Creative Construction

For the last month or so I have been talking about a powerful strategy that will enable you to make the progress you long to see in your life. This idea is something called “creative destruction”. This month I want to give you the other half of that powerful equation.

First to quickly recap, the idea of creative destruction can be boiled down to simply this: in order to grow, to build, and to progress, you first have to be willing to do the work of confronting what isn’t working or meant to be, and removing it. The work of tearing down the old and clearing ground for the new is an ancient bible-principal dating back to Jeremiah’s time in the Old Testament, and is pivotal to making progress.

Sometimes we forget that anything can grow if placed in the right elements—anything. Meaning that even what is wrong, detrimental, or outside of your purpose will grow if it is being fed. This means you might actually be feeding what is wrong, or hampering you from your destiny. We feed things in our lives with our time, our energy, our resources, and our thoughts—our head space. So employing creative destruction in our lives is all about no longer feeding what doesn’t need to be anymore, and doing the work of removing what needs to go.

The criteria for this can be something like this, “If it doesn’t fit the plan or the vision I have in my heart, if it doesn’t line up with my principles or my current strategy, then it needs to be uprooted.” Let me tell you that this is a truly liberating experience because in today’s world, there is so much competing for our attention! Just getting rid of what shouldn’t have access to us is a huge leap forward in life, so the destructive process, however painful, is the necessary price of progress toward a better life.

But what comes after the destructive part? This is what I would like to talk about next: the powerful strategy of Creative Construction. Creative construction is the work of unveiling a reality you’ve never before attempted, or is unknown, at least to you.

The momentum that comes with constructing something new supports a motivation within you to experiment with greater or lesser awareness of the risk involved. To begin to stretch out further to build, create, or operate in what you instinctively feel drawn to do is where the unique greatness that God put inside of you lies! This is where your faith comes in big time! Believing that God can and will sustain you through the work of destruction/construction, and that He will lead you through it and into the new is your place of living by faith.

So as much as it takes to do the painful work of removing what needs to be removed and to tear down what needs to go, it is actually this piece of creative construction that requires us to truly dig down deep and lean forward with courage into what is new. This could be a new job, simply a new way you’d never thought you would be doing your job or operating in your calling, a new business idea, or even building a new and better lifestyle.

The first thing you need to know about employing this strategy of creative construction is that it takes more than you. It takes more than what you know at this point. You need new information to build something new. Otherwise you will start out to build something new or operate in a new way, and without new information, you will eventually just resort to building what you already know, and operating how you always have. You will repeat the same cycles you did before without new insight, new abilities, and new tools.

It takes connecting with what you don’t know to build something new. Bottom line—your creative construction process is hinging on external information AND the understanding, the revelation, of how you are going to implement that in your life. This process of connecting for the believer is one that starts as an instinct on the inside. God will lead you to what you need to connect to and who you need to connect to in order to get you what you need. This is actually one of the greatest benefits of creative construction because when it is done right, a synergy is formed in the connection. Mutually beneficial connections between people produce new construction in our lives. It is saying, “I know something you need to know, and you know something I need to know.” That combination forms a synergy that enables us both to get farther than we would have ever gotten had we kept to ourselves.

If you are a believer in Jesus and His words, you are probably aware of how much the enemy of our souls fights to keep connection from happening. Evil is always trying to highlight what separates us rather than what unites us. For years the enemy of the kingdom of God has worked to highlight the differences of men, women, races, and cultures to hinder them from connecting or daring to work together in true partnership. He fights the connection because of what it constructs. The building of the kingdom of God takes place in creative construction, so the more connection is happening in the right ways, the more growth, creativity, and expanded influence we are going to experience! It is worth pausing to say that we could all do well to “up our game” in focusing on connecting with each other solely on the criteria of being “In Christ”, and watch how much gets accomplished for the kingdom of God.

So connecting with people, information sources, and networks is part of getting what you need to build and feed what you want to grow so you can go where you want to go. The last thing I will mention for now about creative construction is that it is not a streamlined, seamless process. In fact anyone who has been through a construction project can tell you to expect the unexpected! It comes with the territory, but this is where your courage is essential.

Fear of failing, appearing to be failing, fear of feeling not in control, and fear of the unknown are meant to drive us away from the place of our breaking out and into. After all, that is what progress is; it’s breaking out and into a new place that is better than where we have been, but courage is the antidote! Let me share something with you that happened to me that speaks to what I am talking about.

Recently I picked up running again. It was something I have always enjoyed, but let slip out of my routine. Starting all over again took some courage, prioritizing, and motivation, but I was excited about doing something that I knew would bring progress in my lifestyle. I set a beginning goal of simply staying committed for five days straight. Just show up each day for five days straight to log those miles. On day five, my motivation for running was sky high. I had hit my first simple goal of showing up all five days. The next day, day six, I had some company in town, and decided to tow them to the trail with me. All of a sudden about fifteen minutes in, I had a sharp muscle spasm in my left calf. It got worse minute by minute until my whole calf muscle just became a ball. I was so shocked! I had never had anything like this happen before. Limping all the way back to the car, my excitement for building this new area in my life was totally deflated.

I rested it over the next four to five days, and kicked up my supplements. Still pretty sore, I was not looking forward to heading back to the trail again. I had experienced a setback which made me want to avoid and recoil from pushing down that trail again. I was frustrated because I knew I wouldn’t be able to go at the pace I wanted to go right away. Plus, the memory of that shooting pain was pretty fresh. I knew if I didn’t push through what I was wanting to avoid that I was settling for the place I was in, and that meant I was resigning myself to this ceiling over my head, and this box I was already in. That was not what I wanted to confine myself too. I realized that this was a set back, but not a quitting moment.

In the same way in our lives, beginning the work of creative construction is only half of the equation. Walking it out is the other half. The only reason we do the work of tearing down and rooting up is so we can build and plant. This takes patience for the learning curve, and steady persistence to make the real progress that brings results. Don’t let the curve in the road throw you off track! Learn from it. Improve in it.

I want to encourage you today that what you are heading into is a new dimension for your life that God placed the potential for within you. It is you and Him together that can see impossibilities become possible, and they will bless people around you, helping them to progress too.

Every new place you come into, every battle you win, is a weapon you can hand someone else to do the same. Don’t get weary in the work. Take your strength, patience, and persistence from the Spirit of God inside of you. He will give you exactly what you need each and every single day to make it. Be brave, and follow those instincts for connecting to who and what you need. That is God leading you, and He knows every step of the way!

P.S. – We’d love to hear from you about what is stirring in you to build! What do you have vision to make better or to start brand new? Comment below. We are praying for you, and cheering you on!