Discover Your Call To InnovationSample

We’ve forgotten the source of our innovation

In the beginning, God could have created the world at once, a perfectly working, complex system. But He chose to innovate—each day adding intricately linked ecosystems and species that culminated in his most reflective creation: humanity.

Then God invited humanity to join Him in the ongoing innovative process of stewarding creation. But we struggle to remember this calling to be innovators and caretakers, to improve on and steward creation for the glory of the Creator.

Francis Chan writes about our spiritual amnesia in his book Forgotten God. “There is a big gap between what we read in Scripture about the Holy Spirit and how most believers and churches operate today.” Chan argues that we often forget the ever-present Spirit of God that is in us—the same Spirit that hovered over the formless earth (Genesis 1:2), the same Spirit that brought Jesus up from the dead (Romans 8:11). This is the Holy Spirit that now dwells in us as followers of Christ, spurring us on to serve Christ with our ideas and the work of our hands.

When we heed the Holy Spirit’s voice, His guiding and inspiring, we remember who we are as stewards of unique skills and talents. In Exodus 31, we read how God’s Spirit fills Bezalel, a Hebrew craftsman, with wisdom and understanding to skillfully work gold, wood, stone, and other metals to furnish the Tabernacle.

Later, the Spirit of the Lord inspired King David with the plans for the Lord’s temple in Jerusalem—a place where all nations could come and worship the one true God. “‘All this,’ David said, ‘I have in writing as a result of the Lord’s hand on me, and he enabled me to understand all the details of the plan.” (1 Chronicles 28:19)

At the end of His ministry, Jesus promised His followers that the Father would baptize them in the Holy Spirit, commissioning and empowering them to be His witnesses. On the day of Pentecost, the early believers received the Spirit in a mighty way—sparking a Gospel movement that changed history.

As we listen to the Spirit’s leading in our own lives, He will direct and inspire us in our work as creative innovators and stewards of our talents for His glory, whatever the task may be.

“Gracious Spirit, inspire in me holy creativity that I may do bold things for you and to Christ’s glory.” – Anonymous