Created To Be Creative

[This is a short message given at an inner-city mission that focuses on training people with soft-skills for life in a broad discipleship context.]

I know something about you that you might not be fully aware of. Or maybe you already know it.

Did you know that you are a creation of the Creator and that you were created to be creative?

Psalm 139:

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you

when I was made in the secret place,

when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body;

all the days ordained for me were written in your book

before one of them came to be.

How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!

How vast is the sum of them!

Were I to count them,

they would outnumber the grains of sand—

when I awake, I am still with you.

Would you ever look at a painting or a sculpture and imagine that it made itself?

What is the likelihood that a song will write itself? That a poem will speak itself into existence. That an airplane manufactured itself?

Unless you’re high, The answer most likely is no. Created things are made by someone. Created things have a creator. All of Creation, all of nature, including us, was once a thought in the mind of the Creator, in the mind of God.

That means that after God made everything, everything including all the distant galaxies, after God did all that he thought that he needed to make you.

You’re here because God wants you here. You’re here because God loves you. You’re here because God wants you to know that He loves you and to know that you’re made in his image.

You existed in God’s mind before you were born, and you’re here because he wanted you to be here.

And He made you in His image. The Bible says that the first people He made were created in God’s image.

That’s the first reason why each person here matters so much.

That why you deserve respect and dignity - lots of it - it’s because you are an image-bearer. You are made in the image of God.

And just like God was creative in making you, God gives you the ability to be creative too, to be a creative person too.

To be creative means? To be creative means to have a good imagination. To innovate. To have an idea to make things better.

Has anyone here discovered some creativity that you didn’t used to know that you had?

Being creative can mean finding new ways to express yourself.

You create thoughts on a page. You take what’s in your brain and you find a way to give some form to it.

One of the greatest things we could be creative about is our own lives, our own futures.

What do you want to make, creatively, of your life? How do you want to work with your Creator to be creative with the time that you were given on this planet?

We each can have goals and ideas to improve our lives, to help us feel a sense of accomplishment.

Having an idea is one thing, creatively working it out, figuring out how to make it come to pass is another.

Claudette, you’re becoming quite a writer. How do you get your thoughts onto paper?

You might want to make a better friendship. That takes creativity. You might want to learn a new skill? That takes effort and it feels great to be able to do something you couldn’t do before.

You might want to grow in your knowledge of God.

That takes reading the Bible, and if you’re like I was, not believing in God and thinking faith in God was a bunch of hooey, it takes learning to think differently, letting go of old thought patterns, old ways of looking at life.

Has anyone here ever tried to learn an instrument? That takes creativity and energy and effort.

That’s the thing. God spent energy making the universe, making you. We need to spend our energy in good ways to make something new in our own lives.

So, first, remember that you are made in the image of God. You deserve much respect and dignity, and you need to treat every other person in your life with respect and dignity because...guess what...they’re made in God’s image too.

And second, remember that the Creative God who made you has given you the ability to be creative with your life, to imagine, to dream, to see that new thing that you want to add to your life, and then to put your energies into creating it.