From Edie: Author Heidi Gray McGill teaches us how Christian writers can trust God with their writing journey, surrender the results, overcome comparison, and faithfully follow His calling.
How Christian Writers Can Trust God with Their Writing Journey
by Heidi Gray McGill @HeidiGrayMcGill
The morning of the meeting, I ran rubbing alcohol over the tip of my Payless pumps to remove a black scuff. My mother had made my suit, and though it fit well, there was no tag on the inside. The room I walked into was full of corporate executives in trendy clothing, buffed shoes, manicured nails, and engagement rings passed down through generations. Every pair of eyes landed on me when I stood up to speak.
Who was I to ask these people for anything?
I was there on behalf of the American Red Cross, raising funds for disaster relief. The moment I stopped thinking about myself and started telling the stories of lives touched, homes restored, and clean water provided, something shifted. Skepticism softened. Eyes misted. It was never about me. I was simply the conduit, the one willing to stand in the room and carry the need to the people who could help meet it.
I have thought about that moment many times since I became a writer.
The Widow and the Writer
In Mark 12, Jesus watched the crowd drop offerings into the temple treasury. The wealthy gave large amounts. Then a poor widow dropped in two small copper coins, worth next to nothing by any reasonable measure. Jesus told his disciples she had given more than all of them combined, because she gave out of her poverty rather than her surplus. She put in everything she had.
Writers know that feeling. You sit across from someone with three traditionally published novels, a major speaking platform, and an agent who returns calls the same day. You have a manuscript you believe in, a calling you can’t shake, and a platform that fits on a single index card. The temptation is to measure your offering against theirs and decide it doesn’t count.
The widow didn’t do that math. She gave what she had and trusted God with the rest.
Leaning Out of Your Own Understanding
Proverbs 3:5-6 is one of those passages writers quote so often it can lose its edge. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. Read it slowly, and the word that should stop you is lean. Not think. Not consider. Lean, as in the full weight of your body shifting onto something other than yourself.
You see your writing life from where you stand. You see the rejection letters and the slow sales and the authors who seem to move faster and easier than you do. You cannot see what God is doing with the offering you keep placing in front of Him, imperfect and small and faithful.
What the Conduit Does
That day in the boardroom, I was not the most impressive person in the room. I didn’t need to be. My job was to show up, tell the truth, and trust that the stories themselves would do what I could not. Several of those executives wrote checks before I finished gathering my notes.
Your job as a writer is not so different. You are not the source of the story. You are the one willing to stand in the room, put words on the page, and offer what you have to the One who can multiply it beyond anything your understanding would allow you to expect. The tag on the inside of your suit does not matter. The scuff on your shoe does not matter. What matters is that you showed up and did what God asked of you.
Surrendering the Pen
Surrendering your pen to God does not mean writing less. It means writing with open hands, releasing your grip on outcomes you were never meant to control. It means trusting that a story offered faithfully, however humble the offering appears, lands exactly where God intends it to land.
You are not too small for this calling. You are simply the conduit. Show up. Tell the truth. Trust the One who directed your path into that room in the first place to direct every word you write from it.
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