3 Ways God Uses Rejected Book Ideas

I took a deep breath and opened my laptop. It had been a full year since I’d looked at my book proposal. I had made it so far—I almost felt the cold metal pen in my hands as I signed the contract in my mind. But instead of receiving a contract, I received a rejection, and it had, until now, just felt too raw to set eyes upon my defeat.

My passion was rekindled, though, as I read the summaries I’d written two years earlier. That first proposal and all I learned from it worked as a springboard, flinging me toward the book idea that had been sitting dormant in my heart. I crafted a new proposal for the book of my dreams but was met with more rejection. So, I laid it down, not knowing if God would ever call me to pick it back up.

Writing involves a lot of death—death to your darlings, death to your ideas, death to yourself. Again and again, we have to slay our pride and lay to rest sentences, paragraphs, and even full-blown book ideas. We cut out flowery words we love and tone down harshness, all for the sake of honoring God and loving our reader well.

The first book ideas of many published authors never come to fruition. Instead, they are crumpled up and tossed into a virtual trash can. Nevertheless, our original ideas act often as trial runs for future projects. We learn through the process—making contacts, gaining understanding about the publishing world, and honing our craft. Rejection is common, but the experience is not wasted. God uses these disappointments to bring about new ideas, help us to trust him with our dreams and desires, and draw writers to himself.

New (or Rekindled) Ideas on the Horizon

When I set out to tackle my first book proposal, I had two ideas bouncing off the walls of my brain. One felt relatively easy and the other felt really, really hard. So I chose the easy route, of course. I figured a devotional would be a more straightforward sell to a publishing board than the chapter book I had in mind.

Fast forward a few months later, and I was meeting with acquisition and series editors. After many months of waiting, my book idea went before a publishing board but never made it further. I was crushed. Yet, God used this experience to push me back toward that idea that had felt too out of reach—the one he would open a door for in his own timing.

When we receive rejection in the writing world, there’s a temptation to believe nothing good could ever come from it. The whole experience feels utterly pointless. Why did I spend all this time on a project that was rejected? But God uses everything, even smaller heartaches like book rejections, to bring about good in the life of a Christian writer. Rejections are painful, but they also push us to refine our ideas and grow in our craft.

When we walk through the process of creating a book proposal and writing sample chapters, we sharpen our skills in many ways. We learn how to be more concise but also to write creatively. We discover how to draw readers in (and hopefully a publishing board) and how to remain nuanced. Our brains are stretched to understand more about creating chapter outlines that flow together. We even grow in our understanding of publishing and marketing. All these things benefit the aspiring author, regardless of whether our book ever falls into the hands of a reader. None of it is wasted.

This is where we have to be honest with ourselves. Do we truly sense that God is calling us to this project? Should it be an article series instead? Maybe this isn’t the book idea he has for us? Or perhaps it is, and it simply needs to be refined and polished? Whatever the answer may be, God is sovereign over our book ideas and whether they ever make it to print. We can trust him.

Deepening Our Trust

After receiving multiple rejections from publishers and agents, I sensed the Lord prompting me to lay my book at his feet and walk away. Although I believed it was safe there, it was still a painful obedience. I didn’t know if I’d ever get to write that book—or any book for that matter. But I knew God could be trusted with my ideas and my desires.

It was an act of surrender—an exercise in deepening my trust in the God who deserves all trust. When we loosen our grip on our dreams and place them in the hands of our loving Father, we are choosing to believe what his Word says about him. We believe that he is faithful to all of creation and in all of his works (Ps. 145). We know that he is steadfast and will lead us in the way we should go (Ps. 143:8). We simply need to ask him for wisdom (James 1:5).

Scripture reminds us that “it is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man” (Ps. 118:8). Trusting in man can also look like trusting ourselves over God. If we cling to our book ideas, refusing to entrust him with what will come of them, we show we don’t believe that he knows best. We think we know better. But when we surrender these dreams that are most precious to us, we demonstrate we trust him more than ourselves.

The Christian writer must continually fight to remain open-handed with our book aspirations. This is true no matter how many books we publish. We can practice this by praying fervently over all our book ideas, getting advice from other Christian authors, and relying on the Holy Spirit to guide us as we write. Most of all, we must be willing and ready to lay our work down in obedience to God if he so asks.

Drawn Near

Maybe the most life-giving part of rejection is that God draws us near to him through it. When we feel all the emotions, from melancholy to frustration, he is there to help us navigate them. He leads us as our Good Shepherd even in this (Ps. 23:3). As we look to Christ in our disappointment, the Holy Spirit uses it to sanctify us. Everything that comes into our life, good or bad, is used for God’s purposes—one of those being our growth in Christlikeness (Rom. 8:28). This is a gracious gift.

But our loving Father doesn’t stop there. He comforts us in our sadness over the loss (or delay) of a dream. It may feel as though the God of the universe couldn’t possibly care about your grief over the apparent death of your dream, but he does. Just as any loving earthly father would care about their child’s disappointment, so does God the Father care about us. Even though he knows the end of this particular part of our story, his character tells us that he still comforts us (2 Cor. 1:4).

In his drawing near to us, we behold his faithfulness. We realize we don’t need our dreams to come true in order to be fulfilled in Christ: “For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things” (Ps. 107:9). We don’t need a book deal to be happy. We have everything we need in him.

Persevere, fellow writer. Keep beautifying your writing and spreading gospel truth through your words. Never stop seeking to glorify the God who created you and put those words in your heart. None of it is wasted. Not even rejected book proposals.