#274: Practicing the Presence of God in our Writing - What we can learn from Brother Lawrence

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 welcome to this mentor mentoring moment. My name is Shelly Hitz.

And I'm CJ Hitz.

And we're your writing mentors inside Christian Book Academy. And today, CJ is going to mostly share, and he's going to share on the topic of practicing the presence of God in our writing, what we can learn from Brother Lawrence.

Yeah, so why don't we just open in prayer and see what the Lord does, you know, in our hearts through this. Father, I just thank you so much for each and every person here, those who will watch the replay, anybody that's going to tune in on the podcast version. We just thank you for each person and the calling that you have on their lives, the work that you're doing in their hearts, the refining that's happening in their writing. And I just, I ask, Lord, that, that you would touch us through, through what we look at, whether it's your word, any other stories, things that come to mind. I just pray that with each of us, this would. Would really be a personal encounter with you, and we're going to give you the, the glory and the honor for, for the fruit that you bear out through this. And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.

So, as Shelley said, you know, some of you are familiar with that little classic, practicing the Presence of God.

It was about a man named Brother Lawrence who was a.

Really a monk, but he was. He was more of a dishwasher and cook for the monastery, and he had ailments, and he never would have imagined that we're talking about him in 2021. I mean, he died in 1691. But here we are, we're talking about him, and there was a little book written based on some of the letters that he wrote back and forth to people. And people just thought, man, this is incredible. And this can be encouraging. So we're going to look at some of that. But I want to start off with a passage of scripture that is found in Second Corinthians, and it's chapter 12, verses 8 through 10. And this is Paul talking about that thorn in the side, because really, one of the things we're going to be talking about here, the central theme in this, this episode is.

Weakness.

Many of us don't like that word weakness. But we're going to learn that weakness can be a positive thing. And listen to what Paul says here. He says, three different times, I begged the Lord to take this thing away. You know, this thorn in the. In the side. Some people wonder if it was. Maybe he was referring to blindness that was beginning to take shape in his life. Could have been another thing, a backache, something that was serious enough for him to beg the Lord to take it away. But each time he said, my grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness. So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ can work through me. And I love this. He says, that's why I take pleasure. He actually takes pleasure in these weaknesses and in the insults and hardships and persecutions and troubles that I suffer for Christ for. When I am weak, then I am strong. And I think this is just so crucial to, you know, what we're looking at today. We see here, you know, arguably, you know, the most successful missionary in history had a chance to begin planting churches from the. From the onset. And he's saying, I'm dealing with something. I'm struggling with it. Would you please take it away, Lord? And the Lord said, nope, I'm not going to take it away. I actually am going to use this weakness for my glory. And what I want to say here today is that God.

And this may be hard for some of us to grasp, but God is actually creating weakness in our lives in order to drive us to Himself. He's creating weakness. Our weaknesses are actually meant to create dependence upon him alone. And he'll spend decades. How many know this? He will spend decades cultivating weakness in your life and my life. If we get to 70, 80 years old and by that point we don't realize how weak we are, then something's. Something's amiss because I feel it at age 47, I can sense just, you know, this life is fragile. And I just believe with all my heart he wants a greater dependence upon himself. And this applies to our writing. I mean, as Christian writers, as Kingdom writers, you and I, we have to start off and acknowledge how weak we are. Many times the problem isn't that we're weak. The problem many times is that we don't actually know how weak we are and how much of a need that we have for an eternal God that wants to actually create things through us and inspire us with our writing, our words, to bring life into those words, to breathe life as he did. And when he breathed life into our bodies. He breathes life into our dead words as well. And so, you know, the quicker we realize that there's only one hero in this story, and that hero is Jesus Christ, the quicker we're going to get out of the way. But fall on our knees and rely on him. Rely to acknowledge, I am really feeling weak today, Lord, and without you intervening, I got nothing. Is essentially what we need to get. We need to get to that point. I don't know if you want to chime in at all here, Shell, but.

Yeah, and I think that, you know, there's a tendency in our culture to want to boast about strengths and victories and to hide our weaknesses and to hide are failures. But what I have found is that when I choose to write as led by the Holy Spirit. So there are times that you're not to share anything, but there are times that we're to share. And I know a lot of you have struggled with, you know, sharing out of your weaknesses or your struggles or your failures. But I've noticed when I share in that way on social media or in my books, people are just hungry for that. They just want that authenticity, too. And not just always the victories or the strengths or look at me and what I've done. But, oh, my goodness, I didn't know if I could even get out one word today, but I ended up writing a whole chapter and God just showed up. You know, when you start sharing those things, you know, even as part of your marketing and you're willing, as God leads you to include some of those things in your book, it really can actually be very powerful.

Yeah. And I think this is one of the things. Speaking of our topic here, Brother Lawrence, I think it's one of the reasons that the book written from his letters resonates with people through the centuries is they see a weak man here that talked about always practicing the presence, always living his life in view of God being right there. So let's look at this. This guy from the 1600s, Brother Lawrence, gives us a picture of almost pathetic weakness and dependence during his time as a cook and a dishwasher for a monastery in the 1600s. Listen to a couple things that were said about him. Quote, he was a great, awkward fellow who, Bro, everything Okay? So the guy was clumsy. You listen to this. When he had failed in his duty, he simply confessed his fault, saying to God, I shall never do otherwise if thou leavest me to myself. How many of us could say that if you leave me alone, Lord, there ain't Nothing happening with this book. Anything that's really going to be of eternal value. Or it could just be getting through that next, you know, getting out of bed that morning. I mean, how many of us have a hard time sometimes just taking that first step out of bed? But he says here, if thou. Unless, if you leavest me to myself, tis thou must hinder my failings and mend what is amiss. So he's essentially saying, I'm going to mess up a lot today, Lord, but you're going to have to, like, pick up the pieces. Like, if you don't come through, like, this is. This is going to be bad and nothing's going to come of it. But he leaned on the Lord. You can just feel this as you read this little book.

We know that Brother Lawrence was lame, so we also know he was a foot soldier in the army. We. I'm not 100% sure if he was actually injured. And that's how he became lame, was in war. But he was lame, which made simple tasks much more difficult, including. It was actually his responsibility for the monastery to travel to Burgundy to buy the provision of wine for the monastery. And on many occasions, he says he could hardly remember how the task was accomplished, except God helped him moment by moment. There's even these pictures of him having to actually roll on the casks themselves to get his body forward and get these casks back to the monastery. Somehow. You just picture this pathetic.

Picture of weakness, you know, just this. I can't hardly get the next step without God's help. And he says here, he accustomed himself to do everything for the love of God and with prayer upon all occasions for his grace to do his work well. And then he also said, we ought to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, or we ought not be weary of doing little things for the love of God. For he regards not the greatness of the work, but the love in which it's performed. In other words, there's really no great things done for God. It's just, how much love do we have? And is it directed toward the Lord? Are we doing that out of love for the Lord? And then I like this quote. The higher perfection a soul aspires after, the more dependent it is upon divine grace. And I love this little. This little prayer that Brother Lawrence used to pray when he went into that kitchen, whether he was preparing a meal.

Or doing the dishes, this is what he would pray. He would say, o my God, since thou art with me, and I must now, in obedience to Thy commands apply my mind to these outward things.

I beseech thee to grant me grace to continue in thy presence. And to this end do thou prosper me. With thy assistance receive all my works, possess all my affections. He was saying this before he was preparing meals. He was saying this as he was doing the dishes. And I want to suggest that we begin praying like that as we undertake our writing, that we would say.

I'm about ready to endeavor to write some words, but without your help in prospering me, Lord, this really isn't going to add up to a whole lot. And I'm going to probably rack my brain and I'm going to like worry and stress and instead we're preparing ourselves because we know how weak we are. And it reminded me of a story back in my youth for Christ days.

We used to lead trips, you know, with kids that we worked with teenagers. And I remember we went on a whitewater rafting trip. I'm not sure how many of you have been on, on whitewater rafting trips before, but we went on a whitewater rafting trip on the Cheat river in West Virginia. It's known as a pretty wild river and it's got several Class 4 and 5 rapids on there. So they're no joke. And certain seasons those rapids can get absolutely gnarly. And I remember being on this rafting trip and we actually had an exchange student from Hungary that joined us for that trip. We started working with him. He was coming to our meetings and I just remember his name's Irvin. And Irvin was, was on this trip wide eyed, putting the, you know, life jacket on, excited. Little did he know that he was actually going to fear for his life that day on a, on a raging river in West Virginia. And there was a point where we actually their raft, he was in a different raft than I was, but his raft capsized on, on one of those major rapids and it was not a good place to capsize because ahead they were actually going to have to swim right away and go through two class four rapids. That's no joke when you just have your life vest on and your legs are dangling, not sure what they're going to hit underneath the water.

And for those of you that don't know, like a Class 5 rapid is like the highest, one of the highest. And so class four is pretty intense. And then there's rocks that they're having to navigate. I mean we as leaders had already gone through and we're watching everyone, making sure, you know, everyone gets through safely. And we're watching this happen and, like, panic started to come into our hearts. Like, oh, no.

Because there's nothing you can do but watch as you're getting out of the raft. Somehow we had gotten around that one, and now we're in a position where we have to try to rescue them. Throwing ropes out there. Well, here's the thing. Irvin is just letting the current take him. Well, there's a girl right behind him. She's just a little thing, but she saw Ervin and she latched onto him out of terror, sheer terror. And some of you've heard stories about how sometimes if somebody falls into a river or gets pulled out in the ocean, one of the worst things that can happen is the rescuer or the lifeguard that's going after them. Sometimes you hear stories about them drowning because the person will not let go. They're holding on for dear life because they're terrified for their lives and they won't listen to any reason. They're in a panic and they're paranoid, and so they're not in their right mind. And this is what happened with this girl. She grabs on to Ervin. She would not let go. And it was pushing him under the water. He couldn't breathe. He was gulping in huge amounts of water. And he actually said, I feared for my life at that moment. I didn't think I was going to come up. I thought I had one more time where I could get up and get some air. But she wasn't letting go. Now, fortunately, they made it through and were able to go off to the side, and we actually were able to throw ropes to them. They were both safe. But there was sheer terror. And it made me think, what was it about this? Was it the girl's strength? No. Was it her absolute desire to hold on for dear life? No. It was a sheer terror of if I don't grab onto someone that can pull me out of this, I'm going to die. And so I'm going to latch on for dear life. And it made me think, do we have this dependence, this absolute fear that if I don't latch on to Jesus.

I'm doomed? I can't make it through without drowning in this life. And I think this is actually the kind of dependence that God is cultivating in every single one of us. He wants us to grab on for dear life to him. Look him in the eyes. He'll look at us and he'll say, I've got you, son. I've got you, daughter. Ease up. Let's relax. We'll make it through this rapid together. But I still think that he wants this kind of dependence in us. And as Kingdom writers, we must cling to Jesus with every ounce of our being, knowing how utterly weak we are.

He'll uphold us one word at a time, one sentence at a time, one paragraph at a time, one chapter, one finished book at a time. We have to always come back to. There's one hero in this story, only one as a Kingdom writer. Now, if you're not a Kingdom writer, let's say you're not a believer out there, then there might not be that desperation or there might not even be. You're not even getting that message of, well, you're not weak. No, you're. You're really something, you know, and we build. Build each other up. And we. We think we're all that in a bag of chips. And we can make. We can pull our. We can grab life by the. By the harness and we can pull our boots up, you know, by our bootstraps. We can do it all on our own. And by the way, you can accomplish a lot on your own, but without that dependence, that utter dependence on the one that you know that is going to carry you through the rapids of life, you and I probably don't have a lot to offer from an eternal standpoint. We don't have the words of life that only Jesus has. Peter himself said, where else would we go? Jesus, when Jesus asked, do you want to leave? Also, where else would we go? Peter says, you alone have the words of life. You alone. And so I want to challenge each one of us to approach our writing times, to approach each day, to say, as Brother Lawrence did, I can't even get through this. This. This task of doing the dishes without you, Lord. And somehow, some way, this man, he made it to 80 years old. He died in 1691, and a little book was written about his life because of the dependence that he had upon God every waking moment of his life. Now, you and I may not be in a position where we're utterly depending in a physical way on God in this way, but every one of us.

Myself at the top of that list, we are lame spiritually, so to speak, without the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the one that upholds us. He keeps us afloat. He keeps us above water. And so that's my challenge for all of us today, is to embrace weakness as Paul did, as Brother Lawrence did. And to say, this should just be dependence that drives us to Jesus, that our weakness isn't a bad thing, as the world would say. God works powerfully and most powerfully through those shortcomings that each of us has and each of us brings to the writing table.

Yeah. And even this week, God's just been challenging me instead of focusing on my weaknesses and letting that overwhelm me to focus on him. And even, like, in a deeper way, like visualize looking in his eyes and getting strength from him and the things that. That I feel like I can't accomplish or I get overwhelmed, that there's so much and I have limited energy. Right. I have limited resources. And so he's just challenging me instead of focusing on the limitations to focus on Him. And he will provide what I need. He will lead me and guide me and show me. And so I encourage you to do that as well. But let me just close in prayer. So, Lord, we just thank you for this reminder that apart from you, we can do nothing. That, yeah, we can maybe accomplish a few things this side of heaven, but nothing that will last through eternity. And so we just pray that each person right now would recommit themselves to just being humble and clinging to you, and yet not just staying hidd and small, you know, and just quiet. That's not what we're talking about here. But keeping that intimacy with you, looking deep into your eyes and allowing themselves to be strengthened and empowered by you to do things that they could never even think or ask or imagine. Because it's not them. It's you. And so we pray that you would empower every Kingdom writer listening right now to just move forward in your strength and in your power, and we give you all the glory in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen.

So we pray that this encouraged you and are just excited to hear more of what God continues to do in your life.

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.