Love in Action

Romans 12:9-21

This passage in Romans (New International Version) is marked as ‘Love in action’. What an intriguing idea. I’d like to pull out a few of the pieces of advice to focus on them in context of how we serve the Kingdom of God in our writing.

V9. Love must be sincere …

We are Christians first, and love is part of the foundation upon which our faith is built. Love as outlined in 1 Corinthians 13. Love that was modelled by Jesus Christ in his willingness to serve others in life and suffering and sacrifice.

As Christian writers we are in relationship with others through our work. We offer our stories – characters in relationship with each other – and hope our readers will identify with our characters. Our intention is that readers will experience different conflicts, dramas, tensions and hopeful resolutions vicariously. A desired outcome would be that through this experience readers will be encouraged and inspired.

To draw on the fulness of joy that is found in Christ-like sincere love, we need to know that sincere love in real life. It is true we will often paint characters who operate from a different spirit – self-seeking, uncaring, selfish, unkind, perhaps even violent. The gift of imagination is ours to explore how these characters relate to the world and to others in the absence of true love. But to show redemption, healing, reconciliation and the joy that accompanies these miraculous transformations, we need to know the sincerity of Christ-like love.

Can we write from a place of grief or anger? I would guess that a story will have more depth if we have experienced grief or anger from some life experience. Likewise the finding of hope and joy is something that will come through as sincere if we ourselves have found our comfort and peace in the embrace of our Father through his Holy Spirit.

V11. Never lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.

Never lacking zeal. On occasion I lack motivation. Sometimes this is because of discouragement, sometimes it is because of tiredness, sometimes it is because I’ve lost the focus of why I do what I do in creating stories.

When I remember that I’ve been given a gift of communication through imagination, and that I have the opportunity to bring courage, inspiration and joy to others who may not know Him, then I can reignite my motivation. The zeal of the Lord, as the Scripture says, can consume me. This is the zeal to represent Christ’s love for all. Now to show His grace, healing power, peace and joy has an outlet. I can write a poem, a song, a story, a blog. When I offer my gift of writing with sincere love and passion, I place it in the hands of God as seed sown. He will water and bring increase according to His purpose.

V12. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

What am I hoping for. Millions of book sales of course. Isn’t that what we all hope for? As a realist I know the status of multi-million best-seller is not the normal experience for most writers. So I need to have another hope – one that has faith and joy attached to it. This hope is that my writing will find it’s way into the hands of readers who will be encouraged along their journey to faith and healing. This is a faith exercise because in all probability I will never know if my work has been a catalyst toward major change in someone’s life. I Probably won’t know which scene or passage was the seed that the Holy Spirit used to draw that person to salvation and reconciliation. But I can imagine. I can submit all my works to the Lord and be faithful in praying that He will work in ways that will bring joyful results. I must trust Him in this.

V15. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.

Some writers will achieve more obvious success than others. By that I mean, some will get contracts with large publishers who have a wide reach. Others may be the main contributor to the church newsletter. Whatever level of obvious success, we need to rejoice with those who succeed in this way. We also need to rejoice when someone shares a testimony of how their writing has been a part of someone’s journey of emotional or spiritual healing. In this way we support and encourage one another. In forming friendships with other writers we can share the journey with each other, the ups and the downs.

V16. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud… Do not be conceited.

This verse speaks for itself. When we achieve a level of success and enjoy accolades that come along with that, there is a very real possibility that our joy and satisfaction can slip over the line into pride and conceit. We should rejoice in success but be mindful of the enemy as he looks for a spot to settle and cause trouble.

V18. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

When writing fiction, one of the hardest things I’ve had to do with characters is to make them do something really bad. In my early writing I often wanted to redeem them, but as the books went by, I learned that some characters in life and in fiction do not want to be redeemed. In life and in creativity I’ve had to learn to let them go into God’s hands. But I look for the opportunity for peace and resolution. In life I have learned from experience that when you let difficult and seemingly unresolvable situations go passing years sometimes bring peace.