Esther Series Part 7

I’ve been leading my church through a study on the book of Esther.
Here is the video I created for chapter 7.

39: A Video on The Love of Christ

My friend Kerry Jackson asked me if I would be a part of his Stations of the Cross art exhibit. I was delighted to join in. Now since he is in Georgia and I am in Pennsylvania, I opened to do digital animation. My portion was on the flogging of Jesus. Now of course, like pretty much everything else in our world these days, the exhibition was cancelled, but I decided to share it here.

There are several views of the flogging aspect of the story as I understand it. The Israelites has a limitation of 39 lashes. The thought was that 40 lashes would be fatal and they stopped just short. The Roman view as I understand it was that the floggers would beat the person until they were two exhausted to continue. Not surprisingly many people never made it to the cross. Now in my video, I used a more traditional whip. What was because of the limitation of my skills and technology. The Romans would have used a whip with multiple straps, each one tipped with a piece of metal or bone, for the purpose of tearing the flesh. Yes it was gruesome. Yes it was a terrible way to die, so why do I share this. Because Jesus willingly took this beating for someone else, and that someone was me. It was you too. He took our punishment. Isaiah’s prophecy says The punishment that brought US (emphasis mine) peace was on Him and by His wounds we are healed. Jesus died so that we could have peace with God. He died so that we could be reconciled to the Father. Having no sin of His own, He took yours and mine upon Himself.

I call this video 39. It’s short, simple and deliberately uncomfortable. This was just part of what Jesus was willing to do for you, so that you could place your faith and trust in Him and live with Him forever. Trust Him today. If you need more information, contact me.

A Brilliant Work of Art With A Powerful Story

A few days ago I posted a beautiful video for your inspiration by an artist named Jack Whitney. Well he mentioned the story behind it in the post, but did not elaborate. A few of us asked that he share the story and he obliged. The story makes the piece even more powerful. It’s a poignant reminder that God is with us even in the hardest times. I share it here with his permission.

A few of you here have encouraged me to share the story of the art’s conception and execution. It’s a bit challenging to be so transparent. But because it’s a very obvious God story and an example of how He can move through our art when we surrender to Him, here it is-

Lisa, my wife of 27 years passed from this life after a second valiant battle with cancer in Feb. 2013. The monster reared its ugly head in her body once before in 2009. She was a very tough boot camp style fitness instructor and very fit. With her conditioning, and most obviously God’s intervention, she recuperated from a complete hysterectomy and 30 days of chemo tougher than ever. The monster returned in the fall of 2012, and when the doctor recommended another wave of chemo she very quietly declined and asked if I’d support her decision to take a radical natural and supernatural defense with diet, prayer, and praise.

As she put it, “I don’t want more poison in me to fight the poison already there”. That’s just how she was and I was well aware of it. This is the same woman that insisted the nurses stop giving her morphine after the hysterectomy saying she’d rather be in physical pain than endure the hallucinations. A few days after our visit with the doctor, she and I were at a meeting where three gentlemen from India were sharing their hearts for bringing the gospel to the lost in America. They followed with an invitation for prayer specific to the topic. She and I went up along with several others. At the time only six people were aware of this new battle we were facing. As one of the gentlemen was praying for her without knowledge of the intruder, he interrupted his prayer and began repeatedly shouting “you shall not die but live to declare the works of the Lord!” This is a direct reference to Psalm 118:17. One of the six people aware of our circumstances pulled the gentleman aside after the meeting and asked him what compelled him to shout that and asked what he saw. The gentleman answered “I saw life”. When our friend told us this, my wife and I took this as a confirmation to our battle plan.

I’d been doing some contract work for Boeing at the time and the contract ended very suddenly for our team a couple weeks after we learned about the cancer. God is so very good as this allowed me to stay at her side through the entire battle. He also gathered a large company of believers to stand with us. Though we chose to hold on to what we believed, we saw her gradually weaken and a week before Christmas she was rushed to the hospital for an emergency procedure. Because it was unsuccessful, we were sent home with hospice care. Knowing God is faithful and cannot lie and knowing Jesus heals, we still held on to the words of Psalm 118 for her. We got her a hospital bed and put it in the den because she wanted to be in the thick of all household activities.

One day in January as she was sleeping in the bed, I was fighting through discouragement and exhaustion. I can’t imagine what she was enduring. I sat at the computer with my graphics tablet doodling in a painting program. Feeling somewhat betrayed, I was asking God a number of questions about the current situation. In my spirit He told me to paint His Son on the cross. This is a subject I’ve deliberately avoided as an artist. I prefer to show Him as He is in Revelation 19:11, on a white horse with the words “faithful and true” on His thigh. With no fight in me, I submitted and allowed Him to take me on a journey through the painting. As I painted in the bright red lashes on His body, I kept thinking “that’s enough,” but I knew I couldn’t stop until instructed. When I painted the face of death, I was going to give him sharp teeth and a serpent tongue, but I realized he didn’t deserve a bite or a voice.

And there you have it. The software has a feature that allows the user to record each stroke made so the animation is a time lapse recording of the journey. I presented it without sound to a couple groups and told the story. Then last year a few people in my church community added some fantastic audio.

After a couple years of getting my footing back and wrestling with it all, I believe the gentleman was correct; that Lisa would live to declare the works of the Lord. I don’t have an answer for why she died, at least not one I’m completely satisfied with. I don’t expect to get one until I stand before Jesus. But I know that her time here lives on as it is a declaration of the faithfulness and goodness of God.

A Brilliant Work of Art

Over on the Thriving Christian Artists Facebook page, an artist named Jack Whitney posted this beautiful animated video on Christ that ended up being used at his church’s Easter program. I think it’s something everyone should see. This is top of the line art. Now I don’t know if you can pull off this level of art, and Jack has already done this, but here’s the point. There is something you can do that will touch hearts and minds and draw people closer to Christ.
Let this inspire you. Great work Jack.

Today’s Video Clip

I know I’ve been a little quiet the last few days, but believe me when I tell you, I have been hard at work on a variety of projects. I did a quite a bit more art for the flower show from the 14th to the 6th of the month, I’ve been making some other art as well as trying to write a paper and finish a class for my Masters program. Most importantly, I’ve been making some things for my church ministry. This week, I preached on the authority of Scripture and I decided to make a video for it, based on one of my favorite passages, 2 Timothy 3:16-17. There seems to be a trend lately, even among some in the church, for picking and choosing what passages of Scripture are important and which are not, which should be taken seriously and which should not. I made this video to illustrate what the Bible says about that.  I hope it blesses you.

 

Impossible?

I made this short video to illustrate the idea that with God all things are possible. May it remind you to go with God and let Him change all the “Impossibles” before you.

We Have Nothing to Fear…

Okay that’s not entirely true, but there is one thing we cannot afford to fear: failure.  It’s true, there are few things more paralyzing to the creative process, to the utilization of our whatever gifts, that fear of failure. Fear of failure will keep you frozen and stuck. It will keep you from accomplishing your goals and putting yourself and your work out there for the world to see.

I was once driving down the highway and I got behind a guy who had one of those custom  frames around his license plate. The smaller copy at the top of the frame was illegible, but the bottom text could be read from quite a distance. It said Failure is not an option. My heart automatically went out to the guy and I began to feel very sorry for him. I thought of all the undue pressure he must put himself under. Poor guy. Eventually the light in front of us changed to red and I was able to catch up enough to read the top line of text on the frame, which gave me an entirely different view of the man’s predicament. You see, it said “Bomb Disposal Technician.” In that case, he was right, failure is not an option. He gets one shot to get it right each and every time he steps up to do his work. The same applies to surgeons and a few other fields.

So unless you are a bomb disposal technician or some other hazardous profession, failure is also not an option. It’s a necessity. The truth of the matter is using our gifts and solving problems, requires experimentation, requires trying new things, and with trying new things comes failure. Bottom line: YOU WILL FAIL. No exceptions, so you might as well not fear it. Instead, we need to learn from our failures, and learn to fail forward. Fearing something that is inevitable, is pointless. Instead the question is what we can learn from this failure? How can we move forward to success from here?

Don’t be afraid of failure, learn from it and keep going. Success belongs to those who do the work and persevere.

Assignment: Think about a past failure. What did you learn from it? What are your current struggles? How has fear held you back? Now look for ways to overcome your fears and fight you way back from them.

Overcoming Can’t

It’s one of the most limiting words in the English language is “can’t.” Thankfully, it’s easily overcome.

Feel free to use and or share.

Revival Video Bump

Had it with the headlines? Here is a video I created as an opener to my message this morning on Revival. Here’s the truth, nothing we face as a nation or as people, is too big for God. What this nation needs is to turn back to God and for the people of God to rise up, love people and point them to the One who can turn this all around.

How would you express the need for God to change our course and restore us?

Leaving 99

Sometimes a project doesn’t end up the way you planned it. A while ago I had an idea. I was going to create a bunch of three by five cards to distribute around the community, linked to a web page that would tell people more about Jesus. I even was in the process of creating a price for the winner. Unfortunately some things in my ministry changed and I was never able to quite pull it off. The resulting video sat in limbo for quite some time. Recently I rediscovered it and thought, that might be useful to a kids ministry somewhere, so I “dusted it off” revamped a few things and published it.

It’s based on the parable of the lost sheep. I think I am going to end up redoing this piece, and the associated outreach, for my current church, but in the mean time, I thought I would at least share clip in case someone can use it. Sometimes things fall through and have to be discarded. Most of the time, though I think our timing is off, and we just need to wait for the right time. Store your ideas, even the ones that appear to be failing. Sometimes they can be resurrected later. After all, our Lord is in the resurrection business.