From Edie: Explore the final Be-Attitudes for Writers from Matthew 5. See how righteousness, mercy, purity, and perseverance reveal God’s purpose in your writing."
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The Be-Attitudes for Writers: Finding God’s Purpose in Your Writing (part 2)
by Edie Melson @EdieMelson
Yesterday we covered the first three Be-Attitudes for Writers in Part 1 and today I'd like to tackle the rest.
4. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. A hunger and thirst for righteousness should never be confused with a desire for what we consider fairness. A hunger for what is right, isn’t a hunger for what is fair.
So often I speak with writers who either blatantly or indirectly express a desire to just get what they deserve. They’ve put in the work, paid their dues, and now they’re owed something. That isn’t actually the way this writing thing works.
As I was so fond of reminding my kids growing up, the world is not fair. I would go on to make an even more disturbing pronouncement. God is not fair—at least not in our limited vision of fairness. God is something more—God is just. And God’s justice is encased in grace and mercy.
Unpacking this for Writers
The writing world is not fair. Unless we want to spend a lifetime of bitterness and disappointment, we need to surrender our writing dreams to God right now. We must offer them up to Him in exchange for a hunger and thirst for righteousness.
In this writing life I can guarantee you a couple of things.
- 1. God will never abandon you.
- 2. You will not be treated fairly. Things will happen that you don’t deserve and there won’t be a single thing you can do about it—except trust the situation to God and to His righteousness.
I experienced that early on in my own writing life. After I was rejected by that publisher, I picked myself up and decided to follow the advice I was getting. So I attended a conference. In the 90s it was one of the biggest writing conferences out there. It was NOT Mount Hermon, but another one equally respected, although it too is now no longer in business.
I packed up my business cards, my one sheets, my proposal, and my little writer-self and off I went. The project I took to pitch and the topic I wanted to learn about was writing Bible studies. I had—much more meekly—decided to let God do what He wanted with my Bible study, Taking Captive Every Thought.
When I arrived, I asked those in charge who I should meet with and what classes I should attend. Not many people those days were writing or publishing Bible studies. Agents weren’t representing them and the folks I spoke with sort of looked at me like a deer in headlights.
Finally, they encouraged me to attend the continuing session on writing nonfiction and meet with the editor who was teaching that class.
I followed their advice…and it didn't turn out well. Not only didn't I get a request for my manuscript, in one of my classes, my Bible study proposal was held up to ridicule. I went home and decided to quit. However, God had other plans. He resurrected my writing and sent me off to another conference, the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference and everything changed. But it was a rough couple of years in between.
So why am I sharing this story? Not to make you feel sorry about the unfairness with which I was treated. No, I’m sharing this with you to give you, as Paul Harvey would say, The REST of the Story.
Look at me now. What positions has God put me in and what strengths am I known for? Just so you don’t think I came up with these just to prove a point, I actually asked a lot of people what THEY considered my strengths in this industry.
Two things kept recurring in all the answers I got:
- Growing a Platform: Social Media and Platform building
- Shepherding writers: through my blog and directing this conference
What do you think grew those two strengths? Yep, the experiences God allowed in my life are the very things that became the strengths He instilled in me.
Was I treated unfairly? You bet I was.
Did God’s justice bring about more than I dreamed? You bet it did.
God loves me more than to just let me settle for my own writing dreams, goals, and desires. God wants to bless me with exceeding abundance in this writing life.
But so often I’m my own worst enemy.
I get caught up with expectations and desires and lose sight of the fact that I’m writing with God, not for Him. As believer who lives in a fallen world we can get side-tracked by the pursuit of many things—power, authority, success, and respect—especially when it comes to our writing.
We need to turn the pursuit of those things over to God and learn what it means to have a hunger and thirst for righteousness. Because only when we’re filled with the righteousness of God can we be trusted with those other things.
5. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Even when I’m caught up in pursuit of worldly goals, God’s mercy will always bring me back to His side. He doesn’t leave me stuck in the muddy mess of searching for success. Instead, God does what He needs to do to bring me back close to Him.
Unpacking this for Writers
God was so merciful in NOT allowing me to find instant success. God was so merciful in using my humiliation to instill a passion for making sure the dreams of others are shepherded responsibly.
He used all of the things He allowed on my path to refine me. Each of those difficult times was also a crossroads. It was an opportunity for me to continue on, with God, or quit. What happens when we continue? The 6th be-attitude
6. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. When God frees us from the expectations and dreams we come up with, we are gifted with a purer vision of who God is. And that equips us for climbing even higher with Him.
Unpacking this for Writers
Only when we let God purify or ambitions and turn our dreams over to Him can we experience writing with God. He doesn't ask us to go away and write alone. NO—He is right here in the trenches with us. He is in every process of our writing creation. We truly see and experience God in every word, sentence, revelation, and in the result as we watch how the words He gave us impact others.
7. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. Sometimes the hardest peace to achieve is with the path God has given us to walk. We can do every single thing right—incorporate all these be-attitudes into our hearts and still get blind-sided by the truly awfulness of life.
Unpacking this for Writers
This one is hard because sometimes writing the truth doesn't always lead to peace. However notice what the scripture says, PeaceMAKERS, not PeaceBRINGERS. God didn't ask us to bring peace, He asked us to—as much as we are able—to make peace. When I saw this, I felt a huge burden lifted off my shoulders. My job is to be loving, respectful, and submissive to God's will—letting the Holy Spirit do the heavy lifting.
8. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.
I want to focus in on the life of Joseph, from the Old Testament, to illustrate this point. I’m sure the majority of us are familiar with the story of Joseph. The story takes place in Genesis and one of the themes woven throughout Genesis is the Covenant, the Seed and the Promised Land. When we look at Joseph’s story, we must examine it through the filter of that ongoing theme. And when I did that, I found what I needed on my own journey.
We remember how the story begins. Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers and spent the next 20 years in Egypt, experiencing incredibly unfairness, remaining faithful, while God worked in the dark.
finally we see that Joseph is elevated to second in command to pharaoh. God uses Joseph to save that part of the world—including his betraying brothers—from a horrible famine. But how does the story end? does Joseph get to go home, back to the promised land? Nope, Joseph finishes his life in Egypt.
Let’s take up the story in Genesis 41:50 – 52
Before the years of famine came, two sons were born to Joseph by Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On. Joseph named his firstborn Manasseh[e] and said, “It is because God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’shousehold.” The second son he named Ephraim[f] and said, “It is because God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering.”
For years I looked at this part of the story of Joseph as victory—he’d forgotten his past and moved on to new things. But following your dream in the land of exile is never ideal—and Joseph knew that. I don’t know I always celebrated Joseph having to live out his life in Egypt. We don’t treat the book of Daniel that way when He was exiled to Babylon. We don’t get excited that He and his three friends, Hananiah, Mishael & Azariah were forced into exile and given new names and expected to forget they were Hebrew.
So let’s abandon our preconceptions of what the point of Joseph’s story is and read the scripture for the truth.
We gain some insight into Joseph’s mindset as he finished life in Egypt by the names he chose for his sons. Let’s step into that scene. He’s out running the country after the birth of his first son and an Egyptian stops him to congratulate him. He asks the name of his son and Joseph says Manassah. The Egyptian is brought up short. Here’s a man who’s been adopted—by the Egyptians and specifically the Pharoah—into their country and their culture. He’s been given a prestigious wife and a new name, Zaphnath-Paaneah (ZAPH nath Parneah). And now he has a son. But he doesn’t give his son an Egyptian name, instead He gives him a Hebrew name. Manasseh. Scripture quotes Joseph as saying it’s because God has made him forget all his trouble and his father’s household. But a better way of defining the name Manasseh would be I’ve let that go.
Unpacking this for Writers
So here he is, in the wrong land, under the wrong covenant, bearing a seed. He hasn’t forgotten God has a purpose and that purpose is not to celebrate that he’s no longer Hebrew. He still belongs to God.
- The brothers who betrayed him? I’ve let that go
- The family that believed him dead and didn’t look for him? I’ve let that go.
- We all need a Manasseh in our writing walk.
- Didn’t win or place in a contest? Manasseh
- Manuscript rejected? Manasseh
- Poor Sales, Bad Review? Manasseh
But the story doesn’t end here.
Now we see a second son born to him, Ephriam.
Again, a similar circumstance and he chooses a Hebrew name. Ephriam: God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering.
We too are following our dreams in the land of exile, sometimes better known as the land of our suffering. We must remember, JUST LIKE JOSEPH. This place is not our home. We don’t fit in, no matter how hard the world urges us to try. We must hold fast to the truth that this is not our promised land. The world isn’t offering a covenant worth keeping.
But God is providing the seed through us.
I believe the point of Joseph’s story is the fact that by sending him to Egypt, the seed survived. The seed that would become our Messiah was protected.
We live in a world that is hungry and thirsty. God wants to use our circumstances to bring the water of life to a world that is dying of thirst. Dying for lack of the LIVING water.
Our suffering has meaning, our suffering has purpose—and it’s not to make us rich and famous.
We are the means for God to remind the world that there is salvation in His Son, Jesus Christ.
And God has NOT abandoned us here. He is with us—often in ways we cannot imagine. He is making us fruitful. As well as Manasseh, we have Ephriam. But we must never forget who our covenant is with and where the promised land is.
TWEETABLE
She and husband Kirk have been married 43+ years with three grown sons and four grandchildren. They live in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and can often be found with their big black dog hiking the mountains.
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