#445 Forever Friends

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 Shelli 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 Shelly 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. Today we're going to have some encouragement for you as a Kingdom writer on the theme Forever Friends. Cj, why don't you share this encouragement with us?

Okay, so this whole idea of forever friends just. I did a little research regarding just this idea and a forever friend is someone who's close and important and terms of being an important part of your life and whom you share a deep connection. And some of those characteristics might include unconditional acceptance. They accept you for who you are and don't judge you. They support you. They help you through difficult times and encourage you to love yourself and others.

There's communication, so you share your thoughts and feelings with each other.

There's conflict resolution, so you work together to resolve conflicts and talk about sensitive topics. So that's just a little research I did online. It's just we all, I think deep down know what a forever friend is. I thought I'd look at just a few references regarding friendship in scripture and the first one I wanted to share with you is is found in Isaiah 41, verses 8 through 10. And it says, but as for you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, my chosen one, descended from Abraham, my friend. Now this is also referenced in James 2:23, where Abraham is known as a friend of God. Some of you even know the song I am a Friend of God that has become popular in recent years. And so just this IDEA in verse 9, it goes on to say in Isaiah 41, I have called you back from the ends of the earth, saying, you are my servant for I have chosen you and will not throw you away. Don't be afraid, for I am with you. Don't be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand. And I think each one of us here could put ourselves in the place of God addressing Israel here and specifically even mentioning Abraham as his friend. You and I have become a friend of God through Christ. And so with that, I want to actually move to John 15, this idea of friendship that Jesus gives us in John 15. I want to just read a couple verses.

John 15, 13, 15.

And he specifically tells his disciples, there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you slaves because a master doesn't confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends. Since I have told you everything the Father told me, isn't that incredible that Jesus specifically said, I've told you everything that the Father has told me? I want you to think about the implications of what that means for you and I as Kingdom writers. First of all, when we come to Christ, we become God's friend. We are friends with him, and we are, in a sense, forever friends. We are the definition of forever friends. But I think many times we forget to see God as walking hand in hand with us, as someone that wants to have those deep conversations with us, that wants to give us those ideas and inspirations for things with our books and our writing.

And I think if we would begin to confide in the Lord, if we would begin to see Jesus truly as a friend.

We would begin to come to him and say, what do you want to share with me today, Lord? What would you have for me that the Father wants to. Wants me to know today? What would you relate to me.

Father? What would you have me do today regarding my writing? It's just this whole idea of a back and forth and of course you're sharing your heart, he's sharing his. That's what friends do. And so think about the implications regarding your writing and the ideas and the things that God wants to share for you. Some of those secret things you think about, just this idea of a slave or a servant and Jesus saying, a master doesn't confide his deepest things to his servant or those tending, working for him.

But he does so with his deepest friends. And you and I fall into that category now. We are in a deep friendship. And then finally I want to look at one more friendship and this has to do with David and Jonathan. One of the deepest, if not the deepest, friendship we read in all of Scripture. It's one of my favorites. And many of you may not realize Shelly and I, back in 2014, we had a miscarriage. And some of you have heard the story there, but we had already had this little boy that we believe was going to be a little boy. We don't know for sure, but we just both had a sense inside that it was a little boy that we lost. And that little boy was going to be a little cj. Except mine is Kerry James. His was going to be Caden Jonathan. Jonathan being after the Jonathan that's David's friend in the Old Testament. One of my favorite, if not my favorite, Old Testament people is Jonathan. And in 1st Samuel, chapter 18, I want to read a few verses regarding this deep friendship.

So first Samuel 18, I'm going to read verses 1, 3, and 4. So it says, after David had finished talking with Saul, he met Jonathan, the king's son. There was an immediate bond between them, for Jonathan loved David. Moving on to verse three. And Jonathan made a solemn pact. Now, the word there is also used for covenant. He made a covenant with David because he loved him as he loved himself.

Verse 4. Jonathan sealed the pact by taking off his robe and giving it to David together with his tunic. So sword, bow and belt.

We see here a deep covenant made that Jonathan initiated. Jonathan was the initiator in this instance with David. What can we learn from the things that Jonathan gave David? What can we learn from this act of. Of humility on Jonathan's part? If we look at the robe, we would say that Jonathan gave David his robe to symbolize that he was giving David the right to succeed him to the throne. Jonathan was the rightful heir of the throne of his father, Saul, except that God intervened again and said, saul is. We're going to end the household of Saul in terms of being on the throne. He's not done what I've asked him to, so we're going to start over. Now, this isn't always the case with human relationships. Jonathan could have said, you know what? David's a threat to me. I've heard that he's possibly been chosen as the future king, but I don't like that idea. And Jonathan could have had something to say about that, but instead he gives him his robe to symbolize.

That he's handing this over to David. The sword could symbolize Jonathan giving David that sword to symbolize he was entrusting David with his authority and means of defense. He's saying, here's my sword. I'm entrusting not only my life, my household's life, but the whole nation. I'm essentially giving you handing over this sword as a symbolizing that you are going to be our defender. David.

He gave him his belt. Jonathan gave David his belt to symbolize that he was equipping David.

For challenges ahead.

He was essentially saying, yes, there's going to be challenges. I give you my belt because I believe that God is going to use you powerfully in equipping this nation, equipping you for your leadership. And then finally, Jonathan's actions also showed that he loved David as his own soul. He took the initiative to establish a foundation for their relationship. I want to read one more reference before I come back to this, but that reference is actually in Second Samuel, chapter one, and this is after Jonathan and Saul had actually fallen on the battlefield, David actually penned some words regarding his best friend.

And so second Samuel, chapter one, verses 25 and 26.

Says this. David pens, oh, how the mighty heroes have fallen in battle. Jonathan lies dead on the hills. How I weep for you, my brother Jonathan. Oh, how much I loved you. And your love for me was deep, deeper than the love of women.

And in some translations.

That translates to the love of two women.

And isn't it ironic that David actually did have two true wives that he had married. He had others in there that might have been known as concubines, mistresses. But we know of two, Ahonoam and Abigail, that were truly his wives.

And he could have been saying, I have these two wives. But you know what, Jonathan? The love you and I share with one another is even deeper than the love that I share with these two wives. Now, I jokingly wonder if maybe it was because the love of those two women was so divided. And we already know that there aren't too many good things that come from having multiple spouses. We don't see very much good coming out of the kings that had all these wives. We even see that David's own son, Solomon had 700. Oh, my goodness. Can we just say that maybe the definition of stress and so.

Come back to this deep love. What if you and I envisioned ourselves taking off our robe, the robe that the world wants to put on us, and we're laying that before Jesus, our deepest friend, the one who says, I now call you friends. And we say in return, Jesus, in return, I give you this robe to symbolize that you are my king. I'm giving you complete authority over me, I'm giving you my sword. And when I thought of sword or bow, I thought of these pins of ours. You know, these pins are like bows in a lot of ways. We're writing and words are shooting off.

Into their intended targets. We like to sometimes pray as you publish your books, may those books hit their intended targets, May they get into the right hands at the right time. And I want to say that each of you, as you hold that pen, I want you just to envision yourself now handing that pin over before the feet of Jesus. You've handed your robe, your tunic, the very essence of yourself. You're essentially exposing yourself before the Lord, saying, you can have it all, Lord. You're giving him your pen. You're giving him your notebooks, your computer, the very things that you type your manuscripts on. You're saying in a symbolic way, you. You are my king. You are the rightful king. You are the chosen one. I am not. I abdicate all my responsibilities, and I give them to you. Instead of protesting, instead of saying, I want my way, Instead of saying, hey, wait a minute, I want to be the king of my throne. I want to be on that throne. I want to dictate. Instead, you're saying, I lay this down before you, King Jesus.

I lay all of my manuscripts. I lay all of my ideas. And I say, lord, would you be my guide? Would you be the one who is my forever friend, constantly at my side.

Constantly sharing with me as I share with you? We go back and forth. We have this deep commitment.

And as David even said, even stronger than these two wives that I have in terms of that love. Now, that's deep, and that might be a little controversial, but David was essentially saying, oh, how I miss my friend Jonathan. We shared deeply together. We had a bond. And some of you have those forever friends. Let me share just as we close. One forever friend that I still have. His name's Steve Gustweiler, and Steve Gustweiler now lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We used to live in the same town in Ohio for a lot of years. And I met Steve when we began attending the church that Shelly's dad was the pastor of for years. That would have been somewhere around after we got married. 98, I began to get to know this guy, Steve Gustweiler. We crossed paths. He'd gone on a mission trip with the church, and we just became friends. We'd meet for coffee, we'd meet for prayer. And Steve was one of these guys that would just side up with you, and he would be a warrior with you. Whatever you needed. And I still have fond memories. And Shelly was reminding me this just yesterday that Steve would come into my office. I worked for Youth for Christ at the time. I was a campus life director with a couple local high schools and junior highs. And once a week Steve would come into my office, we would close the door and we would get down on our knees on that office floor and we would lift up the kids that I was working with and we would lift them up by name. There were many who were on the the edge of turning their hearts over to Christ. There were important meetings that we would be sharing the gospel in. There were trips that we would be planning. There were all kinds of things that needed prayer. And somehow it could have been a book that I read. I just caught this vision of the need to have specific crying out prayer for these kids. And Steve was there right by my side. Week after week he would show up and we'd both get down. Two men getting down on our knees in that office crying out for these kids and asking for the Lord to work in their hearts in such a way that they would find themselves surrendering to him. And we saw fruit, we saw lives changed. We saw kids that were seemingly hardened that would soften to the Lord. And it was all because of prayer. It was all because of a crying out to the Lord. And this man, Steve Gusweiler, who has continued to be a good friend all these years later, we still talk and we pick up right where we left off. That's a forever friend. You don't have to just rehash and get to know each other all over again. You start where you leave left off the last time. And Steve was one of those supporters. He came down to Belize when Shelly and I were down there as short term missionaries. He's continued to visit. At times we will talk on the phone and pray together. Steve Guestwiler is one of those that is a true friend. And he's continued to even give sacrificially to ministries that we still support in Belize. And I just want to say that if you have one of those types of friends, folks, then you have pure gold. And some of you do have those friends. But for some of you and all of us, I should say Jesus is that forever friend that never leaves us. He never forsakes us. He's always with us, he's always guiding us. And I want to say that just as Jonathan submitted his will, submitted his kingship to this David, who would be his best friend, may I submit that our forever friend Jesus has our best interest in mind regarding our writing and even our best writing to come, no matter what he leads us in, Jesus has your best interest in mind. So I want you to consider that as you think about Forever Friends and the laying down of some of the things that we would love to hold on to, but we'll do anything sacrificially for this deep friendship.

Yeah, that's so good. And I think that it's just a powerful picture of what God does for us. And as I was praying for you, and I knew C.J. was going to be sharing this topic of Forever Friends, I asked the Lord if he had an encouragement he wanted me to share. And he brought this story to mind. And I just feel like I'm supposed to share it with you today. I was the new girl in my class in first grade. And we were on the playground and the boys were chasing me all around. But I didn't want to play with the boys. I wanted to play with the girls. So I went around looking for some girls to play with. I turned the corner and there were some girls sitting by the wall. I went to approach them and all I could hear was Spanish. They were. Their parents were migrant farmers in the orange groves in this little town in Central Florida where I lived. And they didn't even look up to acknowledge me. And I couldn't understand what they were saying. And I remember standing on that playground feeling so alone, like I did not have even one friend. And I ended up being at that school for two years. And would you know it, I never made one friend. I was the minority culturally in that school. And I just. I never. No one ever wanted to be my friend. Now fast forward to third grade. We moved to Pennsylvania, and I'm. When CJ and I were cleaning out our garage recently because it got flooded, I found this little book, I and third grade. And it's like in 1983.

And they had us write different things. And on this specific page, I wrote about my best friend. And I even drew a little picture. And as I was thinking about Forever Friends, this whole story came to my mind. And I just wrote, in third grade, my best friend is Stacy Sandstrom. I'm gonna cry. She's my best friend because we spend lots of time together, we play together, and we see lots of each other. She has brown hair and eyes 4ft tall, and she's thin, 45 pounds.

Stacy is my sister and she's still my forever friend. And when I had no friends and I felt so alone in third grade, I realized I Do have a friend. It's my sister. And we moved so much when I was growing up. My dad was a pastor, but then we also had tragedies in our families and deaths, and we had to move for that. And I just didn't have very many friends growing up. But I always had my sister and she was my best friend. And it was making me think of us as writers. And sometimes I think as writers, we are looking for that key relationship. Maybe you're looking to. You just think, I have to find this publisher that's going to publish my book. Or maybe it's like this marketing connection. Or maybe it's if my post just goes viral or if something just happens, then everything will be good and I'll have what I need. But what I was doing in first grade is I was looking all around that playground for. For a best friend when I had a best friend with me the whole time. And I think sometimes as writers, we're looking all around outside of us for the answers to what we're supposed to write next in our manuscript, for that publisher, for that marketing or whatever. And we have the Holy Spirit inside of us. Do we even comprehend what that means? We have the treasures of God, everything that he has, and it's inside of us as followers of Jesus. And yet we're looking for all these other things. We're looking to coaches and mentors, and we're here to mentor you. But you know what? You have your forever friend inside you with you all the time. And when I realized in third grade, I have a forever friend.

My sister, that little drawing that I wrote, I think some of you, God wants to remind you today that he is with you. The Holy Spirit is with you. And he will give you exactly what you need. Now, he still may connect you with a publisher. He still may allow one of your posts to go viral. He still may give you the idea to market your books. But that all comes from the Holy Spirit. And so I just want to encourage you, as CJ Was talking about forever friend. Like, you have this inside of you and so many times we don't see it. We miss the trees for the forest, or however the saying goes. But let me pray for you today. God, thank you so much that you are our forever friend. You are with us through everything that you are here right now. And I pray right now, if there are any Kingdom writers that are just feeling, yeah, but that's not enough, or, yeah, but God hasn't come through for me before, or yeah, but I need this, Lord, I Just pray you would break off all the lies in Jesus name of any other thing we think we need and that we know that you would help us to know that we have you, we have you as our forever friend, that you are with us, you are walking with us. You will give us God ideas for writing our manuscript, for publishing it, for marketing it, and Lord, we can trust in you. It may not happen right this instant, right this moment, but as we continually and faithfully come to you, you will show us what to do. You will lead us in the way we are to go. And we just thank you for this, Lord, and we pray this in Jesus powerful name. Amen. We are going to pray over you as we go.

Father, we just want to pray over these Kingdom writers. And we just ask, Lord, that you would lead them by your spirit. And I just want to pray you'd even reveal things to each person that perhaps they've been seeking, they've been knocking, they've really been maybe in a mode of being frustrated that they're not making the headway that they want to.

And Father, we're just asking that you would work in such a way that you would reveal those hidden things as we continue seeking you fervently. Lord, would you reveal those ideas that we just haven't thought of, they haven't crossed our minds yet. And I pray that each person would come away today and tomorrow with those things that are only shared among deep friendships.

Just as you, Lord, said that you were sharing things that you were hearing from your father, that you'd shared everything with those disciples who were intimate with you. I want to pray, Lord, that you would share with us things that you're hearing and seeing from your father and our Father alike. And we give you the glory and the honor for those things that we're able to see and hear that we wouldn't have otherwise had we not asked, have we not been walking hand in hand with you, closely with you, just as two deep, close forever friends would do. And so we just thank you for what you're going to do through each and every person here as a Kingdom writer. And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.

Amen. And as C.J. was praying, I just saw a picture of some of you feel like a square peg in a round hole. Just like I was on that playground looking around. I was the minority. All the boys wanted to play with me, but none of the girls wanted to. And just all the things that you may feel as a creative, as a writer, as even a Christian, but it's like trying to shove a round peg in a square hole and trying to force yourself into certain relationships or into certain things. And the Lord just wants to say you get to be who he's created you to be. And he is that place, that safe place for you. He is that connection. And if you just move your peg over just a little bit, you'll find that perfect fit, right? You will find right where he is with you. And that connection with him will just make everything else flow. So let me pray for you in this. And if this is you, just type me in the chat box if you've ever felt this way. But Lord, we just pray for every Kingdom writer right now. We pray that you would just help them to find that connection with you that maybe they've been feeling like just. But they don't fit, that they don't belong or that something just doesn't seem right and they're trying, feels like trying to force that round peg in that square hole. And yet, Lord, I just pray you would help them to see, just moving just a little bit to the side, to the right, to the left, that they will find that perfect fit in you, that the Holy Spirit in them is the one that is flowing through them, is giving them what they need. And they're not meant to fit in every circumstance, in every scenario. They're meant to fit with you. And Lord, I just pray that your spirit would help each of us to connect even deeper with you, to hear even more from you, to hear your voice, your sheep, hear your voice. And I pray as they're writing today, Lord, that there would be connection with you, there would be flow, there would be just an incredible inspiration from you. Because they're not trying to force it. They're not listening to the inner critic that says this isn't good enough. They're just saying, no, I'm not going to force that anymore. I'm just going to move to the side. I'm going to go right in to the flow of the Holy Spirit. I'm going to connect with you, God. I'm going to receive from you. And you have what I need. And if I, even if I don't get it today, you'll give it to me another time, another time. I'll just keep showing up. I'll keep showing up. So we thank you, Lord, for what you're doing. And we pray this in Jesus powerful name. Amen. Amen. 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 the progress that you'll see. So join us@writingweek.com and again, this is completely free. 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