Archive for Creative Process

For Creative Communicators

2013-03-14 Creative Process, Devotional No comments

Whatever your creative bent, whatever your area or outlet, if you are a believer, prepare to serve. God’s love is forever reaching out, drawing people to Himself. He wants to reach out through you. He wants to draw people to Himself through you.

For your part, the more you know Him, the more you will love Him, and the more you will long to show everyone just how wonderful He is. 

As we are called and driven by God’s love, we become creative communicators of the gospel. Individually and together, we use our God-given personalities, abilities, experiences, inclinations, and opportunities to glorify Jesus Christ and draw other people to Him. 

As a creative communicator, remember this key fact: the only thing you will ever have to communicate is what you personally know of Jesus Christ. Biblical knowledge is important, but personal knowledge is central. People don’t just want cold information. They want to know if what you are saying is real…or at least if it is real to you. People can smell what is stiff, canned, or artificial. They can hear it in your voice and in your words. People want reality. They want truth, honestly, clearly, sincerely communicated.

There is a place for language that is objective, intellectual, and detached, but it’s not in personal communication. The truth about Jesus Christ is the most intimate, wondrous, meaningful, and personal thing in all of life. Don’t relegate it to coldly factual language. Speak from experience. Speak from your heart.

As a hymnwriter and as a child of God, it is my goal to be fully responsive to the truth about Jesus. That includes being fully responsive emotionally. No, I don’t have to be emotionally effusive. Many of us are not. But whether we are speaking or writing or acting out our faith, our love for Jesus Christ and our joy and delight in Him need to shine through.

To be fully responsive to the truth about Jesus, nurture your personal relationship with Him. As a communicator, it’s easy to turn into Indiana Jones. When we come into God’s presence, we look around for something to sell, something to write or teach. Instead, focus on Him. Want Him. Need Him. Worship Him.

Focus your life, not on your ministry, but on Jesus Christ and living every moment in Him.

A Testimony: God Is Faithful

2013-03-07 Creative Process, Devotional, Reading & Study No comments

Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you.  (Joshua 1:9, NIV)

One of the responsibilities I’ve carried in my local church is choir chaplain. For seven years, week in and week out, my responsibility was to give five-minute devotionals to close our Wednesday evening rehearsals. It was a wonderful opportunity. The devotional could be on any subject, and the five-minute length was perfect: long enough to express a complete thought, yet short enough not to need hours of research.

Most of us have that kind of long-term ministry in one form or another. Such ministries can be great opportunities, but they can also seem heavy obligations at times.

Therefore I offer this testimony of a few things God taught me through that weekly devotional ministry.

God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. (2 Corinthians 9:8, NIV)

God always gave me something to say. I never had to throw together just anything to fill a slot. A few times I panicked on Tuesday night and forced something together, but He always preempted it and gave me something much better before Wednesday night.

Yes, I studied and did all I needed to do. I prayed and prepared and looked to Him. But He consistently gave me ideas and leadership as to what I should say.

God is incredibly faithful. When He gives us a job to do, He never abandons us to our own devices. He always gives us everything we need.

God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:8, NASB)

It’s easy for any of us who “minister” to get caught up in ourselves and our ministry, rather than in the people we serve. When I approached the devotional time nervous about what I was going to say and worried about how it would go, I tended to get uptight and struggle. But when I rested in the Lord and concentrated on the people to whom I was ministering, it worked more naturally.

In fact, I learned to spend my last few moments praying for the people in the choir, instead of reviewing my notes. It focused my heart and opened me to God working through me.

Preparation is essential, but it is never a substitute for relaxing and letting the Spirit accomplish His will through us. And He will, every time, if we let Him. We won’t always finish the job confident that we were great and everything went smoothly. But God plants His seed through us. It is good seed, and He will make it grow.

The longer I serve my Father, the more joyful it becomes. I serve in His presence, with His arms wrapped around me, personally bringing me the guidance and strength I need for each task. It’s exciting to realize I’m caught up in His work. Right now He is creating a world of love and beauty that will last forever. When we live in Him, we are a part of it. Praise to His wonderful name!

Compelled by Jesus Christ

2013-02-28 Creative Process, Devotional No comments

Many others have written an account of what God has done among us through Jesus. They took their facts from eyewitnesses who were there, who saw Him, heard Him, knew Him, and worked alongside Him. Since I have investigated everything carefully and thoroughly, it seemed good for me to write an account as well. I have researched it diligently and put everything in order, starting from the very beginning. My goal was this, dear friend of God: that you may know for certain the truth about Jesus Christ. (paraphrased from Luke 1:1-4)

Luke was inspired and compelled by the amazing truth about Jesus Christ. Driven by that truth, he undertook the massive task of researching and writing a detailed account of His earthly life. He knew he wasn’t the first to attempt it, but that didn’t discourage him. He was a gentile, not a Jew (the only Gentile author in the entire Bible), but that didn’t deter him either.

Imagine the work, the determination, the organizational ingenuity, and the dedication to detail that it took to carry off such a task in those days. Jesus had been gone bodily for many years. There were no quick means of communication over distance; no phones or computers, no internet, no printing; little or no library resources. Travel was slow, difficult, and dangerous. No person or thing, word or idea could travel faster than a horse.

But Luke investigated patiently and diligently, investing years of his life. He talked to numerous eyewitnesses. He painstakingly assembled and organized the best information from the most reliable sources.

The result was a gospel account of unparalleled historical exactitude. Each of the gospels contributes something unique to our understanding of Jesus. Luke contributes historical detail and organization, as well as unique information about vital aspects of Jesus’ life, such as His birth, His prayer life, and the role of women in His ministry.

But Luke didn’t stop his research at Jesus’ ascension. He continued to trace the ministry of Jesus through His Spirit’s work in the early church. That unique research yielded the only historical account of the first thirty years of the early church: the Acts of the Apostles.

Luke could have had no idea how far his work would go through space and time. But he was inspired, compelled, and driven on by the marvelous truth about Jesus Christ.

The truth about Jesus compels me to write hymns intended to both inform and inspire, to draw people to Him.

What does the truth about Jesus compel you to do?

Prepare to Be Available

2013-02-26 Creative Process, Devotional, Reading & Study One comment

Father, I can only create as You,
the Creator and Source of all,
the Spirit of Truth,
create through me.
I look to You alone.
I depend on You.
I rest in You.
I am available to You.

But being available to You is more than just words and wishes.
In obedience to You and by Your Spirit’s enabling,
I keep myself a pure vessel for Your use:

If anyone cleanses himself from these [dishonorable] things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work. Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. (2 Timothy 2:21-22, NASB)

I do what I can to make myself ready.
I try to keep both my body and my mind
rested,
fed, and
prepared.

I make my moments available to You.
I ask for Your leadership,
Your prompting,
Your enabling.
And as You lead, I take that one step of faith.
Procrastination is disobedience.
It is missing a precious opportunity from You.
“Well begun is half done.”

Father, teach me to do all I can to
keep myself available to You.

Available

2013-02-21 Creative Process, Devotional One comment

Creative work has its pressures.

My wife can take one look at my face and tell if I’m working on a hymn. She says I look constipated. Such writing requires tremendous amounts of concentration and sustained focus. You have to hold in mind every aspect of the overall character and flow, all the while carefully choosing every word.

Your experience with your creative work is probably like mine. No matter how many times you’ve done it, with each new project, each new day, each new problem, you wrestle with the question, “Can I really do this again?”

I find tremendous inspiration from the example of Jesus. His responsibilities dwarf mine, yet He didn’t take them on Himself. He depended completely on His Father. He only said what His Father gave Him to say and did what His Father showed Him to do. The only thing on His “to do” list was to trust and obey.

That is my only responsibility as well: to trust and obey. I only need to keep listening and stay available.

  • When I awake in the morning, before I get out of bed, I simply make myself available to Him.
  • When I start a new writing task, I simply make myself available to Him.
  • When I get stuck and the words stubbornly resist my best efforts to shape them, I set the task aside, do something else for awhile, and simply make myself available to Him. He always calls me back in His time.

Throughout my day, I have to resist the temptation to reserve all my energies and attention for my specialized work, my “calling”. My true calling is to stay available to Him, always, in every situation. Some of my most satisfying and fruitful work has come in response to God’s interruptions.

You can trust your time and responsibilities to Him. He knows what needs to be done. Just stay available.

Time

2013-02-19 Creative Process, Devotional No comments

When we consider the natural world, we begin to realize that time hides from us many of the Creator’s most spectacular miracles. Some are too split-second for us to perceive; others are too gradual to appreciate.

For instance, on one hand, consider a single beat of a hummingbird’s wing (up to 80 per second!). On the other hand, ponder the sculpting of the Grand Canyon.

Or think of the human body. Each simple function is a chain of interworkings, incredibly complex, yet almost instantaneous. But just as marvelous is the transformation of a microscopic egg into an adult human being, capable of reason, imagination, love, work, and worship. (Growth seems to be God’s favorite miracle. Up close, it’s invisible. From a distance, it’s breathtaking . . . too beautiful to rush.)

We are locked into the present, with narrow notions of fast and slow. We are caught in the blindness of time, space, and self. The Everlasting One blesses us, and we do not see Him coming or going. We fail to trace all the wonders of Him who is unhurried and unhindered by time, reigning in eternity. To the Overlord of all the ages, the Master of each  moment, nothing is fast or slow. Time is not a barrier or a restraint, but a tool wielded by His wisdom.

How foolish, then, for us to pretend to be masters of our time. We frantically try to control what we cannot control. Rigid, rushed schedules are our attempts to bring productivity, consistency, and balance into our confusion and fatigue.

But the Lord reminded me years ago that time anxiety is as foolish and unproductive as all other anxieties. “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” (Matthew 6:27, NIV)

Anxiety blocks our free and open response to God’s moment-by-moment leadership. Worry produces only tension, selfishness, and insensitivity. It chokes out love, gentleness, and joy.

Turn to one of the Gospels in the Bible (Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John) and read about Jesus. Notice that while He had so much to accomplish in so little time, He never rushed. He was busy, but He never seemed tense or hurried.

That’s because He focused on only one priority: following His Father’s leadership step by step. Each moment was in His Father’s hands, so Jesus simply did as He was directed to do and worked as He was enabled to work.

Our Creator, our Father gives us the same privilege. We don’t need to juggle our priorities and obligations in our own wisdom. God wants us to lead and balance our lives by his wisdom.

He calls us to listen and respond to His leadership regarding time. We are to use our self-discipline there rather than toward our own arbitrary schedules. As we do, He breathes natural balance and joy, a peace and productivity into each moment, of both labor and rest. He slips accomplishments into our schedules that surprise and delight us.

He is personally with you always. He would be delighted to guide and provide for your time needs. This is just one more area in which He calls us into a closer, more constant fellowship with himself.

God’s gifts are practical. They are more satisfying than we have tasted or imagined. He invites us to discover them all.

God is never in a hurry.
He is the master of time, not its slave.
Walk with Him in His peace.

 

Saturate Yourself with the Truth

2013-02-14 Creative Process, Reading & Study No comments

To nurture your creativity and your life in Christ, be a passionate, lifelong student of the Bible.

When I was in my late twenties, my mentor, Dr. Morris Weigelt, gave me a line paraphrased from Henry David Thoreau*:

Saturate yourself with the truth,
and the truth will exhale from you naturally.

That statement stuck with me, and it has proven so very true. God’s Word is the truth about reality. But more importantly, it helps us know God as a Living Being. You’ve probably experienced how rewarding it can be to get to know a human being, whether a spouse or a close friend. The process for getting to know God is very similar, but infinitely more fascinating and rewarding.

Realize that everything He does is aimed at one goal: to share Himself with us. Son and Spirit, creation and redemption, need and abundance, life here and hereafter, His entire agenda is to give Himself to us and draw us into Him. He wants you to know Him.

Simply cooperate with His loving desire for you. Seek Him for His own sake, not for your own ends. Marinate your mind in Him and in His Word, and He will reshape not only your thoughts, but your imagination, your heart, and the person you are in your daily life. Remember the old saying:

Sow a thought, reap an act.
Sow an act, reap a habit.
Sow a habit, reap a character.
Sow a character, reap a destiny.

Psalm 119 is a wonderful meditation on this very idea. For years as I regularly read through the Psalms, I dreaded coming to Psalm 119. It seemed to drone on and on, saying the same thing over and over again. But as my heart grew to sincerely desire God’s Word, the Psalm became precious to me:

I rejoice in following your statutes
as one rejoices in great riches.

Open my eyes that I may see
wonderful things in your law.

I run in the path of your commands,
for you have set my heart free.

Turn my heart toward your statutes
and not toward selfish gain.

Your statutes are my heritage forever;
they are the joy of my heart.

(Psalm 119:14, 18, 32, 36, 111, NIV)

Saturating myself in God’s Word has proven vital, not only in the big picture of life, but in my daily writing as well. When I’m writing a hymn, for example, I don’t laboriously go through my research notes and try to construct every idea into verse. Instead, it’s more like eating. I ingest the food. I take in the truths until they are personally, emotionally meaningful to me. I saturate myself. Then through processes I can’t see or fully control, the words are born.

Communicators, creators, believers, saturate yourself with the truth. Then experience the amazing and varied ways God causes that truth to exhale through you.

 

*For the full context, see The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, Autumn, Nov. 1, 1851.

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