#432: Recovering What We Have Lost as Writers

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 today CJ is going to share encouragement on the theme recovering what we've lost. And, cj, why don't you share with us and share what God has given you to say?

Yeah, I'd like to read a little story from. It's tucked away in Second Kings, chapter six, and it's the first seven verses. And then I want to just share a few points from this story.

And so it says here that one day the group of prophets came to Elisha and told him, as you can see, this place where we meet with you is too small. Let's go down to the Jordan river where there are plenty of logs. There we can build a new place for us to meet.

All right, he told them, go ahead. Please come with us. Someone suggested. I will, he said. So he went with them. When they arrived at the Jordan, they began cutting down trees. But as one of them was cutting a tree, his axe head fell into the river. Oh, sir, he cried. It was a borrowed axe. Where did it fall? The man of God asked. And when he showed him the place, Elisha cut a stick and threw it into the water at that spot. Then the ax head floated to the surface. Grab it, Elisha said. And the man reached out and grabbed it.

So that's our little story here for. For this morning. And.

You know.

I think many of us at times can relate to this prophet. You know, things are going along well. They're doing a good work. They find themselves growing as a group, and that's a good problem, right? And so they set about to building a new facility, a new shelter, a new place. You know, I don't know what this building was going to look like. I don't know. You know, what, what it. What the measurements were, all that. The bottom line is they were growing, and they were going to set about to doing something new. And I think you and I, you know, just like this, this guy, he's just, you know, chopping along. He's doing good work, he's staying busy. He. He's part of the group that's building this new building. And we can. We can also relate to that at times. You know, we're. We're busy, we're doing good things, and yet somehow we've lost our cutting edge, right. Some somehow we've lost that thing that allowed us to get true work done, eternal work done. And I want to say that the cutting edge here is. Is really. It represents for us this morning the power of God. Can you imagine at times, you know, as we're busy and we're losing, you know, our own cutting edge. Can you imagine this guy trying to cut down a tree with just the axe handle, the wooden axe handle that he had? Imagine, first of all, nothing's going to really happen. You're not really, really able to bite into the tree with an axe handle. You're probably going to break your axe handle and. And at the end of the day, you're going to look.

Pretty bad. All of us that are, I think, trying to do things out of our own flesh, it's kind of like, you know, trying to hit that tree with the ax handle. It's just not going to work. And at times, you know, we can stay busy doing a lot of good things, but we've lost our cutting edge. And as with this man, our cutting edge is borrowed. This man had a borrowed ax. And in that day, it was a very valuable thing because tools were in short supply. We read in other places in. In the Old Testament near there that blacksmiths weren't very readily available, and so tools must have been in short supply. But as with this man.

He had a valuable tool that he lost. So you can imagine his predicament. But our power as well is borrowed from the Lord. We can't produce anything in and of ourselves without it. We're not going to be very effective in our writing. As kingdom writers, it's extra important that we have that cutting edge to recover what we've lost. So the ax head again represents the power to get the job done. I want you to imagine just again trying to cut down that tree with an axe handle.

And just like our flesh sometimes tries to accomplish something.

We need something outside that material. Wood is not going to work. To chop down wood, and especially something big, bigger and more powerful like a tree, we need something of a different material. We need something of a different substance. You and I need the spirit of God. We can't rely on our own flesh to chop down something that's even bigger and more powerful than us. I think we'd all agree that just as Beth said, she. She had mentioned she had lost her peace, that she feels just under spiritual attack. There's. There's a spiritual battle going on. Every one of us feel it in one way, shape or form. All of us do. How do we attempt to handle that, though? How do we attempt to combat that spiritual battle? Are we just using our little wooden axe handle? In order to accomplish. In order to defeat that spiritual power, we need something else, and that's the spirit of God. As Kingdom writers, we need the axe head of the Spirit to accomplish writing that makes a dent. Think about that. If we're going to make a dent as Kingdom writers, if we're going to offer the world something that cuts right to the heart of their issues, that speaks to their spiritual man, that speaks to the things they're dealing with, we have to be able to use something outside of our own flesh that's able to cut right to the matter in someone's life. So I want to suggest just a few steps that we can apply that might help us recover what's been lost. In this case, recovering our cutting edge. Every one of us has a sweet spot. Every one of us has a cutting edge, so to speak, that God wants us to operate out of. And so the first thing that I think we have to do, just like this prophet, this young prophet, is we have to cry out. This young prophet cried out, oh, no, I've lost the axe handle. And it was a borrowed ax. What am I going to do? I mean, the first thing we have to recognize is that we've got a serious concern on our hands. We've lost something. Do we notice a difference without our cutting edge, without our axe head? And some of you have already explained that in the comments. You recognize there's been something missing. You recognize that you've been operating out of short resources. You've been operating in a way that not a lot's getting done. You're staying busy, but you're not getting very far. I think that happens with all of us. We got a lot of things going, but we don't seem to be making much progress. At least what. What we would consider effective progress in what the Lord wants us to do. So the first thing I think we have to do is we've got to cry out. And this man, he cried out to the man of God that was with them. And by the way, isn't it nice? Aren't we happy that someone actually, actually suggested. Would you come with us, Elisha? We're going to go down to the Jordan river, cut down some logs. Elisha, you could tell he was on board. All right, go for it. But someone said, no, that's not going to be good enough. Will you come with us? Will you go down to the river with us. We want you with us. We want the man of God with us. You know what that speaks to with me. Elisha wanted to be invited, and I think the Lord wants us to invite him. In every single operation that we're involved in, every single thing we're attempting, everything that we're wanting to write for his glory, have we first invited him to join us? If we neglect that, imagine if Elisha hadn't been invited. Everyone's down at the river. This thing happens. No man of God to call upon in that day and age. Elisha was known as the man of God. He. He was the one they looked to for spiritual direction. These prophets were under his direction. This was a school of prophets, so to speak. They're being taught, they're being mentored. You and I have to seek the mentor, Jesus. He is our man of God. And, and unless we invite him along, we're not going to see the miracle that this young man saw.

Who's gonna even think of taking a stick from a tree and tossing it out in the water and then that that axe had actually risen in service, Right? It's not going to happen. But with Elisha there, there was a tapping into a miracle because of. Of seeking God. The second thing I think we have to do to recover our cutting edge is we must confess that we've lost the cutting edge. This man told Elisha he was admitting that the ax head had become loose.

And you know what he was admitting there? He was admitting that he had failed to tighten the ax head. He hadn't been watching closely. He didn't recognize that there was a little bit of a loose looseness there with the axe head. How about you and I, We've got to be willing to confess when things have gotten loose in our lives, when things have. When we've not been watching carefully, things can happen. And yet we're being called with this kingdom writing thing. We're being called to connect with the Lord and tighten the screws every day because we know an enemy is looking for a crack. An enemy is looking for a looseness in our lives that he wants to take advantage of. But it's hard. We all want to look like we're on top of things. We all want to look the part. We, you know, we're. We're people that can be prideful at times. We. We want things to look good on the outside, but in reality, we've, We've. We may be dealing with a loose ax head. The third thing we. We need to do is we need to comprehend the value of what we've lost. And this, this man knew. He, he knew the value of what he had lost. He had been entrusted with this expensive tool. The owner had obviously trust entrusted it to him to bring it back to him safely. And tools, like I said, were scarce during this period of time. And so the owner had trusted this young prophet. But how much more valuable is God's spirit in what we're doing in our kingdom? Writing? How much more valuable and yet do we take it for granted? Do we just dismiss it like, ah, you know, just a borrowed thing, you know, no big deal, it's not mine anyway. Hey. Well, the bottom line is, is in this regard, this man knew that he had to replace that ax head. And you can imagine how difficult that is if he had to actually borrow an axe head in the first place. He had no extra ax heads laying around. And so this man knew and he comprehended the value of what he had lost. You and I must comprehend the value of, of the Holy Spirit guiding and directing or writing. If we dismiss that, I believe we're going to have shallow.

Writing that doesn't really move people. It doesn't really impact them on an eternal level. There may be a short value of entertainment that happens, but I don't think the true dent, the true grooves in the tree, so to speak, the, the cutting into the tree is really going to work. It's not going to happen. So we must comprehend that value. And the last thing that I think we need to do is we need to come back to the place where we lost our cutting edge. And I want you just to think briefly. If you're in that place right now where you feel like you've, you've lost your cutting edge.

Where did you lose it? Where, where do you need to go back to? What was it that stirred you up or caused you to forget the value of that cutting edge? Simply go back. That's the neat thing about all this, is we must come back to the place where we lost our cutting edge. Where did our power sink to the bottom, so to speak.

We retrace our steps. You've heard that phrase before. Some of you have done this with your keys. You've lost your keys and you just simply retraced your steps and you realize, oh, they're sitting right there, you know, on this part of the table. Or, or I left them in the bathroom, you know, as I was doing my hair.

We retrace our steps. Some of us might even call this a GPS reroute you know what your GPS does? You know, you got Google Maps up there and, and it reroutes you if you've taken a wrong turn. And so we, many of us, need a GPS reroute. I want to say that it's a miracle of God when he gives us back the power to do his work his way. That is a miracle of God. And this is what happened with this man that lost his ax head. He went to the man of God, he confessed it. He cried out, he recognized he was. He was empty. That ex head wasn't going to be recovered unless.

Something miraculous happened. I don't even think this prophet knew what, what Elisha was about ready to do. He didn't go to him saying, yeah, I know that you do this special trick, you know, where you cut a stick off a tree and you throw it out in the middle of the Jordan, and all, all of a sudden, you know, iron floats up to the. The top of the surface. No, he had no idea. He just simply knew, I need to go to the man of God, and maybe he's got some wisdom for me. What should I do? And every one of us needs to come back to the man of God, Jesus. We come back and we say, oh, what, what am I to do here? I've lost it.

And in a calm way you can just imagine, like Elisha, Jesus comes to us and says, let. Let's go back to the place where you lost the accent. Let's start there.

And then he does his miracle. The miracle is he refills us with his spirit. He gives us that God idea. He allows us to see something in a way we hadn't before. And somehow he resurrects the ax heads of our lives. Somehow they float up to the surface. It's almost like that ax head was a baptized axe head coming up to the surface out of the water. And what does Elisha say is the final thing to do? Don't just stand there, essentially, now grab it. You see it? Now grab it. You and I must take that thing that God's given us, that cutting edge, and say, okay, thank you, Lord. Now I'm going to set about to working again. You. You better believe that. Elisha put that axe head back on the handle. He tightened it extra tight. He probably did a couple of practice swings just to make sure. And then he set about working again. He said about chopping down trees. Why? Because they had a great work they were doing. They're growing, we're growing. We got all things, all kinds of things. Happening in our lives with our writing, with our planning, with our speaking, with this and with that, we got lots of good things happening. And the Lord says, here's your cutting edge back now, let's set about to working. And you're going to see that you're going to get a lot more done with my help. And not only that, it's going to be very calculated, it's going to be very accurate, it's going to be very sharp. You're going to have a sharp focus, and I will guide your steps. And that's what I want to. Want to share. So, first of all, we must cry out. Second, we must confess that we've lost it. Third, we've got to comprehend the value of that, that item that we've lost. And number four, we've got to come back to that original place where we realize, this is where I think I lost it. This has been going on in my life, and I think this, this is where I lost it. So I come back to that.

And I come to the man of God. And in this case, we come to the Lord. In this case, in the case of this prophet, he came to the man of God that he could call upon right there, the flesh and blood that he saw in Elisha. And in us, we come to the Jesus who is the man of God. He is the King of kings, Lord of lords. He is the prophet of all prophets. We come to him and he knows our predicament and he can get us out of it. So where are you at today? What have you, what have you lost and how can you recover it? These are the ways that you can do that. It's a humility. We've got to recognize this. It's a humility of saying, I am bankrupt. I can do nothing with this simple wooden axe handle. Nothing's going to be chopped down. But with you, I can do all things, Lord. And so what is it that God wants to restore and. And help you recover today and tomorrow in these two days of a virtual writing retreat? Maybe part of the day is just simply coming back in humility. And maybe you even apart from this virtual writing retreat, you have a time of prayer, a time of fasting, perhaps a time of just seeking and crying out in a way you haven't for a while because you're desperate for that cutting edge and God wants to give it to you.

Yeah. So good. And recently in our church, our pastor had a. A sermon and he was talking about prayer and really coming to God and how prayer is like our Pressure valve. When all the things start piling up, we come to prayer and we can pour out our hearts to God. Just read the Psalms. C.J. and I were talking about this recently, you know, because we're in a Bible reading plan. It's, you know, we're in the Psalms right now. And it's like David, often he would be like, God, this is awful. These people are coming after me. Rah, rah, rah, rah. And then what would happen? He would come back and say, but God, you are on the throne. You are glorious. You have done this. You, you, you. And by the end, he came to a peace. So, you know, there are times that we just need to pour out our hearts to God. We need to come to him, confess, comprehend the lost, come, come back to where we lost it, and then, you know, come to Jesus. And I know everyone thinks different things about this, but our pastor specifically talked about praying in the spirit. So that's tongues. We don't believe that, you know, that's, you know, a sign of salvation or whatever. I mean, I know a lot of people believe a lot of different things, but God has given me that, that prayer language. And so I was convicted because I have not been using that prayer language. And she. He specifically said, a lot of times that is the pressure valve that we release the pressure. And I've had a lot of pressure lately. We had two of our virtual assistants stepped down. I have a new person that I'm training. It's not been going easy or, you know, there's been a lot of bumps in the road. We've had a lot of technology issues, websites not working, and, you know, just all the things going on. And I was like, I need to get back to my pressure valve. You know, like, I need to get back to that place of prayer. I need to come back to that place where I lost the peace, right? Where, you know, it's like where I spend time with God and I pour out my heart. So I've just been. I've been setting my alarm for 10 minutes, and then I have a little. A little notebook. And what I do is I just write one takeaway or something that God said or even just like I just released this during that 10 minutes. And so I think it's, you know, it's just been really helpful. And then when we read the Bible and read the plan together instead of just. It's just been a checklist for me lately. And I was like, I need to get back to, like, this is God speaking to me. And so I'd be like, God, show me at least one thing. And then I'd write that in my little notebook too. At least one takeaway, one nugget, one thing. And I think we all are on a journey. There's. We all have different seasons. Sometimes though, things can just feel like they're burying us. The circumstances of life. And I felt that way lately. And so I had to get back to some of the things that I had been doing before. And God is renewing some things in me. And it is so powerful. When we spend that time in prayer, it could be two way journaling. You know, we teach about this in Christian Book Academy. It's something I learned from Mark Ver and just release the pressure, get back to that place where we're meeting with God. We're coming to that person, Jesus that C.J. was talking about and really connecting with God, receiving from him. You know, even during some of those 10 minute times of prayer recently, God's given me an idea for the technology issues that we've been facing. Or he's like, during that time of prayer, he gives me like, Shelly, this is what you need to do next. And it's not all resolved yet, but I'm staying at peace because God's like, Shelly, I've got this just keep coming to me each day depend on me. I personally can't figure it out. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. There's all these weird things we have to update our server. I don't know. There's just, it's crazy lately. So I just take a breath and I'm like, okay, God, what do I need to do today? And sometimes he gives it to me during that time of prayer, sometimes he doesn't. But how many times do we just go through our day and, and it's like coming to God is just checking something else off our list. That's the way it was for me for a few months. I was just in survival mode, you know, like when my, my operations manager stepped down and you know, it's like everything's back on me again. And it's like, okay, God, I've got to get back. And so cj, this was so good. Just of a reminder to come back to God to recover what has been lost. The enemy always wants to take that time away from us with God. Amen. Like that's, that's his goal is to steal, kill and destroy. John 10:10 says, But Jesus has come to give us life and life abundantly. When we come to him, he will fill our cup again. So cj, why don't you pray for all of us in this?

Oh Father, we just thank you for this little story tucked away in the Old Testament. And just that each of us, if we've lost our cutting edge, so to speak, which is ultimately.

Your spirit, where if we just feel like we've been trudging along and we're tired and we've been working out of our own strength, I just want to pray, Lord, that each of us would filled with your spirit. We acknowledge our bankruptcy without you, Lord. We acknowledge that we can't chop anything down without your cutting edge. And I ask, Lord, that each person here would recover what's been lost in their lives, in their writing, in their creativity. I pray, Lord, that they'd be able to move forward out of your strength and your power and just know when they look back, it was all. It was all you, Lord. We are vessels that unless we're filled by you, we just don't have a lot to offer when it comes to true eternal significance, breakthrough speaking to very specific things in people's lives. We just know we need to be led by your spirit for those things. And so I just, I ask, Lord, that each person here would find themselves being rejuvenated and recovering what has been lost over today and into tomorrow. May this just be such a fruitful time with you, Lord. We just we invite you just like one of those prophets invited Elisha to come down to the river with them. We invite you to be in our midst and guiding us as we're writing. And we we we wouldn't want it any other way, Lord. We we don't want to leave you at home. We we want you with us step by step. And.

We just ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.

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