#431: Do You Feel Rusty in Your 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.

Today, CJ's going to share an encouragement on the theme Rusty and what that might relate, how that might relate to our writing journey. So CJ share with us today and on this theme of Rusty.

Yeah, so, you know, when you think of that word rusty, sometimes you even think of perhaps a musician or even an athlete coming off of a, a long layoff, maybe somebody that hasn't picked up that instrument in a while, they'll naturally say, yeah, I just feel rusty. I feel like, you know, there's difficulty moving forward. It's, it's, it, it, it is that polishing off as, as one of you said, you know, as you, you related what that meant to you, I want to read a couple quotes to you. One of them was former President Theodore Roosevelt, and it's a popular quote. And he said this. He says, we must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out.

And, you know, that brings up a lot of thoughts, you know, kind of that dynamic between working hard, but then on the other spectrum, perhaps some laziness. There's kind of that dynamic and there's a. I've been reading a little bit of aw to here lately as well, and I love this quote by him. He says, quote, christians and I, I put in parentheses writers, because I'm really directing this even toward, toward us as Kingdom writers. He says christians are like farm implements. And some of you, one of you actually mentioned the, the word tool, you know, like, like farm tools or different kinds of tools you use in your garden. He says farm, farm machinery seldom wears out. If you keep your machinery up, you can use it summer in and summer out until it becomes obsolete. The idle machine sitting in dampness will go to pieces in one season. But that same machine used for 10 years will only make it shine.

One year. Listen to this. One year of sitting around sulking will do more to rust your soul than a hundred years of hard work.

If God granted you that many years, he says, again, that's A.W. tozer. And it just made me think of the craft of writing. And I've experienced it myself so often, where you have a layoff, how many of you can relate to having a layoff? And then when you come up, come back. It just feels, like, difficult to get the momentum going. It feels like, man, there's just some rust here. I feel like I can't get into a groove. It takes a while. You know, I relate this to even myself as a distance runner. If I let a bunch of fitness.

Dissipate, take long, a long break, boy, I notice and tell you what, to gain fitness is a lot harder than to lose fitness. It doesn't take long to lose fitness. It takes longer to actually gain that fitness back. And the older we get, it seems like we're pushing a rock a little bit more up a steeper hill. So it, it, it requires consistency. I've found that the older I get as a distance runner, the more important it is to stay consistent. It doesn't mean I have to do these outlandish workouts or increase the mileage. It's the consistency. Even just doing a little bit every day goes a long way to reminding my body, oh, yeah, we do this daily. Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm used to this. This isn't something new. And I relate this to our writing and how easy it is to lose that writing groove, to lose that consistency. But then when we try to pick it back up, wow, it just feels more and more difficult each long layoff that we have. And so with that, I want to encourage us to really stay consistent. And the scripture I want to really just look at briefly is Ecclesiastes 11:4. So that's the scripture, Deb. And it doesn't necessarily have to do with rust, and it doesn't have the word rust. You won't even find the word rust in the Greek, in that Hebrew, in this particular scripture. It is in the Old testament. But Ecclesiastes 11:4 says, Farmers who wait for perfect weather never plant. If they watch every cloud, they never harvest. And I was thinking to myself, waiting for perfect conditions will keep us from moving forward in our call to write and finish our books. Some of us may have had excuses over the years. Oh, I can't begin on my book because this and this and this, or I need to wait until these certain conditions take place before I can really get into a good writing groove.

Once this happens, this thing, whatever it is, fill in the blank. Then I'll be able to finally get to that place where I can write consistently. But in reality.

That day really never comes. How many agree that there's never going to be a perfect condition.

To where we. We then can say, okay, now I can begin my writing. There may be a season where you say, oh, man, I just feel like I have all this free time now. It's great. But the bottom line is if we don't make the time, if we don't stay consistent, if we don't have a certain amount of time we. We blocked off for our writing craft, it will get rusty in a hurry. And I want to submit that even if. And, and I'm not saying you have to write every single day. But here's what I want to suggest to all of us. Are we at least writing weekly? If we're writing weekly, then there's a muscle memory there. There's a place where our, our minds and our creativity, they jump in and say, oh, yeah, we remember this. We just did this a few days ago. But, man, how difficult it is if you see months go by. When you see months go by, even that short amount of time, it's not always easy for that muscle memory to kick in. And so.

AW Toier also said this because I think there is a balance between working hard and of course, as. As we see with Theodore Roosevelt, he would rather wear out than rust out. So at the end of our lives, we probably would rather say, yeah, if I had to air on working hard, then, then that's what I want to air on, rather than rusting out from not doing anything. But there is a time for rest as well. And so I want us to know that. I'm not saying that we need to just wear ourselves out every day. And, you know, fingers, you know, to the, to the bone. There's a time for rest. And I think, AW Tozer really hit it here. He says, there is a time for everything. And he's referring to this verse in Ecclesiastes, There's a time for everything. We wait on God to renew our batteries, and then when they are up to full power, we turn them loose into the work of God. And I love that. You know, there's this time, there's this back and forth. So if there is a time for rest and recharging, but then as we're recharged, we, we. We hit the writing again. We, we go after it, we sit down, we get those butts in the chair. As Shelley has mentioned.

That intentionality, you coming to this virtual writing retreat is your desire not to get too rusty. It's your desire to stay consistent. It's your desire to see momentum going forward and not just being stagnant for months at a time. So we applaud everyone, and many of you are watching this recording. You couldn't make it live. No problem. These are just times, these are just cut out times that we make in CBA for people to say, hey, this is a good excuse for me to.

Polish off some rust and not just freeze up. As I saw one of your comments had mentioned, rust does tend to freeze things up. It causes the machinery to, to not turn as easily. You have to work that off and then finally get some oil on there. And now here's what I want to submit. Oil in the Old Testament relates even to the Holy Spirit many times. If you'll sit down, if you'll put yourself in a position to write, I believe God will do his part in then pouring out oil to keep your instruments, keep your writing oiled, continually moving forward. And, and I'm telling you, rust has a hard time flourishing whenever something's being used and has been oiled. It just is almost impossible. And so if it's being used regularly, that rust just doesn't have a chance. And so I want to encourage all of us, and I'm happy that each one of you are making progress and you're, you're coming to these virtual writing retreats as a way to say, I want to stay active, I want to stay consistent in this writing craft. None of us have it all together perfectly. Each of us is going to struggle. But if we'll at least make it weekly, you may not have seven out of seven days, but if you can even sit down for 15 minutes, this is what I'm talking about when I go back to my distance, running just a little bit each day goes a long ways. If you'll start with 15, and then that might increase the next week to that writing session being 30 minutes, maybe the next week. Your average writing session is about 45, whatever it might be. You get into that groove, it's going to be much easier to stay there. And so I encourage all of you to err on the side of wearing out, then rusting out. And I believe God will bless you and pour out the oil of His Holy Spirit. He'll also give you the strength and the recharge and the renewal so that you don't feel burnout, because that's, that's another thing we want to avoid. We want to wear out in the best possible way, knowing at the end of our lives, we spend ourselves as kingdom writers for his glory.

Yeah, and as we often say, go at the pace of God's grace. And I think sometimes it's easy to think of that like just laying on a float in a pool. You Know, like, I'm just going at the pace of God's grace. And yet many times it means that we are diligent in what God is calling us to do. And even my friend Shay binds, she wrote the book Grace Over Grind. She's like, you know, she doesn't like using the word, like the words hard work. But she says, you know, we are to be diligent in what God has called us to do. Not in a workaholic way, not striving in our own strength, but diligent. And I think the enemy, like just the lie of the enemy is, especially as we get into our older years, is relax, retire, you know, you. And, and one of my friends says, you know, instead of retire, refire, but just, just relax and, and you don't have to do so many things. And I heard somebody in ministry recently say that's the lie that he's been been hearing a lot lately as he's getting older too. And he's like, but God is not saying that to me. He's like, God is not done with me yet. And he's, you know, continuing to want to use me. And so there's always that, that balance and of doing it while partnering with God versus in our own strength and striving for something in our own strength. And so, yeah, Bonita says, I like the phrase work smarter. Yeah, work smarter, not harder. And our business meetings with God will us to do that. Amen. The other day I just, it was, it was just a minute or two and I, I was just asking God for some wisdom on something where I had angst. Yeah. Any of you have some angst this week? Something that was giving me angst, and I'm like, all right, let me journal about this two way journaling. If you haven't checked it out, we have a training in the member area about how to hear God's voice, and it's through Mark Verkler. And that's how I learned this two way journaling. But anyways, I did some two way journaling and God gave me some really great ins for this thing that I was having angst on. And now it's just kind of like it's gone. And I'm like, thank you, God. Like, it was literally like I think maybe three minutes I sat down to journal. So sometimes we just need to sit down and say, God, would you speak to me on this? I'm just feeling this angst about this plot or I'm feeling this angst about my writing or how to do this or that or whatever. Maybe something technology related. Anyone, anyone relate to that?

But yeah, Tammy says the smartest way is to work with the Holy Spirit and to partner with him. Amen. So we are just so excited that you are all here. That's what we help you do here in Christian Book Academy is to partner with God as you write your book. And so cj, why don't you just say another prayer over all of us as we just offer our lives as living sacrifices. You know, that's what the scripture says. We're to be living sacrifices. You know that. I heard someone else say we were created not for a cruise ship, but for the battleship. Oh, our flesh hates that. We want comfort, right? And yet God is calling you kingdom writers. I'm starting to want to preach. He's calling you into something more than just a cruise ship and comfort. He wants to use you, if you are willing, as a tool in his hands. So cj, go ahead and pray for us.

Yeah, Father, we, we just thank you, Lord, for your Holy Spirit. And we do ask that you would pour that out upon each of these kingdom writers. I pray, Lord, that they would write out of that.

That place where they're, they're well, like well oiled machines. They're not lent to being rusted out, but at the end of their lives they will be able to say.

I.

Used my life in the time that I have to be used by the Lord in writing and accomplishing all that God had in mind for my writing. I pray that each person here would be able to accomplish what you've called them to, to move forward. And if they have been rusted, Lord, I just pray that you would brush that rust off, that these shine their writing lives, that you would oil them, that you would allow them to get back on track and that they would just enjoy. That each of us would enjoy a consistency where we actually are just excited to come to a writing session. It may be different from writing session to writing session, but I want to pray that there would be a, an anticipation knowing that when the Holy Spirit's involved, something new can happen, something different, something fresh, something creative. And so, Lord, would you pour your spirit out upon every kingdom writer here and would you allow them to make the progress that you have in mind? And again, we'll give you the glory and the honor for the, the things that are accomplished. And we ask this in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. As CJ was praying, I just felt like God wanted me to say to all of you today. Anyone hearing my voice, it is never too late, you are never too old, and you are never too rusty.

Oil in the Bible often represents the Holy Spirit, an anointing of the Holy Spirit. And so ask God today for a fresh anointing of his oil, His Spirit to push all of that rustiness away. Anything that has built up over the years. It doesn't matter how long and how many drafts and how many things and how many times you started and how old you are or whatever he is able to accomplish exceedingly, abundantly above what you think or imagine when you submit to Him. So ask him for his oil today to get you going again. And we're excited to hear what God is doing in your life. Would you like more? If you are enjoying this podcast but want more, I have something exciting to share with you. We have released what's called a private podcast. So a private podcast you will not find by searching in Apple. You have to know specifically how to subscribe to it. It's more private and exclusive and it just can be more relaxed behind the scenes. And my new private podcast is called Hits Blitz and it's wisdom for writers that you're going to learn from from my 18 plus years of experience in publishing and online marketing so that you can move forward in God's call to write. I am best known for injecting energy and enthusiasm into everything I do and inspiring those around me to take action. So I encourage you to listen in to this exclusive private podcast. It is free, 100% free. You don't have to pay for it and be prepared to be inspired by my next Hits Blitz so you can sign up@training authors.com forward/hits blitz and if you have any other writing friends that you think could benefit from it, definitely share it with them. They can go to the same link trainingauthors.com hitsblitz to get access. Again, this is a private podcast so you cannot get access to it any other way. It's completely free. All you have to do is sign up and then you'll get all the information on how to add it to your podcast player of choice. So I can't wait for you to join me over there. I share a lot of things behind the scenes and more content just in a real time basis. So it's more like chatting with a friend or following someone on stories on social media. Except you don't have to get caught up in any of the algorithms. You'll just have this in your podcast player and be able to listen in wherever you're at, whatever you're doing. Some of the listeners told me this week that they were listening while waiting in the Target parking lot, while brushing their teeth. You can fit this into the pockets of time that you have, so I hope you'll join me. Come over to trainingauthors.com Pittsbullets.

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 book 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.