Artistic Expression: Spiritual Gifts Definitions, Scriptures, and Ways to Serve

[If you have not already done so, please take a moment now to take this free spiritual gifts assessment. Once you have your results, come back to this and the corresponding 22 blog posts for a detailed description of each of the gifts, focusing on your own as well as becoming familiar with all of them so you can spot and call them out in others.]

 

Artistic Expression

The Spiritual Gift of Artistic Expression could also be called the gift of praise or worship. Those who have this gift have a special ability to communicate God’s beauty, awesomeness, and message through the fine arts, including drama, creative writing, music, dance, and drawing. Through their God-given creativity, these people in our midst use their gifts to draw us in so that we might focus on God, His creation and His message to us. Many with this gift speak of the sense of being compelled to use it in imitation of God the Creator and to show others how God is at work.

 

Scriptures that reference Artistic Expression or show someone exhibiting this gift: Genesis 1-3 (God);Exodus 15 (Miriam);2 Sam 6, Psalms of David (David); John 1; Colossians 1.

 

Questions on the assessment that pertain to Artistic Communication:

  • God uses my artistic/musical gifts to help people worship him.

  • I can communicate important things about God to others through creative writing, art, or music.

  • I express something of God’s creativity through dance, imaginative communication, painting, drawing, or drama.

 

Some words that describe people with this gift:

  • Artistic

  • Expressive

  • Creative

  • Charismatic

  • Original

  • Innovative

 

Potential negatives to this gift:

  • Believing any public acclaim or attention is for oneself and one’s own abilities.

  • Craving the attention that comes with this gift.

  • Focusing on the artistry and not on the purpose of bringing God glory.

 

Some possible ways to serve using this gift:

  • Worship team leader/member

  • Choir director/member/bell choir director/member

  • Drama team director/member

  • Orchestra/band leader/member

  • Artist/painter/animator

  • Singer/songwriter/soloist

  • Writer/author/journalist

  • Actor/actress

  • Choreographer/dancer

  • Videographer/photographer

 

Shirley Giles Davis, author of the God. Gifts. You. Your Unique Calling and Design workbook, Your Unique Design Class Guide, Your Unique Design Facilitator Guide, and Gifts-Calling-Purpose blog, is a consultant, coach, facilitator who has worked with hundreds of faith-based organizations, nonprofit agencies, and executive leaders in a diversity of fields for four decades. She currently serves as Catalyst for Equipping and overseer of Local Missions at her church.

 

Photo © Shirley Giles Davis. Degas painting, Musee d’Orsay, Paris.

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