Am I significant yet?
Earning my significance
I made a new friend in early middle school who quickly became my best friend. Everything clicked because we liked many of the same things: we went to the same church, started learning guitar around the same time, and started singing and leading worship for youth group functions together.
As we got older, teenage drama ensued, and our similarities transformed into a hum of competition and jealousy. I can only share from my faulty perspective, but it felt like my friend pulled away. It seemed that he didn’t want to be associated with me anymore.
That was confirmed to me when, late into high school, a group of guys in our town decided to put on their own weekly worship service for all the youth in the community, and my friend was to be the frontman for the worship band. When I asked if I could participate, he said the guys didn’t want me. I found out a few years later he never really asked them.
I’ve carried around the pain of that rejection for a long time.
For example, just a few years ago, I found myself daydreaming about working with a hero of mine when, seemingly out of nowhere, the thought crossed my mind, “Wait till my old friend sees me working with this guy.”
As I processed that thought further, I realized that some of my desire to do creative work was tainted with attempts to earn my significance. I was using my creative work as a way to prove that I was worth something.
Against the grain
The problem is when I’m operating from a place of trying to earn my significance; I’m actually working against the grain of what makes work meaningful. God gave us the gift of work, and as Timothy Keller points out in Every Good Endeavor, work is a way we can serve one another.
“…work is one of the ways we make ourselves useful to others, rather than just living a life for ourselves. Also, work is one of the ways we discover who we are, because it is through work that we come to understand our distinct abilities and gifts, a major component in our identities”
A few days ago, I was processing this quote, and I wanted to share two clear takeaways that have been helpful to me.
1. Work is selfless
When I do my creative work from a place of trying to earn my significance, I’m doing my work for me.
But work is meant to cultivate selflessness. Work is a way of contributing to society, a way to serve our fellow man, and leave the world a little better than we found it.
In our culture, creative work is so entangled with the selfish pursuit of attention and praise that we often struggle to see how our creative work is and can be a way to serve the world and love others. The key is not to package our creative work in a “Christian” genre. The key to understanding how our creative work can be an act of selfless service is to think about how the creative work of others has served you.
At a recent gathering of creative folks, one friend wisely pointed out, “When I think of the importance of creative work in the world, I imagine a world without creative work.”
I’ve found that I do my best creative work when I stop asking how this work will make me important and impressive and instead ask, “How can this creative work serve the world?” I suspect that this question helps me do my best work because it puts me back in alignment with one of the God-given purposes for the gift of work.
2. Working from identity
Through working, we discover who we are. We find our passions, gifts, talents, abilities, and the things we enjoy.
But discovering our identity is different than earning it.
As a Christian, I believe that God made me. He formed in me the natural gifts and talents that I have. He has sovereignly led me in the opportunities I’ve had to learn and use my creative craft. And though some of my desires are tainted by selfishness and faulty attempts to heal old wounds, I believe that many of my desires to do creative work are given to me by God.
I also believe that I have been given an identity. I am free to work from my identity as a person who is loved, forgiven, and seen.
I need to be reminded more often than I would like, but the truth is I don’t need work to give me significance. And I’ve found that working from the significance that God has given helps me do my best creative work.
The significance of His love
I’m passionate about serving the world by creating beautiful things, and I’m equally passionate about encouraging other artist and creatives to do their work from a profound sense of significance.
So many of us are hindered by our insecure attempts to show the world we are worthy of their love. But if we are in Christ, we don’t have to serve that master. We serve a much better master, One we call Father, and there is no need to work for His love.
The significance of God’s love for us can set us free to do our best creative work as a beautiful offering. And His love frees us to try out and play with our creative gifts as we discover who He made us to be.
