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What Does It Mean To Fear The Lord?

My word this year is brave, I want to be brave and courageous not be fearful of what man can do to me. I want to only fear the Lord. Martin Luther described two different types of fear;  FILIAL fear of the Lord means to have respect and reverence to the Lord and have a healthy fear of the consequences of disobeying Him. Think of the respect that a child has for his/her parents. That child fears disobeying their parents, not just because they are scared of punishment, but because they have such respect for them and the thought of hurting them by disobedience is disheartening. SERVILE fear is the fear that martyrs have or those who are tortured and jailed. It’s the fear and anxiety of the harm that they are going to thrust upon you.

Proverbs 9:10 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
    and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.”

The Gospel message should be the most beautiful and terrifying message. It is beautiful the undeserved grace and mercy that the Lord shown upon us, but terrifying in the sense of the depth of our sins and the punishment that we deserve for them. Our faith in the Lord will show if we do, or do not, have a healthy relationship with the Lord. How do we respond when things go wrong? Do we whine and complain, or do we turn to the Lord? I struggle with anxiety and know that it is worse when I am not diving into the Word and surrounding myself with the Truth of God’s Word. I worry the most when I listen to the world!

George Muller said The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.

Obedience will be another evidence of a healthy fear of the Lord. When we are obedient and following the Lord instead of the ways of the world we show our fear of the Lord through that. How do we respond when we sin? Do we go directly to the one who forgives us of our sins or try and hide hoping that we can get away with it? We are silly and foolish to think that God doesn’t see our sins… That alone should strike some sort of fear in us!

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Encouragement For When You Want To Quit Writing

I have been told many times that I give up too quickly, and while that is true, I don’t like to admit it. So when I realized that my novella was not making any sense, I gave up. I called it quits and decided that I was no good at this writing thing anymore. So many writers are where they are because they keep pressing forward and not giving up, and I have to realize that I cannot compare my beginning to their middle.

So tonight, after a small break away from my novella, I am looking at it once again with fresh eyes and a new vision. Writing is my passion; something that I love to do. For some, writing comes easy; and for others, like me, it takes some time to develop and conquer those hurdles of self-doubt, frustration, and being overtly cynical. I was so angry at myself for wasting all that time on this completely useless novel when I should have been proud of the accomplishment of actually sticking with it and writing from start to finish!

If you have been following me for any amount of time you would know that I like to change things often (i.e., domain names, and interests). I will stick with something for maybe a year or two and then change it. But, one thing has remained consistent through all those changes… writing. My love of writing has never once dwindled! Once you find that thing that you are passionate about, stick with it and work on improving and polishing your skill. I started taking courses about writing, listening to audio books, and reading blog posts. This is something I enjoy doing and I want to see where I can go with it, but I need to stop telling myself I can’t do it.

Sign up for my email list to receive access to my private discord server, where we talk about all things writing. Also, be the first to hear news about my current work in progress! [mc4wp_form id=”6600″]

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What if?

Do you feel like your plot has been way overdone and people are sick and tired of reading the same storyline over and over again? That’s exactly how I was feeling the first time around. But, if you take any TV show, movie or book and look at the bare bones of the plot you will realize that most of them are the same they just executed the scheme differently. Think of TV shows that take place in New York with 20-30 something-year-olds, movies where the nerdy girl gets a makeover or the one that I absolutely cannot stand… when they make the father an incompetent moron.

The difference between the story lines in these various plots is a simple question, What if? Let’s look at The Princess Diaries. What if an average girl finds out she’s a princess? Or in My Fair Lady, what if a pompous phonetics professor transforms a Cockney working-class girl into someone who can pass for an experienced member of high society. See how they both are the same, but very different?

What if a husband vanishes and leaves his wife and children behind. This is one example that I have been mulling over the last few days. What if he didn’t leave on purpose? What if he was forced to leave but couldn’t tell his family? What if she gave up hope for ever finding him? What if he did leave on purpose?

Asking myself those what if questions got me thinking, and pondering what would happen if this happened? How would I react in this situation? I even threw questions by Ruben to see how he would respond in a similar situation. I so appreciate my husband’s willingness to listen to my ideas and help me out. He’s given me some great ideas for plots, told me when something seemed not realistic, and helped me out with different conversations between characters.

I have a much clearer picture this time around of how I want this to end up and I am excited to start working on it again. Just need to get over the hurdles of criticism and self-doubt that I face and I am certain many others face. It’s scary to put yourself out there because you are going to get judged once you do. Everyone has an opinion, some good, others not so good.

Sign up for my email list to receive access to my private discord server, where we talk about all things writing. Also, be the first to hear news about my current work in progress! [mc4wp_form id=”6600″]

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Finding Writing Inspiration in Everyday Life

Finding Writing Inspiration in Everyday Life

There is a guy on our street who likes to walk his dog in a nice dress shirt and pants. Why doesn’t he change before he walks his dog? I find it oddly fascinating. Or the guy that I stood behind today who had a tattoo on his arm that said, “Reward.” Even the quirky ladies that I talked to in the long line at Walmart. Those people are my inspiration! I pull characters, emotions, settings and appearance from them.

I like to keep a small notebook in my purse at all times so whenever I see something, hear something, or just need to make a quick note I can jot it down so I won’t forget. Other places to look for inspiration would be quotes, music, books, and movies. Trust me, I am not saying that I never get writers block, or that I never get low on inspiration, but during those times I don’t give up. Something on a commercial even gave me an idea once!

So, if you’re struggling for inspiration, look up. Look up from the glow of your cell phone to the world around you. There is tons of inspiration right there in front of your face. Everyone has a backstory!

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10 Writing Resources

Here are some of my favorite resources I use when I am writing:

1. I bought a Bluetooth keyboard off of Amazon for my iPad and had been using it to write when I am on the go. It’s a lot easier to haul my iPad around than it is my computer. If I use the Pages app on my iPad, I can sync it through the icloud drive and continue writing right where I left off on my computer! My phone also has the pages app, so if I get an idea I can scribble it down on there as well 🙂

2. Scrivener: If you follow me on Instagram you will see me post screenshots from a program called Scrivener every so often. I bought this program for $40 and use it almost every day to write. I love that you can organize and personalize it however you want to suit your needs. I am more of a pantser when it comes to writing, but I have slowly developed into a planner. I need to write a post about Scrivener at some point…

3. Grammarly! I wrote a post about this one already, but it’s so good that I just needed to mention it again to you. I love that it helps me correct my grammar mistakes and tells me exactly why I shouldn’t write something the way I did.

4. One stop for writers– this resource has helped me enhance my writing. It costs $9 a month, but I think it’s totally worth it. When I am stuck writing a scene, I can quickly head to the setting thesaurus and find sights, sounds, smells, tastes & textures, and possible sources of conflict for that particular environment.

5. Evernote– I use this one to jot down a note when I am on the go since it syncs to my computer so I can easily access it. I will save my whole manuscript to it as well just to have another place to store it.

6. My iPhone– It works as an excellent voice recorder for the time being, but I am looking at getting an actual voice recorder. My phone runs out of space quickly!

7. Facebook groups- I have a few groups that pertain to writing that I am part of, but for the most part, I am in Christian homemaking groups. Sometimes I get sparks of inspiration from posts from others!

8. Pinterest– LOVE this resource! I have a few boards about writing that I find useful when writing, or if I get stuck. It’s nice to have resources about writing, character development and grammar all in one place.

9. Thesaurus and Dictionary– Pretty self-explanatory, I think 😉

10. Jerry Jenkin’s Writers Guild- At this moment the guild isn’t open to new members, but if you are interested I would highly suggest that you sign up to be notified when it begins. If you do join, send me a message I would love to connect with you!

**BONUS: Music- but, I think, that’s also a given 😉 I love to listen to Pandora or Spotify when I am writing and sometimes, sometimes I will get inspiration from a song.

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