For my birthday this year, my thirteen year old daughter game me a present that I will never forget. At midnight, she came into my room, gave me a kiss, said Happy Birthday, then left a present on my nightstand. I’m a good sleeper so I thanked her but immediately fell back asleep. When I woke up the next morning, I realized what she had left for me. She had put together slips of paper in a small box. Each paper listed an attribute that she saw in me. Some even had an explanation at the bottom as to the deeper meaning.
As I looked through all her papers with words like inspiring, loyal, trustworthy, entertaining, and generous, I began to laugh, cry, then laugh some more. My kids are great about having that effect on me! Then I came upon an attribute that puzzled me. The piece of paper said: “CREATIVE (not with crafts but with God)”.
I knew exactly what she meant about me not being crafty in a Martha Stewart kind of way. I really try hard at that one. I work at it. But sadly, my crafts are almost always a disaster, a “Pinterest Fail” if there ever was one. A while back, I was given an assignment to make some prayer journals for a women’s ministry event at our church. The supplies for this assignment included notebooks, fabric, iron-on fabric glue and decorations (to be hot glued). Let me just say, that my journals turned out to be a hot mess (you can catch a glimpse of one in the picture above). And although they still had usefulness (thankfully God doesn’t care that our prayer journals look great or that we even have a prayer journal – He just wants to spend time with us), I doubt anyone at church will ask me to help with a crafting project from now on. I’m pretty sure they hid my journals at the bottom of the stack.
So the fact that my daughter doesn’t attribute the gift of creating amazing crafts to me was not a surprise at all. But I was a little stumped by the “creative with God” part of her paper. Later when we talked about it, she told me that I was creative with God in that I could usually spot Him in situations, could direct conversations back around to Him, and managed to talk about Him a lot in our everyday lives. This immediately became my favorite gift from her, not because I really believed that I deserved that acknowledgement but because she saw something in me that I didn’t recognize. Her small note of encouragement inspired me to be a better mom, friend, and neighbor while reminding me that this life is not about me. It is about allowing God to use us to make an impact in others lives.
As followers of Christ, we are called to seek Him with all of our heart. To grow in our faith through gaining a knowledge of His word, being obedient to His direction, and learning to trust Him. The more we seek Him and the more we allow Him to permeate every area of our lives, the more we can’t help but share that passion, that love with others.
Source: Pinterest
Spending time with Christ allows us to regain focus even among the chaos of our lives. It changes the way we approach each new day, not with dread in our hearts but as an opportunity to make a difference in our world. It can provide a more positive outlook as we begin to look for Him in situations (even the really tough ones). We begin to see other people through Jesus’ eyes rather than our own (and His eyes are filled with grace and compassion). Our expectations and our attitudes can become more Christ-like as our faith grows. All of this will occur because the more time we spend with Christ, the more He can shape us to be like Him.
Although it can be difficult to set aside the distractions of life, we must carve out time to spend with Christ in prayer and Bible study each day. That is when we learn to depend on His provision, follow His guidance, and seek Him for protection and comfort. One faithful and obedient step leads to another. The result is a passion and a boldness to share him with others. He will both give us the opportunity and the creativity to work with him in those situations to further his kingdom. This is not to say that there will not be times when the distractions of life start to win the battle for our attention, but it is in these times that we must cling to the promises of God. Although the Bible is filled with many wonderful promises, one in particular that is very meaningful to me is Lamentations 3:22 – 23.
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness“.
Source: Pinterest
While we can’t all be good with crafts (I’m getting over it!), my prayer is that we will all be creative. Creative in that we sense Christ’s presence in our lives and follow His lead. That we seek Him. That we allow Him to change us – change our attitudes, our perspectives and make us more like Him. I pray that we will not be able to contain His love and keep it to ourselves but instead feel compelled to share it with others. And thankfully none of this requires a trip to Hobby Lobby!
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