Just like Joseph, God knows our name. When God speaks it to us, it is
full of revelation that is available to explore. When God names us,
there are meanings in that name, to discover and walk in, that will
cause us to experience God in a much greater and more intimate way.
Every time we stumble upon or receive a hint of the creativity
encompassed in our name, it causes a greater dependency on God to
fulfill the call. It enlarges us so God can come and fill the new space.
It’s just like breathing. Inhale understanding, exhale application.
Think of what may have happened to Joseph when the angel called to him
by name. “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your
wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit”. It all
happened so beautifully in the dream, but what about his emotions and
thoughts when he woke up?
Can you see Joseph’s mind on over drive?
What did that angel just say? Son of David? Of course I know I am a
descendant of David, but me??? I didn’t know it meant THAT! I mean me?
And all the scriptures he’s ever been taught about the history of the
Jewish people and the promised Messiah come flooding in. What? Wait a
minute! Slow down. Yes, there are scriptures that it is going to be a
virgin birth, but c’mon.....Mary? And I am supposed to suspend logic and
rush headlong into something I am not prepared for?
God is the
author of creativity. You can’t make this stuff up. A virgin birth. A
miracle baby. A couple of unknown nobodies partnering in one of the
most creative ideas God ever had. And the Bible is full of them! It is
crazy how we read some of the astounding accounts and it becomes a
fable, when if you think about it, we hang all of our faith on a
creative idea that makes no sense to the natural mind. A virgin birth?
Creative ideas bypass logic and common sense to unlock a heart
response. In Joseph’s case, God was telling him, “You were made for this
day. I have placed you in this location at this specific time because I
am about to turn the page of history and open the door to the future
and when I do, NOTHING is going to be the same. You are the hinge on
which I am hanging the door.” WOW!
And it is the same for us when
we step into ownership of the creative. We co-partner with the Holy
Spirit to be the hinge on which He hangs a door to more. Our
partnership opens up something even we don’t understand fully, but there
is quiet awe and a humility that happens inside when we begin to
understand that we are part of something much bigger than ourselves.
And may I submit to you, that in order to fully enter the more God
wants to open up through our lives, we have to accept that WE are a many
chambered temple. There are rooms inside of us that have yet to be
explored. I thought I was a one room cottage until God broke in totally
uninvited and unexpected and abruptly shoved a mirror in my face and
said, “Look at you for a change. See what I see. You are creative and I
am about to prove it to you in the most blatant way. I am going to
offend you with the beginnings of a gift you were not even aware of and
never even wanted.”
When He wants to communicate a message
urgently, God is not necessarily a gentleman. He will confront you with
the “more” you never expected or thought of, and it might scare the
living daylights out of you. You just might have an experience like
Joseph that says…I always knew my name was Joseph, but I had no clue
that I would be the one. You might even want to run away because the
unveiling is too overwhelming and scary, and all the objections of being
too old, of knowing what you are already called to do, of time it will
take to invest in and develop that hidden and budding creativity come
rushing at you. You might even feel anger. For me, it was an identity
crisis. How could I not know I could draw or paint all my life?
God’s dream of creativity for us upsets the status quo. What you
thought was going to happen, what you thought was going to be
comfortable, becomes an all-encompassing life journey. Like Joseph, we
are giving up what is a somewhat predictable existence, to be part of
some untold, yet marvelous story. Most of the time, the dream is
two-fold. It stretches us past the membrane of our present notion of
ourselves, while also impacting those around us. Joseph changed, but
his change provided the platform for his son to become all God had
called Him to be.
When you embrace the dream, you are agreeing to
cooperate with God to design something new, whether it is an object, a
thought or insight or a solution. We just call that creativity. We
co-create with God.
Creativity is expressed in art or music or dance
and poetry. Those are major culture changers and influencers that God
wants to use today, but creativity is not limited to the arts. God
wants us to take creative thought into the business world with the
inventiveness we need today. He wants us to take it into the community
with a creative solution that the mind of man cannot think of. He wants
to take it into government, education and every one of the spheres of
influence. Creativity is thinking like God thinks, to bring an
expression of Himself into the world, and awaken people to how much they
mean to Him and Who He wants to be for them.
So, reading the
Christmas story for me this year has become an invitation to be “all in”
in my own story; the story God is writing through my life, whether or
not I am seeing the big picture. I have enough assurances that I am on
the right track by now to allow me to just keep following the
“breadcrumbs” of the hints of direction confident He will bring it all
together. Along the way it is an adventure of discovering the
sufficiency of God in every situation.
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