For the longest time, I treated my art and my faith separately, Christian was who I was and art was what I did. When I discovered that Jesus needed to be lord over my entire life, I thought the creature thing was done. After all how could God use someone who creates creatures in His Kingdom? (Yes, I am aware of how obvious that is now. I wasn’t then.) I ended up freelancing for a licensee of the Ninja Turtles, and while the work was a blast, it was taking me down a pretty bad road. My client had me convinced he was going to bring me the kind of fame and fortune turtle creators Eastman and Laird were experiencing and I was hooked. I really fell hard into idolatry to my career and I was ruining my life. Fortunately God intervened and I laid art down for a season. During this time I got my call to ministry, and I figured being a professional artist was behind me. Well that lasted about six months. You see when I laid art down, I told God I would never pick it up again unless I was using it for him. I figured that meant a church project here and there and nothing more. God had other plans and eventually God showed me how I could use art in ministry and that’s when this ministry and my speaking ministry was born.
But what about the creatures, after all there’s no room for creatures in the Kingdom. Well one day I was preparing to preach at my friend’s church. One of the verses that has resonated with me since the start of my faith journey was 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation, the old has gone and the new has come.” The event I was preaching at was a youth event, and so I decided to preach on being a new creation in Christ and the transformative power of God. Now I knew my friend was a King James guy, and he asked that all preachers at his church preach from the KJV, but I knew the Old English language of the text would make it hard for me to construct the message, so I decided to cheat, just a little. I would write my message from the NIV (my translation of choice at the time) and then, after I was done, I would just cut and paste the King James text into my message. How different could it be?
Well it was different. Where the NIV said “new creation” the KJV said “new creature.” How could I use that? How would people, especially kids respond to being called “creatures?” But then other thoughts came into play, “New Creature, hey wait, I draw creatures, or at least I used to. I wonder could I somehow use creatures to communicate the Gospel?” That was the beginning of my web comic and countless works of art where I do just that.
The moral of this story is simple. God can use virtually anything that we will submit to Him. Your tests become your testimony. Your life story, yes, the good, the bad and even the ugly can show His goodness to a world that desperately needs it, and your gifts and talents, even the unusual ones, can be used to His glory. Look at all you have, and ask God how He would use it. Then step out in faith. Remember 1 Peter 4:10, each one should use whatever gifts he has received to serve others. Any gift submitted to God can be used to glorify Him.
What have you given to God and what are you holding back? Remember when God says whatever gifts, He means it.
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