for divas only (everyone)

I'm glad God has brought my attention to this Verse tonight, I truly need to strengthen myself in God and I needed the reminder.

I think when we feel weak or weighed down by shame, we can get tempted to withdraw, or avoid drawing near to God in prayer, or even try in vain to hide ourselves from the God who unceasingly sees us in our every moment and always cares. And that's the opposite of what we're called to do which is cast our cares on Him who cares for us. God calls us to come because He cares and He knows what we need far better than we can.

A struggling sheep has to come to the Shepherd - not fall behind or hide in a bush somewhere but come to the Good Shepherd and be carried. We can come to God in our weakness.

Our Lord Jesus said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”

We can come to God at our weakest. We can come to God at our worst, our Father knows we have no good apart from Him and He loves us in His Goodness.

But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he* lay.

“The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.”

-C.S. Lewis

When creating stories as Christians, whether it be books, comics, shows, plays, or movies, a well written and truly great story will connect with your audience better than a story forcefully stuffed with Bible verses. Am I saying that Bible verses are bad? By no means, I am simply saying we already have God's Holy Word and Church as well as many teachers to relay Bible verses to those who wish to learn from them.

Think of the Chronicles of Narnia or The Lord of the Rings series, written by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien respectively. Neither of these series appear to be inherently Christian at first glance; after all, there's no direct mention of Bible verses or God in either of them. But when you take a deeper look you notice that both these series have biblical symbolism, parallels, lessons, and God's Truth ingrained in their DNA.

The Ring from Lord of the Rings clearly symbolizes temptation, tempting its holder to put it on and allowing Sauron (Satan) to corrupt them and control them. Think of Gollum, who has become so transfixed and obsessed with the Ring that it physically and mentally transformed him into a monster.

The same goes for Aslan from The Chronicles of Narnia. He clearly symbolizes Jesus Christ, being killed on the stone table by the White Witch and rising from dead later to save Edmund the same way Jesus Christ bled and died on the cross before being raised from the dead to save us from our sins. (I myself didn't realize that Aslan was meant to be Jesus until it was pointed out to me and then the whole series of Narnia made way more sense)

The point is that Christian story tellers should write stories that reflect God's truth instead of blatantly slapping Bible verses into your story purely for the sake of them being there when they do nothing to advance the plot in any meaningful way. You're more likely to just scare away your secular audience this way and even fellow brothers and sisters in Christ may find your story to be bland and flavorless if there's no meaningful plot.