#353: Writing Well: A Guided Prayer for When You Lack Motivation

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.

We're just gonna start this prayer meeting with some guided prayer to start off. And I just felt like the Lord just, just would led me to do this specifically for those of you who are lacking motivation, but it can apply to any of you because you're just going to be asking the Lord to speak to you today, and whatever it is that you need, he will give you. But are any of you here today lacking motivation in the writing, marketing, publishing process? But I just. I just feel like so many times we can get into a place where it just feels hard to just sit down and write or sit down and post that thing on Facebook, or sit down and organize that collaboration or reach out to that person or. Or pitch ourselves to podcasts or whatever it is, right? Sometimes it can be a lack of motivation. It can be a spiritual attack. It can be so many things, right? But I just think so many times as writers, we just can get in this place of just like, Like, I just. There's so many things to do. Where do I start? How do I. You know, it's easy to get to that place. So first I want you to spend a minute. So I want you to have, if you can, a pen and paper or a pencil and paper, or, you know, get out a note taking device, something that you can actually be writing down. It may just be one word that the Lord says. It may be a scripture that he brings to your mind, or it may be a conversation, like, you know, sentences. God speaks to us sometimes in pictures and other things. It could be a song he brings to your mind. But I want you to be able to write this down, okay. And, you know, somewhere to write it down. But yeah, Deb says work overwhelm. That leads to a lack of motivation. Yeah, it could be many different things. Phyllis says marketing area, and Lori says, yes, I'm feeling discouraged right now. It's so easy just to get into that place. And so what we want to do is we want to start off today and say, lord, just lift this from us, whatever it is, right? And so I want you to ask God what may be weighing you down. So the picture I get is like some of us are walking. And I felt this way lately, too. I've just felt like, this lack of motivation. But, like, you know, we have this backpack with all these weights, you know, and it's like, oh, you know, how fast can you run if you have a backpack of £50 on you? I think even CJ would struggle. Yeah. You know, sometimes we need to ask the Lord, what is. What is this weight that I'm carrying? Is it expectations of what should happen? Is it what other people may think is. May not even be something like that. Maybe worries about your family? It might be the stuff that's going around in the world. But what is weighing you down right now? It may be pulling a cart. CJ used to work for a ministry called Media Talk 101. And they said they had a picture of someone carrying a cart, and it was like, had all this media on it. But sometimes there's all these things. Maybe there's maybe people in your life that you're carrying. Maybe there's other things and you're just carrying this cart. How fast can you run if you're trying to carry this big cart? Not very fast. Right. Or it might be that you just have all these extra weights on. Your vest has a weight. You have weights on your ankles, you have weights on your wrists, and you just have this extra stuff. And maybe you think it's supposed to be, you know, for working out and everything, but it's, like, not serving the purpose right now. And God wants to free you of this today. Right. So I just want you to take one minute, ask the Lord what is weighing you down? Yeah. So Georgia even said health issues. Yeah, I've had neck and shoulder issues lately. Praise God. We have people praying, and it's starting to get better. God's showing me some of the roots. You know, God is our healer. Right. Lately that's been my affirmation. God is healer. God is my healer. So I'm going to play some music for one minute. I just want you to ask the Lord, what is it? What is it that's weighing me down? It could be mindset. It could be people. It could be news. It could be, you know, any amounts of things. But just ask him, what is it? And then write it down, what you sense, whatever it is, a word, a scripture, a song, a picture.

Sa.

All right.

I just wrote down. I think it's, you know, a pressure to get it all done now. Like, I don't like having open loops. I want things done. I want it crossed off. I want it closure. I want to have closure. And I have just a lot of things right now that I need to, to do and finish that. It's just going to take time. And I. God gave me the picture of farming. Like you can't expect to plant a seed and then to harvest, harvest it the next day, right? You. It takes time and I just have to embrace that. What was it for you? And then the second thing I felt like the Lord showed me is that sometimes we need to actually come to God and ask him to cleanse us from any sin. It's not a one and done thing. When we come to Christ and we ask for forgiveness and we ask him to come into our life, it's an ongoing thing, right? To confess our sins. He is faithful and just and will forgive us all of unrighteousness. First John 1:9. But I got this picture that some of us have been out and we've been out in the world and we have been in mud. And you know, you think about people in, you know, the four wheelers, they've been out like, and there's mud all over them or whatever. And like, you're just, you're just messy and muddy from the world, right? The residue of the world. Anyone feel the residue of the world on them right now? Or it could be our own sin. It could be worry even, right? It says when we. Jesus says, when the seeds are planted, worries and cares of this world choked out the fruitfulness of that seed, right? So it could just be that. And for me, a lot of times it's worry and, you know, that sort of thing. But what is it right now that you just need the Lord to cleanse off of you, right? Stand under his shower of his forgiveness, his mercy, his grace, and be able to say, just cleanse me. Just get this, this stuff off of me. The mud, the grime, the sin. Forgive me, Lord, for the worry that and for not trusting you or for, you know, whatever it is that you have been going through. And so I'm going to give you one minute, and I want you to write down and say, and ask God to cleanse you from any sin or to cleanse you and just to, to wash away anything that is residue from the world right now. That's just wanting to hold you back.

Sam.

All right.

For me, it's definitely worry. It's like I can take on responsibility that is not mine to take on. Amen. Like we can just take on things that belong to the Lord and then we start to worry about it because we feel like it's. It's ours to control and to worry and all of that. So definitely that was one for me. Yeah. Susan says comparison. Yeah, that's a big one for us as creatives. Amen. All right, so the next part. So we ask God what is weighing us down? And to lift that weight from us, number two, is to cleanse us from anything that our. Our own sin or the residue of the world, like standing under that shower. And then the third, I just feel like we need to remember, like, it is not by strength, it is not by power, but it's by what it is by his spirit, declares the Lord. And I just feel like some of us at times, and, you know, we all have those seasons, but some of us, it's like we just need to plug back in, right? So the picture I'm getting is like, that. That plug that of that light, plugging it back into the source. But also a phone that just is low battery. It's not charged up. And we need to get our charge from being connected with the power from on High. Luke 24:49. I was just reading that this morning. And Jesus says, wait in Jerusalem. He's telling this to his disciples. Wait in Jerusalem until you receive the power from on high. And we know that that was the Holy Spirit, right? So we need to receive that power. We need to really just be a vessel, like C.J. was saying, a pen, a priestly pen, a vessel that he uses in the hands of the author of life, right? So right now, I just want you to ask God, say, God, I have, you know, asked you to lift that weight from me. I've asked you to empty me, to cleanse me. And now I want you to fill me with your power, your power from on high. Who wants that today? And ask the Lord to fill you. And just whatever he wants to say to you about that, go ahead and write that down for the next minute.

Foreign.

And this is something that we can do even on a daily basis. You can kind of go back through these steps at other times. But the last thing I just felt like the Lord wanted us to do as a group before we have corporate prayer, just between him and us, is just allow your heart to be open to receive God's love for you today and for you to reciprocate and to love him. So I've been using the Pause app by John Eldridge, and he talks a lot about this, and, you know, just saying, I love you, Jesus. I love you, Lord. I receive your love for me today. And I have to admit, sometimes I kind of bristle just a little bit of, like, I think sometimes it's difficult for us to. To give and receive love, depending on what our past has been, depending on some of the hurts and the wounds and the things that we've had in relationships. And yet God wants to fill you with his love today, and he wants to be able to be loved by you as well. And then the second part is, during this, this last time, I want you to. To do that. You know, open your heart. But then John, in day two, John gives this illustration. I'm going through it a second time. The 30 days of this is day two. And he says, put your palms together. So go ahead. And everyone put your palms together like you're doing it like this. And look down at your palms. And he says, this is a picture of intimacy. You're touching, right? You're close, you're intimate. And we can be intimate with God. We can be close to him. But then he said, lace your fingers together. And this is a picture of union with God. Do you see the difference? We can be like this all the time. But God's saying, I want you to go one more step. I want you to go deeper with me. I want you to have union with me. I want you to be intertwined with me. And so also to ask the Lord, heal my union with you. Heal our union. God, I invite your healing love into this time, into me. And, you know, just that you would, you know, just have a heart open to be in union with him, even in your writing, publishing, and marketing. Right? That's kind of what God was telling me on step three. He was like, shelly, I want you to think of this as partnering with me. Not just, like, got to get this done. Got to get this done. Got it. But, like, okay, God, this is something that we're doing together. What is it you have for me in this task? So, anyways, I want you to open your heart, receive God's love, and express your love to him. And then ask God to heal your union with him. And just write down anything you sense from God in this next minute.

Sam.

All right, so you may want to spend some more time. I encourage you to download the Pause app. It's free. Free. It's biblical, and it can help, you know, just in so many different ways. So I definitely recommend the 30 days to resilience. I've already done it once. I'm going through it twice. But God wants not just this for you, he wants this. He wants you to not just, you know, be a seed that gets choked out by the worries and cares of this world. He Wants you to be bearing fruit. 30, 60, 100 fold.

I just had a picture that I wanted to share.

And some of you may receive this even more vividly than others. But how many of you watched the movie Titanic years ago when it came out? I believe it still may be in the top three in terms of all time grossing movies of all time, in terms of, of money. But do you remember at the end when the musicians still chose to play on the deck, they.

They just decided, you know what, this ship is going down. But we're going to continue to play sweet music even as we're going down. We're going to do that until the last possible moment. And what I want to say is that we all know that this world is a sinking ship.

We're on board, and yet we've been given a way out through Christ. And yet even as we're on this sinking ship.

How many know that our writing can serve as continuing to play music.

For those that are on the ship? They can be pointed to something different. Of course, our writing can, can even point them to the life raft that Jesus offers as the way out for rescue. But what I want to focus on is that you and I, through our writing, are continuing to play music on the deck of a sinking ship. And that as we do that, there's going to be encouragement. People are going to be also removed briefly from their distractions, from the things that are holding them back.

And you may inspire others to want to come along, play with you. And I just want to say that what you're doing is noble. Just like those musicians, they chose to do something constructive even in a chaotic environment. How many know we live in a chaotic world? Right now, Everywhere you turn, there's chaos politically. In war, in famine and natural disasters, you name it, we've got chaos. And yet even in the midst of chaos, we can be playing our music with a smile on our faces and saying, we trust in the Lord no matter what happens, no matter what circumstances. And so I want to, I want to encourage all of you.

Keep playing, keep writing. Because what you're doing is, you're adding, you're adding good, you're adding peace, you're adding joy to a world that's obviously starving for it. They just don't know where to look. We know it's in Christ, but thank you all. Thank you all for the music that you're continuing to play.

Yeah, we thank you, Lord, for this time together. We thank you for this prayer. We thank you, God, for what you are doing in the Kingdom of God through these Kingdom writers in their households, in their neighborhoods, in their workplaces, through their writing, on their social media accounts, to their email list, through their books. And we just thank you for all that you're doing. 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 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 by Christian Book Academy, where we help you give birth to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom Writers.