I’ve been following the news about Philip Yancey’s confession of his eight‑year‑long affair. Mostly to see how the Christian community reacts as the man who wrote multiple books about God’s grace—books that shaped so many of us and helped us understand the wideness of God’s mercy—now stands in need of grace himself, in a very public way.
This morning, it occurred to me. Maybe Yancey didn’t write those books because he had all the answers. Maybe he wrote those books because he needed the answers.
His words might have been flowing from a place of spiritual hunger, rather than spiritual mastery. The man who taught us all about grace might just have been preaching to his own soul as he tried to grasp the very thing he was explaining.
Honestly, this idea hits uncomfortably close to home.
When Writing Becomes Revelation
I think about my own book, Fireman’s Lesson in Love, and how God revealed things to me as I was writing. Truths that didn’t fully land until I was revising and editing. Almost as if the words were waiting for me. Waiting for the moment I would need to read them. Waiting for the season when those truths would hit harder. Deeper. More personally.
They weren’t lessons for “future readers.”
They were lessons for me.
Things I needed to know about God.
Things I needed to remember about His character.
Things I wasn’t ready to understand when I first put the words together.
And isn’t that just like God?
To tuck revelation inside our own creativity.
To let us write something before we’re ready to live it.
To plant seeds in our stories that won’t bloom until the exact moment we need to harvest their fruit.
The One Holding the Pen Has Need of Grace
I hope Philip Yancey remembers and rereads the words he wrote about God’s grace. Not the polished sentences or the bestselling titles, but the heart of what he was trying to understand. The God he was reaching for. The mercy he was trying to wrap his mind and heart around.
I hope those words steady him and draw him closer to the God he spent his life writing about.
Because Christian writers aren’t exempt from struggles with sin. We’re not above the truths we proclaim.
If anything, we’re the ones who need them most.
Writing as a Mirror, Not a Megaphone
When I first decided to write “for God,” I read the book Write His Answer by Marlene Bagnull. It was inspiring and challenging. I started imagining myself writing His answers for other people. Sharing the things He wanted them to hear. Nothing was more exciting to me than the thought of helping others grow in their relationship with God. I wanted my words to be useful. Helpful. Spiritually productive.
Today, I’m beginning to see something slightly different.
Maybe God doesn’t want me to write His answers to others. At least not only. Or even first.
Maybe He wants me to write His answers to me.
What if God intends the words I craft to be mirrors before they’re ever megaphones? What if the stories I tell are meant to shape me before they ever encourage anyone else? What if the act of writing is one of the ways God wants to reveal Himself to me? Gently peeling away layers as I can handle them.
Through my writing, God shows me what I need to see.
He uncovers what’s hidden.
Reminds me of what’s true.
Grows me in ways I didn’t expect.
And if someone else is helped along the way, that’s His grace at work too.
The Writer Who Is Still Being Written
Writers of grace need grace.
Writers of truth need truth.
Writers of hope need hope.
And writers who long to reveal God to others must first let God reveal Himself, and their true selves, to them.
I’m learning to hold my pen loosely.
To let God speak to me before I try to speak for Him.
Trust that the words He gives me are not just for the world. They’re for my own heart, too.
Maybe that’s my real calling.
Not to write answers for others, but to let God write His answers into me.
One revelation at a time.
One sentence at a time.
One grace-filled word at a time.