Creation or Competition, 2

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by:  Staci Stallings

  This continues our discussion from Monday…

God is not competitive.

Let me repeat that:  God is not competitive.  God does not have to compete because in the simplest terms, who would He compete against?  He who made the universe by saying, “Let there be…” could beat everyone at everything without so much as trying. God’s power does not come from being competitive.  No.  God’s power comes from being creative.

God creates. That’s what He does.  If He wants a mountain, He creates a mountain.  He doesn’t go out and try to talk someone else out of their mountain, nor does He work to gain a piece of someone’s mountain or steal it if He can’t get it any other way.  He doesn’t have to.  He can simply create a mountain, and so in a sense can we.

I have a young friend who wanted a laptop computer.  She pined for one, begged for one, was desperate to get one.  At the time she was learning to play the piano and was early enough in her piano experience that competition hadn’t entered the scene yet. One evening I told her mother to tell her that instead of “competing” for the laptop, she should concentrate on creating with her music.  The more you create, the more “things” will flow to you.  As of this writing, she has not gotten her laptop, but I have no doubt if she keeps creating, it is on its way.

My daughter loves rocks.  She has from a very early age. Yesterday we took our first trip to a rock shop, and it was love beyond all telling.  The man at the shop showed us how he cuts stone and can cut crosses and other shapes out of the stone.  My daughter was fascinated. As we left, we talked about her getting a stone cutting saw so she can make her own creations out of stone.

She has recently gotten into creating things out of wood, and I know the two fit together. Learning one will advance her capacity to learn the other. In her eyes, I see the God of creation.  Maybe that’s why I like to write.  I love the feeling of creating meaning by the patterned arrangement of 26 letters and 10 numbers.  The greatest works of the world like the Bible were created using just these 36 characters.  Think about that for a moment.  It’s astonishing, is it not?

What makes them masterpieces is the sheer ability to create, and someone else can create something equally amazing with the same 36 characters.  You don’t have to compete to use them. They are yours, and they are limitless.

The more I concentrate on creating, the happier I become.  There was a time in my writing career when I would read of the achievements of others and become annoyed.  Why did they get the book contract and I didn’t?  I see now how entrenched in the worldly philosophy of competition I was. In this philosophy when someone else wins, I lose because if the contracts are limited, them getting a contract means there are fewer for me.

And the tragedy of this mentality goes way beyond this example.

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about our girls’ night out getting together night coming up.  She said, “Okay, but this time I am paying because I need to pay you guys back.”  (She’s new to our little group, so I understood where she was coming from.)  I told her that among Holy Spirit friends paying is relative.  We aren’t keeping score—at all.  I couldn’t tell you who’s ahead, who’s not, who owes whom what, and it literally doesn’t matter.

When I first started this little group, I intuitively “knew” it would be different than the way I had always done things.  It started with another friend of mine. I began giving her gifts—books and other uplifting things.  After about the fifth thing that I’d brought over for no reason other than I wanted to (it wasn’t her birthday or even a special day on the calendar), she protested, “Staci!”  To which, I said, “No. It’s not about you having to pay me back. It’s only about… I want to share with you what I have. I want to share the blessings in my life.”

As I told our new Holy Spirit friend, I have so many blessings flowing through my life, it is natural for me to share what I have with others.  She said something that sounds very good, “Yea, but I just want to pay my fair share.”  Ah. That’s the way the world thinks.  “I must pay. I must pull my own weight. I must give my fair share, or you will not want to be around me.”

In worldly terms this makes sense.  If I pay for your meal and my resources are limited, then you’d better pay me back or I now have less because of you. In other words, you owe me to bring me back to even. But that’s not how it works in a creation-based paradigm.  From a creation-based perspective, I have what I need because if the resource is not here, it can be created or obtained through my creation of something else in order to trade for the resource. Think of the resources now using a different term—blessings. The unlimited blessings in my life flow through me onto you when I pay for your meal.  That doesn’t mean I now have less because I gave you some.  In fact, and you know this in relation to love, the more love I give away the more I have.

That’s how it is with God. The more you give away, the more you have. In a creation-based reality, the resources are not limited—they are limitless.  If you need more, you simply ask for more or better yet create more.  More and more and more is available if you focus on God’s resources and learn to create just as God does. As you do this, you will let go of fear-filled, limited, competition thinking and being, and more will be added to you.

“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God (create and creation), and all these things shall be added unto you.”  Learn to create. Let go of having to compete. It will change everything.

Copyright Staci Stallings 2005

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Just out of college and completely alone in the world, Maggie Montgomery has one shot left to save her life from an abyss of poverty and hopelessness. Clinging to the last shred of fuel and hope, she arrives at the mansion of Texas billionaire Conrad Ayers. Although Maggie is clearly not what Mr. Ayers and his wife have in mind for a nanny, they agree to hire her temporarily until they can find someone more appropriate to fill the position. However, Maggie’s whole world is about to be up-ended by two way-over-scheduled children and one incredibly handsome hired hand. As she struggles to fit into a world she was never made to fit in, Maggie wonders if she can ever learn to become a perfect version of herself so she can keep the job, or is she doomed to always be searching for a life she can never quite grasp?

Keith Ayers despises his life. As the son of Texas billionaire Conrad Ayers and the fiance to a Senator from Texas’ daughter, it looks great on the outside, but inside, he is dying. He would vastly prefer to manage and train his father’s racehorses. However, everyone else thinks that is beneath him. He needs to get into industry and build on his father’s success. Suffocating under the constrictions of his life, he meets Maggie who begins to teach him that wealth and power is not everything in this life. But can Keith defy the most powerful men in Texas to follow his heart?

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