By Sandy Kirby Quandt

Four years ago I wrote a post after attending a Christian writers conference where writing professionals told me because I am not of a certain population group, I cannot write the book I’d researched the previous year.

Despite what I was told, I wrote that book, and others, because I firmly believe those are the books God placed on my heart and called me to write for such a time as this.

In the following years I’ve continued to attend writers conferences.

At each conference writing professionals told me there is no market for historical fiction for the 8-16-year-old range for which I write.

I then shake my head when my middle grade and young adult historical fiction contest entries win first place. I must be doing something right.

At the time of my original post on this subject, I thought of Queen Esther and the courage it took to approach the king with her request to save her people; to do what God called her to do for such a time as this.

Three days before Pilot and I headed to the Colorado Christian Writers Conference this year, the morning devotion I read centered on Esther.

Coincidence? Hardly.

Two of the questions the devotional writer asked were questions each of us can ask ourselves regardless of where we might be at this point in time.

• How do you think you might have responded to a similar request? What sort of things are you afraid to do that you think God might want you to do anyway?
• How do you think God might want to use you in the position you now hold, whatever that might be?

In my earlier post I wrote:

It may take courage and persistence on my part. It may take a firm faith in the belief God’s with me in this. It may take stubbornness. But hey. I’ve got the stubbornness-thing down.

If God’s tugging at our hearts to step out and do what he’s calling us to, we need to be careful not to shrug it off. God’s will is going to be completed. One way or the other. Wouldn’t it be great for us to be the ones who step up and git ‘er done?

Is there something you believe God’s nudging you to do? Something maybe a little scary? A little outside your comfort zone? Some place you feel he’s asking you to be a light for him in a dark world?

Who knows … maybe you were brought to this place for such a time as this.

Leave a comment below to share your thoughts on the subject. If you think others would appreciate reading this, please share it through the social media buttons.

 If you keep quiet at a time like this, God will deliver the Jews from some other source, but you and your relatives will die; what’s more, who can say but that God has brought you into the palace for just such a time as this? Esther 4:14 (TLB)

I wish you well.

Sandy

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P.S. I am happy to report two editors at the CCWC asked me to send them three of my  historical novels. One of those three novels is the one I was told several years back I could not write. Although these requests are not a contract to publish, they are steps in the right direction. God’s timing. God’s words. My pen.

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