NCC Daily

I’m going to read a few Scriptures to help us set the tone and intentions of what we need and desire. After I read the Scripture, take a beat and listen to what God is saying.

I’ll be reading from Isaiah 43:16-21 in The Passion Translation and pausing on occasion to allow you time to pray and listen.

As I lead us today in this guided prayer, let’s take a moment to quiet our souls as we prepare to commune with God.

As we continue in our series entitled Dream, I want to just take a moment and intimately guide us in prayer—a prayer that allows us to consecrate and sanctify ourselves from the inside out. A prayer that will allow us to be the revival, reformation, and renaissance first within us individually so that we can believe and posture ourselves for revival in the church, a reformation in the kingdom, and a renaissance in culture.

Today we’re going to pray through a Scripture that should always give us the confidence to want to come HOME.

As image-bearers of God, we are called to reflect his likeness in every way, and while God's essence embodied in the Trinity is love, the action that flows out of that love is creation.

Once we remember that God freely has given us the Holy Spirit which holds that same capacity for the same radical love, we have that capacity to create, and to make beyond some industrial, production-centric purpose culture imposes on us or that we impose on ourselves. It allows us to create through a Spirit-filled, loving state.

When I think of the Renaissance I think of that rebirth in culture and the huge bursts of creativity in art and architecture and grand marble statues, but I also think of great writers and artists who have stood the test of time.

God has made everything beautiful for its time. He has placed eternity within the human heart. Beauty is all around us—God’s goodness made manifest to the senses.

I think the Apostle Paul, walking into the Areopagus in Athens and competing for the truth is a picture of what it means to be both a moral minority and a creative minority. We don’t curse the darkness. We light a candle. We criticize by creating. We write better books, make better music, produce better films, draft better legislation, start better businesses. How? With the help of the Holy Spirit.