When You’re Questioning God’s Call to Write

Today’s blog post is written by Micah Juntunen, a talented member of COMPEL Training! If you have ever felt called by God to be a writer or share your story, or have been pursuing that call but feel frustrated and discouraged in any way, we pray this post brings great encouragement!  

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But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33, ESV)

“God, it is not working,” I cried in anguish. I had just checked the book sales; there were no new sales again. Tears singed the back of my eyes as I shook my head in frustration. I was equally as bothered with myself as I was with the low numbers. 

God had instructed me not to check the numbers a few months ago. I had held out for over a week this time, but my curiosity and twisted motivations kept getting the better of me. I really wanted to believe that God had called me to write and had given me a message that would help others. I kept looking for signs of success in the numbers. But they only worked to amplify my doubts.

Why am I even writing? No one is listening. 

Why isn’t God making this vision come true? Did I mishear Him? 

I am never going to make it in this writing world. Maybe I should just give up.

Obviously, God is not changing my circumstances. 

Whoa. That last thought gave me pause as conviction tightened my chest. Did my fickle and ungrateful heart really just say that? It is not like God had not always cared for me. It had been less than a year since He had walked me into a greater level of freedom than I had ever known before. The same freedom message in the book I was trying to get out there. 

I can quickly go negative towards God when chasing after the wrong thing. Evidently, my heart’s motivation was not in the right place, even though I was doing Kingdom work.

Instead of focusing on glorifying God and building His Kingdom with the gifts of communication and the message He had given me, I was seeking to build my own kingdom. 

It wasn’t going well. 

Instead of serving God and others with the blessings He had given me, I was attempting to serve myself. My focus was on the life I wanted rather than serving God with my whole heart. 

The truth was that my self-centered heart wasn’t serving me either. The fruit my twisted heart was producing was anxiety, discouragement and frustration. I had completely lost the motivation to help others. I was so busy trying to make it, I had forgotten that what I really wanted was to make a difference. 

Blowing out the breath I had been holding through this convicting moment, I repented and received God’s grace to put my focus back on Him and try again. 

As we walk out our callings to communicate for God, we are going to battle twisted motivations. Our motivations flow from our hearts and reveal what we most desire: to serve God or ourselves. Sometimes we will have dual motivations, and other times, we will get it totally wrong. We are human, after all. Plus, the world tells us success is in the numbers. The greatest is the most popular, right? But not in God’s Kingdom. In God’s Kingdom, greatness is found by humbling ourselves and serving God with our whole hearts. 

This is what Jesus meant when He told us to seek the Kingdom first. We must seek the Kingdom with our whole hearts. When we remember how much God has done for us and that it is all about Him, we realign our hearts and motivations. When we obey Him, not to measure in the world’s way but rather to trust Him faithfully regardless of what we see, we walk in our purpose and produce good fruit for ourselves and others.

Although we can’t always avoid getting twisted up again, we can always humble ourselves, repent and refocus again and again. That is the power of God’s grace and our heart’s truest desire. 

Written by COMPEL Training member, Micah Juntunen