I Feel I Should Be Praying Instead Of Painting

It waits until you sit down.

That is the thing about it. It never says a word while you are cooking or driving or answering messages. You get the brush out, you get the water, you sit, and there it is, arriving in the first thirty seconds like it had been standing outside the door.

You could be praying.

There are people who need visiting.

Is this really what God has for you.

And it does not shout. That is the worst part. It is a reasonable voice, and it says reasonable things, and everything it names is genuinely good. Prayer is good. Visiting people is good. It is not accusing you of anything scandalous. It is accusing you of choosing a small good over a large one, which is much harder to argue with.

So you paint for six minutes with a low hum going, and then you put it away, and you do not pray either, because the hour has been spoiled for both.

That is the part I want you to notice. Nobody gains. The painting stops and the prayer does not start. Whatever that voice is, it is not producing prayer. It is producing an empty hour and a woman who feels vaguely in the wrong.

A voice that convicts moves you toward God. This one leaves you sitting in a kitchen with a wet brush, doing neither thing. Those are not the same sound and they do not come from the same place.

Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily

Paul is writing to a mixed room. Householders, servants, working people, and the letter is full of ordinary life rather than ceremony. And into that he drops a sentence that quietly abolishes the whole ranking system.

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. (Colossians 3:23, King James Version)

Whatsoever ye do.

Not whatsoever spiritual thing ye do. Not the prayer, the fasting and the visiting, with everything else tolerated underneath. Whatsoever. The word is deliberately wide and it was written to people whose days were mostly grinding, carrying and cooking.

You are painting under a sentence that covers whatsoever, and Colossians 3:23 refuses to sort a day into the parts that count and the parts that do not. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes an instruction written to servants in a household and lays it on a woman with a brush in her hand.

And look at where it is directed. As to the Lord. The painting is not competing with God for the hour. It is being done to Him, which means the hour was never divided in the first place.

You have an activity that is already directed to the Lord, and it is already settled in the written word that whatsoever is the category it belongs to. His Spirit is the one who says that over a woman who has spent years dividing her own days into two piles.

The voice that leaves you doing neither

I want to stay here, because the test I gave you above is the useful part and it is worth doing properly.

When God draws you toward prayer, what happens is that you pray. There is a pull, and it is warm, and often you look up and it has been longer than you thought. That is the sound of being drawn.

What has been happening to you is different. There is a pull away from the painting and no arrival anywhere else. Six minutes of painting, ruined, and then nothing. Not one of those evenings has ended in intercession.

You are not being drawn anywhere by that voice, and Colossians 3:23 puts whatsoever ye do under one heading with no sorting in it. The Holy Spirit is the one who draws toward and never merely away.

That is not conviction. Conviction has a destination.

And there is a second thing underneath it. The quality of the painting is not a measure of your love for God, and neither is the number of hours you give to it, and the whole idea of ranking an hour by its spiritual weight is not in the letter Paul wrote.

You are not being convicted, and heaven has never once drawn a person toward prayer by souring an evening and leaving them with nothing. Colossians 3:23 puts whatsoever ye do under the same heading, and the Spirit of God is the one who does not deal in vague unease.

And do not trade for it. That is the move I want to head off. Painting for twenty minutes and then praying for twenty to square the books turns the hour into a transaction, and a traded hour is not a free one.

You have permission to paint without buying it back, and this is yours: whatsoever was written wide on purpose. It is written in Colossians 3:23 that it is done as to the Lord, and the Holy Spirit is the one who will not let a gift be re-invoiced.

Twenty minutes, and no trade

So here is the ask.

Tonight, paint for twenty minutes. Or draw, or whatever the thing is that the voice keeps interrupting. Use what is already there and do not go and set up properly.

When the voice arrives, and it will arrive inside the first minute, do not argue with it. Arguing keeps you in the conversation. Say, plainly, this is as to the Lord, and go back to the brush.

And do not pray afterward to make it right. Not because prayer is bad, but because tonight the praying would be a payment, and we are dismantling the invoice.

The painting will not be good. It will be muddy, or the proportions will be wrong, or it will be the same thing you always paint. Leave it and do not scrape it back.

You are covered while the voice is still talking, and Colossians 3:23 is the ground under that. The written word directs whatsoever ye do to the Lord rather than sorting it, and the Spirit of God is present at a table with jars of dirty water on it.