FOR THE KINGDOM WOMAN WHO’S BEEN PUSHING HARDER THAN EVER AND WATCHING IT PRODUCE LESS THAN EVER…

You’ve switched strategies. You’ve gotten to 80% more times than you want to count.

And every single time it stalled, you went harder. But it’s producing less now than it was a year ago. 

Whyyyyy??? 😩 

So let me say the thing that’s going to sound like the worst business advice you’ve ever heard…

Stop. Trying. 

Not stop building. Not stop believing God for it. Stop trying, because the trying is the part that’s killing this. 

What you need instead is the rhythm of the root. And once you see what that actually means, you’re going to understand why some strategies were never going to work for you no matter how hard you ran them.  

🎥 Prefer to WATCH the podcast instead of just listening? 👉 Catch this week’s episode of the video podcast on my YouTube channel:

You Were Grafted In 

I was studying Romans 15 this morning…

The first stretch of that chapter is titled the example of Jesus Christ, and Paul is teaching us how to pattern ourselves after Christ as a servant. Which matters enormously for Kingdom builders, because God assigned you a people group to serve. There’s no building a Kingdom business without a servant’s heart. 

Then in verse 12, Paul says, “The root of Jesse will come.” Now go back to Romans 9 through 11 and you’ll see what he’s been building toward. He’s explaining how we Gentiles got brought into God’s family at all. 

We were grafted in. That’s his word. 

And here’s what I want you to catch about a graft. When a shoot gets grafted into a vine, the shoot doesn’t do anything to change itself. It doesn’t strive its way into belonging. The root pulls the water. The root pulls the nutrients. The root determines the growth, and the root determines the fruit. 

Romans 15:12 is quoting Isaiah 11:1, which says, A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit. Jesus is the “capital B” Branch. And we get grafted into Him, where He is both vine and root. Which means your potential, your growth, and your capacity to produce anything at all are connected to something other than your own effort.  

Your Effort Was Never the Thing Producing 

I know that lands strange. We’ve been taught our whole lives that effort determines output. If I don’t do, I won’t produce. Sister, that’s not how it works in the Kingdom. 

Now hear me clearly, because I am not telling you to sit down. When God says move, you move, and that absolutely advances the ball. But it advances because you moved in trust and obedience with the word of God, not because of the raw effort itself. 

James is blunt about this. Faith without works is dead. And we quote that one all the time. What we skip is that it runs both directions. Works without faith are just as dead. 

So when you see a strategy working for another woman in a similar business, and you overlay it on yours and run it exactly the same way? I’d call you into a moment of prayer before you spend one more month on it. 

Because some things are never going to work for you until you tap into the rhythm of the Root. 

The Rosebush on Bishop Street 

Let me tell you how God taught me this, because I did not learn it from a book.

Eighteen years ago, Doug and I bought a house on Bishop Street in Staten Island. We’d been in a 600-square-foot apartment right off Union Square in Manhattan, and then our first son came, and we needed room. 

That house had an above-ground pool sitting on a patch of dirt out back. And coming out of the city with an infant, I looked at those New York winters and thought, absolutely not. I am not opening and closing a pool every year. So we pulled it out. Put in grass, bordered the whole thing with a rose garden, and brought containers up onto the paver patio, too. 

And in one of those containers I planted a JFK rosebush. Cream white, gorgeous, set against a wall of green so that every time I looked out from the den or the dining room, there it was. 

It felt like life to me. Clean and alive and good. For two years I pruned it and fed it and it came back thriving each season. 

Then Came the Winter 

The year I got pregnant with my second son was the hardest season of my life to that point. Difficult pregnancy. Health issues on top of it. Relational things blowing up across my family.

My father had a widow-maker heart attack, and because I was in New York and he was in Florida and the messages weren’t reaching me, I believed for twenty minutes that my dad was dead. Then I found out they’d brought him back, and I was on a plane three months pregnant. 

Meanwhile the real estate market had crashed and we were in real estate. And Doug’s day job was in trouble. We were really struggling financially.

And it was a brutal winter on top of all of it. So much snow that year. We were covering plants constantly. Things were dying out there. Then spring came, and I looked out the window, and that bush was blooming.

Blood red. Not a white bloom on it. Blood red. 

Why It Bloomed Blood Red 

I stood there asking the Lord if this was a miracle. And I heard Him say go research this, because there’s a natural reason for it, and I’m also sending you a message. 

So here’s what I found. When a nursery grows a rose variety that isn’t naturally hardy, they don’t grow it on its own roots. They take a cutting of the pretty, delicate variety and they graft it onto an aggressively hardy rootstock underneath. In most of the commercial trade that rootstock is a deep red rose called Dr. Huey. 

And here’s the part that undid me… As long as that grafted top gets exactly the food it needs, exactly the water it needs, exactly the pruning it needs, and nothing too stressful ever hits it? It will keep producing its own blooms indefinitely. 

You would never know there was another root under there. Because it never had to rely on the root fully, the root never changed a thing about its fruit. But that winter was unbearable. And under that kind of stress, the top plant does one of two things. It fights, or it surrenders. 

Mine surrendered. It died back, and the rootstock came up through it. And it never produced a white bloom again. Not one. It was blood-of-Jesus red from that day forward. 

God Will Let You Run on Your Own Steam 

Until He doesn’t. That’s the message, and it’s the whole thing. 

As long as the sun is shining and the conditions are easy and you’re getting everything you think you need, God will let you go on operating in your own energy and effort. You’ll look at your output and think, look how good I am at this. Look how much I can carry. 

And then He allows the wilderness. He allows the scorching heat. He allows the winter that just about takes you out. And your instinct in that moment is to go harder. More effort. More striving. More hours.

Sister, take the lesson from the JFK bush. Your best move right there is to surrender. Because you actually need the root to take over. If you keep striving in that energy, here’s what happens: you die anyway, just slower and more painfully.

And that dying is not the tragedy you think it is. That’s the old self going. That’s the new coming. That’s Paul saying the power of God is made perfect in weakness, which only ever happens on the other side of surrender.

So when you’re pushing your hardest and producing less than ever and it feels like something in you is dying? Good. It probably is. That’s not the enemy winning. That’s the invitation. 

Check Your “So That” 

Before we land this, I need you to look at something, because it’s where a lot of us get caught. Romans 15 says all of this is so that we might bring Him glory. 

So ask yourself honestly why you’re producing. Is it for approval? For praise? For the accolades and the applause? And be careful even with the spiritual-sounding version of it. I want to feel fulfilled in my purpose is still not giving glory to God.

I want to bloom this way so that my family is proud of me. So that this financial thing gets resolved. So that I finally prove I’m somebody. So that, so that, so that. 

The other posture is Mary’s in Luke 1:38. I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to Your word. 

That’s it. I bloom this way because of the root. When the fruit comes out of that posture, it is genuinely to His glory, and it’s better fruit than anything you were producing on your own. 

Surrender Is the Next Best Move 

So hear me, if you’re standing at the precipice of something God clearly told you to build. 

You know it’s your lane. You know He said that when you put your hand to it, it will prosper. And right now you’re in struggle and overwhelm and unending difficulty.

Surrender to God. Not to your circumstances, and not to the lies the enemy is running at you. You are going to produce. You are going to get to the finish line. But the next right step isn’t more trying.

I thought that white rosebush was the most beautiful thing I’d ever planted. But when the snow came, you couldn’t even see it. Those red blooms? Breathtaking. Unmissable. You are not your own. You were bought at a price. And the Lord will put better fruit through you than you could manufacture in a lifetime of striving.

So stop trying to launch this thing. Surrender, and step into the rhythm of the root. Which is His grace. 

🎯 Next Steps + Resources For You:

✅ Come to the FREE Called to Build Workshop. Tuesday, October 6th at 7pm ET. In 60 interactive minutes I’m revealing the four pillars every Kingdom business needs to launch successfully online, and we’ll figure out which ones are missing or misaligned in your business. Plus a bonus training on the three things that have to be set in the ground before you install a single pillar on top. Can’t make it live? There’s a 7-day replay. But you’ve got to save your seat.

👉 http://www.jesusgirlgang.com/calledtobuild 

✅ Join me live for Get Ready with God. Weekday mornings at 7:30am ET on Instagram and Facebook. Thirty minutes of preaching and prayer before the day can even try to get loud on you. Thursdays are Kingdom business focused.

👉 Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/ericapyle  
👉 Facebook: http://www.ericapyle.com/BizFB 

✅ Subscribe to the podcast. New episodes every Thursday. This is where breakthrough gets built, the kind that changes the pattern for you, your family, and the generations behind you.  

👉 Subscribe via YouTube: youtube.com/@ericapyle
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📖 Scriptures Referenced in This Episode: Romans 15:1-13 · Romans 9-11 · Isaiah 11:1 · James 2:17-26 · 2 Corinthians 12:9 · Luke 1:38 

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Erica co-leads a local church alongside her husband, Doug, in Tampa, Florida called REVIVE Church of Tampa. You can visit the church’s website for more information about who we are, what we believe and how we show up as the Church in the heart of West Tampa and beyond.

REVIVE Church of Tampa

REVIVE Church of Tampa streams service live on Sunday mornings at 11am ET. You can find that livestream on our church Facebook page:

Live Service – Sundays at 11am ET

If you’re interested in joining the online campus of REVIVE Church of Tampa, you are welcome to join our community group on Facebook where we offer weekly discussion around the Friday and Sunday messages as well as discipleship Zoom groups and the opportunity to host others in your home as you stream services. You can find us here:

The ROCC: REVIVE Online Campus Community

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About this podcast:

Welcome to the Jesus Girl Gang Kingdom Business Podcast with Erica Pyle, where we dive deep into Biblical mindsets, strategies, and inspiration to help you launch and thrive in the God-given business or ministry you’re called to steward.

Join Erica, co-lead pastor of REVIVE Church of Tampa, and founder/lead mentor of The Jesus Girl Gang, an online, group coaching mentorship for Christian women with a pioneering spirit, as she shares powerful teachings, practical advice, and pivotal strategies for breakthrough living without compromising on the things that matter most to you. With over 13 years of experience in pastoral ministry alongside her husband Doug, Erica brings a wealth of knowledge and a passionate heart for helping you live out God’s best for your life.

Each week, tune in for transformative insights that will empower you to build a Kingdom business or ministry, nurture your personal well-being, and create balanced, prosperous relationships. If you’re a faith-driven woman seeking to align your life with God’s purpose, you’re in the right place.

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