God the Creator

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” {Genesis 1:1}

We’ve ignored a huge side of God in today’s Christianity, the creative. In the beginning, the very first thing He did was create.

God is the Ultimate Creative; He designed not only this world, but the universe, but we tend to forget that fact. In the church today we recognize the need for Christians in math and science, and even business, but the arts? Nah. The arts are evil, but there’s no need to take them back; they’re just for entertainment after all.

But God created the arts. Losing a Christian influence in the art industry has limited our view of God to the left-brained scientist. We’ve put Him in a box, ignoring His freedom to create, and reducing Him to a mathematical formula. If you get one small part of that formula wrong, the project (i.e. your life) won’t turn out.

This is where we begin to believe that being a good Christian looks a certain way, and that it takes a specific equation, because that’s our view of how God works.

This is why I feel we desperately need to take back the arts, because without being an active part of them, from movies and music to photography and painting or potter, we fail to grasp the importance of the "other side" of God.

God’s path for your life (and others) is beautiful, and a lot of it is due to the fact that it’s different than anyone else’s. He takes pleasure in creating unique places and roads just for you. Don’t forget that He’s not limited to one formula, even though we tend to think He is.

Purity and our Past

I read this post on Stuff Christians Like, on “Guys like girls with a past” the other day. There are a lot of things I could say about this, and there were a lot of good arguments in the comments, such as why guys *shouldn’t* like girls with a past and other topics but it really just sparked some different thoughts for me.

____________________________________________

Wait a sec…there’s a difference? You mean there are girls without a past? Woah woah woah. When did this happen? I don’t know any.

I think sometimes we need to realize the fact that ALL of us have a past. Maybe the guys are attracted to the ones with an “open” past because they’re more real*. They’re admitting that they’ve messed up. That they’re not pure.

Because none of us are pure. I don’t care if you’ve never slept with a guy, never even kissed a guy, never watch a PG-13 movie, listened to secular music, or been around people who swear [much less use one yourself],  we were born with sin. We were born marked, tarnished… UN-pure. In Christian circles we talk about “losing our purity”, but how can you “lose” it if you’ve never had it? We talk about, strategize and stress [and stress and stress some more] KEEPING your purity, but how can we keep what we’ve never had?

“All have sinned and fallen SHORT of the glory of God.” {Romans 3:23}

We can only gain purity. We can only be given purity, it’s not something we already have. We were never whole, we were never blameless, and never spotless. Jesus came to give us that, He came to make us that way. Pure is something you become, not something you were.

Accepting this fact, for me, is freeing. Because instead of being something on me [I need to keep my purity, I need to be so careful because if I lose it… I can never get it back], and turns into something on God [He’s the only one that has it, and the only one that can give it]. It turns our focus from us to Him. Exactly where it should be. It frees us to do, and be, and say exactly what He wants of us because we have forgotten that it’s on us to save our purity.

Never forget, only Jesus can give us purity, it was never ours in the first place and it’s gift. But it’s a gift He’s more than willing to give.

“Come, and let us return to the Lord; for He has torn, but He will heal us. He has stricken, but He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His sight.” {Hosea 6:1-2}

_________________________________________

{The P.S.'s} 

*This has nothing to do with the "past" or the "cooler past" that they were talking about in the post. And this is not me saying that guys should be attracted to "bad girls", it's more me saying that really we're all bad girls [and boys]. 

Links to the two blog posts that sparked these thoughts of mine [they were also feed by some of the talk at Junction last night]

http://laurennicolelove.blogspot.com/2011/10/what-makes-woman-good.html

http://www.jonacuff.com/stuffchristianslike/2011/11/stuff-christians-guys-like-girls-that-have-a-past/