You Were Created to Get Creative

You Were Created to Get Creative

God is quite creative. All you have to do is look up and around you and you’ll see a world filled with wonder, with color, in mesmerizing detail.

Often when people express themselves creatively, even when they aren’t producing specifically “Christian” art, they’re still glorifying God because they’re doing so as a reflection of his creative touch upon their lives.

The thing about art is that some of us just don’t “get” it. We wonder why someone would pay millions of dollars for a painting or spend countless hours listening to musical performances. Art isn’t very practical, after all.

In ancient Greece, there were two cities of global renown. Sparta was famous for their fighters and became the seat of the Greek military. Athens was the center of thought and artistic expression. Both were essential to the ongoing flourishing of the culture.

God wired us to be expressive. He designed us to employ our talents and abilities to show off his glory, sometimes with art and sometimes with engineering and innovation.

Why is God so interested in worship, anyway? It doesn’t seem to feed the hungry or heal the sick. What’s the purpose of praise? The one hundredth psalm gives us a clue:

Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.
Worship the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
Know that the LORD is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.

~ Psalm 100:1-5 NIV

Shout… worship… sing… know… enter with thanksgiving and praise… these are all commands. And the why?

For the Lord is good and his love endures forever. His faithfulness continues.

We sing and shout and praise God simply on the basis of his worthiness. And when we do, we reach out and touch the heart of our Creator, and he responds by touching our hearts in return.

Praise is God-glorifying. And praise is life-changing. Let it overflow in your life right now. What do you have to praise him for today?

This article originally appeared here.