The Artisan Soul: Craft

[podcast]http://www.revkwon.com/podcast/artisan-craft.mp3[/podcast] Last week I left us with the conclusion: imagination is the creating and building of life. This week I want to build on that idea. I know you believe that imagination leads to the creating and building of life, but sometimes you can’t connect the two. I want to show you how imagining something can lead to creating into life. Not only are we artists that imagine new life, we are also craftsman that have the ability to shape and craft the life that we bring out forth from our imagination. I am convinced that we have potential talent that has yet to be harnessed. I believe that your potential, when it is finally fully developed will become a strength that convinces the world that God provides spiritual gifts that hard work embodies and fulfills His promises with. I think the greater question for all of us here is this: how in the world can we harness our potential? Also, what is potential? I’m twenty-something and I don’t think I’m going to develop a talent I didn’t know about. Additionally, when we look at our lives and compare them to people like Mozart, who was composing at age 5, or a Gaby Douglas, or a Lebron James, or even a Bobby Fischer, it is clear that we’re not going to unleash potential of that magnitude this late in the game. Well, I believe that when we put our imagination to the grind and craft them into reality because we are all creators and builders that we can unleash beauty and greatness that God had designed and planned for our lives.   Last week, we looked at Hebrews 11 last week and talked about all the people of the Old Testament that died not receiving what was promised to them because they would be fulfilled in us, but it was their imagination which showed them what was being promised that drove them to do things great and amazing, whose stories provide us with the encouragement to keep moving along in life. One of the stories that was glossed over by the author of the Hebrews was the story of Joshua and how he died in the promise land, conquering what God had showed him only 40 years earlier. I want to go to that story this morning so that we can look at the exact circumstances of Joshua’s imagination. Let’s go to Joshua 1. ¹ After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, ² “Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel. ³ Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses. ⁴ From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory. ⁵ No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. ⁶ Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. ⁷ Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. ⁸ This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. ⁹ Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:1-9 ESV) Three times God tells Joshua, “be strong and courageous.” That is important because we saw last week that faith is believing our imaginations to become reality. But we know as a fact of life that not everything we imagine happens to play out in reality. But if we are strong and courageous, we saw from the Hebrews last week that it does indeed happen because God provides. If you want a life where no single person can stand in opposition to us, we must be strong and courageous. Let me tell you what this means though, because it means that there will be people and things that oppose us in life. God does not ever say that life will be easy if we have imagination and/or faith. In fact, what God is saying here is that when we try to bring our imaginations to life through our craft, then we will receive everything that is promised to us, but there will be opposition to that promise that we must be strong and courageous when confronted with. Isn’t it clear foreshadowing that the series of events that will come in the rest of this book titled, “Joshua” will be filled with stories of how he will need to be strong and courageous? I encourage you to read all the stories, but the story that kicks off Joshua is crossing the Jordan River. That is followed by the taking of Jericho in such an imaginative fashion—walk around the fortified city in silence and let it fall! Joshua was a hero because he was strong and courageous in his life and God rewarded him for it. Just look at any of our heroes in life. We see most, if not all, overcome personal tragedy and remain steadfast through it all with discipline with tremendous courage and strength to become what humanity defines as “great.” Beethoven was deaf. Joan of Arc was an illiterate peasant. Helen Keller was deaf and blind. Nelson Mandela spent most of his life in jail. Richard Branson is dyslexic. Albert Einstein failed college entrance exams. Jim Carrey was homeless. Bethany Hamilton had her arm bitten off by a shark. Benjamin Franklin only went to school until he was 10 years old. I can go on and on about people who created lives and a world out of difficulties and impossibilities because they were strong and courageous in the face of life, but I think you get my point. How many times have we allowed the imaginations of our heart die because we could not be strong and courageous? We see so clearly here in Joshua 1 that God commands us to be strong and very courageous. When people say no, we say, I’m going to stand strong. When people are jumping ship, we are sticking around. I mean, why wouldn’t we be strong and courageous? God is with us wherever we go, whatever we create, whatever we’re building, isn’t God with us in the act of it? Of course it is, but why do we act like He’s not. God is with us. Just because life is hard, just because working at building something is difficult, it does not mean that God is not with us, it just means we have to be strong and courageous. You can underline or circle or do what you need to do with Joshua 1:7, “Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go.” This is the secret to do our greatest work and to bring our wildest imaginations to life: overcome the temptation to be afraid or become discouraged. If talent requires discipline to reach it’s highest expression, then even more so, we need the discipline of strength and courage to become the person God created us to be. I want to move into where I’m taking this though because that was the pre-requisite to understanding where this is all going and headed. I want to open to 1 Chronicles 28:9, let’s read it together. ⁹ “And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever. ¹⁰ Be careful now, for the Lord has chosen you to build a house for the sanctuary; be strong and do it.” Did you just see that in verse 10? David, who is now resigning as king and making Solomon, his son, the king, says, “you’ve been chosen to bring to life something that God has planted in your imagination, but you have to be strong and do it.” This is key here. The act of creating requires us to be strong. I can understand why God says that Joshua when he is about to go warring and conquer a nation. But why would David be saying this to Solomon who was building a church building? Why in the world would you need to be strong to do it? Let’s keep reading, because the clues come after this logical jump that is made here in the Bible. Let’s go to verse 11.  ¹¹ Then David gave Solomon his son the plan of the vestibule of the temple, and of its houses, its treasuries, its upper rooms, and its inner chambers, and of the room for the mercy seat; ¹² and the plan of all that he had in mind for the courts of the house of the Lord, all the surrounding chambers, the treasuries of the house of God, and the treasuries for dedicated gifts; ¹³ for the divisions of the priests and of the Levites, and all the work of the service in the house of the Lord; for all the vessels for the service in the house of the Lord, ¹⁴ the weight of gold for all golden vessels for each service, the weight of silver vessels for each service, ¹⁵ the weight of the golden lampstands and their lamps, the weight of gold for each lampstand and its lamps, the weight of silver for a lampstand and its lamps, according to the use of each lampstand in the service, ¹⁶ the weight of gold for each table for the showbread, the silver for the silver tables, ¹⁷ and pure gold for the forks, the basins and the cups; for the golden bowls and the weight of each; for the silver bowls and the weight of each; ¹⁸ for the altar of incense made of refined gold, and its weight; also his plan for the golden chariot of the cherubim that spread their wings and covered the ark of the covenant of the Lord. ¹⁹ “All this he made clear to me in writing from the hand of the Lord, all the work to be done according to the plan.”  Isn’t it interesting here that Solomon was given all the plans and the materials that he would need to build the temple of God? Look at what David says to Solomon in verse 19: this was made clear to me in writing from the hand of God. God is incredibly detailed with his planning. His imaginations are precise. If you think you are at a loss of why you are the way you are, it is because God created you to be exactly the way you are. You have to understand this simple logic that you are uniquely created for a purpose—you were hand crafted by God for a purpose. The life you imagine through God is precise, there is a plan that must be followed accordingly. We can’t just live our life pretending that we can wing it. It requires discipline and steadfastness to live out according to God’s plan. In fact, when we look back at Joshua 1, we see that we shouldn’t turn to the right or to the left. God wants us to be us and craft a life together as He designs it. Look at the story of Noah, look at the story of the Ark in the Exodus, God is precise. Let me bring this to the new testament, look at the life of Jesus, he keeps telling people the time hasn’t come, until, finally, time comes and the earth shakes and the temple curtains are ripped in half and people are redeemed because Jesus waited thirty years to be baptized precisely as he needed to be and to die precisely and exactly as Jesus had to die to be the scape goat, the sacrificial lamb that saves all who believe.  ²⁰ Then David said to Solomon his son, “Be strong and courageous and do it. Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed, for the Lord God, even my God, is with you. He will not leave you or forsake you, until all the work for the service of the house of the Lord is finished. (1 Chronicles 28:6-20 ESV)  We may have no control over the gifts and talents given to us, but we have every responsibility for their stewardship. Each of us have been given all the materials necessary for our lives to become works of art and to bring to life from our imagination what God has placed there. But we need to be strong and courageous to do it. The plans God has for us to create are bigger than us. We have to understand we need to be strong and courageous because our lives are greater than us, they are bigger than us because God planned it and planted it within our imaginations and told us to create it as we envisioned it by God. Do you realize what this means? It means that our craft whether it is being a teacher, an attorney, a doctor, or financial planner, or whatever it is that you imagine yourself becoming requires strength and courage. You have the plans to become it, you have all the tools you’ll ever need for it, now be strong and courageous and do it. Let’s pray.