Yes, this is not the continuation…I was going to work on that at my girl’s retreat; however, there was NO internet connection…imagine that! However did I survive? Quite well actually for God gave me not just one idea for a book – but FOUR (one will be a 3 book series)! Now the hard work begins on that…
And at the moment I do not have time to proof and edit the 2nd half of that heavy post as I need to get ready to head back up to the Main Sanctuary at MPPC…not sure why but I felt the little pull to go there this morning instead of my main campus.
Yet….yet I just had to share what God had come out of my creative session last night. Part of my goal all weekend was to take the huge leap to add the cross shadow to my painting I shared a while ago:
Of course I have a little lead in to this first: I had totally planned on working on this at my girl’s weekend. However, God had much different plans…much different plans. While I will not share what His plans were, let’s just say I have been once again wrestling with him the last 14 hours or so – wondering if I had sinned in some of my conversations, what I had said, my tone of voice – my apparent anger. On one hand, it is quite obvious that my emotions are certainly bubbling to the surface and beginning to burst…but I am wrestling with is this “bursting” in selfish pride for wanting to defend myself and my decisions against the Enemy…or from the righteous anger that fills my veins, pulsating at the injustice that so many of us are suffering right here in this own country; from how crafty the Enemy is …so crafty, so good at getting us (talking about the abused) to believe his side of the story…how distorted he makes God’s truth, yet how subtle his deceit is that it is hard to tell it from God’s real truth. Just 1 degree off from the real thing, but still a degree off is something completely different. After my time with God last night, I am leaning towards the latter…but more prayer and self-confrontation is still needed here.
The good news: I feel like with constant prayer and diving into the Scripture God is helping me see the difference in such a way that I will, thru Holy Spirit, will be able to give those of us committed to eradicating this injustice practical tools, biblical solutions to combat those arguments from the Devil himself.
With all this weighing extremely heavily on my heart last night, I decided that now was the time to take a break from writing, from my bible study and just give myself a breather. Thus, I turned to my art….and superimposing the cross over the hill. A friend had suggested putting the cross up on the hill as well…and then when I started drawing it in I decided that the other 2 crosses needed to be added to symbolize the 2 different camps all of humanity falls into…so here are the main points that came as I was painting last night, followed by the painting God allowed me to paint for Him:
* 3 crosses symbolize: The one on the Left – we are all born into sin, meaning we are all perishing from the moment we are conceived really. However, if you accept the Truth from Christ revealed thru Light of the Holy Spirit…you are brought from your natural sinful/death state into life and your “cross” begins to change colors. The cross in the middle – the cross of Christ, small and for all appearances, insignificant. The cross on the Right – symbolizing all those that reject Christ during this time on the earth…left in darkness and death, the state they are born in they remain in.
* The Light coming out of the Left hand corner…this is God shining down on Christ at his crucifixion thru the Holy Spirit…which goes on to reflect throughout all of time with the light across the middle of the painting.
* Moving to the bottom, there is a ragged fence that is broken right in the middle. This symbolizes my oppression that Satan trapped me in, but then I kept myself in for the better part of my life. However, seeing the light, the fence is broken and there is now a pathway to the shadow of the cross that is “bleeding” across the lighted hill
* The RATHER large shadow of the cross…this meaning actually didn’t come to me until I was painting last night… but I remember a sermon from one of the pastors at MPPC from a while ago talking about a concept about the cross (believe it from Tim Keller, out of NYC). Basically, as you walk on in your walk with Christ and He reveals the true nature of your heart…the cross becomes bigger and bigger and bigger – meaning that you realize your utter need for the sacrifice on Calvary’s hill 2000 years ago by Christ. You realize that you are truly “the chief of sinners” and that you are not worthy of Christ’s or God’s love – except thru your acceptance of Christ’s work on the cross. I don’t know if you can see all of this in this painting…but this is what came to me as God moved my hand across the painting last night (and mostly in the dark with just my outside light in as night set in)
* Lastly, the clouds…part of my original inspiration for this painting. If you haven’t ever been to the Bay Area – you need to come visit…and hopefully see a morning where the clouds sit on the top of the mountains (again, to Cali’s they are just hills but to people from the Plains, they are mountains!) – where heaven meets earth with …here it comes again a “sloppy wet kiss” is really the best way to describe it. It is just so peaceful and serene as you drive along, I can’t but be amazed at the sight every time. And I wanted to try to capture just a little bit of this in the painting…and then some. Again, as I was painting, and moving from the Sun to the Dark on the right hand side…I felt the need to remind myself and all of us that there is ALWAYS HOPE when God is in the picture. That He can shine His light in the darkest of nights, in the most miraculous ways where no other way is possible. And so, that is why you will hopefully see (if my iPhone picked it up) some clouds that should not be reflecting light on the RIGHT hand side…reflect light.
As my closing point I was listening to yet another sermon from MPPC while I prepared breakfast. This one was about the Kingdom of Heaven and how as those who are created in God’s likeness we have all the resources of heaven at our disposal IF we call on God to use them for HIS glory. This message reminded me that anything I could do in and of myself is NOTHING compared to the all surpassing power of allowing the Holy Spirit to come into my life to guide, lead and inspire me to create beauty and glory for the Kingdom, even out of Ashes. That while we can never outdo God on the creative side, we are to certainly use our gifts from God to beautify the earth thru art, literature, cooking, cleaning (for God is a God of order not disorder), administration (what I see as the business world that adds so much to our life), speaking/pastoring…all of it is meant to beautify God’s earth and bring glory to Him. And all we have to do is ask God to unleash the storehouses of Heaven in our lives for His glory – and He is more than happy to oblige.
So, as I close, I encourage you to go listen to the song from NEEDTOBREATHE called Slumber…for the lyrics are so poignant and a call to the people of the Earth from God that we need to:
All these victims stand in line for
