Our Praise Should Be Creative

Creativity is the passage-way through which we can discover new and exciting ways to lift up our Lord. A commitment to innovation is the reason new songs are written, old songs are rearranged, new technologies are tried, and fresh ideas are put into action.
Every day someone invents a new and needed utensil, perhaps for the kitchen or for the workplace. And everyday someone comes up with a way to improve and better use an old tool. God has given us this wonderful gift of creativity through which we can make our tools of praise even more powerful and effective.
We should be creative in our praise because God is creative. To see the awesome creative “genius” of God, all one needs do is look up on a starry night or gaze at the full spectrum of colors in a sunset. How true is Psalm 19:1 that says, “The heavens declare the glory of God.”
Because God is creative we are creative. The reason is simple: God, the ultimate and original Creator, actually creates through us, his children! Nancy Beach wrote, “We have access to the Creator of All. For reasons I don’t understand, he chooses to whisper ideas to the listening ones…if only we’ll believe it and receive.” Because it is God who gives us the ability to be creative, it almost goes without saying, therefore, that he wants us to be creative in our praise to him.
Being creative sometimes means doing strange and “out of the ordinary” things. Paul and Silas found a strange place to worship God when they sang praises in prison. An immoral woman did something daring, a way to worship that had never been done before. She poured oil and anointed her Savior’s feet then washed them with her hair. These people offered ground-breaking praise for the greatest reason of all: Their Lord was worth it. And that’s a powerful reason for us to give him creative praise—our Lord is worth it!
[To spark our creative juices and challenge us, I strongly recommend An Hour on Sunday by Nancy Beach and Can We Do That? by Andy Stanley and Ed Young!]