About six years ago, I put this blog on hold. A lot was going on in my life at that time, and my other site, ProPreacher.com, was experiencing tremendous growth.
So for the past five years between balancing my roles as a husband, father of two, pastor, and seminary student, I spent the little free time I had building up this preaching ministry for other pastors.
It wasn’t easy, but it’s amazing to me how every time I take a leap of faith, God shows up in remarkable ways.
I never expected anyone to read any of my work. I didn’t think anyone would care what I had to say. But God put a burden on my heart to write about something I was passionate about, and to my surprise, my writing connected with others as well.
I didn’t realize it then, but the more I look back, the more I see the thread of how God has been using my whole life to prepare me for writing.
As a nerdy homeschooled kid, before I went back to public school in 7th grade, I wrote a few short stories and read a lot of books. I always loved English class, even learning grammar rules.
For years before publishing anything, I toyed with the idea of starting a blog and even created a few ugly websites that I never made public. Plus, as a pastor for ten years, I’d write at least one 3,000 plus word document every week to preach.
All along, behind the scenes, God has been preparing me for this lifelong calling to write for his glory. I was learning and growing in my craft without even realizing it.
No More Fear
Preaching is still a huge passion of mine, but God has been putting a burden back on my heart again that I have more things that he is teaching me that I need to share with the world.
As I wrote in my very first blog post ever, I’ve realized the life is too short to hold anything back. God never blessed anyone for sitting around doing nothing. Every great story in the Bible required someone to take a step of faith.
Fear of what other people might think about me held me back for a long time. But I really had to answer this question: Who do I fear more, God or man?
The Bible teaches that the fear of man is a trap (Prov 29:25) and that we cannot serve God if we are still trying to please man (Gal 1:10).
When I took that first step of faith and began following God’s call to write for him, my life changed. I was finally answering the call that he had placed on my heart.
While it surprised me that ProPreacher.com took off, it really shouldn’t have been that big of a surprise. God had been preparing me to do that for a long time.
So, once again, I’m taking another step of faith. I believe I have the capacity to manage a second site, but I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that it still scares me a little.
I don’t know how many people are ever going to read this. I want to pretend I don’t care what others think, but I still do. But I’ve learned that writing is just as helpful for me as it is for others.
I’m still going to be creating ministry resources and articles for pastors at ProPreacher.com. But on this site, I’m going to be a bit more personal about the nitty-gritty, real stuff of life.
While I’ve learned a lot over the years, I don’t pretend to be an expert on everything. Most of what I write will be the things that God is teaching me as I wrestle with trying to live as he created me to live.
Also, I’ve decided to keep my old posts up (typos and all). You can read them in the archives if you want. But be warned, they’re from an early stage in my writing and are not my best work.
I hid them for years, but like I said, I’m done being afraid of what people think.
Are you in?
Here’s my question for you: Will you join me on this journey?
My prayer is that the work I do here, will inspire you to live the life God has created you to live too—that you’ll grow in your faith to become more like Jesus, your relationships will be stronger, and you’ll discover God’s greater purpose and calling in your work.
Maybe the fear of what other people think about you has been holding you back far too long like it did to me. It’s time for that to end.
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Let’s do this!