Perhaps you are convinced you are not creative.
We assume there are “creative people”, and those who lack creativity. The “creative people” are the artists, musicians, and writers; the rest lack the gifts needed to create.
It is as though we have not read Genesis.
“So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.”
Genesis 1:27
When Scripture repeats, we should pay attention. Throughout scripture we are clearly told that we are made in God’s image, the “Imago Dei”, and this verse alone repeats an element of his character.
God is a creator. This is an integral part of his identity, and as ones made in his image, ours as well; “Imago Creare”, the image of the Creator. We were created to be creators, every one of us. Yet so many of us resolve that we are incapable of creating.
The Creator made us to be creators so that we could experience “far abundantly more than we could ask or imagine.” Jesus puts it this way: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”Creativity as God demonstrated it is far more robust than content-creation. It is the act between the absence of something and its existence, and this mark has always been a defining feature of our faith:
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
2 Corinthians 5:17
“…you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.”
Colossians 3:9
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
Isaiah 43:18-19
Our lives, however, are marked by retaining the old and resisting the new.
God does not want us to remain in our old ways and our old thoughts, but to use the gift of creativity He’s placed within us to create something new. Unfortunately, we tend to hold tight to our perceptions, expectations, and desires with a staunch unwillingness for God to pose a new understanding; we will even let relationships and spiritual families split in defense of what we think we know.
Even if we acknowledge this, we fall into the trap of placing the burden on the Creator to fix it. When He does not immediately renew our minds (or another’s), we grow frustrated.
God responds to us as Jesus responded to the disciples when the crowd of thousands needed food: “You give them something to eat”. God has invited us to participate in this creative work. Rather than sit back and wait for Him to renew our minds, He wants us to step into that redemptive process.
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
Romans 12:2
Fortunately, when we fail, there is grace. Jesus knew the disciples were empowered to feed the thousands, and also knew their faith was still developing; he graciously engaged the process with them, creating for them a new understanding of reality.
God the Creator has empowered us to create, to step towards new understandings of Him and the reality He created. He wants us to put our hands to the clay, even if we do not yet grasp how clay works. It is the creative journey itself where our spirituality thrives.
Feeling creative in a secular sense does not matter; we were created to be creators. You are made in the “Imago Creare.”
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Read more at www.wheredidyouseeGod.com/Writings
CodyArt RVA 