Lessons on finishing

“Always remember, our ambassadorship is INSIDE of us living out THROUGH us. It can NEVER be carried on by our outward man."--Richard Jordan

*****

I don't know why writing about my time before transferring to Ohio State seemed to go so easily and now I'm struggling with how best to continue on with my "testimony," which I see as the last component to finally finishing my book.

It's the most ironic thing, but the same journalism professors who gave me my wings for what has been a life career are the ones who helped instill in me this whole competition thing where, to this day, I'm always afraid my ability to put material together is not good enough and that I need to work hard at being informative and enlightening so as to capture my audience's attention and not have them reject/dismiss what I've written.

My worst fear is I will do my subject matter, whatever it be, a disservice by "writing it up" poorly; being too wordy and boring--going too deep in the weeds or not making it understandable enough, on and on and on.

The way I was taught journalism is you had to always have the best story, beating out the other newspapers. Your lead, or first paragraph, had to be masterful. The meat of the story (with the who, what, when, why and how) had to strategically flow from that first paragraph to give the reader an entertaining, gripping ride through your article. You were to seamlessly answer any question the reader might have without subjecting them to any clunkiness, repetitiveness, longwindedness, etc., etc.

All of this, I realize, has been what's stopped me dead in my tracks (cliches were absolutely verboten in journalism) as far as putting my book into a final form. I simply feel underqualified.

But now that I've put it out there in such a big way that I think my time on earth is short (and I don't even know if there's time still for me to have a finished product in print!!) I can't worry about the results--I just have to act before it's too late.

To be succinct about Ohio State, I feel I couldn't have received better training in the trade of journalism. My education there set me on a life path of being interested in the truth; finding it and investigating it. I will continue with this tomorrow for sure. I'm done with postponing and postponing to give myself more time to think how I should best proceed--"Enough is enough, Lisa!"

*****

Jordan says that when talking about living in the identity God gives you in Christ, “You’re talking about having a truthful, honest scriptural memory of your past as well as your future.

“Because as a Believer your past goes back to where? It no longer goes back to Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden; it now goes back to Christ and Calvary. You see that is a memory about your past. That is a way you understand your past history and the radical change that’s been in it. And that does affect the way you think about yourself in the now, doesn’t it, and what’s going to happen to you in the future?

"The biblical definition of the word 'submit' is 'to give your heart over to another person’s will.' Sub is under. You put yourself under them. You give your heart over. That’s the challenge; that’s the dare of love. It’s the dare of faith. And if you dare to do it by faith, because God said to do it, you’ve made the decision based upon the truth of what God’s Word is.

“My emotions can follow the truth, the decision, and if they don’t, I’m still doing what’s right. If I’ve allowed my emotions to look at something and say, ‘NO, I won’t follow!’ . . . if they look at your balance and it’s overdrawn, your emotions aren’t going to follow.

“And if you know what God’s Word says to do and you do it by faith and your emotions don’t follow, it’s because that bank account with your name on it is empty! If it has a balance, your emotions will look at it and say, ‘Oh, hey, there’s a guy/gal that values me; I can feel good about them!’

“But if your will says, ‘Here’s your Savior, you’re to serve Him, submit to Him,’ and your emotions look at a bank account that’s overdrawn, they say, ‘Oh no, that won’t mean me good.’ And they respond that way.

"This is terribly important for you to understand. You can’t allow the tyranny of your emotions to run your life and make decisions or you’re going to wind up in the can. You’ll wind up in error; you’ll wind up in a kind of destruction.

"It doesn’t work to let your emotions run you. That’s why some little strategies don’t work. That’s why the selfish demands, the disrespectful judgments, the angry outbursts, the independent behavior--none of it works. They’re not strategies for success; they just get you more of the same!"