All posts tagged: #CreativeMotivation

A word on Contentment

Published by

“Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”    ~HEBREWS 13:5 Be content. The statement can be seen as a command or a verbalized form of permission. Be happy. Be wise. Be joyful. Be content. One of the biggest mountains that I face is the mountain whose shadow attempts to cast its darkness upon my garden of contentment. Lack of contentment, for me and I am certain many if not all of you, comes from the need to “do more.” I seem to be in a constant state of growth as I divorce myself from this out ‘need’, but there are a few straggly roots that are still present in my heart. The need to do more makes me measure and count and compare, as if my life is on some scale. And we all know that comparison kills. This attitude and mid-set, like that mountain, stands in opposition to my faith. …It is a hard …

Confronting a Crisis of Faith by Briana Lassiter

Published by

” ‘Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’” ~JEREMIAH 33:3 We all experience a crisis of faith at different times in our life. During that crisis, we can do two things. We can stifle the questions out of learned religious behavior or the fear of being rejected by God, or even of fear of what we may find. Or we can ask those questions, and allow things in our faith to get ugly for a time until our questions are answered. If we ignore our crisis of faith or our doubt and unbelief, not only does it leave the door open for more doubt and unbelief to fester, it also closes off the possibility of our questions being answered if we refuse to ask. As He says, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17). If we just allow ourselves to ask God our questions, it opens the door for Him to speak the answers we need to hear …

Refusing ‘Fake’ but Feeling Through Faith: Faith Emotions pt 1

Published by

“God can’t do anything with our ‘fake’, but He can do all things with our ‘faith’.” ~CANDICE COATES Not too long ago, I was surfing through my social media feed, and like many times before, I came across several posts saying, “Fake it til you make it,” or, “I’m just going to fake it til I make it.” I am sure, that you, like me, have seen or heard that saying before or have maybe even made it your mantra a few or more times during your life. This particular day, however, the Lord interrupted my social media perusal and said, “Candice, I can’t do anything with your ‘fake’, but I can do all things with your faith.” You see, we have been cultivated in a culture that has taught us that our true feelings and emotions are not only disturbing to others but sadly and falsely, unacceptable to display, especially before God. We have subconsciously embraced the ideology that says if we express any sign of fear, or anger, or pain, that we are …

Fire Through The Window: The Season of Preparation

Published by

  The Fall By Candice Coates, written September 28, 2015 The world looked like fire from the view of her bedroom window. The leaves on the trees had been set ablaze by the match called Fall. Life as she had known it, of thin layers and barefoot days, was slowly burning to smoke, leaving behind ashes of leather boots, sweaters and the scent of earth in the air. “I love the fall,” she said. “There is something lovely about it. It reminds me of the perfect kiss; sweet and intimate, zestful with the shock of chilled lips that slowly ebb into a warmth that leaves you hypnotized, never wanting to let go.” She closed her eyes to the warm caress of the sun’s rays sliding over her eyelids like the softest silk before she pushed away from the window. She wrapped herself within her own arms and smiled brightly. No one was there with her, no one except God, the One who had created the Fall with her in mind and heart. The Beginning. THE BLESSING …

What It Takes: A Message For Success

Published by

“It takes time to be a success, but time is all it takes.” ~UNKNOWN What we desire in this life, what we aim to achieve if it is truly a worthy and honest endeavor it is worth the time it will take to make it manifest. Don’t allow the progress of others to discourage you in your journey. You are in a race against only one person; yourself. The prize at the end of this race is having achieved your highest potential. This crown only fits your head. The choice is yours. Time is in your hands. Determine to take one step at a time. *Revised from November 6, 2015 *Photo by Leon Macapagal on Unsplash

The Blessing in Hunger: Faith for Creatives by Briana Lassiter

Published by

*Originally Published June 23, 2019 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.” ~MATTHEW 5:6 NKJV Do you find yourself bursting with questions, hard questions about God, about life, about purpose, about what is right and true? A lot of times we might feel discouraged while we wait for God to answer our hard questions, and yet here is our Savior saying, you are blessed for your hunger. And your hunger will be satisfied. Your questions will be answered. If you find yourself hungering after answers you have not received yet about who you are, who God is, or what your purpose is, you are blessed, and you can trust that He is building in you even now, the answers, and even now you are blessed to receive and know the truth of everything you’re hungry for. There may be a process to receiving, but you will still receive. He is a faithful God and He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it …

Guard Your Heart: Journies of Faith

Published by

“Guard your heart with all diligence for out of it spring forth the issues of life.” ~PROVERBS 4:23 The Lord has been telling me during this season not to allow the enemy to steal my joy. On the cuffs of that admonition, He in His grace, also reminds me that He has also been telling me to “not be nervous but to be expectant.” In all of this, with the ringing of the divine message saying, “guard your heart”, what came to mind was the image and scripture regarding the full armor of God. FULLY ARMED Reading the scriptures about the Armor the Lord calls us to equip ourselves with is how although He has instructed us to be fully dressed in this armor, He doesn’t tell us to fight. In fact, what He instructs us to do is to stand! “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” ~EPHESIANS 6:13 (See Eph. 6:10-20) The Lord wants us to …

It’s Worth the Mess: 3 Reasons to Keep Creating

Published by

Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly . . . until you can learn to do it well.” ~Zig Ziglar I have always been a believer that anything worth having is definitely worth fighting for. Having healthy relationships? Worth fighting for. Having security? Worth fighting for. Having victory in maintaining faith? Worth fighting for. I could go on and I am sure that you could add several things to the ‘worth fighting for’ list. But one thing I have often lost the fight in (because I didn’t show up) was in learning new avenues of creating. Why? Because more times than not I was afraid of failure. I wonder if you can relate. The thing about being a creative person–the thing about being human–is that the beginnings of all of our successes begin in a mess. We don’t begin walking with elegant or confident gaits. We fall and we scuff our hands and knees. The same is true for each and every creative venture that we embark upon. Our first drafts will likely be, well, garbage …

Start Here: Starting Right From the Heart Series Intro

Published by

Do you have a vision? Do you have an ember of hope for something different burning inside you? Have you found yourself frustrated with the predictability of the ‘usual’ and often slip into the imaginative world created by the dream in you? That is fantastic! Christ has given us all seeds or ‘talents’ to work with, but oftentimes we find ourselves lost in the fog of ‘how’. How do we get from where we are to where we dream we can be doing the very thing that Christ has branded in our hearts to do? We start. And we start here, right where we are. This new series, Start Here, will explore what it means to take the first step of faith to go toward your vision, dream, call, or destiny. Sometimes you have to start in the dark, sometimes the mess, but the glory is starting in faith, right where you are. It begins with the heart and the matters that lie within and go to places beyond our imagining. Join us for this …

He Holds It All Together: A Scripture & Song

Published by

*Revised from September 2, 2016 “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For in Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the Head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy.  For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross.” ~Colossians 1:15-20 It is my pleasure to speak of Messiah Yeshua, Christ Jesus, the God of Creation, the Beloved King and lover of my soul. When it seems my world is falling apart or even just shaking so much that my vision is …