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Prophetic Inspiration In Your ArtBy Stan Smith If you are an artist, God wants to talk to you about your work, your marketing, and your ministry opportunities as an artist. If you are an unpaid artist, you may be excited about the process of creating but reluctant to market your work. If you are a professional artist, you may be so busy producing what their employer wants that you have little time and creativity left for projects that fulfill your personal vision. God is a very present help in times of trouble, and He wants to speak into these and other difficulties you may face as an artist.
Your Work Itself God can show you what to produce. He might speak a headline to an advertising writer, show an image to an oil painter, or cause a musician to hear a tune from heaven. But God's voice doesn't stop at this level. He is very interested in your working through the creative process. So sometimes He will tell you not what to produce, but how to produce it. This means He would show the advertising writer a few principles about creating headlines, He would tell the oil painter what to look for when choosing a scene for a landscape, or he would teach a musician how to put a tune together. He may show you how to teach yourself. This means He would lead the advertising writer to go online to look for resources about headlines, He would tell the oil painter to take a course in photography to get a better sense of composition, or He would tell the musician to study the similarities between Schubert's chamber music and the music of Steely Dan. If you ask God to speak to you about your work, He will probably surprise you. His thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways are not our ways. Only as you let God speak into your work can it become art that will bring His kingdom to earth.
Your Marketing Jesus commands us to let our light shine before men, and not to hide it under a bushel. And in the parable of the talents, He makes it clear that we must invest what He has given us in order to bring increase for His kingdom. Many artists act as if they are allergic to marketing, and prefer to live in the dream that someone will discover them and promote them to greatness. Attics across the world are full of undiscovered works... God is not necessarily calling you into a bigger-is-better mentality, but He wants to give you a vision of those your art is meant to touch. Your interests and your skill level narrow your choices; the laws of supply and demand narrow them yet more. But in the midst of it all, He has designed you with specific gifts and set you in the culture that surrounds you. And He has already created a plan for you to produce work that will connect with somebody somewhere, to further His kingdom. He calls one to produce work for a mass market and another to target a niche. He uses one in commercial art and another as a hobbyist. He uses one artist to serve as a volunteer in the church and another to volunteer in the community. Don't just pattern yourself after someone else's success story. Take time to listen for God's marketing strategy for your art. It doesn't matter if it is large or small, but it is vital that it be God-given.
Your Ministry As an artist you are fascinating to many people. You may find that God uses your work as a platform to give you a ministry, and that your connection with others is more important to God's kingdom than the actual work you produce. This doesn't mean you need to be less than wholehearted about your work. But it does mean you need to let God use your art to lead you into relationships:
The list could go on and on. As you listen to God, you will find that you have unique ministry opportunities. They begin with the gifts God placed in your DNA. But everything else in your life -- your family, the people you know, where you live, the prosperity or the devastation around you -- works together with your gifts to create the open doors of ministry God has set before you.
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