Creative License: Trusting God

As a creative, I find that I do my best work when the client trusts my process. The more restrictions they give me, the more difficult it is for me to create something that will please us both. I’ve even found in these situations it’s likely that both parties will end up disappointed in the end result. Sometimes a person doesn’t want to let go of the reins and although they can’t create the finished product themselves, they want to be involved in every step and micromanage the process. Instead of reaching their desired result, they have a frustrated creator and a lackluster outcome.

On the other hand, when someone doesn’t have a picture of the finished product, they just bring their need and trust the designer to make something that will be beautiful in their eyes and maybe even more than what they anticipated. This allows the freedom that excites the artist; it removes the boundaries and can give way to crazy concepts, colors, and approaches that are fresh and unique.

This morning I thought about all of this in terms of the Master Creator. God designed each of us uniquely with all sorts of intricate details that make up who we are and influence who we are to become. Often I come to God with a framework of where I want to go in life and what I want to accomplish, and while I pray to Him and call him Sovereign, I refuse to let go of what I want and how I feel things need to happen for me. I imagine God feeling a little like I feel in the situation. He has all of the tools, vision and experience and actually knows the best way to go about creating the beauty and fulfillment I so desperately want in life, but I have difficulty letting go of how I envision it and the outcome I feel I need to be successful, happy, or complete.

When I use the term “Creative License” I’m not insinuating that God needs our permission to do anything, rather that when we hold “how we see it” so tightly, we don’t allow ourselves to receive what God knows will truly fulfill and satisfy us. After all, he designed us in the first place. God is infinite, all-powerful, has all knowledge and understanding, and yes, He’s sovereign, which means that there is so much outside of what we can see and figure. The scope of God’s plan is bigger than we can imagine and takes into account things well outside the small sphere of our understanding.

A lot of our ideas about what we need to accomplish and what we should be, come from comparing ourselves to others, listening to other people pronounce their thoughts and ideas about what is good for us, and just our vast intake of ideas and norms that shape our thinking about what is most important in life. Even our relationship with God is often restricted by how we think he should deal with us based on how he deals with someone else or how we think we should feel in a given situation based on how we perceive the experiences of others.

God says, “I know the plans I have for you; plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you hope and a future. But it’s so difficult to trust during the process of the plan, because our ideas often paint a different picture than the small view we currently have of God’s plan. If you ever watch a sculptor or a painter, a baker, or any creative during their process, most of them don’t even want you to see their work until it is complete. During the process, you may reject the work entirely because it doesn’t look like what you desire. All of the parts haven’t come together yet, and until they do it is often more of a mess than you’d imagine. Many times it looks like it’s just not going to turn out.

Our lives are like that in a lot of ways, except our vantage point is right in the midst of the mess, often with no idea how things are going to come together. From our perspective, it looks like it is not going to turn out. That mistake I made, or the detour I took seems to have made it impossible for me to recover. But the Creator knows that the mess is part of the process. He says to you don’t despair, and don’t let frustration pull you under… I know the plans I have for you.

Life is drastically more difficult when we spend our days fighting against the plan of God. In his plan, aligned with his purpose, is provision and power to overcome whatever is happening in this moment, because He ALWAYS finishes on time; and because he made us, His plan will ALWAYS be the best possible outcome for our lives.

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