#275: Joy in Our Writing

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.

Our theme today is joy in your writing. And we want to encourage you today that God is here. Holy Spirit. We invite you, Holy Spirit, to come to inhabit your people, to inhabit our fingers, our pens. As CJ says, we are the priestly pens in the hands of the author of life.

Amen.

And so we are going to be talking about joy and in your writing. And CJ has some things he wants to share.

Yeah. So a scripture that came to mind regarding part of this theme of joy. And then tomorrow is going to be peace.

You weren't supposed to say, whoops.

All good.

The theme scripture really has both of these, and we're going to focus on joy today. But it's Romans 15:13. And so it says, I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in Him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit. And so the thing about us as Kingdom writers, those of you that are in CBA are endeavoring to write as a part of God's kingdom. And so we as Kingdom writers have access to a joy. I want you to think about this now. We have access to a joy that can't be manufactured through human means. We can't generate it on our own. It has to come from a supernatural source. Now the world will say, oh yeah, I've got lots of joy. You know, I have joy, you know, when I saw my child being born. And there is a joy in that. But we are talking about a joy that is birthed through the Holy Spirit.

Yeah. And there are a lot of self help books and teachers that will teach you how to choose happiness and joy and do all of these things. And yeah, we are talking about that deeper joy that no matter what is going on in your life, that is available to us.

Yeah. And so it's something that we're actually given by the Holy Spirit. And one of the things I noticed here is that, you know, Paul is specifically saying, I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace. And so we want to follow in Paul's example. We want to say, you know what.

We want to pray together to be filled with this joy, to be filled with his spirit. And out of that, joy is going to come in our writing, as we process, as we brainstorm ideas, as we walk with the Lord, in our book writing or whatever we're working on here today. And there's another passage that came to mind that I wanted to dig into just a little bit. And It's John, chapter 16, verses 20 to 24. And this is Jesus talking to his disciples. And he's basically reminding them, you know, that he's. He's going to be going away. He's going to, you know, there's going to be a time when he's going to be taken, he's going to be killed, and it's not going to be a happy time. But here, let me pick up. In verse 20 of chapter 16, he says, I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn over what's going to happen to me, but the world will rejoice. You will grieve, but your grief will suddenly turn to wonderful joy. Speaking of his resurrection, it will be like a woman suffering the pains of labor when her child is born. Her anguish gives way to joy because she has brought a new baby into the world in verse 22. So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again. Then you will rejoice and no one can rob you of that joy. Verse 23. At that time, you won't need to ask me for anything. I tell you the truth. You will ask the Father directly and he will grant your request. Because you use my name. That's key right there. You use my name. You haven't done this before. So he's reminding me. This is a new thing. You've not asked in my name before. Ask using my name and you will receive and you will have abundant joy.

Yes. How many of you want to receive that today?

And so one of the things that I want to point out here that Jesus mentions is that we should expect some pain and struggle. And I want to specifically apply that to our book writing. But we all know that anything good in life has pain and struggle. It doesn't come easy. And so in the writing of our book, there's going to be pain, struggle and anguish, heartache.

You're going to feel like you're sweating drops of blood. You're just going to be so stressed at times. You're going to feel like hanging up. You're going to feel like dropping this project. So there's going to be pain and struggle. I want to just say that right up front, that we don't try to candy coat and say oh, this is just easy, you know, this whole writing bit, finishing a book, you know, many of you know that have finished writing the book, that there's still more work to be done.

Yeah. It's like. And it is. We do talk about it like birthing a book. Jennifer says it does feel like childbirth because, you know, you have all of those months of. Or, you know, weeks or however long it takes you to write the book, and then you give birth to book, to the book, and then you have the parenting. Right. Which is the marketing. And we have some new resources coming for you to. To help you in that process of marketing, which I'm really excited about and cannot wait to announce to you probably this week. But it's a process. Right. And it's also an amazing, rewarding experience. And yet I do believe that it's a stewarding of what God has given us. Right. A stewarding of these words, a stewarding of these books to publish them, to market them, and that God is going to empower us to do it.

Yeah. It's not only a rewarding experience, it's a rewarding experience that was pretty bad. But I digress.

He likes his puns.

Back to this whole thing with pain and sorrow. The pain and sorrow eventually give way to joy as our books are birthed into the world. And this could happen with anything in life. There's always that pain and struggle before we get to that reward. And it makes it that much more worthwhile. All that blood and sweat that you poured out for that book, the process of birthing that book.

There'S just an added reward and satisfaction, a joy in seeing it come to fruition, knowing that God helped you every step of the way. And so Jesus tells us in this passage here, he's telling his disciples, he's telling us to ask for things in his name. Now, in other words, he's our representative. When you mention that name, when you name drop, Jesus, his Father, has an attentive ear. All of a sudden, you just mentioned my son. You know my son. Well, you're welcome in here. And what we're saying here is that many of you have these requests. You have things that you want to see happen with your writing. We want to encourage you today to begin really writing those things out, voicing those things very clearly to the Lord, lifting up your hearts regarding your writing. And as we ask and see our prayers answered, as we lift up those requests in his name, specifically regarding our writing, when we see those prayers answered in various ways, and we're praying according to his will. So we're not just, you know, rubbing a bottle with a genie and saying, I want these three things and exactly like this. No, we're, we're lifting up our hearts knowing there's a general sense of what we want to see with a book, but knowing that he could take us down a path that we didn't expect. And there's abundant joy, though that happens when we see him answering the prayers of our hearts. And that's a beautiful thing. And you know, I mentioned earlier as you guys were writing your comments and I saw Greg's and he talked about control.

And you know, it reminds me of how I kind of wanted to close today regarding the way we approach our writing. So I'm specifically talking about today, but also as you move into tomorrow and then beyond.

How you're going to approach this writing, I believe we can actually approach our writing kind of like.

This bell. So this bell here has the potential to make a beautiful sound. But, but when I, when I grab onto the bell and I, and I hold it tightly.

And I go to try to make a sound, it's difficult. It's, it's, you know, that whole grasping onto the bell, clenching it is blunting the sound. It's basically putting a damper on the bell. But when I hold it loosely.

It becomes a beautiful sound. And that could be a dinner bell.

It could be something that you use.

Maybe for the way we do the pomodoro effect, where you're writing for 45 minutes, 50 minutes and then taking a 10 to 15 minute break. The whole pomodoro effect, you could use that as an illustration or a tool, but the bell represents something that it works better when there's a loose grip. And I believe it's the same way with our writing. When we approach our writing with this. Fists clasp. And we're going to do it our way and it's going to happen this way and I don't want it to happen any other way. It really sucks the joy out of our writing. The joy just begins to sort of leak out like slowly letting air out of a balloon. And yet when we approach our writing with open hands and we come before the Lord open hands, relaxed, we're not clenched or open. And we allow his spirit to guide and direct us. I believe that's when we're going to experience the most joy in our writing. We haven't come to him with pre made plans saying, you have to fit into this box or else you're out. No, we come to him with loose Hands saying, father, I believe that you were the one that put this idea in my heart in the first place, that unless you would have intervened, I wouldn't have even had an idea for a book or had a desire to write something or share my story with the world. And so we come with that posture, that loose grip.

Not tight fisted, not saying it's gonna. It's gonna be my way or the highway.

Allowing him to have a beautiful sound that shines and sounds through us. Amen. And so I want you just to remember that if you've got a bell in your house, it could be any kind of bell, could be a bell like that. It could be a little. One of those little round ball bells that you might find, you know, on a Christmas tree or the jingle bells. Have that as a reminder today. Put that next to.

Where you're going to be writing and maybe ring it every so often. Do both. Do it in the clenched fist, but then enjoy the sound when you have a loose grip on it, that full sound that it was meant to make. When you and I have that kind of grip on our writing, a beautiful sound is going to come forth. God is going to use that melody through your life in ways that you couldn't even imagine. You thought you had this grip. You thought you had this idea today. And tomorrow it's our prayer that God sort of blows our minds with what he wants to do through our book or our writing or maybe an idea that he gives you this Aha, what we call God moment. When you allow him to do that, beautiful words are gonna find themselves on your page, and you're gonna. You're gonna be giving God the glory no matter what. But it's going to be even more evidence that this is his thing that he's doing through you. It was his idea all along.

Amen. So joy in your writing. And we get more joy when we hold it all a little bit more loosely. Right? So I do think it's a great idea. Put a bell next to your writing desk, you know, and just think of this every time or, you know, ring it and, you know, have it be a symbol in a way that you are are saying, God, I surrender this process to you or anything in life, you know, that you need to surrender. You know, it's a great option. So thank you so much, C.J. for sharing that.

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.