#386: Marketing Minute: Praying for God Ideas

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 foreign.

It starts today. Hey friends, this is Shelli Hits, one of your hosts here at the Kingdom Writers Podcast. And our prayer edition of the Kingdom Writers Conference starts today. So come join us. Get your free ticket@domathonwritersconference.com Prayer in this free one day conference, we will help you unlock the full potential of your writing with the transformative power of prayer so that that God can use your words to impact lives for eternity. I just really believe you are going to be so blessed from this conference. So whether you're listening to this live today or later, come sign up kingdomwritersconference.com prayer and we will see you there. In today's marketing minute episode, we're going to talk about praying for God ideas. Now, first of all, I want to talk about the difference between God ideas and, and good ideas. Obviously the biggest difference is there's an extra O, right? And good. But there is so much more because every day I get a lot of good ideas for marketing for, you know, writing another book or creating another product. I'm always having ideas. And I think many of us as creatives, you could almost call us idea factories. We right? And there many of them are good ideas. However, when you get a God idea, that's an idea that's inspired from heaven, it's inspired by God. And that idea will definitely have eternal impact. Now sometimes it also has an amazing impact right here and now with book sales or all of the things. But we, we know that when God is initiating something, he will bring an impact for eternity. And so I just encourage you right now there's a lot of people out there telling you what to do and how to market your books. But let's just go ahead and take a deep breath. Just go ahead and breathe in through your nose, breathe out through your mouth and say, I am going to choose to filter out all of the good ideas and really take action on the God ideas. And some of you may be like, well, how do you know if it's a God idea? And so number one was knowing like, is it a good idea or a God idea? Number two is I recommend having business meetings with God. This is a concept I first learned from my friend Shay Bynes from Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur and It has really changed the way that I do things now in our business, for our marketing, for our books. And basically having a business meeting with God is being able to sit down and have that prayer time. I also like to journal, so I like to get out a journal and really write out things, but there's so many ways to do it. And in our prayer edition of the Kingdom Writers Conference, my friend Shay Bynes and her husband Phil are going to be sharing on this exact topic. So if you're interested in this, make sure to sign up, it's free. Go to kingdomwritersconference.com prayer and then you can learn more, even directly from them, which, like I said, is where I first learned the concept. But I have another training on this in Christian Book Academy. And it's just something I feel so passionate about because it's so easy just to put together a plan and have a strategy or follow a blueprint or just come up with some idea of what we think we should do without actually stopping and asking the Lord God, what is it that, that you have for me? And I'll tell you, there have been very pivotal, pivotal, pivotal times where I thought I was going to do something and God changed my direction through a business meeting with him, and it was so much more successful. One of those was I was, I had found out that the, at the time that there was a subscription, subscription box company that one of our Christian Book Academy members had gotten a contract with and they had shared the information and I already had my plans for the day. I already knew what I was gonna do. I had my to do list and I was ready, ready to go. But I, I sensed the Lord saying, you know, to reach out and to see, you know, if they would be interested in having one of our books in their box. And that led to a back and forth on email all day with the owner of the company. And although I didn't get anything else on my to do list done, we were able to move forward with a contract that led, led to a partnership for over five years. I, I think we sold over a hundred thousand book. I have the number somewhere. But it was so amazing. And if I would have just said, nope, I already have my plan, I have this deadline, I need to get these things done. I want to get my to do list crossed off. I could have missed that opportunity or who knows, I mean, what, what could have happened? But God has some amazing ideas for you if you would just stop and ask him. So number one was, you know, what are the good ideas Versus God ideas. Number two, having business meetings with God and number trusting God with the timing. This one is a hard one for me. I am an action taker on the strength finders test. I'm an act or activator achiever, which means I will take action and I will work on it until it gets done, until I achieve it right. So I'm like a dog to a bone when I start a project and I, I like to get things done. I like to go. And I often say I'm a redeemed workaholic. I know a lot of you are not that way. You may actually need motivation to get moving. But wherever you're at, whether, you know, sometimes you may want to lag behind or whether sometimes, like me, you want to run ahead, I just believe, like when we keep in step with the spirit, like Galatians talks about keeping in step with the spirit, that's the best way that we're gonna be able to market our books, to move forward in this call to write, publish, market our books. Because like I said in the beginning, there's a million ideas. There are a million things that we could be doing. There are hundreds, if not thousands of good ideas of ways to market your book right now. But when we stop, when we ask the Lord for his ideas, we have business meetings with God and then he reveals things to us. Oh, then we need to trust his timing. I'm in a season right now where I'm not seeing the results as fast as I would like, but the Lord is just, he's like holding me back. Kind of like pulling the reins back on a horse like Shelly. Just wait, give it time. And I feel like he's asking me, you know, to give it until the end of this year. And so, you know, it's one of those things that then we trust his timing. Now for some of you, he may say, okay, it is time to go. Go and send those pitches off to those podcasts today. And your heart's racing and beating and like, ah, that feel feels really nerve wracking. And yet it's exactly what you need to do. And then for others like me, God may be asking you to be patient in his timing, in his process, and not to just start striving again in your own strength. So we talked today about praying for God ideas, and I really encourage you to really have prayer times where you're even praying for your future readers. We like to say praying for the right person at the right time to read the right book. And when you do that, that can bring transformation in someone's life when you're praying specifically for your future readers and really getting the the focus off of you and whether or not you're a success or whether or not this marketing campaign is a success. But praying for your readers. And we're going to talk more about this in our upcoming conference, so make sure to join our prayer edition@dominglywritersconference.com prayer so just as a recap, we've talked about having like knowing the difference between good ideas and God ideas. Number two, having business meetings with God. Number three, trusting in his timing. So let me pray for you, friend. Lord, we just thank you so much that one God idea is worth more than a million good ideas. And we just ask right now that you would help us to turn off the noise from the world and all of the things and all the people shouting at us of what we should do and what we could do. And we come and we sit with you, Lord, that in these business meetings with you, that when we're having a time of prayer and a time of connecting with you, that you will lead us, you will guide us, you will show us which way to go. And even when we, we aren't sure or we feel like we're not hearing your voice as clearly, you are leading the way, we are giving you the reins. So Lord, we just want to trust you with the timing, we want to trust you with our books. And yet we also want to steward well these messages you've given us, these book babies. And so we pray right now that you would give us God ideas, Lord, that you would show us what are the next steps. And we also pray for each person listening that the right person at the right time would read the right book and that would be changed and transformed for eternity because they found our books. So we thank you, Lord. We thank you that this is a privilege. It's not pressure, but it is a privilege to market our books, to be able to write for the Kingdom of God. And whether or not our books are on a spiritual topic or not, we're using our gifts that you've given us. So Lord, thank you for this privilege. And we pray this in Jesus powerful name. Amen. Amen. Friends, so glad that you joined me for this episode and again join us, join us for our conference kingdomwritersconference.com prayer and I will see you there.

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.