2020 04 16 Coffee with Chris Adapting to creative limitation spurs on creativity

The speaker discusses how people are spending more time at home and may find themselves binge-watching shows like Masterchef. They talk about the strategic ways contestants survive the competition and relate it to adapting to new situations in life. They mention the need to adapt to the current scenario and emphasize that while the world has changed, believers should still focus on God and the gospel. They use the analogy of a compass always pointing north, but the path to reach the destination may change depending on the circumstances. The speaker encourages listeners to adapt and find creative ways to point people to Jesus. Good morning and welcome to Coffee with Chris. You know, uh, during this, uh, time, extra time at home that everybody's having where they can't spend any of their free time out and about socializing in a traditional sense, um, some of us may find ourselves binge-watching some shows. The show that Hannah and I have been binge-watching lately is, uh, Masterchef. And if you've never seen the show, uh, basically it's kind of like a, uh, it's a competition, right? It's a, it's a baking and cooking, uh, competition. It's a culinary competition. And it's judged by, uh, some, some high-ranking chefs. And they give their feedback on, uh, the dishes as they go. And then, uh, roughly every one to two episodes, somebody is eliminated from that competition until there's only one master chef done. Um, the reason I bring that up is because it's interesting to watch the strategic ways that the different ones, uh, sort of survive the competition, you know? Um, some of them, uh, try and play to their strengths. Some of them try and go outside of the box and try something new. Um, but it's been, it's interesting as we're, as we're now in sort of the top ten remaining chefs. There was probably about 20 or 30 to begin with. And we're in the top ten remaining ones. The ones that are still there are the ones who have adapted to the scenarios and what the scenario requires rather than staying in their comfort zone. As we're all currently faced with a new situation, um, and the side effects of new situations, whether, uh, things going on in the world right now has affected your, your job, your home life, um, in good or bad ways, we need to adapt. We need to take in the situation. Uh, you know, I was in a webinar earlier, uh, watching about how churches can adapt to these situ- these situations, you know? And it's, it's really at a point where we're looking at, you know, um, looking at what's the new normal going to be like. Whether this continues for much longer or not, um, the world has changed. The world has changed, and we need to be able to adapt. And as believers, and this is something that was emphasized in that webinar, as believers, our mission hasn't changed. You know, God is always going to be our center focus. He always should be, right? You know, the gospel, Jesus, that's still who we're pointing people to. Um, but, you know, think of it this way. When you're, uh, trying to track your way, right, and you've got a compass, that's always going to point north. It's always going to point north, that compass. But which way it, like, how to get to the, where it's pointing, it's going to change depending on where you're standing, right? If you're, uh, in the middle of a wide open field, and it points north, you can just walk straight, right? If you're in the middle of a forest where there's a tree right in front of you, and it's pointing you to the tree, you can't just walk into the tree. You've got to walk around it. You've got to find ways to adapt to the situation you're in to get to the same goal that you've, uh, that you've always been headed towards. So that's my thought for you today, is how can you adapt in the situation you're in? Sometimes we don't want to adapt. We just try and wait out the situations and say, well, we'll wait long enough. Things will be back to normal, and we won't have to worry. We won't have to adapt. I can stay the same forever. Um, you know, something that I was told a lot growing up was the only thing that stays the same is change. Things are always going to change, whether we like it or not. But instead of being afraid of change, let's look at how we can use current circumstances to point people to Jesus in innovative and creative ways, you know? As somebody who does a lot of creative projects, whether it's audio, video, drawing, writing, all these kinds of things, um, as a kid, I would experiment with a lot of different, um, software for doing audio projects. And, uh, because I was just a kid, and I didn't have the money to pay for the software, um, I would often find free demos, limited versions that just let you play with the features, a few of the features. But I would find, uh, that I would find creative ways to get the results I wanted, uh, even with a limited feature set. And so sometimes, uh, those limitations can help us adapt in ways that, uh, thrust creativity forward in a positive way. So just think about that today. What creative ways can these limitations help you point people to Jesus? Anyways, God bless.