All posts tagged: #MotivationMonday

Faith by Hearing: You Are What You Eat pt 1

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“For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he…” ~PROVERBS 23:7a  You’ve probably heard that verse before, maybe pondered its truth a time or two, or maybe this is your very first time encountering it. Either way, the truth of it remains; how a person thinks that is what they are or will become. The thing is what we think is contingent upon many factors and most, dare I say all, are choice-based. What we think is a result of what we: Hear Read Watch Speak As Creatives in Christ, commissioned for a designated mission to advance the Kingdom and to live the abundant life He died for us to have, we have to guard our hearts by censoring what we read, watch, and hear. Some may be turned off by the word ‘censor,’ but hear me out. How many of us have read articles about some sickness or symptom but then suddenly began to feel them in our bodies? How many of us have watched and thusly, heard a television ad or …

You Are What You Eat: Fuel for Faith Moves Series

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I (Candice) was having a conversation the other day with a  co-worker of mine. She was telling me how she loved milk but how it hurt her stomach so she had to limit the amount of dairy milk she consumed. We began to discuss the science behind a1 and a2 milk and how a mutation in cows around 1200 years ago changed their milk from a2, which is much like human breast milk, to a1 which tends to be undigestable in many adults today. She then informed me that when many adults, women especially, reach the age of twenty-five, their bodies no longer need milk and cease to produce the enzymes necessary to break it down and digest it. Wow! Here is the truth of that last statement from a spiritual standpoint; we as Creatives in Christ are like the adults who at a more mature age, are no longer able to digest milk, or better put, have no need for it. There comes a point in our faith walks that we as Creatives must …

Dreams Don’t Expire: Creative Motivation

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Dreams don’t have an expiration date.” ~ Jesse Duplantis As long as there is still breath in your lungs and life in your heart, there is still time for you to achieve your dream. Dreams are seeds, and with all things born of seeds, they have their season to grow. The word of God says it like this, To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:” ~ECCLESIASTES 3:1 KJV (See vs 1-8) Maybe your dream has not yet come into its season. DON’T. GIVE. UP! There is still time. Maybe you are someone who has invested many years, along with tears, into a vision that seems to remain fruitless or blurred. Again I say, don’t give up. If you know in the center of your being that what you are aiming to do is from God, and screams to be birthed, no matter the obstacles or the detours, keep holding out in faith and keep cultivating what is inside of you. Joseph had many dreams to become a …

Team Up! :How to Achieve Your Dream Pt 3

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Teamwork makes the dream work.” ~John C. Maxwell Everything God created was created to be most fruitful when it is connected with another. Why? Because there is such beauty and satisfaction to be had when triumph and victory are born from cooperation. When a man takes a wife, children are born. When a bee meets a flower, more flowers, bees, and honey are born as well as food for the world. When seed meets soil and is saturated with rain, new life is produced. Joy and appreciation from the works and gifts of others bless us with gratitude and the cultivation of a culture of encouragement. When we, dreamers and visionaries becoming creators, have taken the steps to: 1. Believe: Believe that we can achieve the dream that is inside of us. (See Believe You Can). 2. Simplify: Take your processes one step at a time without over-complicating each move you make. (See Keep it Simple). … we are on the path to productively multiplying our success which is found in our ability to properly align ourselves to …

Keep it Simple: How to Achieve Your Dream Part 2

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Everything in life should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.” ~Albert Einstein When it comes to doing anything, especially taking a dream and birthing it into the tangible, keeping things simple is a very crucial admonition to keep in mind. For most of us, our knee-jerk reaction to anything new is to overthink it. We begin to compare our ‘pearl’ with oyster farms of others who have similar dreams already up and running. We begin to add extra bells and whistles to our end products and we haven’t even actually ‘made’ them yet. We take precious ideas, born in a moment of genius, and think it from the mustard seed it began as, and transform it into craggy, dark mountains that we feel ill-equipped to climb. Yes, most dreams, especially those that will involve creative income, do come with seeming miles of information that needs to be learned. All of it is important, but none of it is necessary at the very beginning of the dream. What is important is to take the first step. …

Believe You Can: How to Achieve Your Dream Part 1

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Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” ~Theodre Roosevelt One of the most glorious things about life is that even though it can be considered a canvas, it certainly is not a ‘paint by numbers.’ Life is not a one-size-fits-all even if certain ideas and concepts may mirror that of another’s. There still, and always, remains the glory of uniqueness in each person’s life and creation. I believe that Christ Jesus has a plan for each of us, a perfect design that He wants us to be co-workers with Him upon. He gives us dreams for a reason. Some dreams we take hold of and bring to manifestation, while sadly, others, we leave to float away like feathers in the wind. Many times, the dreams that get away from us are the dreams that we can’t seem to muster the faith for or we allow our faith to be choked out of us in the struggle. But how do we cease to do this? We have to make a connection with faith and hold on …

Letting Go: How I Learned to Step Into My Dreams

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Perfection has a price, but I cannot afford to live that life. It always ends the same; a fight I never win. Oh control. It’s time, time to let you go.” -JJ Heller A few years back, on my birthday, I woke up after having an incredible dream. The dream was prophetic for my personal future. It hit straight to the core of some inner struggles I had been having. It gave me a greater hope for the future that I am now living. For several years I had felt like I had fallen into a dark well or a completely lifeless creative downward spiral. Sure, I had been making art, commissions, and though I was pleased with the outcome of each, I have to say they were indeed lifeless … to me. I was so detached from these paintings that I didn’t even really bother archiving them for my own portfolio. That says something. It says a lot.  My writing was like swimming through mud. I had gone on a rampage to control everything …

The Art of Tireless Pursuit: The Expression of Faith in Creativity pt 3

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Faith is not only defined by giant leaps but is often reflected in the tiny steps.” ~Candice Coates A few years back, I was sitting in front of my television, watching some show on HGTV, eating a plate full of room temperature leftovers (good leftovers nonetheless,) when a thought popped in my head: You will never know where you are going if you never take a step.” ~Candice Coates The thought seemed simple enough, for, as I was watching HGTV, eating room temperature leftovers, I was also thinking about this creative platform, my writing career,  my art, and all the other things I had planned to do in that year which seemed to have been getting derailed from every angle. Truth be told, I am still thinking about all of these things. But when I first had these thoughts, I was thinking about my serial-blog-novel, ASCENSION GRAVEYARD. I will be honest, AG (for those of you who are just now tuning in, AG is my blog novel that I started writing in June of 2014…it …

The Art of Being Curious: The Expression of Faith in Creativity pt 2

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We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. ~Walt Disney Question. Wonder. Think. Discover. All of these words have one specific thing or root, in common, and that is curiosity. I don’t know exactly what comes to mind for you when you think of the word, curiosity, but for me, the image of a child appears. Why? Because children have this uncanny, unwavering courage or faith to seek with the expectation to discover. They have a unique boldness that enables them to try new things in order to arrive at an intended result. As a result, they grow and develop beyond their previous state only to repeat the creative cycle of curiosity again. Children embody the purity of grace to use their curiosity to be exceptionally creative, and thusly, successful. (I mean, have you seen videos of toddlers using the family dog as a ladder to open the fridge to get snacks? If that isn’t a success, I don’t know what …

Can I Be Me?: The Conflict of Creative Authenticity

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Authenticity. According to Wikipedia, Authenticity-Authentic-Authentication is ‘the act of confirming the truth of an attribute.‘ Truth, unlike ‘fact,’ is an unchangeable and consistent reality. While an attribute, in its noun form according to Merriam-Webster, is ‘a quality or feature regarded as a characteristic or inherent part of someone or something.‘ As a creative, a being made in the image of the Master Creator, Yeshua-Jesus, you have the inherent DNA to create. (More on that in The Call to Create.) There are specific, unchangeable attributes about what you have been given to offer to the world, things that are waiting for you to discover and share, that are unique to you and unrivaled by others. “The struggle that we all face in our creative journeys is summed up in one phrase; the urge to be a people-pleaser.” It could be in the way you paint, throw a football, run a boardroom, or even how you nurture children in your home or in an educational environment. Whatever it is, it is unique to you. But, more often than not, the noise of …