Trusting in God's Strength by Heidi Gray McGill

Trusting in God’s Strength

by Heidi Gray McGill

“For the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give all of you into our hands”

(1 Samuel 17:47, NIV).

I am a Pollyanna by nature. I look for the good in people, which becomes a liability when a story needs a villain. While writing Written on My Heart, I had to live for months inside the mind of a man who gave me the heebie-jeebies. Every scene left me needing a shower. Every time his name showed up in my outline, my shoulders climbed toward my ears.

He was my Goliath. Not because he had power on the page, but to write him honestly required something I wasn’t sure I had.

David faced a veritable giant who had taunted Israel’s army for forty days. The soldiers had done the math and decided the odds were impossible. David disagreed. He measured God’s character against Goliath’s defiance, not his own strength against the giant’s size, and that equation had only one outcome. Telling Saul that the same God who helped him kill a lion and a bear would handle Goliath was not a boast. It was testimony.

Writing my villain became my own small battlefield. I couldn’t charm my way through his scenes or soften his edges. He had to be exactly who he was, and I had to go there with him. I prayed over those pages more than almost anything else I have written.

My perseverance and prayers yielded an unexpected result. That character has since become one of my favorites, not because I grew to like him, but because writing him proved something I didn’t know about myself. I could step outside my comfort zone and tell a story that required tremendous growth. God didn’t remove my discomfort. He walked me through it, and on the other side was a version of me who could write what I couldn’t write before.

Whatever giant lurks in your next chapter, show up anyway. The battle belongs to the Lord, and he has already accounted for everything you think you lack.

Lord, when the page in front of me is more than I can manage, remind me that the strength was never mine to begin with. Give me courage to stay in the hard scenes and trust that you are working even when I can’t feel it. Amen.

Heidi Gray McGill is a Selah Award finalist and five-time NEST Award-winning author of Christian historical and contemporary fiction. Her Discerning God’s Best series has earned over 3,500 five-star reviews on Amazon. She began writing in March 2020, after retirement, and writes despite progressive vision loss. Connect with Heidi and receive a free prequel at HeidiGrayMcGill.com .