Kingdom Culture: Translate Heaven

When the conversation on creativity arises many check out. We have convinced ourselves that we are not the creative type. When we think of creativity we automatically assume that it only pertains to the right brained people and although there is some science to that, it has actually held back our unique creative expression. Every child is born creative and freely expresses that nature through any medium available. They freely express themselves with pencil on paper or crayons on a wall, dancing in the middle of the store, or in elaborate stories of talking yellow ponies. They communicate the world around them through their creative instinct until critics arise. Through the mouth of the critic we begin to compartmentalize our expression into groups of noncreative verse creative and ultimately suppress our God given nature. We can all agree that there are those that are better at mathematics and/or science, but way before you began to add and contemplate how the world was made, you were a towel caped super hero.

Scripture is the infallible word of God. If that be so, then we believe that we have been made in His form and likeness. So if God is creator, then we must create. The truth is that God is so infinite and so high dimensional that He has not delegated His intellectual or creative nature to a single person. His vastness requires billions of us, in order to even begin to paint the picture of “Who He is”. Herein lays the beauty of our creative nature. If we were to take all of the variables that make up who we are, we end up with a single unique and specific expression. Your Creative Self is the combination of attributes; gospel story, ethnicity, life experiences, gifts, talents, sex, age, environment, all culminating at a single point in time. In a room full of individuals, all would have a different perspective of the performance, sermon or film. Thereafter the way each would express their experience would be specific to them based on their unique traits. These unique expressions would then minister and inspire individuals or particular groups. Every expression would then overlap in telling the story and thereby reaching more people. There is plenty of supporting scripture indicating our role as ambassadors of the kingdom. Many of these scriptures testify of the domain, authority and glory that has been delegated to us in order to populate heaven. The past has stifled, even criminalized creative expression in the church. Many deemed it as secular or gimmicky. However, nothing is further from the truth. If He is creator and we are to imitate Christ, then we are to exercise His very nature and create.

We could have a dialogue on the importance of a unified body, but we can see even in this example of creative expression how each person plays a vital role in “translating heaven”. The beauty of the gift of creativity is that we come into an active role, co‐laboring, with God in illustrating the unexplainable. Art transcends time. It can be created today and touch the heart and inspire years later. It can be exported through song, painting or words to another part of the world and transform a life. When Jesus spoke on the Kingdom, it always followed demonstration. So what was Jesus saying in Matthew 4:17? Jesus was simply saying, “Hey change the way you think, because I brought my world with me. And if you don’t change your perspective on reality you will think what you see is reality, as opposed to the Kingdom which is at hand. If you begin to see from my perspective, you’ll begin to live from my world towards your world." In view of our sonship, the Father has delegated one of His most powerful characteristics to us, the ability to create. You are the only one on earth, since the creation of man, despite the billions that have lived before you, that can express a certain facet of God. So today I remind you. History does not remember the critic, but only those who take risk. I challenge you once again to childishly dream of the impossible, creatively express heaven and say, "I AM CREATED TO BE CREATIVE"!

- Pastor Omar DePablo