1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:09,000 Good morning everyone. I am Pastor Jen. If I have not had a chance to meet you before. 2 00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:19,000 I always put these here in that I never drink them. I always forget about them. We'll see. 3 00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:27,000 I've been with the house since day one and I guess we're telling our virgin stories today, aren't we? 4 00:00:27,000 --> 00:00:34,000 And it has been a joy as we just celebrated our 10th year to reflect on that with each other 5 00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:41,000 and to think about what God has done in the last 10 years and then looking ahead to the next 10, Lord willing. 6 00:00:41,000 --> 00:00:51,000 We've been doing a series on worship and we're going to start off with an activity because I'm a school teacher as well. 7 00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:58,000 I don't teach in a school anymore. I am a teacher but I have been a school teacher so I have a bit of a lesson planned everyone 8 00:00:58,000 --> 00:01:04,000 which is triggering for some of you. But you all have a piece of paper on the table. 9 00:01:04,000 --> 00:01:10,000 If you don't have enough at your table for everyone there is certainly enough around. 10 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:19,000 So this is a required activity. Some of you are already like, I'll tell you how required it is. 11 00:01:19,000 --> 00:01:30,000 But I'm going to have you do this. You've got a jar or a glass container on your table with random things in it. 12 00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:37,000 And if anybody has ever taken an art class this is called a still life and you're going to draw it. 13 00:01:37,000 --> 00:01:45,000 Bree's over here playing with it. And all of a sudden some of you had some very visceral reactions to me saying that. 14 00:01:45,000 --> 00:01:52,000 So we're going to put on some music for just a couple of minutes and you are going to spend some time drawing. 15 00:01:52,000 --> 00:02:04,000 Fun! Or reflecting on the, and listen, I want you to consider there are all sorts of kind of drawings in the world around us. 16 00:02:04,000 --> 00:02:13,000 Whether it's Picasso in his cubist period or Michelangelo. So be kind to yourself. There you go. 17 00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:18,000 Go. Oh, I am drinking out of this by the way. 18 00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:48,000 I'm drinking out of this by the way. 19 00:02:48,000 --> 00:02:53,000 I'm breathing out of this by the way. 20 00:02:53,000 --> 00:03:00,000 Oh, I'm drinking out of this by the way. 21 00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:21,000 I'm drinking out of this by the way. 22 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:31,000 I'm going to give you guys about 30 more seconds. It doesn't have to be a finished drawing. 23 00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:46,000 All I said was draw. 24 00:03:46,000 --> 00:03:55,000 All right. I'm going to keep going. But you can keep drawing if you want to. If you're like, I am going to finish this. 25 00:03:55,000 --> 00:04:02,000 And for some people, drawing while somebody is talking or doing something while somebody is talking is actually a very helpful way for you to listen. 26 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:10,000 So feel free to do that. But this experience was very different for each of you. 27 00:04:10,000 --> 00:04:19,000 For some of you it was highly terrorizing. And for some of you you're like, great, okay, no problem. Get me to the pencils. 28 00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:28,000 And my guess is you found yourself managing the voices in your head. And some of you were hearing, you're not creative. 29 00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:35,000 You don't draw. You don't know how to do this. This is going to be embarrassing. Oh, this is going to be a disaster. 30 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:40,000 I don't even know how to draw a straight line. But I didn't ask you to do any of that stuff. 31 00:04:40,000 --> 00:04:44,000 I didn't ask you to draw well. I didn't ask you to draw with straight lines. 32 00:04:44,000 --> 00:04:51,000 I didn't ask you to put on the display or draw better than the person next to you. I simply asked you to draw what you see. 33 00:04:51,000 --> 00:04:57,000 But the inner voice tends to qualify how we do that. 34 00:04:57,000 --> 00:05:07,000 When scripture talks about the ways that we respond to God through praise and worship, it's largely not qualified. 35 00:05:07,000 --> 00:05:16,000 When we read passages in which the how is described to the whole of the nation of Israel, overwhelmingly we don't see qualifiers. 36 00:05:16,000 --> 00:05:21,000 First Chronicles 16-23 says, Sing to the Lord all the earth proclaim his salvation day after day. 37 00:05:21,000 --> 00:05:27,000 Jeremiah 20-13, Sing to the Lord, give praise to the Lord. He rescues the life of the needy from the hands of the wicked. 38 00:05:27,000 --> 00:05:34,000 Romans 12-1, Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. 39 00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:41,000 This is your true and proper worship. Psalm 100, 1 and 2, Shout for joy to the Lord all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness. 40 00:05:41,000 --> 00:05:49,000 Come before him with joyful songs. That is a qualifier. But it is not in how you do it. It's just, or rather, it's not in your skill level. 41 00:05:49,000 --> 00:06:13,000 It's just to do it with gladness and joyfulness. Psalm 150, Praise the Lord, praise God in the sanctuary, praise him in his mighty heavens, praise him for his acts of power, praise him for suppressing greatness, praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp of the lyre, praise him with timbrel and dancing, praise him with the strings in the pipe, praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals, let everything that has breath praise the Lord, praise the Lord. 42 00:06:13,000 --> 00:06:22,000 There are no, if you sing beautifully, praise the Lord. If you play the trumpets like Miles Davis, you may praise God. 43 00:06:22,000 --> 00:06:33,000 It may sound like I'm contradicting our friend Tony's message from last week. I'm not. He's right. There are passages about playing skillfully and becoming masterful at that craft, at the craft. That is true. 44 00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:47,000 If that is your calling, build your skill with faithfulness and focus if that is what you have set your heart to do. But that does not disqualify the rest of us from also playing or dancing or singing or, or, or. 45 00:06:47,000 --> 00:07:00,000 But this leads me to something more specific. In the world that we know, creativity, in fact, almost always, gets celebrated in what people do, in what's visible. 46 00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:12,000 In fact, a majority of westernized nations, we highlight creativity in such a scaled way that we honor the best creativity by almost exclusively putting it behind a paywall. 47 00:07:12,000 --> 00:07:22,000 You won't see a Van Gogh unless you go to pay for it in a museum. You largely can't see a ballet, an opera, a show, etc. without a level of socioeconomic placement. 48 00:07:22,000 --> 00:07:31,000 A word on this. Do I think that people who have developed their skills and talents professionally should be paid and even paid well for those things? I do. 49 00:07:31,000 --> 00:07:39,000 I think that the arts should be funded publicly and privately. And I'm not even mad that there are people who can afford high level access. 50 00:07:39,000 --> 00:07:47,000 What has happened though is that in our westernized approach to these things, we have made them exclusively accessible. 51 00:07:47,000 --> 00:07:57,000 And it has created a culture in which some people are talented, and so they're allowed to be creative, and those that are not talented are not allowed to try. 52 00:07:57,000 --> 00:08:05,000 As a music instructor, I meet adults all the time that say things like, I always wanted to learn the piano, but my sister was a talented one. 53 00:08:05,000 --> 00:08:16,000 Those two ideas are not related. I always wanted to learn the piano is one idea. My sister was really talented is another. 54 00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:25,000 They are not related, but we have tied them together. We have tied talent to creativity. 55 00:08:25,000 --> 00:08:34,000 You are allowed to explore creativity. There is no gate. There is no paywall. You are allowed to explore it. 56 00:08:34,000 --> 00:08:44,000 We connect talent to creativity because we look at what people have produced. Someone is often deemed creative because they did something and likely did it more than once. 57 00:08:44,000 --> 00:08:49,000 But it didn't start with the thing that was produced. It began somewhere else. 58 00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:57,000 Creativity starts with how you approach something, how you think about it, how you see it. Creativity begins with the ideas. 59 00:08:57,000 --> 00:09:06,000 And we all have those. So I'm going to invite us to pray before we move forward from here. 60 00:09:06,000 --> 00:09:15,000 Lord, as we go forward into this conversation about creativity and how it relates to how we turn our hearts and affections towards you, God, 61 00:09:15,000 --> 00:09:20,000 I pray that you would open our hearts and minds up to this conversation. 62 00:09:20,000 --> 00:09:31,000 The inner critic, the inner voice, and even the things that we've carried around with us have told many of us that creativity is something we are not invited to. 63 00:09:31,000 --> 00:09:42,000 And that it is certain people that are allowed to do it. But I'm asking you, God, if you would tear down those assumptions and even the rules that we have built up around those things. 64 00:09:42,000 --> 00:09:53,000 And that you would give us a freedom to explore in you. So we ask for your blessing on this conversation and that you would transform us through it as well. 65 00:09:53,000 --> 00:09:57,000 We pray this in your name. Amen. 66 00:09:57,000 --> 00:10:12,000 So ideas. We all have ideas. We all get to have ideas. What we do with the ideas once we have them or are offered them, that matters. 67 00:10:12,000 --> 00:10:20,000 So I'm going to give you two things that I want us to hang on to. Ideas are around us all the time and we may even have them. 68 00:10:20,000 --> 00:10:29,000 But they can often sit and rot if we don't do something with them. 69 00:10:29,000 --> 00:10:35,000 I want to explore curiosity. It is a lost art. 70 00:10:35,000 --> 00:10:48,000 We have lost an ability to ask questions and pull at threads. Social and news media feed us exactly what we've asked it to or what someone's paid to tell us. 71 00:10:48,000 --> 00:10:53,000 We have become consumers and we accept what's been served. 72 00:10:53,000 --> 00:11:01,000 And maybe this is because some of us grew up in a generation where your parents are like, you will eat what you are given or you will not eat at all. 73 00:11:01,000 --> 00:11:11,000 But we do on a social news media level, we have built the algorithm and we have accepted what has been served to us. 74 00:11:11,000 --> 00:11:19,000 And we largely let those things become our opinions or those facts that we accept or conclusions or style or we absorb. 75 00:11:19,000 --> 00:11:25,000 We consume and absorb. I'm going to call out Andy for a second, which he's going to love. 76 00:11:25,000 --> 00:11:29,000 But Andy is a fabulous example of curiosity. It's somebody who pulls at these threads. 77 00:11:29,000 --> 00:11:38,000 And this is why he will often hear something in a sermon or a book or an interview and he will track it down. 78 00:11:38,000 --> 00:11:41,000 If a book is mentioned, he will go out and look it up or he will get the book. 79 00:11:41,000 --> 00:11:48,000 He is curious and he lets ideas find a place of interest for him. 80 00:11:48,000 --> 00:11:55,000 I'm totally celebrating in that view. He's so embarrassed right now. 81 00:11:55,000 --> 00:12:10,000 But with Andy, he lets his curiosity lead him down the road of exploration, which is the next piece. 82 00:12:10,000 --> 00:12:15,000 Curiosity is one thing. We can ask a lot of questions. Where do we go with it? 83 00:12:15,000 --> 00:12:21,000 Exploration, also known as play. Adults have forgotten how to play. 84 00:12:21,000 --> 00:12:29,000 Perhaps when you are given something to consume, perhaps you are still a question asker. 85 00:12:29,000 --> 00:12:33,000 But not everybody explores the questions or the threads of interest. 86 00:12:33,000 --> 00:12:41,000 It makes them step into more curiosity, trying things out, seeing how they look or work. 87 00:12:41,000 --> 00:12:46,000 Bobby McFerrin is one of my most favorite musicians. 88 00:12:46,000 --> 00:12:51,000 A lot of you may know him because of Don't Worry Be Happy. He is so much more than that. 89 00:12:51,000 --> 00:12:57,000 Bobby McFerrin did an album with the pianist Chikoria called Play. 90 00:12:57,000 --> 00:13:02,000 McFerrin reflects on how when you take music lessons, they use the word play. 91 00:13:02,000 --> 00:13:12,000 But often it is only used after you build skill. But play does not need skill. 92 00:13:12,000 --> 00:13:17,000 Skill will enhance how we play, but it is not contingent on it. 93 00:13:17,000 --> 00:13:24,000 Play is what we do with curiosity as we explore, to see what things do, how they work, 94 00:13:24,000 --> 00:13:30,000 how they relate, what happens when, what will happen if I do this. 95 00:13:30,000 --> 00:13:33,000 I ask questions, what will happen if. 96 00:13:33,000 --> 00:13:38,000 I'm talking about a lot of relatable things here, referring to media input and what we do with it. 97 00:13:38,000 --> 00:13:43,000 But what I'm talking about are the seeds of creativity. 98 00:13:43,000 --> 00:13:50,000 By the way, and this will come as no surprise to anyone, but children are the teachers in this area. 99 00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:56,000 Any time at all with a child will loop you endlessly through this. 100 00:13:56,000 --> 00:14:00,000 This curiosity exploration, curiosity exploration loop. 101 00:14:00,000 --> 00:14:05,000 If you spend any time with a kid during a day, you will watch that in cycle over and over again. 102 00:14:05,000 --> 00:14:09,000 They are brilliant at it. They are masters at it. 103 00:14:09,000 --> 00:14:16,000 Also, if you have any familiarity with the three-year-old stage, you are undoubtedly also familiar with the three-year-old starter pack, 104 00:14:16,000 --> 00:14:23,000 fully equipped with the question of why, why, why, why, why, why. 105 00:14:23,000 --> 00:14:28,000 But this is an amazing question. I know it gets a lot, it becomes a lot. 106 00:14:28,000 --> 00:14:34,000 But I love that kids are absolutely on a bash. They want to know more. 107 00:14:34,000 --> 00:14:37,000 So they're going to ask. They're curious. 108 00:14:37,000 --> 00:14:41,000 And then they absolutely will explore what you have answered them. 109 00:14:41,000 --> 00:14:44,000 They will explore that answer. 110 00:14:44,000 --> 00:14:48,000 But this loop that we see kids cycle through, we simply call it playing. 111 00:14:48,000 --> 00:14:54,000 But the breakdown is there, and I have been explicit about the breakdown of curiosity and exploration, 112 00:14:54,000 --> 00:14:57,000 because I'm talking to a room mostly full of adults. 113 00:14:57,000 --> 00:15:02,000 And we've forgotten. We need to review the process. 114 00:15:02,000 --> 00:15:04,000 But this should tell us something. 115 00:15:04,000 --> 00:15:12,000 This recognition that children are the masters at this, it tells us that this process is innate. 116 00:15:12,000 --> 00:15:17,000 It is core to who we are. Creativity is built into our design. 117 00:15:17,000 --> 00:15:23,000 Guys, you are creative. 118 00:15:23,000 --> 00:15:27,000 You don't need to become creative. You are creative. 119 00:15:27,000 --> 00:15:32,000 God has started you there. You have been creative. 120 00:15:32,000 --> 00:15:36,000 You have a baseline for it. You were a child once. 121 00:15:36,000 --> 00:15:39,000 This was your life. 122 00:15:39,000 --> 00:15:45,000 But we have moved away from it. We just, we have stopped practicing. 123 00:15:45,000 --> 00:15:52,000 It didn't go away. Those muscles are just not strong anymore. 124 00:15:52,000 --> 00:15:54,000 So what happens to it? 125 00:15:54,000 --> 00:15:59,000 Well, for various reasons, from within and outside of ourselves, we become self-conscious, 126 00:15:59,000 --> 00:16:02,000 and it steals something from us. 127 00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:05,000 Madeline Lengel may be a familiar name to you. 128 00:16:05,000 --> 00:16:09,000 Whoever read A Wrinkle in Time? 129 00:16:09,000 --> 00:16:12,000 Oh, I'm surprised that there aren't more. 130 00:16:12,000 --> 00:16:15,000 Those of you who are raising your hands, you're probably surprised as well. 131 00:16:15,000 --> 00:16:19,000 A Wrinkle in Time is a stunning book. 132 00:16:19,000 --> 00:16:24,000 Ava DuVernay also directed a movie of it a number of years ago that was really, 133 00:16:24,000 --> 00:16:26,000 it was beautiful to see. 134 00:16:26,000 --> 00:16:32,000 She, so Madeline Lengel, she published her, she was an astounding writer, 135 00:16:32,000 --> 00:16:36,000 just produced so much work, really, really good work. 136 00:16:36,000 --> 00:16:41,000 She published her journals from a period of time in which she and her husband, 137 00:16:41,000 --> 00:16:46,000 children and grandchildren spent summers together at the house she and her husband called Crosswix. 138 00:16:46,000 --> 00:16:51,000 Also, if you haven't thought about naming your house before today, 139 00:16:51,000 --> 00:16:56,000 I would encourage you to have a household meeting about that and make that happen, 140 00:16:56,000 --> 00:16:58,000 because that's a pretty great thing. 141 00:16:58,000 --> 00:17:02,000 Incidentally, mine is called The Urban Cottage, if you're wondering. 142 00:17:02,000 --> 00:17:04,000 I don't know that you are. 143 00:17:04,000 --> 00:17:10,000 But she has four of these journals out, and the first one is called A Circle of Quiet, 144 00:17:10,000 --> 00:17:16,000 and it has been a creative north star for me for a number of decades. 145 00:17:16,000 --> 00:17:20,000 In it, she writes this, and this is a bit of a passage, it's a couple, it's a few paragraphs, 146 00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:25,000 but I follow along the main thread. 147 00:17:25,000 --> 00:17:30,000 She writes, in reflection of the time that they were all together, 148 00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:36,000 this was the first time I'd been forced to think consciously about creativity 149 00:17:36,000 --> 00:17:41,000 in connection with little children, rather than the older ones for whom I often write. 150 00:17:41,000 --> 00:17:47,000 I was trying to think out loud about the concentration essential for all artists, 151 00:17:47,000 --> 00:17:51,000 and in the very little child, I found a perfect example. 152 00:17:51,000 --> 00:18:00,000 The concentration of a small child at play is analogous to the concentration of the artist of any discipline. 153 00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:07,000 In real play, which is real concentration, the child is not only outside of time, 154 00:18:07,000 --> 00:18:10,000 he is also outside of himself. 155 00:18:10,000 --> 00:18:15,000 He has thrown himself completely into whatever it is that he is doing. 156 00:18:15,000 --> 00:18:23,000 A child playing a game, building a sandcastle, painting a picture, is completely in what he is doing. 157 00:18:23,000 --> 00:18:31,000 His self-conscious is gone, his consciousness is wholly focused outside of himself. 158 00:18:31,000 --> 00:18:35,000 She goes on to say, I had just witnessed this in Crosswix, 159 00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:39,000 observing an 18-month-old lying on her stomach in the grass, 160 00:18:39,000 --> 00:18:45,000 watching a colony of ants, watching with total spontaneous concentration. 161 00:18:45,000 --> 00:18:48,000 And I had played Ring Around the Rosie with her. 162 00:18:48,000 --> 00:18:54,000 We skipped around in a circle, grandparents, parents, assorted teenagers, wholly outside of them, 163 00:18:54,000 --> 00:19:00,000 holding hands, falling and abandoned onto the lawn, joining the child's shrieks of delighted laughter. 164 00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:06,000 And with her, we were outside self and outside time. 165 00:19:06,000 --> 00:19:10,000 When we are self-conscious, we cannot be wholly aware. 166 00:19:10,000 --> 00:19:13,000 We must throw ourselves out first. 167 00:19:13,000 --> 00:19:16,000 This throwing ourselves away is an act of creativity. 168 00:19:16,000 --> 00:19:22,000 So when we wholly concentrate, like a child in play or an artist at work, 169 00:19:22,000 --> 00:19:25,000 then we share in the act of creating. 170 00:19:25,000 --> 00:19:30,000 We not only escape time, we also escape our self-conscious selves. 171 00:19:30,000 --> 00:19:37,000 When we trade in our self-consciousness, we are freed up. 172 00:19:37,000 --> 00:19:40,000 Think about the first thing I had us do this morning. 173 00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:46,000 How many experience self-consciousness? 174 00:19:46,000 --> 00:19:52,000 The inner voices that immediately made you pause and consider if this was something that you could do. 175 00:19:52,000 --> 00:19:58,000 Even while you began drawing, were you self-critical? 176 00:19:58,000 --> 00:20:01,000 Why are these important observations to make? 177 00:20:01,000 --> 00:20:07,000 And why is recognizing the value of creativity important? 178 00:20:07,000 --> 00:20:12,000 The practice of creativity is very much kingdom work. 179 00:20:12,000 --> 00:20:16,000 Creativity draws us outside of ourselves. 180 00:20:16,000 --> 00:20:19,000 This is a series on worship that we've been doing, 181 00:20:19,000 --> 00:20:25,000 and at the House we regularly say that worship is turning our hearts and affections towards God. 182 00:20:25,000 --> 00:20:29,000 We come together to do this, but we can also worship outside of this space with less people. 183 00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:33,000 Let me be clear, both matter. It's not an either or. 184 00:20:33,000 --> 00:20:36,000 Both are critical. 185 00:20:36,000 --> 00:20:40,000 But creativity draws us out of ourselves. 186 00:20:40,000 --> 00:20:47,000 Because you can imagine, and even put yourself back in if you can, to those places. 187 00:20:47,000 --> 00:20:50,000 I mean, Eric's question this morning, what were you obsessed with as a child? 188 00:20:50,000 --> 00:20:55,000 Do you remember how much time you lost doing that thing? 189 00:20:55,000 --> 00:21:04,000 How much time did you lose playing Star Wars or playing with your cars or playing outside, 190 00:21:04,000 --> 00:21:08,000 and all of a sudden the sun is going down, and you're like, it was just noon. 191 00:21:08,000 --> 00:21:10,000 How did that happen? 192 00:21:10,000 --> 00:21:13,000 As a child, you abandon yourself to that. 193 00:21:13,000 --> 00:21:15,000 You are wholly outside of yourself. 194 00:21:15,000 --> 00:21:18,000 Kids say crazy things, and you're like, how are you not aware? 195 00:21:18,000 --> 00:21:23,000 Because they have lost that need to be self-conscious. 196 00:21:23,000 --> 00:21:26,000 Or not lost, they have not gained it yet, right? 197 00:21:26,000 --> 00:21:30,000 What a gift. What a gift. 198 00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:35,000 But once we become adults, we just become completely wrapped in this. 199 00:21:35,000 --> 00:21:39,000 We become completely wrapped in our self-conscious. 200 00:21:39,000 --> 00:21:44,000 And we need something to draw us outside of ourselves. 201 00:21:44,000 --> 00:21:50,000 A practice of curiosity and exploration, play, does that. 202 00:21:50,000 --> 00:21:58,000 And isn't that an essential piece of how we allow ourselves the freedom to worship God? 203 00:21:58,000 --> 00:22:01,000 Creativity also gives our mind pliability. 204 00:22:01,000 --> 00:22:03,000 That's important. 205 00:22:03,000 --> 00:22:09,000 Christ introduced an entirely new idea to us and invited us to a life in which we love others, 206 00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:15,000 we think of others as better than ourselves, and we recognize that love was the fulfillment of the law. 207 00:22:15,000 --> 00:22:23,000 And how many couldn't break out of the previous thinking that the Old Testament taught them, 208 00:22:23,000 --> 00:22:27,000 that the Old Scriptures taught them, how many couldn't step away from that? 209 00:22:27,000 --> 00:22:33,000 The New Testament is full of stories of the early church leaders constantly reminding people 210 00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:39,000 that they no longer are slaves, that they are no longer having to live the way that they did. 211 00:22:39,000 --> 00:22:44,000 You are new creations, the old is gone, the new has come. 212 00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:48,000 We see that trouble even now, don't we? 213 00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:54,000 Peter, his story in Scripture moves me probably the most out of anybody. 214 00:22:54,000 --> 00:23:00,000 We see it in Acts 10 moving forward for a few chapters when he's confronted with recognizing 215 00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:05,000 that God has welcomed Gentiles into his plan for salvation. 216 00:23:05,000 --> 00:23:10,000 Those that adhered to the law thought, that's not in the Scriptures. 217 00:23:10,000 --> 00:23:15,000 We're God's chosen people, we can't do something new. 218 00:23:15,000 --> 00:23:21,000 But the Lord clearly told Peter, do not call anything impure that God has made clean. 219 00:23:21,000 --> 00:23:24,000 And what a struggle that was for Peter. 220 00:23:24,000 --> 00:23:28,000 When Peter was asked to apply this new truth among the body of God fearing Gentiles 221 00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:33,000 that God immediately called him to go visit, he says to them, 222 00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:40,000 you are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile, 223 00:23:40,000 --> 00:23:47,000 but God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. 224 00:23:47,000 --> 00:23:54,000 And Peter certainly got flack for it, he had to go back to the church in Antioch and make an account for himself. 225 00:23:54,000 --> 00:23:56,000 He was brought in for questioning. 226 00:23:56,000 --> 00:24:01,000 And so Peter relayed the account, he retells the story. 227 00:24:01,000 --> 00:24:09,000 And it says, when they heard this, they had no further objection and praised God, saying, 228 00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:16,000 so then, even to Gentiles, God has granted repentance that leads to life. 229 00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:20,000 God doing new things is hardly unprecedented. 230 00:24:20,000 --> 00:24:27,000 Even Isaiah 43, 18, 19, Isaiah had to remind the people, forget the former things. 231 00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:30,000 Do not dwell on the past. See, I'm doing a new thing. 232 00:24:30,000 --> 00:24:35,000 Now it springs up using a water reference. 233 00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:39,000 It springs up, it's refreshing, it's new, it's clean. 234 00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:42,000 Do you not perceive it? 235 00:24:42,000 --> 00:24:48,000 Our minds and our hearts must be pliable to be formed into Christlikeness 236 00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:55,000 and to be movable with the new things that God is doing around us. 237 00:24:55,000 --> 00:25:01,000 And lastly, creativity is critical to the kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven. 238 00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:05,000 Kingdom thinking, it must be creative. 239 00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:11,000 I regularly think about the people in the Bible that had to practice such holy imagining on such a regular basis. 240 00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:16,000 Everything was new. Everything was being reinvented. 241 00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:21,000 It was this practice that provided space for the kingdom of God to be ushered in. 242 00:25:21,000 --> 00:25:25,000 Jesus' telling of the parables are exactly this. 243 00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:32,000 I want you to reimagine with me another way, is what Christ did with the parables. 244 00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:36,000 What you thought you knew is not what you thought you knew. 245 00:25:36,000 --> 00:25:41,000 Or you think about the prophets who had to come up with creative ways to tell their stories, 246 00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:47,000 to bring the truth forward, to make it really apparent to the people that were completely overlooking things. 247 00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:53,000 The prophets who told their stories through methods that would grab attention in the most specific of ways, 248 00:25:53,000 --> 00:26:00,000 dressing in sackcloth and ashes and standing on corners, retelling stories and bringing truths forward. 249 00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:07,000 The kingdom of God is so outside of our current world in that it is such a different paradigm, 250 00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:15,000 that we must approach it with wonder and awe and curiosity and a willingness to explore. 251 00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:24,000 This curiosity helps us also move into love and compassion for others when we are willing to ask questions 252 00:26:24,000 --> 00:26:32,000 about what we think we are seeing and we can move and explore possibilities of other paradigms 253 00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:38,000 of what may be the case for them or our city or even ourselves. 254 00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:47,000 If our minds are not pliable with a regular practice of curiosity and exploration and play, 255 00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:53,000 we will find ourselves in such a stuck fixed mindset versus a growth one 256 00:26:53,000 --> 00:27:00,000 and we will find that participation in a kingdom that is continually inviting us to join in what God is doing now 257 00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:03,000 will simply pass over us. 258 00:27:03,000 --> 00:27:12,000 We won't be able to accept the invitation because we won't be able to move with it. 259 00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:16,000 That is a very sobering idea. 260 00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:21,000 Can we afford to do that? 261 00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:24,000 I'm going to have you do a second activity. 262 00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:27,000 Hopefully you are less scared of it. 263 00:27:27,000 --> 00:27:32,000 I'm going to give you a few minutes and I'm going to ask you to do this on your paper. 264 00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:34,000 I'm going to ask you to write down ideas. 265 00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:42,000 They may be yours, ideas you've had, or they may be ideas that you've been offered and you are interested in. 266 00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:50,000 It could be something like, I want to know more about the Roman Empire that everybody's been talking about. 267 00:27:50,000 --> 00:27:53,000 I want to know more about this. 268 00:27:53,000 --> 00:27:56,000 This is something that came my way. 269 00:27:56,000 --> 00:27:58,000 That's an idea that's new to me. 270 00:27:58,000 --> 00:28:03,000 Or an idea that you have that's been generated in you. 271 00:28:03,000 --> 00:28:06,000 I know that you're already thinking like, ideas about what? 272 00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:07,000 About anything. 273 00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:09,000 And I mean anything. 274 00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:12,000 You're already editing yourself, I know. 275 00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:17,000 It can be, like I said, a new idea or an idea you come across, something you've thought about this week, 276 00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:22,000 a project you want to do, what you want to name your house. 277 00:28:22,000 --> 00:28:26,000 And I'm going to ask you just to write down the idea. 278 00:28:26,000 --> 00:28:30,000 Start there and don't edit it. 279 00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:34,000 Don't try to come up with reasons why it's not a good idea. 280 00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:36,000 It's just an idea. 281 00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:38,000 It's neutral. 282 00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:40,000 So let that just be the case. 283 00:28:40,000 --> 00:28:44,000 Do not qualify it. 284 00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:48,000 Because ideas and evaluation of those ideas are two different things. 285 00:28:48,000 --> 00:28:51,000 That's an important thing to keep in mind. 286 00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:56,000 Having an idea and evaluating idea are two different steps. 287 00:28:56,000 --> 00:29:01,000 So just don't try to develop it, don't critique it, don't do anything with it. 288 00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:05,000 Just write down ideas. 289 00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:12,000 This may be such an interesting idea to you in that you can think, I don't know the last time I had an idea. 290 00:29:12,000 --> 00:29:14,000 I don't practice ideas. 291 00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:16,000 I don't practice this. 292 00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:18,000 Huh. 293 00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:21,000 That is an interesting thing to realize in this moment. 294 00:29:21,000 --> 00:29:23,000 Do not think to yourself, well, I can't write that. 295 00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:25,000 That's not a good enough one. 296 00:29:25,000 --> 00:29:27,000 Again, we are not qualifying. 297 00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:30,000 I didn't say write down an idea with a plan that's realistic to accomplish this year. 298 00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:35,000 I said write down an idea, something you want to think about more. 299 00:29:35,000 --> 00:30:04,000 So go ahead and do that. I'm going to give you some time to do that. 300 00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:06,000 Okay. 301 00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:56,000 We're going to keep the music going, but I'm going to add another element to this. 302 00:30:56,000 --> 00:30:59,000 So now I want you to add some curiosity to that idea. 303 00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:02,000 Ask the idea a question. 304 00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:07,000 So, you know, when you were younger, you got the who, what, where, when, why, how. 305 00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:09,000 Those are good starting points. 306 00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:11,000 You don't have to answer all of them. 307 00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:16,000 But pick one to help you be curious about that idea. 308 00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:19,000 Whether it's why am I interested in this? 309 00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:22,000 Is it tied to other things I like? 310 00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:24,000 Where did I first hear about this idea? 311 00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:26,000 Who told me about it? 312 00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:28,000 Who's involved in this idea? 313 00:31:28,000 --> 00:31:31,000 Who were the players of the thing that I'm thinking about? 314 00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:35,000 Use those questions to ask the idea questions. 315 00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:38,000 Does that make sense? 316 00:31:38,000 --> 00:31:56,000 So take a few moments to do that. 317 00:31:56,000 --> 00:31:58,000 By the way, we are not judging the idea. 318 00:31:58,000 --> 00:31:59,000 This is not the evaluation. 319 00:31:59,000 --> 00:32:01,000 It's just the curiosity. 320 00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:32,000 So, I'm going to take a few moments to do that. 321 00:33:29,000 --> 00:33:36,000 The last thing I'm going to ask you to do with this is explore it a little bit. 322 00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:42,000 Draw some fuller thoughts of what you could do with this idea. 323 00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:48,000 Not necessarily what you could physically make out of the idea, but what could you do with this idea? 324 00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:50,000 That could be like, I could read a book. 325 00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:51,000 I could research on it. 326 00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:53,000 I could find a website. 327 00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:55,000 I could, I could, I could. 328 00:33:55,000 --> 00:33:59,000 How can you play with this idea? 329 00:33:59,000 --> 00:34:02,000 Maybe you've got garden plans and you've got some ideas. 330 00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:04,000 So how can you play with that? 331 00:34:04,000 --> 00:34:07,000 When can you play with it? 332 00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:09,000 Think about those things for a moment. 333 00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:38,000 How can you explore this idea? 334 00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:52,000 If you are cool with it? 335 00:35:22,000 --> 00:35:33,000 I have a daily reminder alarm set on my phone that asks me what are your ideas? 336 00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:39,000 And it is the reminder that I want to explore things. 337 00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:46,000 That I need to keep curiosity practiced and I need to explore things and keep play practiced. 338 00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:52,000 That is not something, again, that we do on the regular. 339 00:35:52,000 --> 00:35:56,000 And I want to build that muscle in all areas of my life. 340 00:35:56,000 --> 00:36:05,000 That I have curiosity that is well strengthened and that I don't forget how to play. 341 00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:08,000 I don't forget how to explore. 342 00:36:08,000 --> 00:36:17,000 Often, what happens when we follow the thread of curiosity into the play exploration stage, 343 00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:21,000 we find that that naturally starts looping on its own. 344 00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:23,000 It gains momentum. 345 00:36:23,000 --> 00:36:28,000 We find that we become well on our way to making. 346 00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:35,000 Curiosity often leads us to gather some materials to play with and explore with. 347 00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:41,000 I don't mean that necessarily physically, sometimes that's more ideas like what we just talked about. 348 00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:49,000 But curiosity will lead us to gather some materials, basically some kindling, and to try some things out. 349 00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:54,000 And then we gain more curiosity now that we've had more materials to add to the thing. 350 00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:57,000 And it just keeps looping and looping. 351 00:36:57,000 --> 00:36:59,000 You've got to get started, right? 352 00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:01,000 So we add more things. 353 00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:08,000 This is exactly how kids' forts are made, or when you got the box and you built a spaceship out of it, 354 00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:15,000 and you kept adding more cardboard to it to be the overdrive or whatever, I don't know, hyperdrive. 355 00:37:15,000 --> 00:37:23,000 But my point is, this is how kids develop the stuff that is constantly filling the spaces of your house, 356 00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:27,000 is that they keep adding stuff to it because they continue exploring. 357 00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:32,000 So in this case, what would happen if I add this pot that my mom needs for dinner, my dad needs for dinner? 358 00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:35,000 What would happen if I add this to my spaceship? 359 00:37:35,000 --> 00:37:39,000 And you've heard it, like, I'm using that spatula. 360 00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:41,000 Please don't take it. 361 00:37:41,000 --> 00:37:43,000 It's how we write books. 362 00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:45,000 We just keep adding more sentences. 363 00:37:45,000 --> 00:37:47,000 And what happens if this character would do this? 364 00:37:47,000 --> 00:37:49,000 What happens if this idea goes this direction? 365 00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:51,000 What happens if this character murders this person? 366 00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:53,000 Oh my gosh. 367 00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:55,000 Then you have a Stephen King novel. 368 00:37:55,000 --> 00:38:03,000 This is how we learn to fix things in our home, or how feeding your friend's kids after school turns into community meal programs. 369 00:38:03,000 --> 00:38:05,000 Curiosity. 370 00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:16,000 When allowed curiosity, ideas were not evaluated yet, but given the ability to be curious and to follow a curiosity thread, 371 00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:23,000 when those things move to exploration, that's what creates the things that we see around us. 372 00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:30,000 It is okay to be curious and play, by the way, without producing something. 373 00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:34,000 But by the nature of what it is, that's probably rare. 374 00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:37,000 God has made us creators. 375 00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:39,000 He's made you creative. 376 00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:41,000 You already are. 377 00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:48,000 If you ever say to yourself again, I'm not creative, you have completely denied yourself. 378 00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:55,000 You are creative, because God has built that into you. 379 00:38:55,000 --> 00:39:01,000 It's just a muscle that has gone atrophied. 380 00:39:01,000 --> 00:39:13,000 So with all of this, imagine if we all believed that we could apply this energy into how we turn our hearts and affections towards God and to life in the kingdom. 381 00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:15,000 I love that thought. 382 00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:18,000 I love that idea. 383 00:39:18,000 --> 00:39:20,000 So how do we do something with that? 384 00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:26,000 Well, here, we've changed our room up a little bit. 385 00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:28,000 We've put sketchbooks on the table. 386 00:39:28,000 --> 00:39:30,000 There are materials that you can use. 387 00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:32,000 You can also bring some. 388 00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:40,000 You can use the sketchbooks on the table each week to follow threads of curiosity and to explore those ideas as they come up in our gathering time. 389 00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:43,000 Let the spirit lead you on that stuff. 390 00:39:43,000 --> 00:39:47,000 It is okay to use those while other things are happening, by the way. 391 00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:54,000 I find that if I'm attending a gathering in which there's singing and prayer, I usually don't end up singing. 392 00:39:54,000 --> 00:39:57,000 I usually spend the time writing or drawing. 393 00:39:57,000 --> 00:39:59,000 That's how I engage in that time. 394 00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:04,000 And you're welcome to do that as well. 395 00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:08,000 At home, you're allowed to ask the Bible questions. 396 00:40:08,000 --> 00:40:13,000 You're allowed to talk back to it and explore it and play with ideas. 397 00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:15,000 Ask the spirit questions. 398 00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:19,000 The spirit is with us constantly. 399 00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:21,000 Ask questions all the time. 400 00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:23,000 Explore ideas with the spirit. 401 00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:27,000 The spirit, I find, is so playful. 402 00:40:27,000 --> 00:40:30,000 And I mean that in the most honoring way. 403 00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:34,000 The spirit is not bound by what we think. 404 00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:39,000 You know, like the spirit is not bound by a self-consciousness because the spirit is so unified. 405 00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:42,000 God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. 406 00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:47,000 There's such unity there that the spirit is fully free. 407 00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:54,000 And if you engage with the spirit, the spirit is playful and it is explorative and it is moving constantly. 408 00:40:54,000 --> 00:41:01,000 And there are new things always changing and things to explore and new roots to go down. 409 00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:07,000 Life in the spirit is a life of playfulness, I think, and it's a life of exploration. 410 00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:11,000 That can feel scary, I understand, because we're mostly adults in here. 411 00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:14,000 And this idea of like, oh my gosh, what if I lose myself? 412 00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:16,000 Yeah. 413 00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:20,000 I think that's the point we've been making. 414 00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:21,000 But ask the spirit questions. 415 00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:24,000 Look for revelation around you in the natural world. 416 00:41:24,000 --> 00:41:30,000 Romans in the Psalms constantly tell us that God is revealing itself to us constantly through the natural world. 417 00:41:30,000 --> 00:41:38,000 What a beautiful place to be ignited to think and be curious and explore and to play. 418 00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:45,000 God is being revealed always, and you can respond with your full heart and your attention through these means. 419 00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:48,000 You can also do this in the work that you do. 420 00:41:48,000 --> 00:41:54,000 And I'm not talking about our jobs, though that is under the umbrella of work to some degree. 421 00:41:54,000 --> 00:41:58,000 But the work that we are about around us and the life we are about around us, 422 00:41:58,000 --> 00:42:04,000 the work of friendships and home building and life building and the other things that we are setting our time to, 423 00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:11,000 we can do that in a similar way that Lengel talked about in regards to the child. 424 00:42:11,000 --> 00:42:17,000 Unconscious of ourselves, outwardly looking, drawn out of ourselves. 425 00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:26,000 We can be drawn out of ourselves and be reoriented towards the life of God in and around us in all these areas. 426 00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:31,000 And so when I talk about worship and creativity, 427 00:42:31,000 --> 00:42:40,000 I don't just mean the things that we have applied that to in our common vernacular, 428 00:42:40,000 --> 00:42:44,000 because creativity is so much far beyond that. 429 00:42:44,000 --> 00:42:51,000 Curiosity and exploration can be applied to everything. 430 00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:56,000 You tend to find that people who are deemed the creative ones may be a little bit more practiced in it. 431 00:42:56,000 --> 00:42:59,000 And that's why they tend to be the ones identified that way, 432 00:42:59,000 --> 00:43:02,000 because they're the ones that are engaged in it more regularly, 433 00:43:02,000 --> 00:43:07,000 but that does not exclude others from participating. 434 00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:14,000 So I'm going to invite you this week to just be brave and to be willing to be unselfconscious. 435 00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:19,000 Not unconscious, but unselfconscious. 436 00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:24,000 Unless you're resting, of course. We value that. 437 00:43:24,000 --> 00:43:35,000 I'm going to encourage you to entertain ideas and then be curious about them and be willing to play. 438 00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:39,000 Play this week. Find ways to play. 439 00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:44,000 And let that loop sort of take you in. 440 00:43:44,000 --> 00:43:52,000 Let the Spirit take you into that loop this week as you become completely drawn out of yourself. 441 00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:56,000 And even finding yourself potentially, I would even think, 442 00:43:56,000 --> 00:44:06,000 engaged in the kingdom in new ways around you this week because of this openness to curiosity and exploration and play. 443 00:44:06,000 --> 00:44:09,000 Let's pray. 444 00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:16,000 God, I thank you so much for your Spirit and the way you are here to assist us, 445 00:44:16,000 --> 00:44:28,000 to equip us, to guide us, and to lead us in the ways of becoming unselfconscious, as it were. 446 00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:33,000 I'm so glad, too, that as we, our attention is drawn outside of ourselves, 447 00:44:33,000 --> 00:44:38,000 it's not like we're spinning in circles trying to find a place to orient. 448 00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:41,000 I mean, you are our orientation. 449 00:44:41,000 --> 00:44:48,000 And as we are drawn out of ourselves in our walk with you, 450 00:44:48,000 --> 00:44:53,000 this just helps us turn our hearts and affections towards you more in, 451 00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:57,000 not just when we're gathered together, but in all areas of our life. 452 00:44:57,000 --> 00:45:00,000 So we just really need your help with that. 453 00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:03,000 For those of us who spend time with young people, 454 00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:10,000 help us be really good learners around our teachers with these young people. 455 00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:15,000 For those of us who just don't, that's not an opportunity that exists, 456 00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:20,000 I pray that you remind us of the ways that we used to do things, 457 00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:26,000 the way we used to completely throw ourselves into this curiosity and exploration play loop, 458 00:45:26,000 --> 00:45:30,000 and what that did for us, what that meant to us. 459 00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:35,000 And help us build those muscles back up again. 460 00:45:35,000 --> 00:45:41,000 We, I mean, I think that this is critical to the kingdom. 461 00:45:41,000 --> 00:45:46,000 This is critical to seeing others come to know you. 462 00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:48,000 So Lord, we need your help with it. 463 00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:52,000 We need your, yeah, we need your help with this. 464 00:45:52,000 --> 00:45:56,000 And so we give this new idea to you, or we give you these ideas, 465 00:45:56,000 --> 00:46:03,000 and we ask that this week you help us move forward into reformation of our minds. 466 00:46:03,000 --> 00:46:09,000 And yeah, we're so grateful for your presence with us and your walk with us, God. 467 00:46:09,000 --> 00:46:27,000 We pray this in your name, amen.