#261: Darkness has an Expiration Date

Welcome to Kingdom Writers, where we help equip and empower Christian writers of all genres to share your unique gifts with the world. We're your hosts, C.J. and Shelley Hitz.

This podcast is filled with spiritual encouragement as well as prayers to help you overcome the resistance you face as a writer. Your story matters.

So we're excited to be here with you. And crazy times, right?

Lots going on, but a lot to also be grateful for. We're grateful for this technology to be here with you. The other day, CJ's like, you know, I don't know if I'll want to hear the word virtual for a while. I said, well, we have our virtual writing retreats. We've been doing those for years before COVID We'll be having another one coming up in January, so stay tuned. Tuned for that. That's always so much fun. But today, CJ's going to start off with some encouragement for you, and then we're going to dive into the Q and A. I'm going to cover the questions that were submitted. What's your theme for today, cj?

The theme is darkness has an expiration date. I think it's important for all of us during this time, especially just to remind ourselves as Kingdom writers that we have light to share and that we shouldn't just sort of fold up shop, play conservative, kind of, you know, guard what we have and survive, but to actually thrive in these dark times that we're living in. I think we'd all agree that there just seems to be a pressure, I mean, between obviously all the stuff with COVID.

All of the riots we saw around the country, the instability there, with with each state varying, you know, with, with what happened with their governments, the elections, all those things. I think there's just this, this pressure and we just feel this darkness sort of creeping in and encroaching. And we know that the enemy plays on that. He actually pours gasoline on the fire. I think he really tries to enhance the fear and explode sort of that fear fire in each of us. And around our country, we've seen suicide rates skyrocket over the last six to eight months. I've seen statistics there that at one time in June, they said that as many as 25 million Americans were actually considering suicide. 25 million of our population out of close to 300 million. Not that they followed through with that, but we did see a lot of those, including my own cousin. I have had a cousin named Skyler that took his life on his 39th birthday in August. Back in North Carolina. He kind of struggled with a little bit of that bipolar for a lot of his life. And he succumbed to. To the darkness. And yet, I just want to remind us here today as Kingdom writers that darkness does have an expiration date. And I want to reread a little passage of the scripture that I had quoted. So it's in Isaiah, chapter nine, which is a very popular Christmas passage that we'll usually look at in churches around the country. But let me just read a few verses. I'll start off with 1 and 2. Nevertheless, that time of darkness and despair will not go on forever. If you read the previous chapter, he's talking about people that have walked away from God, people who choose to do things their own way, shake their fist at God. Just sort of a dark, despairing time. So he's just continuing there. Nevertheless, that time of darkness and despair will not go on forever. The land of Zebulun and Naphtali will be humbled. But there will be a time in the future when Galilee of the Gentiles, which lies along the road that runs between the Jordan and the sea, will be filled with glory. The people who walk in darkness will see a great light. For those who live in a land of deep darkness, a light within will shine. And that's verses one and two. Now let's skip down to verse six in that same chapter. For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders, and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, verse 7. His government and its peace will never end. I want to say right there, darkness has an expiration date, but the kingdom of Jesus has no expiration date. We need to remind ourselves of that today. And so just a few verses there to say that this passage, among many that we read around the Advent time show, should be passages that we meditate on, we actually chew over in our minds over and over again. Just turning that scripture over, allowing it to set in, allowing it to digest into our spiritual senses, just every fiber of our being.

You know, death has cast a looming shadow over 2020. It's been an exceptionally difficult year.

Death, disease, disappointment. Those things seem like they're shrouding not only our country, but the world right now. It seems that, oh, man, you know, we're just going to cancel Christmas. You know, we're just going to cancel all these things. We're just going to move past it because we just need to be safe. What I want to say today is that hope is never Canceled. I want to say that peace isn't canceled. I want to say that love for one another, but also the love that we have in Christ isn't canceled. Those things will live on no matter what. And so we can cancel a lot of things. We can blow past a lot of things. We can put heavy restrictions, people, in terms of celebrating, you know, with family members, but you can't take those things away from the depths of our being. The hope, the peace, the love. So I want to just encourage all of us with the words that Jesus spoke in John 8, verse 12. Jesus spoke to the people, and he says these words to us here today. I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won't have to walk in darkness because you will have the light that leads to life. And I want to say that as Kingdom writers, you and I have the light that leads to life. Rather than caving in to the pressures, rather than.

Just, you know, going off on our own and having our own little pity parties for the next six months, I want to encourage all of us to keep writing those words, to keep firing those words of light out into the darkness every time you write a paragraph, every time you write a chapter that is essentially a candle going out into a dark world. We've all had the Christmas Eve services where you all light the candle and you hope you don't light the place on fire, but, you know, we light the candle and then we share and we pass the light, and pretty soon the whole room of the church, right, is lit up. Many churches, for one thing, aren't going to be able to experience that this year. It's just a different year. So that tradition is going to go out the door, most likely. But what I want to say is, in that same way, our words can be those candles lighting one another and sharing that light until we overwhelm this darkness. And I just want to encourage all of us that we don't have to let the times that we're living in.

Snuff out our hope, snuff out our peace. Instead, we can continue to share the light. And because it's God who empowers us, it was never us in the first place. If we had to rely on our own resources, we're all pretty impoverished on our own, or we'd run out very quickly. But we have an endless supply of light from the light bearer, from the light, the creator of light, the one who spoke light into existence. So I want to encourage all of us in that way. And just to say that you are A kingdom writer. And don't back down from that. If you're called as a kingdom writer, then you are called to throw these words of light out into a dark world. That man just desperately needs them right now. They need our words. I believe there's specific people that need your words. Not Jennifer's, not Pam's, but you, coach Joni. They need your specific words because God's going to use you to say something in a certain way with your background, your unique circumstances, your unique experience, to meet somebody right where they're at. And that's going to be like that candle lighting their candle. And pretty soon we're going to continue to see the light expand and so the light of Christ will not be snuffed out. It is going forward. The question you and I have to ask ourselves is, will we be torchbearers of that light wherever we're at? So that's my word here this afternoon.

That's so good. And the question I keep coming back to in my times of prayer, in my business meetings with God, you know, we talk about that a lot. In 2020, the question I kept asking the Lord is, what is my role in this?

I could get worried and caught up in a whole bunch of things that I can't do anything about. Right, but what is my role in this? What is it that you want me to do at this specific moment in history, this specific time? Maybe it's to pray. Like CJ and I hosted a 24 hour prayer vigil back in March. You guys remember that, you know, sometimes he leads us to do different things that, you know, might not be public or, you know, the words that we share might be person to person, individually, you know, sending a text message to someone, calling someone to encourage them. And it might not be public, but there might be things that God is calling you to do and to process the pain, to process the disappointment, the grief, to bring all the emotions to God, to process them with him so that we can be those torchbearers. So recently I felt like God had led me to host an online zoom workout series. And I'm wearing my shirt today. Yes, God can. And honestly, I was like, I've never done anything like this before. What am I doing? But God had me speak words into people's lives. And every single session was like a Bible study. It was so it's a fitness Bible study. And now God is leading me to create a book and publish a book that's going to be a six week Bible study, fitness Bible study based upon these Six. I mean, I had no idea when I started all this, anything that would happen. But you know what? I knew God was like, there's specific people that need this right now. And I know a few of you joined us. And I received testimonies, and people were like, shelly, this was what I needed at this exact time. All we have to do is obey and just take that step of obedience to be those light bearers. And if you want more encouragement on this topic of light and just the Christmas themes, I did create four different teachings that you can move your body. You can just listen to them, their workouts. You can get them for free at Alive and Active Wellness.com One of them, the theme is light. And in every. Everyone, I share a little bit of my testimony. But, you know, what is it that God's called you to do in this season? What is your role and to do it? And so let's just take a moment of silence just to ask God that question. What is my role in this? What is it that you have for me today? What is it I need to process with you? You know, where am I stuck, emotionally or otherwise? And then, cj, why don't you close us in prayer?

Yeah, Take about a minute.

It.

Okay, so, cj, why don't you go ahead and close this?

Father, we thank you so much for sending your son into a dark world at just the right time.

Jesus, we thank you for being the light that lights our way, that's lit up our hearts, that's even given us a desire to be a kingdom writer, to write words that glorify you, to write words that perhaps help light other people's lives and to lead them to you, to actually lead them to the light of the world. I ask that you would empower each one of these that are on this live video, but also those that are watching the replay. We pray that you would show us specifically what our role is, how our writing is a part of that. We pray that you would bring inspiration. We pray that you'd give us creativity. We pray you give us clarity as we move forward, that we wouldn't just be groveling in the dark, but that we would know which direction we're to go, even if it just means that we can only see two feet ahead of us. You know, just like that illustration that I'm reminded of as a car that's driving at nighttime with the headlights on, it can't see very far ahead, maybe 60, 80ft ahead. But over the course of a journey, that's all that needs to happen in order to get from point A to point B and to a destination. And so I pray that each of us here would be given the amount of clarity and sight to get to where you're guiding us, to where you're wanting us to go, and how you're wanting us to be involved in this world that we find ourselves in right now, going from 2020 to 2021. And we don't know what is ahead, but we know.

The God who holds our future. And so we we lift this time, the remaining time as questions will be answered and asked. And we pray that you give insight and clarity in this session that we have here today. And we ask this in Jesus name, 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 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.