Create A Scavenger Hunt

A few months ago I began to experiment with using a scavenger hunt, listing several experiences you can reach for as you seek to grow in the things of the Spirit.

Recently I was led to create a scavenger hunt to stretch myself as I spend December and January with Dunamis Resources in Las Vegas.  Here’s my list; some of it won’t fit anyone but myself, but my list might help you come up with a list of your own.

But here’s a caveat.  I’m trying to avoid good ideas.  I took time to soak and asked God what He wants to do in my life with in the arts in the next few weeks; I want it to be what He wants, not necessarily what I want.  God gave me a few challenges relating to music and I’ve listed them on my Prophetic Song page.  In the arts, it all relates either to writing or to marketing efforts that will help me present CDs and published materials when I travel and minister; here are a few things I feel led to reach for.

Stay filled with the Spirit. I’m seeking to stay in a fulfillment of Ephesians 5:18-20.  I wrote about this a few weeks ago – see Testimony:  Spirit-Filled Living.  It is amazing how creative we can be when we are filled with the Holy Spirit.

Blend soaking and art times. Sometimes I need to be soaking as I work on my writing – I need to get into the manifest presence of God and let Him influence my work.

Get my marketing together. There’s a lot of grunt work for this one, unglamorous stuff that deals with nuts and bolts.

First I need to get point-of-sale capabilities for my merchant account so I can make it easy for people to use my book table when I minister.

God has also challenged me to start reaching out for ministry support.  I’ve been soaking and asking Him how I should do it; in the next few weeks I’ll be posting some new writing about it on my website.

Finally, I’ve known for a long time that I need to revise my website, creating it now in DreamWeaver instead of GoLive.  In the next few weeks, I’m working through Classroom In A Book so I can learn the program.

The specific things God gave me to work on here probably won’t mean much to you; but take time to soak and ask God, “What would you like me to do to get my work out to the people You want it to touch?”  Then whatever He tells you, do it.

Start learning to use the movie-making software that came with my Mac. I had a dream about it and saw myself making a simple DVD.  I need to do what I saw in the dream.

This may or may not be something you need to do, but ask God, “What tools do I have already that I haven’t yet begun to use?”  You may discover that God has already given you all you need to take a large step forward in influencing people with your work.

Finish writing the book version of JoAnn’s testimony. I finished the rough draft a few weeks ago; now it’s time to go over it and make the characters come alive.

Again, adapt this to fit yourself.  What projects has God led you to start?  Don’t just start; if God led you to start, He wants you to finish.  Keep at it.

 

That’s my list.  I think it will make room for me to stretch as I soak 2-3 times a week and encourage 5 people – new artistic techniques, ways to enlarge my influence, and opportunities to encounter the manifest presence of God.

Feel free to join me; take the list to God in a soaking time and let Him revise the list to fit you better – look for items that will affect your work, your marketing, and your ministry opportunities.

 

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

 

Present Your Work Well

In the past few months, JoAnn and I have both been challenged to present our work to a wider audience.  I’m going to share what this has meant to both of us, as it may spark ideas for your own work.

 

JoAnn’s graphics. JoAnn’s manager, Terry Sheppard, has asked us to do several things as we prepare a presentation he can take to potential customers.

1. Prepare a web page.  JoAnn is one of two featured artists on the page; see www.creatives.net.  This has meant she had to choose and prepare images for the site; I have used other articles as a template and have written most of the text for JoAnn’s part of the webpage.

2. Get our pictures taken by a professional photographer.  “You’re going to have to live with these pictures for the next ten years, so get something good.”

Our friends, Daniel and Kari Ballesteros took the pictures, 400 in all, because JoAnn almost always looks good in photographs and I look good in about one picture out of ten.  Some are of us as a couple; others are of each of us alone. Dan posed us well and Kari did a great job with JoAnn’s makeup. I have no idea how hard Dan labored to retouch the photos; all I know is that the pictures of me look a lot better than the thing I see every morning in the mirror.  See http://www.BallesterosPhotography.com.

3. Create two children’s book proposals.  JoAnn and I worked together to craft the stories; I set the whole story for one of the books in verse.  JoAnn has produced sample graphics for both books.

Terry has created a team of educators and psychologists, and they have made suggestions that have shaped her art.  Here’s one:  “Use pastels in the backgrounds and primary colors in the main characters.”  There have been others, but the point has been that they can speak knowledgably about how JoAnn’s artistic choices will affect her audience.

 

My music and writing. I haven’t thought much about my own art because I’ve given a lot of time to helping JoAnn with hers.  But I’ve started working on many of the same things she has been asked to do.

1. I need to prepare MP3 clips of a few songs on each of my music CDs. Identity Network, with its large mailing list wants to showcase my “Peace” CD, the instrumental soaking music we recorded in a meeting a few months ago, but they need MP3 clips to raise interest.

I’ve prepared the MP3 clips and I’m ready to send them; after that, I need to post them on my website.

2. I need to use the new photos of JoAnn and me on my website.  Coming soon.

3. Terry has given me a template of a book proposal I’ll be able to send to publishers and agents as I write JoAnn’s testimony.  He has given me sections I can’t write quickly because they require a lot of thought:

• The purpose of the book is…
• The intended readers are…
• What the reader will find…

Other sections have come together quickly.

 

Obviously the nuts and bolts of presenting JoAnn’s graphics differ from what you may need to do to present your sculpture, your acting, or your poetry.  But use the things listed here to trigger your own imagination so you can present your art as well as you can.

And in it all, take time to listen to God and let the Holy Spirit lead you.  God-ideas are a thousand times better than good ideas.

 

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

 

 

Eyewitness Account: Yelapa

JoAnn and I just finished a 7-day cruise vacation along the “Mexican Riviera” and we got a surprise bonus:  an opportunity to visit Yelapa, one of the places she mentions in her testimony.

A few weeks ago I finished the rough draft of the book-length version of her testimony, but now it’s time to go back through it and make the characters and settings come alive.  So I was excited to have the chance to visit Yelapa – she spells it “Yalappa” in her journal – and to see it for myself.

We took a sailing excursion from Puerto Vallarta.  The boat had a crew of five and 12 guests, and there was too little wind to sail; we had to use the diesel engine.  Four of us managed to get seasick, myself included.  “This is much gentler than the water taxis we had to use,” said JoAnn.  “They were just motorboats, and we felt every wave and always arrived wet.”

Word soon got out that JoAnn had lived in Yelapa thirty years ago, and every time we got a new view the tour guide asked if it looked like it did thirty years ago.  Inevitably JoAnn had to answer, “Not at all; it’s really built up.”

We learned that electricity had come to Yelapa three years ago.  “They really needed it for the schools.  The kids were falling behind without it.”  And though boats are still the best way to get to town, they now have a road that comes within a mile of Yelapa for those who want to walk the rest of the way.  Modernity is closing in.

Eventually we arrived.  “It’s unbelievable,” said JoAnn.  “It’s so built up!  None of this was here.”  We anchored about fifty feet from shore and water taxis delivered us to the restaurant.  It was rustic – a large blue Pepsi awning stretched over poles so we could sit at plastic tables in the shade, our bare feet on the sand.  Vendors came to our tables as we ate, bringing scarves, shawls, jewelry, trinkets, and even a chance to be photographed with an iguana.  “It’s unbelievably commercialized,” said JoAnn.  “None of these restaurants were here.”

We finished lunch and had time for a short walk before our excursion would leave again.  “There’s a path that will take us to where I used to live,” said JoAnn, and we took off walking.  But I was the first to see the obstacle.

“Is there a way across the river?” I asked.  It didn’t look deep, but there was quite a current.

“This must be new!” JoAnn exclaimed.  “I don’t remember a river here.”  We watched a man in his bathing suit ford the river; it was thigh deep and his dogs struggled to swim across.  “Of course, it wouldn’t be a problem for someone in a bathing suit.”

We were in jeans and the clock was ticking.  We decided to turn back.  “Still, I don’t remember a river,” said JoAnn.  “Who knows?  Anything could have happened to make a river in thirty years.”

I was disappointed.  I’d hoped for something that would help me bring a few scenes in JoAnn’s story to life but the river was blocking our way.

Back at the restaurant, JoAnn asked the manager if the river was new.  “It’s always been there,” she said.  “As long as anyone can remember.”

JoAnn came back to my table and reported,” I don’t know how the river got there.  They said it’s always been there.  I guess I wouldn’t have noticed wading through it – I was always in my bathing suit.”

“I think I got what I need,” I replied.  “I knew you were stoned all the time in those days, but now I see how out of it you really were.  Even if I were in a bathing suit, I think I’d remember wading through a river…”

So I’m glad I braved seasickness to go and visit Yelapa.  As I had hoped, JoAnn’s story came to life.  And she got a good picture of me with the iguana…

For the short version of JoAnn’s story, see http://DiaryOfAnExorcism.com.

 

 

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

 

 

Encourage Your Contacts

Recently when I was soaking I sensed that God wants me to take my contact list and hold it before Him when I soak, to see who He might direct me to encourage.

How often?  Maybe once every of weeks.  It takes time to follow through.

For me, this will include a lot of ministers because they are the people I work with as I travel and preach.  In effect, this will be a form of networking.  If your life is more in the arts than in ministry, your contact list will include producers, editors, other artists, marketers, etc.

But this kind of networking is different in several ways.  It is birthed in prayer, not in our own efforts to think strategically. The goal is not to advance professionally but to show the love of God to the people we contact.  We are daring to believe that God will send us to people at times that are more meaningful to them than to us.

I’m not going to say God can’t use these moments to advance our careers.  He can, but that isn’t the main thing we reach for when we read over our contact list as we soak in His presence. We’re saying, “Lord, send me to anyone You want me to encourage, not for my reasons but for yours.”

 

I’ve barely begun.  This week has been unusually hectic and as it began I wondered if I’d find time to encourage five people.  I did; the Holy Spirit overflowed out of me several times and somehow I ministered to six – I wrote about it at http://miraclelifestyle.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/use-the-cracks-in-the-sidewalk/.  But here are two more people, both from my contacts list, that God has led me to connect with.

The first is a pastor in North Carolina.  We talked about things going on in his church and in my ministry, and he asked when I was going to come minister at the church.  I said I’d get back to him and I will, but I knew in my heart that I hadn’t called to try to line up a meeting.

The other was a young minister in our church and I took him to lunch.  I asked him what was going on in his life and told a little of what was going on in mine, and we talked a lot about what God is doing in the church. He shared a very wise perspective – that the body tends to hunger for what it needs most – and I’m still pondering what he had to say.

There was one strategic issue I discussed with him, but I could have done this by phone:  I had asked him to serve on my board and was waiting for his answer. But that isn’t why I took him to lunch.  I needed to take time to thank him for the many times he has made CDs or copies for JoAnn and me, often on short notice, and always cheerfully and efficiently.  And I genuinely wanted to have a friendly visit.

 

God has designed us to need teamwork.  We can’t do it all, and we can’t do it alone.  We need one another.

If you look over your contacts list once or twice a month while you’re soaking, God will lead you to the people you need and to the people who need you.  But many people never get a call unless it’s from someone who wants something.  You can be the exception.

 

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

 

Artistic Limitations

My Bible reading this morning took me to Psalm 113:7-8, and as I read it I felt a surge of hope for Christian artists:

He raises the poor out of the dust, and lifts the needy out of the ash heap, that He may seat him with princes – with the princes of His people.

One strategy would tell us that if we want to make our mark with the arts, we must position ourselves with the princes and policy makers of the earth.  Another strategy tells us to choose humility and to lean on God.

Personally, I opt for the second strategy. There are too many scriptures that say God uses the weak things of this world to confound the wise, or that His strength is made perfect in our weakness.  I suspect that this principle so gripped Saul of Tarsus that he deliberately started calling himself “Paul” which means “little” – he wanted to stay in a position in which God could lift him up.

With this in mind, I want to suggest that the limitations you experience as an artist work for you, not against you.  They are God’s tool to keep you in a position in which only He can make your work influential.  If you can rest in leaning on Him, He will lift you up.

JoAnn and I are starting to taste the world of professional art.  Her manager is starting to take her work to potential clients, and he is also guiding us in the steps we need to take into professionalism.  It’s good to be part of a team; JoAnn’s work will get out to people it would not have touched otherwise.

But teamwork has cost us a bit of freedom.  Gone are the days when JoAnn can crank out whatever she likes; now she must accept the guidance of other professionals – “Use brighter colors on these pages – more contrast between the background and the text – simpler design in the middle pages.”  They will make her graphics more effective, but she is no longer the sole decision-maker about her work.

In future decisions, we will have to include the other team members in our thinking.  It will be unfair to them if we suddenly develop the urge to drop it all and conduct revival meetings.

Ironically, many Christians seem to think this is what the Christian artist should do.  But if the artist is a professional, this option will betray the rest of the team — managers, producers, agents, publishers.  It is not a step to take lightly, and would probably lead to being blackballed by the artistic community.

By contrast, the hobbyist has more freedom.  You can shift course radically without affecting anybody else.  You can drop your projects to make a missions trip or to go back to school; it won’t trouble anyone else if you do.  The hobbyist is free, but doesn’t have the platform, the credibility, or the resources of the professional.

Whichever position you are in, don’t beat yourself over the head about trying to make a kingdom impact.  You will have small opportunities daily to live for Christ – by putting Him first in matters of integrity, by taking time to care for hurting people, by listening to His voice and letting Him guide you in your work.

Your strategizing won’t launch you into the world of princes.  God can; it’s easy for Him.  But you can drive yourself crazy trying to get to the top.

Choose the humility strategy.  Do your job and do it well, whether you are a professional or a hobbyist.  Look for opportunities to let Christ shine through you in the small things of daily life.  Then trust God to fulfill Psalm 113:7-8 as He looks for the humble so He can set them among princes.  You can try to get there yourself, or you can let Him put you there.

Your limitations aren’t working against you; they are positioning you to lean on God.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

The Artist As Shepherd

I‘ve just completed a week of ministry in Korea and have come home with fresh vision for Christian artists.  God is calling us to shepherd our generation.

Shepherd and pastor are the same word, but God isn’t necessarily calling artists to drop their work to become pastors of churches.  We use the word “pastor” for the person who addresses the congregation every Sunday morning, who performs weddings and funerals and baby dedications, and who is for all practical purposes the CEO of the local church.  This is what our culture and tradition have done to the word “pastor.”

But God uses the word a little differently in scripture, especially in the Old Testament.  He often calls the secular leaders shepherds, whether they were politicians or businesspeople.  It’s too long to quote here, but Jeremiah 23 is God’s word of judgment against the shepherds who “destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture.”  Ezekiel 34 echoes the theme.

As artists, we don’t necessarily have a position of authority that makes us leaders.  But we have a capacity to influence people, and influence may shape a culture even more than its authorities do.  God is challenging us to be good stewards of our capacity to influence people, and to nudge them towards godliness.  Here’s an example of what I mean.

My wife has just begun to work with a new manager, Terry Sheppard at http://cre8ives.net.  Terry is a consecrated Christian with a wealth of experience, connections, and creativity in marketing Christian art.  And his first advice to us was to identify a secular cause we believe in, and target the next project towards meeting this need.

Making a long story short, JoAnn’s next project is aimed towards helping and encouraging children in disadvantaged neighborhoods to learn to read.

Think about what it’s like for a child in a bad neighborhood to start falling further and further behind in reading skills.  Is this child likely to finish high school?  To get a job?  To take on the responsibilities of parenting?  And if not, what options are left?

It would be unrealistic for JoAnn to think that her next book will put an end to illiteracy.  But it can make a difference in the life of one child here and another there, and how can we measure how powerful that influence will be?

Why did Terry tell us to look for a secular cause to advance?  Why not simply stay within the pastoral ministry of the church?  Why not proclaim the gospel rather than ministering to other needs?

The questions are valid, and each of us must ask God to help us identify our mission.  But before you decide that you should present your work to Christians only, consider a few more questions.

Are you troubled at the ungodly influences that permeate today’s culture?  Are you disgusted at the filth that parades itself as art?  Do you expect God to find unsaved people through whom He can make a difference?  If God wants to inject righteous influences into our society, who will be the instruments He can use?

Pray about it.  You may find that God starts to give you a fresh sense of missionary direction.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

A Marketing Team

Most of us will go through a season of having to do all our own marketing, but eventually it is helpful to graduate to the point of having a marketing team.

My wife and I began with the build-a-better-mousetrap school of thought and expected the world to beat a path to our door: I with my book, workbook and CDs about prophetic song; she with her four-color graphic intensive books for children. We’ve both had to learn a lot the hard way.

Slowly but surely, we’ve begun getting our marketing materials together. Sometimes I or we are invited to participate in a conference; for that, we keep photos and bios on file. Because JoAnn and I both are multi-talented, we have prepared bios that reflect the variety of things we do. We have built websites. I maintain four blogs. I have familiarized myself with the basics of search engine optimization and have shaped my website accordingly. If you run a search on prophetic song, my materials are usually among the first listed; search for prophetic worship and I’m a lot further down the list. Only rarely have our websites led to sales of our products or services, but they do seem to add to our overall credibility.

I could go on to tell about the colorful business cards JoAnn has designed for both of us, the flyers and email letters we have had to produce for special events, the copies of our work we have given away for promotional purposes, and so on. We haven’t gotten serious with FaceBook or MySpace and have never done anything with press releases, direct mailing, or promotional giveaways.

It’s a lot of work to market our work, and we haven’t had time to do all we could. So a few months ago when we met a man who has a lot of experience in marketing and the arts, we kept our ears open and wanted to learn all we could. I’m creative, but Terry’s IPM Quotient – Ideas-Per-Minute – far exceeds mine.

As our friendship grew, we all began to sense that God wanted us to work together on a few projects. So I’m not sure what to call Terry’s position – for starters we’re calling him our Manager – but he is putting together a team for a special project for JoAnn. He has just posted his new website at cre8ives.net.

For decades, JoAnn has worked on the Alphabuddies, a series of 350 graphics, most of which are a whimsical alphabet made of people, animals, flowers, trees, and more. Terry saw the potential to use these graphics in a literacy campaign aimed at helping disadvantaged children learn to read.

Terry has cultivated a lot of connections over the years, and he has linked us with educators so JoAnn can revise a story she wrote years ago and produce an alphabet book. We needed a writer to make the story sparkle; I ended up doing the writing, which meant putting the whole book into rhythm and rhyme.

JoAnn has spent several weeks putting in long days on her graphics, Terry has linked us to designers who will critique her work. This has led to revisions, but the teamwork is bringing out the best in JoAnn and the pages look better and better.

Now we are in the phase of preparing some of the marketing materials: bios, photos, and more.

I’m going to write other articles about this process in coming weeks, but for this article want to make one simple point: until we built a better mousetrap and waited in vain for the world to beat a path to our door, we didn’t realize we needed to market our work. And until we tried to do all the marketing we could on our own, we didn’t realize that we need a team.

So God’s timing has been right. We’re grateful to have met Terry, and are doing all we can to rise to the occasion as God has given us this opportunity.

Stan Smith :: © 2009, GospelSmith :: www.GospelSmith.com

Soaking Testimony: Learning To Write

In my last post, I mentioned that I was getting ready to take a week to finish the rough draft of JoAnn’s testimony, and that I was trusting God for a flow of ideas for the stories JoAnn will need for two children’s books she’s writing.  Here’s what’s happening with both.

Here’s what’s happening with both projects.

JoAnn’s Testimony. I’m sitting in the deli at the foot of the hill, eating a decadent breakfast of bacon and fried potatoes to celebrate finishing the first draft.

I spent last week in a getaway not far from home; it was a mountaintop retreat with a view of the sea.  My goal was to finish the rough draft of the book, which meant converting JoAnn’s diary into a narrative.  I needed to revise about 60,000 words; I finished 50,000 before I needed to come home, so I hibernated Sunday night and all day Monday, and finished the rough draft today.

What lies ahead?  I’ll have to go back through the chapters to trim the fat, strengthen the settings, and b ring the characters to life.  Then I’ll go back through the whole story and change the names and protect the reputations of everybody mentioned.

Meanwhile, I’ve been praying for guidance for publishing and marketing.  A few ideas had already formed, but a friend has volunteered to recommend me to a couple of agents.  So I’ll be in touch with them before I do anything else to get the book into distribution.

The Two Children’s Books. I had hoped to write the stories for JoAnn before I left for my retreat but didn’t get to do so.  I put these two projects on the back burner and will get to work on them now.

As I’ve spent time soaking, one simple conviction has hit me:  to build the stories around scenes, and to ratchet the sense of conflict a little higher in each until a resolution comes about in the end.

Somehow I think it’ll be easy to come up with a story this way.  All I have to do is come up with the characters — JoAnn has done this part already — and put them in a room and turn them loose.  They always seem to know what to do; all I have to do is write it down.

Soaking Really Helps

When I began writing JoAnn’s testimony a couple of years ago, I sensed I would need to study fiction techniques.  Though the story was non-fiction, it would need fiction techniques to make it readable.

I asked God for help; I had never written fiction before.  I read several books about writing; only one was worth the bother.  But I had read a lot of fiction over the past fifteen years. So between the one-on-one times with God when I was soaking and my awareness that some books are better than others, God began to teach me.

There have been too many principles to explain here, but I’ll show you the difference.  JoAnn’s diary read like a report:

Then X told me he thought Y was embezzling me.  I didn’t want to believe it at first…

This was all she needed to say in a diary.  She wasn’t trying to engage the reader.  She knew X and Y so well that she could see them in her mind’s eye as she wrote.  But I’ve had to rewrite it like this:

Then X turned to me and said, “How long have you known Y?  How do you know he isn’t scamming you?”

As long as he was bringing it up, I asked myself how long I had known X.  Less than a month.  What was his game?  It felt like he was trying to take over my life.  “I’d have to think,” I answered.  “It’s been at least ten years.  He and Bob used to be inseparable.”  I shifted in my seat uncomfortably.  It was unthinkable that X would be embezzling me.

“But it’s time to face the facts,” Y continued.  “He had records for $90 when we came in just now, and there was $190 in the drawer.  What if he’s been doing this every day?”

“I guess I need to check up on it.”  I hated to think of sneaking around behind X’s back, looking over his shoulder as though he were a criminal.  “But I hate this!  He’s been a friend of the family for years!”

“Well, it wouldn’t be that hard to go to the bank for a start,” X continued.  To him it was all business; he and X weren’t friends.  “Maybe you’re right.  All we need to see is whether he’s been depositing cash every day.  If he has, he’s in the clear.”

This is the classic dictum for writers:  “Show, don’t tell.”

What have I learned about this when I was soaking?  I’ve learned a lot of principles, but maybe the most important one has been that God sees the heart.  If I want to show a person or a place, I need to show it in terms of the hearts of those who were there.  I don’t claim to be the best writer in the world, but at least I feel that I know what I should be trying to accomplish when I put a scene on paper.

Enough said for now.  I’m finishing my breakfast and need to go back home and finish all the work I didn’t do last week because I was hidden away in my mountain retreat.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

Soaking Testimony: The Promise Of Flow

Apparently, God was waiting for me to get to this point.  I began to feel overwhelmed yesterday and decided I couldn’t take another step forward without soaking first.

I’m involved in two writing projects right now.  First, I’m taking my wife’s journal from the years when she was converted and converting it into a book-length manuscript.  Though it is non-fiction, I’m studying fiction techniques so I can tell the story well.  (For a short summary of her story, see http://diaryofanexorcism.com.)  Second, JoAnn has recently committed herself to producing two children’s books.  She is coming up with the story and doing the illustrations; my job is to make the text rhyme.  It isn’t too hard to make things rhyme; I do it a lot in my free time — and so on.

Usually the projects are fun, but deadlines for the children’s books are coming closer and closer and the writing projects are taking up so much time that I don’t have time to work on setting up meetings for ministry — most people can’t imagine how many hours of legwork it can take to set up a trip.  So I sank into bed yesterday afternoon and put on some worship music.  And as I waited on God, it took about an hour to have a simple encounter that took only a few seconds:

I sensed Jesus coming to me.  He was smiling sweetly, though something in the smile carried a mild rebuke as though I had unnecessarily allowed things to trouble me.  “I can’t do it all,” I said to Him.  “I just can’t do it.”

His smile got larger. “I was waiting for you to say that,” he said.  Then wordlessly He communicated His promise:  that I’ll be able to sit down and the words will flow; that He who lives in me will do the work through me; that my anxiety had stemmed from trying to do the work in my own strength.  Scriptures began to flood my mind:  “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise…let not the wise man glory in his wisdom…Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

A few moments later JoAnn came in the room to say it was time to eat; we had to leave for church in a few minutes.  I got up refreshed, invigorated by the promise of God.

I don’t sense that God has promised to give me perfect writing.  I’ll probably need to go over it all and tweak it.  But my rule of thumb is that if I can get anything on paper, I can always improve it.  In the children’s books, there are large chunks where I can’t get anything on paper.  This is what I expect God to give me in a few minutes of flow.

It’s a busy weekend. I’m involved in two conferences this weekend and am going to a beach house next week so I can hole up and work on JoAnn’s testimony book.  Ideally, I should finish a rough draft of the children’s books by Monday morning so JoAnn can work on the graphics while I’m out of town.

God likes faith, and I wanted to write down what I sensed He has promised me before I’ll have time to see the promise fulfilled.  I’ll post an update in the next few days and tell how it goes…

God Wants Storytellers

One night at the Project Light Conference, Mark Thomas and Ralph Winter both spoke.  One of their phrases stuck in my heart and has been stirring me ever since:  “God is looking for storytellers.”

I’ve seen this in the Bible.  The four gospels and Acts give more stories than teachings.  Even when He taught, Jesus often used parables.

I’ve seen it in healing meetings.  Often as one person testifies of what God has just done, someone else receives a miracle.  It can become a chain reaction.

More than once I’ve suspected that my life is a story God is writing.  The strange twists of things that go right or wrong are just the sort of thing that makes a story interesting.  Of course, we all want life to be interesting until it really is; then we storm heaven and rebuke every demon we can think of to try to get things to go back to normal.

I’ve read a lot of interviews of how writers write a novel – the creative process fascinates me.  Many (though not all) begin by creating their characters.  Then they throw them into an odd situation and let the characters work out the story themselves.  In a sense, the author predestines the characters to act a certain way; the situations test the characters and change them, depending on the choices they make.

It sounds like real life, and I can’t help wondering if this is how predestination works.  But I won’t go there right now…

Nevertheless, I read a little book by Sundar Singh in which he recounts open-heaven experiences he had.  He met Christians who had died and gone to heaven, and as they told their life stories, they all sounded like parables.  Everybody’s life taught a lesson.

We’re stuck in the middle of our own lives and can’t see the story God is telling.  But every righteous choice counts far more than we realize; and if we’ve sinned terribly, we still have the power to repent all the more powerfully.  It’s difficult as we go through it, but in eternity our lives will tell a story that glorifies God.

After listening to Mark Thomas teach about getting outside the box and Ralph Winters tell about God’s looking for a storyteller, an odd story started working in my mind.  I wondered who first put a bow to a stringed instrument and got the sound of a violin.  Is it a sound that was already used in heaven, and God or an angel taught someone to play it?  Or did man create it by some odd process of accidental discovery – I picture a bored warrior sitting by the campfire and rubbing the strings of two bows together – and the angels learned something new from what man created?

I recall a Bible school teacher who said, “When the Bible is silent, I am silent.”  The Bible doesn’t tell much about how musical sounds were invented, though its few lines are suggestive.  Maybe it‘s better not to think about these things.

But there’s more of God out of the box than in it.  He’s writing a story, and just as He knows the story of whoever first played the bow, I wonder what He remembers about you.  After all, God lives in eternity.  He can remember the future as clearly as though it happened yesterday.

Perhaps He will empower you to tell a story of His works and it will anoint people with the gift of faith.  Maybe He will give you a parable that will inject kingdom values into our culture  And maybe He’s writing a story with your life by giving you an identity in Christ and dropping you into a hostile environment where the life of Jesus will make an impact.

God is a storyteller, and He’s looking for voices who tell His stories to the world.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com