Greetings on this good Thursday. I’m particularly glad to be with you in the Pastor’s Workshop as we “put it all together” today!
Our message this week is, “Begin with Basics: Get Creative”. Our Scriptures are Genesis 1:1-3 and Isaiah 43:1,18-21. Our key thought for this message: Every crisis holds a challenge to get creative.
As you know on Thursday we take our notes, reflections and musings from the week. We surround them with prayer. We seek to discern a message emerging from the Scripture to bring forward on Sunday.
So as you look back on your work this week and “put it all to prayer” what message is coming forward for you?
Here are my “Sunday talking points”:
Every crisis holds a challenge to get creative. For us as people of faith that’s Good News. Getting creative is inherent in who we are and what God’s Kingdom is about.
We have a Creative God. We see that from Genesis 1:1-2, “In the beginning, God created…”. God said, “Let there be …” and it was!
God’s creative work didn’t stop after “six days” (however you choose to interpret that phrase). In Genesis 12 God pronounced a Covenant and created a people. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are the beginning of a long lineage of those who understand their lives to be linked to a living, loving, creating God.
In a time of crisis, a crisis called the Exile, when the people thought God had forgotten and forsaken them, Isaiah reminded the people, God made you, formed you and called you his own (Isaiah 43:1). God will make a way for you through this crisis, a way in the wilderness (43:19), because God is preparing a people to live for God’s praise (43:21).
God continues to create. God continues to call into covenant. God’s creative work centers in the covenant we have with God in Jesus Christ. As we receive and believe in him God’s love goes to work in our lives. The Apostle Paul says in II Corinthians 5:17. “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation, the old is passing away and behold the new is coming.”
As God creates us, God forms us in God’s image. Part of what that means is that God gives us a “capacity to create”. All of us possess this blessing. We see it exhibited most evidently in children, in their playing, singing, drawing, dancing, building, pretending … imagination and creativity gloriously on display.
Even though we’re all given this gift of creativity. As we grow somehow it seems to go away. It gets suppressed.
I believe there are “creativity crushers”. The word “Can’t” is one of the biggest. There is an “antidote to Can’t” in the Scriptures. In Matthew 19:26 Jesus says, “All things are possible with God”.
“Can’t” is a “creativity crusher”. There is also a “creativity encourager”. A tool that encourages creativity is a “right question”.
A right question awakens curiosity, invites imagination, stirs passion, and calls us to pursue possibilities. Samples of right questions begin with: I wonder…, What if…, How could we…, In what ways can we…”
As we decide to Get Creative for God’s Kingdom we can use these prompts to ask some “right” Kingdom questions.
· I wonder, what would Jesus do?
· What if, we are the hands and feet of Jesus in this time and place?
· How could we, join Jesus in whatever work he is doing here and now?
· In what ways can we, bless others and bring out the best in and for them?
We have a God who can (for nothing is impossible with God), and so another “right” Kingdom question is “How can we…”
In the face of crises present in our world it is important for us as a church and as believer to ask those right Kingdom questions and “Get Creative”.
As we pursue this path of creativity we hear the words of Isaiah as an encouragement. God is preparing a people to live for God’s praise. Our creative God is creating people who are willing to get creative for God’s Kingdom.
This is a quick outline of Sunday’s message. Of course there will be illustrations and expansions of ideas which “fill out” the message.
These are my thoughts. What are yours? What word has God given you from these Scriptures? This is how the Spirit is speaking to your heart. Your message is important to think about and write down!
Now it’s time to let your message percolate for a couple of days. Nothing like this “settling” time to help with clarity.
I look forward to being with you on Saturday in prayer and then joining on Sunday I worship.
See you then in the Pastor’s Workshop!
Prayer: Gracious God, thank you for the blessing of this day. Thank you for the gift of Your Word and the message that comes from Your Spirit. In these days let us know that Your creativity is present, not only in the writing of this message but also in the daily living of our witness. Strengthen and expand our faith that we might live more fully into the blessing a being a people prepared for Your praise. This we pray through Jesus Christ our Lord.