A Step in the Write Direction--June 23, 2014--The Mission Field of Writing

A Step in the Write Direction

June 23, 2014

Update: I’m glad I had most of this blog done last week as I found I’m not completely recuperated from my 10-day trip to Oklahoma. Seems I can’t do what I used to (my husband keeps telling me that). However, I do have my ticket now for my 10-day trip to Michigan. Will fly into Grand Rapids Thursday, July 10, visit my ex-sister-in-law (we’re still friends) and nephew and nieces; Friday visit my brother in Mt. Pleasant; go to my sister’s cottage in Houghton Lake on Saturday or Sunday; then Tuesday go to our district camp meeting where my nephew, Dave Clark, has charge of music for the week. My brother and wife will also be there from Tennessee….Friday I’ll go to Adrian where I’ll hold a one-day writers’ workshop Saturday, July 19 (if you know anyone in southern Michigan or in the Toledo, Ohio, area, you can let them know about this). Sunday I’m going to my home church in Jackson, then back to Grand Rapids to fly home Monday, July 21. That’s my last trip for the year!!

Thought for the Day:

Lord Jesus, teach me to be generous,

teach me to serve you as you deserve,

to give and not to count the cost,

to fight and not heed the wounds,

to toil and not to seek for rest,

to labor and not to seek reward,

except that of knowing that I do your will.

—St. Ignatius of Loyola

Song for the Day:

Ready to go, ready to stay;

Ready my place to fill;

Ready for service, lowly or great;

Ready to do His will.

            —Author Unknown

Laugh for the Day: A minister had a ready Scripture for every occasion.  While he was preaching, he swallowed a fly and quickly said, "He was a stranger and I took him in."

Writer’s Tips (#4 from unpublished writer’s devotional book):

The Mission Field of Writing

I have brought you glory on earth by

completing the work you gave me to do (John 17:4).

One day, while in my senior year of high school, I pulled a verse out of my “Promise Box” which read, “I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance.” Aha! At last I knew what I would be—I was called to be a missionary!

I shared my story at missionary rallies, and when I began college and someone asked me my plans after graduation, I proudly announced, “I’m going to be a missionary.” And of course it was to Africa. Wasn’t that where everyone went?

As time went on, however, the desire grew dimmer and I began to question whether it really was a call or just a happenstance that I read that verse that day. After all, it was the next card in the Promise Box. I was embarrassed, however, to admit to friends and family that I really wasn’t called. And I didn’t want to give up my dream. When the song was sung, “Ready to go…ready to stay,” I was ready to go, but not to stay. It took years before I realized that writing is a mission field.  That although I wasn’t called to go to a foreign field, I could still pray and give and help send others.

I did fulfill my dream in a sense, however. After I began a Christian writers club in my home town, a friend brought me an article to critique. She ended up selling it to Decision magazine, and later shared with me that two men—in different parts of Africa—wrote and told her that because of her article, they had accepted Christ. So a little piece of me did get to Africa after all!

What is your writing mission field? Is it writing devotionals? I e-mailed a devotional to a friend one Sunday morning. She printed it off just before leaving for church. Dashing to her car, she noticed her neighbor in the yard—a single man she hadn’t become well acquainted with yet. He looked a little discouraged, she thought, so on impulse, she handed him the devotional. “Here, you might enjoy this,” she said. When she returned home, her neighbor knocked on her door. “I had planned on committing suicide this morning,” he told my friend. “My wife left me and I decided I didn’t want to live anymore. But this”—holding up the piece of paper—“this gave me hope.”

Is your mission field writing personal experience stories—sharing an experience you’ve gone through and how the Lord helped you. After writing an article about letting go of my mother eleven years after she died, I received a letter from a widower who said, “…now I can go on.”

Whatever field of writing you choose, when you know God has called you to write and when something you write helps change someone’s life, then you can know that you, too, are a missionary.

My mission field today is:

 Have a good week spreading the

gospel through the printed page.

Donna Clark Goodrich

dgood648@aol.com

www.thewritersfriend.net

http://donna-goodrich.blogspot.com

 "A Step in the Write Direction--the Complete How-to Guide for Christian Writers"