A quiet thought

I find that God often speaks to me when I least expect it. A quiet thought, just in the back of my head that I know is not my own. It was one of the last nights of spring break. I was exhausted, mentally and physically. My sister’s wedding was fast approaching, and I fell into my air mattress on the floor ready to be unconscious for the next seven hours or so.

That’s when I heard a thought enter my head. It was a title for a new blog post. I thought about it for a moment, contemplating the blog and what the points would be.

“Huh, that would be a good one,” I absently told God as I snuggled deeper into my blankets. “Well—Goodnight!”

I felt a poke at my heart and stopped. Would I remember what the idea was in the morning?

I huffed, lifted my head from my pillow and pulled up my phone. Blearily, I opened my Trello board. I typed out the title and the few points I’d thought of with tired squinting eyes. I saved it, clicked off my phone, and fell back into my bed. Another thought came.

“This experience would also make a good blog post.”

I snapped my eyes open, glowering, and reached for my phone once more.

God loves to share his ideas with us.

I’ve often found he loves to share them when they’d make the most impact—whether it’s convenient for us or not. When you google the definition for the word ‘stewarding’, one of the definitions that comes up is this.

Stewarding: the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care.

From the beginning of the bible, we can see people acting out in creativity, stewarding ideas. In Genesis 4, you’ll notice as it talks about the descendants of Cain, that his sons were the fathers of different things, like tools and musical instruments. (Genesis 4:20-22).

I don’t think I need to convince anyone that your ideas (especially in your writing) should be stewarded. However, I do think that the stewarding process is long, confusing, and often we can get discouraged. So, here are three things God has used to help me stay steadfast in the stewarding process.

1. It takes faith

Faith is the complete trust or confidence in someone or something. When you get an idea, it takes faith to believe that this idea is something worth pursuing!

2. We often don’t get ideas that we can perfectly accomplish.

Often times, I find God uses our ideas to grow us. They’re a tool he uses to disciple us and train us in His ways. That’s how it is for me, at least. If we have an idea, and try to accomplish it and feel like we fail, we wonder if the idea was from God at all. What we have forgotten to remember that it’s in our failings and weakness that God’s glory is seen.

My mentor taught on discipline last week, and we talked about the difference between punishment and discipline. The word discipline comes from the word disciple. When we fail, or face hardships, we should look at those as God disciplining us, or another way we could word it is training us.

If your idea fails, or it just doesn’t come out to the quality you want—that’s okay! You’re growing and learning. God is training you.

3. It won’t always look how we think.

I love to paint. Swirling different colors on a canvas helps me relax. But sometimes, I have something extremely specific in mind that I want to paint. I’ll get out my colors, my brushes, and set to work—and it never turns out how I originally pictured. During the process, somewhere, down the line, something about how a particular color looks will intrigue me—and I’ll follow that curiosity out onto the canvas. Sometimes I’m just not skilled enough to accomplish what I want.

If we stick, rigidly, to the original thought or idea or ‘perfect vision’, sometimes we’ll miss out on something even better. Some of my favorite paintings don’t look at all what I originally set out to accomplish—but they’re still beautiful.

What vision are you and God working on right now?

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