Episode 27:
It’s All About Love
Episode 27 dispels the wonky belief that our creative life is only interesting to God if it’s “useful,” by exploring art for our life, not just our Christian service.
[powerpress]
Hello, hello, and welcome to Episode 27 of the Kingdom Art Life podcast. I am Marlita Hill, here to help you flourish in faith, art, and career.
In our last episode, we began tackling this idea that we wrestle with about our art career compromising our faith. And we began presenting mindsets to help us overcome this struggle.
The second mindset I want to share is understanding that this creative part of you has been given to you for your life, not just for your Christian service.
It’s something that God has given to you to use to participate, respond to, and take space in this life. It’s something that He’s given you to engage with Him in relationship.
We’ve talked about how we fall prey to wonky thinking about the relationship between our faith and art career. One aspect of that wonkyness is falling into thinking that our creativity, and our creative life are only interesting to God, are only worthy of being brought up to Him, and are only worthy of bothering him with, if they’re useful to Him.
But here is wonderful news: God is not in relationship with you because you’re useful to him. And He’s not in relationship with you because your gifts are useful to Him. God is in relationship with you because He loves you. And He has gifted you as an expression of that love.
And within this loving relationship, the two of you engage in these gifts for the things that He wants to do for you, for the things He wants to do with you, for the things that He wants to work and develop in you, and for those things that He wants to work, accomplish and manifest through you.
Within this relationship the two of you put these gifts to use in ways that serve Him, and you, and others around you.
Why are these mindsets so important? Well, when you recognize that your creativity put to use in your “secular” art career is a valid, God-honoring way to participate in Kingdom citizenship and community, and when you understand that this creativity has been given to you for your life, not just your Christian service, then you feel safe to let God into that space, into the space where your creativity lives with it’s hopes, it’s dreams, it’s fears, its desires, it’s ambitions, and it’s pursuits. You feel safe enough to let Him into that space.
The thing that makes us vulnerable to making compromising decisions in our career is that we keep God out of that space. Some of it is for fear of what He might take away from us, or what he might prevent us from doing. But sometimes, we keep Him out of that space because we genuinely don’t want to be disrespectful or displeasing to Him. It’s like if there’s something you know your mother doesn’t like. It’s not that you don’t do it, you just don’t tell her about it, and you don’t do it around her. You don’t talk to her about it because you know that it makes her upset. And sometimes that’s what we do with God when it comes to our careers. We keep him out of that space. We don’t talk to Him about it. We don’t do it around Him.
But, if we understand that it’s been given to us by Him for all parts of our life, and all parts of our relationship with Him, and if we understand that it is honoring to Him when we take space as Kingdom children in secular culture through our art careers, then we feel safe to let Him into that space. And we feel safe to talk to Him in that space. And, if we feel safe to let Him in there, and we feel safe talking to Him about our creative life and career ambitions there, eventually, we will come to find that it’s safe to let Him lead us in our career ambitions from there.
And if He’s leading you, how can you possibly compromise?
TALK TO ME
Have you had any struggles with not feeling useful to God or in your church? How did that make you feel? How does knowing God is not after your usefulness change that for you?