God Called Me to be a Missionary Artist
Going back and forth to that small province in Southeast Asia 7 times, missions anchored in my heart first.
This has always been God’s plan. So that I would not lose focus, He first called me to be a missionary, then guided me to use art for missions. But He’s not done.
He calls me to step into the identity of being an artist.
USING art as a tool on missions is on a totally different level than BEING an artist to answer the call to missions. He is calling out who I truly am.
That’s an idea that took quite some healing to embrace. Although tremendous healing has begun to take shape at Incarnate, brokenness, insecurities, judgments, and denials still define me in many ways.
At my core, I struggle with the assumptions of what an artist should look like and what level of artwork one must produce, discounting my own gifting. “I’ll never be good enough.”
‘Thanks’ to COVID
I have to ‘thank’ COVID. Because it was COVID that finally convinced me of who I am.
The lockdown carved out so much time to spend with God to work on my inner healing as emotions were triggered. ‘Why can’t I accept myself as an artist? Why am I in denial?’
Through quite a few ‘heart surgeries’ – difficult conversations with God, healings, repentance, and forgiveness – I removed a good number of false identities.
Taking up the Challenge of COVID
Now, as an artist, I’m answering the challenge of COVID with my creativity.
The global COVID-19 pandemic reveals so much of our human heart condition. To me, toilet paper is one of the symbols of the pandemic that encapsulates this condition.
Behind this symbol is ‘panic buying,’ ‘hoarding,’ ‘profiteering,’ and all kinds of fearful and selfish acts. It’s the same scene, repeated all over the world. It is ridiculously and sadly realistic.
Think about taking out a brand-new roll of toilet paper, you know it has an end, however big the roll is. You keep pulling and pulling, and it will, unsurprisingly, come to an end.
To us humans, whatever we need and love that has an end, we view as the more, the better. The tighter we can hold on to it, the safer it feels, even though the end is inevitable. Therefore, it causes anxiety, frustration, fear, panic, and so on.
As the Book of Revelation puts it, when famine, wars, and disasters come, the ultimate sickness of human hearts will be fully exposed, then God will deliver.
Repentance simply means ‘to turn around.’ Turning to God is to be delivered from ourselves.
Check back in a few days to find out more about how Jin has been developing her artistry during the pandemic by creating with toilet paper! To find out more about applying for Incarnate, please visit the Incarnate page on our website.
