 Hey, I just want to thank and welcome all of you. I know that this, you know, right in the middle of a week, in the middle of one of the seasons of church life that is really focused around growing and working towards things like Easter and that kind of thing. I know that this is a busy time of year, but I really have an expectation that what you are going to receive over the next few days here is going to be life changing. And I don't say that lightly. I really believe that. I know that all of the worship ministry here at Radiant and our creative teams and all that are involved in this have been praying for this for some for years, but very intensely over the last several months. And I know that what they have in store is just going to be life changing. And I want you to know that it's a privilege for me to share with all of you. I know that you come from a lot of different backgrounds. Some of you are musicians, worship leaders. Some of you are graphic designers. Some of you are cinematographers. Some of you, there's a few pastors that are in the room. Some of you are involved in fine arts and all kinds of different expressions of creativity. And I want you to know that as a pastor and as a leader, it is a high privilege for me to come and to speak life and hopefully deposit something into you tonight that's going to set the stage for what God has on his agenda for you, okay? So I'm a pastor, so I'm a preacher. That's what I do. So you know I want you to turn in your Bibles if you brought one to John chapter nine. If you didn't, that's fine. This is where I'm going to start tonight. And I want to share something tonight that I really believe is vital to the body of Christ that we understand. It's vital for the hour that we live in that we grasp what I'm about to share with us because it has so much to do with our identity. I don't know if you've noticed, but we live in a generation and in a culture where a hot topic is identity, but there is no more confusion and no more searching than in the subject of identity. People are looking for identity. And tonight I want to share a message with you called sent seers. And John chapter nine, I'm going to read to you just the first seven verses tonight. And it's an encounter that Jesus has with a blind man in verse number one. It says, as he passed by Jesus, he saw a blind man from birth. And his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents, so that he was born blind. And Jesus answered. It was not this man's who sinned or his parents, but so that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. And as long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. Having said these things, he spit on the ground. He made mud with the saliva and then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud. And he said to him, go wash in the pool of Siloam, which meant sent. And so he went, he washed, and he came back seeing. Now I want you to imagine with me tonight. I want you to imagine with me what it would be like to be born never seeing. I want you to imagine with me what it would be like if the only site that you had was the site that you experienced through your other four senses. I'm not talking about having sight and then losing it because then your imagination has a database that it can draw on as your other senses engage things much like if you were blindfolded here tonight. I'm talking about having never seen. What scientists tell us is that people that are born blind have heightened senses in the other areas such as smell, hearing, taste, touch. And they actually develop high levels of instinct and spatial recognition, but they don't see. They have no concept of color, of shape. They have no grid for distance or perspective. But all of your life imagine that you felt your way along. When you were growing up and learning how to walk, you couldn't see where you were going. So you learned how to tell the distance of something from you by the sound and the echo. And you felt your way along the coffee table in your mom and dad's living room. And as you got older, you began to count the number of steps from the living room to your bedroom. And as you ventured out into school, you were able to identify people's voices and recognize people's emotions by the speed of their steps, by the tone of their voice. And I want you to imagine being able to tell different fabrics, different textures, being much more sensitive to cold and hot, recognizing smells and tastes. All of these things, that's your world. You've never ever seen. That's what this man that Jesus encountered experienced all of his life. He had been blind from birth. And it's ironic, you may miss it, but the statement that John makes in verse number one is ironic and powerful. It says, Jesus saw a blind man. The blind man didn't see Jesus, but Jesus saw the blind man. And it says when he saw him, his disciples asked all of these questions, what went wrong, what happened? How did he end up in this situation? Asking all the wrong questions. And Jesus immediately directed them back and he said, this is for the glory of God. And then Jesus goes about healing this man. He, Jesus reaches down and he takes the dirt and he spits in it and he forms a little patty, a little ball of mud and he puts it on the man's face and anoints his eye, tells him to go and wash in the pool of Siloam, which means scent, the scent one. He sends this man to the pool and he goes, he obeys, he washes, and as he's going, he sees again. It's an amazing miracle. It's a creative miracle that Jesus performs. And what I want to say to you tonight is that I believe that what Jesus did in this blind man's life is exactly what God wants to do over the next few days in your life. He wants it to be an intersection between the stuff of heaven and the things of earth. He wants it to be an intersection where we meet Jesus and no matter how much you think you know about Jesus, no matter how proficient you are at what you do in the kingdom, no matter how familiar you are with a lot of the stories and a lot of maybe the nuts and bolts techniques and the philosophies and those types of things, I want you to realize that today, tonight, Jesus sees you a whole lot more clearly than you see Jesus. But I believe that his desire is that as you leave, as you leave Kalamazoo, Michigan and you go back to wherever God has positioned you in the kingdom of God, that you just like this man will go away seeing in a different way than you came, that you'll go seeing because you will become a sent seer. Let me share with you real quickly why this, not only this next couple of days is important to me, but why I resonate with so much of what is gonna be said in the creative community. When I was a little boy, there were two things that were absolute constants in my life, that as I look back on growing up, I was a child in a single mother home until I was about seven or eight years old and then grew up in a step family, moved multiple different times. And as I look back on my childhood, there are two things that I'm fully aware of that I was fully aware of then, even as a small child as early as I can remember, one was the presence of God. If you had asked me as a six year old kid, I wouldn't have said, oh, I sense the presence of God. I just always knew that God was there and I always knew he was with me. Just have always known that. I know that's not true for everybody, but it was true for me. I just had this innate sense that God was with me. And the other thing that I had that was a constant in my life is that I was an artist. I mean, the earliest memory I have is drawing in all of my mom's very important books. I would go to her bookshelf and I would take it off and I would draw pictures, crayons. I would paint murals on the kitchen wall. My mom would buy me art kits. And one of the things that I did as a very small kid, and I did it all throughout my life, was my way of dealing with the pain of being a child without his father in a broken home, was I spent massive amounts of hours by myself drawing. I had art books, drawing books, and journals, and different things. And so as I became a middle school student, even in elementary school, but more so in middle school, my art teachers began to take a pretty good eye at the things that I was developing. All the different mediums, watercolor, oil paints. My medium of choice, though, was ink and charcoal and pencils. And they began to put my work in different contests and I would win awards. As I came into high school, I was not good at math and science, I don't know if anybody can relate to that, but I was kind of, I was like, I'll take pre-algebra and I'm gonna have to cheat my way through this, but I took every art class that I could take and my teacher's name was Mrs. Bolx. And Mrs. Bolx noticed that I had a gift. And so I would draw, I would take on projects, I would illustrate yearbooks, I would do all kinds of different things. And it was still something that was very intimate to me. I would spend hours by myself with a journal, with a notebook, with pencils, and I would draw. That was how I was able to express and articulate what was going on. At 12 years old, I encountered the Lord in a very dramatic way and experienced a call to ministry. And so throughout my teen years, I was involved in a incredible church, an incredible youth ministry. We didn't use this language, but we were in the midst of at least a regional revival. We were seeing young people saved in a mass. Our church was packed, overflowing. The presence of God was so strong and I was a part of that and I came up throughout my teen years in that type of an environment. And so I knew that I was called in the ministry. When it came time for me to graduate high school in my senior year, my art teacher, Mrs. Bulks, kind of set me aside and asked me, I really, she said, I really think that you have a future in art and in design. And so at that time I'd already taken some Kendall School design classes in Grand Rapids. And my art teacher was like, I think you can get a scholarship to just about any school that you want to. And I think you've got incredible talent. And I've shown some of your work to different people. And all that, it was very flattering. But yet on the inside I had this, I knew that I knew that I knew that I was called in the ministry. And for the life of me, I could not figure out how the two would ever work together. There was like this tension that was on the inside of me because I loved art. I loved everything about it. I loved the expression. It was healing for me. It was a way that I could express myself. It was a way that I could experience God. But yet I felt like I was called to be a pastor. I was called in the ministry. And I graduated high school in 1989. And in 1989 I had absolutely no grid for how a creative young person could use that in the framework of ministry. I thought, if I was going to be a pastor, I got to go to Bible college. I got to get my theology degree. I got to get it all nailed down. I got to go buy a pair of rock ports where pleaded dockers get my pocket protector and watch the John Ankerberg show. I mean, I thought that's what being a pastor was. And I set the creative side of me aside. And at 25, my wife, Jane, who's here tonight, we planted Radiant Church. And in those early years, there were some difficult times. There were some really hard times. But I kept feeling it was almost like if you've ever seen asphalt that they put over a parking lot, but then the weeds keep finding their way up through the asphalt. I kept finding creativity was coming up. And I tried to suppress it and I tried to push it down because in my mind and from my experience, there had been no place for creativity in ministry. And so it was a wrestling match with this tension which through the goodness of God, I began to realize was not a tension that God had created. It was actually a tension that I had assumed and it was a tension that was in place because the church had missed out on about 50% of who God is. See, we spend a lot of time on God's words and God's teaching and in Bible college, it's all theology and it's systematic and it's analytical. And that's a whole lot of who God is. And I'm giving percentages. They may not be accurate, but it's at least my perspective. But what we fail to realize is that 50% of the Bible is words and content and teaching and doctrine and 50% of what we find out about God in the Bible has everything to do with creativity. The very first verse in the Bible says in the beginning, God, you wanna talk about finding your identity, God identifies who he is, that he is creative. And so the tension that we experience in the body of Christ and I'll just say it, I'm a pastor and I talk with pastors, I lead churches, all those kinds of things. Oftentimes there is a mentality that creatives are something we add kind of like a spice to our soup in order to make ministry good, but we don't really recognize the significance of the anointing on the artisan and on the craftsman and on the songwriter that we do on the preacher and the theologian and the prophet. And what we don't realize is they're not separate spirits, it's one and the same Holy Spirit. And it is one in the same body and we desperately need all of those. And so over the years, as God has been so gracious as a father, I'd begun to embrace more and more the creative side of who I am. Because it's not exchanging that for this and it's not sacrificing that, it's not sinful, it's actually embracing it. And what I'm finding out now more than ever is that God loves to take things and he loves to partner things that have tension in order to create something beautiful. I want you to know what Jesus did. I want you to recognize what Jesus did in this miracle with this blind man. It says that he reached down and he took mud and he spit in it. Try that in your next prayer service. Somebody comes up for prayer, you'll really figure out quickly who wants prayer. It's like, hold on. And Jesus put the saliva in the mud and it says, this is an interesting word. It says that Jesus anointed the man's eye with the mud. Why is this miracle, this creative miracle of Jesus so significant to you and I? Well, because mud or dirt represents things of this earth that have decomposed, that have broken down, that have died. Saliva is what is the carrier of DNA. How many of you have done one of those DNA genetic testing? So far you've done 23andme or ancestry.com. I did it, my family, there was this rumor that we were Native American, Shawnee Indian. I did it, that was nothing but a family lie. There's absolutely no Indian in us whatsoever. I am Irish, I am English and 3% Jewish, which, come on baby, I'ma claim that all day long. And I was like, oh, I love that, Shalom. I mean, I'm in the tribe. But when you take that test, the way that they measure your DNA is they don't ask you for skin, they don't ask you for a hair sample, they ask you to spit. Why, because spit is one of the purest carriers of genetic information. So when Jesus leans down and he takes dirt, he's taking things of earth that have decomposed that at one time had structure. And he added to it the spit, the saliva, the genetic information of heaven. Jesus is the word made flesh. He's the son of the living God. The DNA of God in heaven mixed with the broken decomposed elements of earth, as Rich Mullins would say, the stuff of heaven, the things of earth. And he mixed them together to form an anointing that when applied to a blind spot in a blind man's life gave him the capacity to see when he had never seen before. What he did was he gave this man the gift of revelation. The word revelation is a word that you find all throughout the scripture. It's the Greek word apocalypto and it literally means to lift the veil, to pull back and to expose something, to give sight to something that has previously been hidden. So I want you to imagine this blind man has never seen in his life. He has heightened senses in everything else. He's established a norm. But then Jesus takes broken decomposed matter, mixes it with his saliva, which is heavenly genetic information, mixes them together and anoints his eye and immediately he sees when he's never seen before. And what is the first thing that this man sees? He sees Jesus. The first thing that he, how many would imagine that that's a pretty good start to your seeing future? When you open your eyes and you see Jesus. You see, he had never known what he was missing until he saw for the first moment. That's what revelation is, apocalypto, which means to pull back the veil so somebody can see that they have never seen before. Here's what I want to tell you tonight, that as a creative, as an artisan, as a musician, as a solmist, as a dancer, as a designer, you serve a God who has an artisan anointing. And the same way that Jesus took the decomposed matter of earth and added the heavenly genetic code to it, that's exactly what you do on a day in and day out basis. It is a spirit of revelation because what you do is you take broken things of this earth culture, skills, artistic abilities, design, logos, themes, dance moves, melodies, notes, musical styles, and you know, the church does not have a lock on music. How many know that? There are amazing musicians that are in the secular marketplace that are writing fantastic music and they are filling stadiums and arenas. And for far too long, the church has been in their wake trying to kind of follow along and steal their style, counterfeit it and imitate it because we're in their wake. And as long as there's only one element, which is this broken world and this broken system, and we're following them, we're always going to be, we're always going to be about two years, about five years behind them. But listen, even though there are amazing musicians out there, all they have is the broken stuff of this earth. All they have is the broken styles and skills and new thoughts and new ideas and playing off of most creativity, most revelation comes out of a place of pain. And so they take their pain and they translate it and it becomes decomposed dirt and they make things with it. What you do in the kingdom of God that is so miraculous in all that you do as an artist and as a creative is you do the very same things that artists in the world do except you add the genetic code of heaven, the saliva of God, the word as you speak the saliva comes, the genetic code of the Holy Spirit's anointing that is on the inside of you, which is a spirit of revelation in the knowledge of him. And you add it to the things of this earth and you apply it to a generation's blind spots and give them the ability to see Jesus in a way that they've never seen him before. That's what you do. Imagine a generation whose eyes have never seen the goodness of God, a generation that don't have a comprehension of what it means for God to be a father and for in one moment something that you do placed in their sight or placed in their blind spot, in their pain, in their loss actually produces sight and they see Jesus through what you've done. See, we need you in the church because God's, in the kingdom of God, let me say it like this, in the kingdom of God there is no tension between leadership and creativity. And I just want to say this as a pastor for all the times, it may not happen all the time, you may come from a place that champions creativity, champions musicians, champions worship, but all the times that senior pastors or leaders or people in the body of Christ have ridiculed or made fun of or belittled creatives, musicians, worship leaders and artists in the body of Christ, I apologize for that because we absolutely need you. We need you to give expression because if we don't have you then all we're dealing with is dirt. We've got the Word of God, we've got the promises of God, we have the presence of God, but we have no way of presenting it in a way that lifts the veil completely because we need both. Listen, we need visionary leaders in the church. I'm a visionary leader, I see stuff all the time. I mean, I have a journal up here and this is my vision journal, I'm constantly writing and drawing all kinds of ideas. If you want to know where we are today I could take you 14 pages back and I started drawing it about two and a half years ago and I started writing it and journaling it and drawing it and here we're here today. We need visionary leaders in the church but let me tell you something as a visionary leader. As visionary leaders we also need people who have the anointing of revelation, the artisan spirit on them to help bring shape to it. Let me give you some things about revelation that you need to know because this is a key word. Revelation is different than knowledge. We live in a generation that right now has more knowledge than any other generation has ever had access to. I joke around and I say this that when I was in high school, that's a long time ago, 30 years ago, if I wanted to write a term paper I had to go to the library and use something called an encyclopedia. My kids, my youngest is 21 today, this is her birthday and she's in college in Florida, she's a very smart girl, grew up in Michigan so I'm going to college in Florida and when she wants information, she just takes her phone out and she has way more access to information, knowledge, than I ever had. But in spite of the fact that we have access to more knowledge, I believe we have a generation that is overrun by too much knowledge and not enough revelation because let me tell you what happens in the presence of too much knowledge. In the presence of too much knowledge, there is a spirit of insecurity that is developed because what if I miss out? What if I'm not in the right place at the right time? What if I don't keep up? What if I don't stand out? And knowledge is, we say this phrase, knowledge is power. Knowledge can be powerful, but knowledge is different than revelation because let me tell you what knowledge does. The Bible says that knowledge puffs up, but revelation builds up. Revelation builds up. Knowledge is discovered, revelation is disclosed. You see, revelation comes out of intimacy. Creativity is born out of intimacy. You can get knowledge without relationship. You can search it, you can discover it, you can research it and you hold it in your hands but it's not connected to anything. Revelation doesn't come out of discovery, it comes out of disclosure. God discloses who he is and his purpose and his desire and that revelation is not going to produce insecurity in our lives because it's rooted in intimacy and relationship and it's different. We are a generation that doesn't need more knowledge, we need more revelation and why we need more revelation or how we're going to gain that level of revelation is by saying no to all of the voices that seemingly offer us the cheap pathway to get what we want and shutting those down, putting mute on them and digging deep into relationship and going after God in the place of intimacy. Just like Paul wrote in Ephesians chapter one when he says, I pray that the eyes of your heart would be open, prior to that he says that you would receive a spirit of revelation, listen, in the knowledge of him. Revelation comes out of the knowledge of him. Paul was a man with a lot of knowledge. I think we can all acknowledge that in Philippians. He lays out his resume. It's an impressive resume. He grew up in Tarsus, if you don't know anything about Tarsus, Tarsus was one of the most metropolitan cities in Asia and had had the second largest library in the known world. It was probably the third or the fourth largest city in the world at that time. And if you were a citizen of Tarsus, it was kind of like living in New York City or Paris or London. Paul grew up in that city, but he was also Jewish and he was trained in Jerusalem by the leading scholar and theologian of his day named Gavin Leal. So he came from a prominent family and a prominent city was trained by a prominent scholar. He was probably very young as he was admitted as a mentee in the Sanhedrin Council. He had probably memorized the first five books of the Old Testament in three distinct languages. He knew the Mishnah, he knew Tolman, he knew all the major commentaries of his day. He had been trained as a scholar and we know that he was greatly trusted by the religious establishment of his day because they gave him permission to travel 700 miles and arrest anybody he thought was worthy of being brought up on heresy charges. I mean, this guy knew his stuff. He was sharp, he would have been on the cover of Forbes and Charisma in the same month. And on his way to Damascus, Syria, he encounters Jesus. Imagine what it must have been like for Paul. As he thinks he's encountering an angel, he's probably falling off of his horse thinking, this is God showing up just like he did in the burning bush to Moses. And he says, who are you? Imagine his shock when he heard these words. I am Jesus, the very one he hated the most. Do you know that Paul went blind? But before he went blind, he saw, he saw Jesus. In Philippians chapter three then Paul goes on this whole thing that kind of did all his loss so that I might know Christ. You flip over into Galatians chapter one and Paul begins to lay out the gospel and the defense of the gospel. And he says, this is the gospel that I preached to you. I did not receive from any man, but I received it by revelation. See what Paul did was he went from the road to Damascus to Arabia and he camped out there for an extended period of time where Jesus personally gave him revelation and understanding of the gospel. So much so that Paul says, I didn't go Jerusalem. I didn't learn it from Peter and John. I didn't go to any teacher or educator to get the gospel that I have. I received the gospel that I preached to you from Jesus himself in a cave in Arabia. And what's interesting is the cave he probably went to was the same cave that God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses and the same cave that Elijah went to when he was running from Jezebel. Paul was such an Old Testament expert. He's probably figuring everything I thought was right was wrong. I need to download from God. Let's see, where did Moses go? Where did Elijah go? By the way, the only two people who appeared with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, he says, if it was good enough for them, I'm going to where they went to. And he went there and Jesus changed and transformed his way of thinking by revelation. But how many know that cave had to be very painful to have everything stripped down that he knew so that he could encounter the Jesus that he didn't know. But he came out of that cave, not bound by the fear of man, not insecure, not finding his identity in his past achievements, defending the gospel and solid in who he was. It's a spirit of revelation. And oftentimes when we talk about this kind of revelation, we think about pastors, prophets, evangelists, teachers, those type of people are the ones who, they get that kind of download. You know, I'm just an artist. I'm over here in my creative department. My pastor comes in and he says he wants a little clip art, a little picture of this. You know, we need a really cool graphic on that. Can you put that together for Easter? Fantastic. You know, you're just kind of in the production line or you know, the worship leader, the pastor walks in and he's like, hey, you know, you got 11 minutes for worship. And so, and you know, I need your jeans to be a little skinnier. And if we're going to do this because we've got an image to present here. And I know that it's like the real important stuff happens over in the corner office, but the creative, the worship leader, those kind of guys, it's kind of like you just, you're the spice in the sauce. But can I tell you, you're just as important and it's just as necessary to what God is doing in this hour that you are operating not out of a spirit of self skill or of self knowledge or worldly knowledge. We need the saliva of heaven to connect with the practical stuff of earth and we need it to happen in you. We need you to take that mixture and to partner with the visionary leadership of where God has placed you in order to communicate the greatest message that the world has ever heard. And in some cases, the greatest message that the world hasn't heard. I want you to turn one other place with me. I want you to turn with me over to Exodus, if you would, chapter 31. Exodus chapter 31. I wanna show you something that I think is really profound when it comes to the creative spirit in the church. So going backwards in Exodus, we know the story of how God raised up Moses to be a deliverer. And if there's ever been a visionary leader, it's Moses. Moses is a visionary leader. God speaks to him out of a burning bush. Moses goes into Egypt. He overthrows the most powerful empire the world has ever seen, signs and wonders, parts of the Red Sea, leads the children of Israel through. They get on the other side, Pharaoh's armies get just trounced by the walls of water that come in and drown them all. Miriam turns Pentecostal. It's the first tambourine ministry that happens in the church. She takes the tambourine, the horse and the rider are thrown into the sea. She begins to lure a boom-chak-boom-chak-boom-chak-boom-chak-boom-chak song. And they have church. God had given Moses an assignment, bring them out of Egypt. But I don't want you to just bring them out. I want you to actually bring them in. And before you bring them into the promised land, I want you to bring them to the base of the mountain of the Lord, because I wanna speak to my people. So Moses brings them to the base of the mountain. God gives them the 10 commandments. And then Moses goes up on the mountain. He spends 40 days in the presence of God. Imagine what it must have been like for 40 days in the presence of God. I have no grid for that. I mean, he didn't eat for 40 days. We do a 21-day fast around here, and it is the longest 21 days of my life. And that's with me, like eating fruits and vegetables. I mean, I dream about Chick-fil-A almost all the time. I mean, right? Moses is in the presence of the Lord for 40 days. And it just seems like a moment. And he's on the top of the mountain, and God has descended, literally the throne room of heaven has manifested itself in physical form, in fiery glory shrouded by a thunderstorm, residing on top of a mountain. And Moses steps up into that. He sees the glassy sea, and he beholds the glory of God. And he speaks with God like a friend speaks to a friend. Part of what God assigns to Moses on this mountain is the law. And part of what he assigns to Moses is to build him a house. I want you to build me a physical address on earth. And I want you to build it in a very specific way. Several chapters in the book of Exodus from that point on, chapter 25, chapter 26, chapter 27, chapter 28, chapter 29, are nothing but God's building plans for exactly the way he wants the tabernacle to be built. And the instruments, and the fabric, and the design, and the size, and the scope of all of it. And Moses comes down off of the mountain. And I don't know, here's what I know. If Moses is anything like me, I would have come down off the mountain and said, that was an amazing experience. I have no clue how to build that. Because, I mean, some people just are expert builders. I mean, we have a guy on our staff, his name is Martin, and Martin can just build stuff. I mean, you give him an idea. It's like, hey, Martin, I want this. He's like, okay, and then he builds it. I don't know how that happens. Because I struggle with Ikea furniture. Anybody else relate to that? Like, I struggle with all furniture. I struggle with all building projects. I have two tools, a screwdriver and a hammer. That's it. And I don't know which one I use for which. I mean, sometimes I pound the screw in and sometimes I try and twist the screw in with a hammer. It's just not working. There are some people who just are very skilled at building things. I would have come down off of the mountain and said, that was amazing. I know exactly what you want, God. I just don't know how to translate that. I think Moses was kind of like that because what happens is he comes down off the mountain and after God gives him all of these details, in Exodus chapter 31, in verse number one, it says in the Lord said to Moses, See, I have called by name Bezalel, the son of Yuri, son of her of the tribe of Judah. And I have filled him with the spirit of God with the ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship to devise artistic designs. I love this next part. He says to work in gold and silver and bronze and cutting stone for setting and carving wood in every single craft. It's the first time anywhere in the Bible, God says a man was filled with the Holy Spirit is an artist. It's the first time. And his name was Bezalel. So here's this man who's in the company of millions, possibly of Israelites at the base of the mountain. Moses comes down. He's got the blueprints for what God wants built. He has no idea how to do it. And God says, don't worry, Moe, I got it. I got a guy named Bezalel who I've put my spirit in and the spirit is upon him in such a way that he knows every single skill. He's got knowledge, he's got craft, he's an artisan and he can do anything that you want him to do. And he's going to actually build the house under the power of my Holy Spirit. The name Bezalel means this. The one who lives in the shadow of God. The one who lives in the shadow of God. We don't know anything more about Bezalel. He just shows up. And Moses, God speaks to Moses in Exodus chapter 25 when he's about ready to come down off of the mountain and God tells Moses this. He says, Moses, make sure that when you build the tabernacle you build it exactly according to the pattern that I showed you on the mountain. I wanted exactly according to the pattern that I showed you on the mountain. And now God has put his spirit for the first time on a man who has knowledge, skill and artistic creative abilities who can do everything that's necessary in the natural. He's got the natural skill and he's got the spirit of God within him and upon him which is the anointing of God. And his name happens to be the one who lives in the shadow of God. We don't know anything about Bezalel's life. We don't know anything other than his skill set and his anointing. But what I can tell you from his name is long before he ever showed up in the pages of scripture, he was building a personal history in the presence of God. He was living in the shadow. You see, a lot of times creatives live in shadows. They live in the shadows of other people. They live in the shadows of obscurity. They live in the shadows of pain and of disappointment and frustration. They live in the shadows of perfectionism. They live in the shadows of comparison and looking at other people's highlight reels on social media or wondering when you'll get enough followers or when somebody's gonna discover you. But can I tell you the only shadow that you need to live in is the shadow of the Almighty. Because when you live your life in the shadow of God, it just takes one moment for him to link you in partnership up with a visionary leader who comes out of the presence of God and says, God has spoken to me about our city. God has spoken to me about our generation. God has spoken to me about our church. I've got a word. I just don't know what to do with it. I've got a message that's burning in my heart. I don't know how to communicate. I see God moving in our church. I see God moving in our prayer meetings. I see God wanting to do something in our region, in our city, and it's there. I just don't know how to articulate. And in that moment, God raises up one with the spirit of Bezalil who steps on the scene and says, let me take it from there. Tell me everything that you know and the creative who has the skill, the artisan ability, the songwriting ability, the dancing ability, the musical skills that you developed in obscurity when nobody knew your name, when nobody cared for you, when nobody would even give a second look at what you were doing, when it was just you, like David out in the pasture, working on your chord progressions or drawing in a notebook or being rejected by a university or being told that you don't fit into our grid or our culture. And all the while, you didn't allow those shadows to become your graves, you actually allowed them to push you into the shadow of the Almighty for such a moment as this. And all of a sudden, God says, this is Bezalil. He's going to help you build the house of God. That's what you were created to do. You were created for this. I want everybody to write this down because I want you to have one thing that you, one phrase that you walk out of this session with. And it's this phrase, creativity is born out of intimacy. Creativity is born out of intimacy. I'm gonna tell you guys something I don't think I've ever told anybody in a public setting. It's not because it's bad. It's just because it's very personal. It's that the way that God speaks to me is long before I ever write a message, I see a message. I see a message. I will, like for example, when I read John chapter nine, before the words made any sense to me, it was like I saw it come off the page. And I saw God interacting with it and connecting it with other parts of the scriptures. And why that's important for you to know is my process is different than your process. Don't allow David's armor or don't allow Saul's armor to be the only armor you try on because Saul's armor won't fit you. Your process has to be born out of intimacy. I don't know what your process is. When I was a new pastor, my pastor kind of pulled me aside and he says, here's how I write sermons. You file everything and then you compile it and you write an outline. I tried that, it was terrible. It was terrible. My messages, Jane, my wife thinks I preached too long now. Back then I preached really long because I was trying to get through my outlines. And I felt guilty if I didn't have like 10 pages of notes. It was because that's how you're supposed to do it. It's like supposed to be 10 pages of notes. Well, for me to get through 10 pages of notes is gonna spend, it's gonna be about four or five hours. It's just gonna be like that. I have like three bullet points on a piece of paper. And it's because I see long before, some people are hearers, some people are writers. I'm a seer, I see it. And I see not only the scriptures, but I see what God is doing. That's what I'm talking about in the spirit of revelation. You've gotta figure out your process because revelation and creativity are born out of intimacy. And intimacy means deep personal knowledge. That's the kind of relationship God wants to have with you. And let me tell you something as a creative. You are one of the most vulnerable people in the body of Christ. Because what I know about you, because I am one, is you feel deeply. You sense deeply. Your emotional intelligence is higher than probably the average person is. Things hurt you deeply. Things inspire you greatly. And sometimes you'll walk into a room and you'll sense things and you don't know how to define it. And if you say anything, nobody else feels it. And so you think something's wrong with you. You need to embrace that and you need to sanctify it because it's part of your process. The creativity is born out of intimacy. John chapter nine, Jesus reaches down and he takes the dirt, he spits into it. He makes a mud and he heals this man's sight. I wonder tonight, what place in your heart and in your life is blinded from seeing Jesus accurately? I wonder what you brought here tonight. That Jesus needs to apply an anointing of mud to. Is it a leadership issue? Is it a insecurity issue? Is it a relationship issue? Because let me tell you what his purpose is for all of us. Same purpose that he had for this man. Is once he has applied the anointing of mud to the blind spot of our life, he wants to send us to other people so that we can do the same. You see the healing for others that God wants to bring through you is found on the other side of God bringing healing to you. Because you can share what you know but you can only give what you've experienced. And the reason why there's a lot of pain in the body of Christ and why there's a lot of pain in the creative community is because there have been a lot of wounds and a lot of scars that have become terminal to our souls and to our spirits. They've become deep, deeply entrenched scar tissue in our soul that has caused us to not be able to hear God, to not be able to feel as deeply as we want to. We've made inner vows. We've said I'm not gonna put myself out there. I'm not gonna dream again. I'm not gonna expose myself again. I wonder what would happen tonight if we would allow Jesus to reach down and take some practical things, some stuff of earth over the next day or two and apply the genetic saliva that comes when God speaks a word. And he applies it to the blind spot of our life. And then he tells us, now I want you to go. Now I'm sending you as a sent seer. What is there that the Lord wants to show you that you've never seen before? What is the perspective? Because just like a man who's never seen before, when his eyes were opened up for the first time, everything was brand new. Everything was brand new. He had no grid to compare anything. It was brand new. When Saul's eyes are opened on the road to Damascus and he saw Jesus, he had nothing to compare it with. It was all brand new. And I believe that God is so gracious to us guys. He loves us so much. He did not place you here on this planet to just get by. He did not put you where you are so that you can just be a blind casualty on the side of the road. Jesus has enough power in the anointing to bring about recovery of sight to the blind. If we will allow him to apply the things of heaven and the stuff of earth to the blind spots of our life and we'll respond with obedience to his command for us to go, to be sent. God wants to not just send you back to your church, send you back to your ministry. God wants to send you back healed, but he wants to send you to those who are blind so that you can apply what God has given to you so that they too can see. We need an awakening. We need the eyes of a generation to open and see Jesus standing before them, unabridged, unfiltered and unvarnished in all of his glory and it's not just gonna take preachers, it's gonna take musicians, creatives, poets, dancers, filmmakers, it's going to take the gamut so that we can present Jesus fully to a generation the way that he's supposed to be presented. That's what Jesus wants to do tonight. Jesus wants to heal the blind spots. So here's what I wanna do. I want you to just take some space right where you're at. Musicians, you guys, you can come because that's what musicians do. They just, I'm kidding. I want you to take some space right now. I want you to, I want you to close your eyes. I want you to close the eyes in the natural so that you can open your eyes in the spiritual. Tonight I want you to see Jesus. I want you to see him coming to you, smiling, radiating, pleasure, pride. I want you to see him kneeling down and picking up some of the dirt at his feet. I want you to see him spitting into it and then putting his hand on the back of your neck as a gracious father does and he's reaching out his hand towards you to anoint you. What place in your life is he reaching for? What place in your heart tonight is Jesus reaching towards? And in fact, you might just ask him, Jesus, what is it? What is the place where I'm seeing but I'm not seeing? Where's the place that's been wounded? Where's the place that I need revelation? Where's the place that's been marked by other things than you? Is it your identity? Is it your motives? Is it some words that have been spoken over you? Is it a lie that's been whispered into your soul about the lack of value that you hold? And I want you to see Jesus reaching out to that and applying, caking on the mud and saying to you, it's time for you to wash. It's time for you to have your eyes opened. And when your eyes are open, you're not gonna see what you saw before. You're not gonna have to feel your way through. You're not gonna be limited in your senses. God says, just as much as your eyes were closed by pain, they're about to be opened by revelation. They're about to be opened by a touch from God. I want you, if you would, to join me and stand up all over this room. I hear the Lord saying this that might be one, it might be multiple people, but when I was just walking you through that exercise, you saw yourself in a bedroom with your dad or your mom standing in the doorway. And whether they knew it or not, what they said in the way that they said it, killed a dream that you had. Jesus wants you to know that he's, he was also standing in that doorway. And tonight he's breathing new life into that dream. Believe the Lord is also saying that there's a young lady who you sacrificed, you sacrificed the call of God for a relationship. And it took you down a pathway that you didn't wanna go. And you over the last several months and years have felt like you're playing catch-up. That you may have missed your call for a relationship that now doesn't mean anything to you. And you live in a constant state of anxiety and shame about that. And the Lord wants to lift that off of you today. You don't carry that anymore. He's the God who's able to restore the years the locusts have eaten. I want everybody, if you would, to just raise your hands in a posture of receiving tonight. And I wanna pray over us before the worship team leads us in worship once again. Father, my prayer over everyone in this room tonight is that the next several hours of the next few days would be a divine intersection where we've walked down the path that brought us to this place. Jesus, would you meet us in this place and give us sight so that when we leave, we leave this place as sent seers under the authority of Jesus, with the same anointing, with the same spirit of revelation and the same call and the same mandate to awaken a generation, to open the eyes of a generation, to see the beauty, the glory and the goodness of our God. Lord, I call out the gifts. I call out the anointing of Bezalel over this room in the name of Jesus. I call forth the artisans. I call forth the craftsmen. I call forth the songs. I call forth the psalmist. I call forth those who are prophetic in their skill and their mindset right now. And Lord, turn the volume up on the voice of God. Turn the volume up on our creativity and our innovation. Turn the volume up and a spirit of revelation over our lives so that the church can see the full glory, the full beauty of our Savior Jesus. Begin it in us in this room, an army of 300. Lord, begin it in this room like Gideon's army that is bent down and drinking the water. Lord, as we drink from this water, raise us up as a room full of deliverers to those that you're sending us in the name of Jesus. I pray, amen and amen.