Thank you, listeners, for over nine years of sharing your writing journey with Write from the Deep! We’ve found such joy in bringing you God’s encouragement and in hearing from you. Join us in this final podcast as we share final truths and insights to help you along your writing journey. And God bless each of you!

But first, thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible! And in particular, thank you to ALL of our 2024 sponsors of the month: Christy Bass Adams, Wendy L. Macdonald, Tammy Partlow, Priscilla Sharrow, and Kimberley Woodhouse! You’ve been such a blessing to us and to all our listeners!

An Important Announcement

Erin Taylor Young: Welcome, listeners, to the Deep. We have some important news to share with you.

Karen Ball: And here it is: the podcast you’re listening to in this very moment is our final episode from Write from the Deep. You see, Erin asked me a while ago if I thought it was maybe time to step away from the podcast because of health issues and other reasons.

At first I was like, no, no, let’s keep going. But as the days went by and I thought and prayed about it, God showed me that I really did need to step back, because of my––and Don’s––increasing health issues. As I came to that decision, I felt such peace wash over me that I knew it was the right thing.

Erin Taylor Young: I asked Karen because I’ve been having a few health issues of my own. And also, I’ve been feeling the need to prune, but I didn’t know which things should go. I took a sabbatical from editing over the summer, which was great. But I learned that I needed to keep praying about the pruning that God wanted to do in my life, and I needed to keep seeking Him about the disciplined pursuit of less.

We talked about this idea back in episode 223 in “Three Essentials for a Christian Writer’s Life.”

So as I sought guidance for pruning and refocusing, God showed me it is time to let go of this podcast. I want you all to know I am not missing the irony there that an episode that I researched and recorded for the show is one of the things that contributed to me understanding that I need to let go of it. 

Our Final Gifts for You

Karen Ball: Love the way God works to guide us! How we can make this decision with joy because we know it’s what God is guiding us to do. Now, as you listeners know, we often end our interviews with guests by asking them for final words of wisdom or encouragement. So we thought it would be a fitting end to ask ourselves the same question.

So what wisdom and encouragement do we most want to leave with you to return some of the joy you’ve brought us?

Ground Everything in God’s Word

Erin Taylor Young: Well, the first thing that I want to share is from Psalm 1:1-3. 

“How blessed is the man who does not walk in the council of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law. He meditates day and night. He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. And in whatever he does, he prospers.”

You guys, ground everything you do in God’s Word. But more than that, make God’s word your delight. Your greatest joy. It says, our delight should be in the law of the Lord and we’ll yield fruit in its season.

Not before its season, by the way. So be patient. Spend your time soaking in God’s word and loving it and meditating on it. This is how we guarantee that our lives will be fruitful.

Not Overdue a Single Day!

Karen Ball: I’ve mentioned a couple times on the podcast that Habakkuk 2:3 is my life verse: 

“Slowly, steadily. surely the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled. If it seems slow in coming do not despair, for these things will surely come to pass. Just be patient. They will not be overdue a single day.”

Not overdue a single day. I love that so much. As you go through your writing journey, remember, it’s all in God’s hands and in his timing. He knows what you need and He will provide, even if it seems like it’s taking forever. Take this verse to heart, so when you start feeling that way, you can remember with a soul-deep joy that God’s plans for you will surely come to pass. They won’t be overdue a single day. Just trust and rest in Him and keep doing what He’s asking you to do.

Wait on God

Erin Taylor Young: My next verse fits right in with Karen’s. It’s Isaiah 64:4. 

“Since ancient times, no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides You who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.” 

Remember I said earlier that patience is important? This is why. When we wait for God, He acts. I’m not talking about just any old kind of waiting here. I’m talking about expecting. I’m talking about looking to God to hope in Him and believe in him. Think about how astounding it is that the God of the universe acts on our behalf to accomplish His purposes.

This is how God is different from all the other so-called gods of this world. The true God works on our behalf to show Himself great and mighty.

He delights in doing this, He purposes to do this. If only we could all walk every minute of our writing journey fully convinced that God is on our side and that He is always working on our behalf for our good and His glory. 

This is the Way

Karen Ball: I love that. I love Isaiah. It holds so much wisdom. For example, Isaiah 30:21 has this powerful message for all of us:.

“Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, this is the way walk in it.”

God is so present in your life and in your writing journey, but you’ve got to listen. You’ve got to keep your heart attuned to Him and to His voice. He won’t let you go astray if you do that.

But you know what? Even if you do make a misstep, just take it to Him and He will guide you back to the path He has for you. 

Strong Support

Erin Taylor Young: Amen. My next verse is 2 Chronicles 16:9. Just the first half says:

“For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.”

I’ve had this first section memorized for a long time because it says God will not only guide us, but “strongly support” us.

And this verse also reminds me we have a part to play. We need hearts that are completely God’s. Thankfully, though, we don’t accomplish that on our own because one of the things God has done for us when we chose to follow Him is He gave us a new heart, a heart of flesh, and not a heart of stone. A heart that can resonate with His joy because of all He’s done for us. 

No Divided Hearts!

But even though we know this truth, other desires can come in and divide our hearts. And steal our joy. This world is full of things that just call to us. It may not be our cares and our concerns, but maybe it’s entertainment, money, status, sales, contracts. And let’s not forget stuff like toys and trinkets and all those things. 

There is a reason Jesus says in Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart [or the undivided in heart] for they shall see God.” It’s hard to see God with a divided heart.

But look at how this verse talks about God looking. For us. He’s searching the world for people who will look to Him who trust Him and hope in him. God’s not up there grudgingly giving out help if we beg hard enough. It brings Him joy to bless us! He has a master plan for the world and every person on this planet, and we get to be a part of it. 

We get to bring His truth to this dark world, and we get to be part of God’s kingdom on earth. So go into every day and know God is there waiting to strongly support you.

Remember to Rest

Karen Ball: Hebrews 4:9-11is a reminder we all need, and it says this:

“There is a special rest still waiting for the people of God. For all who have entered into God’s rest, have rested from their labors. Just as God did after creating the world. So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God as the people of Israel did, we will fall.”

As Ecclesiastes points out, there’s a God-appointed time for everything in our lives, which means there’s a God-appointed time for us to rest. We do need to work hard to push ourselves toward excellence in God’s name, but friends, we also need to take time to rest on our writing journey and in life. 

I’m not talking about just resting when you’re discouraged or exhausted, but taking regular time to rest your soul and heart and mind as a part of your process in the day, to prepare yourself to receive God’s joy. You’re not being weak or lazy when you rest. You’re being wise and obedient. 

Let God Fill You

Erin Taylor Young: Rest is productive. It really is. 

Another verse I want to give to you guys is Psalm 81:10: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth, and I will fill it.”

It’s too easy to forget to ask God to supply all our needs. He wants us to depend on Him. Think about God bringing the Israelites, who are a nation of slaves, out of Egypt, which at the time was the most powerful nation.

Consider how unprecedented this display of God’s sovereign might was when He made Pharaoh release the Israelites! Then Pharaoh changes his mind and comes back after them with the entire army. That was scary. But God showed His might and His power. And the Israelites went from fear to joy!

All of God’s power and provision and miracle working brings to our minds now that He is our protector and provider. He says to us, as He did to the Israelites, “Open wide your mouth ‘cause I’m going to bring all My power and resources to fill it.” Friends, there is nothing you need that God can’t provide.

There’s no situation too hopeless, no problem too impossible. God is simply asking you and me to open wide our mouths and receive all He has for us. Let’s purpose to go through all day, every day, with that posture of open mouths, open heart, open hands. Let God fill you.

The Honor of Sharing God’s Word

Karen Ball: Amen. And then there are the next two verses of Hebrews from what I read before, and that’s verses 12 and 13.

“For the word of the Lord is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. Nothing in all of creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before His eyes, and He is the one to whom we are accountable.”

You know, words are vital to God. We see that in His Bible, and we see it in the way that He speaks to us and draws us. It’s vital to who He is and to what He wants from us, that He has invited us to use words for His sake and His glory to bring His truth to a weary, lost world. That is such an honor.

Don’t ever look down on where you are in the task He’s given you. It doesn’t matter where you are. It only matters that you’re obedient to the task He’s asked you to take on. Whether you write 90 books or one article or one letter, the wonder of your words is infused with Him and it will reach hearts and minds in ways you never imagined.

Forget about bestseller lists, about sales numbers, fame, earthly rewards. Instead, keep in mind that you are accountable to Him and only Him for being obedient and doing what He’s given you to do. 

If you do that, the rewards you receive will come from Him, and they will spark more joy than you’ve ever known. 

Learn from the Turkeys!

Erin Taylor Young: The last thing I want to leave you with guys is a story. We’re writers. I gotta leave you with a story! And it’s a true story, by the way. So one day I am looking out my back windows and I see wild turkeys in my yard. I’ve never seen that before! 

They’re just walking across the yard, poking around in the grass looking for stuff to eat. Well, once they get across my yard, suddenly they’re completely stymied by my fence. We have this four-foot-high wrought-iron fence. And these turkeys have no idea what to do!

So they start trotting back and forth along the fence. There’s no gate to let them through. So then they’re like, “Hey, we wanna get to the green grass on the other side.” We all know the grass is always greener, right? 

They’re trying to get to the other side by squeezing through the rails of the fence! Some of these turkeys are too big to fit through the spaces between the rails. 

And I’m watching, fascinated, because they’re so stymied by the fence. They could just fly over, but this doesn’t seem to occur to any of them. Finally, the biggest, older ones flap once and do this giant leap and land on the top of the fence, then sort of jump over.

The younger, smaller turkeys are like, “No problem. We’ll just squeeze through.” And they do. But there’s the medium-sized ones left in my yard. Now they’re panicking because they see most of the flock has made it to the other yard––and they’re even starting to move on!

At this point I’m talking through the window: “ Guys, duh! You can fly. Just fly.” But they continue running up and down the fence, even more panicked. One of them gets stuck trying to squeeze through and I’m wondering if I need to go out and rescue this dumb turkey!

But finally, finally, they do all make it through and they’re all in the next yard, meandering across that yard, and they’re happy again. And then this coyote bursts out of the woods behind the yard and goes after ‘em. 

Guess what they did? They all fly! Right up into the trees, thanks to pure God-given instinct. Now this coyote is just left standing all alone in the yard. He’s looking around, like, “What do I do now?”

You Can Fly!

So here’s what I want you guys to take away from this story.

You can fly. 

Sometimes we forget. We forget that we have God-given talent and creativity and instincts. And sometimes we panic when we see a fence or when we’re confronted by a difficult edit or a book or an article or blog post. It feels too hard to write and we don’t know what to do. We’re stymied. The problem seems insurmountable. 

But friends, you. can. fly. God has made you able. Isaiah 40:31 says, “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint.”

Don’t forget. You can fly. 

You’ve Been A Joy!

Karen Ball: Sharing this podcast with all of you has been a wonder and an honor. You’ve brought us such joy and blessings. We’re grateful for you who have listened and delighted that God has used us to share His truth and encouragement with you. That’s really what we wanted to do from the very beginning. Please know that Erin and I will keep you in our prayers, that we’ll always be grateful you chose to spend time with us.

And as we close this final podcast from Write from the Deep, please take these words from Philippians 1 to heart:

“Every time we think of you, we give thanks to our God. Whenever we pray, we make our requests for all of you with joy. For you have been our partners in spreading the good news about Christ from the time you first heard it until now.

“And we are certain that the God who began the good work within you, will continue His work until it’s finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. So it is right that we should feel as we do about all of you, for you have a special place in our hearts. You share with us the special favor of God…in defending and confirming the truth of the good news.

“God knows how much we love you and long for you with the tender compassion of Jesus Christ. We pray that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding. We want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return.

“May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation: the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ. For this will bring much glory and praise to God.”

Erin Taylor Young: Amen. And thank you all. 

Karen Ball: Yes. Thanks for joining us today, and may God bless you His powerful peace and unending joy.

We at Write from the Deep have found such joy in bringing you God’s encouragement. In this final episode, we share our most important truths and insights for your writing journey. #amwriting #ChristianWriter
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The post 226 – You Brought Us Joy! appeared first on Write from the Deep.

It’s so easy, when we are getting hit by one difficult thing after another, to wonder where God is. To cry out to Him, “Why aren’t You stopping it all?” Join us as guest Jean Wilund shares amazing and freeing insights and wisdom, discovered from her study of the book of Habakkuk, for anyone in the midst of these struggles. Get ready to embrace joy!

About Jean Wilund

Jean Wilund is fully convinced that we’ll never truly know and love the God of the Word apart from the Word of God. This conviction fuels her passion for everything she does, including writing, speaking, and serving her family and the body of Christ—particularly her husband, children, and grandtwins. Jean and Larry live in Lexington, SC and are members of Grace Bible Church.

Jean’s Bible study, Embracing Joy: An 8-Week Transformational Bible Study of Habakkuk helps us discover how, during one of the darkest periods in history for God’s people, God moved His prophet Habakkuk from confused to confident and from panic to praise. God will do the same in us if we do what Habakkuk did. Jean’s latest book, Ease into the Bible: How to Wade into the Water of God’s Word with Confidence releases in August to help relive the intimidation factor out of understanding the pieces and parts of the Bible. For more information or to connect with Jean, visit her website, JeanWilund.com and subscribe to her podcast, It’s All About Him!

Thanks to our sponsors on Patreon, we’re able to offer an edited transcript of the podcast!

Karen: Welcome to the deep, everyone. Today’s podcast is going to be a lot of fun. Our guest, Jean Wilund, is going to dig deep into an amazing book of the Bible, Habakkuk, and share her insights. Erin, tell us all about the amazing Jean Wilund!

Erin: Jean and I met several years ago at the Florida Christian Writers Conference, and I got to visit with her again this year. We had a great conversation about the transforming power of God’s Word which is wisdom we need on our writing journey. So welcome, Jean.

Jean Wilund: Thank you so much. I’m so thrilled to be here with y’all. 

What Does the Deep Mean?

Erin: So Jean, what does the deep mean to you? 

Jean Wilund: It means the deep things of God, which basically is the Word of God. I need the deep things of God, whether I’m gonna go deep into my circumstances or deep into understanding. My daughter, my youngest daughter, loves to free dive, not scuba dive, but free dive. But the thought of going deep into the water without scuba equipment is unnerving to me.

But she said it is so peaceful, and I had a word picture of the deeper we go into God’s Word, the more peace it brings, no matter what we’re going through, no matter what’s going on up on the surface. The deep means to be grounded deep in God, grounded in His Word, and to embrace joy regardless of circumstances.

Erin: I love that. So, you did a Bible study on Habakkuk during the Covid pandemic. What got you interested in writing a study about this very short book in very difficult times in our country?

Unexpected Detours

Jean Wilund: Well, I never anticipated doing a Bible study at all. But when Covid hit and everybody was sheltering in place, I was talking with one of my friends, and she said she’d just read the book of Habakkuk and how perfect it was for those times.

So I read Habakkuk with the current situation in mind, and I was blown away. My next-door neighbor and I sat outside, distanced from each other, and talked about this book. 

And then our pastor said, “I want the women’s ministry to do a four-week Bible study.” My neighbor and I discussed what, in those crazy times where we couldn’t get together in person as much, would help us the most? And we agreed we needed to know how to study the Bible for ourselves.

A Perfect Fit!

Jean Wilund: And hey, Habakkuk is only three chapters! So with a four-week Bible study, we’d study three weeks then have a whole extra week to discuss it all. So I did it. I used my transformational Bible study method and taught Habakkuk.

I was talking with a friend about it, and she said, “Okay, that’s what we want at our church. A four-week study on just the book of Habakkuk.”

So that’s how I wrote it as a study. And my friend’s agent was looking for a Bible study and my friend said, “Well, Jean just taught one on Habakkuk and it was fantastic.” So that’s how the study came about. It was not intentional, but it was so encouraging.  

Habakkuk and Writers

Erin: So, Jean, as you think about the book of Habakkuk, what truth do you feel applies to our writing lives?

Jean Wilund: Well, Judah got into the mess that they were in because they said they’d do everything Moses told them, but before long they just did everything that was right in their own eyes.

As Christian writers, we say that everything that we write is going to be for God’s glory, but then we get into it and it’s too easy to veer off track. To do what’s right in our eyes to get the numbers or the platform or whatever. Soon we’ve lost track of the reason that we felt called to write. 

Like Judah, we let our eyes get off of God and focus instead on success and living the way we think we want to live. 

But if we keep our eyes on the glory of God above all things, we’re going to love our writing journey. And we’ll be successful in God’s eyes and that’s all that matters. 

Karen: It’ll also have an incredible impact on everyday life. Don and I have been dealing with one hit after another lately with health issues and unexpected major expenses. It’s tempting, when you’re in those kinds of situations, to focus on those problems and wondering what’s next.

But if we keep our focus on God, on the fact that He loves us and none of this is a surprise to Him, then we don’t have to worry. We don’t have to have sleepless nights. We don’t have to be anxious about anything. 

Jean Wilund: Right. 

Remember God’s Character

Erin: I also love, Jean, how your Habakkuk study encourages us to embrace joy. So how do we do that when hard trials come, maybe God is even is bringing hard trials into our lives… What do we do? 

Jean Wilund: You know, it’s okay to go to God and ask, “How long, O Lord?” We all wrestle with God’s plans for us at times. The difference is when we wrestle with His character. What we see in Habakkuk is he goes to God because he doesn’t understand why God has allowed Judah to be so evil to their own people.

So he is frustrated. It’s clear he’s been praying for a while, but God has been silent. Even so, Habakkuk has continued to pray. Then, when God does speak, the prophet doesn’t get the message he hoped for. God gave him a message that took him from saying, “God, why are you not doing anything?” to “Back up, God, You’ve gone too far now!” 

Habakkuk’s Transformational Actions

Jean Wilund: But I love what Habakkuk did, and it’s something that has been transformational in my life. In Habakkuk 2:1, he says, “I will take my stand at my watch post and station myself on the tower and look out to see what He will say to me and what I’ll answer concerning my complaint.”

Habakkuk is pouring out his heart to God and now he wants to hear from Him. He’s telling God, “I want you to correct me.” So that’s one thing he did that we can do, too. 

Another example from Habakkuk’s actions is how, earlier on in Habakkuk 1:12, he immediately started going through God’s character. In fact, that’s the first thing he says, “Are you not from Everlasting? Oh Lord, my God, my holy one.”

Habakkuk roots himself in who God is before he tries to process what God has just told him. He calls God Yahweh, the God who wants to be in relationship. He calls him Elohim, the God, the sovereign God who created all things and is supreme over all things. And The Holy One.

The Holy One

Jean Wilund: Now, to be the holy one, God can’t even have the hint of doing anything wrong. So Habakkuk is saying, “God, this feels so wrong. Ah, but You can do no wrong. And so I’m deep breathing my trembling knees.” He says later on that it’s like death has entered his bones. He’s not being like, “Okay, so Babylon’s gonna come and destroy us, but it’s all good.”

Habakkuk understands that it’s going to be awful, but God is so good and He would not ordain this if it wasn’t for their ultimate good. And Habakkuk 1:12, “We shall not die.” Because if Judah were to die, what would that do to God’s promise, right? How can a savior come through if not, as God promised, through Judah?

A Promise to Sustain Us

Jean Wilund: The promise that we have as Christians is the Holy Spirit, who gives us everything for life. The Spirit embodies us. There’s nothing that we lack to accomplish God purposes for us in our writing. And with the Spirit, we can embrace joy no matter what. 

But we have to go to him continually and say, “Am I understanding Your call?” Because when we write a proposal and get great feedback on it, and then we send it out and everybody says no, that feels contradictory. Yet, like Habakkuk, we know that God doesn’t do wrong. So have we misheard him? Maybe.

This may not be the time, or maybe this isn’t the book. Maybe this isn’t the audience or the publisher. It could be we needed to go through that to understand He’s still doing a work in us and in our writing, or He’s still putting the pieces and parts together. 

Remember God’s Presence

Erin: We’ve been doing a study at our church where we are studying God’s presence through the entire Bible. From the Garden of Eden to Abraham, His promises that He’s gonna bless all the nations. But when God promises that, they’re in the middle of history. They don’t see the fulfillment. Even today, Jesus came all those years ago, but there still hasn’t been the total restoration of everything. The day of judgment hasn’t actually arrived yet. It’s a long time coming!

Sometimes I think as writers we forget that. For centuries and centuries and centuries, God has been working out and unfolding His promise. And here we are, after just days and weeks and months and even years, and we’re moaning, “How long, Lord?”

We have remember that God is an eternal God. These are eternal promises. The fruit we think is going to happen tomorrow might be fulfilled centuries from now. We just don’t know. We’ve got to trust, as you pointed out, Jean, in God and His character. Our God is never in a hurry. Sometimes that’s a blessing. Sometimes it is so stinking frustrating. But we can trust it’s always right.

In God’s Time

Jean Wilund: Yes. Each lesson in the Bible study has a transformational truth, and one of them––one that I have to remind myself of all the time––is that God has appointed all things in their time for their time on time. 

Karen: Right. So we can slow down and trust his timing. 

Erin: What does it look like to really believe that? How does that transform us? How does God’s Word do that? 

Jean Wilund: Well, as we come to know Him, we rest more in Him. As we abide in Him, the fruits of the Spirit are going to come out and we’ll learn to dwell in that beautiful balance of patience and faithfulness. If God has called us to write, then we need to do that with excellence. So how do we do it with excellence? We study the craft. How do we study the craft? We buy the books that people tell us. We listen, we read articles, we go to conferences, and we pray.

REmember Prayer!

Jean Wilund: Prayer is vital, beginning to end. We pray and we search God’s Word. Because anything that we have to say of value comes from God’s Word. It doesn’t mean that we can only quote God’s Word if we want to be helpful, but as I heard a pastor say one time, if you don’t have a verse, you only have an opinion.

We need that balance of studying God’s Word and prayer. Ask the Lord for guidance. As Him, “Do you want me to have a website where I send out blog posts? Do you want me to write for ministry? If so, which one?”

Go where God leads you and faithfully do the work. As you do that, you’ll find it more and more natural to embrace the joy He brings you in the process. Even if everything doesn’t go the way you want.

Obedience and Prayer are the Keys

Karen: Exactly. It’s being obedient to God, and studying His Word and to find His wisdom and his guidance. To help us know what the steps are in the midst of our obedience.

When Erin and I first started this podcast, we spent a lot of time praying and thinking and asking God what He wanted it to be and what He wanted us to do with it. And I think the reason that it’s reached as many people as it has is that we followed those steps and the wisdom He gave us. 

Erin: I love when you said to cling to God and hold all else lightly. That’s perfect for the writing life because we don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring.

We were talking to Deborah Raney last month and she said, “I’m writing as long as God tells me to write, and when He tells me to do something else, I’ll do something else.” 

When God Changes Your Focus

Jean Wilund: Well, that quote about clinging to God and holding everything else lightly was my journey, is my journey. I got in to writing to write for children. I was working at a day school and I had this passion to take over the chapel.

Long ago, one of my dear friends, Julia, said to me, “Jean, we’re gonna write a book. You’re gonna write it and I’m gonna illustrate it, and we’re going to show children how Jesus is in the whole Bible. He doesn’t just show up in the New Testament. He’s not waiting in the wings for His turn. He was there from the beginning.”

So that was always our plan, but we were so busy raising our children that we never got around to it. Then she passed away from cancer. Right after that that, I was invited to teach at this day school. I thought, “Okay, this is what I wanna do. I wanna write that book, but I’m gonna teach the children.”

I discovered early on that I had no idea how to write for children, but the children kept asking if I’d finished the book yet. 

My best friend was the director of the school, and she would sit in the back of the room and giggle and I would be giggling too. Because we figured I’d just go home and work on another way to tell stories to children. So that’s how I got to my first writer’s conference––out of desperation. So that I could teach the children well.

A Sweet Confirmation

Jean Wilund: I had to step down from teaching when my son and his wife had twins, but I spent so much time working on these lessons for the kids and I really wanted them to be there for them. One of the greatest confirmations that I was following where God was leading is that in that last year, one kid ran up to me and grabbed me, and said, “You’re the best teacher ever.” And I knew that was because the Lord helped me through these wonderful instructors on how to write for children.

Here’s the thing. The kids at school were loving my teaching and my stories. They were really, really leaning in. But every time I would pitch to publishers, they said, “We love your book, but you don’t know anybody. You don’t have a platform. So why don’t you focus on the mamas? Teach them what you want to teach their children. Why don’t you write for women?” 

I drove home from that conference going, “Lord, I teach children. I don’t know how to teach women.”

When I got home, my husband said a woman from a Women to Women Bible study called, and her number was on the counter.

I thought she called because I was writing an article about them for a friend of mine. So I called her and she said, “We read an article that you wrote about teaching children the Bible, and we want you to come and teach us.”

I was like, “Well, I’m not gonna say no right away because of what I just heard at the conference!”

Never Say Never

Jean Wilund: So I prayed, and that was when I started teaching women, and how God pivoted me away from the children’s writing. But the one thing I did know was that, even though I taught Bible studies, I would never write a Bible study.

Never. Do you know why? Because it’s in black and white. You can’t get those books back. I said, “I’ll write anything but a Bible study.”

But all of that happened with Habakkuk and I was like, “Lord, You know, I don’t want to do this. I’m really afraid.” But I had two pastors who helped vet the book. Our Daily Bread publishing is careful about checking the theology. So I just had to go where I was trembling to go, because I felt the order was so clear.

God Teaches Us With Love and Patience

Karen: I love that and that’s God. God is so good. He’s like we are when we deal with our kids and they want something that’s unreasonable. We say okay, let’s explore that, and then we guide them in a completely different direction. God’s looking at you and saying, okay, okay, writing for children. Now here’s a little detour, 

Jean Wilund: Right? He got me in the door I needed to go through using children’s books as a carrot.

Karen: I want to share the last portion of Habakkuk three, which is a great way to sum up this time that we’ve had with you. It’s a reminder that we can’t keep our eyes on our circumstances. That we have to have our eyes on God. 

This is Habakkuk 3:16-19:

“So I wait quietly for the coming day when disaster will strike the people who invade us. Even though the fig trees have no blossoms and there are no grapes on the vines, even though the olive crops fail and the fields lie empty and barren, even though the flocks die in the fields and the cattle barns are empty, yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

“I will be joyful in the God of my salvation. The sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes me as surefooted as a dear, able to tread upon the heights.”

That’s from the new Living Translation, and Habakkuk reminds us that no matter what’s going on, no matter if you have to fork out $20,000 to put a new roof on your home, or if you are sick, or if you’re having to face surgery or whatever the crises are that come to us, the sovereign Lord is our strength.

We will rejoice in the Lord. We will be joyful in the God of our salvation. He is sovereign. He is in His kingdom on His throne, and He has it all in His hands. 

Erin: Amen. 

Jean Wilund: Amen.

When life gets difficult, we can get discouraged. Guest @JeanWilund shares wisdom from Habakkuk to help us embrace joy no matter what! #ChristianWriter #amwriting
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Publishing is getting harder all the time. The author has to do so much that it can become utterly exhausting. And discouraging. Guest Deborah Raney shares what it takes now to have longevity in a publishing career.

About Deborah Raney

Deborah Raney’s first novel, A Vow to Cherish, inspired the World Wide Pictures film of the same title and launched Deb’s writing career. Thirty years, forty-plus books, and numerous awards later, she’s still creating stories that touch hearts and lives. Her books have garnered multiple industry awards including the RITA® Award, HOLT Medallion, National Readers’ Choice Award, Carol Award, and have three times been Christy Award finalists. Deb served on the executive board of the 2500-member American Christian Fiction Writers for eighteen years and teaches at writers conferences around the country. Deb’s latest release is Playing for Keeps. Find out more about Deborah Raney at her website.

Thanks to our sponsors on Patreon, we’re able to offer an edited transcript of the podcast!

Erin: Welcome, listeners. We’re so glad you’re here in the deep with us. We’re especially excited because we have a guest with us! It’s Deborah Raney, and Karen gets to introduce her!

Karen: I don’t even remember when Deb and I met. It feels as though I’ve known her from my beginning in publishing, low over 40 years ago.

We’ve known each other for a long time, and I’ve always been impressed by how everything that Deb does is so steeped in her faith in God. She always has a smile and always a sense of humor, and for somebody who’s been in publishing as long as she has, that either means she’s got a good grounding in faith or she’s nuts!

Her first novel, A Vow to Cherish, inspired the Worldwide Pictures film of the same title, and it launched Deb’s writing career. Now thirty years, forty-plus books, and numerous awards later, she’s still creating stories that touch hearts and lives. She, in fact, was given the 2024 ACFW Lifetime Achievement Award just a month or so ago for everything that she has done and has contributed to in publishing.

She has been on the executive board of the 2,500 member American Christian Fiction Writers, and she teaches at writers’ conferences all around the country. She’s a Missouri transplant having moved with her husband, Ken, from their native Kansas. They love road trips and they take all kinds of fun trips and share pictures on Facebook.

They also have Friday garage sale dates, which I love to watch on Facebook to see the goodies that they picked up. They love to spend time with their family and share breakfast on the screened porch overlooking their wooded backyard. Deb, thank you so much for joining us! 

Deb: Thank you, Karen and Erin. It is so fun to be talking with you again.

Erin: It is fun! And I kind of wish we were on your screened porch overlooking your wooded backyard. 

Karen: I know! That’s what I was just saying!

Deb: I wish so, too, except the birds make so much noise I don’t know if we could do a recording out here. But we love listening to them.

Karen, I think maybe we met in New Orleans at a writers’ retreat about twenty-five years ago.

Karen: Holy cow!

Deb: Yeah, it’s been a while. 

Karen: Well, I know it’s been a long time. You’ve been a part of my life forever, and I’ve been grateful for that. 

Deb: Same here.

Erin: Deb, let’s start off with what does the deep mean to you? 

Deb: When I think of the deep, I think of God. The deepest place that I go is my faith.

I will never live long enough—I’ve been in this business thirty years and I’ve been on this earth sixty-nine years, but I will never live long enough to understand and even imagine everything that God is. All that he has meant to me in my life in my relationships, in my career, he is the deep.

Karen: I think that’s wonderful.

Deb: It is. There are other things, and again, it all ties back to him. For example, just this past weekend I was with some longtime writer friends. We had a retreat and our conversations went deep. I love that kind of deep, too, where you know each other so well. You love each other so well that you can say what’s on your heart, what’s truly the good things and the hard things, and you know that that won’t change how those people feel about you because your roots with each other go deep. 

Erin: Yeah.  

Deb:  Lots of different ways to interpret that. 

Erin: Wow. Yes. I love that. God has this way of binding us together in a deeper way than we could otherwise be because of his spirit. I think it just reaches out to others and we just, we are a body. That’s the thing, and it just, it shows. So yeah. That’s very cool.

One of the things that we wanted to talk about with you was: what do you do as a writer to deal with discouragement? We wanted to discuss that with you because you’ve had a long career. I can’t imagine that you didn’t run into some discouragement along the way. Yet here you still are winning the Lifetime Achievement Award. 

Deb: That felt really good, given those thirty tough years.

Karen: Right!

Erin: Tell us a little bit about your journey. What kind of discouragements have you faced and what did you do about them?

Deb: I would have to say that right away in my writing career, I encountered discouragement. First of all, trying to submit that first manuscript and getting, I think, seventeen rejections before I was finally published.

Even then, I know that I did not work as hard or write as long as a lot of my writer friends who stuck with it years and years and years before they were published. Comparison is not a good thing usually, but if you’re comparing yourself to the right people, you understand how fortunate you are and you can kind of put things in perspective and realize that while that was hard waiting those five months, or however long it might have been, some people waited twenty years. So be grateful for those things. 

Erin: Right. 

Deb: But then even after I had a lovely contract for three books with Bethany House, there came a roadblock. I submitted a book to them, and I had not finished the book yet. I’m a seat-of-the-pants writer, and I didn’t know how that book would end.

They said, “We don’t see how it could possibly end well. You can submit it again once you’ve finished the book, but we’re going to reject it for now.” 

Erin: Ouch.

Deb: Yes, that hurt. It hurts to get rejected, especially by a publishing house that had now become my home. You know, this was my first publisher, and I loved everybody there. But God had other plans for that manuscript, and it ended up with another publisher.

Another thing that’s happened—and my husband can tease me about it now—he says that I have shut down just about every publisher in the Christian publishing world.

That’s not literally true, but I have very often, I don’t know why, but very often in my career I have been on the very tail end of a publisher’s fiction program. Or a certain line.

I had the last book in the portrait series for Bethany House. I had the last book in Summerside Press before they shut down. I had the last book in Steeple Hill before they decided not to publish full length Christian fiction anymore. I had a wonderful five book contract with Abingdon Press, and after I had written three of the five books, they decided not to publish fiction any longer.

That has just kind of been the story of my life. Of my writing life anyway, I will say. And that’s hard. It’s hard not to think that it’s all because you’re such a terrible writer, that that’s why they decided to close their fiction program. I know in my heart that isn’t really true, but it feels that way sometimes. 

Erin: Well, not only that, but I can see why that would be extremely discouraging because when they shut down that line, I mean, are they gonna promote that?

Deb: Exactly.

Erin: You feel like you’ve birthed this baby and nobody is going to even know about it. That can be career killer, because publishers ask, “Why didn’t that book sell?”

Deb: Yes, exactly. And that really is what happened. They did go ahead and publish all five books, but of course, their heart wasn’t in promoting fiction because they were on to other things. And that’s just the way. If I’ve learned anything, it’s just that that is the way that this business works.

Things are constantly changing. You get an editor you love and she moves to a different publisher. You get a contract you love and that publisher shuts down. I mean, that’s just the way of things are. But the longer I have written, the more I’m able to see that every time something like that happens, God has something else in waiting in the wings for me. There was always a reason for it.

Now, I may not know on this side of heaven what that reason is every single time, but when you walk with the Lord for as long as I have, you learn that whatever he’s doing is for my good and for his glory. That’s what I have always prayed that my writing world and life would be: to bring him glory.

There comes a point where I don’t have to know the answers, because I trust him. I know that whatever it is, there’s a reason for it, whether I ever know that or not. 

Karen: That’s the biggest thing, Deb, that you know you can trust him and you can rely on him. I’ve seen a lot of conversations online, had some conversations in person lately, with writers who are just so discouraged because things haven’t happened the way that they’d hoped they would. They’ve been around for a long time and they’re just feeling like they’re struggling.

I was trying to find a support group of women on Facebook to recommend to some of my friends who’ve been struggling with discouragement, and yet the one group that I found, all of those women are incredibly discouraged and depressed. I don’t think we truly, and tell me if I’m wrong on this, but I don’t think we truly understand who God is, and who we are in him, and what it means to follow Jesus and to walk every step of the way with Jesus.

To become discouraged and depressed when we have Almighty God beside us? I mean, it’s hard for me to wrap my brain around that. 

Deb: I agree. The other thing is that just because God gifted me as a writer doesn’t mean that God’s going to have me writing for the rest of my life. 

Karen: Right. 

Deb: I will write as long as God tells me to write. If he puts something else in my life and says that season is over, then it will be over. I might mourn it. I might be sad about it when that happens, but if he tells me, then how can I do anything else?

Karen: Amen.

Erin: First, I want our listeners to be encouraged because they’ve heard it from Deb: God has a reason. I mean, you have come to that understanding through these years of walking and seeing and having something taken away from you over and over again, only to be handed something different from God. I hope our listeners can see from your experience that God is going to do that.

But take us back to your earlier journey. Before you had those years under your belt, were there maybe some practical things you did, or thought, to help you pick yourself up…or not? Or lean on God, or whatever you did to keep moving forward?

Deb: Well, first of all, please don’t think that I always handled it perfectly because I didn’t. And it’s okay to cry and weep and mourn and say, “God, why?”

He can handle that. It’s okay for us to ask him and plead with him, even, if it’s something we feel strongly about. Sometimes I think that he lets us long for something so that we appreciate it more when it does finally happen.

But no, sometimes my attitude in my younger years, well actually even in my older years, sometimes my attitude is not very God honoring. I’m ashamed of those times because every disappointment that I have had in this life is a first-world problem.

I’m here to tell you, I am very, very blessed. When I finally, you know, suck it up and say, “Okay, Lord, whatever you have,” I realize how very, very blessed I am. Sometimes the discouragement or the disappointment leads to something better. But sometimes it doesn’t.

Sometimes it leads to something a little less than what I thought I deserved and a little less than what I wanted. But even in that, there have been lessons to learn, and there have been reasons for that.

As a sixty-nine-year-old writer, one thing that I have seen is a whole new crop of young writers, just like I was when I first started out, coming in to take the place of the writers my age. The old guard that we have kind of become, and that’s fine. That’s okay. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt sometimes. It doesn’t mean that I don’t feel a little jealous sometimes that those younger writers are coming up, but they are following God’s call just exactly the way I was.

When I was a young writer, there was probably an older writer who felt a little jealous of me and the position that I was in. Again, this is just the way life is.

When my attitude is right, and I am following God and seeking his will and walking in his truth and staying in his word, and when my perspective is right, and I understand this is the way it is, this is the way life is and it’s good—when I’m doing all that, then life IS good. It’s not the way it was supposed to be in the garden, but we live in a fallen world, and when we walk with Jesus in a fallen world, it’s still a pretty wonderful world.

Karen: Yeah. I like those steps. Those are steps to take that can help you endure. Because the longer you walk with the Lord, the closer you become to him and the more you come to understand that, it’s like when you were with your group of friends, you can be honest. You can express every emotion.

When I go through one health issue after another, I’m not sitting there and saying, “Oh, this is so great. Jesus, thank you for this new health challenge and all this physical pain!”

I’ve been known to actually use obscenities from time to time. I always apologize to God and I apologize to whoever happened to hear me when I was going through that, but God is so gracious. He knows our limitations and he knows what we can endure, and everything that we face is meant to get us a step further in what we can endure, to strengthen us more and to refine us.

It’s like tempered steel or tempered glass. It will not shatter the way that untested steel and glass can shatter. 

Deb: The other thing that I have come to recognize is that sometimes I think God allows me to walk through a certain type of disappointment so that I can walk along beside someone else in a few years who is going through that same thing.

When I was walking through that, there was nothing more comforting than having somebody else who had been through that very type of thing come alongside me and say, “It’ll be okay. I thought it was the end of the world when it happened to me, but God had something else in mind. It’ll be okay.” 

Karen: Right.

Erin: You’ve touched on this idea of just crying. I think that sometimes as Christians we forget that lament is okay. It’s not just okay, it’s good and it’s healthy. Look at David’s lament when Saul and Jonathan died. Look at the book Lamentations. Lament is important.

I love what you’re saying, that somebody is walking with you and you can walk through things with others. I think one of the most powerful things we can say is, “It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to lament the loss of that contract or the loss of those sales that you thought you were gonna get and instead something awful happened and the whole world did something different” or whatever.

Lament is just that we can grieve and we can pour out our sorrow. Jesus cried. It’s okay and good. It’s important, I think, to also remember that lament is not despair. Despair is a different story altogether.

But lament is grieving with hope. Grieving at what’s happened, but understanding that we aren’t people who have no hope. In some way, shape, or form, we still have hope for whatever God wants to do. And we know he wants to do things with us because that’s what he does. That’s why we’re here. 

Karen: Yeah. The biggest difference is that there are people who fall into lament and that leads them into despair, and then they live there. They live there with that expectation of something terrible happening, or the other shoe dropping, or that God must not love them as much as X, Y, Z, or whatever lie the enemy is going to visit upon their minds and their hearts and spirits, and they stay in that place.

That’s why it’s so vital to be able to do as you said: to lament, but do it with hope because we know that we have hope in God no matter what happens to us. We have hope. 

Deb: Yes. And sometimes, because God is a loving father and he disciplines the children he loves, sometimes he says to me, “Get over yourself.”

I mean, yes, it’s okay to lament and cry and whine and complain and go to the Psalms and all of that, but sometimes it’s time to be done lamenting and get on with the next thing.

Erin: Yes!

Deb: I always have to learn that the hard way, it seems like. 

Erin: I love that idea, too, because that’s humility. As writers, what better thing can we share with the world than humility? Because that’s where we’re learners. That’s where we’re growers. That’s what this world needs is a little bit more humility and a little less human pride. 

Karen: I’ll never forget Robin Lee Hatcher, who we’ve had on the show a couple times, and she was talking about when she went through her divorces and she was just struggling and she was saying to the Lord, “Why me, Lord, why me?”

God spoke to her and said, “Why not you beloved?”

You know, it’s like, “Oh. Yeah. Okay. That’s true.”

Erin: It’s that cursed world we live in. It’s filled with futility until the whole restoration of the kingdom. That’s just where we live. But how wonderful and how good of God to allow us joy and peace, and the honor of working in a way that we love, and creativity, and the way that he chooses to use these words. It’s just, there’s nothing better out there, you guys. 

Deb: Yes. You know, even if no one ever read the books that I have written, that wouldn’t change God’s goodness. That wouldn’t change the fact that he gave me a gift.

Now sure, I’m happier when a whole bunch of people read them. The more that do, the happier I am. But some of my books, I think I wrote for me. They were written for me to pour out something that was going on in my life, or to teach me a lesson, or that type of thing. That’s okay, too.  

Erin: I love that. 

Deb: Another—I’ll call it a gift in quotes—that God has given me is that I play the piano by ear. Nobody else needs to hear that. That is a gift that he has given me purely for my own enjoyment, and maybe to play with my grandchildren sitting on the piano bench beside me and just having fun.

I am not going to be playing in any concert hall or even in any church anytime soon. So not always are the gifts that we are given meant to be used to do great and mighty things out in the world.

Karen: Right. 

Erin: I love that you said that because so many writers struggle with, “Am I called to write, or is it okay for me to write, or should I be writing?”

My answer is always yes. You’re a creative person. You don’t need some kind of a gift card from God that says you need to write. But they think it’s a waste and they only want to write if it’s going to be read by hundreds of people because otherwise, why? That’s the wrong way to look at it. It’s the wrong question.  

Deb: Right. If God wills, then the story will get out there. Every time I get a wonderful reader letter from somebody who I didn’t even know was reading my book, which usually you don’t, that’s a wonderful blessing. I can remind myself that for every person who does write and tell me what my story meant, there’s probably another hundred people who didn’t write.

That’s okay. I don’t need to know what happened to my story once it got out in the world. That’s between God and that person. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still thrilled when I do get to hear, every so often, and get that little bit of encouragement.

Erin: We’re coming to the end of our time already. Do you have any last words of wisdom you would want to leave our listeners with? 

Deb: I guess if I could say anything to my younger self, I would say don’t worry about the little things. God will take care of them. Learn to trust him and to know that if something that is out of your control happens, just roll with the punches and wait.

God, he may show you. He may make it very clear to you later on what the reason was for that happening. But if he doesn’t, that doesn’t mean he’s not working in your life. He’s still working in your life. Trust him. Two words.

Just learn to trust him.

I think that’s kind of what this life on this earth is all about—just learning that our father loves us and he wants to give us good things. He also sometimes needs to discipline us because we’re naughty children sometimes. You know, we need a spanking. I know I do sometimes. But let him have his way with you and work in your life. 

Erin: I love that.

Karen: What I really like is recognizing that in light of eternity and in light of God’s purpose, it’s all small stuff. Even the things that feel like they’re going to end our careers, or ruin our lives, or whatever. In light of God, it’s all small stuff, so don’t worry about it, don’t fret about it. Feel your emotions and share those with God and with believers who’ll speak truth to you.

But in the long run, God’s got this. He’s got you. You’ve proven that, Deb, with what you’ve talked about today. You’ve reminded us of the fact that we don’t need to worry. We don’t need to be afraid. We don’t need to be discouraged. We can just rely on God and trust him. Like you said, those two words: Trust him. 

Erin: Yes!  

Deb: I think one of the best things about getting older is that the longer you live, the more you see, you can look back and trace, God’s work in your life. I love that part of being old. 

Erin: Amen.

Karen: Amen.

Guest @AuthorDebRaney shares two powerful words to help you have longevity in a publishing career. #amwriting #ChristianWriter
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Writing is not an easy profession. Being a Christian writer can be even more difficult. These three essentials for a Christian writer’s life will ground you in your faith, enabling you to write and build a career with peace and confidence.

But first, thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

Recently I listened to a couple of books that got me thinking about today’s topic. What is essential for a Christian writer’s life? We live in a busy world with a thousand things demanding our time and attention every day. I don’t think that’s overstating it. We’ve only got one life. How are we going to choose what to do with the time God gives us? What is our priority?

Even if we were to weed out obvious things to say no to, like sin or clear distractions, that still leaves a multitude of demands, ideas, activities, and so on, to consider. Many of which you can make a good case for. The choices we make matter, because what you give your time and attention to is what shapes your life.

That’s where those books inspired me. The first one is titled Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. 

The subtitle was a revelation: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. It seems like today’s world is all about the urgent, unending pursuit of more—doing it all and having it all. This book is about deliberately, ruthlessly choosing to do less so you can focus on what matters most to you.  

Today we want to step back from the myriad details of our lives. We want to step back from complicated plans and programs, endless to-do lists, and a plethora of shoulda woulda couldas. Instead, we’ll pare down to 3 essentials, or guiding principles, to help shape and guide your life as a Christian and a writer. God gave us our creative gifts for good purposes, so we want to ensure that we’re willing vessels, available anytime, anywhere, for the tasks God gives us. 

We’ve used the term essentials, or guiding principles, but you can also call them core precepts, or a “rule of life.” By rule, we don’t mean legal regulations but rather a way of organizing your life toward a purpose. 

Essential 1 – Abide in Christ  

John 15:4-5 (ESV) says, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

Abiding in Christ means we WILL bear fruit. Not abiding in Christ means we won’t bear fruit. Apart from Christ we can do nothing. This is so simple, yet too often we fail to realize and carry out the dire necessity of this. Maybe in part because it’s hard to quantify what abiding in Christ looks like, or what it means in a practical sense. Abiding in Christ (or some translations use the word “remaining” in Christ) is more than just believing in Christ. As an article on Crossway.org puts it, it’s “staying vitally connected” to Christ.

An article on DesiringGod.org describes abiding in Christ  as being “…attached to the vine in such a way that it is receiving all that the branch has to give…” The article goes on to say, “…abiding is believing, trusting, savoring, resting, receiving.”

What does that look like in a practical, daily sense? The Crossway.org article says, “It is the lifelong extension of encountering Jesus.”

That’s still probably going to look different for everyone, but I think one universal principle is to make encountering Jesus your daily mindset.

Make Encountering Jesus Your Daily Mindset

This is the essential. The rule of the day is to live in such a way as to believe and trust his promises, to savor and rest in his presence, to be constantly and expectantly open-handed to receive everything we need from him moment by moment. It’s to keep in the forefront of our mind that we’re working and living and resting in communion and in union with him.

When we’re writing, when we’re plotting, when we’re doing a day job that might not be writing; when we get up in the morning, when we go to bed at night; when we brush our teeth, mow the lawn, run errands, fix dinner—all of this is done with a constant awareness of, and reliance on, our connection with the Vine.

But mindfulness of this—or anything else for that matter—is a very real struggle in our culture today. Our brains are being assaulted with distractions, and being rewired to need them. That’s why this essential is also a practice. It’s something we have to choose to continually do, and it isn’t easy. Thankfully we don’t have to do this in our own power. 

The Crossway.org article has this to say, “…Jesus does not leave us to ourselves. Even though he commands us to abide in him—and we are responsible to abide there, and guilty if we don’t abide—nevertheless he himself keeps us there. And we would not abide there without his crucial keeping.”

So, don’t forget to ask for God’s help and know you’ll receive it.

Do Frequent Checks

We should also be frequently checking ourselves to make sure we aren’t neglecting or straying from the true Vine. Y’all know that we’re prone to do this. The Crossway.org article puts it like this: “…we are often tempted to find our life-giving sap from another plant.”

We’re prone to disobedience, apathy, forgetfulness, or just plain drifting. The good gifts and desires God has given us—like creativity and writing—have a tendency to become distorted. That’s the very last thing we want if we’re going to have something of value to share with the world.

Making abiding in Christ an essential, a life rule, rather than just a good idea or a random desire will help us fight those tendencies and truly bear fruit both in our lives and in our writing.

This essential also does the most important thing of all: it helps us love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. Jesus tells us in Matthew 22:37-38 that this is the first and greatest commandment.

Essential 2 – Build & Nurture Relationships

Our next essential is to build and nurture relationships. This is in keeping with our design. We were created for relationship by a relational God. We can’t flourish if we’re not living according to our design.

That said, we want to stress that how this plays out in each person’s life will be very different. Some of us thrive in the midst of a large community of friendships and networks. Some of us do better with fewer relationships. Too many people becomes overwhelming.

No matter what this looks like for you, the point is that you make relationships an essential in your life. We get strength from our community of friends. 

• We carry each others’ burdens (Galatians 6:28).
• We learn in 1 thes 5:11 that We encourage each other and build each other up (1 Thessalonians 5:11).
• We teach each other (Colossians 3:16).
• We help each other and have each other’s backs (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12).
• We sharpen each other (Proverbs 27:17).
• We pray for each other (James 5:16)
• We comfort each other (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)

We simply can’t live a “Lone Ranger” life and expect to thrive. We need all the things relationships offer, and other people need those same things from us in return. In our busy lives today, relationships suffer. They take time and energy, two very precious commodities, so we must make relationships an essential if they’re to flourish.

As writers, we need to be writing out of our deep love for people, our connection with them, and our understanding of them. That comes from our journey of doing life with people. Of being vulnerable and walking with others in their vulnerabilities. Hanging in there through the glory, and mess, and triumphs, and failures. We earn the right to speak to others when we’re in the trenches with them. That’s also where we learn to shift our writing from being writer focused—as in “I just want to tell my story”—to being reader focused—as in, “How can I best serve readers?” 

Loving God with all our hearts is the greatest commandment, but Matthew 22:39 tells us that loving others is the second. We simply can’t do that if we have no relationship with them.

However, please don’t hear us saying you have to spend every minute of your life with people. Many writers are introverts who need down time and alone-time. What we’re saying is that building and nurturing relationships should be a guiding principle in how you’re spending your life and what you’re doing with your time. Ask yourself: Is what I’m doing right now ultimately going to help or hinder my relationships with others? Will I be investing or isolating? That hour you take for solitude may be exactly what you need in order to recharge and be ready to engage others with the best version of you.

Essential 3 – Eliminate Hurry

Our last essential is to eliminate hurry from your life. This might seem like a strange thing for us to pick as an essential, but a book called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer makes a profound case for this idea. I highly recommend all Christians read it. It’s paradigm-shifting.

It’s near impossible to effectively carry out the first two essentials we mentioned if we’re always in a hurry.

How can we abide when we’re in a rush? How can we build and nurture relationships when we’re always on the go? We’ve probably all been on the receiving end of an appointment or conversation with someone who’s in too much of a hurry to listen. Whether it’s a doctor or a good friend, the result is the same. We don’t feel heard or seen, which leaves us feeling uncared for.

Think of this third principle—to eliminate hurry—as a practical way to carry out the first two. It’s a way to make space in our lives for what matters most. Also, think of it as a way to love yourself. We want to love God, and we want to love our neighbors, but Matthew 22:39 says that we’re to love others as we love ourselves. That means we don’t neglect self-care!

A hurried life is a stressful life not a peaceful life. Hurry creates angst and a feeling that we’re never good enough, fast enough, strong enough, smart enough, safe enough. Hurry is the enemy of abiding, the enemy of knowing deeply and being known, and the enemy of time and attention. We can’t listen to ourselves, let alone others, when we’re in a hurry.

What about our writing life? Writing that’s hurried suffers from inauthenticity and superficiality. It lacks insight and resonance. We’ve all read superficial writing. It’s out there, and at the end of the day, it’s ineffective. Don’t add to it.

What does the elimination of hurry look like in our lives? Again that’s probably different for everyone, but two key ideas to put this into practice are to create margin and to slow down.

Create Margin in Your Life

• This means not just that you don’t over book, but it means that you do “under book.” Allow more time than you think you need for each appointment or activity. Put white space in between appointments—and book deadlines!—so you can reset, refocus, and rest. Don’t schedule anything back to back.
• Work to pare down your schedule, to pursue less, as the book Essentialism suggests. Do few things and do them well.
• Fair warning: Creating margin will require you to be disciplined and ruthless in your choices! 

Slow Down

The second way we eliminate hurry is to slow down By this we mean actively work to set a slower pace. This will be hard. Our culture is zooming along at a frantic pace, and we’ve been caught up and swept along. We have to dig our heels in if we’re going to stop the madness. 

The goal of this essential is to experience your life. To savor it rather than be exhausted by it. Stop and think about how that sounds. What could that feel like to be free from rushing? I think that’s why so many people love Amish and historical fiction. It’s the lure of a slower life that feels impossible today.

How would your stress level change if you regularly drove the speed limit because you weren’t in a hurry to get where you were going? Or if you could saunter through the grocery store, and play lazy games of Candyland with your kids? If you had time to savor a cup of coffee with a friend or an impromptu conversation with a neighbor. You can do this if you create margin and actively work to set a slower pace. 

Eliminating hurry fosters creativity, patience, peace, mindfulness, rest, delight, and love. It makes your life and writing fertile ground for bearing fruit. 

God’s Design

Abide in Christ, build and nurture relationships, and eliminate hurry from your life. Following these principles will help you live out God’s design for your writing and life as you love God, love your neighbor, and love yourself.

3 essentials for a Christian writer’s life to ground you in your faith so you can write and build a career with peace and confidence. #christianwriter #amwriting
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Books mentioned in the podcast

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

What do you count as essential in your life?

CHECK OUT THE FLORIDA CHRISTIAN WRITERS CONFERENCE!

Erin will be at theFlorida Christian Writers Conference, in Leesburg, FL, October 16-20, 2024. Hope to see you there!

THANK YOU!

Thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

A big thank you to our October sponsor of the month, Kimberley Woodhouse! She’s an award-winning and bestselling author whose books have received the Carol Award, Holt Medallion, Reader’s Choice Award, Selah Award, Spur Award, Christian Market Book Award, Golden Scroll Award among others. A popular speaker/teacher, she’s shared with over 1,000,000 people at more than twenty-five hundred venues across the country. Her fortieth book, 70 North, releases this month. You can also connect with Kim at kimberleywoodhouse.com

Many thanks also to the folks at PodcastPS for their fabulous sound editing!

STAY CONNECTED

Want the latest news from Karen and Erin? Click here to join our newsletter and get an exclusive audio download.

The post 223 – 3 Essentials for a Christian Writer’s Life appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Attending a writers’ conference can be intimidating, even overwhelming. If you want to make the most of your time at a writers’ conference, guest Grace Fox has some specific strategies to help you do exactly that. And some of them are even about your writing.

But first, thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

Grace Fox

Grace Fox is a popular speaker at women’s events internationally. She inspires hope, courage, and transformation through God’s Word. She has served as a career missionary for more than 30 years. Grace has written fourteen books and published hundreds of articles in magazines. She’s a member of the First 5 Bible Study writing team for P31 Ministries and is a co-host for a podcast called Your Daily Bible Verse. Her book, Finding Hope in Crisis: Devotions for Calm in Chaos, won the Golden Scroll Devotional Book of the Year Award in 2021. Keeping Hope Alive: Devotions for Strength in the Storm won the same award in 2022. Her newest devotional is titled Names of God: Living Unafraid. You can learn all about her at GraceFox.com. 

Thanks to our sponsors on Patreon, we’re able to offer an edited transcript of the podcast

Erin Taylor Young: Welcome listeners into the Deep. Today is part two of our interview on writers’ conferences with Grace Fox, and we are discussing specific strategies for making conferences work for you. 

Karen Ball: So when writers attend conferences, what is helpful and what isn’t? 

Well, many writers wonder why they should spend the money to attend a writers’ conference if they don’t get a contract from it. How do they justify the expense to a spouse? Or maybe you think, “I’m ready to be published. I’ve got this,” but what if the professionals at the conference don’t agree? 

Haven’t they just wasted all that money for nothing?

Grace Fox: Absolutely not, because attending conferences is about growing relationships with those very professionals. It’s about laying a strong foundation for your career. You go to conferences to learn as much as you possibly can about the craft of writing. Which means you have to go in with a teachable spirit. To say, “I’m here to learn,” and take in as much as you can. That’s the first strategy. 

But conferences––all those workshops––can feel like information overload at times, so the next strategy is to tell yourself it’s okay to skip out on a workshop if you need to decompress. It’s so helpful to take time to get your notes in order and to get your thoughts put together again, or to just go to your room and have a quiet time and pray. 

With that in mind, it’s always a good idea to have friends praying for you as attend the conference. Because you don’t know what God’s purpose is for having you go there. 

Karen Ball: Exactly! Sometimes He calls you to go to a writer’s conference and it has nothing to do with your writing career. It has to do with you meeting people who get you on the right track as far as your perspective, understanding that God may be calling you to write something for one person, and if you write something and only one person reads it and it changes that person’s life, it’s worth it. The expense is worth it. The investment is worth it. It’s all worth it because you’re doing what God has asked you to do.

Grace Fox: That’s beautiful. It really is about obedience. And in my career with writing, I’ve met so many people who think that end all is writing a book—gotta write a book. Gotta write a book. But one thing I learned at a conference is that that there is a huge audience out there with magazines.

Think about it. Your book may only sell 2000 copies in its lifetime. But one magazine article can reach a quarter of a million people. You don’t know those things unless you start going to conferences and learning from those people that are in the know.

Karen Ball: That’s why it’s so important to get your expectations straight, to go in with an open mind and an open-hearted spirit and say, “What is it you want from me, Lord?” Not, “What are You going to give me, Lord?,” but “What do You want from me?”

Grace Fox: Because His plan may be to put you on the bridge to something entirely different.

Erin Taylor Young: You know, I love, Grace, how supportive your husband was. He justified the expense because God told you to go. And I love what you said about it being an education. I mean, people go back to school all the time and nobody questions that expense to pay for a class or whatever. This is the same thing. You’re paying for a lot of classes. And believe me,  it’s cheaper than college tuition!

Grace Fox: Amen. And again, the relationships that you make at conferences can last for years. I am still friends with some of the women that I met in 1999. We still communicate and [00:08:00] support each other in our writing.

Erin Taylor Young: Well, I met Karen at a writing conference. 

Karen Ball: Exactly. And so much came out of that, even beyond publishing Erin’s book, Surviving Henry. It’s amazing what God can accomplish if we’re open to letting Him do his will and bring about His plans instead of ours.

And Grace, I loved what you said in part one of this interview about not stopping until God tells you to. 

Grace Fox: That was a quote from Matt Anderson. 

Karen Ball: We all need to remember that, especially when we experience what you did, Grace. Where you told us in the first part of this podcast that you were so sure when you went to that first conference that you had everything down, that you were ready to be published, and you weren’t. Or when we’re’re told that we need to learn how to do this or this or this better…

That that can be just devastating. 

But from the editor’s side of the desk at writer’s conferences, I can say met a lot of wonderful writers, but not very many who were ready, at that moment, to be published. Writers have to spend time studying, writing, and  learning the craft.

And so if you go to a writer’s conference and they’re telling you that you need to do this and this and this, don’t look at that as something depressing. And don’t let it make you want to give up! Look at that as your orders, your marching orders. Don’t stop writing until God tells you to do so.

Grace Fox: That’s right because we want to do what God’s called us to do with excellence.

Erin Taylor Young: So, Grace, you were digging in and learning everything you could, and when you learned about articles, you explored that as a way to hone your craft. And to learn how to write to deadline. And you were building a reputation amongst editors. 

Karen Ball: One caution though, again from the editor’s side of the desk. We’re talking about making professional connections, and that’s great. But it was obvious to me when someone came to talk to me or sit at my table during a meal, and it was just to make a connection with an editor. It wasn’t because they cared anything about me as a person, or they were looking at me as an individual, or that God had asked them to sit next to me. It was that they thought talking to me was a strategic connection. 

It’s not about “connections” so much as relationship. The people that I met at these conferences, who shared passions for the things that I had passions for, who came to me with a teachable spirit like you’re talking about…

Those are the people who are still in my life because they know me so well and they know God so well and we can speak truth to each other and encourage and challenge each other. So focus more on building relationships. Just ask God who He wants you to meet. He’s got His reasons for directing you where He does.

Erin Taylor Young: Yeah, I love that. Especially because there are some conferences editors can’t always control who their appointments might be with. But it’s lovely to just have someone come along and just chat with you, to just to talk about what’s happening in the writing world or even just to visit. 

Grace Fox: So another wise strategy is to watch your attitude when you approach the editors. Always remember, they are people as well who may be dealing with hard things, who may have  just had a tragedy in their family, but here they are back at work. We just don’t know. So be careful, if an editor looks disinterested, that it may have nothing to do with you or your writing. Maybe they’re a little preoccupied because they’ve got something personal going on. 

There are all kinds of dynamics that happen at a conference, so purpose to be sensitive to those dynamics, whether with editors or the other attendees. Some are discouraged. Oh my goodness! I’ve been at conferences where a writer gets a rejections and that person is in tears. So go in as someone who’s willing to minister as well as be ministered to.

Erin Taylor Young: Just know that God might send you to a writing conference for something that you can offer to someone else––some thought, some prayer, some who knows what, and word of encouragement––and you might be there for that.

And that’s still being obedient and still being used by God and still contributing. To the overall words of truth going forth in, in this world. We can contribute even if we don’t write a word. What if we encouraged somebody who then wrote something that that just took off? Changed people’s lives? God is so much bigger than we realize.

Karen Ball: So let me recap some strategies or going to writer’s conferences that we’ve hit on here. First of all, make sure you go to conferences because God is calling you to do so. If you need to justify the expense, you can honestly say that God is calling you to this, that this is an investment in what He’s asking you to do.

The next strategy is to check your expectations at the door. We talked about false expectations, why not go with no expectations beyond asking God what He wants to show you? 

Erin Taylor Young: Right. Go in with an open heart and mind and spirit.

Grace Fox: And ask him for those divine appointments.

Erin Taylor Young: Those are so much fun when they happen!

Karen Ball: Next, check your ego at the door. Be teachable. Don’t feel as though people are rejecting you when they say you’re not ready. What they’re really saying is you can do better. That actually is a form of belief in you, and so take it as such and let it nurture you and nourish you and move forward in what you’ve been shown and taught. 

Erin Taylor Young: That brings up an important point. It’s difficult sometimes for a new writer to get that meeting she wanted, or have a critique done, and see red pen all over. But the deal is this: published writers, career writers, still get red pen all over their work!

As an editor, Karen has put red pen all over manuscripts. I have too. There are multi-published authors who’ve had a 30-page revision letter from me! That doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re doing and it doesn’t mean that you’re a bad writer and it doesn’t mean that you should be discouraged. It’s just a normal part of the process.

Karen Ball: We writers all need editors. When I’m functioning as a writer, I love getting those letters from my editor. I don’t always agree with everything that they suggest, but I know that what they are saying is, this is good, but you can do better. And it’s because of their belief in who I am as a writer.

So when editors at these conferences say this isn’t quite what we need, but have you considered, and then they give you guidance, that’s because they believe in you.

Grace Fox: When I went to that first writer’s conference. I should have checked my ego at the door. I wrote three sample devotions to be critiqued by an editor of a beautiful women’s devotional magazine. I sat at her table one meal and she recognized my name. She said, “Oh, I read some of your stuff.” And I’m thinking, oh yeah, here we go. And then she said, “They were okay, but they’re just too long for our publication.”

My devotionals were 800 words, and she was looking for something more like 350 to 400. But she said, “I know you can cut them down and get them down to 350 or 400 words.” 

I had the gall to say, “I don’t think so.” She said again that I could, and I just said no. That I couldn’t do that and maintain the integrity of the piece. 

Needless to say, I’ve never written for her. And why would she want me to? Talk about ego!

But I ended up at the airport with a different editor whose flight was at the same time as mine. I told her about that meeting, and she said, “Show me what you submitted.” So I pulled out that first devotion and slid it across the table to her. She butchered it with red ink. She took the second one and did it again. And when she got to the third one and started in with her red pen, I was just dying by that point.

But I went home with those devotions all marked up in red pen, and I did what she said. She showed me how to cut things down from 800 words to 350. And the integrity of the piece was still there!

Now? I have a hard time going bigger because I know how to write tight.

Erin Taylor Young: That’s grace right there. That is a God-gift that this editor, after you wouldn’t listen, did that for you. One of the neat things about all this? We have all made mistakes, mistakes, mistakes, mistakes, and guess what? Our careers did not die. One mistake is not going to ruin your career.

So be okay with direction. With correction. We’re gonna learn, we’re gonna make mistakes, and we’re gonna be humble about it and, and then follow advice. 

Karen Ball: Grace, do you have any final words of wisdom for our listeners about writer’s conferences?

Grace Fox: Absolutely, GO. Have a teachable heart. Know that what you think you’re going for may not be at all what God has in mind. It might be about ministering to somebody in the airport on your way or the person in the plane beside you. God’s purposes are so much bigger than ours, so go with a wide open heart.

Karen Ball: Yes, amen. Thanks for joining us today. You can find previous episodes and more resources at right from the deep.com, and I bet you know someone who needs this podcast will please share it with them.

So until next time, embrace the deep, your writing and your life will never be the same.

Don't stop until God tells you to.
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WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Which of these strategies do you think will work best for you next time you attend a writers’ conference?

CHECK OUT THE FLORIDA CHRISTIAN WRITERS CONFERENCE!

Erin will be at theFlorida Christian Writers Conference, in Leesburg, FL, October 16-20, 2024. Hope to see you there!

THANK YOU!

Thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

A big thank you to our August sponsor of the month,Tammy Partlow! She’s a speaker at women’s retreats, and her debut novel Blood Beneath the Pines, a suspense set in the deep South, is now available. She’s hard at work on the next book in the series! 

Many thanks also to the folks at PodcastPS for their fabulous sound editing!

STAY CONNECTED

Want the latest news from Karen and Erin? Click here to join our newsletter and get an exclusive audio download.

Book mentioned in the podcast

Names of God: Living Unafraid by Grace Fox

The post 222 – Strategies for Writers’ Conferences with Guest Grace Fox appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Writers’ conferences cost time and money, so are they really worth it? Absolutely! But not necessarily for the reasons you think. Guest Grace Fox shares how God moved her to attend a writers’ conference, how many mistakes she made there, and how God miraculously provided for her and used it all to bless her far more than she ever imagined.

About Grace Fox

Grace Fox is a popular speaker at women’s events internationally. She inspires hope, courage, and transformation through God’s Word. She has served as a career missionary for more than 30 years. Grace has written fourteen books and published hundreds of articles in magazines. She’s a member of the First 5 Bible Study writing team for P31 Ministries and is a co-host for a podcast called Your Daily Bible Verse. Her book, Finding Hope in Crisis: Devotions for Calm in Chaos, won the Golden Scroll Devotional Book of the Year Award in 2021. Keeping Hope Alive: Devotions for Strength in the Storm won the same award in 2022. Her newest devotional is titled Names of God: Living Unafraid. You can learn all about her at GraceFox.com. 

Thanks to our sponsors on Patreon, we’re able to offer an edited transcript of the podcast!

Erin: Welcome, listeners. We’re so excited that you’re here for another day, another show! We have a guest, which is also exciting.  

Karen: Our guest is someone that you all know. She’s been here before, and we’re so excited that she’s here with us again now.

Her name is Grace Fox. She’s the writer who lives on a boat. She speaks at women’s events internationally and inspires hope, courage, and transformation through God’s word. She’s written fourteen books and published hundreds of articles in magazines. She’s a member of the First 5 Bible study writing team for P31 Ministries and a co-host for the podcast Your Daily Bible Verse. She is just so smart you guys, and she’s here to share with us about conferences and other things. Welcome, Grace. 

Grace: Thank you so much for having me back. 

Erin: Yes, we’re excited about it. So let’s start with our same lovely question that we just love digging into. Grace, what does the deep mean to you? 

Grace: Well, that word reminds me of my childhood, standing on the diving board at the swimming pool. At the end of swimming classes, the teacher would say, “Okay, everybody, you get to jump off the diving board.”

I would just die inside because the thought scared me half to death. Getting up those stairs and standing on the diving board with a lineup of people waiting patiently behind me while I worked up the courage to jump into the deep end, that’s what I think of. In my faith journey, it’s scary sometimes when God calls me to a place where he says, “Okay, Grace, I want you to jump.”

The good thing to know is that he’s always there to catch me. Like the lifeguard, in the goodness of his heart, he’d be down there with his arms straight up going, “It’s okay, Grace, you can jump. I’ll catch you.” 

Karen: That’s great. 

Erin: Conference season is kind of rolling along here in the fall. I would love to hear, Grace, about your very first conference because we were talking a little bit earlier and I know you’ve got some good stories about your first conference. 

Grace: Yeah, so I started my writing career thinking I was going to develop a line of greeting cards. I found a woman who could draw, because I can’t draw to save my life. I came up with the concepts and we put together ten sample cards. 

Then we thought, “Now what do we do with them?”

She really wasn’t interested in doing any more than drawing. She had a little hobby farm she was busy with, and so I said, “Okay, I’ll figure out the marketing. I haven’t got a clue, but I’ll figure it out.”

I remember sitting down at my computer and Googling, like for the first time, Christian greeting card publisher. Up came the Florida Christian Writers Conference. I didn’t even know that such a thing existed. I thought, “Wow, that looks interesting.”

I scrolled through it and looked to see what faculty members were going to be there. Lo and behold, Dayspring was going to be there!

Karen: Wow. 

Grace: My first thought was, “That looks so good. I should go. Oh, but that’s way beyond my reach. That’s so far. I can’t do this, I can’t afford it.”

You know. I came up with all the reasons why not. That was in August. 

Erin: Where were you living at the time that it was far? 

Grace: I was living on a little island off the coast of British Columbia, working at a Christian camp, and we were living on paid support, so the thought of coming up with the money to do this was just beyond me. Then the thought of getting there was another issue.

Erin: Wait a minute. That really was far. I mean, let’s just point that out for our listeners. You were far, okay, and you were financially challenged. Those were both true. 

Grace: Yep. As far as distance goes, it would take me two ferries just to get to the mainland, and then I would have to fly from either Vancouver or Seattle.

If I were to go to Seattle to fly, it would be about a twelve hour trip, ten or twelve hours with two ferries.

Erin: Wow. 

Grace: So it was a big deal. It was a very big deal. I remember thinking, and arguing about that, and then just kind of shutting it down and thinking, “That’s impossible.”

But the thought never really left the back of my mind. In October I went back and looked at the site again, and it was like somebody just gripped me and said, “You need to be there.”

I shared that with my husband and he just said, “If God is wanting you to go, then I will support you with that. We will make it work.” 

Karen: Yeah. 

Grace: God actually did make it work in an amazing way, because a couple weeks later I went to a teeny tiny missions conference at a teeny tiny church. Literally walked across the cow pastor to get there. 

It was on a Friday evening. The pastor opened the service by saying, “Everybody stand up, turn around and say hi to somebody around you.”

I did that, and lo and behold, the woman behind me was there because her husband was one of the speakers for that weekend. But I’d graduated from Bible college with her more than twenty years before, and I hadn’t seen her since. I’d had no contact with her. 

I went, “Lynn, so great to see you! What have you been doing with yourself?”

She told me that she was a travel agent working out of her own home. I remember saying, “Hey, give me your information because I’ll keep you in mind if I ever need to go somewhere.”

When it just seemed like God was saying, “You are going to Florida,” I phoned her up and I said, “Lynn, here’s the deal. I need to get to Florida on this day, and I need to get back on this day and you know, I need you to get me there as inexpensively as possible out of Vancouver or out of Seattle. “

She said, “Let me see what I can do.”

She called me back and said, “Grace, I have never seen anything like this before, ever, so give me your credit card right now.”

I did and she booked me a flight on the days that I needed it. It was about $150 round trip. 

Erin: No! 

Grace: That was a miracle. And let me tell you, I didn’t know the whole story until I met her at a women’s retreat years later. She goes, “Grace, by the way, did I ever tell you what happened after I booked your ticket? A disclaimer came up on the screen that said that price was a mistake. They’d honor every ticket purchased on that price, but that was a mistake.”

Erin: That’s God. 

Grace: And that’s how I got to my first writer’s conference. 

Erin: That is amazing. Look at how God provided. You stepped forward in faith each time and God gave you that encouragement along the way and that prompting, and then he made it work. Miraculously. 

Grace: He did more even because we had a house that had been on the market for two years in Washington state. When we moved to Canada, we’d put our house on the market. It sold just before Christmas that year. But I was still several hundred dollars shy of what I needed to go to the conference. 

About a week before the conference, I remember sitting at the kitchen table, literally crying because I felt like this was way bigger than me. I was thinking, “I’m on a white water rafting trip, and I’m hanging on for dear life, and this is way bigger than me.” 

Into our mailbox came a letter from escrow that said they’d made a mistake in figuring out how much they owed us after the house sold. The amount of money they said they owed us was, almost to the penny, what was left that I needed to get to Florida.

Karen: Don’t you love how God does that? I mean, that’s amazing. I guess it’s pretty clear God wanted you there. 

Grace: I think that’s another reason why I cried. I thought, “He’s in charge of this and this is bigger than me. Let’s just hang on for dear life and see where this goes.”

I went to the conference because I knew I was supposed to go.

Erin: Yes, it’s very clear. 

Karen: How did that conference go for you? 

Grace: My greeting cards were nicely rejected by the Dayspring editor, and they’ve never gone anywhere to this day. That would’ve been like 1999, and they’ve never gone anywhere. But it was, like I say, the carrot before a little donkey’s nose. I just followed that carrot and it led me to the Florida Christian Writers Conference.

While I was there, I went to every workshop I could possibly go to because I wanted to get my money’s worth out of the thing!

Erin: Yeah. 

Grace: I went to the sessions especially about writing for magazines. That was where I ultimately broke into writing. I was just doing what the editors said. I played by the rules, and I got the Christian Writers Market Guide, and I studied it like a Bible. I did all the right things, and I was able to break in, but that doesn’t mean that I did it all correctly. 

Erin: First, though, let’s go back to the fact that you got rejected by Dayspring. Like what happened to you when that happened? Obviously you said, “Well, too bad, I’m still gonna learn everything I can.” But did you also go, “God, uh, did you make a mistake?”

What did you think when that happened? 

Grace: I got rejected there, but I thought, “I’m not gonna give up that easy.”

I think I went back home and I sent the samples to… I must have sent them in to Dayspring again. At that point, there was an artist named Matt Anderson, and he had a line of greeting cards called Heaven’s Unofficial Greetings, like there were little characters like Ziggy, the little cartoon character.

They were one of my favorite lines of cards. So I sent some samples in, and I got a letter back. It was kind of a form rejection, you know, “Your cards do not meet what we’re looking for at this time. Thanks, but no thanks.”

I saw the name on the letter when I got it, and I thought, “That’s not Matt Anderson. That’s not who I wanted to look at the cards”

So I got on the phone. There was a phone number on that thing. I phoned and I asked for that person. It was a name that could be either a male or a female, so I really didn’t even know who I was calling, but I called up, and it turned out to be a man.

I said, “I wanna know why these cards were rejected.”

He said, “Well, to tell you the truth, I didn’t even see them. I was not the one who looked at them. Matt Anderson did. Why don’t I have him call you? He’s a really nice guy and he will do that.”

I thought, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” But I thanked him and hung up. 

Thirty minutes later my phone rang and it was Matt Anderson himself!

Erin: Wow. 

Grace: He went through each card and what he thought about them gave me his opinion. Then he said this, ” Grace, if God is in this, then don’t stop until he says so.”

Karen: Very good. 

Grace: I thought that was the best piece of advice, and I’ve passed that on to a lot of newer writers too, because it really kept me going. I didn’t realize you probably shouldn’t get on the phone and call and say, “Tell me, explain to me…” 

But these people were gracious with me and gave me the answers I was looking for, and that’s what I needed.

As for Matt Anderson, later I was able to interview him for a Power for Living Sunday School paper article. Then we met years later at a Mount Herman Christian Writers Conference. It was great fun. 

Erin: Wow. What I love is these connections that you were building, you know? Let’s go back to the conference. You get rejected by Dayspring, but you’re still, you know, moving along. Did you get rejected at the conference with Dayspring, or did that happen later? 

Grace: No, that happened right at the conference. 

Erin: Okay. Yeah. 

Grace: I had sent them in earlier to be looked at, and so when I got the envelope back there was the nice rejection letter.

Erin: How did you feel? 

Grace: I was disappointed because that’s why I went. I went thinking, “Oh, these are so cute and for sure somebody’s gonna want them.”

I had actually done a little bit of a test drive with some Christian bookstores on Vancouver Island, I had taken them in, and also had taken them to a friend of mine who owned a Christian bookstore in Tacoma, Washington.

All of them were favorable reviews, so I went to that conference thinking, “I’ve got this thing in the bag.” But it didn’t turn out that way at all!

Erin: You wouldn’t be the first person to think, “I’ve got this thing in the bag,” at a conference. 

Karen: Not by a long shot. 

Erin: What else happened at the conference? You learned a lot, it sounds like. 

Grace: I learned a ton. Really that was the best thing I ever could have done, to invest in a conference. I know it’s costly, but it’s an investment. People invest in their education if they’re going to become a teacher or a dentist or any other career. So you know, we need to, as writers, invest as well and know that that money is well spent.

Erin: Right!

Grace: I went wanting to learn. Especially when I got my rejection, I knew that I had to pivot. That’s the big word, right? To pivot and to be flexible. I thought, “Okay, well if the cards aren’t gonna fly, I’m not gonna waste this opportunity. What else can I learn?”

And, yeah, I learned. I remember catching an editor on the sidewalk and pitching an idea on the way to the dining room and that type of thing. He actually said to me, “Yeah, go ahead. Why don’t you write up the story?”

And I did. And I got published. So that was a win for me. 

Erin: You know what I love about all this is that you’re very tenacious. You were willing to not roll over and die at the first sign of trouble. You just kept moving forward.

Now, I know you and I were talking at one point about your interaction with Andy Sheer. Was that a result of this conference? 

Grace: Yes. 

Andy had said yes to an idea that I pitched to him as well. I went home, wrote up the article, typed it up, and I sent it in. That was in the days where they weren’t doing so much by email. It was hard copy.

I sent it in and a little while later I got a rejection letter back. I was appalled to see that when I sent this thing in, I’d sent it on recycled paper, so there was something typed on the back! It wasn’t even clean paper that I sent the article in on. I was so appalled. I just wanted to go crawl into a hole and never come back out.

I did get their form rejection letter back. Although I think it did say something like, “Try again.” It wasn’t a, “Don’t ever do this again!”

I did get a comment like that from another editor. I can tell you about that one. But this one, I don’t think I ever submitted again to that magazine because I was so embarrassed. So embarrassed. 

Erin: Let that be a lesson to everyone out there. Try to use clean paper. Or in these days, hey, everything’s electronic, so that helps. But don’t send it “to whom it may concern…” 

Grace: That’s right. Play by the rules. Get that Christian Writer’s Market Guide and play by the rules. 

Erin: There you go. Obviously, though, you’ve had a very prolific career. Did you go to other conferences or did you just make the most of this one so much that afterwords you were mostly developing connections by submitting and getting rejections and submitting again? 

Grace: I probably went to one or two conferences a year for the first seven or eight years.

Erin: Wow. 

Grace: Yeah. Oh, I did the whole thing. I prepared meals for my family, and I marked on the freezer container, you know, 350 degrees for forty-five minutes. I did all of that. Just prepared, prepared, prepared so that my family wouldn’t feel like I was stepping out on them because I’d be gone for a week at a time. I still had three kids at home at the time. They weren’t little anymore. They were junior high and high school, but still. 

I did that and then I think I took a bit of a break, if I remember correctly, because I felt like things were really starting to move along and it was okay to take a break for a couple years, three years. 

Then my husband and I moved from the island down to Abbottsford, British Columbia, which is about an hour from Vancouver. But the ministry that we began leading at that time meant that I had to be overseas for about five or six weeks every summer and also in the spring. 

I had loved going to the Mount Herman Christian Writers Conference partly because it wasn’t as far as the Florida Christian Writers Conference. It wasn’t clear across the continent for me. It was also in the same time zone, so I didn’t have to deal with jet lag. That was quite handy. Just less expensive all around for me. But they always did it in the springtime, right around Palm Sunday, and that’s when our missions staff conference was held overseas. So I missed it for many years.

But yeah, my writing career was really taking off at that point, so it didn’t hurt it so much since I had a lot of established connections. 

Erin: Right. 

Grace: But for those who are thinking about it, or just fairly new kids on the block with this, it is good to get your foot in the door and keep that door open by growing those relationships at conferences. 

Erin: Right. I think that’s a misconception that a lot of new writers have. I know I did when I was a new writer. I was like, “Well I have to go to a writer’s conference.” But then you go and there’s so much pressure on that one because it’s expensive and you’re like, “I’ve gotta make my money back. I’ve gotta do this now, and this might be my only chance.”

But it doesn’t work that way very often. The best thing is exactly what you did, Grace: to go to as many conferences as you can year after year to meet the same people, to develop relationships.

Ultimately that’s what I ended up doing as well. That’s how I got to know people. That’s how I grew in my writing craft. That’s what happens.

Then after you’ve been going to conferences for 5, 6, 7 years, you know so many more people and those connections and relationships are far more developed, and then when the time is right, God takes you, if he has publication in the path for you, and he opens those doors and makes it happen and all of a sudden you’re like an overnight success after seven years. 

Karen: After a lot more than that. There are people who’ve been overnight successes after twenty years. 

Erin: Yeah.

Karen: Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I really enjoyed this whole conversation and we’ve got even better information and ideas for you about attending writers conferences in the next podcast. So be sure to listen.

Are writers’ conferences worth it? Guest Grace Fox says YES! #ChristianWriter #amwriting
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The Latest Release by Grace Fox

Names of God: Living Unafraid by Grace Fox

Upcoming Conference

Erin will be at the Florida Christian Writers Conference, in Leesburg, FL, October 16-20, 2024.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Have you been to a writers’ conference? What did you you think about your experience?

THANK YOU!

Thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

A big thank you to our September sponsor of the month, Christy Bass Adams. She’s the author of a devotional titled Learning As I Go: Big Lessons from Little People, and a middle grades novel, The Adventures of Cricket and Kyle: Imagination Checkers. She’s also a speaker and leads women’s conferences and Bible studies, and she’s a monthly contributor to Inspire-a-fire and a newspaper columnist for Greene Publishing.

Many thanks also to the folks at PodcastPS for their fabulous sound editing!

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The post 221 – Are Writers’ Conferences Worth It? with Guest Grace Fox appeared first on Write from the Deep.

There is no escaping our humanity. But we can address those elements in our hearts, minds, and spirits that make us, as people and writers, vulnerable to attacks from the enemy of our souls. Attacks that seem, nowadays, to happen more and more often. Come explore the solutions to those vulnerabilities so you are ready

But first, thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

The Bad News: We’re ALL Vulnerable

No one likes to be vulnerable. Heck, we don’t even like to admit we’re vulnerable, especially to the enemy of our souls. But as fallible humans––yes, even someone as wise as we are––our strong emotions that can lead us astray, giving the enemy a foothold to launch attacks against us and tear apart our faith and trust in God.

The Good News: You’re Normal

All of the emotions we’ll talk about today are a normal part of life. They aren’t wrong or dangerous in and of themselves. But when we don’t take them to God, seeking His guidance and peace, His resolution, things can go very bad very fast.

So let’s dive in.

Vulnerability #1: Anger

Scripture makes it clear God gets angry, but His anger is always righteous. Since we’re created in His image, we, too, have the potential for anger. Unfortunately, our anger often isn’t righteous, but self-focused. We perceive some slight, some insult, some betrayal––and they all may be real––and we get angry.

A reader writes us a letter taking us to task for something we’ve written. Our book receives a one-star review for reasons that have nothing to do with the book itself. Publishers decide to cancel or not renew contracts.

Anger is often understandable. But when we nurse that anger, when we let it coax us into bitterness and a desire for retribution, when we continue to visit it and feed it, we have opened a door to the enemy’s attacks.

Satan loves our anger

And satan loves it when we nurse our anger, when we recount it to others and do everything but surrender it to the Father.

The longer anger dwells in your heart, the more likely satan is to fuel it. To increase your frustration, to compound the negative feelings and thoughts with any issue that arises, whether it’s connected to the source of your anger or not. And before you know it, you are under attack, and more focused on serving your anger than serving your Lord.

Solutions for the vulnerability of Anger

Remember Ephesians 4:26-27: “Don’t sin by letting anger control you…for anger gives a foothold to the devil.” If you’re angry, be sure you are controlling that emotion and not the other way around.

Seek resolution. Address the problem rather than the person who attacks you. Stick to the facts of the situation, where you felt wronged. Seek to communicate in a calm, reasoned tone. Don’t fall into the trap of yelling or letting your emotions take control. Instead, let God lead you as you try to talk the issue out. 

Know when to let it go. Some situations cannot be resolved. If your anger is taking up too much of your time and energy, if it’s leading you into resentfulness or bitterness, you need to surrender it to God. Holding on to anger hurts you far more than anyone else.

Vulnerability #2: Pain

Physical pain, emotional pain, spiritual pain. It all strikes at the heart of what we believe, at the heart of our trust in our loving Father. Too often, our response to such pain is to pull back, to separate ourselves from others. Or to think God has forgotten us or is ignoring our suffering. That He doesn’t care.

Or, even worse, that we must not have heard Him right when He tasked us to write for Him, otherwise He wouldn’t let us go through this pain. But those reactions only make things worse.

Pain married with isolation and doubt is dangerous and becomes an open door to satan’s attacks. Instead, lean into the pain and try the following:

Solutions for the vulnerability of Pain

Know what Scripture says about pain. For example:

1 Peter 5:10

“After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you”

See how it says AFTER you’ve suffered, and not IF?

2 Cor 4:16-18
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Isaiah 43:2

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall the flame scorch you.”

Revelation 21:4

“And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

Let God in to your pain.  Justin Jahanshir, on Jamesriver.church, shares this wisdom:

• Bring your pain to God, don’t run from him…
• Fill your life with God’s Word and God’s people…
• Don’t be filled with worry, overflow with worship…
• Believe that God will turn your sorrow into great joy…

Vulnerability #2: Injustice

Injustice is so hard to deal with. Whether it’s false accusations (“She stole my story!”), or untrue attacks on our reputation (“If he was a real Christian he’d never write something like that!”), or flat-out lies told about us (“Did you hear? She’s turned her back on God!”), everything inside of us wants to defend ourselves. But God calls on us to leave these attacks to Him.

NEVER??

Oh, I can hear you now: “Never? Never defend ourselves in the face of injustice?” It’s a hard admonition, isn’t it? I struggle with it too. When someone treats me or those I love unjustly, everything in my flesh wants to rear up and defend against those false accusers. It’s a normal, human reaction.

But our behavior isn’t based on normal human reactions, is it? It’s based on following our Lord. And His instructions are clear.

God’s Instructions for handling injustice

If you’re not sure about that, read Romans 12 in its entirety, giving special attention to the following verses:

14: “Bless those who persecute you. Don’t curse them; pray that God will bless them.”

17-21: “Never pay back evil with more evil. Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are honorable. Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone.

“Dear friends, never take revenge. Leave that to the righteous anger of God. For the Scriptures say, ‘I will take revenge; I will pay them back,’ says the LORD. Instead, if your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals of shame on their heads.

“Don’t let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good.”

And God gives us even more instructions in 1 Peter 2: 19-25:

“ God is pleased when, conscious of his will, you patiently endure unjust treatment. Of course, you get no credit for being patient if you are beaten for doing wrong. But if you suffer for doing good and endure it patiently, God is pleased with you. For God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you. He is your example, and you must follow in his steps.

“He never sinned, nor ever deceived anyone.”

No retaliation!

1 Peter goes on: “He did not retaliate when he was insulted, nor threaten revenge when he suffered. He left his case in the hands of God, who always judges fairly.

“He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed. Once you were like sheep who wandered away. But now you have turned to your Shepherd, the Guardian of your souls.”

Let God Defend!

So when injustice hits, don’t open yourself up to even more attacks by trying to defend yourself. Let Almighty God defend us and grant us justice. Easy to say, but How do we do that?

Solutions for the vulnerability of Injustice

Remember, we live in a fallen world. Again, the enemy isn’t those who treat us unjustly, but satan. He moves those without God to do terrible things, especially against God’s children. He moves them to lie and deceive, to attack and spread injustice.

Social media is a veritable playground for the enemy’s lies and evil. We’ve all faced attacks there. But make no mistake, it is satan’s lies and evil. He is the enemy, not the people attacking us. So speak God’s Scriptures right to satan. Trust me on this, he will flee.

Prepare your heart and spirit ahead of time. Knowing that we live in a fallen world with fallen people, and knowing that it’s only a matter of time until someone––by the enemy’s prodding or from their own brokenness––treats us unjustly, fortify your heart and spirit with God’s word.

Let Scripture protect you

Let Scripture such as the following verses sink deep into your heart and spirit to protect you and keep your focus on God:

“Take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weak knees.  Mark out a straight path for your feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong.

“Work at living in peace with everyone, and work at living a holy life, for those who are not holy will not see the Lord…Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you.” (Heb 12:12-14)

“For the LORD loves the just and will not forsake his faithful ones. Wrongdoers will be completely destroyed ; the offspring of the wicked will perish. The righteous will inherit the land and dwell in it forever.” (Psalms 37:28-29)

“And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:7-8)

The last vulnerability we’ll look at is a doozy. In fact, it’s the sin that births many other sins:

Vulnerability #3: Self-Focused Pride

C.S. Lewis called pride in ourselves “the utmost evil….the complete anti-God state of mind.”

Scripture is equally harsh in regard to this kind of pride:

Proverbs 8:13 “To fear the LORD is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech.”

Proverbs 11:2 “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.”

Proverbs 16:5 “The LORD detests all the proud of heart. Be sure of this: They will not go unpunished.”

In Mark 7: 21-23, Jesus says: “It is what comes from inside that defiles you. For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you.”

Listen up!

When Jesus says something is vile, that it defiles you, you need to listen up. So…

• when pride rears it’s ugly head, and tells you that you’re better than someone else;
• when it encourages you in your own righteousness to judge another for saying or doing things you don’t think they should;
• when it tells you that you deserve more or better or something other than God has given you;
• when it keeps you from humbling yourself and apologizing when you’ve wronged someone…

Let’s face it, ANY TIME pride comes to play in your heart and spirit, you need to deal with it as God commands. Because it’s not just an open door to the enemy’s attacks, it’s a flat-out invitation.

Solutions for the vulnerability of Self-Focused Pride

Romans 3:22-31 gives us God’s steps to deal with pride:

First, remember who you are in God’s eyes. Who we all are: “This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe… for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” Who we are, without Christ, is unrighteous sinners. Period. Deserving of punishment and death.

Second, remember why we have any righteousness at all: “…and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”

God and His Son Jesus justify us, and they alone deserve adoration and worship. None of us is worthy in and of ourselves. We are made acceptable to God by Christ’s sacrifice. Period.

Third, realize where pride belongs in a life of faith: “Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith.”

If it’s not clear to you by now, then let me make it clear. Where does pride belong in a life of faith in Jesus Christ? It doesn’t. At all.

Don’t Get Discouraged

It’s easy to look at all that we’ve talked about and grow discouraged. Especially when we realize that these vulnerabilities aren’t the only ones we have! We humans are full of sin and foibles and failure.

God is greater!

But the truth is God is greater than all of those things. His love, through Jesus’s sacrifice and resurrection, has brought us back to Him. And He is there every time we fall, every time we give in to vulnerabilities and end up facing the enemy’s attacks.

We can’t change or deal with these things on our own, but we don’t have to! Jesus is there, ready to shelter us under His wing, to cover us in His righteousness, and to restore us over and over. Because His Holy Father LOVES you, and me, and all of us.

Be Ready, but not afraid

Yes, we need to be ready for the attacks coming out way. But friends, we don’t need to be afraid of the enemy or his attacks. We have already won the victory through Christ, and He will uphold and sustain us. All we need to do is, as the child’s chorus says, “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey.”

Amen

There is no better weapon against satan than Scripture, prayer, and submitting the situation to God.
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WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Do you struggle with any of these vulnerabilities? What one thing can you do today to address one of them?

Check out the Florida Christian Writers Conference!

Erin will be at the Florida Christian Writers Conference, in Leesburg, FL, October 16-20, 2024. Hope to see you there!

THANK YOU!

Thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

A big thank you to our August sponsor of the month,Tammy Partlow! She’s a speaker at women’s retreats, and her debut novel Blood Beneath the Pines, a suspense set in the deep South, is now available. She’s hard at work on the next book in the series! 

Many thanks also to the folks at PodcastPS for their fabulous sound editing!

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The post 220 – Are You Ready for Attacks? Part 3 appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Recentering your writer’s heart is not just a privilege, but a necessity! In our busy lives, it’s easy to get off kilter. We each need to take a moment and examine our focus, to ensure it’s on the only one deserving of our trust: Almighty God. And Psalm 40 is here to help you do exactly that!

But first, thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

Can you all believe that it’s already the second half of 2024? I don’t know about you guys, but it feels to me like this year is rushing by. If you’re considering a midyear or third quarter review, or you’re taking stock of the things you’ve accomplished, or haven’t yet accomplished, or you’re feeling stuck, or frustrated, or you just want to make sure you’re on the right path, have we got some encouragement for you!

It’s a chance to recenter our hearts and thoughts, and a chance to check our behavior. It’s all conveniently found in Psalm 40. I encourage writers to consider memorizing this psalm—at the least beginning of it—in order to help you dwell on it. Then you can meditate on it even if you don’t have your Bible open or with you. It’s full of life lessons for writers.

WAIT PATIENTLY

“I waited patiently for the Lord…” Psalm 40:1a (CSB)

I love how this Psalm opens. If you remember nothing else, or read no farther in Psalm 40, this alone is still so powerful in the application to our lives as Christians and writers. “I waited patiently.” If only we could look back on our writing career and on our life and say we did that—we waited patiently. 

But we didn’t wait for just anything, we waited for the Lord. God is the one who is in charge of the universe, in charge of our lives, and in charge of our careers. He opens doors, he closes doors, and he leads us in his timing. God will act on our behalf. No matter what our situation is right now, we’re not forgotten, we’re not an afterthought. We just need to wait patiently, because here’s what the rest of verse 1 says:

“…and he turned to me and heard my cry for help.”

God sees and God hears. He’s looking at you even now. Turned to you. Some translations say “inclined” to you. Your cries for help don’t go unheeded. Whatever you’re facing right now, it’s not unknown to God. But we do have to trust in God’s timing and his sovereign plan. Our job is to ask for help and then wait patiently.

Resist the temptation to FRET

Now, we all know this isn’t as easy as it sounds. While we’re trying to wait patiently and trust that God sees, hears, and has a plan, we’re going to be tempted, of course, to fret. To wonder and worry and think about all the things that could go wrong, or all the ways we think God is failing. And that’s exactly what we have to resist. 

Think of this midyear recentering as giving you something positive to do: wait patiently for the Lord, and something negative to resist: fretting and worrying.

When we did our series on being ready for attacks, we talked about knowing our vulnerabilities. This is the same idea. If we’re supposed to wait patiently, we know we’re probably going to be vulnerable to attacks of fret and fear.

God ACTS TO HELP US

Let’s face it, sometimes our patience is needed through some very difficult situations. Here’s how the next verse in Psalm 40 begins:

“He brought me up from a desolate pit, out of the muddy clay…” Psalm 40:2a (CSB)

A desolate pit? Other translations say things like horrible pit, slimy pit, pit of destruction. Now, we know the Christian publishing industry can be difficult, but a pit of death? It can feel that way. For example, what if you feel your career is dying? 

Have you ever felt like the situation you’re facing is hopeless? It might be illness, or a huge publishing nightmare, or a problem you can’t see your way out of. I have great news: God specializes in impossible things.

We might feel like we’re drowning in trials, and it’s okay to acknowledge that life is hard. But don’t forget to catch the first four words of the verse: “He brought me up.” Up from where? From the pit. He always does. You know why? The pit is no match for God’s almighty power. 

But God doesn’t just lift us up, he does more. Listen to the whole verse now:

“He brought me up from a desolate pit, out of the muddy clay and set my feet on a rock, making my steps secure.” Psalm 40:2 (CSB)

God acts to help us by lifting us up, and then he sets us in a place of safety and security. We have a God who IS a rock, a fortress. When we walk on the sure foundation of God’s truth, we are secure. 

Resist the temptation to FORce YOUR OWN WAY OUT

Even while we know that God is the one who lifts us up and puts us on a secure path, we face the temptation to short circuit waiting by scrambling to find our own way out, to stubbornly force our way onto some path we think will get us out of whatever pit we’re in, whether it’s the path God has for us or not. 

Of course we’re not saying we should never try to help ourselves, only that we should never move ahead of God’s leading in doing so. God has the plan. We need to follow it and resist the temptation to claw our own way out, because our own plan is not placing our feet on the Rock. 

God CHANGES OUR PERSPECTIVE

Have you ever wondered why life seems to work this way? Why we face trials and struggles and have to wait on God to help us? We could maybe blame it on Adam and Eve, who thought they’d forge their own path to wisdom and ate the fruit God had forbidden them. That certainly highlights our problem with perspective: We tend to think we know best, and that the one who created us doesn’t.

But when we wait patiently for the Lord, and he brings us up from the pit, and he sets us on a secure path, guess what happens next? He changes our perspective to one that reflects the truth of all reality. Here’s how the next verse in Psalm 40 begins:

“He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.” Psalm 40:3a (CSB)

First notice that it’s God who puts the song in our mouths, a song of praise to him. He gives us the right perspective on not just our trials, our writing, and our life, but also on humanity’s place in creation. Big news: We are not God. He is. And he is to be praised. He alone deserves praise for who he is and what he does. In God’s plan, God gets the glory, not us.

Second, when we’re praising God, we’re focusing on him. Our focus has moved off of our pain and difficulty. We have something wonderful to sing about—he’s lifted us up from the pit. And we’re left with gratitude and love for the God who saves us.

Resist the temptation to fall back into your old way of thinking

Ah, if only that would last! But as humans, we easily slip back into our old ways of thinking. Like the hymn writer of Come Thou Fount says, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it…” We need to resist the temptation to hang on to, or drift back into our old patterns of self-sufficiency. That’s hard because it’s ingrained in our culture, this notion that humanity is the savior of itself. That’s a lie. We’re not our savior, God is. We cannot praise God when we’re busy praising ourselves. 

OUR SITUATION RESULTS IN A WITNESS TO OTHERS

There is an exciting thing about us waiting patiently, and God hearing, acting, and changing our perspective, resulting in us praising him. It’s told in the rest of verse 3:

“Many will see and fear, and they will trust in the Lord.” Psalm 40:3b (CSB) 

Our whole experience becomes a witness that can lead others to know and trust in God. 

Our trials are never wasted. First, they change us, but also they are a light shining in the darkness for others to see. That’s astounding. We get to participate in a show of God’s glory, in bringing hope to this weary world.

resist the temptation to hide

But as we’ve acknowledged, sometimes the struggles we face are so awful, or it produces such shame that we’d rather no one knew. But this is the very thing we need to resist. We must resist the temptation to hide the reality of our lives.

TRUSTING GOD RESULTS IN HAPPINESS

We need to be transparent so God can show others how he is acting in our lives. Whatever pit we fell into, or whatever ordeal we’ve gone through, that’s all part of who we’ve become and who we’re continuing to become. It’s part of the tapestry that God is weaving of our lives. We need to trust him with that. 

Conveniently, Psalm 40 goes on to tell us what the benefit of trusting God is. Here’s verse 4:

“How happy is anyone who has put his trust in the Lord…” Psalm 40:4a (CSB)

Some translations use the word happy, some use the word blessed. But the idea is this: putting our trust in God means we’re putting ourselves in the care of our almighty, sovereign God, the God who hears us, turns to us, lifts us up from the pit, and changes our perspective. Under God’s protection we can rest and find peace. That’s where we find our state of blessedness, of happiness, even in the midst of difficulties. 

Resist the temptation to turn to self or humanity as a source of salvation

Yes, there is still a caution for us, a temptation to resist. Putting our trust in the Lord means we don’t turn to human wisdom, or self sufficiency for rescue. That’s exactly what the rest of verse 4 says:

“How happy is anyone who has put his trust in the Lord and has not turned to the proud or to those who run after lies!” Psalm 40:4

This can be difficult when our culture is screaming at us to do it all our way, to be “free” of any outside constraint, and trust in ourselves. Or to trust in the current person trying to sell us happiness. We need to resist that if we’re truly going to trust in the Lord.

REMEMBER THE WORKS OF THE LORD 

Is God deserving of that trust? Why? Check out verse 5 of Psalm 40:

“Many, Lord my God, are the wonders you have done, the things you planned for us. None can compare with you; were I to speak and tell of your deeds, they would be too many to declare.” Psalm 40:5 (NIV)

The God who deserves our trust is the God who’s done wonder upon wonder not just throughout the course of history, but also in a deeply personal way in our own lives.

We are not walking through life facing random events. God is sovereign, and he makes good plans for his people. He’s been doing this since before time began. Our job is to remember this. Remember the works of the Lord recorded in the Bible, but also to remember the works of the Lord in our own lives. To record them, to meditate on them. To sing about them, tell about them, and write stories about them. Acknowledge that God’s works are indeed too many to declare. 

Think about how much God has done for us just today. Our hearts are beating by God’s grace, we’re breathing, oxygen is going to our brains and everywhere else in our bodies. We’re wearing clothes that God provided. Eating food that he gave us. In a shelter he provided. We can hear, see, feel, and think. 

Take a few seconds to consider how you got where you’ve gotten to so far on your writing journey. Consider the hurdles you’ve faced, the knowledge you’ve gained, the experiences you’ve had, both good and bad. How about your journey just to discover your desire to write in the first place, or to hear God telling you to write? What about all the things he planned that led you to that point? If you’re like me, you might’ve had a twenty some-odd year journey to that discovery.

Resist the temptation to discount God’s works or his sovereign control

Many are the wonders God has done. But sometimes we forget. Sometimes our memory is just too short. Or perhaps worse, we discount the things God has done.

We’re tempted to think that all those marvels are in the past, and we don’t trust that God has anything else planned. But we have to resist that temptation, because of course he has more plans. He’s God. He has a sovereign plan for everything. You’re not a forgotten secondary character in some other person’s story. God has an arc just for you, and he IS leading you through your own story. 

No one can come in and take it over. No one can sabotage or revise God’s plans. He doesn’t make mistakes. He doesn’t need an editor. Remember that the verse says, “None can compare with God.” That means he’s the best planner, and the best story-maker. 

So as we head into the remainder of this year, stop and take some time to do a heart check. To recenter your thoughts and hopes on God’s sovereign plans for you and your writing journey. Speak, write, remember, and praise God for the deeds he has already done in your life, and wait expectantly for the amazing deeds he has planned for your future.

Trust us on this. Not just for the rest of this year, but for the rest of your life, you can trust God with every single thing that you face. In your life, and in your career, he’s got you in his hands.

Writers, let Psalm 40 help you recenter your heart on Almighty God. #amwriting #ChristianWriter
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Erin will be at the Florida Christian Writers Conference, in Leesburg, FL, October 16-20, 2024.

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THANK YOU!

Thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

A big thank you to our August sponsor of the month, Tammy Partlow! She’s a speaker at women’s retreats, and her debut novel Blood Beneath the Pines, a suspense set in the deep South, is now available. She’s hard at work on the next book in the series! 

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Do you want to know God more intimately and live unafraid? Come join our guest, Grace Fox, as she delves into the many names of God, all with their own meaning and promise. You will find yourself more drawn to Him than ever!

But first, thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

We’re told in Scripture that God doesn’t give us a spirit of fear, and yet so many of us struggle with that very emotion in our lives. Sometimes even debilitating fear.

Guest Grace Fox is here to share what God has taught her about living unafraid. 

About Grace Fox

Grace Fox is a popular speaker at women’s events internationally. She inspires hope, courage, and transformation through God’s word. She has served as a career missionary for more than 30 years. Grace has written 14 books and published hundreds of articles in magazines.

She’s a member of the First Five Bible Study writing team for P 31 Ministries and is a co-host for a podcast called Your Daily Bible Verse.

Her book, Finding Hope in Crisis: Devotions for Calm in Chaos, won the Golden Scroll Devotional Book of the Year Award in 2021. Keeping Hope Alive: Devotions for Strength in the Storm won the same award in 2022.

Her newest devotional is titled Names of God: Living Unafraid. You can learn all about her at GraceFox.com. 

Thanks to our sponsors on Patreon, we’re able to offer an edited transcript of the podcast! 

Living Unafraid

Erin: Welcome listeners. We are delighted that you’re here with us today. And you might even hear my smile. We have a guest, Grace Fox, and she’s on a boat somewhere in Canada! 

Karen Ball: In fact, Grace and her husband have been living on their boat for six years, and they have discovered all kinds of people to share God’s love with. Welcome, Grace.     

Grace Fox: Thank you so much for having me. I am excited to be here with you all. 

Erin: Of course, we’re going to start by asking you what ‘the deep’ means to you? 

Grace Fox: It means going into a hard place, and yet it’s a rich place. It’s a place I might not necessarily choose for myself because it might hurt and I don’t like pain, but it’s often in the hard places, the painful places of life, that we grow the most. 

Karen: It’s true. We don’t want to go there. But so often God forces us there, kicking and screaming.  Whenever Erin and I meet together, we read from a devotional called Streams in the Desert.  

What I most appreciate about that devotional is it addresses the fact that, by following Christ, we are members of the fellowship of suffering. Living the Christian life is not easy, but we have an almighty God and Savior who help us to get through it.  

Know God Better

Grace Fox: And maybe the deep shouldn’t be a place we dread or think of it as a frightening place to be. Maybe we should start thinking of it more as a place of invitation, where God says, “Come with me. You wanna know Me better? Let’s go to the deep.” 

Erin: Both are true. It’s hard and it’s great.  So, Grace, we mentioned in our intro that you have a new devotional release about living unafraid. What compelled you to focus on the names of God as a means to overcome fear?

Grace Fox: Back during Covid days, I thought about women being in isolation just like I was. And it occurred to me that maybe they were hungry to fellowship with other women, like I was.

Many years prior I wrote a book called Moving From Fear to Freedom, A Woman’s Guide to Peace in every Situation. And then I had done a Bible study to go with that. 

So pulled that out and put it out there, asking women if they’d like to do the study with me on Zoom.

Eighty women said yes! I didn’t know what to do! I didn’t know how to do small groups on Zoom. But a woman who had signed up contacted me and she said, “Grace, do you need help with the technological part of this?” And I said, “Absolutely!”

So off we went with a seven- or eight-week study. And as it came to an end, the ladies were asking what we were going to do next? And I went, “I don’t know. What are we gonna do next?”

What’s Next?

I hadn’t thought that far ahead. But in my own quiet time reading, the names of God just kept coming up. Not any particular names of God, but the words “name of God” or “God’s name.” Such as “in God’s holy name,” or “We will praise God’s name.”

And I kept thinking, what’s the deal? It just kept coming around. Finally I realized God was trying to get my attention. And so I offered that––to study God’s names together. I wrote the curriculum as we went, week by week.

It was a massive undertaking, but I learned so much and saw how there is tons of material to explore. 

When I met my managing editor around that time, she asked me for other book ideas. I pulled up my laptop and went through a list of what I’d been studying.

She listened and when I said, “What about a book on the names of God?” She said, “Yes, Let’s do that.” So that’s how this was born. 

A Devotional Study

It’s actually a devotional study. It’s seven chapters, written in a devotional style, with stories and biblical teaching and a prayer and questions at the end of each chapter. It’s a Bible study for groups or individuals.

I envision somebody sitting across the table having coffee with a friend and doing this, maybe one-on-one as a discipleship tool. And then there’s a QR code at the end of each chapter where you just point your camera and up will come a fifteen-minute video teaching.

Karen: How fun!

Why Study the Names of God?

Grace Fox: I’ve learned so much about the names of God and how understanding each one can change our lives. Because understanding God’s character frees us to live unafraid.

Erin: I really like the notion of studying God’s names, because God’s name is who He is, but it’s also what He does. And if we connect those things better we can apply who He is to our situation, and understand how who He is affects who we are and what we need. So I love how it’s all woven together.

Grace Fox: Years and years ago, my husband and I were missionaries back in Nepal. Our son was born there, and then on our second child was born, but she had hydrocephalus––too much water on the brain.

The doctors told us we had to take her back to North America on the first flight available for a surgery to save her life. Well, back then there weren’t a lot of international flights. Maybe one every three days or so.

Then, when the airline found out I had had a C-section to deliver this baby, they refused to take me because I was a medical high risk. They didn’t want me, or my less-than-two-week-old baby on their plane. But my husband and the doctors said our little girl would die if she didn’t get back.

So my husband wrapped our daughter in a big blanket, and took one bottle of breast milk and a diaper bag. That’s all he had. He left, but I had to stay behind for another eight days.

“What do You want me to Learn?”

Sitting on that bed, after saying good-bye to my newborn daughter, not knowing if I would see her alive again or not, I cried out to God, asking what He wanted me to learn.

Well, one week prior, we’d interviewed with a career mission agency to stay in Nepal for the rest of our lives. And now…that was not gonna happen. And it was that fast that everything changed. 

In that very, very dark moment, the lyrics of “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” came to mind. And I got to where I could kind of sing along. Not with my whole heart and mind, but I was hanging on for dear life to God’s faithfulness 

I wondered what was going to happen to our family. We were going back to North America with no job, no car, no house. We didn’t even have a health insurance for a North American hospital, and we were gonna have a baby in the NICU ward! 

The AHA! Moment

That was the life-changing aha! moment for me, a young woman in my mid-twenties. I either had to believe those lyrics, that God is faithful, or not. And if they weren’t true, then we were in serious trouble. 

But if they were true, then everything would be okay. It didn’t mean our daughter would live. It didn’t promise me that she would have a good quality of life. But God would be faithful to see us through, no matter what. And I hung onto that.

Since then, I’ve believed with all my heart that our understanding of who God is, well, that’s the most important understanding we can have. Which means we have to ensure that understanding is based not on our feelings, not on our circumstances, not on what somebody else says, but on truth.

And that’s what gets us through those hard and deep places.

Erin: Exactly. What do we have if not that truth? We have nothing.  So, let’s talk about the process of writing and studying all of these things.  What kind of affect did that have on your own spiritual journey as a writer?

Yahweh Rohi: The Lord is my shepherd

Grace Fox: This book has seven of God’s names, but there are so many more. When I thought about Yahweh Rohi, The Lord is my Shepherd, I realized that every time I write a book, I go into it with a great deal of fear.  I think it’s fear of failure, like, Oh no, I landed a contract! What if I fail?

That’s when I remember Yahweh Rohi, The Lord is my Shepherd. I have all I need. My Shepherd will give me what I need to do this job. 

I will trust Him to lead me to the right research and the right resources. I might have somebody who I think will be a good interview for a particular chapter, but inevitably Yahweh Rohi flips it upside down and brings in somebody else whose story is a better fit. 

What’s more, I have to be open to that––to follow His guidance as my Shepherd, to follow His lead and to know that He’s not gonna lead me down some path with a dead end.         

He’s going to lead me down the right path to this pasture that is green and it’s gonna feed not only my soul as I write it, but it’s also gonna feed the souls of the readers.

What If I Fail?

Karen: There’s the perfect answer to that question, “What if I fail?” Yahweh Rohi. The Lord is my Shepherd. I can’t fail. He has called me and guided me to write this. I don’t need to worry about failing. I just need to pay attention and to listen. 

Grace Fox: Exactly. I mean, think about the cast sheep. That’s the sheep that just flips over on its back and it can’t get up. So it’s in a very vulnerable position. 

Sometimes a sheep like that will lie there and kick and flounder and cry out, bleating for the shepherd’s help. Unless the shepherd comes to help, the cast sheep will die. 

As a writer, I’ve been that sheep in that cast position. Several years ago I had such high hopes for one book that I’d written. I thought it was going to come out of the gate and be a bestseller and I’d be set for life and all that, yada yada. But it didn’t happen. Not at all.

Two years into it, my agent had to release some clients because of her life and needs at that point. And I was one of those she said good-bye to. Well, that broke my heart. Then I heard that this book that I had all the high hopes for was going to be remaindered. And I thought, Oh, all that work for nothing!

“Is This The End of My Career?”

I went into a pit. I was the sheep on my back, lying there with its legs floundering and crying, “Oh God, I don’t get it. I had better hopes for this.” One day, I even thought, Maybe I’m done writing, maybe this is it. This is the end. 

I cried out again to my Shepherd. “God, you gotta help me here. Would You show me if I’m done? Because if I’m done writing, I’m okay with that. If I’m not, then You need to tell me, because I’m okay with persevering too, but I just wanna know so I’m not wasting my energy anymore.” 

Keep Writing!

Five hours later––five hours––my phone rang and it was a woman I didn’t even know. She said, “Grace, for some reason I feel compelled to call you. I’ve never called an author before, but today I can’t get this out of my head. I need to tell you that your book, Moving from Fear to Freedom, changed my life.

“I also feel compelled to tell you this, for whatever this is about, so just take it or leave it. I feel compelled to say, please keep writing.”

I burst into tears. I told her why I was crying, what I had prayed five hours before. And then she started crying and said, “I heard the spirit.”

“You not only heard him, but you did something about it.”

She was afraid what I would think of her if she just called me. But she did it anyway. Wow. And I needed the words she spoke.  It was my most amazing God moment ever as a writer.

That was 10 or 12 years ago, and I’ve never looked back. I’ve grown weary, but I’ll never again think it’s over. Not until God makes it that clear that it’s done. 

Are You Done?

Karen: Over the years, I’ve had authors come to me and ask if I think they’re finished writing. My first response is to ask who gave him or her the task to write in the first place? If their answer is God, then I ask if He’s set them free from that task. The answer is usually no, or the reasons they think they’re done.

But I ask again if God has set them free. More often than not, the answer is no. “Then you’re not done.” 

I understand the frustration and weariness, but God doesn’t call us to be bestselling authors. He calls us to write His words and truth for whomever will read it and be blessed by it. 

Grace Fox: Yep. So there might be a writer out there listening to this who feels like that little cast sheep and to that dear writer, I would say just call out to the Shepherd and He will come. He will come and put you back on your feet.

Part of a shepherd’s job is to massage the sheep to get that circulation going until that sheep is able to run again. Jesus, our Shepherd, our Yahweh Rohi, knows what we writers need to get back on our feet so that we can run again. 

Understand the Shepherd Aspect of God

Erin: Amen. How kind and gentle and loving He is to give us what we need in those moments. Like the shepherd rubbing and massaging the sheep, when Jesus was here, walking on Earth, He was going places, meeting people, touching the leper…

We would have less fear if we understood that Shepherd aspect of Jesus more deeply, that he is going to take care of us. My favorite thing about the shepherd is the place of rest. My Shepherd leads me beside quiet waters and makes me lie down in green pastures.

It’s such a picture of calm. 

Publishing is difficult and can be stressful and fraught with problems, but if we’re doing it with God, it’s also a place of rest. And if we would hang on to that, it would make such a difference. And that’s just one of the names you cover! 

Yahweh: I Am Who I Am

Karen: Another name that you explore is just Yahweh, and the meaning you give is I Am Who I Am. Who else can say that but God? I Am Who I Am. You know, we spend so much time trying to “find” ourselves. God never has to do that. He knows who He is. 

So when I pray, if I’m feeling uncertain, I can go to the I Am, Who is the biggest and the best and the most powerful of anyone who has ever existed. And I can rest in Him and in the promise that nothing is going to change Him. He is God.

Yahweh Tzevaot: the Lord of Hosts

Erin: Yeah, that’s very cool. Another name that I really liked was Yahweh Tzevaot. I might not pronounce it right, but it means the Lord of Hosts. Can you talk about that one just a little bit? 

Grace Fox: You did well pronouncing that name. That is the name that comes to mind when we think about David fighting Goliath, when David says, “You come to me with with your javelin and with all your armor, but I come to you in the name of the Lord, my God.”

The Israelite army turned around and ran from Goliath’s taunts. The entire army. Twice a day for 40 days, whenever Goliath came out and taunted them. 

When David, this little teenage shepherd boy showed up, he says, “What’s the problem here?”

What’s the problem? Goliath is defying the army of the living God, and that’s a problem! So David picks up his five little smooth stones and takes Goliath out with a slingshot!

Fight In Yahweh Tzevaot’s Name!

David really got it. He fought that battle in the name of the Lord of hosts, the Lord of heaven’s armies.

If you’re looking at all the challenges with marketing or writing a book, or maybe you’re a newer writer trying to break into publishing, and it feels like a Goliath before you. But if God has called us to do this, then do it in the name of the Lord of hosts! 

He goes before us. He’s the one who gives us courage. He’s the one who fights on our behalf. We don’t do this alone. 

Karen: When we come to challenges, we need to see through the eyes of eternity, not the eyes of this temporal world.

If you look at where the world is today, it’s easy to be discouraged and to feel as though everything’s out of control. There’s so much hatred and so much violence, and yet if we turn our gaze to God and we see Him in all of these names and that He does, we don’t need to be afraid.

We don’t need to despair. We know that God is all knowing. We know that God is ever present. We know that in all of his names and in all of the things that He does, He is working for our best. He is working to make us into clearer reflections of His son. 

So, Grace, as we draw our time to a close,  do you have any final words of wisdom for our listeners? 

El Elon: God is a Creator

Grace Fox: I would just sign off using the name El Elyon. And that one is God is a Creator, Almighty God. Because he is a creator, he owns it all. So it’s his right to do with it what he wants, right? 

And that’s true about our writing career, our endeavors. That’s true about our lives. When we belong to Him, He owns us. He bought us with the blood of Jesus Christ. We need to surrender to that, to be good with that and learn to rest in that. 

Also that name denotes the fact that He is the boss, therefore He always has the final say. When we as writers look at what’s before us, look at our dreams, look at our endeavors or whatever, always remember He decides the outcome.

So we can strive and strive and strive, but He gets the final say. And don’t compare with other people’s journey, but rest in contentment knowing that He’s got us. He’s our Shepherd. He holds us close to His heart and He will have the final say.  

Karen: Amen! 

Erin: Amen to that.

Book mentioned in the podcast

Names of God: Living Unafraid by Grace Fox

I cried out to God, asking what He wanted me to learn. #amwriting #Christianwriter
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How can you start today to live unafraid?

THANK YOU!

Thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible! If you want to add your support, visit patreon.com/writefromthedeep.  We’d sure appreciate it!

Thanks so much to our July sponsor of the month, Wendy L. Macdonald. She’s a writer, poet, podcaster, photographer, a maker of journals (find her on Etsy to see them!) and nature lover. I know you’d enjoy getting to know her! Check out the treasury of her website at wendyLmacdonald.com.

Many thanks also to the folks at PodcastPS for their fabulous sound editing!

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The post 218 – How to Live Unafraid with Guest Grace Fox appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Fasting. We’ve all heard of it, and yet we rarely do it. But this ancient practice is frequently mentioned in the Bible, with Jesus himself leading the way. He did it, he taught about it, and he presumed we’d follow in his footsteps. Join us for a deeper look at this vital aspect of discipleship and why it matters for writers. We’ll even discuss alternatives to try if your medical condition prevents you from practicing typical methods of fasting.

But first, thank you to all our patrons on Patreon! You help make this podcast possible!

We’ve been talking about various practices for deepening our relationship with God. Here are links to our past episodes about Rest-211, Prayer 208, Silence-205, Solitude 199, and Fellowship 214 if you missed them. Today we want to cover a practice that isn’t the first choice for most of us. It’s certainly not comfortable, and often put off or not done at all. What is it? Fasting. 

Now, hang in there with us, because while fasting typically involves abstaining from food for a period of time, we’re well aware that some folks, Karen included, have medical issues that make it unsafe, even life threatening, to skip meals. So in this episode, we’ll also cover alternatives to traditional fasting.

First, let’s talk about why fasting matters. I mean, who thought of this? And why?

I’ll sum up my research findings in one sentence: I couldn’t find any source that claimed to know exactly when the practice of fasting started. New World Encyclopedia just says, “Fasting for religious and spiritual reasons has been a part of human custom since pre-history.” 

But it is also found in various ancient written records—including the Old and New Testaments. 

How often is fasting mentioned in the Bible? An article on cslewisinstitute.org lists many occasions:

In Deuteronomy chapter 9, Moses recounts how he did not one but two 40-day fasts when he was meeting with God on Mt. Sinai after leading the Israelites out of Egypt.

In Daniel 10:3, in response to an overwhelming, terrifying vision, Daniel talks about his partial fast for 21 days and says, “I ate no delicacies, no meat or wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all, for the full three weeks.” After this he received the meaning of the vision.

Here’s what it says in Ezra 8:21-23 when Ezra is leading a group of exiles from Babylon back to Jerusalem: “Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a safe journey for ourselves, our children, and all our goods. For I was ashamed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king, ‘The hand of our God is for good on all who seek him, and the power of his wrath is against all who forsake him.’ So we fasted and implored our God for this, and he listened to our entreaty.” ESV

In the book of Esther, when Haman succeeded in getting a law published to kill all the Jews, Esther was going to go to the king to plead for mercy, but appearing before him without being summoned was punishable by death unless the king held out his scepter to her. So here’s what she tells her uncle, Mordecai: “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.” Esther 4:16 ESV

Another fast during a national emergency happens in the time of King Jehoshaphat. A giant army made up of different people groups has come against them, and this is the king’s response in 2 Chronicles 20:3-4: “Then Jehoshaphat was afraid and set his face to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. And Judah assembled to seek help from the Lord; from all the cities of Judah they came to seek the Lord.” ESV

The result of this fast? God delivered them—they didn’t even need to fight the battle because the opposing armies killed each other off.

Fasting is found in the New Testament, too. Mark chapter 1 tells us Jesus himself fasted in the wilderness for 40 days. And Jesus’ teaching on fasting in Matthew chapters 6 and 9 make it clear that he expects this to be a normal practice for his followers after his crucifixion.

In Acts chapter 9, Saul, later to be called the apostle Paul, fasts for three days after being blinded after his vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus.

In Acts 13, God’s instructions to launch the first missionary journey come during the course of prayer and fasting, and Paul and Barnabus are then sent off with another round of prayer and fasting. And it’s clear that fasting was a regular part of their journey. Acts 14:23 says, “And when [Paul and Barnabus] had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.”

We won’t take the time to give detailed examples of prominent fasting Christians in the centuries after the Bible was written, but we will point out that John Calvin, Martin Luther, Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and C.S. Lewis were all enthusiastic supporters and practicers of fasting.

One more thing we should make clear. The article on cslewisinstitute.org states that the Bible specifically defines fasting as going without food. Here’s how they put it: “In the Old Testament, the main Hebrew word used is tsom, which means ‘to abstain from food.’ In the New Testament, the Greek word we translate as ‘fast’ is nesteuo, which means ‘to abstain from eating.’ In both testaments, fasting is simply going without food in order to seek God for some special reason.”

The reason they stress this definition is because this is what the actual practice was and is: going without food. This is what the Israelites did, this is what Jesus did, and it’s what he’s teaching about. So, if your health allows, this is the normal way to practice fasting.

But again, we know not everyone can physically do this, so we’ll also discuss alternatives.

First, let’s circle back to the purpose of this practice. The article on cslewisinstitute.org says it’s “to seek God for some special reason.” So, why would fasting help us do that?

How Does Fasting Help Us Seek God?

1. Fasting helps us divorce ourselves from the ordinary pleasures and occupations of this world. 

Dallas Willard, in his book The Spirit of the Disciplines, which we’ve mentioned in previous episodes, writes this: “[Fasting] teaches us a lot about ourselves very quickly…it reveals to us how much our peace depends upon the pleasures of eating.” 

Justin Whitmel Earley, in his book The Common Rule, adds, “Fasting is a way to resist the original sin of trying to eat our way to happiness…”

Earley goes on to describe how he feels during a day of fasting: “It’s midmorning when I become irritable. Not only am I trying to concentrate over a hungry stomach, but I also can’t do what I otherwise do every day: look forward to lunch or snacks as a way to medicate the pain of toilsome work.”

He continues describing the discomfort of his day, then he sums it up with this: “When I fast I see that deep down I’m not actually a very patient person after all. I’m not actually a very content person after all…I’m a weak, impatient, angry person who medicates with food and drink. This is painful to confront. Yet to live without fasting is to live without knowing who I truly am.”

Knowing our weaknesses is humbling, but that’s right where we need to be in order to effectively seek God. Which leads to the second reason fasting helps us seek God.

2. Fasting reminds us that we are humbly dependent on God.

We’re dependent on God for everything. Acts 17:25 (NIV) tells us, “[God] is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.”

God supplies our daily bread, our clothes, our homes, our jobs, our stories, our words, our talents and abilities, our book sales, our readers.

Dallas Willard writes, “Persons well used to fasting as a systematic practice will have a clear and constant sense of their resources in God.”

That’s exactly what we need as Christians, a better connection to the reality of God as our constant provider. 

But there’s more. Willard goes on to say that this connection and constant sense developed through the systematic practice of fasting will help us “…endure deprivations of all kinds, even to the point of coping with them easily and cheerfully.”

Imagine what coping cheerfully and easily with deprivations could look like if, say, you find you have to type your next book with one hand because you’ve developed carpal tunnel syndrome in the other? Or if the time you thought you had to write gets cut in half because of an unforeseen family emergency? Or if you lose your publishing contract? Or your day job? Or you have to tighten your belt due to the crazy inflation these days? Or whatever else. 

3. Fasting helps us feast on God.

But God is more than just the giver of stuff we need. Dallas Willard writes, “Fasting confirms our utter dependence on God by finding in him a source of sustenance beyond food…In fasting we learn how to suffer happily as we feast on God.”

So, fasting helps us see God as more than a provider of resources, but actually as sustenance itself. 

Look at Deuteronomy 8:3 where Moses speaks to the Israelites before they head into the Promised Land: “[God] humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

Now fast forward to the New Testament and look at what Jesus says about this bread of God in John 6, verses 33 and 51 (ESV): “For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world…I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

So, fasting helps us seek God by seeking to feast on him. On who he is, on what he’s done, and on what he will keep doing throughout eternity.

Look at what Psalm 36:7-9 says: “…The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.” ESV

Not only can we feast on God, we can also feast on doing God’s will. In John chapter 4, Jesus is talking to the woman at the well in Samaria, while his disciples have gone to the village to buy food. When they come back, they urge him to eat. Here’s what he says, “…I have food to eat that you do not know about” (John 4:32 ESV). So the disciples are trying to figure out if someone brought him food while they were gone. But then: “Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.’” (John 4:34 ESV) 

I love how Dallas Willard sums this up. When we fast, he writes, “We learn that we too have meat to eat that the world does not know about. Fasting unto our Lord is therefore feasting—feasting on him and on doing his will.”

4. Fasting helps remind us to pray and serve.

None of what we’ve said so far means we won’t actually experience the discomfort of hunger. We typically do. But one way those hunger pangs can help us seek God is by being a consistent reminder to pray. As we go about the busyness of life, the habit of praying can be something that becomes superficially brief, or put off until we have more time, or forgotten altogether. But prayer is key in communicating with God, so the reminder to pray that hunger brings can help us foster more constant interaction with God.

And hey, if we don’t have to spend time making dinner and eating it, well, we’ve just freed up more time to spend with God.

Another benefit of the discomfort of fasting is that it can help us tune in to the needs of others. Here’s what Justin Whitmel Earley writes of his own experience returning home from a day at work when he’s been fasting, “I come home [at dinner time] not expecting to eat. I’m simply expecting to serve other people as they eat. The most remarkable part is that I’m actually happier that way, because all along I’ve been thinking that food makes me happy. But now I see that only love does that. When that switch happens, ironically one of my favorite things to do is cook for other people when I’m fasting.”

5. Fasting helps us empathize with the suffering of others.

You all will likely find other benefits of fasting that we didn’t have time to cover, but one last benefit we want to mention is that fasting gives us empathy with those who are suffering. That, in turn, expands our capacity and tenacity in our prayers for the needs of those around us.

Justin Whitmel Earley writes, “When we fast, we become more attuned to the stubborn reality of the world’s suffering…while there is a part of fasting that reveals our own needs, there is a part that reveals the world’s need, too…fasting is a way to lean past our own emptiness and into someone else’s. It’s a practice of empathy, of willingly walking into pain for someone else. It’s an imitation of Christ…” 

What if fasting isn’t medically advisable for you?

Now, for those of you who can’t fast—either for physical or mental health reasons—remember the goal as you’re looking for a suitable alternative. As Justin Whitmel Earley puts it, you want to “lean into the lack.” 

• Simple Meals

One idea, instead of not eating, might be to eat very simple meals.

You can follow what Daniel did, and rather than abstain from all foods, you can choose certain foods to abstain from. Maybe especially those we consume for pleasure rather than healthy sustenance. We need protein everyday, but does it need to come from whatever your favorite source is? What about things like soda? Refined sugar? Chocolate? Potato Chips? These are things we like the taste of, we eat them for pleasure rather than nutritional value.

In The Spirit of the Disciplines, Willard writes, “The desert fathers such as St. Antony often subsided for long periods of time on bread and water…” but he also cautions that “their ‘bread’ was much more substantial than we have today.”

So you might not want to eat just store bought white bread! But what is the simplest meal that can supply the basic nutrients you need? The goal is to experience discomfort, to be humbled, to focus on God as our fullness.

• Abstain from Snacking

Another alternative, and something that can also be done in conjunction with simple meals, is to not eat between meals—if your medical condition makes that possible. I know I have the habit of grazing. My watch tells me it’s time to stand because I’ve been sitting too long, so I get up and walk to my kitchen where I eat a nice little snack. Which, when you analyze that, is probably counterproductive. For the most part, I don’t need those snacks. I just like them.

• Abstain from Entertainment

Kelly Minter, in her Bible study Encountering God: Cultivating Habits of Faith Through the Spiritual Disciplines writes this: “When we fast, we’re practicing the needed discipline of saying no to ourselves and yes to God.”

For alternatives to fasting from food, what other things can we say no to? Well, we can say no to entertainment. No TV, no phone games, no social media scrolling for birds and puppies and other fun videos, no Spotify, Pandora, or Podcasts, no reading for pleasure, going to the movies, sporting events, or whatever you do for fun. Take a whole day off, and rather than seeking distraction, seek only God, his presence, his words, his direction. Learn to delight in God, and only God. 

• Abstain from Something Else 

What are the things in your life that take up time? Things you look forward to and would miss? 

For example, suppose you’re an extroverted person who hates to be alone and spends lots of time getting together with friends. Maybe you can choose to stay home one night a week instead—stay home and have a date with God.

Or, maybe you like to go out and shop. You don’t even necessarily buy things, although maybe sometimes you do. But instead of hitting the mall to look around and see what’s new, you abstain for 40 days. Instead, you use that time to stay home and seek God.

There are probably lots of other alternatives out there we can think of if we give it more personalized time and thought. Ask God to show you. The point is to practice fasting—in whatever way your health allows—and incorporate it into your spiritual life. As Dallas Willard writes, “…[F]asting is one of the more important ways of practicing that self-denial required of everyone who would follow Christ (Matthew 16:24).”

Why do we fast?

Kelly Minter sums up her reasoning for fasting this way in her Bible Study Encountering God: “I believe we can and should fast for guidance, healing, direction, intercession, in pursuit of spiritual breakthroughs, and more. But I believe one of the greatest reasons we can fast is simply in pursuit of a deeper experience with Christ.”

Fasting. We’ve all heard of it, and yet we rarely do it. Take a deeper look at this vital aspect of discipleship and why it matters for writers. #amwriting #Christianwriter
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