I’m sure many of you can quote John 10:10:
Our preacher spoke about this at church a couple of weeks ago, but he focused on the first half of the scripture. The preacher asked:
What is satan* trying to steal?
Our identity. The devil is trying to steal our identity in Christ, that internal spirit that produces our external ability to do God’s work.
As an author, that concept struck home with me. Writing instructors will talk about how our characters need to have a GMC:
Goal:
The character has to want something
Motivation:
They have to want that something for a reason
Conflict:
But something is stopping them getting what they want
GMC will be both external and internal, with the external being outside circumstances and events, and the internal being the beliefs and misbeliefs of the main character. If you think about the best novels you’ve read, you’ll notice the best books have characters with both an internal and an external GMC, and there will be a relationship between them. Often a character won’t be able to beat the external conflict until they’ve beaten the internal conflict.
This holds true in real life.
If we believe we’re no good and that God can’t use us … then He can’t. Because we’re not making ourselves available to be used, and He won’t force us (it’s that whole concept of free will).
Instead, we’ve got to remember we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, we can complete the race set before us, we can fulfil God’s plan for our lives. We can’t let satan steal our hopes or kill our dreams or destroy our God-given destiny. Instead, we to reach out to Jesus and claim the life He promises us, this full and abundant life.
Some people don’t read fiction, claiming it’s a lie and they only want to read books that are true. Yet Jesus told stories—parables—using stories as a lie that demonstrates the Truth. In the same way, good fiction can be a lie that shows the way to the truth.
And the Truth.
And that’s what I want to write.
*satan is lowercased because his name is not worthy of being capitalised. At least, that’s the approach taken by the evangelist I worked with before he was promoted to Glory. I’ve adopted it because I like it, even though I know it breaks all the ‘rules’.
