‘Remember now your creator in the days of your youth’ Ecclesiastes 12:1

‘Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Malachi 2:10

‘For He commanded and they were created’ Psalm 148:5

By Stephen Bennett

Iced chocolate was a treat today for my 11-year-old daughter Jesikah Faith – Gloria Jeans Café, chats with Dad, precious time together. In those moments children can deliver such gems of thought, or ideas. We were rapping about creativity, as she loves to design, draw and act. “Dad, did you know that the word created, is the 5th word in the Bible in Genesis chapter one?” It was an innocent comment that triggered something I already knew – five is the Biblical number representing God’s grace. I pondered a new thought:

“In the very nature of godly creativity there is the greatest room for His grace.”

Beautiful child… how mushy I am! Children teach us grace.

“God lives for creation, the love for Him from some people is incredible” Jamin Lee Bennett – age 8

In the Beginning

‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters’ Genesis 1:1-2.

The Mighty Creator, Beautiful God, artistically created from the very beginning of time. What a mind blowing thought. In the first verse of the Bible, we see creativity stretched out on a canvass of such grandiose scale that we couldn’t even comprehend its fullness. Isaiah the prophet calls this Artist, ‘The Creator of the ends of the earth’ Isaiah 40:28.

The twenty-four elders in heaven worshipped Him and said, “For You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created” Revelation 4:11.

Our Lord the Divine Artist created, it is His nature – the word means to cut down wood, select and feed as a formative process, to choose and dispatch. The art of creating the world and the heavens, was an act of absolute creative intelligent design: pre-planned, loving, and timed to perfection. Every color shape and form was thought through and preestablished, with the finesse of an artist and sculptor of ultimate Renaissance.

This was the start of an incredible story – History – God’s creative love affair with His art.

‘This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created’ Genesis 2:4.

The exquisite statuesque centerpiece of this history is mankind – formed in the image of God. This was no big bang evolutionary theory; Artist God knew exactly what He was doing.

Creating through Christ

“The ideas flow in upon me, directly from God” Johannes Brahms

The full Godhead was involved in this art studio of art studio’s – the grand universe atelier. God the Father led the creative process (Genesis 1:1). Yet, everything was made through Jesus His Son – The Word.

‘He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made’ John 1:2-3.

In fact Jesus was The Beginning. “These things says the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God” Revelation 3:14.

Life starts with Christ!

Jesus Himself is the ultimate art piece – that is, the True Witness of God in all that He is. All creativity has its pivotal advent in and around Jesus Christ – He is our worship. God does not want us making graven images to bow down to and worship because we cannot ever produce art in His true likeness. All things that are truly effective for God are formed through the Holy Spirit of Christ.

“I was laying in my bed half awake, half asleep, and God visited me and gave me three pictures of art – they were all songs, they just flowed into me like lightning. I was 5 years old” Jamin Lee Bennett – age 8

Holy Spirit Movement

Then we find the Holy Spirit bringing the creation movement to its grand opening – like He did on the Day of Pentecost with a rushing Mighty wind to establish the Church –another awesome creative performance (Acts 2:1-4)! The person of the Holy Spirit brooded, hovered and moved over the face of the churning turning waters. It was in a relaxed manner, thoughtful, ready, and totally prepared with all the designs, blueprints, and models, to shake perceptions from their formless existence.

‘You send forth Your Spirit – they are created; and you renew the face of the earth’ Psalm 104:30.

The sculpting substance of the day was mayim – water, or juice like semen. This was ‘creative juice’ that could be impregnated with the seed of an artist’s desire. Amazing juice that could respond to words spoken. Living super juice that could be formed like the clay; it was the uncut marble, the raw bronze of the artistic vision of the Michaelangelo of Heaven. God selected all forms with deep, eternal intelligence – way beyond the stupidity of ET, and other skinny, big eyed, close encounters of the Yoda kind.

The Lord would create something, informing the future participants of this planet of who He was, and the reality of His existence – He became known through his art. 

‘For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse’ Romans 1:20.

‘The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.’” Psalm 14:1.

God’s invisible attributes, His artistic nature, are seen in a sunset, and a sunrise, each day uniquely different, exquisitely beautiful, a fresh painting new every morning: each wisp of cloud, each frond of burnt orange, breathtakingly placed for maximum effect.

Water is symbolic of the Holy Spirit. When He is the centre of our art, we can form a creative movement of spirit that is connected to heaven. We then paint, write, make song and sound, and articulate with heaven’s presence in our art. God’s glory is released, and change happens.

“The Holy Spirit is a comforter because He wants to connect our feelings to God” Graham Cooke – Prophet

Creativity is not only just for the artists. Creativity is at the very heart and center of Christianity. Being a Christian is supposed to be a creative adventurous life, beholding wonder, constantly fascinated, seeing miracles, changing worlds, and stewarding life well – not always easy!

“The wind blows where it wishes, and you can hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit” John 3:8 -Jesus

With the Spirit we can move and hover and brood with Him, working with the creative plan He has for our lives. In just six days God created amazing things, accelerated by the Holy Spirit. He can propel us in the same way.

God’s Mona Lisa Smile

“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life” John 6:63 – Jesus

“But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female” Mark 10:6.

Mankind didn’t evolve – he was made, sculpted by the eternal hand of Lord Artist. Jesus was there, because the truth is,

“All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made, in Him was life…!” John 1:3-4.

When Jesus is in the centre of your creative world, life is in your art. In that place Sistine chapels are possible, and so much more now in our modern society!

Adam was made of dust but God took one of the ribs from Adam and created a gorgeous, curvaceous work of art – woman. This babe, was the man with the womb, the one who could receive seed, like the word of God spoken to the creative juice in the act of creation; the one who could form the art of life itself within her.

In our bodies, ribs are articulated in pairs to the spine and protect the thoracic cavity and its organs – including the heart. In structures, ribs are something usually made of stronger material that supports and strengthens – it’s structure bearing. Inherent in the woman is great strength, a protector of the heart – where the issues of life emanate – in her wisdom and gentleness, she has the ability to help bring structure to a man’s life and support him in his God given ability to lead. That is one of the reasons why the Devil loves to attack marriages and relationships so hard.

‘Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man’ 1 Corinthians 11:9.

The following is from the interesting writings of Dr Carl Weiland, explaining beautifully why the Lord creatively used a rib to make Adam’s Mona Lisa – Eve!

“Rib periosteum has a remarkable ability to regenerate bone, perhaps more so than any other bone, particularly in young people. Periosteum is a membrane that covers every bone, and contains cells that can manufacture new bone.  Thoracic (chest) surgeons routinely remove ribs, and these often grow back, in whole or in part, depending on the care with which the rib is removed. The rib needs to be peeled out of its periosteum to leave this membrane as intact as possible. A major reason why the rib is the ideal situation for such regeneration is that the attached intercostal muscles provide it with a good blood supply.”

Why did God creative Eve this way — why not directly from simple elements, or dust, as for Adam?

All of us have sinned ‘in Adam’ — and we can all be redeemed through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the ‘last Adam’ (1 Corinthians 15:45).

So it was important that all of us, including Eve, were descendants of Adam, hence she was ‘taken out of him’. God designed the rib, along with the periosteum. He would certainly have known how to remove the rib in such a way that it would later grow back, just as ribs still do today — without requiring any sort of special miracle. Adam would not have had any permanent area of weakness in his rib cage, but would have had, for all of the hundreds of years of his life, the same number of ribs that you and I have today. http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v21/i4/ribs.asp

Man Made

Man didn’t come from monkeys; he was created with intelligent design, in an instant act of such intimate, artistic endeavor; perfect portraits of the Divine Artist who made them.

‘And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being’ Genesis 2:7.

‘Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man’ Genesis 2:22.

‘For Adam was formed first, then Eve’ 1 Timothy 2:13.

The songwriting prophet Isaiah is emphatic with this point.

‘I have made the earth, and created man on it. It was I (not evolution) – My hands that stretched out the heavens’. Isaiah 45:12.

‘In the day that God created man. He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and blessed them and called them Mankind in the day they were created’ Genesis 5:1-2.

Adam and Eve were blessed when fashioned by God. He made Eve out of the rib knowing the full extent of what was to happen in the future. His ‘rib’ art was prophetic!

His Workmanship

“The music of this opera Madame Butterfly was dictated to me by God” Giacomo Puccini

“I paint not by sight but by faith. Faith gives you sight” Amos Ferguson

We are God’s artwork, to create and be creative with God Artist. The only worthwhile workmanship of any consequence in our own lives is achieved through Christ, like the act of creation itself – made through Him.

‘For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we could walk in them’ Ephesians 2:10.

Part of walking in those good works is walking in the character of God – in that, we are all certainly an artwork in progress!

‘My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you’ Galatians 4:19.

We are God’s product, we are the fabric, the form of who He is; the canvass for the Holy Spirit to paint on, sing through, or make sound that will rend open the heavens, accelerate the Church and push back darkness that fervently resists this art.

‘Everyone who is called by My name, whom I have created for My glory; I have formed him, yes I have made him’ Isaiah 43:7.

What we do as believers should be for His glory. We are now the yet to be created people in these end-times that will usher in the glory of the Lord in an apostolic reformation. Artisans of all persuasions, musicians and singers,

‘… a people yet to be created may praise the Lord’ Psalm 102:18.

God formed you unique. You have your own special way of creating and doing things – embrace it. He has made you for honor – work with your Potter.

‘But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to Him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?’ Romans 9:20-21.

“When you have developed the art of abiding in Christ you will never have a problem knowing the will of God” Graham Cooke – Prophet.

God Owns You

‘For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s’
1 Corinthians 6:20.

‘You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men’ 1 Corinthians 7:23.

‘Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood’ Acts 20:28.

If we consider ourselves as God’s art, and the price He paid through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus, we must see that we are canvass of the highest of value. You could not even purchase you for the greatest art collection in the world, because it would be passed in at auction with a tag saying – priceless. Nobody could afford you except the Lord. We are not our own – we have been purchased with the Pearl of Great Price – Jesus Christ.

God is the author of all creation. He has the proprietorship, and is the manufacturer of everything, including us. He fabricated the form; He is the founder and maker of form.

‘Thus says the Lord, who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him’ Zechariah 12:1.

When you create something you own it, unless of course you sell it, give it away, bequeath it, or sign it to a publisher!

Jesus Christ is the heir of all things and we are co-heirs with him (Romans 8:17, Ephesians 3:6).

He is The Divine Artist, Writer Publisher, the ‘author and finisher of our faith’ Hebrews 12:2.

Let Him write you!

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Chapter excerpt from Stephen Bennett’s book, “The Divine Artist – Art for God’s Sake”, (http://www.awesomecitymusic.com ).
Reprinted with permission from the author.

Originally from England, Stephen Bennett and his Australian wife Rebecca, founded Awesome City Music Ministries in the early nineties  which is based in Sydney, Australia. Stephen’s gifting spans various creative fields as a prophet singer, songwriter, musician, worship leader, recording artist, author, poet, and as a creator, presenter, producer of Christian television, film, and documentary programs. Stephen mentors to a wide community of musicians, singers and artists around the world and he is a creative prophetic and apostolic voice to the Church.