Lauren Sparks

At a party this weekend, I watched in awe and fascination as a friend lopped the bottom off of her cupcake and placed it on top of the icing to make a cupcake sandwich.  Mind blown!  Have you seen this?  It makes the cupcake so much easier and less messy to eat.  Now THAT’s a useful life hack.  Unlike this:

Who is ever going to use an office clip binder to cover the head of a razor?  I need more USEFUL life hacks.  Lots of them, because my life is about to get a whole lotta complicated.

For years friends and family members have suggested that I should write a book.  My response?  “I don’t have enough material for an entire book.”  or “I have no idea what I would even write about.”  But the times, they are a changing.  Although I still doubt whether I can intelligently pen an entire book’s worth, I feel a calling to try.  Several months ago, everything started to sound like a book idea to me.  And now it’s all I can think about.  But here’s the rub; I’m terrified.  I started this blog 6 years ago because, as my friend author Jen Bleakley says, “I make sense of my world by turning feelings into words, and experiences into sentences.”  And writing this blog is comfortable for me now.  I love the form of self-expression and the way it allows me to connect and communicate with so many of you.  I love the platform it gives me to tell others about Jesus.  To continue to write nothing but this forever would be a very safe and happy place for me.  Except that I feel God’s calling to more.

Do you remember the Prayer of Jabez?  1 Chronicles 4:9-10 wasn’t an often studied or taught passage of scripture until Bruce Wilkinson’s book hit the shelves in 2000 and created a stir.  Jabez prayed, “Oh that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory!”  I believe a book is the way God will enlarge my territory.  The way I can reach a greater audience.  I don’t want to write a book because I think I have something amazing to say that the world must hear, but I do believe telling our stories is the way we share Jesus with others.  In Un-Afraid, my new author friend Carey Wiggins Scott’s latest book, she says, “authenticity turns beneficial when we do two things:  1) When we tell truth about the storms we’re currently facing (or have faced).  2) And when we also share how God is working in them or through them to calm the waters (or how we are waiting for Him to intervene).  People need truth and they also need hope.  And when you’re a Jesus-girl, the under-current of your authenticity is always anchored in the hope of Jesus.”  I’ve never before seen a more perfect written description of my calling in God’s Kingdom.

Hebrews 10:36 NIV says, “You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God you will receive what he has promised.”  We know the will of God is for us to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”  Mark 16:15 NIV  The written word is the gift He’s allowing me to use to do it.  And even though I know He’s in it, I’m filled with doubts about my ability to accomplish the task.  It looms too large in my mind.  Not just all the work it will take to write (and where I will find the time to do it with 2 part time jobs and 2 kids and a husband to care for), but also the platform building and literary agents and publishing houses and all the things that I still don’t know enough about.  Author Holley Gerth says, “God will fill the gaps for what you lack right now.  Jesus turned a few fish and loves of bread into a meal for thousands.  He can turn whatever you offer into enough too.”  I’m counting on that.  And my friend Heather wisely told me that if God has called me to write, then every time I sit down to it I am being obedient.  He will take care of the rest.  Yes!

So why am I telling you all of this?  First of all, for accountability.  It’s one thing for me to tell my husband and my mom that I’m going to write a book, but a horse of a different color to put it out on the inter webs.  It’s gettin’ real, y’all.  Second, I need your help.  If you are still reading this, you either enjoy my writing or are a sweet enough friend to support me anyway (Bless my heart.)  I need your prayers.  If I could be so presumptuous to ask, pray for me to get out of my own way so the love of Christ flows from the page.  Pray for time management and all the little details that will be a part of the process.

There are other ways you can help too.  Agents and publishers want to see that I have readership.  If you haven’t already subscribed to receive these blog posts in your e-mail box, I hope you will.  And comment on my posts if you feel lead – not just on the social media post – but on the blog post itself.  And lastly, if you like something I said, share it on your social media accounts so others can read it too.

Well, I bet you didn’t expect homework when you clicked on that picture of a cupcake; but I have now shared my dreams and deepest desires with you – whether you wanted to know them or not.  So before I work myself into a lather and start shadow boxing to “Eye of the Tiger”, I will close with Ephesians 3:17-19 NIV.  I referenced it in a recent post but I keep coming back to this passage because it is the scripture I pray over anyone who ever reads a word I write.

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”