Writing is not an easy profession. Being a Christian writer can be even more difficult. These three essentials for a Christian writer’s life will ground you in your faith, enabling you to write and build a career with peace and confidence.

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Recently I listened to a couple of books that got me thinking about today’s topic. What is essential for a Christian writer’s life? We live in a busy world with a thousand things demanding our time and attention every day. I don’t think that’s overstating it. We’ve only got one life. How are we going to choose what to do with the time God gives us? What is our priority?

Even if we were to weed out obvious things to say no to, like sin or clear distractions, that still leaves a multitude of demands, ideas, activities, and so on, to consider. Many of which you can make a good case for. The choices we make matter, because what you give your time and attention to is what shapes your life.

That’s where those books inspired me. The first one is titled Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. 

The subtitle was a revelation: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. It seems like today’s world is all about the urgent, unending pursuit of more—doing it all and having it all. This book is about deliberately, ruthlessly choosing to do less so you can focus on what matters most to you.  

Today we want to step back from the myriad details of our lives. We want to step back from complicated plans and programs, endless to-do lists, and a plethora of shoulda woulda couldas. Instead, we’ll pare down to 3 essentials, or guiding principles, to help shape and guide your life as a Christian and a writer. God gave us our creative gifts for good purposes, so we want to ensure that we’re willing vessels, available anytime, anywhere, for the tasks God gives us. 

We’ve used the term essentials, or guiding principles, but you can also call them core precepts, or a “rule of life.” By rule, we don’t mean legal regulations but rather a way of organizing your life toward a purpose. 

Essential 1 – Abide in Christ  

John 15:4-5 (ESV) says, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

Abiding in Christ means we WILL bear fruit. Not abiding in Christ means we won’t bear fruit. Apart from Christ we can do nothing. This is so simple, yet too often we fail to realize and carry out the dire necessity of this. Maybe in part because it’s hard to quantify what abiding in Christ looks like, or what it means in a practical sense. Abiding in Christ (or some translations use the word “remaining” in Christ) is more than just believing in Christ. As an article on Crossway.org puts it, it’s “staying vitally connected” to Christ.

An article on DesiringGod.org describes abiding in Christ  as being “…attached to the vine in such a way that it is receiving all that the branch has to give…” The article goes on to say, “…abiding is believing, trusting, savoring, resting, receiving.”

What does that look like in a practical, daily sense? The Crossway.org article says, “It is the lifelong extension of encountering Jesus.”

That’s still probably going to look different for everyone, but I think one universal principle is to make encountering Jesus your daily mindset.

Make Encountering Jesus Your Daily Mindset

This is the essential. The rule of the day is to live in such a way as to believe and trust his promises, to savor and rest in his presence, to be constantly and expectantly open-handed to receive everything we need from him moment by moment. It’s to keep in the forefront of our mind that we’re working and living and resting in communion and in union with him.

When we’re writing, when we’re plotting, when we’re doing a day job that might not be writing; when we get up in the morning, when we go to bed at night; when we brush our teeth, mow the lawn, run errands, fix dinner—all of this is done with a constant awareness of, and reliance on, our connection with the Vine.

But mindfulness of this—or anything else for that matter—is a very real struggle in our culture today. Our brains are being assaulted with distractions, and being rewired to need them. That’s why this essential is also a practice. It’s something we have to choose to continually do, and it isn’t easy. Thankfully we don’t have to do this in our own power. 

The Crossway.org article has this to say, “…Jesus does not leave us to ourselves. Even though he commands us to abide in him—and we are responsible to abide there, and guilty if we don’t abide—nevertheless he himself keeps us there. And we would not abide there without his crucial keeping.”

So, don’t forget to ask for God’s help and know you’ll receive it.

Do Frequent Checks

We should also be frequently checking ourselves to make sure we aren’t neglecting or straying from the true Vine. Y’all know that we’re prone to do this. The Crossway.org article puts it like this: “…we are often tempted to find our life-giving sap from another plant.”

We’re prone to disobedience, apathy, forgetfulness, or just plain drifting. The good gifts and desires God has given us—like creativity and writing—have a tendency to become distorted. That’s the very last thing we want if we’re going to have something of value to share with the world.

Making abiding in Christ an essential, a life rule, rather than just a good idea or a random desire will help us fight those tendencies and truly bear fruit both in our lives and in our writing.

This essential also does the most important thing of all: it helps us love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. Jesus tells us in Matthew 22:37-38 that this is the first and greatest commandment.

Essential 2 – Build & Nurture Relationships

Our next essential is to build and nurture relationships. This is in keeping with our design. We were created for relationship by a relational God. We can’t flourish if we’re not living according to our design.

That said, we want to stress that how this plays out in each person’s life will be very different. Some of us thrive in the midst of a large community of friendships and networks. Some of us do better with fewer relationships. Too many people becomes overwhelming.

No matter what this looks like for you, the point is that you make relationships an essential in your life. We get strength from our community of friends. 

• We carry each others’ burdens (Galatians 6:28 ).


• We learn in 1 thes 5:11 that We encourage each other and build each other up (1 Thessalonians 5:11 ).


• We teach each other (Colossians 3:16 ).


• We help each other and have each other’s backs (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12).


• We sharpen each other (Proverbs 27:17 ).


• We pray for each other (James 5:16 )


• We comfort each other (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)

We simply can’t live a “Lone Ranger” life and expect to thrive. We need all the things relationships offer, and other people need those same thi