Live the Word Bible Studies

Purpose Study Bible 27: Creativity Gone Awry

As we move on to read about another story in Abram's life, we read about the plan he and Sarai hatched for them to have a baby when it appeared no other way was possible:

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived (Genesis 16:1-4).

I have read that this was the custom of the land at that time, but it was not something the Lord had spoken to Abram to do. When they got tired of waiting, the couple's creativity kicked in and they hatched a plan, which only had a 50-50 chance of succeeding because Hagar could have delivered a girl. Yet Abram and Sarai perhaps sincerely thought that this was God's way to fulfill His promise to them. They were sincere—but sincerely wrong.

If you do not use your creativity for good, it will find its way to be expressed in activities that are not so good or helpful. You will creatively manufacture excuses, fantasies, what-if scenarios, things to worry about, empty hobbies and activities, and options to act and do something during your season of waiting. If not expressed properly, you will use your creativity to produce an idol and then creatively justify its existence.

How are you expressing your creativity? Do you deploy it in the service of others and in the fulfillment of your purpose, or in producing excuses of why this is not the right time or you are not the right person for the task? Do you use it to creatively conceive of what faith step you can take with an idea you have or to conceive a reason why you should stay put and shut up? The point is that you will use your creativity one way or the other. Determine to use it for good in cooperation in God's plan for your life and not in a way that avoids the work and patience it takes to produce fruit in the will of God.

Purpose Study Bible 26: Doubt and Darkness

Even though God had spoken His promise to Abram, Abram went through a time of testing:

After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir" (Genesis 15:1-3).

Why do you think the Lord told Abram not to fear? it's because he was afraid! Even though God had spoken to him and proved Himself to him, Abram doubted what God had promised because he could not see how it could all come to pass. Then if that wasn't enough, Abram went through what some call the dark night of the soul: 

He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it." But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?” (Genesis 15:7-8).

After Abram brought the Lord some sacrifices as God directed, we are told, "As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him" (Genesis 15:12). Then again, we see that "when the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces" (Genesis 15:17).

When Abram was at his lowest and darkest, God spoke to him and then provided a light through the firepot and torch. The same will be true for you. Perhaps you are doubting and in darkness where you purpose or creativity are concerned. You have heard from the Lord and have faith, but you're afraid or maybe have even descended into depression. The word of the Lord for you is to trust Him. The less you feel or sense, the greater the need for faith.

Where are you in your faith walk where purpose and creativity are concerned? What doubts and fears do you have? The Lord is mindful of you and is willing to comfort and sustain you, even though your breakthrough may not be imminent. Today, embrace your darkness not as an end unto itself but as a means to seek the Lord and go to higher heights and deeper depths in Him. God has not forgotten you, but don't you forget Him or the promises He has made to you concerning His assignment for you.

Purpose Study Bible 25: Making War

The Spirit included an unusual story from the life of Abram in Genesis 14 that is worth examining as we consider the topics of purpose and creativity:

Then one who had escaped came and told Abram the Hebrew, who was living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and of Aner. These were allies of Abram. When Abram heard that his kinsman had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in his house, 318 of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. And he divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and defeated them and pursued them to Hobah, north of Damascus. Then he brought back all the possessions, and also brought back his kinsman Lot with his possessions, and the women and the people (Genesis 14:13-16 ESV).

After Abram had allowed Lot to have first choice of the land he and his herdsmen would live in, Abraham had to go rescue his nephew. Yet consider these things as you reflect on this story:

1. Abram had 318 men in his household who could go to battle. That is quite an entourage from one man's house. This indicates Abraham's wealth and his organizational skills that he could oversee an operation of that size.
2. Not only did Abram have to oversee his personal enterprise, someone had to train those men in how to fight and deploy for battle. Perhaps it was Abram or maybe he hired people specifically to carry out that task. The point is that he was proactive in preparing for the eventuality of conflict.
3. Abram had to go on the offensive to win back what his enemies had taken from him, even though Lot had exposed himself to this danger because of his selfish choice of the best land as he saw it.
4. Abram was confident that he could lead that company into battle and defeat his enemies.
5. Abram displayed creativity in his attack plan. They marched by day and fought by night after Abram divided his forces in order to surprise and overwhelm his enemies. 
6. Then Abram pursued his enemies for a distance after the battle until he had recovered his nephew along with their possessions, women, and children.
7. Abram was not afraid to go and fight for what was most important to him.

Are you willing to be creative and fight for what is most important to you, which may include not only your family but also your purpose and how it is being carried out? That may mean you are "fighting" to preserve your ministry, company, or creative expressions from enemies like recession, legal attacks, or people who are trying to steal what you have built. Sometimes your enemies are those you cannot see, for Paul reminded us that "for though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds" (2 Corinthians 10:3-4). Today is not a day to be passive but to stand and preserve and recover your purposeful creativity that God has given you.

Purpose Study Bible 24: Building Altars

As we study the earlier parts of Abram's life, we see that he used his creativity to build an altar wherever he settled:

• Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him (Genesis 3:6- 7).
• From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord (Genesis 12:8).
• From the Negev he went from place to place until he came to Bethel, to the place between Bethel and Ai where his tent had been earlier and where he had first built an altar. There Abram called on the name of the Lord (Genesis 13:3-4).
•  So Abram went to live near the great trees of Mamre at Hebron, where he pitched his tents. There he built an altar to the Lord (Genesis 3:18).

Abram was pursuing the purpose God had assigned him, but the way was hard and fraught with uncertainty and danger. Even his nephew and he experienced conflict, which caused them to split with Lot taking what appeared to be the best of the land when Abram allowed him to choose. At a time when it appeared Abram had experienced great loss, the Lord appeared to him and renewed His promises: 

The Lord said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, “Look around from where you are, to the north and south, to the east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you" (Genesis 13:14-17).

What was Abram's response after Lot left and Lord spoke to him? He built an altar, using his hands and creativity to worship the Lord and recommit his way to the God who was leading him. 

Your purpose and creativity are from the Lord and will only be fully expressed and realized in the context of worshiping the Lord. You are not alone nor are you strong or smart enough to fulfill God's purpose in your own understanding and strength. Are you building your own kingdom or building altars of worship and sacrifice with your gifts, time, and talents? Is it time for you to build an altar and worship the Lord right where you are with what you have? Are you mindful of God's presence and leading in the midst of your success and failure as you carry out His assignment for you? Remember that worship, and not success as your culture defines it, is the goal of your life's efforts.

Purpose Study Bible 23: A Creative Lie

In the last entry, we looked at Abram's call to be a great nation, which required that he leave his homeland and go to a place the Lord had assigned for him. During his journey, he and his wife Sarai entered the land of Egypt, where Abram became afraid:

Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while
because the famine was severe. As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you" (Genesis 12:10-13).

When fear overcame him, Abram used his God-given creativity to concoct a lie, or what was really a half-truth, to protect himself. He excused what he did in his own mind, but the king who took Abram's wife because he thought she was his sister, knew that Abram had done wrong:

But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai. So Pharaoh summoned Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!” Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had (Genesis 12:17-20).

Truth is always better than a lie, even if that lie has its source in some measure of truth (Sarai was Abram's family member but also his wife). If you do not use your creativity for the right reasons, you will use it for the wrong reasons to devise clever rationalizations, usually called excuses, to explain why you are not doing what you are supposed to do. Excuses are often creative lies that soothe one's conscience and fend off critics, but at the end of the day, they are still lies that mask fear.

How have you anesthetized your conscience by using your creativity to justify your inaction (or wrong action)? Where do you need to accept responsibility for who you are and what you do so you can move on and God can bless you? What are your excuses to explain why you are not doing more for the Lord? Is it time that you stop using the best of your creativity to create a make-believe world and start using it to step out and move on as Abraham did?

Purpose Study Bible 22: Big

We move on this week to one of the most important accounts in the Old Testament, for it is in chapter 12 that the Lord begins to fulfill the promise He made to Adam and Eve that their seed would crush the
head of the serpent:

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.(Genesis 12:1-5).

We do not know why the Lord called Abram, although it does seem like he had a heart for God even though he had no history in God of which we know. When the Lord revealed Himself to Abram, He continued His directive for the people to spread out, multiply, and fill the earth, something that those in Genesis 11 refused to do until they were forced to do so. Abram went willingly.

Put yourself in Abram's place. How would you have received the news that you would be a great nation from your current situation? Would you ask a lot of questions? Would you want confirmation or more evidence that God was behind this?

We are all comfortable with being small, but what if God wants you to be "big"? What is His plan for you is to start a business that will employ thousands, or launch a fashion or beauty line that carries your name, or perform on a big stage (singing, preaching, teaching, performing) that will touch many people as you encourage, inspire, instruct, or entertain them? If God wants you to be "big," then what do you have to do to make yourself equal to the task?

Purpose Study Bible 21: Failure to Communicate

As we look at the last lesson from the Tower of Babel, we learn how the Lord thwarted the efforts of the people to settle down and build themselves a city with a monument:

Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth (Genesis 11:7-9).

What exactly happened here? Did people suddenly start speaking different languages? There is that possibility that a few languages emerged from this story, but it is also possible that the Lord confused the language the people were already speaking so that their singular goal became unclear or unsatisfactory. Have you ever been totally confused by someone even though they were speaking your native tongue? Have you talked to someone using a common word but realized during the conversation that you both understood the word differently? That can be a source of frustration and friction between people, causing them not to be "on the same page" with one another and preventing them from successfully working together.. 

This story tell us that God is involved not only in the development of human language, but He also is involved in enhancing communication between people, whether one-on-one or in a group. This truth is demonstrated in the story of Acts 2 when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples:

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?" (Acts 2:1-12).

The Holy Spirit empowered the disciples to "declare the wonders of God" in the languages represented in the crowd that day because God was involved to enhance communication the same way He was present to confuse communication in Genesis 11. Are you having any communication problems with others, even though you speak the same language—maybe even in your own family? Are you asking God to help you communicate with others, especially as you tell the story of His work in your life? Are you asking God to help you not just hear but also fully comprehend what others are trying to tell you? 

Purpose Study Bible 20: Power in Teams

The story of the tower in Genesis 11 is important because it encapsulates and explains so many of the challenges faced as we build and function in teams and families. Let's look at how the Lord responded to their efforts to build a tower:

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. (Genesis 11:5-6).

The people thought they were building a great edifice that would reach unto heaven. Yet the account says that the Lord "came down" to see the city and the tower. (This shows that the people were doing more than building a tower; they were establishing a life center with the tower as the crowning achievement.) The Lord was not impressed with either, for He had to "come down" to see them.

No matter how great our efforts, they are futile in God's sight without His involvement and protection: "All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and have given us over to our sins" (Isaiah 64:6-7). This is especially true of any works we do to try and gain His approval or earn His favor. We already have both, so our efforts should not be to gain God's favor, but to indicate we already enjoy His favor.

Notice also the power that God put into the power of teams working together. He created us to feed off one another's gifts and strengths, and when we combine them for the right reasons, our efforts are greater as a whole than the sum of their individual parts. In other words, when we work together, one plus one can equal five or ten or more. That is the power of something called synergy. God had to thwart the synergy in this story because He had promised not to intervene again as He had during the Flood, so He had to prevent the builders from being successful for their own good and protection—or they would have kept building.

Are you working for the Lord or building a monument for yourself or your organization? (Even people working in ministry can be building something great for the wrong reasons.). Are you part of a team that is experiencing synergy or one that is simply a collection of individuals working in silos or alone? What can you do to improve your team's dynamics and effectiveness?

Purpose Study Bible 19: Building a Tower

We saw in Genesis 10 how people spread out to fill the earth as the Lord had commanded them to do. In Genesis 11, we read about those who stopped spreading out and instead decided to stay put and build a tower:

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth" (Genesis 11:1-4).

These people wanted to make "a name for themselves," and they determined to do it at any cost. What did they do? They made bricks. They lived in a hot climate, but decided to bake the bricks thoroughly, which meant they had to build fires, making an already unpleasant work environment even worse. Then they decided to use tar to hold the bricks together. Do you know what tar smells like when it's heated? It gives off a foul odor.

Contrast these conditions with those in the Garden and you will see what the Fall cost people in regards to their purpose and creativity and how they would ultimately be expressed. What's more, rather than spread out as they were commanded, these people decided to stay in one place and build up, believing they could reach heaven through their own effort and work. 

Proverbs 13:15 states, "Good understanding giveth favour: but the way of transgressors is hard" (KJV) while Psalm 127:1-2 reports, "Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain. In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat—for he grants sleep to those he loves."

How would you characterize your work and career? Do you enjoy your work or are you toiling away in the heat of the day in unpleasant conditions? Are you building a name for yourself or glorifying God? Have you stubbornly planted yourself in one place, perhaps enduring mistreatment and a harsh environment rather than move on to something else, like as if you have the only job on the planet? If you are making bricks in the desert, can you trust the Lord for something better? How will you find it?

Purpose Study Bible 18: Spread Out

The Lord told Noah and his sons to "be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth" (Genesis 9:1). Here is an example of how they and the generations following them responded:

Cush was the father of Nimrod, who became a mighty warrior on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; that is why it is said, “Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord.” The first centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Uruk, Akkad and Kalneh, in Shinar. From that land he went to Assyria, where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah and Resen, which is between Nineveh and Calah—which is the great city (Genesis 10:8-11).

Obeying God's command, some went out and built cities and kingdoms, being true to their interests and purpose like Nimrod, who was a "mighty hunter before the Lord." These men did not necessarily honor or glorify God through their efforts, but they went out nonetheless and bore fruit, building kingdoms and establishing population centers that are mentioned throughout the Bible.

Later, Jesus gave a similar command found in Matthew 28:19-20: "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” What are you doing with Jesus command? Are you going? Are you helping others to go? Are you praying? Are you doing something in response to the command to spread out and bear fruit? "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you" (John 15:16).

It is important to understand that Genesis 10 and Matthew 28 are not simply directives to evangelize but to fulfill one's purpose, whatever that God-assigned purpose may be. Are you fulfilling your purpose and bearing fruit? If so, what is your fruit?