There is no shortage of voices telling you what to do with your author business and writing life right now.
What books to write, how to market your books, which platform to show up on, which novel marketing strategy is working this season,
which writing coach to follow, which self publishing course will finally be the one that moves the the needle.
And most of it sounds reasonable. Some of it even sounds scriptural.
And yet, somehow, in the middle of all of that noise,
a lot of Christian authors are more confused,
more uncertain, and more disconnected from their own sense of calling than ever before.
I want to talk about why that is today. And I want to show you something in scripture that stopped me in my tracks recently.
Something so simple that I almost missed it.
Grab your favorite beverage, 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 back to the show.
If you're new here, I'm really glad you found your way. Consider yourself officially welcomed to the Anointed Scribe community.
I hope you'll stay a while because I think what we are covering today is going to make a real difference to your author life and to my regular followers and subscribers.
Thank you for choosing to come back. You know I do not take that for granted and I count myself blessed to have you here. So thank you for being here.
So today I want to have a conversation that I think is long overdue.
Not because it's controversial,
but because it's something we seldom slow down long enough to actually think through.
And in a world that is moving faster than ever, with more content,
more information,
more courses, more opinions,
I think it might be the most important thing we can talk about as a Christian author right now.
It's about discernment,
about sources,
about knowing whose voice you're actually building. Your author life.
And your author brand on.
And it starts with a verse that I have literally written out and stuck on the wall directly in front of my desk to look at every single day.
And it's Jeremiah 33. Three from the NIV version, where God speaks directly to Jeremiah and he says this,
call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.
Now I want to pull out one word from that verse today. It is from the NIV version. The other versions use the word hidden,
but the one in the NIV version says unsearchable. The word unsearchable,
I looked it up in the dictionary, not in a theological commentary, just in a regular dictionary, and here's what it said.
Unsearchable means not capable of being found by searching,
not indexed, not discoverable through conventional means.
Let that sit for a moment, friend. Let it sink in, because this literally blew my mind when it clicked for me.
God is telling Jeremiah, and by extension telling us,
that he has things to say to you that cannot be found on Google,
that cannot be indexed, that cannot be generated by ChatGPT,
that are not sitting in someone else's blog post or self help book or course or Facebook group post or YouTube video.
There are things God wants to tell you about your writing life, your calling,
your next book,
your direction that are only accessible one way.
By calling to him directly,
personally,
and then waiting for him to answer.
That is not a passive, vague, mystical idea.
That is a direct promise from God.
Call to me,
I will answer.
I will tell you things that cannot be found anywhere else.
And I think a lot of us have forgotten that.
Not because we don't believe it,
but because we've been so busy calling to everyone else. First,
here's what I've been observing, and I include myself in this completely because this is something I've had to wrestle with personally.
We live in an era of unprecedented access to information,
advice and opinion.
And as Christian authors, a lot of that information is faith adjacent.
It sounds right,
it uses the right language,
it quotes scripture,
it talks about calling and purpose and serving God through your writing.
And so we consume it. We follow these voices, we take the courses, we join the communities, we implement the strategies.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that,
somewhere between the podcast episodes and the Instagram reels and the coaching calls, God's voice gets buried.
Not because he stopped speaking,
but because we stopped creating the environment and kind of quiet in which his voice can actually be heard.
Jeremiah 17, 9 says, the heart is deceived deceitful above all things.
And I think what that means practically for us as authors is this.
We can convince ourselves we are seeking God's direction when what we are actually doing is seeking confirmation for a direction we have already chosen.
We go to God with our plan already formed and ask him to bless it.
We consume content that affirms what we already want to do and call it confirmation.
We follow voices that sound like wisdom because they align with our own desires. And we call that discernment.
But that is not discernment.
That is the heart doing what the heart does,
finding what it wants and dressing it up as what God wants.
True discernment is harder than that and far less common than we think.
Real discernment, the kind God calls us to,
requires something most of us find deeply uncomfortable.
It requires slowing down before we speed up.
It requires sitting with a question long enough for God to actually answer it,
rather than filling the silence with someone else's opinion. How often do we do that?
It requires being willing to receive an answer we didn't expect or even want.
One that doesn't look like what's working for everyone else.
One that doesn't come with a strategy or a roadmap or a five step plan.
Just a quiet,
clear internal knowing that this is the next right thing.
And it requires testing what we receive.
Because not every voice that sounds spiritual is speaking from God. Right.
Deuteronomy 18 is very clear on this.
God's Word warns us about voices that presume to speak on his behalf.
And the test isn't whether a voice sounds confident or whether it has a large following,
or whether its advice has worked for other people.
The test is whether what's being said holds up against Scripture,
whether it points you toward Christ or toward yourself or toward that speaker's mission,
whether it produces peace and faithfulness or anxiety and performance.
That is the filter.
Every piece of advice,
every course, every coaching voice,
every trending strategy, every Facebook post,
it goes through that filter first.
Does this point me toward Christ and his mission that he called me to?
Or does it point me toward my own platform and my own results and essentially, pride?
I want to say something here that I think needs to be said plainly.
Not all sources are are equal. And in the Christian creative space especially,
there is a lot of content that sounds right but isn't sourced from truth.
There are voices that borrow biblical language and use it to sell something. A program,
an identity, a method without the theological grounding to back it up.
And the danger isn't that it's obviously wrong.
The danger is that it sounds almost right.
It uses familiar words,
it references God. It talks about calling and kingdom and purpose. And if we're not discerning, if we haven't built the habit of taking everything back to God and back to Scripture,
if we don't sit with the Word daily and write it on our hearts and minds, we can absorb the avalanche of so called biblical content without even noticing what it's rooted in.
I say this not to make you suspicious of everything and everyone.
I say it because I care about what you build your writing life and author business on.
And I know from personal experience that when you build on something that sounds solid but isn't, it doesn't hold.
It doesn't last. It cannot. The confusion creeps back. Back. The comparison never leaves. The lack of peace creeps back. The insecurities keep festering.
The fleshly desire for wealth and success will keep drawing us away from our relationship with God.
The doubt comes back and before you know it you end up back where you started,
wondering what went wrong.
Building on the right foundation matters more than and building fast,
and the only foundation that actually holds is one sourced directly from God.
I want to say something that might surprise you, coming from me, considering I share these podcast episodes every week and want you to enrol in my online program.
But I mean it. Not as a humble disclaimer, as a genuine non negotiable conviction.
Don't copy me.
I am one voice.
I have my own perspective, my own journey, my own understanding of scripture which is a daily work in progress.
I will get things wrong. I have gotten things wrong.
And if you are building your author business on what I say rather than on what God says to you directly,
I have failed you regardless of how good my intentions are.
The Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11:1 Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ.
That's the model. Not follow me.
Follow me as far as I'm following Christ. And then keep your eyes on Christ.
Keep searching and confirming with God. Keep praying, keep seeking Him. Keep waiting for his answer. Keep Because I'm not the destination.
I am at best a fellow traveler pointing in the same direction.
And that direction is always only back to God,
back to His Word, back to Jeremiah 33:3 that invites you to call to him who will tell you unsearchable things.
The most important voice in your author life is not mine.
It is not any coaches,
any podcast hosts, any best selling author,
any Facebook post. It is his and he is speaking the question is whether you are creating the conditions to actually hear Him.
And I recognise the irony here.
I'm telling you to be discerning about whose voice you follow,
while also hoping you'll follow mine.
So let me be transparent about what I've tried to do differently.
Everything I create,
including my Revive to Thrive Way™ program,
is built with this conviction at its core.
I'm not handing you a formula and telling you to follow it by the letter.
What I share are the three core areas God identified in an author's life,
certainly in my own life, and that needed attention before anything else could grow from it.
They are starting points,
signposts, not a script.
Because here's what I know to be true.
The work that happens inside those three areas is between you and God. I can create the structure. I can point you to the scripture. I can guide you through the process step by step.
I can share what happened in my own author journey. But the specific thing God needs to say to you,
the specific way he needs to move in your life,
in your author business,
that is entirely between you and him.
My role is simply to create the space for that conversation to happen.
So use what I offer as a doorway, not a destination. If you want to go deeper with God to have him not only heal the things that rob you of peace,
joy and fruitfulness in your business,
but to also give you clarity and who you are as an author,
why you are writing and where you are headed in your author business, let God be the One who walks you through it.
Inside the Revive to Thrive Way.
The link is in the show notes.
So what does all this actually look like on a day to day basis for Christ following authors?
Let me put some flesh on this.
Start with God before you start with Google,
when you have a question about your next book or your next business decision,
before you open a browser, before you ask a community,
before you queue up someone's blog post,
give him the first conversation. Give God the first conversation.
Research has its place, but not before prayer.
Then take whatever advice you receive from another author, a coach, a Facebook community,
and run it through an honest filter.
Does this align with Scripture? Does it produce peace in me or does it produce anxiety and overwhelm?
Is it pointing me toward faithfulness or towards performance?
Those questions will tell you more than any testimonial ever will be willing to do. Nothing for a season. If God hasn't given you a clear next step,
be still and wait.
That's harder than it sounds,
because busyness can feel like obedience, right? But the pressure to always Be moving,
always be producing, always be growing. That pressure is not from God.
Stillness before him is not wasted time.
It is often the most productive thing you will ever do.
Ground your author identity in what God says about you, not what the industry says.
Your worth as a writer is not your download numbers or your Amazon ranking or the size of your email list. It was settled long before you wrote your first word, and it will not change based on your next book launch.
And finally, ask yourself honestly whose voice you've been following most closely lately and whether that voice consistently points you back to Christ.
If you are in a season right now where you genuinely don't know who you are as an author,
what your message is,
who you are called to serve, who your readers are, what makes your voice distinct,
I want to offer you something practical to help you today.
I've created a free resource to help you discover your Christian author brand.
It's designed to help you get clear on your identity, your message, and your mission as a Christian author. Not based on what's trending,
not based on what's working for someone else, but based on how God has specifically wired and called you.
Because clarity about who you are is what makes everything else,
your writing, your book marketing, your author platform actually make sense.
And that clarity has to come from the right source.
The link is in the show notes. It's free. It's called Discover your Christian Author Brand™.
No strings attached. Grab it, work through it, and take every question in it back to God.
Let him be the one who confirms the answers and gives you the clarity and direction you need to publish your books and build your author business.
Friend, we live in a noisy world. A noisy and opinionated world.
And the Christian creative space is not exempt from that noise.
There are more voices than ever, competing for your attention, your trust,
and your next decision.
But there is one voice that has been there since before you wrote your first word.
One voice that knows your calling better than any coach or course or community ever could.
One voice that has, as Jeremiah tells us, great and unsearchable things to tell you.
Things that cannot be indexed, cannot be Googled, cannot be found anywhere else.
Call to Him. That's all he asks.
Just call to him and wait.
Because the direction he gives you will not look like everyone else's direction.
It's unique, it's bespoke, and it will be exactly right for you.
May your pen stay faithful, your roots grow deep,
and every word you write bear fruit for his glory.
If you've been building your author business feeling exhausted, overwhelmed and unsure of your next steps. The Revive to Thrive Way™ was made for you.
Three shifts that replace the overwhelm with peace, the confusion with purpose, and the hustle with overflow. And they're ready to do the same for you.
Check it out at anointed scribe.com/revivetothrive
link is in the show, notes.
