Starve your doubts and feed your faith. Believe that you have something valuable to share with the world.

Feed your creativity by refusing to shun your most audacious thoughts. Don’t dampen your dreams with reality (so called). Instead, let them blossom.

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I want to swing background to just a pure encouragement for you. If you are a Christian in the creative space, looking to make a difference and make a deadline in the world. And I just want to speak of fresh courage to your heart, in your desire, I want to affirm your desire to make a difference. I want to affirm your desire to stand up, stand out, shout out your truth, and bring your message to the world and to people that you believe can be helped by it, because the thing is with courage when we think of courage, just the very word itself stirs fresh resolve in our spirit.

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And I think perhaps more than most, the creatives like yourself and myself are often very sensitive human beings, and it’s very easy for the creative soul to be bombarded by doubt and as creatives.

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We need to really tap in and hear the voice of our Father speaking to our spirit on a regular basis, at least daily and usually many times a day. I remember well, and I’m sure that most of you who are listening here will be able to relate those days of discouragement where discouragement has hounded your every thought, just seeking to pull you into a place of despair, really and really desperately needing words that attach us again to a fresh hope and to a sense of destiny. The word of God, my dear brother and sister, is an anchor that refuses to be shifted by the storms of life.

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It’s a staff that you can tie yourself to, driven deep into the soil of your father’s love. There is nothing that can separate you from His love.

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You are in His hand, and no one can prize you from it. And in his hand, planted in His will, whatever he has planned is as certain as he himself is now. I don’t mean that in a positive sense that we just sit around waiting for God to do the part that we need to do. This is a partnership that you’re involved in, but in the name of Jesus, I declare fresh courage into your heart and a resolve to go into the coming year with your eyes open, not just to some of the difficulties that you may have faced, not with an expectation of mountains that are going to stand in your way, but with eyes that look and see the perfect plan and purpose of God and plant yourself in firm trust that those plans will come to pass.

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He has prepared you for them, and they are prepared for you to walk in.

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You are his masterpiece, his workmanship, his craftsmanship shaped for the very things that you’ve been called to bring to the world. And sometimes we can feel like there’s two very different people wrestling on the inside of us. This one is ready to conquer the world, and the other one wants to run away and hide in a cave somewhere, trembling at the thought that anyone would ever find them out. I remember hearing a story told. I believe it was Billy Graham that I heard relating this story and he’s talking more about the wrestling within our own soul of light and dark.

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But the story of the Black Dog and the white dog, the dastardly and the divine wrestling in the arena of our thoughts and emotions. And here they are in the ring, tearing one another for supremacy. Will confidence or insecurity win the day? Will generosity or jealousy have the final say the world with all of its judgments and criticisms, its sniggering and Snides it’s so often baying for this untamed black dog to win seems relentless in its mission to shut you down, shut you off and shut you up, but ultimately listen carefully.

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It is not the crowd who will determine the outcome.

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This battle is not fought outwardly. It is fought inwardly within your own being. We do not wrestle with flesh and blood. We wrestle with powers and principalities invisible enemies that want to keep the image and the likeness of God firmly. Kind of shut away and covered up.

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And the question is which dog is going to come out as the Victor? And the truth is the one that we feed. And I starve your doubts. Feed your faith. Believe that you have something valuable to share with the world and not only believe that you have something valuable to share, but believe that you can do it and indeed must do it.

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Feed your creative nature. Feed that creative call and destiny by refusing to shun your most audacious thoughts. Don’t dampen your dreams with so called reality. Instead, let them blossom. There is a place in the prayer closet.

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There is a place where we come and we allow ourselves to dream big dreams, think big thoughts, pray big prayers and then coupling patience with that faith. We can see great change. We can see great things happen. We can allow our roots to go deep so our branches can go out and spread wide. At the end of the day, the world doesn’t really belong to the pragmatist.

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It belongs to the dreamers childlike. Faith is very underrated. But in heaven’s eyes, everything is possible to the one who believes Jesus said, if you can believe all things are possible to him that believe us or her that believe us. Mark 9:23. And if you’re going to be a writer, why not believe that you can reach far beyond any audience you dared.

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Yet imagine you plan to be a movie maker or a public speaker. Know that what’s on the inside of you can change the world for the better, not just in the present, but potentially for generations to come as a coach or an encourager a preacher or a pastor, an author or an artist. Your potential, my dear friend, is fueled by faith in the God who specialises in impossible. He delights to show off through his children. Whatever your discipline immerse.

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And soak it in the dream of what can be possible if the limits are lifted and then go for it. Do whatever you need to do to make room for that life on the inside, to flow out and find expression. Act on your ideas. Believe in your best self. Those who the father is cheering for that’s who he is cheering for.

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He’s cheering for the person on the inside. He’s coming like he did to Gideon Gideon there trembling in the wine press, feeling like the lowest of the low, the least of the least, the smallest of the small. And yet God, when he spoke, didn’t speak to that false self image. That fig leaf image. He spoke to the man on the inside.

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Mighty man of Valour. Mighty woman of valour. I call you forth in Jesus name and I declare and I delight to call you God’s workmanship. I delight to call you more than a conqueror. I delight to call you the one who walks in victory.

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I delight to call you the one who has been stripped of the old self and has been raised a new life that all things have passed away and all things have been made new. Hallelujah, I declare you as a son or a daughter of the living God, a mighty force in the Earth.

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Let’s ditch the fig leaves. Let’s ditch the shame. All of those leaves that we’ve hidden behind. All of those fears of what others might say or might think. All of the fears of what happens if I fail.

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All of the fears that say no one will listen. No one will be interested. Really, how will we ever know unless we have a go? That’s the truth of it. And sometimes we do walk through a season of obscurity in our search to find that significance in the world.

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It’s important that we understand that this is not just an overnight journey we are on. We are Christians. We are disciples, disciplined ones. We have been enlisted into a war that is raging and a lot of that war rages in the realm of ideas. God has called his artists.

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God has called his creatives. He is raising an army of strong creative voices. And you are one of them. Of course it takes courage. But there is no alternative.

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You’ve been enlisted in the victorious army of God to take your worth out to the world and bring value to other people, to declare and to display the greatness of the God that you serve. Live fully. Bring your whole self to the table, my brother. Kick the Devil’s backside, sister. And don’t listen to His lies.

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This is a great day to be in. This is a great generation to serve and in Jesus name. Let us go forward with great courage and extreme confidence. Well, thanks for listening. Hopefully, it’s been an encouragement to you today.

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If you want to connect any further, you can do so through my website davidleemartin.com have a great day.