, we're still best friends shout out to Chanel.

So off I go, confused, lost, and suddenly without the perfect plan I was creating for my life, I was stuck in no man's land. And all I could do was throw myself into these long conversations with God, something I now know was exactly what I should have done before I even started writing the first book.

And as I was spending more and more time with God, wrestling over these revelations, asking questions and not getting the answers I wanted, I very quickly realized that this was just the beginning of God directing me towards something.

I wasn't even sure I knew what it was at the time, because at this point, God hadn't called me to anything yet.

You see, I had picked this new career for myself based off of a bucketless whim and listening to my readers who kept asking for more. So I kept going. I'm a people pleaser.

But suddenly I had no direction. I was literally lost and had no idea where to go from there. Or even how torn between whatever was stirring up in my spirit and my already somewhat successful career.

I was lost.

In fact, I was already halfway into a series and on course to creating financial freedom and a legacy to pass on to my kids. You know my big why? The reason I chose to write in the first place.

I had thousands of readers loving what I'd already written and they were eagerly waiting for the next book in the series.

I didn't see how I could just stop and leave them hanging.

More so I wasn't even sure what exactly I was doing wrong because my books didn't have profanity or sex scenes or gratuitous violence. Where was the ****?

How was I not honoring God?

I also didn't know what I was going to do instead, even if I got as far as finishing the series.

But once I was open to hearing from God after I let go of the offence and stopped feeling sorry for myself once I let him direct and guide me. Things slowly started changing.

And God didn't only show me grace to write the final three books in my Alex Hunt series, He also started showing me his plan.

And so I began a gentle 12 month transformation into what was going to be a new purpose.

My path to discovering my calling took a little while longer though, because God had to prepare me first and equip me so that I could do the work he needed me to do.

His way, not my way.

And so when I started working on the final book in the series, the fog started to lift for the first time.

And by the end of it, I knew the answers to most of my questions.

I knew exactly what I had done wrong. In fact, it wasn't as much about what I wasn't doing or what I was doing wrong, but more about what I wasn't doing.

You see, while I wrote the Caiaphas Code, a book that was all about discovering the nails used in Jesus crucifixion, my relation to my writing changed.

I realized as I was searching for scriptural facts to back up my research for the book, that I had this platform, access to thousands of people who wanted to hear from me and the means to use my creative talent to both bring glory to God and serve his kingdom.

God was literally giving me this stage, this mountaintop from which to spread the gospel, to spread the good news of Jesus.

It was my great commission.

It was no longer a career that I decided on.

I was busy discovering a calling.

It wasn't happening naturally either. It was happening supernaturally.

It also wasn't something I could change.

It was pretty much happening on autopilot.

What I also realized was that my perspective had changed and I was no longer doing it for money, but to serve believers and to worship God.

I didn't even need any formal training for it, only God's anointing.

You see, it wasn't until I started writing that final book and I was paying attention to God's whispers and allowing myself to be open to God's direction that I realized God was busy doing a brand new thing with my writing.

And when I started seeing my writing as a calling from God and a way to serve him and the church, it completely changed my big why.

It changed my motivations for creating books, how I created it, and even what I created.

And I very soon discovered that everything I had thought my writing was about was nothing more than just words on a page. It had no impact.

Looking back on my life, I can clearly see that I was always destined to write.

That going off Brief in my English class was in actual fact me giving way to my imagination that more often than not ran away from what my teacher wanted me to do.

I was born with a natural ability to be better at writing than speaking to people.

But only by grace was I called to be an author when I fully committed my writing to God's plan.

Because talents come at birth, but gifts come at salvation.

When you are born, God gives you the talent to write.

But when you are born again, the Holy Spirit turns your writing talent into your spiritual gifting.

And oftentimes this happens over time as God trains and equips you.

Only then can you supernaturally use your writing for the purpose of serving God.

I believe that it's more about having the right perspective than being fixated on knowing if writing is your calling.

We're all called to serve God and to preach the gospel to all nations.

So if you then open yourself up to the quiet whispers around you and to the chocolate brownie people that cross your path, to the gentle reprimand of your friends or to the childhood talents that you once upon a time were allowed to run free, you'll find that special place where God calls you to serve him in all you do to make disciples of people.

Where through his grace, you let your tongue be the pen of a ready writer.

So I want to encourage you today to ask God to make you aware of the gifts His Spirit has given you so you can use them to serve Him.

Ask for God to guide you so that you hear his whispers and to recognize where and how he wants you to use your gifts in your writing career for. And here's the ticker.

His purpose, not yours.

And as you seek God to hear if he is calling you to write, ask yourself these five questions.

Is writing a career that you decided on, or are you busy discovering a calling?

Is it happening naturally or supernaturally?

Is it something you can change, or is it happening on autopilot?

Are you writing for money or to serve believers and to worship God?

And number five, do you need any formal training or does writing come easy to you?

I believe he's chosen me and he's chosen you.

We are all called set apart and gifted by God to write words that will impact lives and build his kingdom, to fulfil a purpose in his master plan.

And it is when Jesus becomes your Lord in all you write that the anointing begins to flow in your life.

Hence the name of this podcast, Anointed Scribe.

So make sure you subscribe and follow, because when we get together again, in the next episode, we're going to talk more about your anointing, and I'll give you the secret sauce to being a successful Christian writer, the single most important ingredient you'll ever need to turn your next book into a successful one.

And if you want free access to all the tools I personally use every day, you'll find them in my free resource library@anointedscribe.com

including a handy checklist that supplements today's show. And you can also follow me on Instagram at Anointed Scribe for daily nuggets of inspiration.

I hope you were blessed by this episode. I'd love to hear how God called you to write for his kingdom, so let me know in the comments or shoot me a message.

Because for such a time as this, you have been called to thrive as God's Anointed Scribe. I'll see you next time.

Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Anointed Scribe Podcast. I hope you're leaving feeling inspired, encouraged and on fire to step boldly into your calling as a writer chosen and set apart to fulfill a unique purpose.

God's Plan if you found value and liked today's episode, would you stop right now and share this episode with someone else who's struggling to balance their faith with building their author career?

I'd also really love it if you take 30 seconds and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. This is the only way that I know you're actually liking the show. Plus, it lights me up to hear from you.

And if you want more, more of the lessons I learned in my personal journey. Good news because I drop new episodes every Friday, so go ahead and subscribe or follow this show so you don't miss the next one.

Then head on over to anointedscribe.com for today's show notes and free access to my entire resource library to keep you rooted and on course. There's also a link where you can shoot me a message or ask a question.

Or if there's a specific topic you'd like me to talk about in a future episode, you can use the message link for that too.

I look forward to our next episode together. And remember, for such a time as this, you have been called to thrive as God's Anointed Scribe. I'll see you next time.