“God changed the drawing studio into a healing room” “after all I had only offered to teach them to draw….”
‘Graphos’ in the Greek means to write or draw and ‘photo-graphos’ where our word photography comes from means to produce an image using light….
Have you ever thought how incongruous it seems; we pick up a pencil, make marks on paper and depending on the measure of our understanding and ability it can result in a remarkable piece of artwork, likeness, image or representation.
Romans 4:17 “God calls into being the things that are not as though they are.”
How interesting is it then, that we can look at a three-dimensional object or a scene, interpret it on paper, ie a two-dimensional surface and make it look 3D again!!!
1 Cor 1:57 “He takes the foolish things to confound the wise.”
But what I hear you ask is this in any way related to healing?
It seems strange to talk about drawing in the ministry of healing, however, it is not the art of drawing itself but how the Lord uses creative expression to unearth hurts from our past. When we ran our creative arts ministry there came a point at which I gave in to requests from several members of our team to teach them to draw.
I knew from my experience in art education that it would take more than one lesson to teach them the many aspects of drawing, but a journey starts with one step, so I organised a drawing workshop and fourteen keen folks attended. By way of a revelation when I started to write this piece I was reminded of the Italian word “chiaroscuro” which means “the use of light and dark to create an illusion of 3D on a flat surface.” Perhaps the Lord was reminding me of this as a reflection of good and evil and of how He can take our humble creative offerings and use them for His purpose and His glory.
“1 John 1:5 God is light and there is no darkness in Him.”
The session started very well, but an hour or so into the workshop things started to take a turn. One lady began to well up with tears, another became frustrated because she felt she couldn’t do it, one didn’t have the patience, one lady recalled struggles she’d had in her childhood, another had her fingers rapped with a ruler by her schoolteacher, one was left-handed and had forcibly been pushed into being right-handed and so it went on until nearly all were re-living issues from their past.
“2 Cor 3:17 where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
We didn’t need to go digging the Lord was using this creative environment as an opportunity to bring to the surface issues that had been long forgotten, hidden and buried. He wanted to cut them off to bring inner healing and wholeness to the group.
“WOW” Well! I wasn’t expecting that!
“after all I had only offered to teach them to draw!!!!!!”
We downed tools and began to pray for each other, for emotional healing, for any inner struggles and hurts to go, for healing of memories for the release of ungodly soul ties with teachers/parents.
Creative activity is able to ‘draw’ (excuse the pun) deep seated trauma and hurt out of us. Issues of abuse and brokenness have a habit of re-surfacing when faced with the challenge of searching deep into our inner being to find our creative core. When we create an environment in which His presence is manifest His anointing comes.
Things from our past can emerge as emotional, physical and spiritual pain. However, we must play our part and give Him permission to deal with the things that bind us and prevent us entering into the fullness of our relationship with and our identity in Him. As we shed the chains that hold us, whatever way ‘He’ chooses, we can have that release and come into ‘the light’ secure in the knowledge that He did it all for us on the cross because the truth of the matter is that our healing is in the atonement and……
Isaiah 53:5 “by His stripes we are healed.”
