Write from the Deep

About Jean Wilund

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Does the Deep Mean?

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

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

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

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

Unexpected Detours

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

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

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

A Perfect Fit!

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

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

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

Habakkuk and Writers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jean Wilund: Right.

Remember God’s Character

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

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

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

Habakkuk’s Transformational Actions

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

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

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

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

The Holy One

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

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

A Promise to Sustain Us

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

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

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

Remember God’s Presence

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

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

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

In God’s Time

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

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

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

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

REmember Prayer!

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

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

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

Obedience and Prayer are the Keys

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

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

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

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

When God Changes Your Focus

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

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

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

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

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

A Sweet Confirmation

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

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

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

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

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

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

Never Say Never

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

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

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

God Teaches Us With Love and Patience

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

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

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

This is Habakkuk 3:16-19:

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

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

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

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

Erin: Amen.

Jean Wilund: Amen.

When life gets difficult, we can get discouraged. Guest @JeanWilund shares wisdom from Habakkuk to help us embrace joy no matter what! #ChristianWriter #amwriting
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WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

What about Habakkuk speaks to you today?

Books by JEAN WILUND

Ease Into the Bible by Jean Wilund

Embracing Joy: An 8-Week Transformational Bible Study of Habakkuk by Jean Wilund

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The post 225 – Embrace Joy! With Guest Jean Wilund appeared first on Write from the Deep.