#258: Preparing Our Hearts to Write

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How many know that many times, you know, you, you come out of whatever you were doing, setting about to write, and you just feel like perhaps a, a jar of dirty water that's been shaken up. And if you've seen that, you know that it takes several minutes or longer for that dirt to then begin to settle and to be able to see clearly through perhaps the glass jar.

It takes several days sometimes, depending how muddy it is.

Yeah, and I think a lot of us feel that way when we, we abruptly come to our writing and we say, okay, yeah, I gotta get some writing done, you know, and we're, we're just shaken up. We're stirred up. And I don't know about you, I've alluded to this before, but I just really believe that we as writers need a good warm up. But not just a warm up.

You even think of musicians. How many musicians just come right into the band room and just start whipping out a song without tuning their instruments?

It takes time to tune, take to fine tune and get, get the instrument ready to be able to play beautiful music. And you might even, you know, I, for me personally, I'm not doing as much racing these days, but in terms of the running, you know, I would never show up to a race just ready to burn speed right off the line. I needed a warm up, probably a couple mile warmup just to kind of get the muscles loose, warmed up, ready to fire, even do some strides, some faster running right before the gun goes off, so that my legs are basically given the message, okay, you're going to be running fast right out of the gate here. You need to be prepared for that.

But there's a scripture. I'm going to actually read this in the King James Version, the old King James. And it's Psalm 57. 7. It says this, it says, my heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed. He repeats that this is David. I will sing and give praise. And again, that's Psalms 57. 7. Now that word fixed is a Hebrew word called kuhn or kun k u W n. And that word means to be directed aright.

To prepare or to be ready. So David is essentially saying, okay, my heart is ready, Lord, my heart is fixed on you. It's Been prepared. This soil has been prepared, turned over, ready to receive what you have for me, what you want to lay on my heart. I believe you have something divine, something supernatural that I can bless others with through my writing, through my music, through my preaching, whatever it may be. The psalmist here, David, is essentially saying, I'm ready, I'm prepared. I'm coming for something special, Lord. And so what I think we should do here right off the start is to pause, and we should consider things like.

Any sin that we might have in our lives.

Our wants, our worries.

Our needs, all these things that sort of are still stirred up inside of us like that jar of dirty water.

We consider these things our troubles, all of the things that concern us. As we come into this writing session.

I want us just to picture these things gradually leaking out of us and being absorbed by Christ. Being absorbed almost like Jesus is the sponge. He's absorbed all of our sin, our troubles, our cares, our worries for this day. We bring that to him and he absorbs it, and only Christ can do with that, to throw it as far as the east is from the west to purify us, to do whatever he does with those things that are to be never dredged up again.

We bring those things as we pause. And so.

I think it's. It's good to take time, and I think we're going to do that here shortly. But there's another psalm as well that I want to read, and this is the new living translation.

And it says in Psalm 119:37, again, Psalm 119:37, turn my eyes from worthless things and give me life through your word. That word worthless. If you were to look up other translations, like the King James, that word worthless is vanity. We've heard that word vanity. And vanity simply means that which is empty. It's just devoid of any life. It's empty. There's no useful part of it. And how many would agree that we come to these writing sessions, having many times feasted on so many what we might call empty or worthless things that are still in us, that are stirring us up, clouding the waters?

And we come to our writing session and we wonder, why did I struggle so much? Why am I so distracted? Why is it hard to really get going right off the start? And my. I would submit, and I'm here, right here with you. I struggle with this as well. It's difficult right off the bat until we've sort of allowed our hearts to be prepared for that quality writing, that it's difficult to get into a flow until we've really settled this. And, and so I love this quote here by one of my favorite.

17Th century writers. He was a, he was an English puritan by the name of John Flavel. And listen to what he says here. This is written in the late 1600s and yet look at how relevant this is for us today. You must avoid all occasions of distraction from without.

In other words, outside of us. And imbibe. I love that. What do you think of when you think of the word imbibe?

Many of us will probably say over drinking, right? Somebody that's had too much to drink, they've imbibed. But here's what he's saying. He's saying you must avoid all occasions of distraction from without. Imbibe or absorb that intenseness of spirit in the work of God which locks up the eye and ear against vanity. That's what John Flavel says. In other words, we should position ourselves to cut out the distractions. Turn off the phone, turn off the TV.

If you need a little, perhaps music as ambiance. That's perhaps a different kind of good distraction. But we must cut off these distractions that would serve to throw emptiness inside of us or things that are really worthless and are going to come against that flow of writing. So we want to be in that intenseness of spirit. We want to be in that.

Place where God can download stuff into us and give us inspiration in our writing. And again, this is John Flavel, one of my favorite 17th century writers. And let me read that to you one more time. You must avoid all occasions of distraction from without.

Imbibe that intenseness of spirit in the work of God which locks up the eye and the ear against vanity. And that's John Flavel. And so I think it would be good for us to take.

I'm actually normally we're looking at one minute of just sort of setting our hearts right, but I'm going to say two minutes here, even two minutes when we're completely still and quiet. Seems like an eternity, doesn't it, in the culture that we live in today? Yeah, but I guess what I want to do is I want to give us two minutes and in that time again, I want you to picture and envision.

You, you, you just emptying and seeing all of your sin that you, you've maybe collected this week. We all know that we've fallen short in different areas. The troubles, the cares, the anxieties, the things that are stirring that water up inside of us. I want Us just to picture that leaking out of us, being absorbed by Christ.

And I want you just to lay all of that at the foot of the cross and just quiet yourselves. Picture that, that sediment emptying out and picture the stormy waters just growing calm. So take two minutes and I'm going to start the timer now.

Okay.

So let's just come together in prayer as we just devote this day one of this virtual writing retreat.

Just continue with.

Leaving all of the junk behind.

Envisioning that, being absorbed by Christ.

And Father, we thank you so much that we can have the privilege of being priestly. Pens in your hands that you're writing new stories through, that you are bringing encouragement to others through. We are a conduit for what you want to do through us. And I ask that you, each person here today would be given clarity.

Would be given.

Power in their writing.

I guess as the old preachers would say, an unction that would go deep. It would just be something that is a timely word for the audience that they're writing to.

That we consider ourselves stewards of your word as Christian writers, as Kingdom writers. We thank you that you've given us the opportunity to pull and mine from your word. We have a resource that others.

That aren't Kingdom writers don't take advantage of. And I pray that each and every person here today would be given insight and wisdom as they write. I pray that they'd be able to say at the end of today that whether they were getting more organized and prepared to write or the actual writing itself. I pray, Lord, that they would be several steps.

Further than when they started. That you would guide and direct each person. Every one of us is in a different place and it's going to look different for each person. But I pray that you would move each of us from one place to another and that we would look back and see your fingerprints all over today. And I pray that.

You would help each and every one of us break through every obstacle that stands in our way. Any distractions, I pray, would dissolve in Jesus name. I pray that.

Each person here would just revel and enjoy their time of being creative as writers. And I pray that you would put a hedge of protection around every single person in terms of any assignments that the enemy has for them. I pray that all of that would be thwarted in Jesus name. And I pray for all the technical side of things, the technology that allows us to do these types of things. I pray that everything would run smoothly, that you put a shield around all of the technology on our end and on the end of each of.

The members.

Pray that each person would get the maximum amount of good out of today and tomorrow. And that the enemy would not be able to gloat, would not be able to say he stole anything, and that each and every person would be almost just in a cocoon in your hand, Father protected, able to do what you've called them to do this day. And we thank you for this calling of being Kingdom Writers. We don't take it lightly and we know that you want to impact people both for now and eternity. And we give you this time and we ask this in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you as a Christian writer have a specific role to play in the Kingdom of Heaven to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this, we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers like you to not only tell your stories, but to take the courageous step of self publishing your stories in books that will outlive you and leave behind a powerful, powerful legacy. This podcast is sponsored by Christian Book Academy where we help you give birth to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom writers.