Sometimes it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that ability is what makes someone stand out, that skill makes all the difference.
This morning as I was praying, I was surprised to hear my own spirit calling out to God and saying to Him over and over again, “I want to make myself available to You. I want to make myself available to You.”
In itself that may not seem strange. After all, don’t we all want to be available for God. What impressed me was the insistence of my spirit. I could not stop repeating this simple request.
“I want to make myself available to You. I want to make myself available to You.”
The reality is that often it’s not our ability that determines our progress, but our availability.
As Christian creatives, authors, business people, and entrepreneurs, we need to understand that we are not in this enterprise alone.
We are not limited by our own ability or skill set, because we have a Partner who is working with us. He is more than on board and sees and understands everything.
The Holy Spirit is a partner with you in whatever endeavour you choose to engage in. You just need to continually come and make yourself available to him, so that you can become a conduit for something bigger than yourself.
Jesus said that the greatest in the kingdom is not necessarily the leader of all, the most talented of all, or the most notable. It’s the one who is willing to serve others.
A servant spirit will always look for ways that they can help solve problems for, and lift others to a new place of freedom, and fulfilment.
This is our mission as Christian creatives.
I believe with all my heart that there is no greater calling, than providing leverage for our brothers and sisters, or for those who don’t yet know Jesus, to move forward in their own discovery of who God has made them to be.
It was like my spirit hooked on to that word, “available”.
I kept saying it again and again, “I want to be available.”
I want to be available. I want to be available. I want to be available.
The word available means to be close at hand. Within easy reach.
Are you within easy reach? When God has an idea He wants to implement, are you close at hand?
When He has something he wants to share, or direction he wants to give, are you in attendance with a listening ear?
If we make ourself available in this way, God can infuse ability into us.
I have an artist friend, David Holden.
He was in a meeting one night, and a prophet was speaking. The prophet called him out, and began to pray for him. David fell to the floor under the power of the Holy Ghost. The prophet began to speak over him and say words that were so outside of David’s current world, they just seem bizarre.
The Prophet said, I want you to be a painter.
All the while, David’s hands were burning, filled with some supernatural power from heaven. Immediately his thoughts went to the picture of being a painter and decorator, caking walls with gallons of magnolia.
David was involved in property, and training to be a pastor, but had gone through some disappointments and was really feeling very broken. The idea of being a painter and decorator really did not seem like a destiny call.
But the Holy Spirit spoke to him as he lay their pinned to the floor and told him, “No, I want you to be an artist.”
David had never painted anything in his life.
His wife was not present at that meeting, and David went home to tell her that God had told me to be a painter. Maybe not surprisingly, his wife was a little taken aback. Maybe her husband had finally succumbed to an early onset midlife crisis!
The following day, David went to an art supply shop.
Remember, he had never painted in his life.
He had to ask the attendant at the shop what he should buy, telling her that he was a painter, and needed to buy some supplies. She asked what kind go paints, but he had no idea where to even begin, so asked the young lady for her recommendation.
He left the shop with a bag of sable brushes, a collection of papers, and some watercolours. That very day began to paint and a supernatural endowment, a gift from heaven, come upon him.
From the very first painting forward, the images and landscape paintings, taken from scenes around his home in Sussex, England, were some of the most beautiful you’ll ever see.
Within the next month, he painted over 30 paintings. He and his wife laid out what some call a ‘fleece’ to test the word that he’d been given.
The instant and incredible gift that he was exercising was answer enough, but he needed to know he could make money and pay the bills from his new pursuit.
They hired a studio space and 30 days hence determined if the paintings didn’t sell the David would need to look for, or return to, his old job. Needless to say, the paintings sold out within just a few hours.
David went on to be one of the most popular landscape painters in Sussex over the coming years. His paintings, postcards, and prints appear in hundreds of locations across the country.
We see similar stories of divine endowment through the Scriptures, and I’m sure there are many current stories very similar to the one you have read here.
David was available.
He was willing to step out on a word. Even when the word seemed impossible of fulfilment.
The actual word “avail” comes from a root Latin word meaning, “to be strong or of value”.
The word valiant comes from the same a Latin word, Valere.
You don’t know what the Holy Ghost has in store for you. Maybe it will be an encounter like the one we’ve shared here, or maybe it will be a journey to prominence through adversity much like Joseph’s.
The key thing to remember is that it is not your ability that determines where you go. It is not just your skill or your personality. It’s not some special unattainable thing that remains just outside your reach.
You have the Creator living in you, filling you. And He has plans and purposes, that maybe you’ve never even conceived yet.
I encourage you to continue to make yourself available to His hand, and to His presence and His voice. Be in attendance and at His disposal ready to receive direction. You never know when the call will come.
For Moses, it was a burning bush at the back end of the desert.
For Joe said was in a dream, on his knees washing floors, in a prison.
For Peter? He was fishing,
For Matthew in his office job collecting taxes for Israel’s oppressor.
For Mary, it was a call out of darkness and demonic oppression.
No story is the same.
Everyone bears the supernatural mark of God’s love with their own unique flair.
We already looked at the fact that the word “avail” means to be strong.
When I hear this I’m always reminded of Paul’s prayer that God would strengthen his disciples in their inner man that they might be able to comprehend, take hold, and grasp the implications and gravity of the truth of God’s amazing love.
“That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:16-19
This friend is the foundation, the springboard, the sustenance, and the final destination of everything that you do every act of service.
Every creative experiment and endeavour is rooted in this reality.
Love is the reason we exist.
Love God, learn to love ourselves as He loves us. To accept ourselves and step out with confidence, not trying to be something other than the person God has designed.
His endorsement is all you need.
Through that, and from that ground that cannot be shaken, we step out to serve others.
Read more about David Holden’s amazing story here: https://www1.cbn.com/700club/gods-brush-stroke-story-painter-david-holden
