#264: Big Brave Steps

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.

Today. We also, we always have a theme for every day of the Virtual Writing retreat. And cj, why don't you share just what is the one word theme for today?

It is brave.

Brave. So I want you to be thinking about what do you think that theme brave means for you today and the projects you are working on. And as you are thinking about that and praying about that, I'll have CJ Open us in prayer.

Yeah. Father, we thank you so much for a new day, new possibilities, new aspirations.

We are asking, Lord, that your Holy Spirit would fill every aspect of what goes on today and tomorrow with the virtual Writing retreat. I pray that each and every person with would have those aha. Moments. Yes, I pray that each and every person would.

Have a productive next couple days. Not necessarily. And you know, it doesn't have to be X amount of words, but maybe it's really getting a clear understanding of which direction there to move forward in, how they're to begin, how to structure everything.

Preparing an outline, whatever it may be. Each person here may be in a different spot on the process, on the journey, but we ask, Lord, that each person here would accomplish all that you have them accomplish this day and tomorrow, that everyone would look back and say, thank you, Lord, thank you for allowing me to move forward on the dream that you've planted within me and this book, this project, whatever it might be. I just pray that each person would just walk away from this retreat just shaking their heads in amazement how faithful you are to show up in these times. And we're going to give you the glory and the honor for helping each of us be brave and to take those brave steps that you're calling us to. And we'll ask this in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. In order to write your book and then to market it and share it with the world, it requires a lot of really big brave steps. If you agree with me, type Amen in the comments.

It takes a lot of really big and brave steps. You think once you're done publishing it, you're done, but then the marketing starts, right? And then you have your first podcast interview or you're putting something out on social media or you know, you're doing a book launch and ah.

But Yeah, I see a lot of amens.

Yeah. Greg says, no doubt, dare to be different. Amen. And so C.J. is just going to share a little bit from scratch Scripture and encouragement on this theme of brave.

Yeah. So I don't know which particular stories in scripture come to mind for you, but one of the first to me is really, it's found in Numbers. We're going to. If you want to look at numbers, chapter 13, we're going to start in verse 25. But it really begins with those 12 that Moses set aside to go and explore and scout the promised land, you know, to bring back a report. What's it like over there? What are we going to encounter? So I want to read just some verses to you, and then maybe we can touch on a few things. So it says in verse 25, after exploring the land for 40 days, the men returned to Moses, Aaron, and the whole community of Israel at Kadesh, in the wilderness of Paran. They reported to the whole community that they had seen what they had seen and showed them the fruit they had taken from the land. This was their report to Moses. We entered the land you sent us to explore, and it is indeed a bountiful country, a land flowing with milk and honey. Here's the kind of fruit it produces. But the people living there are powerful, and their towns are large and fortified. We even saw giants there. The descendants of Anak.

The Amalekites, live in the Negev, and the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country. The Canaanites live along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and along the Jordan Valley. But Caleb tried to quiet the people as they stood before Moses. Let's go at once to take this land, he said. We can certainly conquer it. But the other men who had explored the land with him disagreed. We can't go up against them. They are stronger than we are. So they spread this bad report about the land among the Israelites. The land we traveled through and explored will devour anyone who goes to live there. All the people we saw were huge. We even saw giants there. The descendants of Anak. Next to them, we felt like grasshoppers. And that's what they thought, too.

Yeah. Amen. Thanks be to God for his word.

And I just wanted to read one more little section in chapter 14. The next. The next chapter over, starting in verse four. And this is the people now. The report has spread, obviously. Bad news spread quickly. And here's what the people were beginning to say, starting in verse 4 of chapter 14. Then they plotted among them themselves. Let's choose a new leader and go back to Egypt. Then Moses and Aaron fell face down on the ground before the whole community of Israel. Two of the men who had explored the land, Joshua, son of none.

Joshua might be the only man in history without a dad. Son of none.

Bad joke.

And Caleb, son of Jephunneh, tore their clothing. They said to all the people of Israel, the land we traveled through and explored is a wonderful land.

And if the Lord is pleased with us, he will bring us safely into that land and give it to us. It is a rich land, flowing with milk and honey. Do not rebel against the Lord. And don't be afraid of the people of the land. They are only helpless prey to us. They have no protection. But the Lord is with us. Don't be afraid of them.

And that is the word of the Lord. You know, here you have these scouts that are. Are basically called out. There's 12 representing each tribe of Israel, and there's these 12 scouts exploring the promised land. But only two of them, it says, actually were willing to be brave and go back and take the land. There was something in Caleb and Joshua that was different than the other 10 that spread this bad report. And would you know that Caleb and Joshua would later be the only ones. Listen to this now. They were the only ones from their whole generation that would actually step foot into that promised land that they had once scouted. And to them, they were salivating. They were like, let's get it. Let's go back and we can take this. With the Lord's help, of course.

That's the key. With the Lord's help, yeah.

And so the Lord eventually rewarded their bravery. And I guess one of the things that I want us to think about and ask ourselves, are there things in our lives that we've actually become intimidated by? Now, I think we could all agree that this last year has been ripe perhaps for a lot of intimidation, a lot of hiding, a lot of playing it safe, a lot of just choosing to remain where we're at instead of taking that step and going into the promised land and conquering those enemies, those. Those people that stand in the way of God's people taking that land and taking whatever it might be that he's called them to. So what are the things in your lives that make you feel like grasshoppers? What are the things, even regarding your book that you feel intimidated by?

Go ahead and share those in the comments because it just. I think it provides encouragement for everyone to know. I'm not alone in this. Like, oh yeah, I feel that way too. But. But there's a lot of times when I think the enemy brings up all these excuses. Recently I felt like God was asking me to do something and I had about five different excuses why I shouldn't do it.

I said, but God, what about this and what about this and what about this? And I had my business meeting with God. You know, we recommend those. And I just sat down and I just started journaling out all the excuses and God just overcame every single single one. But it was so easy. I could have gotten stuck and not moved forward because of that.

I remember.

You know, seeing a little clip that some of you may have heard of Donald Miller. He is New York Times best selling author in the past Story brand, he's written that book. Yeah, he's gotten into a whole different sort of niche in terms of helping business leaders and helping them create their stories and getting that out to the world. But I remember him doing a little clip. It might have been on Instagram, I can't remember. But Donald Miller was just like, I'm calling BS on the resistance. And what he meant by that was.

Every single time you and I go to sit down and endeavor to write something or put something together, it could be a blog post, it could be working on a chapter of your book. It could be something as simple as a social media post that you know could have the potential to impact people. How many know there's always going to be resistance? Always. And I mean, it never fails. How many of you have ever had an idea and everything was going smooth until you put your butt in the chair.

And decided to actually start working on that thing at that point, it never fails. The resistance comes and do you think it's coincidence? No. We know there's a spiritual enemy at work. And I'm here to tell you.

I believe we as Kingdom writers have a greater resistance. But I do believe there's resistance no matter what you're doing in life.

You hear it from secular writers as well. They all creatives, artists. Anytime you're putting your creative work out there, you hear it over and over and over. You are not alone if you're feeling that resistance today.

But essentially what Donald decided to do is, you know what? He just recognized it for what it was right in the beginning. And he just called BS on it. He's like, no, I'm going to sit here and one word after another is going to get written. I don't care if it's 200 words, 500 words or a thousand? I'm going to sit down because how many know that once you commence, once you actually start, one word turns into a paragraph or sentence turns into a paragraph, turns into holy cow, I can't believe it, half a chapter is written or holy cow, I can't believe it. I actually finished this blog post. I. I didn't think I was going to get it done today. I thought it was going to take three days and I whipped it out in one day. It's that beginning. It's that starting. It's that taking that first step. You know, the Joshua's and the Caleb's are rewarded for believing with God's help that they can overcome every enemy that stands in their way. They're the ones that are later rewarded. And I want to encourage all of us. You know, you showed up here today for a reason. You showed up because you believe that God has something to say through you. And you're endeavoring to put feet to your words. You're endeavoring to do it. And I'm just here to say that with God's help, you will. You will do it. You will conquer that promised land. And I don't know what that promised land is for. You fill in the blank. But what I do know is there's going to be resistance. There's going to be a million things that are put on your mind over the course of the beginning hour because it really takes a little time to settle. It's almost like when you shake up a bottle of muddy water and, and then you just set it down on the table. It takes a while before the sediment goes down and gets to the bottom of the glass jar. It takes time. I think of a swimming pool full of kids, like splashing and yelling and screaming and then the whistle blows and they're all told to get out because it's break time and generally that just means the lifeguard has to go to the bathroom and get a snack and so the kids have to get out because there's no one to watch them. But during that time that that water that was all shaken up and stirred around gets glassy and calm. And I believe that in the first few minutes or the first hour perhaps, you're going to sort of feel stirred up still. And during that time, you just may need to take some deep breaths, close your eyes recenter and say, lord, take it all. Take all. Take the sediment, take the gunk. Just allow my life to calm down in this time because I endeavor to write for your glory. I endeavor to Write some words today. And I'm telling you, God will, He will be faithful. And if for some reason you need to have a second pad of paper because all of a sudden 82 things came up in your mind on your to do list, I was just going to recommend that or your prayer list, write them all down. And then you can, you can just almost thank the enemy for giving you your organization for the next three days.

Yeah.

All I'm saying is there's going to be a resistance. We know this. Yeah, it's not going to be a surprise.

Deborah Butterfield said, I've found once I take that first step, the job was never as hard as I expected. And you know, we've done these challenges before, like 15 minutes. Just write 15 minutes a day or even five minutes. And what I found is that you guys report back to me when you start the 15 minutes. You end up writing an hour or, you know, you end up writing for two hours because you get flowing. It's that initial resistance just to start. And so that's what we're so excited, you know, to be here with you these two days. This is accountability, you know, but in chair time, right, Whatever you need to get done today and tomorrow. And you know, our productivity parties every week are the same kind of format and just a time to really just come together and get some work done. But Greg said start step towards a relevant task. He says the pastor in him always is coming up with acrostics.

Yeah, yeah, that's good.

I like that.

And so what are you intimidated by? You've written out a lot of things. I think those are common to a lot of us. And yet what promised land is God calling you to move into, you know, and conquer the giants with his help? You know, what is that dream? What is that promised land that God has given you? That, that place that you know, that destination that he's taking you to. And it's not in your own strength, it's with God. You know, we believe that Christian book academy is full of Caleb's and Joshua's. Can I get an amen?

Amen.

It's full of Caleb's and Joshua's. That you're not going to shrink back just because the enemy shows you this big scary giant, just because the enemy puts these obstacles in your way, just because you can't see how it's going to happen today. That you're willing to push forward in faith, believing that God is going to take care of everything standing in your way. Now I'm starting to preach.

Anytime you hear the voice rising, start to realize it's like passion. Get out of the way. I'll just step aside.

But we believe that you are Caleb's and Joshua's who are willing to lead others into their promised land through the things that you write. So. So you're even. By publishing these things, by finishing, by marketing, you're actually going to be leading other people behind you into a new place, into a new promised land. And I found that over and over with the things that I have written, and I continue to get people that. That write me and say, oh, my goodness. Your book Broken Crayonstoke Color changed my life. You know, this happened and that happened, or whatever it was, you know, the book of the 21 prayers of gratitude, it totally reset my life. And I actually had someone that. She was like, in a depression, and just by doing the steps of gratitude, it changed her life around. So you never know whether it's something as small as a tiny little book on gratitude, 21 Prayers of Gratitude, or, you know, the book that I really feel like is like my life book. Rogan crayons still color. You never know what God's going to do with that. As you are brave, as you step out, as you believe God for what he's going to do. The people that will come behind.

Yeah. What I'd like you to do.

I want you to ask yourself, what would it look like in your. In your vision, your. If you were to dream with God, what would your promised land look like? What do you envision? That. That fruit, you know, that fruit that they'd mentioned, they had to carry it. If you read that story, the great clusters, they had to carry on a pole with a man on each side of the pole. I mean, that's how big they were. Now I just want you to dream, like, write down what your dream is. And you can share it here or you can just do it privately. But how many know, it really makes a difference? It almost adds power when you write it down, when you write that down. Because how quickly are we prone to forget? How quickly is something in our mind and then out and we sort of lose focus in life? We lose the opportunity to really take action on that. So I want to encourage you. Would you write down your dream so that you have that there? And then you can just keep giving that to the Lord. Like, lord, does this line up with what you have for me?

Yeah, the dream God has given you. So if you want to go deeper into that, we have a training in the kingdom, foundations Module called Dreaming with God. I take you step by step through a process of really just in prayer, asking God for that. But as we begin to close this initial session, we're going to have some time to pray for you. But, you know, we just want to encourage you that today and tomorrow you may need to take some of these big, scary brave steps. Amen. You know, there may be some things that you need to do that are, you know, to finish the thing to maybe right now you need to go on your social media and just publish a post that talks about you writing your book or, you know, sharing, you know, the process with someone that is scary. Right. But that being brave is not the absence of fear. It's like, I often heard of that courage and bravery. It's not the absence of fear, it's feeling the fear and doing it anyway. So almost every time I release something new into the world, I have a little butterfly in my stomach. Right? I mean, it doesn't go away. Even after publishing over writing and publishing over 45 books, it's like it doesn't go away, but it keeps us humble, it keeps us dependent on God, and we do it anyways, not let that emotion and that fear stop us. And so what we're going to do is we're going to have a time to pray for you, those of you that are here live on the call. And so go ahead. And right now, just stop commenting on the actual content and just start sharing your prayer requests. And then CJ and I will have a time where we'll pray for each one of you. And so go ahead and just take a moment to type in any prayer requests you have for today. But as you do that, I just wanted to share a picture. As I was just thinking about this theme, Brave.

CJ and I were actually talking about this recently, but I got the picture again of being on a high dive and stepping out to the edge. You have to decide if you're going to jump off or if you're going to crawl back down the ladder. And you know, CJ mentions like when he was younger, like, didn't you actually crawl back down the ladder one time?

Yeah, we had a high dive back in the days when pools had high dives. I remember getting up there and I started then back down the ladder and I got razzed for it. All my buddies were like laughing, ah, you know, well, 15 minutes later, I jumped off that high dive. I wasn't going to let them get the last word in. But yeah, it was, it was fear that Drove me back down that ladder.

Yeah. And so, you know, like, C.J. does have a fear of heights. I mean, that is something. Even Today he'll climb 14,000ft foot mountains. But.

And I just thought of this. Let me just interject real quickly. I realized that the reason I eventually jumped off the high dive is because I probably feared more what my friends thought of me than actually what would happen to me jumping off that board. That's the power of peer pressure right there. But what if we actually feared not writing our project and what that meant? Instead of fearing those that try to prevent us from writing that, what if we instead feared, what are people going to miss out on if I don't do this? It's sort of like twisting it a little bit in terms of maybe a positive fear. I don't know if that's. If there is such thing.

But yeah, I'm not seeing your prayer request yet, so go ahead and make sure you're typing those in, pressing enter. So we have those. Oh, here they come. But so I just want to encourage you to take the step off the high dive, even if you need to close your eyes and just, you know, take a deep breath, hold your nose.

Do it, take the leap off today. And like C.J. was saying, you know, what if we have a fear of God, bigger than the fear of man or fear of failure or whatever the fear is. So, Lord, we just thank you for all CBA members and anyone that's not here today. And we just pray that you're blessing, you're faithful favor would pour out over them. We thank you for this time to gather together to move forward to take those big brave steps into the promised land, into the dreams that you have given us. And we pray this in Jesus powerful 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 life 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.