“First this: God created the Heavens and Earth-all you see, all you don’t see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.” (Genesis chapter 1, verses 1-2)
I’ve always seen worship as this black and white act of singing and praising God in church or wherever the ‘worship’ music is playing. But over the last few years, I’ve learnt that worship can look so differently to individuals.
As we see in Genesis, the first thing God did was create. He himself was a creative being, and just like God created the Heavens and Earth we too can create and honor him in different forms of worship.
Creativity is…
Creativity is defined or explained as the use of imagination or original ideas to create something, to be inventive. It’s an expression of ourselves and our ideas and our unique abilities as individuals to create and express ourselves through different means whether its painting, drawing, poetry, short stories, song or dance.
For me as an individual, although I love to sing and worship God in that manner, I’ve come to see that the creative ways I’m able to worship God are such an integral part of how I connect and honour God in my life and walk with him.
Creative Christian Communities…
Through April last year in lockdown and again this April, I’ve been so grateful to be part of an online group called Auaha April where through daily prompts of words or sentences, individuals from across New Zealand and further have expressed themselves creatively often with a reflection of God in their life and our world. So many people have worshipped God through their creative means.
Through this group and the vulnerability and honesty people have shared with, I’ve learnt that the act of worship is so unique just like us as worshippers and how cool is it that through our different mediums of creativity we can express ourselves in worship to our one true creator.
Worship with Gladness….
“Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever his faithfulness continues through all generations.” (Psalms chapter 100, verses 2-5)
As the bible calls us to worship with gladness and thanksgiving in the Psalms, we can enter his courts and worship him in whatever means we as a unique child of God feels is the appropriate medium for us.
For me words are often the most likely choice that I will worship with and share the love of Jesus using, and although I love to stand in a room with passionate followers of Jesus and sing my praises to him I’m pretty tone deaf but I have a passion for writing and being creative and honouring God in that medium.
Using prompts in a spoken word session run by my talented and creative friend who is the mind and heart behind Auaha April I managed to pen the following piece of poetry in just a few minutes and to me, these pieces guided by the Holy Spirit and his presence in our life is pure worship.
“We are not whole or broken,
They will see us as we come to them,
Oceans tell me that the waters will take me to peace,
Pride will prevail over me,
They can’t make me expose the muck, the peace will wash me as the waters rise and cleanse my spirit.
Speak to me Holy Spirit,
God above all else who reigns earth,
Your spirit cleanse me whole again,
God take me home to you, a peaceful place,
They come through and heal again,
God have mercy, Christ have mercy.”
I am a Young Salvationist who lives in Upper Hutt, Wellington. I am passionate about enhancing the life experiences of others and do this in my paid employment as a Support worker for those with Intellectual Disabilities and as a volunteer leader for GirlGuiding New Zealand. I love to create, write and travel the world and have a passion for submerging myself in the cultures of each place I travel. I left my heart in Africa a month before Covid sent the world into lockdown and I cannot wait to be able to return and serve in a continent that stole so much of my heart.