We ended the last installment of The Waking Sound with a simple truth: the journey of faith begins with a setting of a foundation in heavenly places. It starts by letting our thought and emotional lives be re-ordered to flow from heavenly realities.

Faith is more than what you feel. But faith will ultimately lead you to experience God more deeply than you ever have before and will change your feelings to feel what God feels. The journey of faith is not devoid of emotions; instead, it's a re-ordering of priorities, where right emotions flow from redeemed thinking. 

This is huge for artists and creatives. Your art flows from a unique intuition and perspective of things. This uniqueness can make you sought after for your craft: "Do you someone skillful in their work? They will stand before kings" (Proverbs 22:29). Yet this same uniqueness by its very nature separates and distances creatives from each other and the world around them. Emotions flowing from circumstances will inevitably be directed by bouts of loneliness and melancholy. You may have felt this cycle.

I'm writing this to you today to tell you that you don't have to live there.

The world needs creatives who are inspired by something transcendental. As Christians who create, I believe a major part of our calling is about casting vision for something higher, something greater. Yes, circumstances may tell us otherwise, and yes, you may have periods of immense loneliness or doubt. I believe your art is in its truest form when you acknowledge the dark and light a path of out it.  The only way we can do this authentically is by re-ordering the tyranny of our emotions.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 10:5: "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." The way we overcome the ebbs and flows of emotions is by making our every thought submitted to the truth of who Jesus is and what He has done.

I may feel separated from others, but Christ says that I am forever united with Him. I may experience distances from people, but God's Word tells me that I am part of the household of faith, with Christ as the Cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20). My thoughts come into alignment with the truth of who Jesus is and who I am in Him and the result? My emotions flow from these realities.

I saw this video a few weeks back taken from a ship in the middle of a winter storm on the North Atlantic. Going over what looked like the world's tallest wave, the ship crashed into the surf and looked like it was submerged--but within a moment, it was again on top of the water as if nothing had happened.

Taking our thoughts captive and submitting them to Christ is like riding a trusted ship over a storm raging on the seas of emotions. I am not at the mercy of emotional highs and lows, and while I experience those things, there is a place where I am not affected by them in such a destructive way.

In your creative process and this endeavor to make good art, let your emotions flow from right thinking. Let the life that God gives become the driver of your emotional life and as a result, your art.