The Giving Spirit

More blessed is He who is the Giver than the receiver.  I've got a feeling I'm going to be chewing on this for the next season.  Don't know if I'll share it all here in the blog, but this is some life-changing stuff for me.

In the beginning, God.  He made the world.  He gave it life.  He gave life to man.  God = Giver.  In Him I live and move and have my being.  I am a Receiver.

Here's where I get twisted.  You see, with five feature films accomplished, I've thought that one of my "gifts" was the ability to get it done-- the ability to make it happen.  I look back at the times I've said that and cringe.  What arrogance.  I'm saying that I can GIVE a project life.  Make it happen.  That I'm the Giver.

Well, that means I'm saying I'm a god.  If I were a farmer, I can plant, water, prune, etc.  But the "making it happen" is totally up to God.  He's the Giver.

Eve, in the garden, thought it'd be great to be a Giver too.  So she took mankind's first steps away from the Giver.  You see, Evil isn't the opposite of God.  It's the absence of God.  The more you walk away from Him, the more you walk down Evil's path.  It's human nature to be Evil... the nature that came from the Fall-- from the choice Adam and Eve made that fateful day.

It's easy as a film director to start to have a mindset that I'm a Giver.  But that's delusion when I walk in that mindset.  I can't give anything.  I can work hard, but the results aren't up to me.  Though I try so hard to get movies sold and seats sold in theaters, CD's sold online.  It's not mine to control. 

Unless I want to be a god.  But when I do, I move away from Him.  I can't be a god and walk in His presence.  This is actually incredibly freeing.  I've been sweating bigtime some things in my life-- but now I don't have to sweat.  The Giver will give or not.  But He promised me He'd provide for me. 

So during this hard time, I ask "what does He want me to learn through this?" 

I'll probably share more about this as I walk through it.