All posts filed under: Creative Motivations

The Many Realms Of Romance

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“The beauty of Romance is birthed from the thought of what could be.” ~CANDICE COATES In light of the season revolving around romance in the ‘love’ sense, I felt lead to share this quote that, like countless others, came to me several years ago. The meaning of it is pretty straight forward, although I believe that that romance itself is often shoved into a singular pocket of expression and definition. Whenever most people hear the word, ‘romance’ they initially think, “Girl lonely for Guy, finds Guy within the cliche environment, and then they are in love, DESPERATELY in love.” Romance. The thing is, romance is far broader than that. If you look up the definition of the word, you are going to pretty much get what I described above with this grand definition lost in the shadows and often over looked: Romance: spirit of adventure: a spirit or feeling of adventure, excitement, the potential for heroic achievement, and the exotic* First, as a fiction and non-fiction author who is exploring the genre of clean-read-romance, I would …

The Posture of Pursuit: Pt 2 of Pursuit of Passion

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Faith. Fear. Worry. Wisdom. All four cups are set before us to drink from as we traverse our pathway of pursuit of passion, but which cups are we choosing to drink from? The question seems simple enough and the answer even simpler. What is our posture in prayer as we pursue our passion? If prayer, seeking the wisdom of God, is not our foundation we are already off to a bad start. Christ Himself blessed us with the truth that apart from Him we could do nothing, and sharing with Him in all things is done through prayers of faith (JOHN 15:5). Prayer. It is more than just a religious act of acknowledging a Power greater than yourself. For the Redeemed, prayer is, or rather should be, an authentic conversation with our Beloved Father, Friend, and Savior, Christ Jesus. The Word ensures us that “…The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” (JAMES 5:16) We who have accepted the free gift of salvation through the finished work of Christ Jesus ARE now the righteousness of God …

Don’t Give Up in Your Pursuit by Pastor Robert House III

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The reality of living in a fallen world is that many times you may feel stuck, unfilled, hopeless, confused and even bitter. You put your full effort into making a change, pursuing something better in your life, fighting an addiction, changing your circle of friends or even connecting with family and then nothing changes. You have been lead to build a dream, you pray over your family and your marriage and nothing changes. Have you ever been passionately pursuing the will of God because you know what He told you and still find yourself empty? What do you do when nothing changes and yet everything changes. Where do you go when you feel like your prayers aren’t being heard. Your body aches, your heart cries, you know that you stepped into the miry clay and now trying to get out of it. You went right when God told you to go left and now your trying to make a U-turn. Pursuit, passion, change and finding a better balance to the brokenness of your life. In …

A Heart at Peace: Pt 1 of Pursuit of Passion

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“The life of the body is a heart at peace, but envy rots the bones.”~PROVERBS 17:22 WMB Passion is a gift, be it passion for creative arts, passion for relationships, passion in your walk with Christ. The beauty of passion is that it is unique in design even if it bares similarities in concept with the passion of others. Just as there are an innumerous amount of snowflakes, each one bares a singular pattern unique in its form in comparison to others, so too is the design of your God-given passion and the drive and direction with which you pursue it. Unfortunately, many of us find our feet tangled in the trap of the enemy and the lies that come along in the game of comparison. We wonder if our process and pursuit should be like that of others. We question if the reason why our fruit is taking so long to manifest is because we are not following the plan and path of others. We judge, not only our dream but the plan with …

Partnering with God’s Heart for You by Bri Lassiter

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I have found while walking with Jesus that the things I am most passionate about in my life are often a direct reflection of the things He is most passionate about for me. Prayer has always been one of those things I just need to do like I need to breathe, and although there have been many seasons where I couldn’t hear the Lord’s voice, I persisted in those times with the comfort that whether or not I hear Him at that moment,He can always hear me. Many times over the years I’ve felt like my prayers never made a difference and there have been times I’ve been so frustrated I’ve tried to quit praying altogether. But I’ve found that The Lord is relentless in His determination for me to walk in joy and success in the gifts He’s given me. And instead of letting me quit, He’s set about to teach me that instead of trying to hammer a square peg in a round hole with my prayers, I need to learn how to …

Five Ways to Maintain Creative Joy

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Being a creative person is a gift, one that is inherent to us all. Whether you are a writer or an artist, an educator or a parent imagining a new way to get your kids to eat their broccoli, you are operating in your creative nature. For those us who want to take our creative passion to the next level and turn our hobbies into lucrative business ventures, we run the risk of facing burnout. This burnout isn’t just from working nonstop on something awesome. This burnout comes from being unprepared for the reality in the shift that we are making. When our passion becomes a business there is another level of accountability that we have to step into, a level that is not as ‘fun’ as creating itself but just as necessary if we are to be successful. With that in mind, I want to encourage you on ways to keep the glow of joy in your creating even as you stretch beyond your comfort zone and begin to make your passion available to …

Pursuit of Passion: Series Intro

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With the start of every new year, with all the hope and uncertainty ahead of us, there are two themes that we can count on hearing about or seeing in the lives of others and that is pursuit and passion, or the pursuit of passion. From the greatest to the least of us, we all hear the proverbial ‘starting bell’ of a new year and mentally reset our minds with the belief that the slate is washed clean and we are beginning from zero, the old is past and the new is just ahead of us. Maybe you have determined to leave the corporate world behind in pursuit of your passion for entrepreneurship with the hopes of a new career. Perhaps you have set your heart to leave the single life behind in pursuit of a new relationship and romantic passion. Maybe you just want to a new you and are setting your mind in that direction with a passionate pursuit of healthier living. No matter what your ‘new’ may be in actuality, the commonality …

Talking with Your Mouth Full: You Are What You Eat pt 4

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“Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.” ~I PETER 2:1-3 NKJV In a letter of encouragement, the Apostle Peter writes that we, like newborn babes, should desire the pure milk of the word and grow in that. But let’s do a bit of backtracking in the word, recognizing that I Peter as one stream of thought in entirety and not segmented chapters. With that being said, what was Peter’s statement to the Body of Believers prior to chapter two verses one through three? “Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever, because, “All flesh is as grass, And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, And its flower falls away, But the word of the Lord endures forever.” Now this is the …

This Year: Hope For 2019

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“Don’t remember the former things, and don’t consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” ~ISAIAH 43:18-19 The Apostle Paul said in (Philippians 3:13-14) that he had determined to forget what was behind him in order to obtain what was ahead of him, thus he pressed forward towards the goal of the high calling of his life. And if you are familiar with the life of Paul, then you know that he was responsible for many deaths and imprisonments of the first followers of Yeshua Jesus, only to be called into Christ’s glorious Light himself. Could you imagine what life would have been like had Paul allowed his past mistakes, failures, and disappointments to determine and even spoil his future? Think of all the humanitarians of the Faith who’ve come forward for good because Paul pressed forward leaving yesterday where it belongs…behind him. With the dawning of …

Watch It!: You Are What You Eat pt 3

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“Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” ~ MATTHEW 26:41 Eating is more than just the substance that we take in with our mouths. In all actuality, if you haven’t learned this truth yet, we eat with all of our senses. The first thing that we are drawn by is our sense of smell. Something lets us know, or leads us to believe that is good by the way it smells. It lures us, and like a fish on a hook, we follow the draw until our eyes take hold of what tempted us. At this point, we are left with a decision, to consume or not to consume. The first thought that comes to my mind is that of State Fair food or Carnival food. Let’s all be honest, there really is nothing good about all that deep fried greasy goodness, but our noses tell us otherwise and our eyes, more often than not come in agreement with the lie…heartburn and other ailments later, we are …