Inspiration

As I was pouring myself a cup of iced afternoon coffee, my five-year-old daughter approached me with a smirk and said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if a pig sang a song and all he did was oink?” She’d painted a silly picture, and I couldn’t help but hear a pig oinking to the tune of Yankee Doodle Went to Town. Then, without any effort, my mind showed me a cow mooing dramatically to the tune of Whitney Houston’s I will always love you. Suddenly, the possibilities for children’s books and YouTube videos were running through my mind. I was mentally writing them when I realized: I was inspired, however ridiculously, by the imaginations of my five-year-old.

Inspiration is funny like that.  It comes and goes, almost without pattern or precedence. What works to get me thinking, writing, or dreaming one day may not work the next. When I try to re-create a time or place where I felt inspired, it almost never happens. That’s when motivation steps in. I have to motivate myself with rewards or consequences to keep things moving. Deadlines, responsibilities, paychecks, happy or disappointed people, failure or success—these are all external motivators. Though the two are similar, we all understand that somehow inspiration is different. Many people even say that motivation is external while inspiration comes from within. 

If it’s true that inspiration comes from within, then that is also the “place” where the Spirit of God dwells.[1] The Spirit of the single most creative Being to ever exist indwells us. So it would be reasonable to believe that same Spirit indwelling us could inspire some of the most thought-provoking art and literature, the most well-composed music, the most compelling movies, research papers and ingenious inventions. A professor of mine once said, “Christians should be the most creative people on the planet.” But perhaps a better way to word it is: “Christians should be the most inspired people on the planet.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t often feel like this—like I am a uniquely inspired individual. Much of what I produce is some sort of reproduction of something I saw or read or researched online. And I’m not alone. Our internet age ultra-connectedness has created a sort of groupthink, creative template that nearly suffocates originality. Even what we share with one another is meme-esque, in that it’s already been shared a thousand, a hundred thousand times before.

It’s like we’ve all forgotten how to draw without tracing paper, how to think without Google. Where is our inspiration?

But there’s hope. Isn’t that always the message for us who love and are loved by God? There’s hope because of the creative Spirit that we so often ignore. I believe His voice is always speaking, waiting to be heard. I believe He’s behind every stroke of genius, every life-altering piece of art. When we pray, listen, trust that Creator—instead of looking for outside motivators or even our own past inspiration— something new can be born.

Let’s ask. Ask Him to inspire us, to move us, to not just indwell, but pour out of us. I don’t think this is a one-time prayer or even a daily ritual, but rather a real desire to be used in new and divinely inspired ways.

I believe that as we do this, inspiration will come with a force we’ve never known before. And it might just start a movement. Because the truly inspired tend to leave a trail of tulip petals, of true inspiration for others to follow and find for themselves.

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[1] Ezekiel 36:27

I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.

But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

Romans 8:9

However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him

Source: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Indwelling-Of-The-Holy-Spirit