Same Message; Different Messenger

A few weeks ago my teens went to Youth Camp with our church.

A friend of mine and I decided to go up and visit camp for the day and stay for the evening preaching.

I was looking forward to seeing and hearing JC Groves preach again.

The sermon topic was “Consuming Worship” and how worshiping God was not just singing praise and worship songs at the beginning of a service on a Sunday but it is something that we are to do with our whole life. God blessed each of us with specific talents and we should be using them to bring glory to God.

“You can ACT at worship one hour a week or you can ACTUALLY worship God with your life.” -JC Groves

We need to: 1. Reflect on God’s Love and 2. Respond to God’s Challenges by 3. Surrendering to that challenge, which isn’t easy but it is rewarding.

When you surrender to the challenge, the Lord can give you a platform to share the gospel and glorify God, …using the talents God has gifted you with.

Sound familiar?

We are God’s masterpieces. (Ephesians 2:10)

A masterpiece isn’t something that you hide. You hang it up for all the world to see. You don’t hang it in an outhouse. (but then again there are those outhouse toilet seats that Willem de Kooning painted.)

As God’s masterpieces, He wants to show himself off through you. When we do what he created us to do, he can display his glory through us.

“You don’t hang a DaVinci in an outhouse.” -JC Groves

JC then went on to talk about his wife, who is a painter but all her paintings are in the basement, unseen, not hanging on the walls. A masterpiece is to be displayed for all to see not hung in an outhouse or left hidden in a basement.

At this point in the sermon my daughter turns around and glares at me. (Which JC noticed, while preaching, and commented on later.)

The same message God’s been preaching at me for several years now smacks me upside the head. Again.

I’m trying to obey and paint more and work at my art more but it is always sequestered at the bottom of the to do list, even though I know I should carve out time to work on it every week, if not every day. (Of course at the moment, I have to clean and declutter my studio because it recently became a dump zone when preparing for company a few days ago.)

(Sketched while waiting for dinner at the camp.)

Is the reason God is still sending the same message because I am not putting the effort in to it the way he wants me to? I am not good at balancing the spinning plates of raising kids, keeping house, and homeschooling. How do I add one more spinning plate of “a set time for pursuing art”?

If this wasn’t something God wanted me to pursue… why would he still be sending me the same message? For six years?

One could say I manipulate the message I’m hearing by the books I choose to read, however I have no control over the sermons others preach or the encouraging words others say to me. I had no idea that it would be a topic in the Truth Project video series bible study and other bible studies I’ve done.

I need to:

• Paint more.
• Post here more about it.
• Post here to encourage others to be the Artist / Masterpiece that God is calling them to be.

and

• Put my art out there… somehow.