#452 Persistent Pests

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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.

So today I'm going to be sharing on the theme of persistent pests, and I just had to look up the definition of pest just to make sure we're we're in alignment with this word today. But.

A definition is a destructive insect or other animal that attacks crops, food, livestock, etc. And.

What inspired this was looking at song of songs 2:15.

And.

I was even inspired with this passage when I was reading some things by AW Tozer, who.

Has been long in heaven, but was reading some things along this whole line of song of songs 2:15 which says, Catch all the foxes, those little foxes, before they ruin the vineyard of love, for the grapevines are blossoming.

And I was thinking to myself, you know.

There are many things, little foxes, so to speak, that ruin the vineyards of our writing or can threaten them or eat them up. These little foxes aren't yet fully grown. As we read this, we're picturing little foxes, and I love how A.W. tozier put this. He said, no one would think that a cuddly little fox would be dangerous to have around. They love nothing better though, than to eat the young grapes before they come out fully. Thus they wreak havoc on the vines of our walk with the Lord. And so something can be so cuddly, so cute, and yet wreak havoc if we allow it into our lives long enough. And so what I wanted to do is.

Mention five what I would think are little foxes that ruin some of our fruitful writing before it's fully ripened. How many can Say that you have writing that almost feels like it's been stolen before it's been fully ripened.

It'S been taken out, so to speak, before it comes to full fruition. And I think all of us could say that we feel like at times we've left something out there or something still out there. It's just. It hasn't reached its maturity. And we feel discontent as a result. And for good reason. I think it should cause us to say, what is it in my life that could possibly change that would allow more fruitful writing? And so I want to mention five of these. And the first little fox that I think all of us, at some point or another, some of us more than others, may have dealt with, is sensitiveness or being easily offended.

And I would say that this can be a small chip on our shoulder.

Something that could flare up if we're not given the respect or desire.

Or the respect that we actually desire. And I felt this in my own life. Sometimes you don't feel a certain respect that you feel like you're due. And if you're not careful, it can turn into some resentment. You're easily offended.

There's things that are just on the surface. And again, these are all little foxes. These are things that the world would say and even the Christian world would say, oh, you know, you know, it's something that could easily be handled, but if we're not careful, they can actually grow and grow and grow into something bigger. They can eat away the vines of our fruitful writing.

These things. Sensitiveness or being easily offended can stifle creativity in our writing, and it can actually dry up the flow, the Holy Spirit.

And so what we would pray in this way is that we can have the mind and humility of Christ. How many know that praying for more humility is always a good thing? Always a good thing. Andrew Murray wrote a fantastic book on humility, and he actually believes that every humility is the soil from which every other fruit flows. We have to have a humility. We have to bow our knee. We have to open our hands and surrender and say, oh, Lord, you know, I'm starting to go this direction of being easily offended and developing this resentment. Oh, Lord, please, I want to humble myself before you. I don't want to be easily offended. I don't want to just crave this respect of men, but instead I want this deep humility. And so that's the first little fox, is sensitiveness or being easily offended. The second little fox that I think can wreak havoc is Laziness. It's laziness. And sometimes we all have a tendency of being lazy. Maybe too lazy to really dig into the word. Maybe too lazy to spend extra time in prayer because we get caught doing other things or other things at the moment seem more intriguing. They seem more.

You know, exciting.

This also leaks into our writing. And so I want to say if the. That if we're lazy in one area, it has a tendency of slowly sort of infecting other areas of our lives. It just kind of gradually moves around.

And if we're not careful, it can leak into our writing to where we're just even too lazy to do the hard work, the blood, sweat and tears that we all know good writing entails. That's not to say we're doing it in our own strength. We're led by the spirit. But there's still.

A point where we have to put our rear in. In the chair. We've got to say, I'm going to fight through this. This desire just to be lazy and not do what I'm called to do. The Kingdom writer cannot afford to compromise in these areas if we expect eternal impact. And so I did mention the word. I mentioned prayer. Those things that then flow into our writing. I want to say we can't afford to compromise on those things. The kingdom writer cannot. Somebody like Stephen King.

He can compromise in that way because he's not endeavoring to glorify the Lord in his writing. He's got best sellers that encourage other things. There are a lot of people that are writing best sellers. They don't have to spend time in prayer. They don't have to spend time in the word. But you and I, as the kingdom writer, have to. This is our lifeline if we're to write anything of fruitful substance.

And I want to say that there's a cost to those things. But how many know there's a great reward? There is a great reward for spending time. You're never wasting time in the word and you're never wasting time in prayer. It will leak and flow right into your writing as a divine. Just like a vine. Just like SAP and nourishment flows into a vine. The vines of our writing. There's a third area that I think can become a little fox, and that is this whole concept of living in regret. Living in regret. I've had this in my life, by the way. Every single one of these I can identify with. So I'm only saying this stuff from my own weakness. But I have lived in that land of Regret. The most powerful three words, though, in the history of mankind, at least uttered in this order.

Are, it is finished. You recognize those words? It is finished. Our Lord said those words on the cross. And when he said those words, how freeing I believe they were for all of us. No matter what we've done wrong in the past, we have a chance to move forward now because Christ has accomplished what was necessary to put that stuff in the past. He's forgiven us.

And so it is finished. I want you to meditate on those three words when you begin to feel regret. Coming up. Meditate on what our Lord has said. He's accomplished everything. He's paid the full price. He was saying, father, I've accomplished all that you had me do on this planet. And finally I can say it is finished.

If we'll meditate on those words, I believe it'll destroy this concept of regret having control in our lives. Regret sucks the life out of us and keeps us from moving forward in all that God has for us. Some of you may say, oh, I should have started this book 20 years ago. Oh, Lord. And the Lord says, start today. Today, August 22, 2025. I'm giving you fresh manna today. New life today. New nourishment for your vine of writing today. Forget about the past. You can't do anything about it. You know, that's the interesting thing about regret that I've had to learn here recently, is you can't do anything about it. All you can do is live in this moment and move forward. And I want to encourage all of you to do that. Put your writing regrets in the past and just know that God is saying it is finished. But I have a new adventure for you, son. New adventure for you, daughter. Let's do this together. There's a fourth that many of you have already mentioned in the comments beforehand. A fourth little fox. And that is distraction. Distraction. Distraction causes us to go from one rabbit trail to the next, let's face it. And social media is the rabbit trail. I believe in the day and age that we live in today.

One writer has called it nuggets of nothingness. Nuggets of nothingness. You spend 12 hours going through social media, scrolling. You've taken in a lot of what we would call nuggets of nothingness. They don't have any impact. You think you've accomplished something, and yet we haven't accomplished anything. I've seen this in gamers, video gamers. They set records and they do this and they do that. They think they've accomplished something. But in reality, there's been nothing fruitful accomplished. They've been entertained. They might enjoy some time with a friend or family member, but at the end of the day, we have a lot of these fruitless activities that can easily distract us from the things that God's calling us to. And if we're not careful, we can go from one to two hours to one to two years to one to two decades. That things just add up, and they snowball. So ask yourself, what is this little fox of distraction? How does it work its way into the vines of my writing, the things that are happening in my own life? And then the fifth little fox.

Is busyness. Busyness.

Somebody once said, I don't know where I'm going, but I'm going to get there fast. Right? And so, you know, we just get busy, and we think we're doing things, and yet time just gets eaten up. And pretty soon we've eked out our writing block. We fill up our days and weeks with good things. I just talked to someone about this yesterday, one of our CBA writers in one of the coffee chats, and.

I said, you know, we. We have to have seasons where we actually decide not to do some of the good things that we've done for a season in order to get this thing done that God's called us to. That may mean saying no to certain things at church. It doesn't mean you drop out of church. It just means you don't maybe volunteer for two or three things that you normally would have. Why? Because you're saying, I'm blocking that time off to finish this book, to do the thing I feel like God has put on my life for years. I want to see breakthrough there. And so somehow we fail to set aside scheduled writing blocks, or when we do, it can easily be canceled and replaced by something else. It's not treated as a priority. How many of you have put something on your schedule? You said, I'm going to write for these two hours. But then so and so said, hey, can you get together? And you just went ahead and did it. Now, it wasn't an emergency, but you just went ahead and said, boy, that sounds really interesting. And sometimes we do this to avoid the thing we know we need to do. And so it's not a bad thing to get together and have coffee with a friend. That's a great thing. But what if we tweaked it a little? What if we said, I'd love to have coffee with you, but I've got another Appointment in these two hours. I'd love to meet with you tomorrow, though. I've got this time. It's as simple as that. You still stick to that writing block even though you've got other good things competing for that two hour block. And I told this other CBA member, I said, it's hard to say no sometimes, but in order to move forward and make progress on this thing, this book, this writing that God's called us to.

We simply have to learn to say no to some good things for a season. It doesn't mean the rest of our lives. It might mean three or four months of just putting the pen to the grind, putting it down there and saying, I'm going to stick to this.

And so let's just review real quickly the first little fox sensitiveness or easily being offended.

Number two, laziness. Number three, living in regret. Number four, distraction. And number five, busyness. I want to say that the only way to handle these little foxes. Now this is going to sound a little bit harsh.

But the only way that you handle a little fox in your vineyard.

Do you have any ideas?

You've got to kill them.

You've got to kill those little foxes because there's no way around the fact that if you just leave them out there to run amok in your vineyard.

They'Re going to clean out all of your crops, all of the fruitful writing. We've got to get to the point where we say.

I'm not going to allow this to continue. I'm going to take control with the control that God's given me, with his strength to make decisions.

And I would, I want to say that if we don't kill these little foxes, our sweetest, most fruitful writing.

Like vine ripened grapes, will not materialize because those little foxes will just keep coming. They'll just keep coming. Why, it's, it's irresistible. They, they love those little grapes, the sour grapes, before they come to that full sweetness and they'll take them out before you even know it. You'll wake up and you'll go and you'll look and you'll say, oh my goodness, I tried to pet that little fox. I tried to even offer it other kinds of food. I tried to just love it.

And if we're not careful, that little fox that's so cuddly, so sweet will take out all of our sweet writing and all of the things that God wants to do in and through us. And so there's five little foxes that I want to encourage all of us to say, you know what? I've got to take control in this area, and with God's help, I can do so. And so let that be an encouragement to you. Again, let me just reread the verse.

Catch all the foxes, those little foxes, before they ruin the vineyard of love, and I might say, before they ruin the vineyard of your fruitful writing.

For grapevine. The grapevines are blossoming. I believe the grape vines are blossoming in every single one of you kingdom writers. God has fruitful writing for you. He's got sweet things that he wants you to share with others. But it's going to require some intentionality about making sure these little foxes don't continue to run amok. And so why don't we pray in that with that same theme? Father, we thank you so much that you have called us to this craft of writing.

You have given us insight, inspiration, creativity.

And I want to ask, Lord, that if there are any of these little foxes, these five that we've mentioned, that have gotten out of control in our lives. They started as little, but they just kept maturing and they kept growing and their appetites continued to get bigger. Lord, I pray that you would help us take care of those little foxes before they continue to grow, before they reap more havoc on the vineyards of our writing.

Show us, Lord, we know you're gentle. You show these things. You. You show us these things. You reveal these things. You're letting us know things, even well before they get to full fruition. You say, just be careful, son. Be careful, daughter, I want you to take care of this now. I don't want it to get bigger, this resentment or this busyness or this distraction. I want you to take care of it. I have better things for you. And Father, may we be attentive to your spirit when we're being prompted to address one of these issues. And we will give you the glory and the honor for all of the fruitful writing publishing that we do in your name. And we do all pray in Jesus, wonderful name, Amen.

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