Artistic Growth

God wants to bless not just your work, but your life.  Let His love touch four dimensions of your mission as a Christian artist.

Ephesians 3:17-19 speaks of four dimensions of God’s love, and these represent four areas where Christian artists can plan to grow.  Here is the text:

…that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

This passage speaks of growth in four dimensions.  The horizontal – length and breadth – relate to your work itself.  The vertical – height and depth – relate to your walk with God.  Take a closer look at each dimension and what it means to you as an artist.

Length and breadth. These are the two horizontal dimensions, and God wants to fill them both with His love.

But what do they mean to an artist?  I’m going to suggest that length is your artistic output throughout your lifetime, and breadth is your connecting with people.

Imagine for a moment that you become a famous artist, you live and die, and another hundred years go by.  You will be remembered for the art you produced.  Nobody will know what your family life was like; only the art historians will know what efforts you made to promote your work and to develop your career.  (God will know, of course.)

When you think of other artists who have inspired you, you are most likely to think of their work.  Few of us know anything about their lives.

But if you are serious about your calling as a Christian artist, you need to let the love of God permeate both – your output and your relationships with people.

How do you treat your friends and family?  What kind of effort do you make to get your art out into the market-place – does the love of God show in your marketing?  Do you get to minister to people because of your art?

God looks at the big picture, and we must do the same.  He wants to permeate your work with His love – but He can do so only if you also let Him permeate your relationships as well.

Height and depth. These are the two vertical dimensions, and these too need to be filled with God’s love.

Height is your reaching up into God.  What resources do you have in Him?  What promises can you receive?  What grace is available to you?

Paul knew the Ephesian church knew how to reach into their resources in Christ, but he was moved to pray that they would be faithful not to overlook His love as they reached into His treasury.

Depth is where God reaches down into us.  What does He have in you?  Do you belong to Him?  Can He do anything He wants with you?  Have you totally surrendered to Him?

Do you have the kind of friendship with God that Abraham had?  When God was ready to bring judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah, He said to the angels, “Can I do this thing and not first tell my friend Abraham?”  You can have that kind of friendship with God.  You can be a friend to whom He will pour out creative ideas because He can’t bear to hold them back from you.

These four dimensions are your whole life – not just your artistic output.  God wants to fill all of it with His love.  There are no shortcuts.  If you are serious about your mission as a Christian, you will plan to grow in all four ways.

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

Balanced Artistic Growth

Be balanced. Let love permeate all four dimensions in your art.

In Ephesians 3:17-19, we find four dimensions that need to be filled with God’s love:  width, length, depth, and height.  Often we set unrealistic goals because we want to focus on just one or two of these dimensions and we neglect the others.  But the breakthrough you need may occur when you let God direct you in a dimension you have been overlooking.

Here is what the various dimensions can look like in the lives of a Christian artist.

Height. Start with prayer.  Do you pray about your work? Do you ask God to inspire your creativity?  Do you ask Him to show you how to get your work out into the marketplace, and where you can find ministry opportunities?

Sometimes when I write, God will drop an outline into my heart when I pray. But sometimes I get stuck, and feel the words are just plodding along.  When I go to God, He shows me how to make the words come alive – usually by telling a story.

This week I will send out emails to widen the circle I’m touching with the online school.  This is another idea that came to me in prayer.

Depth. Surrender to God.  Are you trying to get God to bless your will, or are you doing His?  How committed are you to the mission He has given you?  Will you let obstacles turn you aside from your calling?

Nothing worthwhile happens without effort.  Nobody accomplishes anything of spiritual value without going the way of the cross – self-denial, walking a narrow way, and at times wondering if you are crazy.  Be not weary in well-doing.  In due time we will reap, if we faint not.

Length. Finish your projects, and create a body of work.  It’s good to have goals and to make sure you get something done.

Many artists never get past the amateurish phase of puttering around with new techniques but never quite finishing anything.  It’s safe; we can silence our critics by saying, “This is something I’m working on; I haven’t finished it yet…”

If this is where you live, the love of God will set you free from your fears of criticism.  He will give you the courage to finish what you start.

Width. Grow in more than one direction.  Don’t just crank out hundreds of works that are all alike.  Experiment with new styles and techniques.  Get more training.  Never stop honing your skills.

This applies to the disciplines of marketing as well.

You can always add to your repertoire, but just adding a lot of unrelated things to your life may prove costly in terms of time, money, and focus.  If you listen for God’s wisdom, He will often show you how to add one small thing that will make everything work better.

Love.  Listen to God.  God loves you.  He is not a hard taskmaster.  He will show you how to grow in all four dimensions.

We all have issues to overcome as we identify and fulfill our missions.  The love of God will help us hear from Him, surrender to Him, improve our output, and grow into artistic excellence.

What dimension have you been overlooking?  Let the love of God take you there to strengthen and equip you.  God is for you – who can be against you?

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

Think Big Picture

Think big picture. Consider all the ingredients that make a complete circuit in your art.

It was my first attempt at writing. I was twenty-four years old and had written nothing but term papers.  I had already become a preacher; I assumed the publishing world would be as excited about the teaching I wanted to write as the congregations were who hung on my every word when I spoke.

The rejection slip said, “Part of the writer’s job is to imagine the impact his words will have on the reader.”  It went on to ask what burdens the words would lift, and what questions in the readers’ minds they would answer.

As a young writer, I had fallen into the trap of writing what was on my heart with no regard for whether anyone would be interested in what I had to say.  The publisher, a friend of the family, let me down gently.

Whether we write or give ourselves to another artistic medium, the publisher’s words apply to us all.  Our imagination has to go beyond getting something on the page. It has to include the people it will touch – and how we will deliver our work to them.

I picture this process as a complete electrical circuit, like the science projects we did in grade school.  It was simple stuff:  a battery, a switch, a light bulb, and a few bits of wire to tie it all together.  The lesson in these science projects was simple:  the light didn’t shine unless all the ingredients were in place.

The battery is God, our power source.  As Christian artists, our mission won’t happen unless we draw ideas from Him.  Otherwise, we will present nothing more than a talent show.

The switch is our decisions.  If we don’t decide to engage in our mission, the current won’t flow.

If the battery is the plus side of the circuit, the light bulb is the minus.  It’s the human need we want to speak into.

The wires are the connections with God and with other people.  They include your prayer times, your marketing campaigns, your book signings or art shows or concerts…  They include all your connections with God and man.

Often in an old car, the electrical accessories stop working because of a bad connection.  In my younger days when I drove old beaters, I often took wiring diagrams and followed a circuit, disconnecting and reconnecting all the wiring harnesses.  This often was all I had to do to repair a broken accessory.

In Psalm 71:18, David spoke of those connections:

Now also when I am old and grayheaded,
O God, do not forsake me,
Until I declare Your strength to this generation,
Your power to everyone who is to come.

David is probably the most beloved artist in the Bible.  He was not only a king and a military commander, but also a musician and a poet.  His music is lost to us, but his Psalms remain as a favorite part of scripture.

But note that David was concerned about maintaining His connection with God.  He was not content just to pour out the musings of his own heart.  He wanted to declare a message that was on the heart of God.

And he purposed to speak into his own generation, and also the generation to come.  He might have allowed himself to fall into the trap of being the misunderstood artist, ahead of his time; instead, he was careful to serve his own generation.  But at the same time, he disciplined himself to produce work that would speak to future generations as well.

Let God guide you to think of the big picture – all of your connections with God and man – as you seek His inspiration in your work.

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

Trust Is Humility

Walk humbly with God.  As you seek inspiration, humble yourself to believe He gives it to you.

Humility and faith go hand in hand.  Both are the art of getting our eyes off ourselves, and focusing on Jesus.

If you spend time soaking, God will talk to you about your art.  He will give you sounds or images or techniques to explore.  Examples:

Right now in my music, I am challenged to create rhythm tracks on my keyboards so I can record them, save them on an iPod, and mix them with my live playing.  I am challenged to play two or even three keyboards at one time.  These two ideas have come to me while soaking; they both have put me on a learning curve that calls for a lot of trial and error.

In my writing, I understand in principle that it is always better to show than to tell, but sometimes I have to write in a hurry and I can’t live up to my highest standards.  Nevertheless, if I take time to soak or if I even get into the manifest presence of God, He brings stories to mind and they make my words dance.

And sometimes when I soak, God challenges me to do something to get my work noticed.  Recently He showed me a simple way to announce the online school of the Spirit to thousands.

As I have explored the process of hearing from God in the arts, several lessons have crystallized:

1) Listening is humility. We have to choose whose judgment we trust more:  God’s or our own.  If we trust His, we will set aside time to listen.

James 1:5-6 gives the recipe:

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.  But let him ask in faith, with no doubting…

If we spend time soaking, we will find that God is faithful to speak to us.  It’s not that we control or manipulate Him; sometimes we have to wait.  But when we approach Him with childlike trust, He shows us what to do.

2) It takes courage to act on what God says. It doesn’t always take courage; sometimes God’s wisdom is so clear to us that we can’t imagine doing things another way.

But sooner or later, we’ll be tempted to second-guess what God shows us.  Is this really the song to use in a worship service?  Is this really the best way to get the word out about an event I’m putting on?  Will I lose my credibility as an artist if I give my testimony?

James 1:6-8 tells the rest of the story:

…he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.  For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

The important thing is to stick with what God tells us.  This too is humility, as we trust His judgment rather than our own.

3) God rewards those who diligently seek Him. Seeking is taking time to listen.  It includes processing what we think we’re hearing from God, to prove all things and hold fast what is good.  Sometimes we can test our hearing only with trial and error.  (Start small.)  Ultimately, our seeking is not complete until we’ve acted on what God has given us.

Seeking is an act of humility.  It is a way of saying that without Him we can do nothing.

If we seek, we will find.  God will give us wisdom and inspiration.  Choose humility.  God will lift you up.

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

Availability Is Humility

Choose humility in your dealings with people.  Be sure you make yourself available to them.

The principle is simple:  if we humble ourselves, God will lift us up.  We need Him to lift us up:  by giving us ideas for our art, by giving us favor, by giving us promotion.  Money can’t buy these things. Only God can give them.

We’ve been looking at Paul’s statement about God’s love in Ephesians 3:18, where he noted four dimensions:  length, width, height, and depth.  If we want God to lift us up in the arts, we need to let humility permeate all four dimensions.

It begins with the vertical.  The way up is down.  The best way to reach up into God is by bowing low before Him.  And when we open the deepest parts of our hearts to Him, it usually begins with our being painfully honest with Him about what’s going on inside.

But another aspect of humility is in our relationships with others.  These are the horizontal dimensions, length and width.  If we humble ourselves here, God will lift us up.

1) Complete your works so you will have something ready for others.  If you have started writing fifteen songs but haven’t finished any, you need to finish at least one, practice it, and perform it.  Don’t wallow in the morass of unfulfilled talent.

2) Get your stuff out into the marketplace. Do you want to paint portraits?  Get something out there; anything is better than nothing.  The greats almost never began with their finest work.  Assume that as you do your best, what you produce five years from now will be better than what you can produce now.

3) Keep learning.  Don’t coast on past successes.  Don’t lock yourself into a style; try new techniques.  Plan to throw away some of your experimental stuff, but make sure you also make some of it available for use.  Learn from books, look up articles online, attend seminars, and learn from other artists who will spend time with you.

4) Work well with others.  Writers and graphic artists work with editors; actors work with directors; musicians and dancers often work with other musicians and dancers.  Let humility guide these relationships.  Be the person everyone finds easy to work with.

5) Be willing to market your work.  You may have written a poem about a better mousetrap, but don’t wait idly for the world to beat a path to your door.  Submit it to literary magazines, and then do whatever you can to help your publisher get your work before more readers.

6) Think “servant” when you market your work.  Your goal is not to make extraordinary claims about yourself; it’s to get your work to the people it should reach, then to step back and let your work speak for itself.

7) Humility will guide you to make your work available to those God wants to touch with it.  This was God’s goal when He gave you artistic talent, and humility will line you up with it.

I have had to work through each of these steps with the materials I’m posting online.  For a few years, I was content to tell people, “God seems to be calling me to create an online school…”

Sooner or later, I had to begin.  Once I started, I saw how to improve the materials – and soon, I’ll reformat it once again.  I’m learning a lot from the comments I receive, and have taken my first faltering steps in marketing.

I don’t have to tell anyone “The online school of the Spirit will change your life.”  I simply make it available, and slowly, I’m starting to receive testimonials from people who say – “The online school has changed my life!”

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