72 | Fruit or Flesh? How to Know What's Really Driving Your Author Business

Most of us have read Galatians 5 dozens of times and applied it to our personal lives. In this episode, we bring it straight into your author business.

If you've ever wondered whether God is in your work or whether the flesh has been running it in His name, this is the diagnostic you've been missing.

Because the works of the flesh don't only show up in the obvious places. They show up even at your writing desk. Paul named them all. And every single one has an author version.

But Galatians 5 also reveals the evidence that tells you if your author business is connected to the right source. And in this episode, we look at exactly what each one looks like in practice, from how you write, to how you market your books, to how you respond to your Amazon sales numbers.

Grab your free Kingdom Author Breakthrough Audit™ and answer ten questions that tell you exactly which root is driving your author life right now — so you can stop guessing and stop fixing the wrong things, and start getting real results.

Transcript

Most of us have read Galatians 5 dozens of times and applied it to our personal lives.

In this episode, we bring it straight into your author business.

If you've ever wondered whether God is in your work or whether the flesh has been running it in his name,

this is the diagnostic you've been missing.

Because the works of the flesh don't only show up in the obvious places, they show up even at your writing desk.

Paul named them all, and every single one has an author version.

But Galatians 5 also reveals the evidence that tells you if your author business is connected to the right source.

And in this episode, we look at exactly what each one looks like in practice, from how you write to how you market your books, and to how you respond to your Amazon sales numbers.

And at the end of the episode, I have a free resource to tell you exactly which route is driving your author life right now.

So you can stop guessing and stop fixing the wrong things and start getting real results.

This is the Anointed Scribe Podcast.

I'm Urcelia Teixeira, ex real estate agent turned award winning Christian fiction author.

When I wrote my first novel on a bucket list whim, I had no idea it would spark a spiritual journey that would redefine my calling. But you know what, friend?

Self publishing wasn't easy. I got caught in the hustle, chasing rankings and sales while desperately trying to stay rooted in Christ.

Now, by God's grace, I'm building my author business his way. And now he's called me to help you do the same.

Welcome to the Anointed Scribe Podcast where faith meets business for Christian writers. Let's write, publish and grow our author business God's way. Are you ready? Well then, let's get started.

Hey, it's your author friend, Urcelia. And welcome back to the Anointed Scribe Podcast where faith and the Author business meet.

If you're new here, welcome friend, grab your coffee,

find a quiet corner and let's have an honest conversation today because I'm going to say some things that might sting a little,

as it did for me when the Holy Spirit brought this to my attention just a few days ago.

And again, I'm trying my absolute best not to sound preachy when I share these things with you.

So forgive me if it comes across that way. I just have such a passion for the Lord and when I discover these new revelations in the Word, I just can't help myself but be intense in my delivery.

So know that it comes from a good place and hopefully you'll lean into it with me.

Okay, so let me start with a question,

and I want you to sit with it before you answer. It's not an easy one. I want you to really just think about this for a second.

If God told you tomorrow that your book would never hit an Amazon bestseller list,

that your series would never be picked up by Netflix,

that you'd never earn six figures from your author business,

that your name would remain largely unknown in Christian publishing circles,

would you still write?

Would you still show up?

I've found that answer, the real one,

not the Sunday school version,

will reveal more about what's driving your author life and your author business than almost anything else.

Let me take you to the Bible passage that stirred all of this for me.

Galatians 5, 16, 25.

Make a note to go back to it later, or if you have a Bible nearby, open it. If not, I'll quickly walk you through it.

Paul is writing to the church in Galatia, and he lays out two ways of living. He gives you two lists, two engines. You could say one is the flesh and one is the spirit.

And he doesn't leave us guessing about which is which either. He names them quite specifically.

The first one is the works of the flesh. And oftentimes we just skim over this passage because we're good people, right? We don't indulge in sexual immorality or impurity,

debauchery, orgies, drunkenness.

What happens is that we miss the other words, the other things that he lists in between the other works of the flesh that's woven in between those sexually immoral words.

So we just skim past them too. Things like idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage,

selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Your knee jerk reaction was likely the same as mine because there was a reason why we skimmed over it in the past so many times.

Every time we land on that scripture because we committed Christians, right? And we acknowledge God in our work and our communities,

we don't indulge in those things, Right?

But stay with me here, because Paul includes these words in that list,

and I want to hold up to the light a couple of them specifically for us as authors Today,

we're going to look at jealousy,

selfish ambition,

envy, and the one we so often just really skip past, idolatry.

Because we think of idolatry as bowing before golden statue, right? We don't do those things. We don't have a Buddha statue in the house, so we don't bow before golden statues doesn't apply to us, right?

Or the most common thought, loving money more than God. That's idolatry in our books, Right?

But that's not all there is to this word, though. See, our author idols are much quieter.

They sit like prowling lions in our browser tabs and our social media posts and our feeds, right?

And here's why I say that. An orange Amazon bestseller ribbon is an idol when you need it to feel like God is blessing your work.

Or if you need it to feel like you are being noticed or going to be noticed.

A collaboration request from an author with a larger platform is an idol when your sense of calling depends on them noticing you.

A five figure book launch is an idol when you've secretly decided that's proof that God approves of what you're doing.

Follower counts, book deals,

endorsements from authors you admire,

positive reviews from strangers.

None of these things are wrong on their own.

Hear me on this. But the moment you need them to feel legitimate,

to feel called,

to feel like God is pleased with you, to feel validated, to feel seen,

they've become an idol.

They've become an altar.

And the cruelest part of an idol is this. It never actually satisfies.

You hit the ribbon on Amazon, that little orange ribbon that's there for a couple of hours and then it disappears and.

And instantly you want the ranking as well. Then you get the ranking and now you want the award.

Then you get the award and you start comparing yourself to whoever's in the row above you, right?

And here's why. Because the flesh is not designed to be filled.

It is designed to keep you hungry and wanting more.

And guess who knows this better than anyone?

The enemy, Right?

And he has a field day with that list in your life.

And the hunger has a name.

While idolatry is the symptom,

the ribbon, the ranking, the shout out.

Selfish ambition is the root beneath it.

Paul names it selfish ambition for a reason.

Selfish ambition is ambition that has turned inward.

It started as a calling and somewhere along the way, it became all about you. About your name,

about. About your legacy, about your platform,

about your success,

about your bank balance.

All about you. That's selfish ambition. I know. I've been there. I've sat at my desk and told myself I was serving my readers while secretly, in my heart, I was hoping the book that I'm releasing would make people take me seriously, that they would finally notice me.

That it would be the breakout book that gets me on the map and has everyone talking about guess What?

Me?

Not God,

me.

That is flesh wearing a ministry costume.

Then there's jealousy. Jealousy is what happens when another author's success feels like a personal threat.

Jealousy shows up when someone in your genre lands a book or a TV deal and and your first thought is an awesome, Congratulations. I'm so happy for them.

It is instead,

why not me?

See, jealousy tells you that the kingdom has limited seats.

That someone else sitting down means you have to stand.

That, my friend, is a lie.

It's having you operate from a scarcity mindset instead of from an abundance 1.

When the flesh is in the driving seat, it twists your heart into feeling that those thoughts are logical and therefore has merit.

Envy is jealousy's sharper edge.

Jealousy wants what someone else has.

Envy resents them for having it.

You can spot envy in yourself when you find it hard to promote another author's work,

when you read their five star reviews and feel something close to irritation,

when their win somehow feels like your loss.

Paul names it specifically because it is specific.

It is a spirit, not the Holy Spirit. It is a spirit and it will poison your author life from the inside out if you let it sit there and not deal with it.

Here's what ties all four of these together. Idolatry, selfish ambition, jealousy and envy.

They all chase the same thing.

The flesh calls it abundance.

More sales, more reach, more recognition, more influence.

The Holy Spirit has a completely different definition of abundance.

It's called peace and joy.

And peace and joy don't live in your Amazon dashboard.

They don't arrive with your launch numbers.

Peace and joy is the evidence that you are connected to the right source and that you are writing from the right place,

building for the right kingdom.

The flesh will keep you hungry for more. The flesh needs big results to feel satisfied.

A big book launch,

a big Amazon KDP sales number,

a big platform.

Without the big thing,

it feels empty.

But the spirit produces fullness. The Holy Spirit produces fullness,

contentment, peace, joy, freedom,

independent of the size of what's happening around you.

So you can be in a small season, in a season where nothing moves, where it feels like you're not making any progress,

where you are standing still or stalled, where the numbers don't move and you can still feel completely satisfied,

not resigned. You're not accepting it, you're not tolerating the smallness,

but you can feel full. You feel like you have joy and peace. Why?

Because what fills you isn't coming from your results,

it's coming from your source. As Paul says in Philippians 4:11 I am content in all things. Right?

Let's look at an example.

An author writes a book that reaches 200 people.

The flesh says that that's a failure. Those 200 sales, it's nothing. It's a drop in the bucket.

Absolutely nothing. It's a failure.

But if those 200 people were the exact 200 readers God needed to read your book,

God intended,

and you wrote it and surrendered that to God. And you feel peace and joy about it.

That's fullness,

that's abundance.

The Spirit made you full in what the world would call small.

Okay, let's look now at the fruit side of the passage of the scripture in Galatians 5, where Paul flips it and he gives us the direct opposites of the fleshly fruit.

Right?

The fruit of the spirit. Love,

joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.

Let's look at those.

The first thing we should notice is that he calls them fruit,

not achievements. Right?

You don't produce fruit by effort.

Fruit grows from what the tree is connected to.

When your author business is rooted in the Holy Spirit,

these show up without you having to force them.

Let me show you what they look like in practice.

Let's take each of these fruit. When you have the fruit of love,

you write for the reader, not for the review.

A love driven author sits down to write and thinks, what does this person need to hear? What truth will help them in their lives?

Not what will make them leave five stars. Or what will make this book an Amazon bestseller.

No, it's all about the reader. It's all about serving. Right?

Joy means your creative energy doesn't depend on external results. You finish a chapter and something in you is glad. Regardless of whether anyone will ever read that book.

Peace means you are not checking your rankings at 11 o' clock at night and then again two hours later. And then in the morning. And then you're all anxious because the sales aren't there.

No, Peace means you've submitted your work to God and you trusting with the results. You trust his timing.

That is not being passive, that's being surrendered. That's trusting. That's peace. Which is different and really much harder to do. Right?

Patience means you don't abandon your calling because your first book didn't sell 10,000 copies in the year.

You understand that God's timelines and Amazon's algorithms are not the same book. Right? They don't read off or sing off the same hymn sheet. That's patience. You are content,

you are calm, you are relaxed. You know it's coming.

God's faithful. God will never let you down. Right?

Kindness. Kindness means you can celebrate another author's success without feeling like you are failing,

without shrinking back.

Someone else hits their launch goal,

it doesn't threaten you. You clap for them, you praise them, you celebrate with them, and you actually mean it. That's kindness.

Faithfulness means you show up to write even when the numbers aren't there.

Faithfulness means you continue your race. You sit even if your fingers are bleeding, if you've got nothing in your mind, in your head, if you've got author's block, you keep showing up and you keep being faithful and you keep doing what God's called you to do.

You steward the assignment whether or not the audience is watching or reading the books or not. You keep going because you know what you know what you know, right? You know what God's called you to do.

Gentleness means you handle criticism, rejection and slow seasons without becoming defensive.

Or the one that we so often lean into,

bitter.

You take your feedback, all these criticisms, all these rejections, and you take it to God. For first.

You sit with God, you pray,

you discuss this with God before you let it settle and turn into depression. Or this deep, dark place we often take ourselves to, this failure, this woe to me place, right?

That's gentleness. You handle your criticism without feeling defensive or bitter.

And the last one, self control. Self control means you know when to close your laptop.

You don't need to post social media five times a day. You don't need to keep striving and hustling and pushing and have sleepless nights and stressing out and stuff. You can put the work down and trust the one who holds it.

That's self control.

So how do you know which one flesh or fruit is running your author life and business right now?

Well,

you simply take any area of your author life and you run it through these two checklists that I just gave you.

Take for example, your marketing.

When you sit down to write a social media post or a promotion of any kind,

do you think about your reader first or do you think about your reach?

Are you writing that social media post thinking, this is going to serve my reader, they are going to get a benefit out of this? Or are you writing it thinking this is going to go viral?

This is the post I'm going to need to write this post that's going to go viral.

Do you feel anxious when a post underperforms? Do you take it personally if there's anxiety there? It tells you the flesh is Driving your particular marketing car.

If you look at your writing process, for example, do you write freely?

Do you write what God puts on your heart? Or do you write for a target market because that's what you're told will make money?

Do you write from any kind of pressure,

any kind of fear?

Is there a reader in your mind when you write? Or is there a bestseller list or worse, a bank balance in the back of your mind?

Again, this is not a condemnation, just a question.

We have to ask ourselves these very hard questions, and we have to answer them honestly if we want to become more like Christ. That's the goal, right?

How about your relationship with other authors? Do you scroll past someone else's launch announcement with a sting in your chest?

Do you feel that ugliness that comes over you? Do you compare your cover to theirs? Your endorsement to theirs? Your Amazon ranking to theirs?

Don't be fooled, here friend. Comparison is envy dressed up as research, or as the world likes to call it,

competitor analysis. You are not doing competitor analysis when you sit and compare your ranking to someone else's ranking.

Okay? That is comparison. That is envy.

So how do you respond to slow seasons? That's another one you can. You can measure against your checklist. When a launch, a book launch is not what you hoped it would be.

Do you hear God saying, wait,

be patient.

Or do you hear God saying, you have failed. I'm so disappointed in you if your slow automatically feels like failing, if that's what that says to you. The idol of expansion is sitting on the throne now.

Expansion idolatry is one of the most common and least named problems in publishing. In Christian publishing in particular,

we frame growth as faithfulness.

More readers, more impact, bigger platform, bigger kingdom contribution. Right? That's what we think.

And growth can absolutely be God initiated and absolutely be used for the kingdom.

But when you can't rest in a small season,

when you can't write a book that reaches 50 people and call that obedience,

when you've decided that faithfulness looks like scale,

you've built an altar to expansion.

God sent his son to one town at a time. He stopped for a woman at a well. One woman. He stopped at that well.

Small is not the opposite of faithful.

So what do you do now that you've gone through these results and you've gone through these checklists and you've compared everything against the checklist? What do you do? Well,

maybe you've been nodding through this episode.

Maybe you've also been a little bit uncomfortable, which is good.

That discomfort is the Spirit at work. We want that you don't repent idolatry with willpower.

You repent by turning back to the source. And that's what you do. You take your hands off the outcomes.

You surrender the results to God and you go back to the question you started with.

Would you still write if none of this came with it?

If the answer is yes, even a shaky yes, you. You have something real to build from.

But if the answer is no, that's not a condemnation. Don't see that as a condemnation.

That's the beginning of an honest conversation with God.

Here's how I can help you today. Because I don't want you walking away from today's discussion feeling even more overwhelmed and like a failure than what you came here with, right?

I've put together a free resource called The Kingdom Author Breakthrough Audit™. It's 10 questions and it tells you exactly which route is driving your author business right now.

Whether that's striving and performance,

whether it's comparison and lack of identity or not knowing who you are, whether it's confusion about the way forward, confusion about any direction you need to take in your business,

whatever it is,

it's going to tell you the root. It's going to tell you what's driving that.

Because knowing whether you are operating in the flesh is one thing,

but knowing which specific root is feeding that flesh,

that's where the real work begins.

That's what this audit will show you. It's called The Kingdom Author Breakthrough Audit™.

It covers your mindset, your marketing, your relationship with money and recognition,

even your sense of calling. 10 questions you can answer in less than 10 minutes.

And it gives you a clear picture of where things are rooted and where they need attention. You can grab it free. The link is in the show notes and I want to be fully transparent here.

The Kingdom Author Breakthrough Audit™ is the first step into the Revive to Thrive Way™ program, which is built around the very shifts we talk about here today.

Moving from flesh driven striving to spirit led authorship.

And that's what you want, right? You want peace and you want joy and you want kingdom success.

You don't want the stress and you don't want comparison and you don't want to feel like a failure.

You want doors to open in your author business and you want God to keep using you, right?

In fact, here's what one of the early students said after she was barely a third into the program.

She said this to me already. Your course is making a huge difference.

The Holy Spirit is revealing blind spots and loving me through it all as he transforms me.

I'm so excited to say that God has already opened two doors for me. But God, right?

This course has literally transformed not only my writing life, but my entire life. Friend, I want this for you too.

So badly.

I really want this for you. I want to see that Kingdom Success says I want doors to fly open for you.

And right now it's still available at the early bird price of $197, but that price closes midnight March 31st.

After that, it moves to the regular price of $297.

If you've downloaded the free Breakthrough Audit, gone through the 10 questions, and land on a result that's rooted in anything opposite to the fruits of the Spirit,

I want to urge you to take advantage of this early bird pricing and go in and fix what needs fixing so you can stop guessing and stop wasting your time and money on fixing the wrong things and start seeing real results,

real Kingdom abundance.

I'll leave the links for both the free audit and The Revive to Thrive Way™ program in the show notes Friend, the world is in chaos.

It is in desperate need to hear the truth. And you and I are who God called to help them find Jesus.

So right from the fruit, friend,

Right from the Holy Spirit fruit. The world doesn't need more authors. It needs you.

The Holy Spirit led called and equipped version of you.

You know now what's driving your author life.

Let that knowledge be the beginning of something different.

Friend, if today's episode stirred something in you, if you found yourself thinking, yes, this is exactly where I am, I want you to know you don't have to keep circling the same mountain.

There comes a point where working harder and more information aren't the answer.

What's needed is a step by step,

spirit led journey that takes you from knowing what's wrong to actually fixing it from the inside out. From the foundations up.

The Revive to Thrive Way™ is that journey. It's not another strategy. It's not another checklist. It's you,

God and the work that actually moves things forward at your own pace, in your own time.

If you sense this might be your next step, head to anointedscribe.com/revivetothrive.