See What God Sees In People

There are two sides to what God wants to do in the lives of artists:  what happens when you are alone with your work, and what happens when you connect with others.  This article touches both aspects.

I was a student in Bible school, preparing for ministry because I felt called, but inwardly wishing I could just be a writer or a musician. The other students in the school were driving me crazy – I’m sure I was doing the same for them – and one day I prayed:

Lord, You seem to be able to love people.  What do you see in them?  You must see something I don’t see.

Almost immediately I began to see people differently.  I began to see Christians in the light of the presence of Christ who lives in them.  They didn’t always live up to all they could be in Christ, but I saw them in terms of His covenant promises and His patience with them.

And I began to see non-Christians in terms of the price Jesus had paid for them.  It made it easy to be moved with compassion towards them.

Left to myself, I tend to be harsh and critical – and I seem to be fairly typical of people who have an artistic temperament.  Artists have to be perfectionistic; it motivates us to polish our work until it really stands out.  But it can give us a cynical view of the people around us.

Jesus looked at Simon, whose name hints at instability or an inability to follow through on a conviction, and He renamed him “Peter” or “rock”.  He saw Peter not just as he was, but as he would become when God had His way in his life.

What do you see when you look at people?  Do you see only what is, or do you see what God is doing?  Ask God to help you see people as He sees them.

This enhanced vision will affect your artistic career in several ways.

First, your world-view will show through your work.  If your view of people is cynical and disparaging, it will affect everything you do.  But if you see people as God sees them, it will show up in your writing, your paintings, your music.

We’ve all seen the difference between the performing artist who feels superior to the audience and the one who loves the audience.  And some writers despise their characters; others love them.  It makes a difference.

Second, your relationships with others will reflect how you see people.  This will affect your home, your friends, and your professional contacts.

If you want to find more ministry opportunities as you mix with people, ask God to help you see them as He does.  You will see opportunities to nudge people towards the purpose of God.

Third, you will sometimes find that God stirs your heart to right some of the wrongs in the world.  He will cause you to see people who are locked in poverty, ignorance, abuse, addiction.  And God will challenge you, It doesn’t have to be this way.  You can make a difference.  And then He will give you ideas that can indeed bring change.

Perhaps by now you’re wondering, “What makes you think anyone can see people as Jesus sees them?”  Part of the answer is the story of my own life, which changed radically when I asked God to let me see what He sees in people.

But my story isn’t enough.  Colossians 1:24 gives the key:  “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  If Jesus lives in you, He will look at people through your eyes.  He will think His thoughts in your mind.  He will love people through you.

And this is basic Christianity.  We can’t just follow Jesus, as though our flesh had the strength to keep up with Him.  We have to let Him live through us.

And this will make a huge impact on your art.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2008, GospelSmith  ::  www.gospelsmith.com

Go Deep With People

Solomon was a king, which meant he continually dealt with people; but he was also an artist – he was a writer – which meant he had a deep and a reflective nature.  So his observation in Proverbs 20:5 shows that he came to realize that only a rare few could relate to the deepest feelings and dreams of those around them:

Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water,
But a man of understanding will draw it out.

Perhaps more than any other group, artists see deeply into the people and the world around them.  This gives artists a unique and powerful voice in society.
If artists are steeped in their own decadence or in the failings of the world around them, they can only increase the darkness.  But Jesus has called every disciple to gaze upon Him and to become filled with light, and then to shine throughout the world.  (See Luke 11:33-36.)  This has special meaning for Christian artists.

First, we can’t shine in the world just by conforming to it.  We must bring something different.  Second, we gain a deep understanding of people as we bask in the light of Jesus because His light exposes what is in us.  Third, we learn to coax people’s stories out of them because we learn to see past the veneer of social convention – if we first allow the light of Jesus to reach beyond our outer behavior and to touch our depths.  Take a closer look.

1) If the world around us is in darkness, we can’t just conform to it if we want to bring light. This is problematic for artists because a certain level of professional conformity is necessary if our work is to be taken seriously.  We can’t just throw off all conventions.

But within an existing genre, our work can still stand out.  As we spend time with Jesus, we can expect Him to give us ideas that will fit in just enough to find an audience, and yet will also challenge the status quo.

2) Jesus is deep, and the light of His presence will tug at the deepest places in our own hearts. He is not content with surface religiosity. As we let our faith challenge us and push us out of our comfort zone, Jesus will cause us to understand ourselves deeply. We will see past our little white lies and subterfuges, and even then will discover that He loves us still.

This will affect our world view, which in turn will affect our work.

3) As Jesus begins to reign over us deeply, we will find that He coaxes our deepest longings out of us. This in turn will empower us to do the same with others.  Often our prayers come from the mind – we think we know what we want – and God’s answers demand self-denial because He does not give us what we had first asked for.  Instead, He answers the longing of our hearts.

We have to let go of the superficial desires we thought we had, in order to grasp the heart-desires He is prepared to give us.  This is the “lose-your-life-to-find-it” principle that lies at the core of Christian discipleship.

If God has designed you for the arts, He has designed you to see differently than others around you.  But the core principle of discipleship remains the same for all:  we need to see Jesus, and we need to follow Him closely.

As we do, we find that as Jesus strips away the veneer of our niceness to get to the core issues in our hearts, He enables us to see others as He sees us.  We see the ugliness of self-worshipping humanity, but we also see His ceaseless redemptive love.

Focus on Him.  Little by little, His light will make you into a man or woman of understanding who will be able to draw out the deep waters of those around you.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2008, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

Creativity And Godly Fear

“Show, don’t tell.”  This is classic advice for writers.  I heard it repeatedly, growing up as I did in a home with two writers; since then, I have encountered it repeatedly in writers’ magazines.

So the last article told about how the fear of God impacts artists, but this one will use my experience to show what these principles look like.  I work with three kinds of art:  writing (books and the online school), graphic arts (just for fun), and prophetic music.  Here’s the story.

A few weeks ago, I arranged to record about an hour and a half of spontaneous song.  At the last minute we sent the announcement to a couple of churches; I was surprised that about thirty people showed up to pray and soak as I played and sang.

It was tough going.  Prophetic song is the ultimate in multi-tasking, and it was all I could do to find melodies and lyrics.  Further, I was experimenting with a new format as I used the sounds from two keyboards at one time.  (Others do this as a matter of routine, but it’s new to me.)  I suspected that people felt trapped, bored with the music but too polite to get up and walk out.

When the music ended, I was astonished to hear several people tell of visions and other encounters with God.  They seemed surprised that I hadn’t sensed the anointing as strongly as they had.

A couple of weeks passed, and I received the first file, a recording of the music, without vocals.  I didn’t like my music.  I felt I had blended the wrong keyboard sounds.  It was repetitive.  It had variations that made no musical sense.  I was disgusted with what I had produced.

This was my opinion, but God had another idea.  He began to nudge me that the music without the vocals was incomplete, and that I would have played it differently if I had known it was to be just an instrumental.  (True.)  He reminded me that others had felt the anointing powerfully in the meeting, even if I had not.  (True.)

Then a day later I had to work on a writing project.  It wasn’t flowing; I kept writing the same 500 words over and over again, never quite getting them right.  It occurred to me to soak, and I decided to use my recording.  As I listened to the music, I got into a place with God where the writing suddenly flowed easily and wonderfully.

God was showing me that the music was anointed, whether it appeals to my taste or not.  So if I approach this project with a single eye, I have to look not just at the music but at Jesus. Whom do I fear more, God or man?  Whose opinion means more to me, His or mine?

In spite of my opinions, I see Him wanting to use it.

So I need to do two things.  I need to do what it takes to improve the sounds and lyrics according to my taste.  But I also need to honor the anointing and release the recording as a limited-edition, available to those who want it.   It’s not about my tastes; it’s about the flow of His Spirit.

This process illustrates how the single eye and the fear of God work together to augment our artistic creativity.  He won’t let me throw this work away, but He will let me use it as a starting point from which to improve.  As soon as I agreed with His conviction, ideas began to flow:  how to make this CD available, how to package it, how to start recording at home so I can produce better music, and even what to work on.

He has given me new input about my work itself, and about how to get it out there.  And the key was to focus on Jesus, not myself.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2008, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

The Beginning Of Wisdom

For generations, Solomon’s words about wisdom have been a theological cornerstone for many:

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.  (Proverbs 9:10)

These words tell us our right standing with God begins with holy fear.  But the fear of God also bolsters artistic creativity, another kind of wisdom.  It nudges us towards a single eye, a vision of Jesus that prepares us to receive heaven’s inspiration in our work.

What is the fear of God?  Some call it a reverential awe, but a more workable picture might be the conviction of the Holy Spirit.  To paraphrase John 16:8-11, He awakens our heart to show us:  (1) the things we need to confront in ourselves, (2) how God wants to do things in our own lives and in the world around us, and (3) what He has already accomplished for us in Christ.

If you pay attention to the conviction of the Holy Spirit, you are walking in the fear of God.

Why does it matter if we confront the unrighteous things in our own hearts?  Because it will determine whether our eyes and ears are open to other inspiration God wants to give us.  If we let bitterness, self-seeking, or pride fill our hearts, they will dim our seeing and hearing and we will miss the wisdom – the creative inspiration – God wants to give us.

It’s interesting to read reviews of artists, whatever their medium and genre, and to see how often the great artists of the last century have “wrestled with their demons.”  This phrase crops up again and again.  It has become part of the artist’s mystique that he or she must live in a state of moral failure of one kind or another, and out of the resulting torment will pour out great work.

Jesus offers something better.  He calls us into righteousness and wholeness, and leads us to work from a platform of peace and communion with Him.  And He teaches us to focus our attention on Him so He can pour creativity and inspiration into us:

The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, when your eye is single, your whole body also is full of light. But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness.  (Luke 11:34)

From the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks – or the feet dance, or the pen writes, or the brush paints.  Our work will simply confirm the darkness in the world all around us if we don’t let Jesus give us light.

This isn’t to say that the Christian artist must be a Pollyanna, always cheerful and out of touch with the sufferings and angst in the world.  Jesus also bids us take up our cross to follow Him.  In the world we will have tribulation.  But if we walk in the fear of God and keep our eyes centered on Jesus, His light will deliver us from our own darkness and we will shine brightly in a dark world.

I don’t know if my own talents could land me among the greats.  Most of us aren’t that talented.  But must all the highly talented people of this world wrestle with their demons while churning out their masterpieces?  What would happen if just one wrestled with God instead, as Jacob did?

There are treasures of wisdom in heaven, wisdom that can make an impact in lives.  Whether our talents will give us worldwide recognition or will simply touch a few dozen people, we need to do all we can to tap into the wisdom God wants to give.

And it starts with the fear of God.  When He lets you know you need to devote some of your prayer time to heart cleansing, do it.  It will open your eyes and ears, and you will be able to receive inspiration from God.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2008, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

God’s Generosity

God is generous.  He so loved the world that He gave His Son, so we who believe in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

God’s economy is based on giving, so He not only gives to us, but also teaches us to give to others.  This means several things to artists.  It means that if God has given us artistic talent, He expects something from us.  But because of the fall of man, our talent is not enough.  God is also calling us to receive fresh inspiration and wisdom from Him so we will have something redemptive to give.

Jesus has commissioned us to be the light of the world – but first, He has declared that He is the light of the world.  Obviously, our light cannot shine unless we receive it from Him.

Light exposes.  We can’t see what’s in a dark room unless we turn on the light.  Artists who let their light shine will sometimes expose the true condition of things.

Light also dispels darkness.   Exposing a need is a good start, but then our work must reveal the remedy God has supplied.

This doesn’t mean we need to paint crosses on all our paintings or tell a conversion story every time we write an article.  But we do need to consider God’s purpose for our body of work – will our life merely complain about what is wrong with the world, or will we shine the light of Christ in a way that will point to redemption?

Before we can give this light, we have to receive it.  God is the only one who can give it to us; our own talents cannot manufacture it.

Zechariah 3 shows a scene of Joshua the high priest when he was admitted into the throne room.  Immediately he sensed – and everyone in the heavens noticed – that his clothes were dirty.  Satan stood by to accuse him.  But the God of grace had anticipated his need, and an angel helped him change into clean garments.  Prepared now to stand before a holy God, Joshua received a commission that shaped his own life, and then the world around him.

The Christian life begins the same way.  We come to Jesus, confessing our sins and putting off the garments of our self-righteousness to receive the clean robe of His righteousness.  It’s a free gift; it’s grace; we receive by faith.

We maintain the Christian life by making this same exchange again and again.  Perhaps it’s our own personal failures and perhaps it’s defilement that comes about as we move through daily life, but somehow we get our clothes dirty.  We find that God is generous, and He is ready to provide fresh clean clothes for us as often as we need them.

The difference between clean people and dirty people is not that the clean never get dirty.  It’s that they bathe more often and wear fresh clothes.

So we need to include cleansing as part of our devotional life.  I John 1 talks about this, noting that when we come into the light it will expose our sin.  As we focus on Jesus, we will often discover that we need fresh garments.  God is generous.  His closet is full of fresh robes for us.

What does this have to do with art?  Everything.  Repeated cleansings will change our world-view, and this in turn will filter through our work.  Sometimes it will happen without our realizing it, and sometimes it God will give us a specific assignment.  Either way, our coming to Him for light will make us into lamps that shine in this world.

And as He cleanses us, it will remove the static from our seeing and hearing.  We will come into a higher level of inspiration, and will pour His light into the world.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2008, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com