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| photo credit: Svetlana Pochatun |
The following series is excerpts from my book "Your Creative Peace: How to find your creative voice while communing with God" written in 2013
to purchase: CLICK HERE
Unit 1:
How to Move
Deeply into
Your Creative
Voice
What to expect from this book:
We will:
-explore God’s creativity
-explore the beauty of creativity
-explore creativity as an act of
worship
-PINPOINT your creative journey
-INTEGRATE YOUR CREATIVITY AND
SPIRITUAL JOURNEY MORE DEEPLY
This is my hope for you. That as you
journey through these next 5 weeks, you will have a sense of how GOD has gifted
you with a creativity that is uniquely yours. Maybe you ALREADY have a
sense of where you thrive creatively. This may be an opportunity to
incorporate this section of your life into your spiritual practice. This may be
a time to try a new creative medium. Whatever place you find yourself,
remember during this point in time you will journey through this course as YOU
NEED TO.
Suggestions on
how to use this course:
-At the beginning of each week a
creative prompt is given along with a bible verse. You may choose to use either of these as the
jumping off point for your creative expression that week.
-You can choose to read the sessions
as preparation before you begin work in the creative medium you choose.
-At the end of each day's session, you
will find questions to deepen your creative and spiritual practice. Journal space has been provided for you to
log your thoughts. You might also choose
one of these questions as a prompt for your creativity.
-A final suggestion on how to utilize
these sessions in your creative practice is to keep an art journal and create
drawings, scrapbook pages and mixed media pieces or photography as a means to
express the work God is doing in your creative life.
Vision for the
Course:
This course is geared towards:
-those who are ready to start finding
their creative voice
-those who have a creative outlet
already or have an idea of an avenue they would like to explore creatively.
-those who can commit some time (this
course is structured to complete in 5 weeks) to exploring more deeply their
creative processes as an act of worship/spiritual connection
Examples of
what I mean by creative outlets:
Drawing, Painting, Mosaics, Sewing,
Cooking, Clay, Photography, Decorating, Jewelry making, Baking, Scrapbooking,
Writing, Music, Poetry, Knit/crochet, Needlepoint, Yoga, Teaching, Gardening,
Singing, Songwriting, Homemaking, Teaching Sunday School
Ready to
Begin?
GOD AS CREATOR
Week
1 Creative Prompt: Declare Freedom
Verse for the week: “You know me inside and out, you know every
bone in my body. You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was
sculpted from nothing into something.” Psalm 139:15
Day 1
Recently, I read through the best selling book
“The Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren. He touched upon something that
I find sits in a very deep place for me: being successful and fulfilling your
life’s purpose are not the same thing. Have you noticed that in your own
life? Do success and fulfillment go hand in hand? I think it
depends on how you define success and whether or not you have figured out what areas
in your life leave you feeling fulfilled.
For
many years I had not answered these questions for my life. I was just
living. Were the bills paid? Are my kids healthy? Am I
fighting with my husband? I did not have any real sense of purpose.
Definitely I did not think it mattered to GOD what I was doing with my time
other than making sure I lived a moral life. I would have been content to
live this way but…GOD in His mercy for me (AND FOR YOU) allowed the events in
my life to shift in such a way that I had to TAKE NOTICE.
One
of the things I found in my life is that I seemed to not be able to connect
with God anymore. I felt like life had beaten me to a pulp. I was
discouraged, disillusioned, distracted… feeling hopeless. My prayers felt
empty. The words on the pages of my Bible waxed cold in my ears and on my
heart. The disappointments and discouragements felt too great to
overcome. I found that I was living in a shadow relationship with
GOD. He was there but I had no desire to connect, no entry to connect, no
vehicle to connect. What I did not know was that God was
making a change in my life and I would start to find a language to express
fulfillment on a deeper level.
Spiritual:
1.
How
do you define success? Has it changed over the years? How so? What
changes would you like to make in your life in order to redefine success?
2.
Are
success and fulfillment two sides of the same coin or are they one and the
same? Explain.
3.
Do
you feel like you are fulfilling your life’s purpose? What one step do you need
to take in order to get on track? How do you see creativity playing a
role in those changes?
Creative:
1.
The
theme for this week is Declare Freedom as in letting go of how others would
have you define your success, your fulfillment. Begin to think of how you
would represent this declaration in a creative way.