God is creative, but are you? Whether you feel like a creative person or not, you are one. And your creativity doesn't have to be limited to certain times or situations. You can - and should - be creative in all aspects of your life.
The secular view of creativity portrays this God-given gift as a special talent reserved only for people who are artistic, or for children who can afford to have fun before they're shackled by the practical demands of life as adults. But God, the master Creator and source of all creativity, has a far more holistic view. He has created you in His image, and will enable you to participate in His creativity. He wants you to live creatively at all times and in all situations, so your life can become the masterpiece He intends it to be.
Creativity, simply put, is innovative thinking and acting. Everyone can do it, with God's help.
Here are some ways you can live a more creative life:
- Get to know more about God's creativity. Some aspects of God's character mentioned in the Bible reveal a lot about His creativity. Learning more about those characteristics can help you better understand how they shape God's creation - the environment in which you live and express your own God-given creativity. Consider how God is loving, purposeful, infinite, dynamic, and emotional.
- Nurture your spiritual, mental, and physical health. Think of your life as a fertile field that has great potential to bear creative fruit if you take care of each aspect of it. When you have a healthy spirit, mind, and body, you have great tools to help you live creatively.
- Invite God to heighten your awareness of His presence with you. Each time you use one of your senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting) you can pray for a sense of God's presence with you in that moment. Consider how the experience reminds you of God and thank Him for the gift of it. This practice will help you realize the value of each moment and motivate you to think creatively about how best to use the moments in your life. Then you can better pursue the steps in the creative process listed below.
- Exploration: God is waiting to reveal innumerable exciting new ideas to those who seek them out. Develop a sense of wonder, relinquish the status quo in your life, embrace forgiveness, follow God's voice instead of tradition or pressure from others, place margins on the pages of your life to create free time and space, listen enthusiastically, try new things, look for potential in situations you encounter, enjoy humor and consider how it changes your perspective, and get out in nature.
- Inspiration: Open yourself up to receive inspiration from God. Connect to Him through Christ, humble yourself to trust Him, pray to recognize encounters with God in ordinary moments rather than just at dramatic times in your life, channel your creative energy in positive ways, discern the best from the good, record your ideas, release the flavor of your ideas by taking the time to meditate on them, and step forward in faith to act on them.
- Concentration: Concentrate on developing your ideas. Once you begin working with your creative ideas, you can start to experience the excitement of seeing them come to life before your eyes. Trust God to enable you to actually do what He has asked you to do, take inventory of your resources and ask God for anything more that you need, choose the important over the urgent, deal effectively with interruptions, plan your work for your best times when you can, live in the present rather than the past or future, redeem your downtime, and deal effectively with discouragement and seek encouragement from others.
- Implementation: Implement your creative work. The world is waiting for your creative contributions, even without knowing that they exist. That's because God has designed a world that is nourished by the creativity contributed by each part of it to the greater whole. Pray for courage to present your creative work to others, time your presentation wisely, test and validate your work, prepare to make changes to your work, capture people's attention, and respond to feedback.
Adapted from A Creative Life: God's Design for You, copyright 2002 by Whitney Von Lake Hopler. Published by Xulon Press, Fairfax, Va. The book illustrates the stages of the creative process using Scripture and many examples of real people from all walks of life. It concludes with a study guide you can go through yourself or as part of a small group. To order, click on the link below or call toll free at: 1-866-909-BOOK.
Whitney Von Lake Hopler edits the Live It Channel for Crosswalk.com, the largest Christian site on the Internet. She has acquired extensive professional writing and editing experience through previous jobs as a newspaper reporter, magazine editor (for The Salvation Army's national publications), and book author and editor. Whitney is passionate about using her writing ministry to show how God is working creatively in people's lives. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband Russ and their daughter Honor.
(Article first published July 10, 2002)
Quotes about Christianity and Creativity
“Christ entered our world, the Creator translating heavenly existence to earthly. When our faith in Christ is combined with our own human efforts at creation, the act forges a richer and more diverse form of communication. Artists throughout the centuries have sought to tap into the transcendent by their creating. The language of the arts, it can be argued, is a language born of faith.” ― Makoto Fujimura, foreword to Scribbling in the Sand by Michael Card
The arts are not the pretty but irrelevant bits around the border of reality. They are the highways into the center of a reality which cannot be glimpsed, let alone grasped, any other way. The present world is good but broken and in any case incomplete; art of all kinds enables us to understand that paradox in its many dimensions. But the present world is also designed for something which has not yet happened. It is like a violin waiting to be played: beautiful to look at, graceful to hold—and yet if you’d never heard one in the hands of a musician, you wouldn’t believe the new dimensions of beauty yet to be revealed. Perhaps art can show something of that, can glimpse the future possibilities pregnant within the present time.” ― N.T. Wright, Simply Christian
“…remember that one holy way of mending the world is to sing, to write, to paint, to weave new worlds. Because the seed of your feeble-yet-faithful work fell to the ground, died, and rose again, what Christ has done through you will call forth praise from lonesome travelers long after your name is forgotten. They will know someone lived and loved there.” ― Andrew Peterson, Adorning the Dark
(Excerpted from "What Does the Bible Say about Art?" by Cathy Baker)
If you liked this article, you may enjoy the following:
Why Do Christians Seem Suspicious of the Arts?
How the Church Can Embrace Artists and the Arts, Part I
How the Church Can Embrace Artists and the Arts, Part II
50 Great Books about Christian Art
20 Great Books about Christian Music
The Arts & the Maturity of the Church
How Should A Christian Relate to the Arts?
Why Christians Must be Involved in the Arts