There are four key steps to connecting to the creative flow of God:
1.
Quiet yourself down both from outside distractions and your analytical
mind.
2. Look for vision, possibly triggering this vision by visuallizing in
your mind.
3. Hearing God’s voice and allowing the Holy Spirit to flow
through you.
4. Writing down what you are receiving.
It’s this last
step that I want to focus on here. The greatest hinderance to the flow that
comes from God is our own analytical thinking. When the left side of our brain
starts analyzing what we are receiving from God, it necessarily inhibits the
right side of the brain and cuts off the flow from God. It stops the process and
cuts it short. So, we must find a way to prevent that, but at the same time be
able to remember what we are receiving and test it to know that it came from
God.
The greatest tool to release this flow is probably to record it in
some fashion as it is being received, for as one records in simple childlike
faith that which is flowing within him, the flow continues unabated.
I
have found that without a pen in my hand, or my fingers on a computer keyboard,
or on the strings of my autoharp, I often halt the flow by stopping to test and
analyze while I am receiving it. Testing and analyzing cuts me off from flow,
because flow is right-brain and testing is left-brain. So if I want to
experience an hour in the presence of God and capture God’s creativity, then I
must stay in flow for the hour. That means I must stay in the right hemisphere
of my brain for an hour. Remember, intuition and vision (where my interaction
with God is consciously registered) are right-brain, and reasoning is
left-brain. If I start testing the flow I am receiving, I immediately cut off
the river of God’s creativity within me, because I have shifted from the right
brain to the left brain.
One value of recording this flow is that it
serves as a trigger which increases the flow, in that I may continue to write or
paint or sculpture or whatever, in faith, knowing that when the flow has
stopped, I will be able to come back and test it to see if it came from God or
not. So journaling (recording the flow) becomes a tool that lets me stay in
faith for an extended period of time, knowing I can test it later.
Mark
Virkler is with Christian Leadership University. CLU is a Christian University and Online Bible
College offering Christian education including Christian counseling and Christian theology
seminaries and offers certificates, undergrad, Masters, and Doctorates in
the various Christian
colleges of CLU.