Here's a question that's been keeping me up at night. What happens when God's name gets used to sell things?
Not by obvious charlatans, but by well meaning God loving Christian authors who somewhere along the way stopped asking whether he was truly behind their book publishing.
I've been sitting with this for weeks and today I'm saying it out loud because I think a lot of us are feeling it and nobody is talking about it.
And what I found has been happening with me personally as a result of this is that I've been pulling more and more away from social media. And when I say pulling away,
I don't mean I've got it all figured out and that I'm above it all. I mean I'm wrestling with it. Genuinely wrestling with it.
Because every time I open the app I find myself scrolling past post after post of Christian sounding content,
scripture quotes, faith, language, God this and Kingdom that. And instead of feeling encouraged, I feel numb, desensitized.
And that bothered me a lot.
Because I asked myself why?
Why does content that mentions God leave me feeling empty?
And the answer I landed on is what today's episode is about.
Grab your favorite beverage, friends, Settle in and turn up the volume. This is the Anointed Scribe podcast.
I'm Urcelia Teixeira, ex real estate agent turned award winning Christian fiction author.
When I wrote my first novel on a bucket list whim, I I had no idea it would spark a spiritual journey that would redefine my calling. But you know what friend?
Self publishing wasn't easy. I got caught in the hustle, chasing rankings and sales while desperately trying to stay rooted in Christ.
Now, by God's grace, I'm building my author business his way. And now he's called me to help you do the same.
Welcome to the Anointed Scribe Podcast with Where Faith Meets Business for Christian Writers. Let's write, publish and grow our author Business God's way. Are you ready? Well then, let's get started.
Hey, it's your author friend, Urcelia, and welcome to the show.
If you're new here. I'm really grateful you found your way here today of all days, friend. Consider this your official welcome to the Anointed Scribe Tribe.
I hope you'll subscribe or follow and stay because I know God brought you here for a reason.
And to my regulars, thank you for returning. Today's episode is one I've been sitting with for a while, and it's not a comfortable one.
It made me uncomfortable just thinking it through.
But I think it's one of the most important conversations we can have as Christian authors right now. Especially now.
So let's get into it.
Here's what I've been noticing, and I say this not to judge anyone genuinely. I say this as someone who has had to ask herself the same hard questions.
But there is a growing social media content pattern of what I can only describe as borrowed God language being used to sell things,
products,
books,
personal brands,
follower counts, even stationery.
Someone slaps a scripture on a graphic and suddenly they're a Kingdom business.
Someone drops God told me into a caption and it becomes anointed content.
Someone uses words like calling, purpose, and divine assignment. And those words, which are sacred,
become marketing copy.
And look, I'm not saying every person doing this has bad intentions. Say some of them genuinely love God and are just doing what they've been taught works.
But the effect of it, the cumulative effect of it all,
is that the language of faith has become so common, so ambient,
so overused that it's losing its weight.
And that should concern us a lot.
Because here's the thing.
When the world can't tell the difference between someone genuinely carrying a Kingdom assignment and someone using Kingdom language to grow their platform,
we have a problem.
Not just a branding problem,
a stewardship problem.
And if I'm being really honest about where I think a lot of this is coming from,
AI has made. Yes, dare I say so,
dare I go there.
AI has made it incredibly easy to generate 50 posts in like five minutes, right?
ChatGPT has been the biggest culprit, in my humble opinion. And if you scroll through Instagram right now, you'll notice it. The same cadence, the same phrases, the same God language dropped into the same sentence structures over and over again.
People have become so desensitized by it that there's now a whole new wave of influencers encouraging everyone to switch to Claude AI instead.
And if we're not careful, the same thing will happen there too.
Here's the thing. I use AI tools myself. I want to be transparent about that.
But there is a big difference between using AI as a tool to help you brainstorm or conceptualize what's already in your heart, and using it as your voice, or worse, God's voice,
because you don't know what else to say.
One is a resource, the other is a replacement.
It's a slippery slope, people.
And this is exactly what brings me to the real heart of today's conversation. Because when God's name gets attached to content that isn't genuinely his content,
whether that's AI generated or just performance driven, there are real consequences.
Not just for your brand,
for his name.
Because this isn't just a content quality problem,
it's a stewardship problem. And the weight of that hit me hard when I heard this one statement recently that I haven't been able to shake.
And through an author lens, the statement sounds like this.
If there's a gap between the calling and the fruit,
it's not just your author name that suffers.
It's God's name you've mishandled,
it's his name you've misused.
That is an extremely sobering thought, right?
Because most of us who write Christian fiction or faith based non fiction aren't just building an author brand. We are representing someone.
We are putting God's name and character on our covers, our bios, our social media profiles, our email signatures.
We are telling the world this work comes from God.
This work honors God.
And that means we have a responsibility that goes beyond our Amazon ranking, or our launch results,
or our follower count.
It means we carry a sacred accountability.
It should mean that we've accepted the responsibility that comes with being an author and that serves his kingdom.
Which brings me to what the term Kingdom Author actually means.
What does it really mean to be a Kingdom Author?
Not as a title, not as a niche, but as a genuine daily lived reality?
I've been thinking about this a lot, and here's where I've landed.
A Kingdom Author is not someone who mentions God in their books.
Plenty of people do that.
Plenty of authors who are openly atheists do that.
A Kingdom Author is not someone who has a scripture in their bio or posts devotional content on a Friday.
That's not nothing, but it's not the whole picture either. Right?
Here's my definition of a kingdom.
A Kingdom Author is someone who has made a conscious,
costly decision to let God determine the direction,
the pace,
the content,
and the outcome of their writing life.
Even when that direction doesn't make obvious business sense.
Even when that pace is slower than they'd like.
Even when that outcome doesn't look like what they prayed for.
It means writing what he asks you to write, not what the market does tells you will sell.
It means stewarding your platform, however small,
as something that belongs to him,
not something you are building to serve yourself.
It means being willing to be unknown,
unnoticed and unrewarded by the world's standards, and calling that faithfulness rather than failure.
It means seeking first the heart of God by spending time in the Word to daily.
It means using your time and money to bless others.
It means giving back a tenth of your income every month.
That is a Kingdom Author,
that is an anointed scribe and what this show is all about.
It's what I personally strive to be every day when I sit down at my desk and it's genuinely hard. I won't pretend otherwise because the world will pull you the opposite way all the time because it's all about serving self rather than serving God.
So here's the question I want to leave sitting in the room with you today.
If you stripped away every sales metric,
every follower count,
every accolade and every moment of recognition,
what would be left of your reason for writing?
Is God in the answer or is he just in the packaging?
Because there's a difference between writing for God and writing with God.
There's a difference between putting his name on your work and actually letting him into it.
There's a difference between calling yourself a Kingdom author and living with a weight of what that actually means.
And I think a lot of us, and I include myself in this completely, have been somewhere on that spectrum. Not because we are bad people,
not because we don't love God, but because the pull toward performance,
recognition and results is so strong and so culturally normalized that we absorb it without even noticing.
The question isn't whether you've ever operated from that place.
The question is whether you are willing to be honest about it.
Are you willing to take accountability for it.
So what does sacred accountability look like for us anyway?
I think sacred accountability as a Kingdom author looks like a few very practical things that are non negotiables if we are to attach his name to ours.
Here's what I think they look before you write a single word of your next book, ask God if this is what he wants you to write.
Not what will sell,
not what the market is hungry for. What he wants you to write.
Before you post that caption with a scripture, ask Am I sharing this because it genuinely stirred something in me?
Or am I sharing it because it will perform well,
or because it's what my readers are expecting me to post it looks like being willing to sit in a slow season without rebranding yourself as more Christian to try to access the market.
Because if that's your modus operandi, I'll share the simple truth with you.
God doesn't need you to marketing.
He needs you to represent Him.
And finally, it looks like understanding that the gap between what you say you are and how you actually live as an author, as a person is visible not just to the people watching,
but to God Himself.
Which brings me to the gentle caution,
don't put God's name on your books and your brand if you won't let him refine what what's underneath it.
Don't ask for his favor and blessing if you won't act on what he's already asking you to address.
That's not a condemnation, friend. That is a gentle invitation.
Because the refining, as uncomfortable as it is,
is where the furnace shapes and sharpens us so that we can go out and do the only thing God has ever called you to do, and that's to tell the world about Him.
Friend, As I come to a close, I need you to know that I don't say any of this from a place of having it all figured out.
I'm figuring things out every single day.
But I'm saying it as someone who has sat with these questions and found them deeply uncomfortable.
As someone who has had to honestly ask herself more than once,
am I representing him well?
Am I writing what God asked or what I want?
Am I building something for his kingdom or something with his name on it?
Those are hard questions,
but they are the right questions. And I think the fact that you are here,
that you chose this podcast episode today,
tells me that somewhere in you, you already know that too.
The issue isn't whether God calls called you to write. I believe with all my heart he did.
The issue is how you steward that calling, how you carry his name.
How seriously you take the sacred accountability of representing him in a world that desperately needs the real thing,
not a polished, platform optimized version of it.
The world is hungry for authors who mean it,
who write from something real, who carry his name with a reverence it deserves.
Let's be that author friend together.
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The link is in the show notes.
