#435 Shoring up Weaknesses

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.

Welcome to the Kingdom Writers Podcast. My name is Shelli Hitz, one of your hosts. This episode is an excerpt from our virtual writing retreat we host every month inside our membership Christian Book Academy. You can join us with a special coupon code just for podcast listeners, and this will get you 50% off your first month. Use the coupon code podcast and this way we can help you take a step of faith and finally finish your book. So go to ChristianBookAcademy.com and enter the Coupon Code Podcast at checkout for 50% off your first month. Come join us at our retreats and all the other things that we offer throughout the month. And I pray that the encouragement from this episode blesses you.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the September 2024 virtual writing retreat. I'm Shelly Hits, and I'm here with my husband, cj.

Yeah, we had a little pause there. Sorry about that.

Oh, no worries. And we're excited to see you all just get a lot of work done and just be able to move forward in your call to write. So, cj, why don't you go ahead and open us in prayer?

Yeah. Well, Father, we thank you for another virtual writing retreat and each person here and Father.

And direct each person that each person would come away encouraged and edified.

Able to make progress in their writing with your help, Lord, we know with your holy spirit, anything's possible. So we just pray, Lord, that whether they're.

Being whatever it is, Lord, in the this whole process, we pray that you would bear fruit through this today and tomorrow. We just ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.

All right. Welcome Mary. She's here for the first time. So excited. And.

Yeah, so we are excited for what God is going to do. Cj, you were still coming in and out a little bit. I'm not sure what that.

I'm noticing that too.

Like I mentioned to everyone, we have a new setup here with a computer, and I don't have all the little kinks worked out.

Okay, well, we'll just have to figure that out afterwards. But hopefully just pray everyone that it works well for what we need today.

And we're just excited that you're here and you're ready to write. So each virtual writing retreat CJ chooses a theme. And so, cj, why don't you share what that theme is with us?

Yeah, so the theme is shoring up weaknesses.

Shoring up weaknesses.

How do you spell shoring? I was going to put that in the chat box.

Yeah, it'd be S H O R.

I N G. Okay, that's what I thought. Okay. Shoring up weakness. All right, so we give you a minute just to have a mini business meeting with God. Ask God, what does that.

That theme mean for you and your writing right now or mean for you in your life? Shoring up weakness. We're going to give you one minute, we're going to go silent, and then we'll come back and ask you to share in the chat box what you sensed God saying to you.

All right, that was a minute. And go ahead and share in the chat box what you sensed God saying to you about that theme today. Shoring up weakness. Shirley says, aware, attention, action. We have to be aware of our weakness before we can take action. Kind of like making a decision. Hard to make a decision. Once the decision is made, it's time to implement.

Heather says, working from his strength and not my weakness.

Yeah.

That'S a reminder I need all the time.

Audrey says get.

And Lois says, shoring up weakness. Leaning on him.

That's good. You're. You're tapping into the core of shoring with that word. Leaning even.

Yeah. Shirley says, coming together in strength.

Tammy says when I keep my focus on him, my weaknesses fade.

Yeah. I'm going to have CJ read the rest of these, and I'm going to go ahead over to your computer, cj and see if we can do a backup recording on your computer just in case the zoom is going in and out. So you go ahead and keep reading full.

He's willing to work through us in our weaknesses to show his greatness.

Lana says stop being afraid.

And we have his power to move forward.

Okay. And Karen says, stepdad is a Navy sailor. So I see ropes and binding up weaknesses. What is bound in heaven is bound on earth. Saris is building strength through guidance. He's still working on me.

Those are fantastic.

Looking at here today.

All right, did you get all of them, cj?

I think so.

Okay.

Left off with Sarah there.

Okay.

There's Barbara. Shifting my focus off of my weakness and onto God's strength. Yeah. Amen to that. Yeah.

Well, I couldn't figure out while he was on his computer how to do another recording from there. So we also record these for our podcast, and we have them in the replays. So I wanted to have a good recording. But we'll just trust God. If it goes in and out, that is, you know, God will fill in the gaps. So.

How many of you know that God is bigger than any technical issues that we face? He's bigger than all of that.

So today CJ is going to share some encouragement to us to, in this theme of shoring up weakness. So cj, why don't you share with us and encourage us with this today?

Yeah, well, let me, let me start off by at least defining what we mean by shoring. So shoring is the process of temporarily supporting a building a vessel, a structure or a trench with shores. These are props.

Pairs or alterations. Shoring comes from shore, which is a timber or a metal prop. Ensoring may be vertical, angled or horizontal.

Actually read a passage that really has to do with this whole shoring up weaknesses idea. And the passage is in 2nd Chronicles, chapter 32. And it's verses 1 through 8 that we're going to read. And it has to do with King Hezekiah. And so let me just give you a quick little background. Hezekiah has just made a lot of really good changes for the better. You could, you could sum this up with a repentance, a deciding to do things God's way.

To completely demolish.

Places of idolatry. And you name it, he basically destroyed that and established his kingdom by saying, we're going to worship the Lord our God. And so I want to with that, start with verse one in chapter.

Faithfully carried out this work. King Sennacherib of Assyria invaded Judah. He laid siege to the fortified towns, giving orders for his army to break through their walls.

Just real quick. This is proof right here in this first verse.

Things. We've carried out the Lord's assignment for us. We have written the words. He's. He's called us to. We've pushed that publish button. The book has gotten out into people's hands. It's impacting them, it's making a difference. And how many know that even with that.

That we are not immune from.

Receiving attacks of the enemy? So that just shows you right here, Hezekiah did all the right things. You might say, oh no, what's going on here? He should just be living completely in, you know, problem free land. Well, it doesn't work that way, not even in our world here today. And so Hezekiah here has done all this. Verse 2. When Hezekiah realized that Sennacherib also intended to attack Jerusalem he consulted with his officials and military advisors and they decided to stop the flow of the springs outside the city. They organized a huge work crew to stop the flow of the springs, cutting off the Brooklyn that ran through the fields. For they said, why should the kings of Assyria come here and find plenty of water? Then Hezekiah worked hard at repairing all the broken sections of the wall, erecting towers.

He also reinforced.

In the city of David and manufactured large numbers of weapons and shields. He appointed military officers over the people and assembled them before him in the square at the city gate. Then Hezekiah encouraged them by saying, be strong and courageous. Don't be afraid or discouraged because the king of Assyria.

Our side, he may have a great army, but they are merely men. We have the Lord our God to help us and fight our battles for us. Hezekiah's.

The people. And so with that, I want to actually share with us five lessons that I think each one of us can take from Hezekiah in this passage. Five lessons.

Wise to consult with trusted advisors just like Hezekiah did. That was the first thing he did. He said, you.

Ask for their opinions, their wisdom, their recommendations, and you and I can do the same thing. We could be attacked. We could have a problem that we, we need an answer for, whatever it may be. We've got friends, we've got pastors, we've got counselors, we've got our fellow kingdom writers within this Christian Book Academy community. And we can seek out this count.

Understanding as we move forward. So that's the first thing Hezekiah was humble enough to say. I'm going to look around me. I've got military commanders, I've got advisors. Let's have a gathering here and let's talk about what we do moving forward with this enemy that's attacking us.

Off anything that might fuel or refresh our enemy and allow him to prolong his attack. You see that one of the things they, they decided to do right off the bat was cut off the flow of the springs so that when Sennacherib and his army showed up, they weren't going to find any water right there. And so this would have caused their army to actually redouble and say, okay, what are we going to do here without water? What's our backup plan? And so essentially we're cutting off anything that might fuel or refresh our enemy and allow him to prolong his attack. Now, sin is obvious in terms of one thing that we can cut off, but perhaps we also need to consider cutting off Maybe there's some toxic people in our lives, people that every time we're around them we feel horrible after we leave their presence.

Maybe we need to cut off the flow of toxic news. And aren't we into a flow right now in this political season of toxic news? It's really easy.

Through social media, through all of our news networks. And it could be that this is one way the enemy creates anxiety in our lives. And so what I want to encourage us to do is think about cutting off things that would fuel our enemy in terms of him bringing additional things to our lives that we don't need. And so we have a choice there in terms of cutting off things that.

So that's the second thing. The third thing I think we can learn from Hezekiah is that.

Broken places in the walls, shoring up weaknesses, different things we can begin healing. Broken places.

Where perhaps the enemy keeps zeroing in on because there hasn't been healing in that area, shoring up those weaknesses to prevent the enemy from constantly zeroing in on those vulnerable areas.

One of the examples that we could use is perhaps forming a small prayer team. Many of you have done this, but perhaps forming a small prayer team could be a form of constructing a second wall. Think about this. Now, Hezekiah formed us. He built a second wall around.

Layer that the enemy would have had to have gone through, had to use their battering rams to try to get through and create an opening. And so Hezekiah and his advisors, his commanders, were making things difficult for the enemy. How are you and I making things difficult for our enemy in terms of our, our writing? One of the first things we can do is form a prayer team that then act.

Here. So if you haven't done that, I want to encourage you to.

Create a prayer team that could be two people, that could be 10 people. Could be an email you send out, it could be a text that you sent out every once a week. You decide how you want to do that. But the important thing is having those people in our lives that can form that second wall. The fourth thing that I think we can do as we see that Hezekiah manufactured large numbers of weapons and shields, what could we interpret that as in our lives? Well, this could represent reading, meditating, memorizing.

Godly teachings that help sharpen us. So there's a number of ways that we could, so to speak, manufacture weapons and tools and shields that help combat this enemy of ours that's constantly.

Trying to throw us off, trying to find an opening, trying to find a weakness. Trying to sniff out areas in our lives where we have not shored up the weaknesses. And so these are just ways that we can actually do this. And then the fifth, the fifth and final lesson I think we can learn from Hezekiah is we remind ourselves, just like he did with everyone in, in his. At his that was under him, reminding ourselves and others that we have a power that's far greater on our side. And notice that Hezekiah was proactive in doing the things that he could. Notice that he still was going about consulting advisors, military commanders.

Building a second wall, constructing weapons, shields. He was doing all these things. He's being proactive. But notice his attitude.

Still leaning and looking to the Lord for ultimate protection over his enemies. Now, this may sound familiar when he says we have a power far greater on our side, if that sounds familiar, this is also very similar. And I wonder if he was even quoting the prophet Elisha. When the prophet Elisha and his servant found themselves in a horrible predicament where they were surrounded by the Aramean army.

Elisha continued to hear from the Lord and give the enemy's plans to, to Israel and their and their commanders. And listen to this. In Second Kings, chapter 6, 15, 17, it says, when the servant of the man of God got up early the next morning and went outside, there were troops, horses and chariots everywhere. Oh.

He cried to Elisha. And Elisha says, don't be afraid, for there are more on our side than on theirs. And then Elisha prayed, o Lord, open his eyes and let him see. The Lord opened the young man's eyes, and when he looked up, he saw that the hillside around Elisha was filled with horses and chariots of fire. You see, I.

Elisha, when he was also encouraging those Israelites, his commanders, his leadership, everyone around him, we've done all these things. We've done what we can, but now we lean on the Lord. The Lord is our ultimate source of protection. We don't lean on these shields, these weapons, we don't lean on that second wall. These are all good things that we do. But ultimately we have a God who is greater than anything that our enemy could muster. And so that's the encouraging thing for us today, is that no matter what we're facing in terms of attack.

God who's much bigger. In fact, I want to give you one illustration to close. If you were to go outside.

And you were to look up at the sun, do you know, do you realize that you could take a quarter and you could put that.

Basically block out the sun with that little quarter. Now, do you understand that the sun.

Is 865,000 miles in diameter? By the way, our Earth is 7,900 miles in diameter. So here you have the Sun 865,000 miles in diameter, and you can cover that up with a little quarter. Do you know, I think this is what the enemy tries to do for us. The enemy is that quarter he's trying to show us. Oh, you know, you. You don't really serve that big a God. He's not that big. See, you can even cover him up. You can't even see that God. Well, in reality, the sun is still 865,000 miles in diameter. And it doesn't matter what you do with that quarter, it's not going to change the size of that sun. We need to realize that the enemy's trying to diminish.

God in our eyes. He's trying to diminish God so that you and I are scared. We're in.

Yeah, I'm done. I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm just bringing on attack from the enemy. No, we serve a God that's much bigger and a God that's able to help you complete the writing assignment that he has for you that he's called you to. If he's called you to it, by the way, he. He will equip you, he will help you, he will protect you. And that enemy is nothing but a little quarter in the eyes of God. And so I want to encourage all of you with that. Take some lessons. Take these five lessons from Hezekiah. Go back and reread.

Afterwards, which was a huge victory brought on by, by the way, one angel, one unnamed angel wiped out the army of.

We can do all these things, but at the end of the day, we lean on that God who is bigger than anything we can imagine. And he's there to help us. So that's my encouragement for all of us this morning.

Yeah, that was good. And I apologize for anyone that's listening to the recording if it was going in and out. We've been having some technical difficulties, but we just pray that God worked through this message regardless and filled in the gaps for you. And so let me just pray so, God, thank you so much for this word of encouragement. Thank you. That you are the one that fights our battles, that you are the one that is. Is working on our behalf. And we just give you everything that's going on in our lives right now, our writing and personal lives. And we just pray, God, that you would bring victory, that you would do it, that it would be you coming through. And we just pray this in Jesus powerful name. Amen.

Amen.

All right, well, we are going to have just a time of corporate prayer. CJ and I will pray over you and then we will have a time going into breakout rooms where you can pray for each other. And we will you, if you want to stay in this room, you can just be quiet, have like a business meeting with God. But I do encourage you to go to the breakout rooms. It's just a really powerful time of meeting with other Kingdom writers. So cj, why don't you start and, and start prayer and then I will pray and then we'll go into the breakout rooms.

Yeah, Father, again, we just thank you for your word. We thank you for these stories that we come across where we see men and women just like.

Who are seeking your guidance and.

They'Re continuing to even shore up their own weaknesses.

And yet leaning on you the whole time. And so I just want to pray, Lord, that each person here would just have a wonderful day of, of writing or planning or whatever they're doing with you, Lord. Dreaming, brainstorming. I pray that you would give each person those God ideas, that inspiration that only you can provide. And we just thank you Lord, for just all of the. The fruit that you want to bear out through today and tomorrow. We pray for those watching any of the replay and we just pray that they're encouraged as well. And so we give you this time and we pray it be productive time making progress and whatever way that looks for each person in Jesus name.

Yes, Lord. We just pray for each Kingdom writer. We pray that you would shore up their weaknesses today. You would show them what it is that you're wanting to do in their lives to bring breakthrough and victory. And we just thank you Lord for what you're going to accomplish today. We thank you in advance, Lord, that you are going to do some amazing things, you know, above and beyond what we can even think or imagine. So Lord, we just give you this time, we give you these days, and we pray that you would do the work, they would part. Each of these writers would partner with you as they move forward today and tomorrow. And we pray this in Jesus powerful name. Amen.

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 an 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 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@trainingauthors.com 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 training authors.com forward/hits blitz 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. But 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 hitsblitz if you're ready to take a step of faith and finally finish your book, we have a few ways we can help you. First of all, you can join our free Writing Week challenge to create a writing habit in just 15 minutes a day. Thousands of writers have taken this over the years and it is incredible that the progress that you'll see. So join us@writingweek.com and again, this is completely free. Inside our Book Writing Lab workshop you can choose your book topic, write an outline, and create a writing plan in just 90 minutes so you'll finally feel confident that you'll actually finish your book. Get started@bookwritinglab.com and finally you can get one more support and personalized feedback from myself and our team by joining Christian Book Academy because the honest truth is most writers stay stuck and never finish their first draft. But inside Christian Book Academy we help you partner with God to write your book so you can become a published author. So finally ditch your self doubt and take a step of faith so you can finish your book. Join Christian book academy@christianbookacademy.com and get 50% off your first month by using the Coupon Code Podcast at checkout There's a special coupon code for our podcast listeners. We love you. So come over to ChristianBookAcademy.com, use the coupon Code podcast and we look forward to working closely with you.

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.