It\u2019s election day in the U.S. And yes, I will write about the election in this post, but not to endorse a candidate (which might be a tad late by now\u2026). Instead, I\u2019ll share a very personal nail biter and how it compares, to me, to the emotions of election night…<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Over the past four years, I have pursued a life-long dream that was long buried and then resurrected by my ever-encouraging husband. I wrote a novel. Apart from becoming a mom, this has been the most fulfilling and rewarding thing I have ever done. And yet, there is a small detail missing\u2026 the book isn\u2019t out yet! For the past year and a half, I have spent countless hours researching the process from raw manuscript<\/em> to book on the shelf<\/em>, attending writers\u2019 conferences and writing to agencies, publishers and editors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few months ago, a German publisher showed interest in my manuscript and thus started a very positive and hopeful conversation. At their last publisher\u2019s round table, they discussed my book and decided to give it to a person in their team who was considered a target audience and see if it would speak to her before saying yes or no (the target audience, in the case of my novel, are Christians whose faith had outgrown the box they had previously put it in). The decision will be made in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the meantime, I have had plenty of time for anticipation, nervousness, and prayer. I soon realized that praying for this publisher\u2019s meeting was not as straightforward as I had thought. The same holds true for a lot of other important, maybe live-changing events we pray for, like\u2026 you guessed right, the outcome of an election. But more on that in a moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I believe in my novel. I\u2019m convinced that it will help a lot of people who are going through similar spiritual experiences as I have, or who are right now questioning aspects of their faith and are hungry for more authenticity. So why not just pray for this person\u2019s feedback to be radiant enough to convince the publisher to take on my book?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Have you ever asked yourself a similar question? Turns out, a question like this is not about a particular prayer technique, but simply about trust<\/em>. Because in the end, I don\u2019t know if publishing the book through this publisher is the best for them, for me, or for the book. God is the only one in the equation who knows the best outcome for everyone, and has the power to accomplish it. And His eternal and all-loving perspective is possibly different from mine. Therefore, the only prayer I can pray for sure is for the publishers to listen to Him<\/em>. And the only prayer I can pray for myself is to trust Him<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We know this well in theory. We understand that we can\u2019t really pray for sunshine for our outdoor event if the farmer next door might urgently need rain, and there is a myriad of even sillier prayer requests spoken and written every day that we might laugh off. But when the stakes are higher, our attitudes often change. When I\u2019m convinced I\u2019m perfectly suited for the job, do I still pray for God\u2019s choice to be picked? When that perfect house is for sale, do I really want<\/em> God to give it to this other family who might need it more than me?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Knowing God loves all of us the same is different from hoping He\u2019ll play favorites. From many a pulpit we hear that God favors His children and that this translates into favorable things happening to Christians. But what if God saw every person on the planet as His child? What if He always had every one of His children\u2019s best interests in mind, including those we consider ungodly and not deserving of God\u2019s favor?<\/p>\n\n\n\n While praying about how to pray<\/em> for the publisher\u2019s meeting (that is a thing, and it\u2019s sometimes more important than your actual prayer request!), I made some discoveries. I found out not only does really seeking for God\u2019s perspective diminish my anxiety, it also opens my heart to care more for others. I\u2019m turning away from looking at my needs to focusing on His abundance and I find out there is more than enough for all of us. In God\u2019s reality, we\u2019re all connected. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My three children are a perfect example. I love all of them, but they need me in different ways, which means they experience my love in different ways<\/em>. The natural response to this is jealousy or a feeling of unfairness. But as they learn to feel safe in my love for them, they become more generous toward my display of love for their siblings. A secure child will enjoy seeing a sibling being given a gift, because it tells them something about the generosity of their parents. And in return, seeing one of my children be happy for their sibling will naturally make me want to reward them even more for their trust and maturity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But our prayers often don\u2019t reflect such maturity. In fact, they are more often thinly veiled attempts to keep some things from happening and force others into happening. We\u2019re doing this on one hand because we want to stay in control of our lives, but also because we are so convinced we know what\u2019s right. Praying for God\u2019s will to come to pass, on the other hand, is not some passive and fatalistic prayer as I\u2019ve been told it is. It is an honest and humble assessment of the fact that I don\u2019t ultimately know, and a beautiful expression of trust in a Father who loves all His children well<\/em>, as W.P. Young beautifully puts it in The Shack<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You guessed it right, dear reader\u2026. This brings us to today\u2019s election. Christians on the left and right have prayed fervently for their candidate to win, knowing him to be God\u2019s clear choice and declaring with astonishing arrogance that one cannot be a Christian if voting for the other candidate. What if those Christians had prayed instead for the best candidate in God\u2019s eyes<\/em> to win, whomever it might be? What if, for one moment in this long, drawn-out election process, we had considered that maybe we don\u2019t ultimately know? Granted\u2026 it\u2019s hard to convince someone to knock on people\u2019s door or donate money unless you can tell him there is absolutely no question who\u2019s the right choice. And many Christians love to declare who Jesus would vote for as if the candidate\u2019s name was in the book. But it\u2019s a temptation worth resisting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m not saying here we shouldn\u2019t vote for a candidate and have an opinion. But seeing it as opinion,<\/em> rather than stone-cold fact, would come with an immeasurable advantage. We could stop blaming, hating and fighting each other. We could start focusing on the fact that God loves every other person in this world as much as He loves us. We could focus on trusting that God is in control instead of being convinced that nothing good can happen in this world for the coming four years if candidate X doesn\u2019t win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus commissioned us to be like him<\/em> towards the people around us. He gave us his Spirit so we could fulfill this commission. And we are told that the fruit of living in this Spirit is, among others, love, gentleness, kindness, humility and self-control. If you compare this list to the way Christians in this country have talked politics in the past months, we might stop praying for a candidate and start praying for the fruit of the Spirit that we need so much more than we need any politician. Or, to say it in today\u2019s language: Change starts right here, with our own social media accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m still a little nervous about the upcoming publisher\u2019s decision regarding my book. I know whatever happens will not necessarily be the \u201cright\u201d decision \u2013 after all, we all have a free will and we\u2019re all fallible. But praying this way puts my focus on God and His desire to work together with those who love him to bring about what is good (Rom 8:28<\/em>). So yes, we absolutely play our part. But in our brokenness, we can look to Him who is able to bring it all together for something good. And whether it\u2019s a book deal or the next president of the U.S., we are definitely in need of good things coming together.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Keywords: Elections – partiality- prayer – writing<\/p>\n It\u2019s election day in the U.S. And yes, I will write about the election in this post, but not to endorse a candidate (which might be a tad late by now\u2026). Instead, I\u2019ll share a very personal nail biter and how it compares, to me, to the emotions of election night…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[80,81,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"tag-elections","9":"tag-partiality-prayer","10":"tag-writing","11":"entry","12":"no-grid","13":"first"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.judithforgoston.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/canyon-gorge-antelope-canyon-tourist-attraction-87419.jpeg?fit=975%2C1300&ssl=1","featured_image_src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.judithforgoston.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/canyon-gorge-antelope-canyon-tourist-attraction-87419.jpeg?resize=600%2C400&ssl=1","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.judithforgoston.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/canyon-gorge-antelope-canyon-tourist-attraction-87419.jpeg?resize=600%2C600&ssl=1","author_info":{"display_name":"Judith Forgoston","author_link":"https:\/\/www.judithforgoston.com\/de\/author\/judith-forgoston\/"},"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfADN4-6B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithforgoston.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithforgoston.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithforgoston.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithforgoston.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithforgoston.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithforgoston.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2042,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithforgoston.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions\/2042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithforgoston.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithforgoston.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithforgoston.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithforgoston.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}