Three Lessons From One Year of Blogging

“For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”—John 1:16

This is the 53rd weekly post in this blog. One full year.

To be honest, this is not my first attempt at blogging. I started back in 2011, over ten years ago.

Back then, I posted whenever I felt like it. I slavishly labored over every one, trying to make it perfect and trying to please everyone.

No wonder I quit!

But I have always wanted to write. I know I’m not a great writer or an innovative or creative one. There are many things I have yet to learn about the craft of writing.

However, one thing I have learned about writing is that learning comes from doing. If I want to learn how to write, I need to write.

So it is with many other things in the Christian life. If we want to learn how to pray, we pray. If we want to learn how to trust God, we trust Him when we are tempted otherwise. If we want to surround ourselves with godly fellowship, we need to extend a hand of friendship first.

Besides this lesson, I have learned several other things through this year of blogging.

Write one post at a time.

When it comes to connecting the dots, we need to study God’s Word and read good books—yes! But we also need to get started with the next right step. For me—that simply was writing, one sentence, then one paragraph, one post, at a time.

I discovered that this meant learning to adjust my routine each week to write, just a little at a time. Research. Outline. Draft. Edit. Post. And most importantly: Repeat.

I could try to batch write a lot of posts at once (and maybe one day I’ll get there), but for now, slow and steady works for me.

What I learned is that God is looking for faithfulness in the next thing. We overwhelm ourselves when in the name of efficiency, we try to do too much at once.

What is something big you hope to accomplish? What small thing can you show up to do faithfully? Will you lean on the Lord’s strength and then do it?

Remember I am in process, not perfect.

When I read others’ blogs, I can often feel discouraged. Their style. Their focus. Their value.

Me? I’m not an expert in my field. And honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever be, because it seems like the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know.

However, I have learned a couple things in this area through blogging.

First, I realized that if I go back to the earliest posts of these bloggers, they were where I was. They were all over the map too. Their posts were imperfect—far from what I see today.

It took time for them to get where they are. It will take me time too.

Second, I also realized I do not ever want to think I am an expert in my field. Not only is it arrogance of the grossest kind, it alienates me from the people I seek to reach.

Rather, I hope that as I continue to blog, I will refine my focus, improve the quality of my writing, but that I will always remain humble enough to realize that I will never be an expert.

Sometimes we have such graceless expectations for ourselves when our God extends grace upon grace. Not knowing everything helps me to remember my utter dependence on Him. I don’t need to be perfect when He is.

Where do you need to depend on His perfection instead of driving yourself to graceless standards? Will you humble yourself and lean on Him to grow in faith and change?

Recognize and honor how God created me.

When I wrote my first post, I wanted to make everybody happy. I hated excluding people. But what I really discovered was how deeply I wanted to garner the praise of others to bring me the assurance I desperately craved.

I was trying to find my identity through my audience.

As a result, I felt constantly on edge. Will I get any comments? Will they share my posts?

To be honest, this is why I stopped writing for awhile. It was just too much pressure.

I also realized that when I let others shape my identity, when I seek to please others, I am no longer honoring and seeking to please God. I have replaced Him with others.

So this time, I made the decision to close comments on my blog so I could focus. I prayed that in the process of writing, the Lord will help me to discover and write for Him, even if no one else ever read my posts.

And He has answered that prayer. As I have been writing this year, I realized I am good at some things and not good at others.

I like researching, synthesizing, reviewing. I don’t like coming up with witty, insightful posts. I do far better with the practical than the philosophical.

So as I look ahead to the next year of blogging, I hope to refine my direction even further in this direction.

This might mean that I may lose some readers and gain others. But that’s okay. I am learning that I am not going to make everyone happy.

But if I seek to make the Lord happy by honoring how He made me, then that’s far more important. That is where I will find joy in writing.

May God be glorified in this space. Thank you for reading.