Post 3
What happens when you have a creative idea, vision or goal, and you are struggling with how it should pan out ?
In the context of this new way of approaching art making (refer post 6/08/2019), and all that God was revealing to me, I was eager to build a course combining this approach. I wanted to use the tools I had learned in the intuitive approach, but I wanted a God Inspired directive and environment that would host the work of Holy Spirit. I was so excited and infected with joy, that it was easy to gather willing students who wanted to connect more to God through their art. I had no idea what each lesson would look like and I struggled to visualize each lesson, in the way I would prepare when I taught before.
Well, the irony is that God already had designed the course and how it would all pan out, it was me that had to be prepared and equipped. I had committed to a two-month contract in a secular job prior to all this new insight, and even though I was bursting to birth this new baby, God in His wisdom and gentleness held me back. I was so afraid the momentum of my new found passion and energy would dissipate in the long wait, and people would lose interest if I delayed presenting it. As we all know, everything must happen now!
But in fact, the opposite unfolded. I had much more time to gather disciples and God was leading one person after another across my path. The opportunities to witness and draw people into what God wanted to do through art was overwhelming. Matt Tommey, author of Unlocking the heart of the artist, talks about embarrassing favor. God was going ahead of me and doing all the recruiting and preparing of hearts, making them hungry for breakthrough and more of Him in their lives. Not long, and I had enough people interested for 3 classes.
Those two months prior to starting I was so tired and fragile at night after a long day’s work, but that frame of mind kept me desperate for God’s presence and the power of the Holy Spirit. I would literally just lie and weep in the safe space of God’s word, or a testimony on the internet, or a random prophetic word that just seemed to speak straight to my heart. In this process. I could already then feel the weight of the responsibility of mentoring people, wanting them to encounter Jesus, and that I could potentially mess it all up.
Here in lies the miracle. It was only my responsibility to be available. God designed every lesson and topic on a as need to know basis. He was a step ahead of me all the time.
I think this valuable lesson in my life was quite profound, and perhaps helpful to you.
When God wants to do something, he stirs you, he gives you a glimpse of the dream, not all the dots are connected and not everything always has to be planned out to the last detail, or even where you find all the resources. There is a basic framework of an idea, but submitted to the leading of the Holy Spirit, through the guidance of the word of God…it’s a journey that unfolds.
Every idea, project, vision, ministry, is a creative process, an unfolding and a journey that is submitted to the Creator of all things, whose imagination and creative solutions are limitless.
As in the context of intuitive art, if we fix ourselves on a specific, detailed expectation of how any of the above should materialize, if we have have a specific end product in mind and need to know all the details before we move on, we limit our creativity and the work that God might want to do. We don’t give ourselves opportunity to discover what actually is possible, because we have already determined the creative boundary.
I have just recently attended an art therapy workshop for five days with Psychologist and art therapist Samantha Davis. We were looking at how art is used as a therapeutic tool to bridge the gap between the unconscious and conscious. Winocott’s theory that if we hold the space for client in therapy, and we are comfortable with the unknown and not giving the client our answers, perspectives or directing the process of art making and problem solving, we then open up the opportunity for the client to discover what’s going on in their subconscious and for them to realize through their own creative problem solving all the possibilities solutions available to them. Directing a client or trying to “fix” their problem would shut down the opportunity for their own creative thinking and road to wholeness.
She says it’s in those awkward unknown, quiet moments that stuff begins to surface.
It makes sense then that when we don’t have immediate answers from God, or sense his silence in certain questions in our life…that He is holding the space for us, to be creative, or to realize truths about ourselves, to discover who He is and who we are, and what we are capable of, since he has given us everything we need.