By Sandra Kay Chambers @PrayWaves
All writers know about the Bottom Drawer—it’s a writer’s cemetery! The place where unfinished books and writing projects go to die.
I had a book that was stuck in the bottom drawer of my desk for over 10 years. It was about prayer. I knew God had given me the assignment and I worked on it with great enthusiasm at first. Then a full-time teaching job, family and health issues encroached not only on my time, but also on my faith and my belief in prayer. Satan whispered, “See, prayer doesn’t work. How can you write a book about it when you’re not even sure you believe in prayer any more?”
A few years later we moved to a different state. By this time, I had retired from teaching and God had been drawing me closer and teaching me more about prayer and how to overcome the enemy’s lies. Yet, every time I tried to work on the book, I became overwhelmed and frustrated and back it went into the Bottom Drawer.
Then my pastor asked me to put together some prayer resources for a 21-day Daniel Fast we were doing at our church. So once again, I pulled out my book from the Bottom Drawer, but this time it was different. I wanted to share some of the things I had learned about prayer with my fellow church members as we participated in the corporate fast. My goal was to help them and that gave me new motivation to work on my book. Instead of frustration, there was peace. It was a new start and after the fast, God breathed new life into my book project.
A few years ago, Lord, It’s Boring in My Prayer (How to Revitalize Your Prayer Life) was finally completed and published. It’s a testimony to God’s perfect timing and power to bring to life what He put on my heart over 10 years ago. The scripture verse in Ezekiel says it all:
“I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord” (Ezek. 37:6b)
As writers, most of us have one or more projects that have landed in our Bottom Drawer due to discouragement, busyness, procrastination or a million other reasons. Reach in that drawer right now and pray with me:
“Lord, we ask you to breathe new life on these writing projects in our Bottom Drawers. We commit them totally to you for your glory alone and ask you to resurrect them in your perfect timing.”
Helping Christians develop a creative and joyful prayer life is Sandra’s passion. She has served as Prayer Coordinator at two churches, leads small group Bible studies, speaks on the topic of prayer at women’s groups and conferences and teaches an online class on prayer at BeADisciple.com. Find out more about Sandra at: sandrakaychambers.com and PrayWaves.com.
The Conversation
Thank you. Excellent reminder.:)
Good encouragement, Sandra. I would add that even sample writing pieces submitted to editors at writing conferences can resurface years later. Twice I’ve had editors call–years later–about articles I had submitted. Apparently the slush pile gets a spring cleaning occasionally. You never know what will come back to you.
Beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
I am a brand new writer, working on my very first book. I am writing my memoir and I have had many periods of discouragement due to parts of my story are hard to write and the enemy plants “doubt” that anyone will even want to read it. In those times I find myself not opening up that Word Doc (my bottom drawer) per say. God has also called me to write devotions to someday put together as a book and or Blog posts. Those also at times end up in my computers bottom drawer too. The enemy wants to keep me quiet and it is my job to work hard to not let him win.