Part of growing up involves developing a belief system. In that process, were you ever told to be careful, because you can’t always believe what you hear?

Developing a belief system involves learning to discern good from bad, right from wrong, truth from falsehood, and fact from opinion. Believing a lie, can mislead you in life. It begins as toddlers learn to listen to, believe, and obey their parents. As they grow, obedience expands to babysitters, teachers, and such.

Part of the process is learning who has authority and choosing whether to trust or believe what each authority says. As a person matures, he is responsible for his own decisions. Those personal decisions are based on his own belief system, which develops from his experiences as well as things he was taught.

We all went through the process. However, we generally weren’t conscious of it. Furthermore, we probably weren’t warned to guard against believing those messages that were never spoken.

Some of those unspoken messages are harmful, and sometimes they hang around for years, like one I believed from school.

Creative writing was always difficult for me. I’d rather go to the dentist than to write a story. I did all right on research papers, but not on creative assignments.

However, one day, we had to write an iambic pentameter poem. (In case your forgot, iambic pentameter has particular guidelines for the number of lines, beats on each line, and the rhyme scheme.) I wrote about the time I climbed Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina right after a big rain. I labored to get a good grade on that assignment.

The climb involved numerous obstacles, such as fog, rain, steep climbs, slipping down on the wet path, and a huge fallen tree blocking our way. I described the difficulties, painted pictures of perseverance over obstacles, and climaxed in victory. I worked hard to meet iambic pentameter standards. I even had a hidden meaning as I alluded to struggles we face as we journey through life.

Finally, I had a winner on a creative writing assignment.

My paper was returned without comment—and with a big red C at the top of the page.

I didn’t bother ask what was wrong with it. What I heard was, “You can’t write. You’ll never be a writer.”

Why ask? I’d done my best, and all hope for improvement was squashed.

That belief held me back for over thirty years.

During that time, I kept articles or notes that seemed important and made outlines of things that struck me as insightful, thinking someday they might be useful. I even organized them in notebooks, and kept them for years, moving them from place to place.

Today, they take up about 18 inches on a shelf. Recently, I tried to weed them out and make space for books, but it was a waste of time. I hardly threw anything out.

For thirty years, I had the heart of a writer, but I believed a lie—even though it was never spoken.

I finally became aware of the lie when I searched for answers to help some people we were counseling with their anger problems, and God pushed and prodded me until my findings became a book, Uprooting Anger: Destroying the Monster Within. Not until after the book was published did I begin to believe I could write.

Meanwhile, for twenty years I prayed that Robert, my husband, would write a book on a seminar that he does for churches. I believe the church needs to hear it, but it never got written—not until I realized it was mine to write, with Robert’s input and guidance.

That book, The Great Exchange: Bound by Blood, has just gone to the publisher. It will be available in June. I am excited and relieved. And amazed, because in high school, I heard that I couldn’t write. And I believed it.

All these years, I could have been honing my skills. More importantly, I could have experienced the purpose, joy, and fulfillment that I now find through writing.

In this process, I’ve learned that, with work, I can write. Furthermore, I am called to write—just don’t ask me to make up a story.

Through Paul, God said that “we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).

If we believe a lie from our past and it’s keeping us from the work God prepared for us, we’re missing out on His blessing—and so is the kingdom of God. People are finding freedom from anger through Uprooting Anger, and I believe others will understand the Bible and draw closer to God through The Great Exchange.

We need to be careful not to believe all that we hear, but to look to God for what we believe—about who we are and what we are to do, as well as what is right and wrong and what is fact or opinion.

Have you believed a lie that kept you from fulfilling all that God prepared for you to do?