Skip to main content

Creativity Tip: Kick the Devil out

This is an honest confession. I am not the smartest person on planet earth. I never been. My IQ is average and it hasn't made any significant progress in the last few decades. However, my work involves a lot of thinking. It requires that I should focus on a subject for a considerable time without distraction.
For the sake of those who do not know me, I should say that I am an academic first. My job involves reading, preparing lectures, notes and books on topics in my field of expertise. I am also a pastor. That means I have to prepare sermons, bible studies, etc. All these means serious cerebral work.
However, most of the time my cerebral space is under siege. There are interpersonal issues, difficulties with the administration and a whole lot of things that keep invading this space. I try to fight out, but most of the time, I lose.
The consequences are disastrous. This disastrously affects my productivity. I find myself busy scheming, imagining my enemies, sometimes silently addressing my adversaries, preparing answers to questions that they haven't raised yet, etc. Then when I come out of it finally, I find myself tired. Exhausted to such an extent that even when I able to return to my work I am not able to move from where I left it.
One big shocking observation that I made is that the enemy took over this cerebral territory at my invitation. I allowed him to do that. Once I allow him in then he refuses to go back on his own. There ensues a battle to evict him.
After one such battle, when I was cooling my heels in prayer and meditating on the Bible, Ephesians 4:27 jumped out of the page. 'Give no opportunity to the devil.' That is what it said in the English Standard Version. I looked up the word used for 'opportunity' in Greek. It could mean 'opportunity' but the primary meaning is not that. The primary meaning of this word (TOPOS) is 'space' or 'place.' This verse then could be translated as 'do not give the devil any space!'
The Devil is the enemy of creativity and productivity. Devil is the opposite of what God is in every way. God is the creator but Devil is the destroyer. God gives life but Devil steals and kills. God makes us productive and creative but the Devil does just the opposite.
Devil cannot be a partner with a mind that is dedicated to God. Spending a single minute with thoughts that Devil plants in our mind amount to the loss of hours of creativity. Resolve conflicts as early as possible so that the Devil is kept out. Pray for troubling issues so that all that can be entrusted to God and sorted out by his help. This helps us to be creative for the creator God.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

The Days of Antipas

"The days of Antipas" means not only a period of persecution but a period of perseverance as well. It signifies the days of believers who withstood the pressures from outside to surrender. In the church in the city of Pergamum, there were some people who remained faithful to Jesus in the days of severe persecution. Apostle John calls these days of persecution "the day of Antipas" (Rev. 2:13).  The Antipas mentioned here should not be confused with Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great. Herod Antipas was a wicked ruler whom Jesus called "fox". He is the one who offered the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter to his daughter. He might have tried to kill Jesus and presided over Jesus' trial. However, the Antipas mentioned in Revelation 2 was the bishop of Pergamum, a pagan city in the first century AD. The name means "against all." There is a great con trast in the names -- Herod was against all that was good, however, Antipas th...
Read more

The Lonely Jungle Babbler

Every day it comes, and pecks at the glass panel of the window of my study. It is a Jungle Babbler, a very common bird in the Indian subcontinent. It dances flying up and down and fluttering its wings. Sometimes, three or four times a day it repeats this ritual. I thought it is trying to get  into  my room or fly through as it can see the other side. But why does it keep coming, can't it make out after three or four attempts that it can't fly through?   I told my Neighbor, whom I consider an expert on birds, about this winged visitor. She explained that the babbler is pecking at its own reflection, thinking that it is another bird. I thought of verifying her suggestion. The following day I kept the window half open, drawing one panel fully open. The babbler came as usual. Perched on the window,  looked into  my room through the open panel but did not enter the room or peck. But it moved to the side of the window where there is glass and started pecking on the gl...
Read more

The Conquering Grace

  Grace of God is hard to define. When I was making baby steps in Christian faith, mentors told me that ‘grace is unmerited favor.’ I found that helpful. But as I continued to experience God’s grace as I grew, I found that this definition is inadequate to express all that God does in my life. Now, I have come to realize that grace of God is such a thing that eludes any definition. Grace, as I understand now is what God alone and no human can do in our lives. It comes in various colors, shapes and sizes! John, the gospel writer seems to have understood the multifarious nature of grace that he talks about the ‘fullness of grace’ and ‘grace upon grace’ (John 1:17). Or the New Living Translation puts it: ‘From his abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another.’ These expressions mean that grace is not just one-sided reality but a multi-faceted reality. Its fullness is beyond our comprehension just as God evades our understanding. One of the rare but ...
Read more