A while ago I wrote a short manifesto for creative Christian marketplace. Ministry. You can download a copy at https://www.davidleemartin.net/manifesto.

The manifesto was originally titled ‘Made To be A Maker’.

You are created in God’s image with creative DNA infused with Christ’s anointing to serve the world.

I felt impressed to share a few more thoughts to encourage your creative, entrepreneurial journey.

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Today I want to talk about the wise heart of the maker, kind of concluding a series of insights into the entrepreneurial journey earning we’ve been pulling from Genesis Chapter 26, where we’ve looked at Isaac and the various ups and downs of his pathway to purposeful prosperity, if you like to coin a phrase actually coined first by my good friend Ray Edwards. And we see that there are challenges that face us along the way. And it’s honestly very easy sometimes to want to back off and to ease ourselves in to kind of a more sedate status quo. But really, the heart of an entrepreneur, the heart of a creative really is not designed to settle. It will always be moving.

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We see again and again throughout study that they dug again and he departed from there and went somewhere else and dug again. And I think that that really does speak very much to that creative nature that’s always looking to unearth and discover something new and bring something new to the world. A while ago, I wrote a short manifesto for creative Christians in the marketplace, and you can download a copy if you want to, at www.davidleemartin.net/manifesto.

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That’s www.davidleemartin.net/manifesto, and I originally titled this Made to Be a Maker. I changed the title at some point, but I think that Made to Be a Maker actually does sum up the heart of what I want to say. I’ll probably revert to the original title at some point because honestly, you as God’s child were made to be a maker.

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You’re created in God’s image, and you have creative DNA. You are infused with Christ’s anointing to serve the world. And as I was reading today, I’m now kind of beyond the troughs and the valleys and the peaks of Isaac’s journey, and I’m heading my way through the desert in Exodus.

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As I was reading today, I was reminded of the manifesto that I’ve mentioned and felt impressed to share a few more thoughts to encourage your creative entrepreneurial journey. Really looking at it, I saw the importance and the place and the value that God places on sanctified skill. The seed bed of inspiration for me is found here in the final chapters of Exodus, the last ten chapters or so, there’s a couple of chapters that I’m really thinking of, chapter 31, and then chapter 35 and 36. One of the most interesting portions is found in the record of building the Tabernacle. Now, when we come to the there’s an entire section dedicated to this very thing.

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The Tabernacle and the building of it was something extremely important, both in the mind and the heart of God. And for God’s people. This was going to be the place of God’s dwelling. This was going to be the place where he would inhabit and manifest himself in powerful, unmistakable ways. Now, of course, we have now become the habitation of God, the Church, and the people, both corporately and individually have become the habitation of God.

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But what we find here is real insight into how God anoints people to give tangibility to his designs and his purposes through their artisanal skills, through their artistic skills. Take the words of Exodus 35:10, for example. It says here, Every wise hearted among you shall come and make all that the Lord has commanded. Exodus 35:10, the wise hearted come and make as they are directed by the Lord. Now, I think that this is a directive that we can all choose to take hold of, and there are a few points that really stand out for me.

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First, come to God. Every wise hearted among you shall come. I tell you the wisest thing you will ever do is come to God. Come to Jesus, come to the Holy Spirit. Allow him space, give him room, let him speak.

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Wisdom teaches us a wise hearted among us shall come. It says, Wisdom teaches us that we must first come to God to hear his directions. The world wants to pull us in every which way. In fact, it would pull you apart. If you listen to every voice out there saying, this is the way walkie in it, you would be torn to pieces.

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We need to tune our heart, tune our mind, tune even the motives of our heart, be renewed in the spirit of our thinking and our mind so we can hear God speak in the midst of all of the noise and follow his directions. A person can gain the whole world and lose their own soul, we’re told. And how foolish would it be to become a creative success story, but ultimately fall into the inevitable and abysmal end that all selfishness leads to? Now we need to understand that your creative destiny is not about you, that there’s a bigger picture at play that we’re invited to enter into, and that really is the joy of all of life. I think that we’re not just a storm in a teacup that comes to a final, annihilated end.

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We are actually part of a bigger, bigger story. And the wonderful truth is, like the artisans of all old, like these men and women in Exodus, God calls upon our current learning and skills and then sanctifies them toward his habitation and purpose. We are told, inhabits the praises of his people. And your honest service offered through the passionate and purposeful use of your gifts is a powerful thing. The skills, the expertise, the experience that you’ve worked to acquire can become something quite extraordinary when those things are consecrated to God and his design.

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And you’re making your creativity, your creation, your use of your gifts and your talents become a praise to the maker. That allows Him to inhabit those things that you make, allows Him to anoint those things that you make so they can then go out and make a difference in the lives of other people. So we’re told first, every wise hearted among you shall come and make. It is a wise thing to make things. Every wise hearted among you will make it’s wise to make things, to exercise creativity, to apply ourselves diligently to creative endeavours, to bringing value to the world, to take ideas and make them tangible in ways that others can benefit from and be blessed by making really is a mirror of the maker himself at work in and through us.

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It’s not something we strain to be or to become. It is settling back into who we are as children of God bezelel that’s the name of kind of the head Hon show that God called and anointed for this work. And other wise hearted artisans may not have realised before they’re calling how pivotal their artistic skills were. And I think today, even today, there’s a danger that a handful of skills are considered sacred. If you can preach or if you can kind of hold a tune and sing a song or play a guitar well, or a keyboard, then, yeah, you’re good.

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Some are considered sacred, while others are frowned upon as secular. But God were told. And I do love the King James Version of this verse in Ephesians 2:10. No, actually we’ll look at Ephesians 2:10. In a moment.

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We’ll stay here in Exodus. Scripture shows that we can be filled with the Spirit of God in wisdom and in understanding and in knowledge and in all manner of workmanship. That’s what we learn from the book of Exodus about this chap bezalil and those whom he worked with in the construction of the Tabernacle. They were filled with the Spirit of God in all manner of workmanship. And so sometimes I think it’s very easy for us to fall into, like I say, the sacred secular trap in our thinking and somehow think that the skills that we bring to the table are lesser because they don’t fit within an ecclesiastical mould.

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But really, God is not just calling people in the house is also sending people from the house into the marketplace to make a difference. Through their gifts, through their anointings, and through their artistic kind of skills, these men and women brought an array of practical skills designed to bring beauty to the world. Everything from woodwork to metal work to embroidery, you name it. There were so many different skills at work here to develop and display the glory of God in the way that they did. They were not preachers or priests in the conventional sense.

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Yet God’s anointing came upon them and guided their hands just as much as it came on the Levites. In their realm of spiritual service, if you like. But in God’s world and everything is spiritual, God is a spirit. You are a spirit. And in that realm we inhabit and our citizens of two realms at the same time.

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And so an artist’s making was a powerful means of service to the King and to his people. And so it is today. And then we find in the same verse that we started with, that there is a blueprint, the Maker’s blueprint. It says that they were to come to God and make all that the Lord had commanded. Now, I think one of the most inspiring lessons the Tabernacle can teach us is that God has and shares with his people detailed plans.

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Do we take time to listen? Do we take time to allow Him to speak to us? And do we have the guts to then step out on what we believe we’ve heard? Sometimes it will work out really well. Sometimes it may not.

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Sometimes our ears might be a bit muddy, our hearing might be a little off. But it’s better to hear and obey and then just learn by doing rather than adopt ourselves at every turn. Sometimes you’ve just got to say, yeah, I believe God said this and then step out on it. I think that God can work with that, even if we need to kind of be fine attuned. You will learn to hear his voice by stepping out in faith, taking what you believe you’ve heard, and beginning to put some feet to that.

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As a Christian creative tuned to the voice of the Creator and the shepherd of your soul, I believe that you too can build according to his plans. Every detail of the Tabernacle was intricately communicated, and today we’re told in Christ. And this is where Ephesians 2:10 comes in. Again, that word workmanship, it just to me is so beautiful. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.

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Now consider carefully how the Master describes your life. Do you think that the attention that he gave to the design and implementation of the Tabernacle is any less than the attention that is lavished upon preparing his plans for you? I believe that God, in the same way as he poured over and was very, very detailed in his blueprint for his habitation in the wilderness, equally gives thought and attention to his habitation here in Christ in the New Testament, both corporately and individually, consider how he describes your life. You are his workmanship. I think that David understood this wonderful truth when he explained in the Psalms, how precious also are your thoughts toward me.

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Oh God, how great is the sum of them. God has a pathway for you to walk, a purpose for you to fulfil in Christ itself, his design and making. And the wise hearted will seek it out so they can follow his instructions. And that may at times not be easy. And the noise, the ambitions of our flesh, will seek to drown Him out.

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But still the small voice speaks. That still small voice on the inside wants to become ever louder in your world. Isaiah 30:21, says, Your ears shall hear a word behind you saying this is the way walk you in it and when you turn to the right hand and when you turn to the left, he wants to direct your steps. The sons of God are led by the spirit of God and of course that is the daughters of God as well. Our part as anointed artists and artisans just as the men and the women in exodus here are described is to listen carefully and to obey fully.

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That is the wisest thing you can do today. Now, I’ve been spending the last few days together with a group of wonderfully creative people in an online conference and it’s been that the real premise of all that we are talking about is that hearing and obeying the voice of God as we go out into the marketplace, as we go out into our realm of creative service and how that can play out to help bless and build people while we actually are rewarded for that. At the same time while we receive monetary rewards as we faithfully serve. I believe that you can do the same but it’s going to begin as we say. The wise hearted came.

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Yeah, the wise hearted every wise hearted among you shall come. That’s where it begins and make that’s the continuation we come we hear, we make and we share. Hey, God bless you today. Hopefully this was an encouragement to you. I do really encourage you so much to believe in what God has planted in you and to do all you can to bring that gift, that anointing and that skill to the world in ways that will help and bless others.

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Thanks for listening to today’s episode. Hopefully it was a blessing to you. If it was do, please consider leaving a rating in a review on whatever platform you are listening on. I also would love to encourage you to cheque out my new book faithful creative. We’ve got a package of resources designed specifically to encourage you in your Christian creative call.

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You can check that out at faithfulcreativebook.com and if you choose to pick it up, use the promo code podcast for 50% off so you’ll get it for half prices. Have a great rest of your day and God bless Jesus first. Everything else follows.