How I Create With My Creator

Before there were these colourful pictures on Instagram, there was just a girl with her heart stirred.

A girl who believed God was speaking to her, clearly speaking to her for over a year to start a blog and write about faith. So she obeyed but eventually realized / believed words needed to be accompanied by images. She didn’t have any ‘spiritual’ inspired photos so used stock photos for a few weeks before hightailing to the Apple store after work one day to buy an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil with faith that God would do something.

Not sure why I wrote the above in third person haha, maybe because it still feels surreal that God started to fulfil my childhood dream of being a writer / artist in 2019. I always had an inner longing to do something original and unique (Type 4!) in life but nothing I’d tried felt right. Writing and drawing about faith is the first time my soul feels on fire for the right thing. Because it’s about so much more than creating … it’s about worshipping God.

So how do I create with my Creator?

Let me begin by saying I am not perfect by any means. I still have so much to learn about God, the Trinity, the Bible, as well as living it out. But sharing my experience with hopes someone will read it and be encouraged to press into their own desire to worship God through words and / or art.

My current creative process: Instagram captions

When writing I try and be as accurate and honest as I possible can but I am still learning, learning so much day by day. And it all starts with my daily habit of quiet time.

Each morning, I wake up, make a cup of coffee, and sit at my desk to read through my Bible In One Year entry for the day. Sometimes I pray before reading and often I’m amazed that the topic of the entry is exactly what was on my heart. Other times I go right into reading. But while reading I’ll always make notes in my journal. And then I’ll pray / journal too.

For a long time, I’d split my pages in half: into PRAYERS and DOWNLOADS sections. That got a little messy so now I write out my prayers first and then just wait on the Lord. This is my favourite part - I try to do this for at least 45 mins to an hour every morning. Just waiting on God and being open to however he wants to speak. Sometimes it’s a song lyric, sometimes it’s a message about my future, sometimes it’s something in my heart that needs to be dealt with. There is never a dull moment with God and I think I can honestly say I come out of all these times stirred up and refreshed.

And ready to write an Instagram post! When I started in August 2019, I was really nervous because I’d never written about God before. But I feel God has protected and guided me every step of the way. Where God guides, he provides right. <3 I pray and ask God to lead and then use the Notes app on my iPhone / iMac (easy to transfer things back and forth) to type it out.

That’s usually it.

Recap: How I write faith-filled Instagram captions

1. Read Bible

2. Journal

3. Pray

4. Soak / Download

5. Ask Holy Spirit to lead and type out draft

6. Read over / edit draft

7. Choose a drawing from my catalogue (more below)

8. Share!

When it comes to social media, there’s a lot of information about scheduling posts but it’s not for me. At least for now. It’s nice to share in real time and maintain and online journal of sorts.

My current creative process: Art

Digital drawing is so, so fun. It’s always a cool feeling to finish a piece … like this idea was in my head and now it exists. How crazy. And amazing. But I say this not as an ego thing … because I know I couldn’t do it without the Holy Spirit.

When I bought my iPad, I hadn’t drawn since I was a child. In fact, we had an art jamming class at work a few months prior and I’d been assigned to draw the sketch (I imagine their thinking was along the lines of she looks creative ... she probably is creative) before we started painting. All I had to do was copy a photo. And much to my chagrin, I really could not do it well. Someone else in my group eventually (kindly) took over! With Yay, there was a lot of experimenting, trying out colours and combinations. At first I did take a look at what other artists were doing but quickly stopped because I knew that Yay had to be all me imperfections and all. I mean God encouraged me to make it all about celebrating our God-given design… no way could any of the words or art seem like they mimicked something that already existed. So through prayer and practice, I feel like God lead me towards a unique steps.

But drawing is part developing skills, and part figuring out what to draw in the first place. And for this, I go back to my journals.

Guys, I journal a lot. God made me a writer and lover of words, but I really just don’t want to forget anything I feel like God has told me. And the more I see his words to me come true, the more inspired I am to journal out my prayers too because I want to accurately testify when prayers come true too! To give you an idea of what ‘a lot’ means, I go through an entire journal every two months when it used to take me at least six. And these notes means I feel like I have an endless supply of verses, downloads, insights to draw from.

When it comes time to draw, I open my journal and make a list of things I think would make good art. I stop when I get to 20 or 30 (and then repeat the process when I’m done with the list), and then I start to pray. Lord, what do you think I should draw? What image do you think would go with this verse / download? From here, I make notes of what I sense God is saying and then start drawing. Usually I don’t get through the whole list so come back to it for the next drawing session. This builds up a catalogue of sorts, and draw from this when it comes time to choose an image for a post.

Recap: How I draw faith-inspired art

1. Pray

2. Review journal

3. Make a list of art ideas

4. Ask God for an image per idea

5. Draw!

So here’s a bit about how I create with our Creator! How about you? I’d love to read your process if you’ve ever blogged about it. Or please feel free to email / message / comment below. It’s so awesome to learn about how God’s working in the lives of fellow sisters and brothers.