faith, art, and reaching your creative potential.
Ever since I can remember, I’ve been creating — writing songs and stories, filming videos, building forts and making crafts, doodling and taking photos. Creativity has always been in my DNA.
When I moved to Nashville in 2017, I began building a music career. Around the same time, I got really serious about my faith. My two biggest passions, faith and music, were constantly battling for my time and energy. I started to wonder: is what I’m creating actually making a difference? Does God really care about my music? Am I really bringing light to a hurting world through my songs?
I began diving into the scriptures and discovered just how valuable creativity is in God’s eyes. I also learned that my innate desire to create was actually inherited from Him.
God is the Original Creator
God is the maker of the Heavens and the Earth, and the whole world came into being through His act of creativity. All of creation was thought of and purposed by God. Scripture tells us that God created the heavens and the earth and everything in it, and said that it was good.
Psalms 19:1-4 paints a beautiful picture of God as the original Creator by saying, “The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world.”
God did not create a dull and colorless world. He created a glorious world filled with breathtaking mountains and valleys, glittering stars, lush meadows, and vast oceans. God also created humans in His own image. Ephesians 2:10 tells us that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. Isaiah 64:8 tells us, “But now, O Lord, You are our Father, We are the clay, and You our potter; And all of us are the work of Your hand.”
Embracing Our Creative DNA
Since we were made in God’s image, creativity is a part of our DNA as humans. We are people who create because we ourselves were created. Our Heavenly Father formed humans in His image, giving us His creativity for a divine purpose. We are to model God’s qualities in everything we do. We love because God is loving, we are merciful because God is merciful, and we create because God creates.
Purpose Behind Our Creative Gifts
The Lord has intention in blessing us with gifts. Humanity has been given the ability to create beauty for a purpose bigger than ourselves. We are not to waste or hoard our gifts, but rather to share and steward our gifts well. When we walk with God, our creativity glorifies Him and our art cannot help but speak His name.
Practical Ways to Reach Your Creative Potential
1. Understand Your Inherent Worth in Christ
Do you ever feel like you’re creating to prove yourself and your talent? Nothing kills the creative more than the desire to prove. Regardless of what we achieve, how creative we are, how productive we are, or how much influence we have, we are inherently valuable as children of God.
1 Corinthians 10:31 says, “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” The point of everything, including our creativity, is to bring glory to our Heavenly Father. Our talents and gifts aren’t about our fame and recognition — after all, there is no talent we have that God did not give us.
When relationship with God is the center of our lives, we will create from a place of worship, not from a place of having to prove ourselves. We will create from a place of praise, not from a place of needing affirmation. We will create from a place of love, not from a place of pride. As we seek God, I believe that deeper revelation of our inherent worth and a desire to serve and glorify Him through creativity will happen as a result.
2. Break Free from the Trap of Comparison
Comparison inhibits our ability to be creative and weakens our capacity to operate in our God-given gifts. But what if we could break free from this trap that hinders us? Click here to read my blog post all about comparison.
When we understand that we are one of many parts of the body of Christ, we take the first step in walking away from comparison. Think about how ineffective the body of Christ would be if we all had the same gifts, talents, platforms, jobs, and passions! When we try to imitate the lives of others, we create a void in the body of Christ that we were intended to fill.
Consider this analogy. In an orchestra, each instrument blends together to create a heavenly symphony of sound. The violins, violas, and cellos mix beautifully with the grand piano, powerful percussion, airy woodwinds, and magnificent brass instruments, producing a musical masterpiece. If one of these instruments were to be removed, the orchestra would lose its magical touch. It’s the different sounds united together that make listening to an orchestra such a wonderful experience. In the body of Christ, God chooses to reflect His glory in different traits, facets, colors, combinations in every one of His children.
Luke McElroy says it beautifully in his book Creative Potential: “When we ignore the giftedness that defines our uniqueness, we rob God (and ourselves) of our creative potential. We indirectly tell God that we don’t want the parts of Him that He gave us, and in turn, fall into the trap of coveting sameness like everyone else in our culture.”
Stepping away from comparison allows us to re-center our minds on the real reason for creativity — to bring glory to our Heavenly Father, advance the Kingdom of Heaven, and make this world a better place.
3. Embrace Collaboration
Have you noticed that the most successful entrepreneurs, companies, movie studios, record labels, and churches work in teams? This is how God has set up this world. We were created to work together and to be dependent on other people. So let’s embrace collaboration, brainstorm with a group, get feedback, bounce ideas off our peers, ask for help, and get curious. Let’s not be too prideful that we aren’t willing to learn from others. We are more creative together than we are alone. And remember: other creatives aren’t our competitors. The body of Christ is one team, with one common mission.
4. Strive for Excellence, Not Perfection
As creatives, we must strive for excellence. Colossians 3:23 says, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.” Regardless of who is watching or listening, we are to do our best work because it is the Lord that we serve. When we execute things in excellence, we glorify God! Excellence, however, is very different from perfectionism. Perfectionism believes that our art will never be good enough. It traps us in a place of insecurity and fear, fixates on past failures, and keeps us from moving forward in our craft.
Perfectionism refuses to admit that as humans we have limitations. Our art will always have flaws, because we are flawed people. While we reflect the creativity of God when we make art, we cannot reflect His perfection. The good news is that God does not expect perfection from us, and even our flawed creations can bring an abundance of light to a dark and hurting world.
5. Embrace Rest Over Striving
One of the biggest threats to creativity is perpetual busyness. Just because everyone is running a million miles a minute doesn’t mean it’s the way God designed us to operate. The good news is we can choose to reject the lifestyle of hustle that has us burnt out.
God makes it clear that there is a time to work and a time to rest. Even God, the Creator of the universe, rested. Genesis 2:2-3 says, “On the seventh day God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation.”
Think about that: after God created the world and everything in it, He rested! How can we expect to maximize our creativity when we dismiss the very thing that God Himself did? Let’s take the pressure off ourselves to constantly be creating or accomplishing something.
When we are perpetually hurried, we’ll find it difficult to connect with God. But we need God in our creative process because He invented creativity! Our Heavenly Father is bursting with infinite wisdom and ideas that He desires to share with us if we would dare to listen. Click here to read my blog post all about embracing a lifestyle of rest in a world that glorifies hustle.
