Be Strengthened by Grace: Writing What You've Heard

"You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also."
— 2 Timothy 2:1-2 (ESV)

Paul was old when he wrote this. Chained up. Nearing the end. Timothy was young, tired, carrying forward work that felt too heavy in churches that were too hard. The mission was brutal. The opposition was real. The flame was guttering.

Paul didn't tell him to toughen up or try harder.

He said: "Be strengthened by grace."

Grace isn't a pep talk. It's fuel. It's the undeserved favor of God that keeps you standing when the work feels invisible, when your words feel weak, when your audience feels nonexistent. Grace reminds you that before you were a writer, you were a child. Loved and chosen by God.

Then Paul adds the second thing:

"Entrust what you have heard to faithful men who will be able to teach others also."

There it is. The writer's calling in one sentence.

We receive truth.
We live it.
We write it down, and here's where something happens.
We're nourished by it in the writing.
Then we pass it on.

Christian writing isn't self-expression for its own sake. It's stewardship. The stories, insights, and words entrusted to us are meant to outlive us. When we write from grace and for others, we join a two-thousand-year relay: Paul to Timothy. Timothy to faithful men. Faithful men to others. And now, to us.

You may not feel like an apostle or a pastor. That's fine. Every faithful Christian writer is part of that same chain. The church moves forward because ordinary people record what they've heard and entrust it to others.

Then Paul gives one more image:

"It is the hardworking farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops." (2 Timothy 2:6)

Writers are like that farmer. We plant seeds of truth and wait for growth we can't control. But here's the promise: the farmer gets the first share of the harvest.

This is where it gets good.

The old theologian John Owen once said something like “a preacher must first preach the gospel to his own heart before preaching it to others.” In other words, you have to eat your own cooking before you serve it. To make sure it's not poison.

But there's more to it than that. When you labor over truth, when you wrestle it onto the page, when you shape sentences around what you've heard until it burns in your bones, the Spirit feeds you through the very act of writing. Every time a passage convicts you mid-draft, comforts you as you revise, or revives you when you reread what you just wrote, that's the first share of the harvest. That's grace doing its work in you through the writing itself.

The writing isn't just the delivery system. It's part of the nourishment.

In short: writing truth causes us to be strengthened by the grace that comes from the very truth we write.

So this week, as you face the blank page:

Be strengthened by grace. Remember that God's favor, not your productivity, is your strength.

Write what you've heard. Stay close to the Word, to prayer, to the lived experience of grace.

Let the writing feed you. Don't just write to teach. Write to taste. Let the act of shaping truth on the page become your own communion with it.

Entrust it to others. Picture one reader, one friend, one future believer who might need what you're writing.

Expect a share of the harvest. The Spirit will feed you through the very truths you sow.

That's how the gospel keeps moving. From grace to grace, page to page. 

And that’s the great privilege of being called to write the truth. We get the first share of the fruit, by the grace of God. 

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Blessings,

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Jeff B. Miller 

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