This reflection is about faith, surrender, and the fear of losing yourself when you come to God, especially when creativity is involved.
This might be something unique to my experience with God… but I doubt it.
For a long time, I was terrified of what would change if I came to Him. I resisted for months before finally giving my life to God, and the reason surprised even me: I was afraid He would change my writing.
Writing had been with me for years. It felt like part of who I was. I worried that getting saved meant losing it entirely, or worse, having it stripped of everything that made it mine.
Eventually, I reached a point where I wanted the Father badly enough to be willing to let go. I told Him that if I had to release what I’d written for years, I would.
That’s when I realized something extraordinary about God.
The Truth About God’s Calling
God’s calling isn’t always about losing everything that came before Him.
It isn’t always about stripping away all your darkness and suddenly being handed something new, bright, and righteous in its place.
Sometimes, that darkness remains; not because God approves of it, but because He intends to work through it. Sometimes, He allows it to stay so that you can learn to dispel it yourself, guided by His power and His presence.
I have an entire universe in my head that I draw from when I write fantasy. It has its own version of heaven and hell. Its own lore, creatures, landscapes, and laws of nature. Its own forms of magic and miracles.
I built a world full of broken characters; characters I loved so deeply that I cried when they suffered.
If God had asked me to burn every record of that universe, I would have done it.
But He never did.
Relationship With God
Instead, God used my fictional universe to teach me about Himself.
He took hold of it through my hand, and slowly, we’ve been fixing it together. As I write, He teaches me who He is; what it looks like for Him to love the broken so fiercely that He is willing to restore every shattered piece, no matter how long it takes.
It was never about my writing being “too dark” and needing to be erased to make room for God’s light.
It was about learning to let that light flood into it; to transform it, reshape it, and drive out the darkness from within.
Listening to God
You don’t always have to scrap everything when you come to Him.
Sometimes, God uses what you already have to teach you and to show His greatness to others through it.
The key is listening.
Do not remove something unless you are told to.
Do not cling to something He asks you to release.
Do not assume His heart, He will always surprise you.
God knew you before you were conceived. He knows how you learn best. He knows exactly what you need in order to understand what He wants to show you.
He knew that by stepping into the world He had built into my mind, I would understand His lessons.
He wanted me to know Him.
To know who I belong to.
To enter into the relationship He seeks with all His children.
Why God Chose This Path for Me
I learn by stepping into other people’s shoes.
I have an empathic mind. To understand someone, I have to see life through their eyes. When you tell me a story, I relive the memory alongside you.
I’m terrible to watch TV with.
If a character is hurting, I hurt with them. If they’re afraid, my body reacts as if the fear is my own. I remember watching a show once where a character had to stitch up a wound in her arm. My friend laughed when she saw me clutching my own arm, but I was living that moment with her pain and terror.
My Father knows this about me. He designed my mind this way.
So He gave me a way to step into His eyes, too.
He built this universe into my imagination so that when I finally came to Him, He could take hold of my pen and teach me about who he is through my stories.
Final Words
God will teach you in the way you will understand.
We all learn differently, and those differences were designed on purpose. He knows exactly what will reveal Himself to you most clearly.
Your only task is to listen.
God is a flexible teacher, as long as you are willing to be an obedient student.
For me, listening looked like trusting Him with the thing I was most afraid to lose. I thought surrender meant destruction.
It didn’t.
I didn’t lose my writing.
I found Him inside it.
Maybe for you, it won’t look like writing. Maybe it’s something else you’re afraid to hand over. Whatever it is, God already knows how to meet you there.
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