Write from the Deep

Here’s the bad news: you cannot overcome your sin. Especially persistent sin. But there’s good news! Not easy news, mind you, but good: Being brutally honest with yourself and with God is the first step to spiritual freedom. Guest Christy Bass Adams shares how this key opened the door to a life and ministry far beyond anything she ever imagined.

About Christy Bass Adams

Christy Bass Adams worked in education for eighteen years and now serves as the Outreach and Connections Coordinator at Fellowship Baptist Church. She is passionate about connecting people within the Body of Christ and helping fellow believers find a place to serve and grow. Her writing career includes a weekly inspirational column for Greene Publishing and regular contributions to Vinewords.net and Inspireafire.com. She has also written devotions for CBN.com, christiandevotions.us, Inkspirations, and The Secret Place (Judson Press). Speaking and sharing about her own healing journey is also a big part of her life as she teaches a weekly bible study at Humble House recovery home for women and monthly leads workshops at Honey Lake Clinic (a Christian mental health center). Her most important role, however, is that of a wife, and mother to two busy, adventurous boys. Her debut book is a devotional, Learning As I Go: Big Lessons from Little People. Her second book is a middle grades novel, Cricket and Kyle: Imagination Checkers.

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

Erin: Welcome, listeners, into the deep. We’re excited that you’re joining us. I’m extra excited because we’re going to continue our interview with Christy Bass Adams. It’s just been a great conversation so far, and there is more to come, so we’re going to jump right in. 

Erin: My favorite thing, Christy, about your healing process is that this core lie that almost started it all, “If anyone really knew me, they wouldn’t love me,” you actually had to overcome that. 

If we were writing a novel about your life, that would be the climax where it would be like, “Okay, now she’s faced with having to confront that lie and overcome it.” That’s what God had you do when you wrote your testimony, when you wrote that book.

You’re right that maybe God will use it and maybe it’ll be published, or maybe it won’t be. The issue was that writing the book was your climax of your story in terms of this particular chapter of your life. You faced that deepest fear and God helped you overcome that. And man, it opened up not just healing for you, but healing for others as you talk about it.

I’m amazed by that. I think that’s very cool. 

Karen: I think something you said there, Erin, is key and we need to focus on that. We don’t overcome our sin, especially habitual sin. We cannot overcome it, but the act of surrendering and placing it in God’s hands and then taking it back and placing it in his hands again, that’s key. God is the one who overcomes by continually drawing us into truth and drawing us into those uncomfortable places. 

I was a habitual liar when I was younger. I mean fantasy worlds. I’ve been a writer since I could speak, in essence, writing fiction, telling stories, and I always embellished. That expanded into just flat out lying when I was an older teen and then on into college to the point that I would falsify the hours that I was working on work study. 

I’d just nudge it a little here and there so that I would make more money. I love the people that God has placed in our lives to confront us. At the moment that they confront us, at the moment that a friend of mine confronted me when she realized what was happening and told me it had to stop and told me that either I would tell our boss or she would, and inside of me…the worst thing that could happen was that anybody would know that I wasn’t perfect.

I mean, I know you two are surprised by that, but… 

Christy: I would like to piggyback off of that because I feel like confrontation is the biggest way we can love somebody. 

Karen: Yes. 

Christy: Especially when we have that relationship. I have women now that God has placed underneath of me in a ministry. I’m on staff at our church as an outreach and connections coordinator, and part of that umbrella that I’m in charge of is our women’s ministry. 

God has given me the opportunity to sit down with so many women, and they’ll start sharing and I’ll go, “Time out. That’s not okay. That is the separation. That’s why you are not growing in Christ. It’s because you’re living in sin, and it opens the door.”

And I always share my story. If we’re in a big group, small group, I’ll be the first one to throw myself under the bus and say, “Hey, this is where I was and this is what God did. This is what Satan wanted, and this is what God has been able to do.”

I’m so grateful that he gave me the courage and the boldness, and I stopped worrying about people pleasing. Now sometimes I still get scared. Even doing this, my stomach was in knots as I was getting ready for this phone call. But I recognize also that God, if he will use this—I go back to that deal every time—if he will use one thing to set somebody free, then it’s all worth putting our junk on the table. 

Karen: Amen.

Erin: Right. You know, I think, too, that Satan wants us isolated so nobody can confront us. 

Christy: Right. 

Erin: The more we’re isolated, the more we don’t have those people around us. You writers out there, get truth-tellers in your life. Get somebody who’s willing to confront you. Find a small group, find a writer’s group, somebody.

Pray for it if you don’t have it now. This might be one of those dangerous prayers, praying somebody will confront me for all my bad stuff. 

Christy: For one that saves your life. 

Karen: That’s exactly what we need. We need dangerous prayers. Remember in Narnia how they say, “Aslan isn’t safe, but he’s good, I tell you. Completely good.” 

God is not safe. You pray dangerous prayers, and he will take you at your word, like you said, Christy. And in the process of taking us at our word, he heals us. He sets us free. He gives us life beyond anything we could possibly have imagined when we were so busy hiding.

Erin: Right. One thing I want to just go back and touch on, you had said that part of your issue was that you were not being satisfied by Christ. You did not find your satisfaction in him. I’m assuming that this process has changed that, but talk a little about how you find that satisfaction in him now. Are there practices that help you do that or something?

Christy: Well, I think I need to kind of say what I was living for was for “the stuff.” I was living for the things of Christ and not for Christ. For example, we get wrapped up in church and we do the things. We sing in the choir, we lead the study, we go and serve, and we set up the tables. 

We do all the “things.” We do all the things that are Christlike in our eyes, but we leave Christ out of the middle of it. So much of what we do for Christ could be done without him at all. And if we’re not dependent upon the Holy Spirit, then we’re wasting our efforts. 

Karen: Amen.

Christy: What God really did through this process was I was one of those smart aleck know-it-alls about Scripture. Bible trivia? I won everything. Sword drills. I was very proud of that fact. But what God did through this whole journey was he brought me back to Scripture and he showed me, “Hey, listen, you’ve got this stuff in your head. You need it in your heart.”

Hours and hours I would spend on my front porch, reading out of the Psalms and weeping, going, “God, I do have an unclean heart. Please create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit.” I prayed the words of King David in Psalm 51 and so many others. 

I’d read, “My enemies are chasing after me,” and I would go in there and I would put a line through enemies and put sin, my selfishness. Whatever I was struggling with at that time, I would go back and actually write it down and mark it in my Bible. 

Another big piece during this whole season, this last decade especially, but the past thirteen years of being on the other side of addiction is that God has really drawn me to him through writing in my journal.

So many of the words that I write, nobody else will ever see. It’s between me and that audience of One. It’s God dealing with my heart. I can be angry or frustrated and not know why, and I can sit down and get my pen, and I can pray, “God, show me what it is that’s going on.” I’ll start writing through it, and I’ll have that epiphany moment and go, “Oh, that’s it!”

Then I can spend that time in prayer. That’s another piece is the prayer. Spending time in the word, journaling, praying deeply. Not just, “Dear God, thank you for this day. Forgive me.”

But instead saying, “God, I am so broken. I’m hurting today. I messed up. I said this. I hurt this person. God, I was angry at my kids for no reason, and I took it out on them. God forgive me.” Being very specific in our prayers. 

Then, you know, there was even a time that—I like to tell people this because I grew up in church and I knew God—but I said, “God, I don’t love you.” This was recently, in the last 10 years. 

I said, “God, I don’t love you and I don’t trust you. I’ve said it my whole life, but I really need to love you and I want to trust you, and I need you to show me who you are. Show me your character, because I’ve been paying you lip service and I wanna really know you.” 

And he did that. He has been showing me his character. He’s been showing me who he is. He’s been breaking me. I thought he’d broken me of all my pride and then, yeah, laugh, laugh. We never get broken of it all. There’s always more pride in there. 

But in 2019, my husband got diagnosed with cancer. For a whole year we went through cancer treatments. Well, here’s the ironic part. I was at my busiest season with work.

I was teaching between two colleges. I taught teachers how to teach. I had joined our staff at church part-time. We had just ordered the trusses for our house because we are doing the work ourselves. We are in year number six doing everything, with help from friends, of course. 

But with my husband going through treatments, it was like he had the flu all year. God humbled me to a place where I had to ask for help and let that pride fall. But through it, God brought friends and family that I did not know would rally around us. Blessings in disguise all throughout the whole season from 2019 to now. And again, he keeps breaking that pride again and again and again. 

And he’s brought people. That’s another piece of the puzzle: surrounding ourselves with people that will confront us, love us, hold us accountable. They’ll call us out on the carpet and go, “Hey, listen, you gotta work on this.”

But it’s only because I’ve invited that accountability. If we don’t invite accountability, it doesn’t just show up knocking at the door. We have to be somebody who others can be accountable to, and we can be accountable to them. That’s another piece of that growing puzzle that I always want to tell people. We don’t heal by ourselves. 

Erin: Yeah. You know, one of the themes that I’m hearing from you is brutal honesty. 

Christy: Yes. 

Erin: I mean, if we want to know how to get closer to God, it’s called brutal honesty. We can admit, or have to admit, “I don’t love you, God. Help me.”

He knows. It’s not a secret. But I think that that kind of honesty is what opens the path to a deeper relationship with him. 

Karen: Well, it’s like any relationship. If you’re having struggles in your relationship with a spouse or a sibling or a friend, you can’t restore the relationship until you’re honest. Until you share what’s going on. And then restoration can begin. It takes a long time and it’s a process, but if we just continually stuff things inside, it will fester and it will completely destroy the relationship. 

It’s like that with God. The thing is he knows. He knows exactly what we’re stuffing. If we think we’re hiding it from him, we’re just dumb. He knows exactly what is in there and festering, and so he brings the people who are necessary. He brings situations, events, readings, everything that we need to be able to release it and surrender it so that it can be excised and we can start to heal.

But we can’t do it until we’re honest with him. 

Erin: Right. So, Christy, one more thing before we wrap up here. Do you have anything else that you would want to say to the writer out there who is afraid, who is struggling with fear in this? They want to make this step that you did, but they can’t bring themselves to do it?

Christy: I think I would tell that writer that you gotta start with ditching the excuses. We make a lot of excuses. We need to change the things that we tell ourselves. “I’ve always been a this,” or “I’ve never been able to finish,” or “I’ve always been a procrastinator.” But changing the way that we think and going, “You know what? Yeah, that might have been the pattern, but I’m giving that to God,” that’s the place to start. 

We need to say, “God, I don’t want to be this way anymore. I don’t want to be a procrastinator. I don’t want to make excuses. I don’t want this to be my identity.”

Because tThose excuses become our identity. And it became my identity, the rejection, the “I can’t do this,” and the “I don’t have time.” I had to get serious about it and go, “All right, is this something that I want to do? Is this something God has called me to do or not? Am I gonna dink at it or am I gonna be serious about it?”

It’s really laying it down on that one-yard line going, “Am I in or not?”

If we’re in, then we go, “Okay, God. I’m gonna depend on you to show me when that time is, and then when you show me when that time is, I’ve gotta hold it sacred. If it’s thirty minutes every morning, and I gotta get up at five instead of five-thirty, then I’m gonna hold that thirty minutes sacred. 

If it’s a whole day of the week, then I’ve gotta hold that time sacred. I don’t take calls. I don’t send messages…unless it’s my husband, which I need to make sure he’s okay and not bringing reptiles home or anything. Which he will. He had a snake in his truck one day, which is a whole nother thing. 

As far as those excuses and that time, we really need to set that time aside. But I think the biggest piece is saying, “Okay, who am I doing this for? Am I doing this for my glory or am I doing this for God? If nobody ever read a word that I wrote, am I willing to continue putting it out there and offering it to God because he told me to do it?”

That’s when you really are satisfied. At the end of the day, I have to go, “Okay, it’s not for this person, it’s not for that person. It’s for God first. And if he chooses to put it wherever he wants to put it, I’ve put it in words and now it’s there.”

But if I never take the time to put it on paper, then God can’t have it. He can’t use it. So that’s what I would say. Just get serious and decide, am I all in or not? 

Karen: Amen. 

Erin: Love it. 

Karen: Christy, you have shared so much with us, and we’re just so grateful that you’ve been here and that you’ve allowed us into your life and into your journey, both as a writer, but more important as a believer who struggled with an habitual sin.

I want to say thank you, and I want to tell all of you listening out there, if you think that God doesn’t know what’s going on deep inside of you, you’re wrong. He knows, but the thing is, he still loves you. That lie that if people really know who I am, they wouldn’t love me? That’s just out the window with God.

He knows. He created you. He knows every single thing about you. It’s time to kick fear to the curb and just walk in boldness. Confess to him. Lay yourself in his hands, and as he did with Christy, experience the amazing restoration and the ways that God will use you for his glory. 

Erin: Amen. 

Brutal honesty with yourself and with God is the key to freedom! @christyadams008 #ChristianWriter #amwriting
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What are the challenges of being brutally honest with God? Or with others?

Learning as I Go: Big Lessons from Little People by Christy Bass Adams

Imagination Checkers by Christy Bass Adams

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

A big thank you to our October sponsor of the month, Wendy L. Macdonald. She’s a writer, poet, podcaster, photographer, and nature lover, and I know you’d enjoy getting to know her! She has a free, special gift for you: 10 Good Habits to Help You Become a Great Listener!

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The post 176 – Sin and Brutal Honesty with Guest Christy Bass Adams, Part 2 appeared first on Write from the Deep.

We all do it. We convince ourselves that that sin—the one that no one knows about—isn’t hurting anyone. Isn’t a big deal. Doesn’t matter. But we also know that’s a lie. Because hidden sin isn’t hidden from God. Join guest Christy Bass Adams as she shares what happens when we stop hiding and give God everything—even our worst sin.

About Christy Bass Adams

Christy Bass Adams worked in education for 18 years and now serves as the Outreach and Connections Coordinator at Fellowship Baptist Church. She is passionate about connecting people within the Body of Christ and helping fellow believers find a place to serve and grow. Her writing career includes a weekly inspirational column for Greene Publishing and regular contributions to Vinewords.net and Inspireafire.com. She has also written devotions for CBN.com, christiandevotions.us, Inkspirations, and The Secret Place (Judson Press). Speaking and sharing about her own healing journey is also a big part of her life as she teaches a weekly bible study at Humble House recovery home for women and monthly leads workshops at Honey Lake Clinic (a Christian mental health center). Her most important role, however, is that of a wife, and mother to two busy, adventurous boys. Her debut book is a devotional, Learning As I Go: Big Lessons from Little People. Her second book is a middle grades novel, Cricket and Kyle: Imagination Checkers.

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

Karen: Welcome, friends, to the deep. We have some exciting things to share with you today. We have a guest, Christy Bass Adams, and I’m gonna let Erin introduce her. 

Erin: I get to do that. Yay! I met Christy at the Florida Christian Writer’s Conference last year, and we had such a grand time getting to know each other. It was so fun. 

She is a former school teacher and trainer, and she now works for her local church. She’s been married for 18 years to a man she describes as a good ole’ country boy. Apparently, to keep her life from getting boring, he randomly tosses reptiles into her kitchen. I can relate to that kind of excitement, but usually it’s an accident when there’s a snake in my house!

My favorite picture on her website shows her in work clothes, wearing big knee pads and holding a power tool. She and her hubby are building their own house, which I totally respect. She has two young sons who may or may not be very helpful in that building process. Christy has a natural bent toward encouraging others, and she loves to share the life-giving breath of words with everyone she meets. 

She’s been a weekly inspirational columnist and contributed to several other publications, including cbn.com, Christian devotions, inspireafire.com and all kinds of stuff. I’m super excited that her first two books released last month. One of them is a devotional called Learning As I Go: Big Lessons from Little People. The other is a middle grade novel called Cricket and Kyle: Imagination Checkers.

They sound so fun! Welcome, Christy. We’re super excited that you’re here, and we promise not to throw any reptiles at you. 

Christy: Thank you so much. 

Erin: She’s either thanking us for, you know, letting her come on the show or for not throwing reptiles. We’re not sure. No, actually, we’re blessed that she’s been willing to come on and share. Christy, let’s jump in. What does the deep mean to you? 

Christy: Well, the deep to me, it goes way back. When I first decided to write, I kind of played it safe. I did easy devotions. I wrote easy picture books for the classroom, kind of math related. I kept it real safe. 

I received lots of rejections, lots of rejection letters in the mail. After a season I got defeated and I quit. I could feel God nudging me way down deep, though, that I needed to write about my insecurities and write about my failures and struggles. But I was scared. 

Erin: Yeah. 

Christy: I was scared to air my dirty laundry. I was scared of how people would perceive me. Afraid to fully let God have my pen, really, is what it came down to. Through a series of divine appointments, which I could talk about forever, God reminded me of a deal that I made with him. 

Let me say, as a sidebar, it’s not a good idea to make a deal with God. It just is not advisable. He takes you seriously. 

My deal was if he would heal me and truly free me from my habitual, long-term sin and show me how to be whole in him, I’d do anything that he asked me to do. And if it was only for one person, it was worth my surrender. 

I was reminded of that through that series of events, and so God and I had a pow wow on my back porch. I apologized to him for being afraid. I physically extended my hands and said, “I’m yours. This gift of writing is yours. If you choose to take it back and never let me use it again, I have to be okay with that. But I’m done taking the easy road. I’ll talk about the hard stuff. I’ll share my story. I’m surrendering at all. If I’m not writing to honor you, God, I’m wasting everything you’ve given me.” 

What’s crazy is in that moment, there was this picture of a gift in my mind that was wrapped, and it was almost like God was handing me that gift back. I didn’t hear an audible voice. I didn’t hear anything specifically, but it was this feeling of, “Now, write for me. Everything you do, honor me with it.”

Karen: Yeah. 

Christy: So the deep for me, it means full surrender and complete obedience. Whether it’s a text, an email, a handwritten card, a letter, a blog, a devotion, or even a book, they all are just as important in the Lord’s economy.

His words through me can make an eternal impact as long as I let him have them. I always say I might as well put my pen down if I’m not gonna let God have it. So that’s what the deep is. It’s that obedience and surrender. 

Karen: That’s amazing. 

Erin: That is a deep place. From what you’re saying, I’m sensing a lot of backstory. I’m a fiction writer sometimes and non-fiction sometimes, but I know backstory when I hear it!

Karen: That’s exactly right. 

Erin: If you’re willing, talk about what was going on with that struggle and the backstory. Why you didn’t wanna talk about what you needed to talk about and how that had happened. 

Christy: It goes back to when I was a kid. I grew up in church. I have wonderful parents. I am blessed with Christian parents and I recognize what a blessing and true reward that is in this life to have good parents who took me to church, who taught me the values of Christ. 

But somewhere in the process, I started this negative self-talk thing. I really beat myself up inside and I didn’t tell anybody about it. My friends were coming to me with big, big problems in middle school and high school, and their problems were overarching compared to mine.

I shoved all of my issues down. I was struggling with some depression, with a lot of insecurity. I was worried about my appearance, and my weight, and so many things that teenagers worry about. But I wasn’t gonna say anything because my friends were more important in my eyes. Now again, I’m going to church, I’m in a good home, but these lies. I started believing them and resting on them.

As middle school and high school kids do, I started having this desire to rebel. It is a thing that runs across the board in all teenagers, all adults. We just have this innate desire to rebel against the things that we know are good. 

I decided that I wanted to keep a good name. I wanted to keep a good face. I wanted a facade of looking like I was doing everything right, but I still wanted to rebel like my friends were doing. And honestly, I was curious, so I sought out pornography from time to time. It wasn’t a big deal until I got into late high school and early college. Then the internet became more accessible.

I wanna say this, my problem was not pornography. My problem was that I was not satisfied by Christ. My insides were running from Jesus. My insides were not being totally surrendered. And I was using the excuse of, “God, you made me this way. Why won’t you take it away? Why won’t you fix this?”

I blamed him for a lot of things that were happening in my life, instead of going, “Christy, you did this. You chose this. You made this decision.”

Basically what happened during this ten year period from late middle school, all the way into early adulthood, outside of college, and on into my marriage is that I was trying so hard to keep up the outside facade of going to church, being a teacher—that’s what I went to school for—being a good wife, leading Sunday school, but I was basically a Pharisee when it comes down to it. 

I was a hypocrite. There were two people living inside of me. I had the Christy who was broken and ashamed of the things that she was doing and the sin that she would not confess. Then I had this other version of Christy who was trying so hard on the outside to honor God, so I said, and do the right things on the outside. 

But at some point I had come to the realization when a friend finally got the courage to confront me. In 2009, she came to my house. She checked my computer because she was checking her email for school. I had not cleared my history, and she got the courage to confront me.

I can tell you at that moment, because I was a Christian during all of this, I just was living in unconfessed habitual sin, and when she had the courage to finally confront me, God got hold of me.

I recognized that I was the one making excuses. I was the one not owning my sins, and I was living this fake version of Christianity that is not what God intended. I was not talking about my struggles, my sin. I wasn’t addressing the issues of my heart. And I wasn’t letting him have everything. I was just talking about it.

I was good at lip service. I was like a Christian Milli Vanilli. I was lip syncing this whole Christian walk thing instead of actually living it. So from 2009 until the present, God really rocked my world. 

When my friend confronted me, she said, “Christy, you’ve gotta do four things. You’ve gotta tell your husband. You’ve got to step down from all leadership roles at church. You’ve got to tell your family, and go to a Christian counselor.” 

Karen: Yeah. 

Christy: Through Christian counseling, I was so prideful. I was like, “No, I don’t have a problem. No, this is not a big deal. I can take care of this on summer break.” 

I made so many excuses and justifications for these sins that my moral compass, which used to run straight ahead, it would notch away a little at a time. And when I looked back, I was completely off track. 

Erin: Wow. 

Christy: As God continued dealing with my heart and I began Christian counseling, the conversations came down to, “Christy, you’re believing lies.” That’s what my counselor told me.

One of the core lies that stemmed all the way back from middle school was that if anybody knew the real me, then they wouldn’t love me. If anybody saw my weaknesses, if I let them see who I really was, then they would make fun of me or reject me. 

Instead of being rejected, I put walls up so nobody would ever see that weak version of myself. After that year of counseling, I said to my counselor, I call her Dr. T, and I said, ” Dr. T, you’ve walked with me this whole year. Where do I go from here?”

She said, “Well, you don’t need me anymore. You’ve got Jesus, and you’re walking with him.” But she also said, “You’re a writer. You have journaled through this whole process and you need to write your story.”

Karen: Yeah. 

Christy: So I really thought that I was supposed to write a book about my testimony. I started it, and then I set it down, and I got scared. That season that I talked about in my answer about what is the deep, that was the season that I walked away and got scared. I went to easy, safe writing. I set aside my testimony, and for probably ten years, I did not pick it up and I did not write it. 

That series of events I mentioned earlier was workshops and conferences where God kept putting people in my path going, “Hey, Christy, you need to tell your story. You need to write your story. You need to let God use these things because he can bring redemption where Satan wanted ruin.” 

Erin: Mm-hmm. 

Christy: So the last, really three, four years I got serious. One of my friends looked at me, her name’s Vicki, and she said, “Christy, when are you writing?”

I went, “I don’t know when I’m writing. I mean, I’m just doing it when I can. I’ve got kids, you know. I just pick it up when I can.”

She said, “No. When are you writing? If you’re serious about this and you really have surrendered your pen to God, then you need to set aside time to write.”

Through her encouragement and through her opening her home, where I’m actually sitting right now, in her extra room because it’s quiet and I’m not distracted by the things at my house—the dishes and the garbage and the laundry that would distract me—

Erin: And the reptiles! 

Christy: And the reptiles that are randomly thrown on my floor. She offered me this space, and she offered me a gift. She said, “Christy, you need to designate a whole day and not let anybody take that from you and write.”

I finished writing my testimony. I put it in book form. It’s a Christian living book. I tried to put it out there, and I offered it to God, and nobody’s wanted it so far. That’s okay because I was obedient. When the time comes, God will take it .

But I’ll tell you what he’s done. He’s opened the door for speaking at recovery clinics. I go twice a month and I speak at a recovery clinic, Honey Lake Clinic, over in Greenville, Florida. I get to teach them about how to go home, and how to make a plan, and how to protect their minds, and how to change, and how to heal. 

I always tell them, “Your story’s not my story, and my story’s not your story. But the healing process of wandering away from Jesus and losing ourselves, and moving back to him, and taking up residence and abiding in him, that process is the same. That healing process of grace and forgiveness and redemption and restoration, that looks the same, no matter what our journey is.”

As God has continued growing me in that area, I’m recognizing, you know, pornography? Yes, that was a struggle of mine. But that was a symptom just like alcohol, drugs, appearance, overeating, under-eating, exercise, all those things that we focus on and become outward symptoms of inward problems.

God is calling me to heal and help heal others on this journey. So that’s the big picture of the struggles that I had and how God is now using them, for writing, for encouraging. And speaking, which honestly terrifies me. 

Karen: Which is why he’s called you there. 

Christy: There you go. 

Erin: You don’t sound terrified, so that’s good. It’s always good. 

Karen: It’s interesting to me, because I think that another, human, earthly, natural thing inside of us is deflection. There’s something—especially

in Pharisees and believers minds—especially wrong with a woman with pornography. I mean, you see men with pornography and you think to yourself, “Well, of course. They’re men.” 

When it happens with a woman, the attitude from people in the church can be especially judgmental, and they become this deflection about their own sin and saying, “Well, at least I don’t…”

It’s such a dangerous place for anyone to be who claims to be a believer because that’s the first foothold into pride, saying, “Sure, I may do this, but I would never do that.”

Satan absolutely loves it when Jesus’ children say things like that. Satan is just so excited and clapping his hands because that’s his access point to get into us.

All of us need to recognize that those sins that we continually return back to, those are weaknesses inside of us that separate us from Christ. And it doesn’t matter. There are no degrees of sin when it separates us from Christ. They’re all equally damaging. It’s not that Jesus is saying that you’re a terrible person for doing that.

He’s saying, “I want you close, and this is between us, and it has to end.” 

Christy: Right.

Karen: Wow. I don’t know about you guys, but this has been such an amazing podcast. I so respect Christy and everything that she’s shared with us, everything that you’ve shared with us, Christy, and thank you for that. But here’s the good news. There’s more to come!

Erin: Indeed. 

Karen: We will have another podcast finishing our conversation up, but talking about things like courage and brutal honesty, so don’t miss it!

Hidden sin is never hidden from God. Join guest Christy Bass Adams as she shares what happens when we stop hiding and give God everything—even our worst sin. #ChristianWriter #amwriting @christyadams008
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Do you have someone in your life who will confront you about your sin? If not, what steps can you take to find someone?

Learning as I Go: Big Lessons from Little People by Christy Bass Adams

Imagination Checkers by Christy Bass Adams

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

A big thank you to our October sponsor of the month, Wendy L. Macdonald. She’s a writer, poet, podcaster, photographer, and nature lover, and I know you’d enjoy getting to know her! She has a free, special gift for you: 10 Good Habits to Help You Become a Great Listener!

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 175 – Sin and Brutal Honesty with Guest Christy Bass Adams, Part 1 appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Ever wished someone could give you guaranteed advice for your writing journey? Well, someone has. The Apostle Paul shared these gems of wisdom that are as effective now as when God inspired him to write them.

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

The writing life can be hard. We have to be vulnerable on the page and then take critique like it doesn’t hurt. We have to learn the rules of the publishing industry, yet watch people break rules and succeed. We invest time, sweat, and dollars into honing our craft without ever knowing for sure if anyone will care enough to read the finished product. Let alone if it will affect anyone.

This is a setup for angst. More so because it’s not all a one-time deal. We have to keep learning our craft. keep paying attention and adapting to the turbulent publishing industry. And even if someone did read our last book, we have to keep putting words out there without knowing who will read the next book. There are no guarantees.

You guys know, if you listen to the podcast, that we preach obedience to God as the measure of success. If he’s asking us to put words out there, it doesn’t matter if people don’t read it. But we know that still doesn’t make it easy to keep going forward.

Today we want to share 3 pieces of wisdom with you. Wisdom that will help you through these challenges. Wisdom that has stood the test of time. It comes from the Apostle Paul, and it’s in his first letter to the Thessalonians in chapter 5, verses 16-18.

You might be wondering what ancient Thessolanica has to do with the publishing industry. Well, here’s some background, and you can read more here if you’re interested. 

One of the reasons Paul wrote to the Thessalonians was to restore their hope, because they experienced several unexpected deaths. 

Writers experience unexpected deaths as well, only more often it’s a beloved character that your editor says must be written out. Or it’s the death of a promising publishing contract. Or the death of a book idea that you really loved but God is leading you to set it aside. 

Or maybe it’s a manuscript that has too many fatal flaws and you just need to let it die and start from scratch. Or the death of your dream for an award or a bestsellers list or to quit your day job. Or even just to make money with your writing! Death happens. And it happened in Thessalonica too.

Another reason Paul wrote this letter was to help people understand that persecution is normal for Christians. People don’t always like you. When you write truth, there will be people who hate you. Suffering is a normal part of the Christian life.

Things go wrong. Bad things happen. Publishing is not fair. Life is not fair. This is the way of things.

You have to get the backdrop of Paul’s letter to Thessolanica clear in your minds because it makes his wisdom all the more astounding and counterintuitive. 

Are you ready? In the midst of death, suffering, persecution, and things going horribly wrong…

The first piece of advice or wisdom is: rejoice always. That’s right. In the midst of stuff dying all around us, rejoice. In the midst of persecution, rejoice. In the midst of hardship, rejoice.

Bear in mind that while we’re labeling this as advice, it is really a command. Paul’s inspired writing is the authoritative word of God. Paul says not just here, but also elsewhere (Philippians 4:4 for example) that God’s children are to rejoice. We might be writers, but first we’re God’s children. We need to follow what God commands his children to do.

What does it look like to “rejoice always”? Are we supposed to laugh when we learn of tragedy? Never be sad or depressed?

No. We’re allowed those emotions. We’re allowed to grieve and feel sad at times. Remember that Jesus himself wept when he stood at Lazarus’s tomb. We don’t ignore our pain, but in the midst of that pain, we can allow a deeper joy to still exist. Here are some ways we can do that:

1) Recognize and affirm that God is in control, that he is good, and that he’s going to work all things for his good purpose.

That does not mean we slap on a happy face. It means we hold on to truth in obedience. When bad things happen in our writing lives (and they will!), we have to hold on to God’s truth and trust him.

2) Continually invite and embrace the Holy Spirit’s work in us to give us the fruit of joy.

The gifts of the Spirit come from God. We don’t manufacture them. But we can make the choice to keep embracing, keep inviting, keep trusting that fruit of joy to grow.

3) Spend time in worship. 

Remember what Job did when he learned that all his children died and all his wealth was carried off by raiders? Here’s what Job 1:20-21 says: “Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’”

He tore his robe, he shaved his head. Those are signs of his grief and distress. But in the midst, he still worships God.

When Paul and Silas were in prison, what did they do? They sang hymns. Paul knows what he’s talking about when he commands us to rejoice always. He’s lived through the challenges of doing it.

4) Don’t focus on negativity, on pessimism, because your thoughts affect your emotions.

It’s hard to rejoice when you continually think of your wounds, trials, aggravations, and so forth. Paul instructs the Philippians in his letter to them, which is full of the command to rejoice, to think about things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable. If you’re doing that, you can’t be focused on negativity.

The second piece of advice—command, actually—is to pray without ceasing, but what does that mean?

Praying without ceasing is about our attitude. It’s about our normal posture of life being that of humble reliance on God. An article on the Gospel Coalition Website puts it this way: “[praying without ceasing] means that there is a spirit of dependence that should permeate all we do.” 

As we’re writing, we write in dependence on God. As we encounter the death of our manuscript, or character, or goal, or whatever, we walk through it in a state of humble reliance. As we suffer, we walk in a spirit of acknowledgement that God is our strength through it. He’s our justifier, our defender, and our helper. 

Praying without ceasing means being ever mindful of our need and God’s constant supply. But it does not mean that we repeat the same prayer every second of our lives. But it does mean that we pray “repeatedly and often” as the article puts it. It goes on to say that our “default mental state should be: ‘O God, help.’”

Another thing “praying without ceasing” means is that we keep praying no matter what, and we don’t ever give up on prayer. As Christians and writers, giving up on prayer can be a temptation we don’t even know we’re facing. We simply get discouraged, tired, or burned out. We feel battered by the publishing machine, and we feel like God isn’t answering our prayers. And we just kind of…stop praying. Or we get angry and deliberately stop talking to God. 

When we stop praying, that disrupts our connection to God. We’re isolated and a prime target for not just lies we tell ourselves, but the destructive things our enemy will tell us.

Paul’s third command is to give thanks in everything. Not just the good things. Not just the easy things. Not just the fun things. Everything. This means we have to give thanks for the hard things, too. 

We all know the writing life is filled with setbacks, disappointments, and painful lessons. And certainly with unexpected detours. So sure, take a moment to collect your thoughts. To grieve. To lament. But underneath that, we still want to have a thankful heart. As an act of obedience we still need to walk in gratitude because God is sovereign and works everything for our good and his glory. We come back to that over and over because it’s the truth he’s given us. It’s the hope.

Also, let’s not neglect to give thanks for good things. Yes, it’s easier to give thanks for good things, but do we remember to actually do that? How often do we wake up in the morning and thank God that he’s putting breath our my mouths? That our hearts are beating? That he made the sun rise? That he’s holding the entire universe together even right this second.

We could spend every second of our lives thanking God for all the good things he does because there are so many! And again, if we’re focused on thanking God, it’s so much easier to rejoice, right?

So, Paul tells us to rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and to give thanks in everything. But look at the rest of the verse:

This is bonus wisdom, or maybe clarification. How many people struggle to know what God’s will is? Here it is: Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks. This is what he wants us to do. When we’re faithful in these things, we ARE in God’s will. 

Yes, sometimes we feel like we need answers to questions we have. Should I submit to this agent or that one? Should I go to this conference or that one, or any at all this year? Should I keep writing in this genre or switch to that one?

But too often we overemphasize our need to get answers and underemphasize time spent rejoicing in God’s presence, or thanking him, or resting in his presence, or letting him lead the conversation, or quietly adoring, or listening. All these actions are part of rejoicing always, praying without ceasing, and giving thanks in everything. Doing that will help us find our way, because we’ll trust that God is in fact leading us in his way and his time and for his purposes. He has purposed our steps. God’s got this. Always!

Ever wished someone could give you guaranteed advice for your writing journey? Well, someone has! #amwriting #ChristianWriter
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Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 174 – 3 Pieces of Advice That Will Never Lead Writers Wrong appeared first on Write from the Deep.

With all the chaos happening around us, we need peace more than ever. And yet it can seem elusive and transient. Come listen in as we share guaranteed steps to help you get (and keep!) true daily peace—no matter what’s happening in the world…or your life.

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

I don’t think anyone would argue with the fact that we live in a fallen world filled with chaos, anxiety, stress, uncertainty, busyness, and way too much rushing around. It can keep us up nights, give us ulcers, or just plain suck the joy out of life. What we could all use is a big hearty dose of peace.

Merriam Webster says peace is:

In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for the idea of peace is shalom. What did they mean by that? Here’s a quote from an article answering that very question:

“What is shalom? The ancient Hebrew concept of peace, rooted in the word ‘shalom,’ meant wholeness, completeness, soundness, health, safety and prosperity, carrying with it the implication of permanence.”

Another article on Christianity.com adds:

“It is completeness, soundness, wellbeing, complete reconciliation. One of the names of God is Yahweh-Shalom, or The Lord Our Peace (Judges 6:24), and Jesus is called the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6).” 

That quote and these verses tell us something important. They tell us who originated peace. It’s God, Yahweh-Shalom. It’s Jesus, the Prince of Peace. This makes sense because God is the creator of all things.

First and foremost, because our relationship with God has been broken by sin, we need peace with God—reconciliation, harmony in that relationship. God provided this peace in Jesus, through his sacrifice on the cross.

Colossians 1:19-20 tells us: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”

Romans 5:1 says, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” 

Why else do we need peace? Let’s go back to another of Webster’s definitions: Peace is a state of calm, of feeling good. Who doesn’t want to feel good? Psalm 37:11 says, “But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace.”

Peace is delightful!

Another reason we need peace is that it glorifies God when we exhibit it. Peace is listed in Galatians 5:22-23 as one of the fruits of the spirit. These fruits are great for us, they benefit us, but they also show that we belong to God because ultimately these gifts come from him.

1. Getting peace starts by knowing where—or who—peace comes from: Jesus.

Consider John 14:27: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

And, going back to the article on Christianity.com, it says, “True shalom is only reached through God.”

We need to know where and who peace comes from in order to get it.

2. Another way we get peace is by seeking and pursuing it.

Psalm 34:14 tells us, “Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.”

2 Timothy 2:22 says, “So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.”

We need to think about ways we can be more proactive in seeking peace. What does pursuing peace look like in our lives?

3. We should also be praying for peace, because again, God gives it to us.

Here’s a familiar prayer from Numbers 6:25-26: “The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”

Psalm 29:11 says, “May the Lord give strength to his people! May the Lord bless his people with peace!”

We need to pray for peace.

4. We also need to avoid wickedness in order to have peace. 

Isaiah 48:22 says, “There is no peace,” says the Lord, “for the wicked.”

Zechariah 8:16-17 tells us, “‘These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another; render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace; do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath, for all these things I hate,’ declares the Lord.”

So we know where peace comes from and how to get it. But just because we gain a little peace, doesn’t mean we don’t have to do anything else. We need to nurture the gift of peace that God gives us. We don’t want to let it whither and die.

1. The first way to nurture peace is to know God better and better.

2 Peter 1:2 says, “May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.”

2. We can also nurture peace by loving God’s law.

Psalm 119:165 says, “Great peace have those who love your law; nothing can make them stumble.”

3. We should love peace, too.

Here’s Zechariah 8:19b “…Therefore love truth and peace.”

4. Walking in wisdom also helps us nurture peace in our lives.

Proverbs 3:17, speaking about wisdom, tells us, “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.”

5. We can also nurture peace by planning to live, to the best of our ability, at peace with people.

Especially these days when so many things in our society spark anger and dissension, we need to think ahead about how we can approach life peacefully. Proverbs 12:20 says, “Deceit is in the heart of those who devise evil, but those who plan peace have joy.”

In Romans 12:18 the apostle Paul urges, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”

6. One of the biggest ways to nurture peace in our lives is to keep our focus on God in trust.

We said earlier that we can nurture peace by knowing God better and better, and the benefit of knowing him is that we learn he’s trustworthy. When we focus on trusting God rather than on our worries or problems, peace is the result. 

Isaiah 26:3 tells us, “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.”

God is in control. We can trust that and we can trust him.

Mark 4:39 says, “And [Jesus] awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.”

Jesus is in control of not just the weather, but all the stormy circumstances in our lives. 

7. Finally, we can’t nurture peace, or truly even have God’s peace, if we turn away from him.

Psalm 85:8 says, “Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints; but let them not turn back to folly.”

Even scarier as a warning is what it says in Jeremiah 16, verses 5 and 9. Israel rejected God and he took away their peace. Here’s what it says: “For thus says the Lord: ‘Do not enter the house of mourning, or go to lament or grieve for them, for I have taken away my peace from this people, my steadfast love and mercy,’ declares the Lord.”

We’ve talked about what peace is, how we get it, and how we can nurture it. But even with all that, we know daily peace can still be a battle because there are plenty of peace stealers out there in our daily lives. Peace stealers can be things like: being overbooked, regretting the past, worrying about the future, lack of gratitude, and on and on the list goes.

We encourage you to think about what your personal peace stealers are. We all have them, but we can fight them. We can combat them with God’s Word, God’s promises.

We’ve already read a lot of Scripture about peace, but guess what? There’s more! Take some time now and just absorb God’s Word. Let it wash over you.

Just as a reminder, not only do we have the Scripture list here, but it’s also always in our newsletter. We want you to be able to go back to these verses again and again. (If you signed up for our newsletter and you’re not getting it, check your spam folder. Or sign up again because there may have been a technical glitch.)

“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

“In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” Psalm 4:8

“For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.” 1 Corinthians 14:13

“My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.” Isaiah 32:18

“The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” Romans 16:20

“Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace.” 2 Peter 3:14

“For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Romans 14:17

“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.” Colossians 3:15

“Finally, [brothers and sisters], rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.” 2 Corinthians 13:11

“For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” Isaiah 55:12

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” Philippians 4:6-9

“For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” Romans 8:6

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” Romans 15:13

“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.” 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24

“For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you.” Isaiah 54:10

“Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in every way. The Lord be with you all.” 2 Thessalonians 3:16

With all the chaos happening around us, we need peace more than ever. Listen in as we share steps to help you get (and keep!) true daily peace—no matter what’s happening in the world…or your life. #ChristianWriter #amwriting
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What are your “peace stealers” and what helps you fight against them?

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

We have openings in our Patreon Sponsor of the Month tier. You’ll get your name mentioned on the podcast with a link to your website and your latest book. You’ll also have a link right here in the show notes, as well as a banner on our regular podcast page. Check it out here! We appreciate your consideration!

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 173 – Daily Peace in an Anxious World appeared first on Write from the Deep.

What if God took away your ability to write? Guest Sharon Hinck has walked through some deep valleys, and she knows firsthand how insecurities and the enemy’s lies hit hardest in the midst of our darkest times. But she also knows without a doubt that God is there, even through the mystery of unanswered questions, turning the darkness to light. Listen in as she shares how God led her into a profound new understanding of her extraordinary worth.

About Sharon Hinck

Award-winning author Sharon Hinck writes “stories for the hero in all of us,” about ordinary people on extraordinary faith journeys. She has been honored with three Carol awards, and the 2020 and 2021 Christy Award in the Speculative Fiction category. She has experience as a church youth worker, a choreographer and ballet teacher, a church organist, and an adjunct professor for Creative Writing MFA students. One day she’ll figure out what to be when she grows up, but meanwhile she’s pouring her imagination into writing. When she isn’t wrestling with words, Sharon enjoys speaking for conferences, retreats, and church groups.

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

Erin: Welcome, listeners. We are delighted that you’re here with us in the deep, and today we’re continuing our interview with Sharon Hinck.

Oh my gosh, you guys, this was such a great interview, and I’m looking forward to you hearing more. So we’re gonna jump right in!  

Sharon: As someone who has always been a bit of an overachiever in personality, God had to do a lot in me to remind me that just being his is all I need to be. That it isn’t what I accomplish. It’s not how many books I get written. How many words I write that day.

The story of the Dancing Realm series is another miracle of his mercy because I had gotten very, very ill after several books came out with Bethany House and Nav Press. I was just going gangbusters, then I got very sick and was actually mostly bedridden for two years.

I had tons of cognitive loss, which is terrifying when you’re a writer, you can’t find words. 

Erin: Yeah. 

Sharon: And physical weakness. I thought, “That’s it. I can’t write anymore.” 

Years went by. Eventually I was writing devotions because I could do little tidbits. Then God used that. I eventually got a little bit stronger mentally, a little stronger physically. 

I was talking to my agent and he said, “You used to be a dancer. Why don’t you write about a story world that dance is involved?”

I said, “Oh, I don’t know.” 

But I started to play, and it was difficult. It felt choppy, so I was afraid the writing would be choppy. You know, it was sentence by sentence. Writing in little pieces. It didn’t flow, but God enabled me to write that series. 

Then it was terrifying when the first book came out. I thought, “People are gonna say, ‘Oh, we used to like her stuff. What happened to her?'”

I was literally biting my nails, and so to have it well received was so meaningful to me.

Karen: I love how God works that way. And it’s predictable how the enemy works. On the very heels of a miracle from God, the enemy steps in and says, “Well, maybe he helped you do this, but it’ll be crap. Nobody will wanna read it.”

All those insecurities come up, and he’s doing everything he can to steal God’s glory in this miracle that God’s done and to steal our peace in the midst of God’s miracle. If we could just keep our eyes focused on him and ignore those stupid voices inside of us that are speaking condemnation and fear and insecurity. 

You know, we’ve been through a really horrific time here in the last couple of months. Things happened that I ended up feeling really stupid about. Things that I fell for. We were conned twice by moving brokers and there was the potential that we were going to lose $11,000. 

I spent so much time just being angry with myself until my husband said, “These guys are pros at cunning people. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, they’re pros at what they’re doing.”

Finally I came to the end of myself in all of it because I’ve always prided myself on being capable, being able to handle a lot of things. I finally came to the place where I was just telling God, “You take it. I can’t do it, God. You take it.”

We may end up still losing about, I don’t know, $1,500. But that’s incredibly better than $11,000. We’re doing something different, but it’s coming together and we actually will be able to move out of this house and close when we need to without any problems.

So, more and more lately, I’m just like, “Father, just show me what to do. Show me what to do, because I got nothing.” 

Sharon: And give yourself grace. Because I do the same thing. I mentioned earlier, before we started the recording, how I struggle with technology. I get mad at myself and I feel like I’m so dumb. How do I not understand this stuff? 

You would give others grace. You would not condemn a friend who got conned. We need to give ourselves grace and that’s what God taught me as I had time away from writing, when I couldn’t write. Not only did I feel useless, I felt like a burden to the people around me.

Not only was I not producing and I wasn’t accomplishing great things for God’s kingdom, which is what I always want to be doing, but I was actually making people spend time helping me, which was wasting their time, in my opinion.

Karen: I can tell you, that’s got to be the most difficult thing for any of us who are able to do things is asking for help. Like you, I struggled a lot with health issues in the last five or ten years and realizing, or being able to accept the phrase, “Yes, there was a time when I could do that, but I cannot do that now.”

Sharon: Oh, it’s hard. It’s so hard. 

Karen: It’s hard to go to someone when you’re the one who’s usually offering help to people and teaching people and mentoring people, and you’re coming in and saying, “Could you come to my house and help me pack a box?” 

Sharon: Yeah! And again, it’s in those places where we see our need. My pastor recently, in a sermon, talked about the story, the parable, where the man goes to his neighbor and is pounding on the door in the middle of the night, “Oh, I don’t have enough food. I have a guest. Could you lend me something?”

He said the hero of the story is that man going and confessing his need and asking for help.

Karen: Yes. 

Sharon: That was a new insight for me. I thought, “Oh! Hey, finally, I could be the hero of the story because I’m needy. I’m needy. I can say that!”

I used to worry that I was Miss Needy-Pants all the time. 

Karen: Now you’re just Miss Needy-Hero. 

Sharon: That’s right! It can be very courageous to admit need. I see that with all the friends that I have seen suffer in these past years. With loss of loved ones, with depression, with anxiety. When they’re honest about those places of pain and need and share that, it helps others who are hurting. I love that verse, I do my bad paraphrase of it: that he comforts us with his comfort so that we can comfort others with the same comfort with which we were comforted.

It is so true. And then we can be there for each other. We aren’t the heroes of our own story. We just point to the hero, which is Jesus. 

Karen: Absolutely! Preach it, Sister!  

Erin: Sharon, you had said that God taught you that just being his was enough. What do you think was one of the final straws that helped you realize that? That really pulled that together for you?

Sharon: Well, I have to confess it’s a daily battle. 

Karen: Yeah. 

Sharon: It has not been resolved. That issue is not fully resolved. But, getting to that point of, “I may never be able to write again. I may never be able to read again…” I still struggle to read for pleasure, which is a huge loss. I’ve been a voracious reader since I was four years old.

My critique partners would send me chapters and I could edit and critique because it used a different part of my brain. 

Karen: Exactly. 

Sharon: But I couldn’t read for pleasure. That’s still a struggle for me, although I’ve started to be able to do audiobooks. But all these things that defined me—I thought all these things defined me—having them taken away really gave me a chance to rest in God and know he loves me, whether I do another thing or not. 

I spoke last year. In the spring I did a keynote through zoom for a writer’s conference. I started out by saying, “This is gonna sound very radical: it’s okay to not write.”

Karen: Yeah. 

Sharon: Because we get so caught up in, “Oh, I have to do this.” And we compare to other people and what they’re accomplishing. Having God strip me down to being useless to him and then realizing he still loved me…he doesn’t love me based on me doing stuff for him. I mean, intellectually, I knew that, but I absorbed it in a deeper way through those years of illness. 

Karen: Intellectually, we know that for others. And we teach that to others. 

Sharon: Yes, exactly. 

Karen: But for us, that’s just a bitter pill to swallow. But one of the things that Erin and I teach at writer’s conferences, both when we teach together and we teach separate, is this isn’t about writing. This task that God has given us isn’t about writing. It’s about obedience. And it’s about honoring God in what we’re doing. 

If our book never gets published, you still have been obedient. That’s what matters. 

And if you have been published and suddenly you can’t write anymore, are you being obedient in the midst of that experience? God isn’t taking away your dream. God is refining you and giving you a new, deeper, more profound dream of just being his. 

Sharon: To be more closely connected to him is a gift that doesn’t compare. I mean, no writing contract, no award, no anything compares to getting to know him more intimately. And we have that blessing sometimes in the deep, and sometimes in the dark places, and the valley. 

Erin: What I love is that in this situation with the Dream of Kings book, your obedience to not write led to a beautiful time with your mom. It led to lots of other grief, of course, but then it did turn around and lead to writing again. To another book.

It doesn’t always work that way. But sometimes it does, and in this case it did. That’s gonna be really exciting to have that book. You listeners out there, this book will be available on pre-order when this podcast comes out. It’s Dream of Kings, and I’m looking forward to reading that. 

Karen: Me too. 

Erin: I actually read your Dancing Realms series as well. 

Sharon: I’m always so surprised when someone other than my mom or my husband have read my books! Thank you, Erin. 

Erin: What I wanted to say, too, about it is that I thought the premise was really neat. That whole idea of dance being so important in that world. I mean, that was just a really cool idea that hadn’t come up that I had seen before. I thought it was a fascinating premise. 

I also liked the fact that, you know, sometimes I think when people write a series, people will love the first book. Then with the next few books that come along, people are like, “Well, good, we wanna finish the story.” But the first book seems to be the real hit, the best book.

With you, of course the books were good, but I actually liked the last book best. I mean, I thought that was where things really like… well, I don’t want to spoil it for readers. It was just a really good final book of a series.

Sharon: Oh, thank you!  

Erin: It gets my recommendation. 

Sharon: Cool. Along with what Karen said about the enemy loving to whisper lies to us, I actually had a dream around the time the third book came out where I was talking to someone and they said, “Yeah, the first two were okay. But that third book has no plot.” 

I woke up sweating and just totally convinced, “Oh no, the book is out there now and it has no plot!” 

Karen: I don’t know why we’re so quick to believe the enemy lies. I just…

Erin: Says the person who’s now got all these bills that she has to pay, because she got taken in. I mean, it’s because that’s who we. 

Karen: No, no, I’m saying, I don’t know why we believe them. I recognize that I’m right there with them!  

Erin: It’s just dumb on our part. But we do. We just do. I mean, maybe it’s just so that we know that we really still need God.

Sharon: Yeah. 

Karen: I don’t think it’s dumb, actually. I think that it’s human. 

Erin: Good point. 

Karen: I think that the voice of the enemy is seductive and impactful, and God speaks in that small, still whisper. We have to listen so hard to hear God’s voice over the cacophony of the enemy’s lies being thrown at us.

If I’ve seen nothing else over these last several weeks, I’ve seen how the enemy just brings it from all directions and in all manner of doing it. I sit there and I think to myself that the enemy is so obvious in his battle against us. Of course, ABC happened because God was doing a great work. So the enemy came in to distract and do everything to keep me from looking at God and resting in God. 

Once I finally realized, “Okay, this is another attack,” I went back to that place that I was before and just saying, “God, I got nothing. You have to handle this because I cannot do this.”

There’s so much peace in recognizing it. 

Sharon: Yeah. Another thing that I’ve been realizing is, through my character’s journey in Dream of Kings, she’s always trying to find a purpose that would make all the losses worthwhile. And she’s not finding that. And to come to the realization that God may not explain himself to us. And that’s okay. He is good. He is working out a purpose. 

Karen: He’s God. It’s not like he owes us anything. Let alone an explanation. 

Sharon: That’s right. I feel like sometimes we’re secret agents and we operate on a need-to-know basis. And God doesn’t think we need to know everything he’s doing behind the scenes. But we can trust he’s doing way beyond what we can imagine behind the scenes. 

That’s what my character Jolan found throughout Dream of Kings. Things that she couldn’t even imagine that The Provider, as she called him, was doing in that world.

Karen: Right. 

Sharon: But yeah, it’s easier when you can see a direct purpose. “Oh, my car died. There was an accident a mile down the road that I would’ve been in, but my car died. God used that to protect me. Yay. A bad thing happened. I see the good purpose. Yay.” 

But a lot of times we aren’t given that and we have to walk by faith. Faith that God is love, and faith that he has a purpose, and faith that he is with us in it, and he is transforming the pain into something beautiful. 

Karen: Exactly. 

Erin: Yeah. I think the deal is that we don’t have the wisdom to understand. Or the judgment to understand what would be worthwhile anyway. We want to know, but we are just going to compare it to our own human thinking of what is worthwhile. So God’s just like, “Don’t even go there.”

It’s like trying to explain to my golden retriever why she can’t have a bunch of water right before she goes to sleep at night. She’s just not gonna get it. 

I guess that’s where we are human and God is God. If we could understand what made something worthwhile, we would be God and we’re not. 

Karen: And God is telling us, “Don’t worry about understanding. Be it peace. Understanding isn’t the be all and the end all. Peace. Be at peace. My peace I give to you. Not peace like the world gives, but my peace I give to you.” 

Erin: Yes. 

Sharon: Amen. Oh, I love talking with you guys. I feel like I’m in church. 

Erin: We’re coming to the end of our time, so I was going to ask you if you have any final words of wisdom or encouragement you wanted to leave with our listeners. 

Sharon: Well, I know that most of your listeners are writers and they want to be writing from the heart, writing for God. I would say just what you said earlier. It’s about following his lead. Sometimes it’s okay to not write. Sometimes he calls us to write. Sometimes he calls us to write an unexpected thing, or sometimes the theme of a story changes. 

It’s fun when we can see how he uses life circumstances in our stories, but sometimes we won’t see it. All of your listeners who are writers, get ready for that wonderful day when we’re all in heaven and someone comes up and says, “I was struggling with X, Y, and Z, and I read this novel you wrote, and that character went through a journey like I did, and God used that.”

Isn’t that gonna be a fun party? When we find out that he’s actually working through these humble stories that we’ve struggled so hard to write?  

Karen: Right. It’s gonna be wonderful. Well, Sharon, we’re out time. It’s been delightful to talk with you. It really has. I told you that you didn’t need to be afraid. You did a great job.

Sharon: You guys are so awesome. 

Karen: We’re so delighted with what you’ve shared with us and with our listeners. Friends, let’s just continue to pray for each other. To lift each other up in this time of darkness and struggle, and work to remember that what we need to do is leave it to God and rest in him because that’s what will carry us through.

Erin: Amen. 

Sharon: Amen.

What if God suddenly took away your ability to write? Guest @SharonHinck shares her story. #am writing #Christianwriter
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What would you do if you suddenly found you couldn’t write anymore?

Dream of Kings by Sharon Hinck

Windward Shore (Dancing Realms, Book 3) by Sharon Hinck

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

Thanks so much to our August sponsor of the month, Priscilla Sharrow! She’s working on her memoir called Bonked! Life, Love, and Laughter with Traumatic Brain Injury, which will be coming out with Redemption Press. Learn more about Priscilla at her website priscillasharrow.com and follow her blog for the TBI/PTSD community.

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post In the Valley of the Shadow of Death with Guest Sharon Hinck, Part 2 appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Are you in a deep valley? Do you feel alone? Rejoice! God is there! Our guest Sharon Hinck can prove it from her valley experiences. Join us as she shares what she experienced, and the wonder of what God did in her life and writing.

About Sharon Hinck

Award-winning author Sharon Hinck writes “stories for the hero in all of us,” about ordinary people on extraordinary faith journeys. She has been honored with three Carol awards, and the 2020 and 2021 Christy Award in the Speculative Fiction category. She has experience as a church youth worker, a choreographer and ballet teacher, a church organist, and an adjunct professor for Creative Writing MFA students. One day she’ll figure out what to be when she grows up, but meanwhile she’s pouring her imagination into writing. When she isn’t wrestling with words, Sharon enjoys speaking for conferences, retreats, and church groups.

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 with us because we like you. And because we have a guest!

Karen: Our guest is Sharon Hinck, and I’m sure many of you know her. She writes what she calls stories for the hero in all of us, and she does a phenomenal job with that. She writes about ordinary people on extraordinary faith journeys. I love that.

Her books are known for their authenticity, their emotional range, and spiritual depth. I mean, you talk about a trifecta in fiction? That’s outstanding. She’s written humorous contemporary fiction, women’s fiction, the ground breaking Sword of Lyric fantasy series, and her new Dancing Realms series.

She’s been honored with a Christy finalist medal, three Carol awards and a 2020 Christian award in the visionary category for her fantasy novel Hidden Current. That’s about as impressive as it gets.

Erin: Indeed.

Karen: She says when she isn’t wrestling with words, she enjoys serving as an adjunct professor for the Creative Writing MFA program at Concordia University.

Again, impressive. She also shares with conferences, retreats, and church groups. Sharon and her family make their home in Minnesota.

Sharon: Ya, sure, you betcha!

Karen: I’m married to a Norski, so I know all about that.

Sharon: Ah, you know.

Karen: Uff da!

Erin: Oh my goodness. Sharon, we are glad to have you all the way from Minnesota.

Sharon: It’s great to be here. Thank you.

Erin: Let’s just jump right in, like one of those Minnesota lakes, right? The Land of 10,000 Lakes? What does the deep mean to you?

Sharon: Well, I’ve been thinking about this question. I’ve listened to the podcast, which I love and love this thought of what the deep means.

I was thinking one of the deepest places that I have gone with God and seen him at work is in the valley—which is deep, valleys are deep—the valley of the shadow of death. That is the place I found myself, and many people found themselves, in these past few years as loved ones have gone ahead to heaven.

And not just the loss of death. I think there’s also death of careers, death of health, death of visions, death of all kinds of things people have dealt with these past few years. But for me, I call Dream of Kings my pandemic book because I started writing it in the pandemic.

I was really looking to play with the notion of biblical inspiration. I do that with a lot of my fantasy novels. I take a character or a story, or even a very obscure Bible verse, and then I look at it from a different angle and put it in the fantasy universe that I create to gain some new insights. To ask story questions and to learn more about God’s nature.

Karen: Mm-hmm.

Sharon: So I was playing with this idea of someone who was a dream teller, and I made it a woman: Jolan the Dream Teller of Norgard. I think I was probably inspired by a Minnesota winter when I started the book. Jolan is betrayed by her own people, her guild, and she’s sold to an enemy country. So you can see kind of where the inspiration came from.

Because of that, I assumed my theme would be about forgiveness, seeing how what they meant for evil God meant for good, and how God works out good.

What I didn’t realize was the way God would shape that theme much more into the avenue of how he is with us even in loss. It played out in my life in that I had written about 80,000 words and life was difficult. I have chronic health challenges, which keep me mostly home bound and I struggle quite a bit.

My mom was battling Alzheimer’s, and I was trying to care for her. But I was still plugging away at this book because that’s what God’s called me to do: write. I can still do that even when I’m stuck in bed, I can write.

Then Mom fell and broke her hip.

Erin: Oh no.

Sharon: She had surgery, hip replacement, and went to transitional care. We couldn’t visit for quite a while because they were trying to protect patients, so you had to wait several weeks. On the day I would be able to go and be with her again, transitional care called and said, “She was unresponsive this morning when we went into her room. We think she had a stroke. We’ve sent her to the hospital.”

I’m, like, shaking. I get to the hospital. They only allow one family member in, because this was in the midst of everything.

Erin: At least they let you in.

Sharon: Yes, at that point, I was able to go in. But I felt so alone. So scared. I had her medical directive. We had talked about it when she was lucid. I knew her wishes. But there they are asking me, “Well, you know, her brain, there’s this blockage. If you don’t make a decision soon, she’s gonna lose all function. What would she want?”

I’m looking through all of the directive and it was really hard to discern. I said, “She spunky. Yes, she has Alzheimer’s but she still laughs. She still loves life.”

They said, “We can put a catheter in and try to pull out this blockage in the brain, and she might recover. But you know, she has broken hip. She’s probably in a lot of pain, so maybe just let her go?”

Oh, that was an agonizing choice.

But I said, “No, I think at this point we should try.”

So then they did the surgery. She came through it, but it didn’t make a difference. She was paralyzed, unable to speak very much. And she was paralyzed on the side opposite of the broken hip. It was pretty rough.

I was there with her in intensive care. Then we worked with hospice to get her back to her apartment that she shared with my stepdad. I was able to be there and care for her. And here’s where it was interesting, because you know what it’s like as a dedicated writer, you think, ” I’ll just keep working somehow.”

Karen: Right.

Sharon: I brought my laptop and thought, “While she’s dozing in between me giving her her medication and caring for her and wiping her forehead and doing whatever else she needs, I’ll keep working on this novel.”

Karen: Right.

Sharon: I thought, “This is a sacred time. She is on the threshold of heaven and I need to just be here with her.”

So I set it aside and thankfully I had plenty of time. I wasn’t on a tight deadline. I wasn’t being irresponsible. But I could set that aside and just be with mom. After several weeks she went to heaven. We had precious time together. I played her favorite music. I read her favorite Psalms. We watched episodes of Colombo, her favorite TV show.

Karen: (Imitating Colombo) “Eh, eh, just one more question…”

Sharon: I kept joking I was gonna buy her a raincoat like his.

Karen: There you go!

Sharon: It was a precious time, but also heartbreaking. Then came cleaning out the apartment and sorting through her things and planning a funeral and helping my stepdad move.

I was so beaten down by grief that I really thought, “Maybe I’m done. Maybe I won’t be able to pick up the threads of the book again.”

As I said, I was about 80,000 words in to what was planned to be 120,000, because it’s an epic fantasy. And I thought, “I just don’t have that in me.”

The grief counselor I talked to had said, “Don’t make any decisions the whole first year after a significant loss.”

Why I talk about this valley of the shadow of death? We had six significant losses in six months. The same day Mom had a stroke, my uncle passed away. We had friends, we had other relatives, Ted’s brother. I mean, those months… And I know it wasn’t just me, which somehow didn’t comfort me that the whole world was dealing with grief.

Karen: It doesn’t. When you go through grief, nothing comforts you for a while. But then God gets through. I hear you.

Sharon: Yeah. It almost augmented the grief, knowing that so many in the world were also going through that kind of heart-wrenching loss.

Erin: Yeah.

Sharon: I went to a writer’s conference a few months later and was teaching. God often makes me teach the things I need to hear because apparently I only listen to myself. I don’t know.

I came home and said, “It’s time to look back. I’ll just open the manuscript and see what God wants to do.”

And he just empowered and inspired and I wrote and wrote and wrote. But what was weird is that the themes weren’t what I thought they were going to be.

Karen: Right.

Sharon: I didn’t even see it till my critique buddies were reading it. They said, “You’re talking about loss of identity, loss of role, loss of loved ones, loss of freedom. That’s the theme here.”

That just always amazes me how God’s able to do that. How he’s able to use these things. I love Corrie Ten Boom’s quote, “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.”

So my character is in a very deep pit, literally. Imprisoned, treated unjustly, suffering loss. One of my favorite things, and it’s just a God thing, is that she was describing her losses as if it was a shelf of books, and she would pull out each volume and page through it and feel sad and feel that loss.

But by the end of the story, she’s able to mentally open each of those, and the pages are gilded with the grace of God as she sees his mercy in it all. If that makes sense.

Karen: It does. It’s a beautiful image.

Erin: What’s so interesting to me is that obviously there’s a difficult, difficult experience—this valley of the shadow of death. Very difficult. But I truly think that the book became a different book. You stopped at 80,000 words. If in some way you would’ve just tried to push through it, it wouldn’t have been the book that God wanted to happen.

After those trials, after that groaning, and after that time of grief and learning, then you were able to write with so much more depth of feeling. It just made the book a different book. I love how God does that.

Sharon: I do, too.

Karen: It made the book a better book. It made it a deeper book, and probably a far more profound book.

Erin: Yeah.

Sharon: I love what God shows us about himself in those deep places, because he was so tender in so many ways. I just saw his hand shaping situations when I felt so broken and beaten down. He was there. But not only is he with us in those dark places, he transforms the dark places. He creates beautiful things, and he fulfills purposes.

In Dream of Kings, which parallels biblical dream tellers, God’s also able to show that what you went through had a purpose that’s much bigger than you knew.

Karen: Yeah, I’ve always said that in God’s economy nothing is wasted. Everything that happens to us in God’s economy is an element of our refinement, or teaching us, or blessing us. The losses can actually bless us once we get through the pain.

It’s just a testimony to his goodness, and like you said, his tenderness.

Sharon: Yeah, and I think when we’re in the deep place… Before you called, I was reciting Psalm 121, which was one of my mom’s favorites. “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From whence does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” RSV

I think when we’re in the deep we look up. We look for God instead of our own power and our own wisdom. I tend to be a little self-reliant, so when things are going well I rely on me. But when I’m in the deep places, I have to look up. I have to look for him.

Erin: Yeah. I also like the idea here that you had a ministry of presence with your mom. I think we can get so focused on our writing, and our doing, and our this and our that. Sometimes we forget the most important thing: a ministry of presence.

Let’s be present when we’re making dinner with our family. Or, let’s be present when we’re watching our kid play soccer, or whatever we’re doing. Or, let’s be present with someone who’s hurting. You know, whatever it is, those things are important, too.

Writing is important, but what we learn, or what we can give or offer through our ministry of presence, it’s priceless.

Karen: Amen!

Hey guys, we hope you’re enjoying this amazing podcast with Sharon Hinck, because the second part is coming up in two weeks, and you will just learn so much about what God does for us in deep valleys.

Guest @sharonhinck shares how even in the deepest valley, even the valley of the shadow of death, God is with you! #amwriting #christianwriter
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Have you felt like you’ve traveled through the valley of the shadow of death? What helps you cope with it?

Dream of Kings by Sharon Hinck

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

Thanks so much to our August sponsor of the month, Priscilla Sharrow! She’s working on her memoir called Bonked! Life, Love, and Laughter with Traumatic Brain Injury, which will be coming out with Redemption Press. Learn more about Priscilla at her website priscillasharrow.com and follow her blog for the TBI/PTSD community.

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 171 – In the Valley of the Shadow of Death with Guest Sharon Hinck, Part 1 appeared first on Write from the Deep.

Are we hearing—and worshiping—God as he truly is, or only as we imagine him to be? Why does this matter? It’s so easy—and dangerous!—to let our own ideas of who God is take center stage over who he’s actually revealed himself to be in his Word. When we do that, we’ve made up our own god to serve, love, and pray to. There’s a word for that: Idolatry.

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

Erin: Welcome, listeners, into the deep with us. We are so glad you’re here. If you’ve been with us for a while, you know that we just finished a great interview with Shadia Hrichi. She writes Bible studies. Her joy and her excitement over studying God and his Word was such a delight for us.

We want to keep that spark going in this next podcast with a continuation of our series on God’s attributes. I cannot stress this enough. We need to know God. The real God. To paraphrase what Eugene Peterson wrote in The Message, we need to be faced with God as he is, not as we imagine him to be.

This is a danger, guys. We cannot just imagine the kind of god that we want. And it’s so easy to do that, but it becomes a god we’ve made up and not the God that he revealed truly to us of himself. We can’t just imagine a god or make it up, because that’s an idol. So I want to encourage us again to know God as he revealed himself. As he truly is.

Karen: Let’s go ahead and consider the first attribute, which is one that I have been so thankful for over the last several months.

Karen: As many of you know, my husband and I are in the process of moving to Washington from Oregon. Selling our home, buying a home.

Erin: That’s not easy.

Karen: Oh my gosh! It’s been a turbulent time, I can tell you. And here’s what I love about God, this characteristic of God: God is never overwhelmed by emotions. Never.

Everything in God is perfect, and that includes emotions. For us, though, for humans, our experience of emotions is imperfect. Meaning we can be overwhelmed and influenced by them. And boy howdy have Don and I been influenced by them lately.

The emotions we humans experience have been given to us by God, because they’re a part of who he is and help reveal himself to us. But just as our understanding of God is incomplete and imperfect, our understanding of emotions is the same.

Yes, God has emotions, but with him, they are perfect. They are never overwhelming, and he is not controlled by them.

With Don and me trying to communicate, I say something, and the way he hears it is so warped by his perceptions and his emotions that it comes out the total opposite of what I was saying. So he gets frustrated, and he comes back, then I hear through my own filters and warp things, and then it just gets really ugly.

That never happens with God. Because we know that he understands us, even in the midst of these messy, confused, turbulent emotions. But we never ever have to worry about him being arbitrary or moody for no reason or any of a host of other things that we humans not only experience, but allow to influence us.

This is why it’s so important to realize that emotions are seldom, if ever, a good measuring stick for us for reality. Our emotions cloud our judgment, cloud the things that we say and the things that we do. But emotions will never cloud God’s judgment.

His emotions are as stable and unchangeable as he is, which means he will never, ever stop loving us. We can trust him without reservation. He doesn’t communicate in hidden messages. He doesn’t base his love for us on how many books we’ve published, how many books we’ve sold, or what our marketing programs are.

His love for us is simply based on who he is and that we are his creation and his children through Christ. His emotions are stable. We can trust him in every facet of what we’re doing.

Erin: Following right up on when we’re talking about God being stable with his emotions, God is also our rock. That’s stable, right?

I love the imagery in Psalm 18:2. It says, “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”

Isaiah 26:4 says, “Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.”

I love the imagery of rock. It makes me think of strength and refuge, solid and unfailing. There is just nothing in this world that’s certain or solid. Look at the stock market lately. It’s up, it’s down, and down some more.

Look at what’s happening in other countries around the world. The awful situation with what Russia is doing invading Ukraine, and just the constant battles over pieces of land since the dawn of civilization.

Look at our health. One minute we’re fine. The next we’re facing cancer or who knows what. Look at our houses, one minute it’s there and the next minute there’s a fire, and it’s all gone.

Look at technology. One time, I couldn’t get into our website because a plugin had gone haywire, and that was blocking me from getting into our website. That’s a surprise. Nothing is stable. People aren’t stable. They’re wonderful. We love them, but they make mistakes. They don’t live forever.

Readers are wonderful, but they can be fickle. They can give you good reviews, bad reviews, who knows. Contracts come and go. The writing industry changes, there’s upheaval. It goes on and on.

But God is steady, secure, solid, eternal. You can hope in him. You can cling to him. You can trust in him. He is not going anywhere ever.

God is our rock.

Karen: Not only is God our rock, but he is El Roi. That is one of his names, and it means “the strong one who sees.” We see that first in Genesis 16:13. But in Psalm 3:3 it tells us, “But you, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the one who lifts my head high, you are my refuge and my shield: I have put my hope in your word.”

This God, who is our rock, and he is the strong one, he sees. He sees everything that we experience. Every joy, every disappointment, every difficult thing that we face, every triumph that we experience. God is there and he sees, and he’s the strong one. He’s almighty. Nothing is stronger than God.

No publisher is stronger than God. No readers, no reviews, no nothing. We are not stronger than God. When we start to question what we’re doing and if we’re doing it right, turn to God. He’s the strong one who sees you. He sees your disappointment. He sees your insecurity. He sees all of it and he will respond.

You never have to deal with anything on this writing journey alone, because God is there. He’s the strong one who’s almighty. He’s able, he’s capable, he’s willing. And he sees you. Never doubt that.

Erin: I love that because what would it matter if he was the weak one who sees you? Not helpful.

Karen: Yeah.

Erin: But the fact that he sees and is strong, now he can do something about what he sees. I love it.

Our next attribute is that God is our rewarder. Colossians 3:23-24 says, “Whatever you do, do you work heartily, as for the Lord and not for people, knowing that it is from the Lord that you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.”

It’s easy to see measures of earthly success, right? How many copies got sold? How many contracts we got or awards or reader reviews or whatever, whatever, whatever. But earthly success cannot be the measuring stick of our writing because how much weight are we going to put on giving somebody hope?

What is that worth in dollars? It’s just not. Dollars or sales or acclaim or whatever, that’s not the right measuring stick. Our job is to please God, to be obedient to him, and to work for the reward that only God can give.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to make money as a writer, because that might be your earthly job. But it’s God who provides that money because he knows your needs. And ultimately, God is the one who provides the reward we were all made for: heaven.

1 Peter 1:4 says, “We have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled beyond the reach of change and decay.”

That’s our reward, and guess what? No one can take it away because our Father gives it to us, and he keeps it safe.

The next thing that we want to talk about is that God is a great king. We talked previously in this series about God being sovereign, that he rules over all, and he works all things according to his plan.

But in thinking about God as king, what I want to highlight is respect. The reverence and honor that’s due to God as a great king. The greatest king.

In our culture, singers, TV stars, movie stars, professional athletes, billionaires, self-help gurus, gamers, even, yes, household-name authors, they are all given incredible status. At the same time, the King of the entire universe, the Maker of all reality, has his name tossed around in profanity. How many people don’t even believe their maker exists? That’s appalling.

I want us to take some time to think about how we treat God. His name, his reputation. How do we go about speaking to him or talking about him?

There’s still a queen in England. If she were coming to your house, how would you treat her? How would you pay attention to her or speak to her?

I mean, we’d probably figure we should stop what we’re doing and give her the time of day. It’s a whole different ballgame because she’s the queen. That’s the kind of reverence and awe that is sometimes missing in our interactions with God. We’re in danger of becoming too focused on God as our friend, which he is, but we forget to fear and revere him.

I love this verse in Malachi 1:14. It says, “But cursed be the deceiver who has in his flock a male, and takes a vow, but sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished.” In other words, not giving our best, right? “‘For, I am a great King,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘and my name is to be feared among the nations.'”

Meditate on the respect and awe and honor that God deserves. How he deserves our best effort in everything. As a writer, as a person, this is what’s going to keep you humble and meek and service-oriented and focused on what truly matters in this life: on honoring our great King.

Karen: Amen.

Karen: There’s no better thing for us to do than to honor him because another name of God in Scripture is Yahweh Sabbaoth and that means “the Lord of Hosts.”

The hosts are considered the heavenly beings that God created. He is the Lord, the commander of heaven’s armies, heaven’s hosts.

According to Scottish preacher and expositor Alexander MacLaren, “By that title, ‘the Lord of hosts,’ the prophet and psalmist meant to express the universal dominion of God over the whole universe in all its battalions and sections, which they conceived of as one ranked army, obedient to the voice of the great General and Ruler of them all.”

So, how much is a host? How many people or how many heavenly hosts are there? Well, it talks about at the birth of Jesus, a multitude of the heavenly host. Scripture doesn’t specify how many, but if you look at Daniel 7:10 and Revelation 5:11, and if you take them literally, they both talk about 10,000 times 10,000, which equals a hundred million heavenly hosts serve the eternal.

It’s countless. It’s multitudeness. There’s no way to know how many, but I tell you what, it’s a whole lot more than any of the armies here on the earth.

Psalm 46:11 tells us, “The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.”

Erin talked about the struggles in the world. There is a war on truth and righteousness and godliness taking place. There has been since the beginning of time, but in our time right now it seems to be intensifying, and it feels like righteousness and godliness and good and truth are losing.

The state of the world is clear evidence that there is a spiritual battle being waged and intensifying. But the wonder is that we don’t need to fear this battle or its outcome. Indeed, we are commanded to take part by appealing to God, the leader of heaven’s armies, the Yahweh Sabbaoth, and ask him to mobilize those heavenly armies to bring down evil.

Erin: Cool.

Karen: In our writing, we must stay faithful to God’s truth in what we put on paper. We cannot let the world force us to water down God’s truth. Will it be easy to stand like this? Of course not. When has war ever been easy?

But remember 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 says, “We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ.”

We do that by calling on the Lord of hosts and asking him to mobilize his armies to attack and defeat evil. If we authors stand under pressure from publishers, if we feel like Davids facing Goliaths, then we can echo David’s words in 1 Samuel 17:45. Remember, David is just a kid when he’s looking at this giant. He’s facing this enormous Goliath, and what does he say to him? “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin,” or parenthetically, sensitivity readers and canceling contracts and demands in marketing, “but I come against you in the name of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies…”

Friends, you don’t have to be afraid. You don’t have to fear anything. You are a follower of Yahweh Sabbaoth and you can implore him and beseech him and ask him to mobilize those heavenly host, that army, in order to help us fight evil.

Erin: The next thing we want to talk about is that Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith. Hebrews 12:1-2 says, “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

I love this translation because we’re authors and we can relate to what it means to author something. To Jesus being the author of our faith. Other translations say things like the pioneer, the founder, the leader, the source, originator, champion, initiator, maker of faith.

But Jesus did more than just make it. Word Biblical Commentary translates it like this: “The champion in the exercise of faith and the one who brought faith to complete expression.” That’s Jesus, the one who brought faith to complete expression.

Why is this important? Because it’s imperative that we keep our eyes on Jesus, who first designed this whole concept of faith, but then who also came to earth to demonstrate what perfect faith looked like.

Now, are we ever going to be perfect? No. But we have that picture to aim for in every step of our lives, through adversity and joy. And of course it’s not our own, right? But as the author, Jesus has this unlimited supply to share with us. He gives us faith. He builds our faith. He helps support our faith. That’s who he is as the author and perfecter of our faith.

Karen: Last but not least on our list today, God is one. He’s the only true God. There are no other gods who exist. They are false gods. There are no other gods beside him. He’s unique. Even these other gods that the world has created, that people have created, there is no other faith based on love and grace and sacrifice and redemption.

God is unique. There’s nobody else like him. In Isaiah 43:10 we see, “‘You are my witnesses,’ declares the Lord, ‘and my servant, whom I have chosen that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He. Before me know God was formed, nor shall there be any after me.'”

In Isaiah 44:8 it says, “Fear not, nor be afraid; have I not told you from old and declared it? And you are my witnesses! Is there a God besides me? There is no rock. I know not any.”

Then Ephesians 4:4-6, “There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all who is overall and through all and in all.”

One God. And you know what’s amazing? This unique, omnipresent, almighty, transcendent, utterly amazing, one unique God loves you. Loves you, and loves me, and has given everything to restore us to himself.

As we think about these attributes of God, I want us to end with Psalm 113. Listen and praise with me.

“Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, you his servants; praise the name of the Lord. Let the name of the Lord be praised, both now and forevermore. From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the Lord is to be praised. The Lord is exalted over all the nations, his glory above the heavens. Who is like the Lord our God, the one who sits enthroned on high, who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth? He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes, with the princes of his people. He settles the childless woman in her home as a happy mother of children. Praise the Lord.”

Erin: Amen.

Karen: Amen.

Are we hearing—and worshiping—God as he truly is, or only as we imagine him to be? #Christianwriter #amwriting
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In what areas do you think your image of God has been off target from what he’s revealed in his Word?

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

Thanks so much to our July 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 Podcast P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 170 – Do You Really Know Who God Is? Part 5 appeared first on Write from the Deep.

There’s one critical thing you must do before you can share the depths of God with readers: go to the depths yourself. Guest Shadia Hrichi shares how God took her deep into one of the worst memories of her life—and redeemed it. Now she can serve her readers with a depth of wisdom found only in God. It’s no wonder her Bible studies have such a powerful impact, and your books can too! Listen in as she tells her inspiring story.

About Shadia Hrichi

Shadia Hrichi is a passionate Bible teacher who loves seeing lives transformed by the power of God’s Word. She holds a master’s in biblical and theological studies and a master’s in criminal justice. Her Bible studies include TAMAR, HAGAR, LEGION, and WORTHY OF LOVE, endorsed by Francine Rivers, Liz Curtis-Higgs, Chris Tiegreen, Bible Study Magazine, and others. Shadia enjoys speaking at retreats and events, and loves to visit the ocean each week for “a date with Jesus.” Find out more about Shadia Hrichi and check out her free resources at her website.

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

Erin: Welcome, listeners. We are super excited for part two of our interview with Shadia Hrichi, and it has just been a great conversation. You’re not going to want to miss the rest of this.

Shadia, how do you think the fact that you write Bible studies impacts you in your spiritual journey as a writer?

Shadia: It’s been an interesting journey. The first study I wrote was, as I shared earlier, about the abortion and God’s beautiful healing. I had first written a story about it, and then I turned that into a Bible study. Virtually every one of my Bible studies centers, kinda like what you were saying, Karen, on the character of God. Who he is, meditating on certain aspects, because that’s the most important thing.

But when I finished that study, I thought, you know, that was a deep wound. I wrote it years after, and I kind of thought, “Okay, now we’re gonna go to the teaching part.”

Karen: Right, right.

Shadia: So the next study that God puts on my heart to write is Hagar, the servant of Sarah. Talk about a messy story. But I love that story. She was actually the inspiration for the whole series. Like you said, Karen, you liked the series title Behind the Seen and that play of words. Hagar was the inspiration for that.

In the process of writing that study, well, this study includes a invitation for readers to walk through some difficult experiences from their past. Then through this study, they come out with a recognition that God was there. There’s sort of three things going on in that study where I’m talking about Hagar’s story and how God was there. I share some of my story, how God was there in these difficult times, and then the readers are invited to do the same.

About halfway through, God decides to dig up, I would probably say, one of the most painful memories of my life. Of those memories where you’ve buried it so deep you actually did forget about it. That kind. You know, not that you put it in the back of your mind. It truly is out of your mind. Like you don’t even remember it. I mean, you’ve just buried it.

And God starts digging that up.

I’m like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. This wasn’t on my to do list today.”

Karen: Don’t you understand? I have a set word count, God?

Shadia: Exactly right. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It was just unexpected, you know? So we walked through that, and I share a lot more details in the study and in the videos and stuff. But it was a very painful memory.

I’ll just give you a summary so you have some context. I was married before I got saved, well, up until I got saved, then he left. He was an abusive husband, and at one point he tried to take my life. I might as well just tell it real quick now that I mentioned it.

Erin: Yeah, that’s painful.

Karen: I mean, how do you respond to that? “Oh, really?”

Shadia: So God brings up this very difficult memory. Now it’s just me and God, we’re out walking. I mean, I’m not at my computer. We’re out walking. I’m taking some time alone. I went away for a few days. This was something very traumatic I had to deal with God, nothing to do with the writing until later. Do you want me to tell the quick story?

Erin: Sure.

Shadia: Okay. My husband was attempting to choke me to death. When God brings up this memory, you know, I’m not very happy about it. And God says, “Do you believe I was there?”

I’m like, “Well, um, I know you’re everywhere, and you’re in all time, and so even though I didn’t know you…yeah, I guess you were there.”

It was sort of like a mental acknowledgement.

Karen: Yes.

Shadia: But, you know, God’s after more, as always. So God says, “Why did he stop?”

Obviously he didn’t succeed, right? It was at the very last moment that he stopped. Well, I’ve always believed that he stopped because he got scared. As if he thought, “She’s blacking out. Now I’m gonna get arrested. What do I do with the body?”

I mean, I don’t know what was in his mind, but I said, “Lord, I guess he got scared.”

God said to me, “And who do you think scared him?”

It floored me. I mean, it floored me. I was like, “You were there. You were there.”

I never saw any of that coming. And then walking through that, and then coming back down the mountain, so to speak, and getting back to the writing, I was able to share that story and really give a tangible picture. God sees. Which is what the whole Bible study is about. He sees.

As far as spiritual journey, I start writing the next study, which was Legion, and God brings up something else. I won’t go into it, but you know, I’m like, “Again? Oh my word!”

Then the next study, which just came out—Tamar, Judah’s daughter-in-law—once again, something else. God doesn’t need my Bible studies.

Karen: Right.

Shadia: He doesn’t need anything from any of us to accomplish what he wants to accomplish in the world. By his grace, he invites us to participate in his work, and I love that. But ultimately he’s after us individually. One at a time, he wants our hearts. He wants everything.

Every study I write, now I’m getting to notice a pattern. God’s gonna come after something and it’s gonna be hard, but it’s gonna be good. In the end, it’s gonna be good. Because he’s gonna show me who he is again.

Karen: That’s what he does. He shows us who we are. As a fiction writer, I have characters or scenes come up that I’m not expecting. There are some of them that have come up and I’m like, “I don’t wanna write about that.”

Then I have to go into this wrestling match until I finally say, “Oh yeah, that’s right. You’re God, and I’m not, so if you gave me this task to write and I need to go down this path, then I will go down this path.”

When I’ve been willing to do that, when I’ve been willing to be vulnerable, and I think all writers are like that, when we’re willing to share of our own life and heart and journey in whatever we write, that’s what will impact people. That’s what we’ll draw them deeper into that understanding of who God is and who they are in him.

Shadia: Amen.

Erin: I love your quote here, too. You said it’s gonna be hard. This is something that writers need to know. I’m not even talking about trying to get published or trying to deal with readers or any of that stuff. Forget that.

It’s gonna be hard. You’ve got to go into those deep places with God and if it’s easy, something isn’t right.

It’s game changing when we do that, when we face that hard place and come out on the other side with some sort of “elixir.” In The Writer’s Journey, Christopher Vogler talks about bringing back the elixir as one of the stages of the “hero’s journey.” You go on this journey and you come back with this thing that can help somebody. It’s this elixir that is from God that you’ve done this journey to get.

That picture is us facing that hard place. We always want the characters to go into the hard place and not us. But we have to do that. I love that you’re willing to do that, Shadia, and how it comes out in those Bible studies as you’re writing.

Shadia: Yeah. It is the hardest part, but if we’re gonna write for God, that’s a whole different category of writing.

Karen: Right.

Shadia: If we’re inviting him in then guess what? He gets to set the agenda.

Karen: I think it was David in 2 Samuel 24, who said, ” I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord, my God, that cost me nothing.” We need to remember that.

Shadia: What a beautiful parallel.

Karen: We cannot as writers, try to offer something to God, through our writing and through the message that he’s given us, that doesn’t cost anything. You have to know going into it: this is gonna cost you everything, but it’s worth it.

Shadia: Yeah, that’s a beautiful parallel, Karen. Wow.

Erin: So it does seem like you’re attracted to these messy stories. Why do you think that is and how do you pick the next thing you’re going to do?

Shadia: Well, I would say I pick these stories because they give me hope. You know, I was a mess. I am a mess. A redeemed mess and being transformed as God does his work, like each of us. But, until we get to the other side there’s always gonna be work to do.

I have a lot of pain and mistakes and bad choices in my past. I broke every commandment, not just in my mind but in life, before I was fifteen years old. So the stories in the Bible of people who felt unworthy or unseen or unknown—

Karen: Or irredeemable—

Shadia: Exactly. I mean, redemption is like, that’s who God is. I love that. But yeah, those stories give me hope because I can relate to them. I can relate to the broken people. I can relate to those who were just kind of cast aside or felt cast aside. They give me hope because when God steps into their story, something amazing always happens.

Karen: Right.

Shadia: Just as he steps into ours, you know? So that’s one of the reasons. The other reason I think I like the messy stories is kind of what I was sharing earlier. I feel like an archeologist. I don’t hear sermons often on Legion or Tamar or Hagar. So I wanna know, like, what am I missing? What do I not know? What am I going to learn about God?

I feel like it’s fresh. Like it’s fresh ground that no one’s come to. I mean, there’s commentaries and stuff, and of course I do all that study, but initially my time is just me and the Word. It’s fun. In short, the second reason is that I think it’s fun, because they’re not often explored.

Erin: What I love is that writing is gonna be hard and it’s gonna be fun. It’s a great adventure. While it’s going to be difficult, we can’t lose sight of the fact that it’s also fun and an adventure.

Karen and I were talking about how one of God’s qualities is a sense of humor. It’s going to still be fun in places and hard in places like every good story.

Shadia: Yes, exactly. And I do get to tell some funny stories in the studies as well that God brings up. I’m like, “Oh, this is gonna be good. This will be fun!”

Erin: Which is great. Well, we’re coming to the end of our time. Do you have some final words of wisdom or encouragement that you want to leave our listeners with?

Shadia: Don’t be afraid of the deep. Be brave.

God’s on your side. If he is calling you to spend more time with him, even if it’s five minutes, wherever you’re at, whatever he’s calling you to, he’s already for you. He’s already with you. Yield to that. Give him that space. You won’t regret it. Have you ever been in God’s Word and regretted it?

Now, of course, if you jumped into Leviticus without maybe some commentaries, you might have regretted it, but…

Karen: Even into Song of Solomon, I mean, I’m sorry…

Shadia: Oh yeah. Actually, though, there is a passage in chapter two of Song of Solomon. It’s something I love, kind of a picture of Christ coming back for us. But yes, there are other parts where it’s very clearly also referring to marriage and sexual love and all that, but it’s there for a reason as well, right? All Scripture is breathed out by God for teaching and reproof and so forth.

So I would say don’t be afraid of the deep. And guess what? Just like the ocean, you don’t go diving into the middle of the ocean. You start on the shore. Put your toes in, take a walk. Enjoy the little ripples, watch the seals. But just go. And each day, let him take you a little deeper.

You will not be disappointed in the beauty and the creativity and the beautiful way the Word displays who God is. If you need a guide, that’s what studies are for. That’s what commentaries are for. That’s what podcasts are for. That’s what we need community for. That’s what churches are for. We’re not in it alone.

But give God time alone also. Just you and him in his Word. I just can’t emphasize that enough. You will not be disappointed.

Karen: That’s excellent counsel. We hear that all of our lives as believers, whenever that adventure starts for us. And I think it’s one of the easiest things to forget and one of the easiest things to not do. It shouldn’t be. We should be as excited about immersing ourselves in his Word as we are about developing characters, or writing our nonfiction books, or winning awards, or getting a good review.

Friends, be grounded in the Word so that whatever happens, you won’t have to be afraid of the deep. You will find that joy and that happiness and that guidance that Shadia has been talking about.

Thank you, Shadia! You’ve been a blessing.

Shadia: This has been wonderful. It’s such a joy chatting with you. Thank you for having me.

Need some help getting started with Bible study? Check out Shadia’s FREE resources!

@ShadiaHrichi shares how God took her deep into the worst memory of her life—and redeemed it!—so she can serve her readers with wisdom and insight found only in God. #ChristianWriter
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What “deep” is God inviting you to explore with him?

Hagar: Rediscovering the God Who Sees Me by Shadia Hrichi (Affiliate link)

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

Thanks so much to our July 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 Podcast P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 169 – Sharing the Depths of God with Guest Shadia Hrichi, Part 2 appeared first on Write from the Deep.

There are few things that are both hard AND fun, but guest Shadia Hrichi says that perfectly describes writing. From unexpected beginnings to realizing God was asking her to dig deeper and share her own struggles and pain, Shadia tells how God has led and challenged her to plumb the depths of his nature so she can bring his truth to others.

About Shadia Hrichi

Shadia Hrichi is a passionate Bible teacher who loves seeing lives transformed by the power of God’s Word. She holds a master’s in biblical and theological studies and a master’s in criminal justice. Her Bible studies include TAMAR, HAGAR, LEGION, and WORTHY OF LOVE, endorsed by Francine Rivers, Liz Curtis-Higgs, Chris Tiegreen, Bible Study Magazine, and others. Shadia enjoys speaking at retreats and events, and loves to visit the ocean each week for “a date with Jesus.”

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

Erin: Welcome, listeners. We’re so glad that you’re here with us in the deep today. We have a guest. Yay!

Karen: Yay! We’re delighted to be speaking with Shadia Hrichi. She’s a passionate Bible teacher who has a heart for seeing lives transformed by the power of God’s Word. She’s written several Bible studies, including Hagar, Legion, and Tamar from her Behind the Seen series.

I love that: Behind the Seen. She often speaks at churches, conferences, and other events. She received an MA in biblical and theological studies from the Western Seminary, as well as an MA in criminal justice from the State University of New York.

My husband has a criminal justice major. He says you can take over the payments. You can have it.

Shadia resides in Northern California, and she loves to visit the ocean each week for a date with Jesus. Shadia, welcome. We’re so glad to have you here.

Shadia: It’s just delightful to be here. Thank you for having me.

Erin: We are excited, and we want to ask you what we love to ask everybody. What does the deep mean to you?

Shadia: Oh, such a cool question. It’s interesting. Two things come to my mind. The first thing that comes to my mind is that when I think of the deep, I think of, in the physical world, the ocean. I love the ocean and being able to spend time with the Lord there. It’s my happy place.

I try to go every single week. Right now, I live on the west coast. I love to have my date with the Lord at the ocean. It’s my happy place.

But in this spiritual realm, the other part that comes to my mind is just who God is and how he reveals himself in his Word and how, just like the ocean, we can study and we can learn and we can meditate and we can ponder who he is, and talk with him and walk with him, but we’ll never get to the depths of him. I love that. God is a vast ocean, infinitely beautiful. And I love just exploring who he is.

Karen: I like that comparison a lot because when you look at the ocean, you see so much on the surface. I was up in the Seattle area last week. My brother and his family live there. My sister-in-law and I went to the Mukilteo Beach, which is a very different beach from the beaches down in Oregon and California. It’s rocky. It’s not sandy, it’s rocky.

As we were walking along, there were these things bobbing out there. I looked and they were seals that were peeking up like “Kilroy” used to do. Just peeking up. The seagulls would get quite irritated as they were floating and bobbing along. So they’d jump up, and they’d come down, and they’d hit the seal on the head. And the seal would go down, and he’d stay down. And you’re thinking, “Well, is he coming back up?”

Then he’d pop back up over here, and the other one would pop up next to him. They were just teasing and playing with these seagulls who were most irritated. I thought to myself, “We have no clue what goes on beneath the surface.”

We look and we see things and we’re entertained by it, but who knows what’s going on down deep, down underneath. The ocean is like that. There’s so much happening beneath the surface. Just the surface is awe inspiring enough. But when you think about what’s underneath and what’s in the deepness, it’s powerful.

Shadia: Yeah. And scientists are continuously discovering new things and always thinking like, “Oh, we didn’t think there was more, but wait, there’s more.”

Erin: I love that, you know, way down deep, you’re not going to get the same kind of surface action of the waves and the crashing. It seems like there’s a peace down there. A sense of calm and quiet. And it’s a deep quiet.

A neat thing to think about, too, is in the Psalm, I think it’s, “Your justice is like the great deep,” in Psalm 36. I think about how that’s so mysterious and perfect and unknown. One of these days we’ll get to heaven and maybe we’ll understand more about how all of this works, but until then we’ll have to ponder the ocean.

Shadia: Yes.

Erin: Well, let’s talk a little bit about the fact that you write Bible studies. That’s cool. I’m not sure that we’ve had a guest where that was one of the primary things that they did. Why do you write Bible studies? What has attracted you to that?

Shadia: In one sense I would say I’ve always been a student at heart. I love to learn. I’m kind of a nerd. I mean, I don’t know how else to say it, you know? I love just learning about things.

I didn’t grow up in the church. I didn’t grow up ever opening the Bible. I didn’t know a single Bible verse when I got saved at the age of thirty. I wasn’t raised to believe in God. I came to the Lord with kind of a blank slate.

Erin: Wow.

Shadia: So, from the beginning, I just wanted to devour him and know who he was. When he opened my eyes to who he was, I mean, it rocked my world, and I’ll never get enough of him.

Then studying the Bible, I mean, obviously when you first get saved, you are just reading, you’re devouring who he is and learning so much. In time, after quite a number of years of some healing work that God did in my heart, I began writing little articles, little blogs.

Somebody was like, “Oh, you should start a blog.”

And I’m like, “What’s that? How do you do that?”

I mean, I didn’t have an aim. I just write. That’s kind of my outlet, I guess. So that goes on, and I began to be asked to speak. Primarily in the beginning of the ministry that God gave was speaking for pregnancy centers.

As a teenager, I’d had an abortion. God healed me of that and did a miraculous, beautiful, beautiful healing in my heart. I shared that story and that kind of caught on. I would be asked to share it at churches and things like that. So this writing/speaking thing began.

After a number of years, I went to visit my pastor at church because I was at a career crossroads. I was looking at a new potential new job. I was also doing just some side work, just project management type stuff. I kind of have an administrative brain. Then this writing, speaking thing, which I knew even then was like, you know, you can’t make a career out of this, at least not right away, if even ever.

But I knew I was called to it. I mean, I felt compelled, I would say. I didn’t recognize a call at that point. But anyway, I go in and see my pastor, and I was actually asking a very specific question. I said, “I’m doing this little bit of writing, speaking over here. I’m doing project management. I’ve got this potential job offer, which is gonna be, like, a big sixty hour week.”

This is Silicon valley, where I live. It wasn’t a tech job, but it was going to be a time consuming job. So I basically went to him and it was kind of just like my hands handing him the platter. I was like, “I need something to come off my plate, and I’m not sure what that should be.”

He listens and so forth, and then he spends some time praying silently, and then he looks up and he says, “Have you thought about going to seminary?”

I was like, “Um, I’m sorry. I’m not sure if you heard me right, but I’m trying to get something off the plate!”

But there was something about it. It felt like it was exactly what I did not know I wanted to do. If that makes sense.

Karen: It does.

Shadia: Okay, I’m glad. It was almost like somebody saying it out loud made me think, “I can do that?”

I applied the following semester and got accepted and so forth. The seminary years were probably the hardest but most rewarding years that I’ve ever spent. Incredibly hard work. I believe through that season that God made it very clear that I would continue with this writing and speaking.

Because of my nature and how God created me, I teach. So that’s all I’ve ever written. I mean, the first thing I wrote apart from those little articles I mentioned was a short story about the healing God did in my heart for the abortion. But even that later became a Bible study.

I think it’s because I absolutely love studying God’s Word. It is no work on my part to study God’s Word. Writing is hard work. But I write Bible studies because I love studying God’s Word. It’s a way for me to engage with the Lord, and then he allows that to minister to others.

Karen: What kind of things about the Word? I mean, obviously the Word speaks to us all in different ways and speaks the same truths to us in ways that we understand them in our own ability to do so. But what was it in the Scripture, as you were going through studying it, and as you were going through seminary, what captured you that you actually wanted to write a Bible study about it?

Shadia: Oh, that’s a great question. A couple of things. One is learning how every single verse in Scripture is tied to every single verse in Scripture.

Karen: Yeah.

Shadia: And how you can open the Bible anywhere, and read some context, read a few paragraphs, and a little bit farther, and you will begin, once you know more of Scripture, you will see how it points: “Oh, this connects to this, and this connects to this,” and all of it points to how glorious God is, and to this overarching redemptive story for mankind because of his love. I mean, everything in Scripture points to that. Everything in Scripture points to Christ.

You read everything in seminary, but obviously you can’t focus on everything. You have to choose. “Okay, I’m gonna do a class on Hebrews.” If there’s a story or a letter or something that I had not spent tremendous amount of time on, when I do spend some time on it, it’s like, I almost feel like an archeologist.

Karen: Yes!

Shadia: “Oh my gosh, what am I gonna find? What am I gonna find?” You know? Everything just connects to each other and just displays how beautiful God is. So that’s one key thing. I think the other part is all of the stories.

If you had asked me, even before I wrote my very first study or anything, even if I was skilled at writing, I would not necessarily say, “Oh, I’m gonna be a writer.”

I didn’t know that. But if you had said to me, “You know what? One day you’re gonna be a writer,” I would naturally think of stories, novels. Which is not what I do. I’m not a storyteller. But as I’ve studied God’s Word and read the stories, I have fallen in love with the stories. It turns out I can be a storyteller.

He’s taught me how to share these stories in a way that shows us just how rich, how—here it is again, the word deep—how deep these stories are. How every single person in the Bible, even if it seems like a secondary character, which are the ones I tend to be drawn to, when you spend time and really dig into their stories, oh, my word, the redemption is there every single time.

Karen: I’d be curious to know, when I saw that the title of one of your Bible studies is Legion, what drew you to that? What did you learn in the study for that? And what did God give you to share with others about that?

Shadia: I think it’s interesting that you chose that particular one because sometimes people ask me, “Do you have a favorite of the studies that you have written?” I love them all for different reasons, for different things that God has taught me, but Legion is actually my personal favorite.

Legion is a story about the man who was possessed by a legion, or an army, of demons. It’s in the Gospels, Mark chapter five if you wanna read it. This man from a human perspective seems beyond, beyond, beyond hope. If there was a poster child of, “There is no hope for this person,” that would be this man.

I love the fact that you brought that particular study up because it is not actually my most popular. I’ve heard from people who have done it, saying, “You know, I was hesitant to do this. I thought it was dark and scary and so forth, but it’s the most beautiful story of rescue.”

And I’m like, “Yes, yes! That is exactly what it is.” It is the most beautiful rescue story I’ve ever read in Scripture.

I’ve always been drawn to this story. I think it’s a glorious picture of God’s heart for the one person who has nothing to offer. I share some parallels with the thief on the cross who has nothing to offer. He had nothing to offer, even in the future. It’s over for him, and Christ still saves him. It’s just a beautiful story.

But in addition to that, another side reason that I was compelled to write the Legion study is because I see a tendency in some teaching out there where we tend to put a lot of emphasis on Satan’s activities. But when we spend a lot of time focusing on that, if we’re not careful, we can diminish in our mind, our understanding of God’s power. In other words, Satan gets higher and higher up in this image of power.

Karen: Satan has a better PR team.

Shadia: Oh my goodness, what a way to say it. Yes.

Karen: In media, in books, in everything, they portray the power and the “un-defeat-ability,” which is not a word, but I just made it up. The fact that evil never dies, that’s in so many horror flicks and horror books.

I did research for a young adult line of fiction that dealt with supernatural elements, and when I read the books that were out there, they were terrifying. They were grotesque, and evil never dies. That’s what Satan, his PR group, is telling everyone. You look at the horrific things that happen to people because of Satan in the media, and yet we miss the fact that he can’t touch us.

Shadia: Amen.

Karen: He can’t get past the God who is protecting us.

Shadia: Absolutely. That’s one of the other reasons I really wanted to write that study is to spend some real time engaging readers with a renewed understanding of God’s sovereignty. God’s power. Because Satan is a spiritual being, we forget he’s still a creature.

Karen: Right.

Shadia: God is the Creator. He’s in a category all by himself. He’s not hand to hand, fist to fist with Satan. No, not at all. God is in a category all by himself.

It is so important that we get our minds rightly attuned to who God is. Then we’ll have the proper perspective of who Satan is. So that’s one of the things I spend quite a bit of time on in this study. So readers come away with this renewed joy and freedom and excitement for being reminded that God is sovereign. We often say those words, but do we really have them embedded in our hearts?

Karen: No. And we don’t truly understand them. We don’t study things like sovereignty.

Erin and I have been doing a series of podcasts looking at the characteristics of God. Who God is at the core and at the heart, things we don’t realize about him. And he is sovereign. But what does that mean? What does sovereign entail?

It’s so easy to say it and then just let it go by instead of digging in. I think that’s why we need to be so careful when we’re writing the books we’re writing. We know that we have a message that God has given us to communicate, but we have to make sure, like it says an Ezekiel, that we take his Word into ourselves first. That we absorb his Word and understand it for ourselves.

Then we can go to the page, and then we can go to whatever it is, Bible studies, fiction, whatever, and we can pour out what we finally understand because we’ve taken it in for ourselves.

But too many people have a tendency to think, “I don’t have time. I can’t do an in-depth study in this, I’m just not a Bible study person,” or those kinds of things. So they get stuff down on paper without making sure that it’s embedded in themselves first, and that’s a mistake.

Shadia: Yeah. Because when the trials come, that weakness will be exposed.

Karen: Wow. What a great conversation this has been so far. And, guys, you get to listen to the rest of it in our next podcast, which will be part 2, with guest Shadia Hrichi. So, be sure you join us!

@ShadiaHrichi shares how God has led and challenged her to plumb the depths of his nature so she can bring his truth to others. Listen in and be inspired by her story! #amwriting #ChristianWriter
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Legion: Rediscovering the God Who Rescues Me by Shadia Hrichi (affiliate link)

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

Special thanks to our June sponsor of the month, Bobbi Updegraff. Bobbi has been traveling to Honduras every year since 2000 to volunteer with Renacer, a ministry for children. One of the things they do is provide scholarships to abused and abandoned kids. Bobbi’s had the pleasure of watching these kids grow up in the Lord, get an education, pursue careers, and make a difference in their country. You can find out about how you can help with scholarships at their website: friendsofrenacer.com.

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 168 – Sharing the Depths of God with Guest Shadia Hrichi, Part 1 appeared first on Write from the Deep.

It’s so easy for us, when we’ve known someone a long time, been around them every day, to take for granted that we know them inside and out. And yet, there are always things we don’t know. In fact, some of what we think we know are just assumptions. We’re inclined to do this not just with people, but with God. So don’t let that happen. Instead, come explore more of God’s complexity with us!

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

Erin: Welcome listeners. We’re excited that you’re joining us here in the deep. Today we’re continuing our series about God. We are loving this series, you guys. We’re talking about knowing God better so we can trust him and we can lean on him.

God gives us life and breath and everything else. That includes the stories we share with others. It’s all about the truth that we have that sets us free from the world, the bondage, the decay, the sin. We have to know that truth, and we have to know God.

Karen: Today’s first attribute is God is right on time. He’s never late. He’s never early, no matter what we think. We like God to work on our timeline. We like to tell God, “Well, Father, this needs to happen by…” all the while, not realizing who we’re saying this to. God knows the exact right timing. I can guarantee you, his timing is seldom our timing.

I just went and spoke up in the Seattle area at a writer’s conference. Well, not only was I speaking, I was doing the keynote speech that opened the conference. The very first thing everybody was going to hear.

Erin: No pressure!

Karen: No pressure. When I agreed to do this months ago, I was like, no big deal. I do keynotes all the time. I’m good with this.

Every stinking time I sat down to write this thing, I’d sit there and I’d stare at the screen. I’d stare at the computer screen, and I’d be like, “I got nothing. Let’s go garden.”

It just kept happening and kept happening. By the week before the conference, I was talking with God and I said, “I’ve really got to get this put down on paper. We got to let this happen, Lord.”

So I came and I sat at my computer. And, yeah. My mantra. “I got nothing. Lord, there’s just nothing there.”

Now people had given me ideas all along the way, and I actually tried to build on some of those ideas and craft a speech based on that. And it just didn’t happen.

So there I am in Seattle, in my hotel the night before I’m supposed to deliver the speech. It was around 7:30 that night, and I was giving the speech at 9:30 the next morning. I was sitting on the couch watching TV because I’d tried earlier and nothing happened.

Then I get kind of this spiritual tap on my shoulder. All I get is this urge inside that it’s like, “Now.”

Okay, I’m good. So I go and I sit at the computer. I close my eyes, and I just start laughing because God revealed to me, unfolded, that all of these things that I had tried to develop into a speech were all laying the groundwork for what he really wanted me to tell everyone.

When I gave this keynote I said, “Okay, I thought I might talk to you about…and so on, but that wasn’t going to work. So then I realized I could talk to you about and so on.”

All of these previous ideas fed into the speech that I gave. I had so much fun talking about the process. The people listening had so much fun hearing it. We were laughing, we were crying, and then I came to the thing that God had told me, “This is the message I want you to give to them.”

It was in Ezekiel chapters two and three, selected sections, where God comes to Ezekiel and says, “I have appointed you a watchman, and this is what I want you to do. Go to Israel, to this rebellious nation and tell them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says.'”

I’m just laughing to myself because I’m like, “That’s what I’m doing, Lord. I’m telling them, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says,’ and that’s perfect for writers!”

It just worked out so well. I had so many people coming up and telling me how it blessed them. I thought, and actually said to them, “You know, God knew what you needed, and he provided in his time and in his way.”

For one of the first times in my life, I didn’t worry about it. I just said, “When you’re ready, you’ll pour it into me.” And he did. The timing was all up to God.

If I had gotten it too early, if I had started and forced it and tried to make it come out, I would have figured it was all me and my great wisdom and what a terrific speaker I am.

Yet if it had been too late, I’d have been standing there facing these people and just, you know, “Lord!” It would have been a terrible thing. But the timing was up to God, and it was perfect. All he asked of me was to be willing to wait on him and his timing.

God will never be too late. He will never be too early. God is perfectly timed in everything he does for you and in you and through you.

Erin: I love that.

Erin: I love that God revealed himself to us in a father relationship. God is obviously relational, and this is the relationship he takes with us. He’s our Father.

I love that we all seem to have this built in. We have this longing to connect, please, and get in touch with our earthly father or heavenly Father or both. I mean, God planted this specifically for him in there, but you can see it in our world too.

I was watching some design show contest or something, and the winner had not been receiving very much support from her family, specifically from her father. She ends up winning and she says, “I can’t tell you how great it was to get that approval from my father,” who was so excited and cried when she won.

It was just this beautiful moment, and it reminded me of how important that relationship is. The thing is, we don’t have to win God’s approval. We don’t have to do anything to get it. God already loves us. He values us. He approves of us.

He made us. He takes care of us. He carries us. I think of it as that he has ownership of us, too. I have kids, I would go out of my way to help them with whatever they need. You know, that’s God, he teaches us what’s right. He disciplines us, and his love for us is like a father’s.

I was reading just the other day in The Message a section from Jeremiah in chapter 31. Listen to how this is paraphrased in The Message. “Oh, Ephraim is my dear, dear son. My child in whom I take pleasure. Every time I mentioned his name, my heart bursts with longing for him. Everything in me cries out for him, softly and tenderly I wait for him.”

This is God’s feelings about us, his children. As writers, I want to encourage us to rest in God’s love. In his Father-ness. In his approval. In his willingness to take care of us.

We can entrust ourselves to him, and we don’t have to take on the publishing industry by ourselves or really at all. We don’t. We just have to go where God tells us. Do what our Father tells us. Rest in him and let him fight our battles.

Karen: The next attribute is that God is self-sufficient. You know, I never really thought about this until I started doing some research. Scripture tells us in Psalm 24:1, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him.” (NLT)

Think about it. God has no needs. He can’t improve. He’s already perfection in every single way. He is perfect. He created everything. He owns everything. Like Erin just said, he has ownership of us.

He has access to everything. God’s stores never run dry. God will never go to the shelves and find they aren’t overflowing with everything he has.  His grace, his love, his mercy, every treasure, every cattle on every hill, nothing will run out with God.

He is self-sufficient. We cannot add anything to who he is. He doesn’t need us, but he asks us to partake with him in ministry. To take part in him by writing his truth for a dark and lost world.

He does it not because he needs us to do those things. He does it because he loves us. He loves us so much that he wants to share us and the message through us with other people. And he loves them so much that he wants to share his truth in the way that only we can do it as writers and in telling our stories and the truths that we’ve learned about God.

God has no needs. He is self-sufficient and that tells us two very important things. Anything he asks us to do isn’t for him, for his needs, but for ours. If he has come and said to you, “I want you to write for me,” it’s what he knows is best for you. It’s what he knows you need. Whether it’s something you will encounter on that journey, whether it’s something that will happen through your books, God knows.

He asks us to do things for our own good, not for his good, but for our own good. And that’s again, because he loves us so much.

The second thing it tells us is that we can trust him to supply all our needs in every area of life. If it seems like you’re going down this path, and you’re doing all these things, and something’s just not happening or you need this or you need that, “God, I need more reviews. I need this. I need that,” just stop.

Stop in the midst of feeling as though what you have isn’t enough and look to the God who is more than enough. He will never run low on wisdom, on grace, on love. Anything that exists, God has in abundance, and he has told us that he will share that with us. But again, like I talked about at the very beginning, in the perfect time. He has you, your career, your family, everything in his hands, and he will supply every need.

Erin: Amen.

Erin: The next thing I want to mention is that God is our forgiver. He’s the one who forgives. I was reading Psalm 103 verses two and three, and it says, “Bless the Lord, oh my soul and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity…”

That got me thinking that we need to remember who we are at the core. We are actually sinners at the core. We’re forgiven sinners, but we’re sinners nevertheless.

This is the human condition, right? We like to make our own decisions and be our own god and decide what’s best for us. This is what’s been happening since Adam and Eve.

The deal is that we sinned against God in all of this. Now, yes, sometimes we’ll sin by doing or not doing something to someone else. That’s true. I’m not trying to minimize that. That’s hurtful and wrong to someone else.

But ultimately it is against God that we’ve sinned because he told us not to do that. He told us how to live. But the deal is that even while we were sinners, Christ died for us, and God forgives us.

Why do I bring all this up? It’s not to make us feel bad. It’s to help us live in the understanding of who we are and where we would be without God. It’s to help us live in meekness and in gratitude.

It’s to encourage us in this profound truth of forgiveness that was offered to us, and that we can offer that to our readers. These are the kinds of truths that we write about. This is the kind of hope that we want to offer, but we need to live in it. The more deeply that we live in it, the more deeply we can write about it.

But how can we do that if we don’t meditate? If we don’t take the time to put it in our minds and our hearts? God is our forgiver.

That should lead us to forgive others, too. We’ve said this before—people are not perfect. This industry is not perfect. Chances are very good that someone somewhere along the way is going to hurt you, and you will need to practice forgiveness. If we use our heavenly Father’s example of forgiveness, that will help us to offer forgiveness to others.

Karen: The next attribute is something that I’ve known for a long time, but it never really connected in my brain. One attribute of God that I especially appreciate is that God is funny. He seriously is. He has a sense of humor and a sense of irony that I absolutely admire.

All you have to do is look at creation. Look at critters like the platypus. If God had no imagination and no sense of humor, he would not have created this thing.

Look at the dinosaurs, the way that they show they were created. Here’s this enormous tyrannosaurus rex and these short little arms. God must’ve had a really good laugh when he was creating the world and all the animals and all the different things that he did.

But you know what? I’ve been researching, Isaiah 43. I take a verse and I write it down. Then I study that verse and look at all the commentaries on it.

I came across, just a couple days ago, Isaiah 43:9. This is what Isaiah says is the message of God. That God says to everyone, all of the nations that he’s speaking to let everyone gather and all you who follow idols or other gods, witness before everyone, how they foretold something and how they told you the progression of a promise would happen, that this would happen. And then this would happen. And then this. But the thing is they can’t do that because none of their idols, none of their false gods, can either foretell the future or look back and say, “Back here, I told you this would happen. And then this, and then this,” because they don’t know the future. They don’t know what’s coming. Only our God can do that.

I found it absolutely hysterical that God was saying, “Yeah, you guys who believe these false gods and these ideas come and tell us. Witness to how they told you this would happen and then this, and then this.” They’re all just kind of standing there looking like they’ve been sucking on lemons all day long, because they can’t do it.

Then listen to this in Proverbs 4:7. This just cracks me up. It says, “The beginning of wisdom is this: get wisdom…”

It made me laugh when I read that. I ought to make a new bumper sticker “Got wisdom?” and put it on my car. I love it so much.

Then in 1 Samuel 5:1-5, the Philistines captured the ark of the covenant and they placed it in the temple of their god Dagon. Later when they came to take a look at it, they found their idle fallen face down in front of the ark.

Well, they picked up their god and brushed it off and set it there again. The next day, guess where their idol was? Face down on the ground with its hands and its head broken off. God wasn’t having it. He was making it very clear to them that he wasn’t having it. I bet you anything he was laughing when he took that idol and smashed it onto the ground.

What this teaches me is that I have to be careful not to take myself too seriously. God created us, and he created our need for laughter. And he created our sense of humor.

We need to be able to laugh at ourselves. We need to be able to laugh with others. We need to be able to see the humorous things all around us, because we need that kind of relief in the course of these very difficult days that we’re facing.

Our God has led the way for us. He has a sense of humor. He has a sense of irony, and we need to have the same as we follow him.

Erin: The next attribute is that God is the Great Physician. God made us. He formed us in the womb, and he knows every intricacy of how our bodies work. Our bodies are marvelous, intricate machines. It’s so amazing.

Now, modern medicine is great. But there are still so many unknowns. I have fibromyalgia. That’s a problem with my brain processing pain, but no one knows how that happens, or why that happens.

I’ve got this new medication that my doctor put me on for fybro. I was reading about this medication and they’re like, “Well, it does this, but we don’t know why that works.”

I’m just like, “That’s scary.”

I have chronic insomnia, too. I can’t sleep. Why? That’s unknown. That’s just straight up unknown.

But God knows. God sees, and God does heal us. I mentioned Psalm 103:2-3 earlier, but I didn’t read all of verse three. It says, “Who forgives all your inequity, who heals all your diseases.”

That’s our God. Sometimes he heals us quickly. You might have a headache or a cold or some other virus and it goes away. Or sometimes there’s a miraculous healing. I’ve known people that this has happened to. The cancer just disappears. That’s great. It’s a miracle.

Sometimes he heals slowly. I had mono in college, and it took weeks to recover from. Sometimes our healing isn’t realized until heaven. Maybe he brings us home through the illness or disease.

Sometimes we struggle with chronic issues until heaven. Like I said, I have this fibromyalgia, I still have chronic fatigue episodes and insomnia. But while we live, he gives us grace to cope, and in our weakness, he’s shown strong. He gets the glory.

Someday we’ll have a new and glorious body with no pain and no weariness and no problems. But for now, we trust. We just trust.

I know there are a lot of writers out there suffering from medical issues. You can check out some of our previous episodes because we’ve talked to a lot of writers who do struggle with this. They have great words of wisdom and great encouragement.

But remember that your chronic issues or your sudden issues are no surprise to God. He will walk with you through it. He will. He will never leave you. He knows every molecule in your body. He knows every hurt and every worry, and he, as your Great Physician will take care of you.

Karen: Isn’t it good to know that this God who we’ve heard about all our lives, this God who we’ve decided to trust for our salvation, that there’s so much about him that we still can learn?

We humans have a habit of taking people for granted. Of loving people, but we see them all the time, and so we don’t think much about who they really are and what really moves them, and how special they are.

We sometimes do that with God. We take him for granted. But we can remedy that. We can sit down and look in Scripture. We can talk to God and learn from him about who he is and his many attributes. As you listen to this podcast, and as you think about it later, ask God to show you what facet of his personality, what characteristic, what attribute he wants you to think about and ponder on today. And then do it, because I’ll tell you, there’s nobody who’s more worth your time.

Erin: Amen.

Do you ever wonder if you’ve taken God for granted? #Christianwriter #amwriting
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How do you think we would know if we were taking God for granted?

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

Special thanks to our June sponsor of the month, Bobbi Updegraff. Bobbi has been traveling to Honduras every year since 2000 to volunteer with Renacer, a ministry for children. One of the things they do is provide scholarships to abused and abandoned kids. Bobbi’s had the pleasure of watching these kids grow up in the Lord, get an education, pursue careers, and make a difference in their country. You can find out about how you can help with scholarships at their website: friendsofrenacer.com.

Many thanks also to the folks at Podcast P.S. for their fabulous sound editing!

The post 167 – Do You Really Know Who God Is? Part 4 appeared first on Write from the Deep.