Father, CLF21 for today?
Go as you are being led.
Roger. I just needed to know it was you doing the leading.
What did you say yesterday about testing the spirit of what was being said?
Did it sound like you? Was the spirit of it in harmony with all your other words? After all these years, I should know the voice of the Shepherd – was it Him?
I showed you something else, which you did not pick up on, and almost did not now.
You are referring to the ever-present danger of a word being influenced by one’s ego or will, his personal desire or intellectual conviction.
Pride.
The Lucifer sin. Deadliest of the seven deadlies. The pit so well disguised that the believer falls into it, unaware. The snare so artfully set that he often continues in it without realizing he’s been caught.
Use the example of the Gollum.
Not long after you began using me to encourage others, Tolkien’s Ring trilogy was brought to the screen. Perhaps the most repellant of his creations was the Gollum. Once he had been a normal hobbit with all the resident virtues of Middle Earth. Then he had come into possession of the Ring, the ultimate power of self, and it had deformed him into a loathsome creature, hideous to behold.
You showed me that my ego was like that. I kept him locked away in a dungeon in the lowest sub-basement of my castle. But he was a crafty one. Hearing me entertaining guests in the great hall, very quietly he would pick the lock and creep up the back stairs. Suddenly, there he would be, cavorting among the guests, displaying himself, and it would be too late to do anything about it.
Furious, I would grab him by the scruff of his neck and march him back down to the dungeon, throwing him in and changing the lock. There, he would remain in disgrace – until the next time.
It is a not-uncommon problem.
How often have I heard someone speak a prophetic word under a powerful anointing. All present witness to the power and authority of the Almighty. Goose bumps rise; scalps tighten. But the speaker goes on – past the perfect end-point, and the next, and the next. His word might have begun in the Spirit, but it is finishing in the flesh. Listeners who were awed are now squirming. And the saddest part? The speaker was unaware that the anointing had dissipated.
How do you deal with your own pride, when I call upon you to speak. ?
I mock it. “Pour contempt on it,” as Isaac Watts put it. I make fun of myself, stuck in pride, and as people laugh, they relax. And allow the Holy Spirit of convict them of doing much the same.
If I come to the end of a story or a point, and don’t know exactly where you would have me go next, I will just stand there and wait. If the pause becomes prolonged, I might tell them: “If you’re wondering why I’m standing here like a doofus, it’s because I don’t know where the Spirit wants to go next. Of course, I could fill the void by running my mouth. My ego would enjoy that, but you would hardly be edified.”
And when you are writing?
There, I’m wholly dependent on your grace. After all these years, I know when it is with me, and when it isn’t. In the beginning, the whole thing used to make me angry. I didn’t care for you peering over my shoulder, as I typed, and I liked it even less, when you would abruptly depart. Particularly if it was a point I was determined to make, or a scene I of which I was overly enamored. In those early days I might have gone several pages, before I realized that the champagne had gone flat. I would have to go back then, to where it still had bubbles, and start again from there. Invariably, it would mean eschewing some pet hobby horse or refraining from dipping my pen in heliotrope ink.
You became willing to submit to the pruner’s hook.
The process was painful. (It still is.) But the alternative – putting forth less than the best that I was capable of – was worse. I came to appreciate my senior writing partner. You would never do it for me, but you delighted in being asked to do it with me. You are, after all, the Creator Spirit. So when one of your creatures, to whom you have given the Gift of Telling, in paint or song or dance or story – or life – asks you to help them use their gift to glorify you, nothing gives you greater joy.
In the beginning, I encourage a new vine with rain and sun and rich soil. But the time comes, when the vine must be pruned. And the more severe the pruning, the better the fruit.
I know that – now. But how I resented your steadfast refusal to allow me to compromise! What difference did it make if it was merely good? Good was good enough! No one would know, anyway. Most would think good was fine.
You and I would know.
Yes. And so now I teach – not just in writing but in all things – that the Number One enemy of best is good. As Oswald Chambers attested, you are calling us to give nothing less than our utmost, for your highest glory.
Has it not served you well?
It has. In thirty-nine years I have written or ghosted or collaborated on fifty-three book projects.
Were they successful?
In your eyes, they were. In other eyes, too. Those with discernment for such things declared they all had an anointing.
To what do you attribute that?
Holding myself accountable to the Vinedresser. Returning again and again for further pruning. In the beginning, I thought three or four drafts were enough and mentioned that one day to my friend John Sherrill [who ghosted The Cross and the Switchblade for David Wilkerson]. I asked him how many drafts he did of one of his pieces in Guideposts. Ten to thirteen, he replied. That was when I first learned what I now teach: Good writing is re-writing. Each time we return to the Vinedresser, we are asking you to help us make it as good as it can possibly be.
That is enough for today.
Amen.
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