Message of the Week. Cast of Characters: Jacob: What Comes Around Goes Around and Around…

Over the last few weeks at my church we have been doing a study based on Max Lucado’s Cast of Characters: Lost and Found: Encounters with the Living God
This particular message focusses on wrestling with God from the story of Jacob in Genesis 32. Have you ever wrestled with God? Have you ever struggled with giving him control over an area of your life? I did. At one point I joined God in an epic battle for control of my art career. He won and because He won, I won a fuller more complete life. Wrestling with God saved my life. Join me as I explore this timely topic. As always your feed back is appreciated.

How Much of Art Ministry is About Art?

When arts ministry becomes about arts, it runs the risk of moving toward idolatry. Ministry is always about God, Jesus and people. If we keep that perspective firmly in place, God will take care of the rest. The arts are a tool we’ve been given to express the work of God in our lives and His message to the world. This is the role they must occupy in the life of a Christ following creative. Part of the challenge of ministering to creatives is helping them to remember that and keep God and our work in their proper places, i.e. God is over all and art is the tool we get to use to serve Him.

Excerpted from my upcoming manifesto, Ministering to the Creative Soul coming soon from AMOK Books

End of Year Check Up With John Waller

In March, I will be working with a musician named John Waller at an event called Called2Ministry in Chattanooga, TN. I’ve been a fan of John’s for quite a few years and I am excited to do this conference and meet him. I was checking out his video for the song As for Me and My House and I noticed a video at the bottom of the page with the story behind the song. As I watched that video, I realized that while our roads have been different, we have something in common. There came a time in both our lives when our work became an idol. So as we look at the end of the year and our hopes and dreams for 2012, it might be wise to check yourself. Here John and his wife Josee tell the story. Please take the time to listen. It will be worth your time.

Here is the song born out of the story, As for Me and My House

Lastly, here is one more song from John, called Because God is Good. At the end of the video he shares a little more about this concept. The basic idea is “my life didn’t work out the way I thought it would because God is good. I, Dave Weiss, can claim that as my testimony as well. How about you?

As we approach the new year, check yourself. Is there something you need to leave behind. Take it to the cross and leave it there.

Creative Challenge: Idolatry?

For my devotional reading this morning, I read the first 10 chapters of Jeremiah. (OKay I typoed in the first edition, there are not 100 chapters in Jeremiah) Don’t think me over spiritual, I was playing catchup after a busy week. In those chapters God is instructing Jeremiah what to say to the already captive Israel and the soon to be captive Judah. As you read you can hear the angry and hurting Father mourning over his chosen nation as they fall away from him and into idolatry. My first thoughts went to our own nation but I kept feeling God drawing me back to me. Is there anything in my lifethat is drawing me away from Him? How about you?

I was listening to Craig Groschel yesterday. In his message he brought up a great point. He said what you worry about most is what you value most. What is it you worry about most? Could that be becoming an idol for you? The next point Groschel made was what you worry about most is the area where you trust God the least. This could be another symptom of an idol manifesting itself.

So what’s the challenge. Search your heart and pray, then create something that expresses your idol or something in danger of becoming an idol in your life. Yes I know it may sound ludicrous to create an image of your idol, but I’m not done. The next thing I want you to do is either ruin it or paint the no sign over it and keep it as a reminder for you not to go there.

Idolatry breaks the heart of God. Let’s live to please Him instead. Keep Him first.
w=267, mw=2, mr=2

Functional Saviors…It is finished

Well I’ve been working on this piece in my spare time over the last few months but it’s a piece I’ve been wanting to do for years and last night I finished it. I can’t tell you how good it feels to be able to bring a dream to fruition. I wanted to start it as soon as I thought of it, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. I knew it had to be a video because of the layers and layers and layers that it involved but I didn’t know how to make it just right so it moved to the back burner, a little glimmer at the back of my mind and I thought it might stay that way.

Until one day…
One day I made a mistake, well not really so much a mistake as a lackluster painting. I started taping it as I painted and when I got to the end it just was not great, but rather than quitting I started layering. It became the piece I call “Ten Paintings, One Canvas.” As I finished that piece, I began to see how I might finally make this vision happen. The point I am trying to make is this, sometimes the ideas we get are right now and sometimes they are visions for the future. If you have an idea you and can’t figure out how to complete it or make it work, write it down, sketch it out and then let it go and get on with the other things God puts before you. Chances are there is just something you have to learn to make it happen. God knows the time just be faithful with each day.

About the piece…
I call it “Functional Saviors.” I first heard of the concept in a Mark Driscoll message and it intrigued me. It’s really idolatry, all the things we look to when we should be looking to God, all the things we put in front of God in our lives when we should be trusting in Him. These are the things we use to try to create the mythical perfect life and a heaven on earth…a return to paradise. This piece illustrates that there is only one way back to paradise and encourages all of us to strip away all that it takes to get back to the true meaning of our story, too the only way back to heaven, to Jesus Christ.

The following is the script. One last thing, and I say this with all humility, I believe this may be one of the best things I have ever been blessed to create and it tells a story a lot of people need to hear. Please if it blesses you, share it. Let’s take this video viral to the glory of God.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth
and on the earth he created paradise
a beautiful perfect garden as a gift for his most prized creation
the creation he created to love and gave the choice to love him in return
the creation was humanity.
and in the garden he planted a tree but it was more than a tree, it was a choice.
If you love me, don’t touch it or eat from it.
You can have anything else but don’t touch the tree.
Love me more than it’s beautiful fruit
Not long after they were tempted and they failed.
They did what we’ve done ever since.
chose forbidden fruit over God
and when they did paradise was lost.
Ever since then we’ve been trying to return
to create our own perfect lives
First we trusted in power
It’s escalated and grown and became more and more destructive but it never worked.
Next someone came up with a different kind of power and called it money
with it we could buy our own paradise.
it didn’t work either because our idea of paradise always demands more.
Since the nation of Israel rejected the leadership of God in favor of a fellow sinner named Saul we’ve trusted politics and politicians to build our paradise for us.
It never works, the crown is too big for any man.
We trust in our own strength
we trust our own intellect
We look for paradise in beauty and lust and romance and relationships
We obsess over celebrity and dream of a paradise life that seems a nightmare to those who actually live it as if we will be somehow different
We seek paradise in status, in possessions as if paradise can be found by one upping the Joneses.
and then somewhere along the line some seek paradise in religion
and they get painfully close to the truth, but they see it as a way of being elevated above others and lose the meaning and end up having a form of godliness while denying it’s power.
When the pain of paradise lost gets too much to bear some begin to try to self medicate and in the process waste their chance and the resources needed to make the world a better place.
We do all these things and many more, some good and worthwhile and some very bad and some very destructive but we place our trust in them to build a paradise, to build heaven on earth. I call them functional saviors. They’re the answers we look to because we reject the real answer.
But the world is still broken and filled with people with giant holes in their hearts that none of this stuff will fill.
Paradise is still possible but to get there we have got to strip it all away.

There is a way back, Paradise is not lost, but no functional savior will get us there. The way back is found in Christ alone. Those of us who know that truth must examine ourselves, purge our own idols and walk out our mission. We must serve others in Jesus name otherwise we glorify no one but ourselves and we must share the truth that will set them free while serving them to show them not just that we care but that God cares. Christ is the only answer. Christ is the only way answer. Christ is the only savior.