The Primal, Sacred, and Devastating Impulse to Write

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Have you ever felt holy rage consuming you from inside out? I watch someone preying on someone else, I feel that.

Martin Luther was in a holy rage.

He’d just witnessed for the last time a priest named Johann Tetzel selling indulgences, a mockery of God’s forgiveness. Tetzel had a slogan that made Luther’s blood boil: “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.“¹

People were being spiritually extorted. Salvation was treated like merchandise, a transaction.

Luther couldn’t stand it anymore, so on October 31, 1517, he grabbed his pen and started writing.²

Ninety-five statements poured out. Ninety-five sharp, pointed, angry truths that needed to be said.

It was not a careful treatise. He didn’t wait for the right moment or worry about his reputation.

He just nailed those words to a church door in Wittenberg.³

Those words, written in a moment of holy rage, sparked the Protestant Reformation.⁴

When Love Can’t Be Contained

Elizabeth Barrett Browning knew a different kind of urgency.

In 1845, she was a semi-invalid poet living under her domineering father’s control. She wasn’t supposed to leave and marry; she was supposed to stay quiet and small.

Then she met Robert Browning, her heart came alive, and everything changed.⁵

The love she felt was so overwhelming and consuming, that she couldn’t keep it to herself. So she secretly wrote poem after poem after poem.⁶

Elizabeth didn’t write them to be published. She wrote them because she had to.

The most famous one begins: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.“⁷

Those words, written in the privacy of her room while her heart was bursting, became one of the most beloved love poems in the English language.⁸

And Elizabeth didn’t know her private confession would be read at weddings for centuries. She just knew her love was too big to keep silent.

When Gratitude Overflows

Fanny Crosby knew this urgency too.

She went blind at six weeks old because of a medical mistake.⁹ She grew up poor, didn’t marry until later in life, and her only child died in infancy.¹⁰

By all accounts, she had every reason to be bitter.

She wasn’t bitter.

Because God had met her in the dark.

She once said, “If I had a choice, I would still choose to remain blind… for when I die, the first face I will ever see will be the face of my blessed Savior.“¹¹

She believed her blindness had given her a gift: the ability to “see” spiritual truths more clearly than she ever could have with physical sight.

In 1873, overwhelmed by God’s faithfulness to her despite everything, she sat down and wrote:

“Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!

O what a foretaste of glory divine!“¹²

She didn’t write it for a hymnal committee or even for publication. She wrote it because her heart was so full of thanksgiving she couldn’t not write.

That hymn has been sung in churches around the world for 150 years.¹³

In fact, Fanny went on to write over 8,000 hymns in her lifetime.¹⁴

She always said the best ones came when she felt something so deeply that words just poured out.

Your best writing often comes when you’re feeling most deeply.

When you’re enraged at injustice like Luther. When you’re overwhelmed with love like Elizabeth. When you’re bursting with gratitude like Fanny.

That’s when the words flow fastest. Not because you’re performing. Because you’re witnessing.

And This All Brings Me to Job

Job knew this urgency too. Maybe better than anyone.

In our church, we follow the weekly Scripture readings from the Book of Common Prayer. This week, one of the passages was Job 19:23-27a.¹⁵

At this point in the story, Job is at his wit’s end. His so-called friends keep insisting he must have done something to deserve his suffering. But Job had integrity. He couldn’t pretend he’d sinned when he knew the pains he’d taken to be righteous.

Then, in the middle of his anguish, he cries out:

“Oh that my words were written!

Oh that they were inscribed in a book!

Oh that with an iron pen and lead

they were engraved in the rock forever!“¹⁶

Job wanted his words preserved. Not explained. Not justified. Just recorded.

Why?

Because when everything else is stripped away—your health, your wealth, your reputation, your certainty—your words are all you have left to offer God.

We Already Know This Instinct

You know the feeling.

Something happens. Something that shakes you, breaks you, or fills you so full you might burst. And suddenly you can’t not write.

Your hands reach for your phone. You open Notes, Twitter, Instagram.

You have to get it out. The grief. The rage. The gratitude. The love.

The words come fast, almost frantic. You’re not thinking about craft or audience or even coherence, but just recording the moment before it slips away.

We do this all the time now. Something beautiful or terrible happens, and we immediately post it. Tweet it. Caption it.

We already have the writer’s instinct Job had, Luther had, Elizabeth had, and Fanny had, (and one notable politician has…not always for the best! 😬) We just direct it toward vanishing platforms instead of stone.

Job wanted his words engraved in rock forever. Luther nailed his to a church door. Elizabeth wrote hers in a private journal. Fanny wrote hers as songs.

The need to write when something matters…when you’re devastated, elated, in love, outraged, grateful isn’t vanity. That’s likely the image of God in you. The God Who used words and the Word to bring creation in to being.¹⁷

The question is: what are you writing on?

Are you engraving truth in stone? In journals, essays, books, songs that might outlive you?

Or are you carving your deepest words into sand? Into feeds that refresh and forget?

Writing as Witness, Not Explanation

Job didn’t try to make sense of everything. He just told the truth as best he could.

Luther didn’t write a systematic theology in that moment. He wrote 95 urgent truths.

Elizabeth didn’t write a treatise on love. She just counted the ways.

Fanny didn’t write a theological defense of suffering. She just sang her gratitude.

That’s what Christian writers do. We testify. We leave a record of faith in a confusing world.

Job’s friends offered polished theology. They had answers for everything. But God rebuked them and said Job had “spoken rightly” of Him (Job 42:7).¹⁸

God prefers an honest lament to pretty lies. He prefers sincere praise to performance.

You have to trust that sincerity is sacred. That raw truth matters more than impressive packaging.

Your Pain May Become Someone Else’s Scripture

What is stunning is that Job’s wish came true.

His words were engraved, not just in stone, but in Scripture as the suffering he wanted remembered became the very text that has comforted millions of believers for thousands of years.

Luther’s angry protest became the foundation document of a Reformation.

Elizabeth’s private love poems became the language couples use to express their own devotion.

Fanny’s spontaneous song of gratitude became the anthem of faith for generations.

We never know which sentences God will use to strengthen another believer.

The stories you think are “too raw” might be the very ones that outlive you.

The confession you’re afraid to write might be the exact words someone else desperately needs to read.

The gratitude you think is too simple might be the very praise that lifts someone else’s heart.

But they won’t find it in a tweet that’s buried in an algorithm by tomorrow.

They’ll find it in the book you write. The essay you craft. The journal entry you preserve. The song you sing.

So let me ask you what I’m asking myself this week:

What truth in your life right now needs to be engraved? Not polished or packaged, but written honestly before God?

Doubt?

Grief?

Love?

Rage?

Gratitude?

Whatever it is, write it as an act of witness. As an offering. As a way of saying to God:

“This happened. I still believe. Remember me.”

Your Assignment This Week

Let’s you and I take 15 minutes this week to write a short “Job entry” in our journals.

One paragraph of raw, honest truth about where you are and what you still believe.

Don’t edit it. Don’t make it pretty. Just engrave it.

Because your words matter. Especially when you’re in the dark.

Until next time, keep writing what’s true.

Jeff

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