I did one of those wine and paint nights a few years back. This was during the Covid days, so a group of us did it for a friend’s birthday over Zoom. It was a total blast! I remember seeing the painting that we were going to do and thinking to myself – there’s no way I’m going to be able to create something that looks even remotely similar. We had a fun teacher who took us step-by-step through the process and what do you know, mine had some resemblance!

I’m not much of an artist and I can’t say I’ve attended many art museums in my day either. However, I can appreciate a well painted canvas. It’s amazing to see a beautifully pastel-stroked sunset. We see a sunset, but there were thousands of singular strokes of intricate, meaningful effort that have culminated into the sunset we see hanging on the wall.

If I was to have been given the prompt of painting three waterfalls spilling out of a mountainside at dusk without any further instruction, I would have ended up painting something that may have resembled a purple body of water or some mysterious sea creature – I would have completely missed the mark. The beauty of the wine and paint night was that we were given specific instruction. Surely, those with more artistic experience fared slightly better than others, but all seven of us created a picture that looked much more like the goal than I thought possible when I first gazed at our blank canvases.

Over the course of the 90-minute Zoom lesson, I placed stroke after stroke and layer after layer. I began to gain some confidence, my wrist and my fingers became more comfortable, and I started to see the portrait come to life. Could I sell my finished piece for $750 at the local wine shop, no, but it is hanging up proudly in my house.

I had the freedom to paint whatever I wanted. I had a full color wheel at my disposal and a number of different types of brushes, I could have made whatever I wanted. Due to my inexperience, if I had wielded that freedom I would have created chaos – or for you artists, abstract perfection. But I submitted myself to my virtual guide and followed her every instruction. I didn’t have the skillset to create what’s currently hanging on the wall, but she did. And because I set aside my freedom to paint however I wanted and practiced obedience instead, my strokes produced a beautiful piece.

Are our walks with the Lord much different than this? We’ve been given freedom and agency to live our lives however we would like to. All it takes is a quick peak at the world to see that our freedom has gotten us into a lot of trouble. It’s brought sin and brokenness into the world and none of us can escape that reality. We also have Someone by the Name of Jesus who stepped into this broken world, bled, died, and rose again as a payment for the brokenness of those who believe in Him. He’s paid the debt that our sin has accrued.

He's also given the believer His Holy Spirit who convicts us in areas we ought to turn from and teaches us the Truth we need to stand on. Like my Zoom painting teacher, the Spirit teaches us how to live and gives us the tools to do so, tools we would not have had on our own. The Spirit is referred to as the Helper. The Spirit helps me submit to His teachings. God also speaks to us through His Word – the Bible. For the Christian, reading God’s Word and consulting with the Lord via prayer is how we submit ourselves to the Lord and choose obedience to his teachings.

Like the wine and paint night, our lives are a canvas that we are painting choice-by-choice. As believers, we have an instructor who teaches us exactly where and how to go. Through obedience, our canvases begin to look more and more like the goal – Jesus. My question to you today, friend, is this – who or what is your current life-canvas resembling? Stroke-by-stroke we are all painting something. My prayer is that we’d stay rooted in and submit ourselves to the teachings of Jesus and paint our pictures just like Him.