Welcome to The Kingdom Art Life, Episode 6
In this episode, we’re going to talk about relationships, and relationship’s part in building harmony. Harmony between faith, art, and career can’t exist without thinking about our relationship with God; and it’s important for us to be honest about where we see faith fitting in our art and career life.
You can’t build harmony between them until you’re clear about how you see each of them individually, and in relationship to one another. To successfully build and maintain harmony, you also have to be willing to address and adjust how you see them.
So let me tell you how we, here at KAI, understand faith’s place in the art and career life. For us, it’s home base. It’s the foundation, the launch pad, the catalyst, the place from which everything else proceeds. It informs our worldview. It is the determination of how we do things. It is the root of why we do things. For us, here at KAI, our relationship with God is the linchpin, the underpinning, the lifeblood,. It’s the invisible thread that holds all things in our art and career life together.
For KAI, and for the purposes of this conversation we’re having in the Kingdom art Life podcast, harmony between faith, art, and career, has to start at relationship. Now, just like we’ve clarified that for ourselves, you, in building harmony between your faith, art, and career have to clarify, address, and adjust where, and how, you see your relationship with God fitting in your art and career life.
And in doing that, I want you to answer a couple of questions. I mean honestly answer them for yourselves. I’m going to post these questions in the show notes at the thekingdomartlife.com, click on episode six and I will have these questions for you there.
The first question is: why did God invite you to relationship with Him in the first place? What does He want from you, in you, through you, with you. And please, let us be clear: He absolutely wants something from you. So, what does he want? Why did he invite you into relationship? When you define the reason(s), I also want you to think about where do those reason(s) and your career life come together? Where does your art and career life factor into the reason(s) He invited you into relationship with Him? I want you to be as specific and tangible as possible. Don’t say He’s invited you to relationship to worship Him. I mean, that’s true; but, what does that even mean? What does it look like? How do you know when you’re doing it? Otherwise, it’s too conceptual, too cerebral. My desire is for us to take our relationship with God out of our heads and into our real, everyday lives. So, make sure that your answers are tangible; I mean you can point to them in your daily life.
The second question is: when you said yes to His invitation to come into relationship with Him through salvation, what did you say yes to? What did you think you were saying yes to? Again, because we need to apply this, where do your art and career life fit into that yes?
If we’re going to build harmony between faith, art, and career, these are questions that need to be answered. Harmony, again in our conversation, is about coming to one mind with God. But, coming to one mind with him about what? Is the relationship with God that you envision what He actually invited you to? If there’s a lack of clarity about that, there can be no harmony.
Think about a couple. From the proposal to the exchanging of the marriage vows, they are not just looking at each other saying will you marry me, and yes, I will marry you. That is not the only thing those two people are saying to each other. They are saying much more than that. The person proposing is saying, “I know who you are, I know what you expect of me and of this relationship, I know what comes with you, and I’m saying ‘yes.’ I accept all of it, and I will be a part of that with you. I take it. All of it.”
The person saying yes, I will marry you, is also saying to the other person, “I know who you are, I know what you expect of me and of this relationship, I know what comes with you, and I’m saying ‘yes.’ I, too, accept all of that and I will be a part of that with you. I’ll take it. All of it.”
Now, that’s what they’re saying in their yes and their I do. The problem comes when these two people don’t realize that’s what they’re saying, or when they don’t mean what they’re saying, or when they’re saying it, and it isn’t true. They don’t really know who the other person is, or what they expect of the relationship or each other; and they’re not actually cool with what comes with the other person. That becomes a problem in the marriage. Now there’s no harmony
There’s no one mind.
There’s no peace in the marriage because they either forgot to talk about those things before they said yes, they said yes and then neglected to keep their word for whatever reason, or they just flat-out made a decision that they were no longer going to honor their word and do their part (for whatever reason they decided to do that).
The fact of the matter is that those yeses between them we’re pregnant with expectation. They were pregnant with hopes and desires. This is like our relationship with God. God’s invitation to us was pregnant with expectation, hopes, and desires. In the same manner, our yes to His invitation was pregnant with expectation, hopes, and desires. Harmony between faith, art, and career means addressing two visions of this relationship and bringing them together into one unified vision – a vision that includes what’s expected of one another and where, and how, our art and career life factor into that expectation.
The first step to that is we have to look at our own selves and examine our own expectations. Then we have to understand what God wants. Since we’re coming to one mind towards him, and we’re coming to his mind about things, we also have to be willing to adjust where we stand.
Next week, we’re going to look at the relationship God actually invited us into. First, we need to be aware of what we think it is. If you go to couple’s therapy, they talk to you as a couple, but they also talk to you individually because you have to understand your own mind. Then you have to come to consensus with your partner and their mind; which is possible once you know where the deviation exists between the two of you. Then you know how to bring the two of you together.
So, we have to know what we’re thinking.
Then we have to know what God is thinking.
Then we have to bring the two together.
Okay family, that’s what Papa gave me for this week. I want you to answer those questions. Then I want you to come talk to me in the chat. Come and let me know what was it like for you.
What were things that were unearthed? Were there any things that surprised you? Were there any patterns of thought that you realize have crept into your thinking about your relationship with God? Were there things you let slip, things you were unaware of? Let me know. Happy Labor Day!!!
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