The Give and Take of Creativity

If you have something of value to say, it will be repeated somewhere by someone who will fail to give you credit for being the original author of the thought. A few years ago, this began to happen to me on a regular basis. Someone would use a phrase I coined or a concept I had unpacked in a book or a blog article and then used it in the public square giving the impression they were the originator of the thought.

After authoring several books and posting hundreds of blog articles, I have come to a simple understanding. None of these downloads we get from God and publish under our name originate with us. They are God thoughts given to us as an act of grace. We freely give them because we freely received them. These heavenly downloads are the mind of Christ. They come to us to transform our thinking. When they arrive we process them and produce concepts in written or spoken form that reveal the heart of God. At some point, we need to give up our need to be seen as the original author of anything. It is really quite freeing to not carry the smoldering ember of this offense.

In some ways, we have allowed a business, copywriting and litigious mentality to seep into our way of doing Kingdom business. I understand the issues involved with copyrights and licensing, but in the end, we need to get free from thinking it all started with us when in fact anything of value we share comes from Heaven and entered our thinking process while we were still involved in the lifelong process of God renewing our minds.

A great peace comes when we choose to live with an open hand. Let God place things in your intellectual palm and allow people the opportunity to come and take whatever they want and do with it whatever they please. If they have a lack of character regarding what they took unrighteous credit for, a loving God will deal with them. This is a much better way to live because it will keep your heart free from offense and it will actually open up the way for the delivery of deeper revelations that only come when our hearts are not filled with offense or the need to demand recognition of authorship for something that was actually a gift to us, not our original creation.