The Artisan Soul Quotes

“To create is to reflect the image of God. To create is an act of worship.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“Love never comes without wounds; faith never comes without failure.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“Whether we realize it or not, everything we do is an expression of either how alive our souls are or how much we have allowed ourselves to be deadened over time.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“True creativity does not come easily; creativity is born of risk and refined from failure.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“There is no proof of creativity without action.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“What is your idea of you? Who is it that you have decided to become? If your greatest work of art is the life you live, and ultimately life is a creative act, what life will you choose to leave behind as your masterpiece?”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“Artists love without reservation. They give their hearts completely and leave nothing on the table. They are naked and unashamed. They leave no room for pretension. And because they have given all of themselves, they live without regret.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“Frankly, the people who whine the most about how hard their lives are have very rarely experienced much to be disappointed about. They seem to find solace in their most negative memories, using these as a blank check that abdicates them from all personal responsibility. “I am how I am because of the pain of my past. If you had experienced what I have experienced, you would understand my bitterness, my anger, my paralysis, my despair.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“the only art we can create is that which authentically reflects who we are. Our soul is the material for all we create. Thus, to nurture the artisan soul, essence is far more important than talent.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“Jesus’s early followers formed a movement of dreamers and visionaries.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“The life of faith is less about gathering information than it is about expanding imagination. The movement Jesus started was a movement of dreamers and visionaries, not a movement of academics and theologians.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“Within the universe’s intention and its unique design around relationship, we find that the focal point of the universe, the motive of the universe, is love. God created life so that we could know love. Everything God does is an expression of his love. It is neither trite nor superficial that the Scriptures summarize this in three simple words: “God is love.” It is critical to understand this because, if we are to reclaim our role in the creative process and express our lives as masterful works of art, we, too, must be sure that our motivation is the expansion of love.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“Far too often, when we think we are frightened by mystery, the fact is that we are haunted by history.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“It’s hard to tell a great story if we remain stuck in chapter one.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“When we are freed from the rules and regulations that are so often imposed on us in the name of God, we discover that creativity is the natural result of spirituality. And if this is true, then our soul is the primary material for all artistic expression.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“It takes courage to not only accept our limitations but embrace our potential. To deny our creative nature is to choose a life where we are less and thus responsible for less. We see ourselves as created beings, so we choose to survive. When we see ourselves as creative beings, we must instead create.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“Unfortunately, the people who have the greatest influence in our lives rarely understand the power of their words to shape who we become. They never fully understand that what informs us forms us. Words spoken into a soul are like the hands of a potter pressed against wet clay.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“Creativity should be an everyday experience. Creativity should be as common as breathing. We breathe, therefore we create.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“I have come to realize, after over thirty years of studying human creativity, that the great divide is not between those who are artists and those who are not, but between those who understand that they are creative and those who have become convinced that they are not.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“Our lives will become our greatest works of art not only when our relationships are a beautiful expression of love, acceptance, and intimacy, but when we have a deep sense of purpose that produces accomplishments that express, for us, success and significance.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“Since part of our creative responsibility is to move from imagination to image, we need to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ and allow our imagination once again to be the playground of God. And once our dreams and visions are the material that has been passed on to us by a divine imagination, then it is time to dream, to risk, and to create.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“if God refuses to mass-produce but insists on an intimate process that in the end forms each of us into the image of Christ, why would we choose a lesser path for our own lives? The work of the artist begins with the care of his or her own soul.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“Who do we become when we stop allowing all the voices in our head to crowd out the one voice we must hear to come to life?”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“Worship is not something we are called to so that God can reinforce his status. It is his way of calling us near.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“We are most human when love is our motive.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“Who told you that you were naked? Who have you been listening to?..'

This is a tragic reminder that we humans have the strange capacity to live a soulless life. Our inner voice was never supposed to be simply an echo. Our inner voice was always to resonate with the voice of God. Every other voice will either make us less than we were intended to be or convince us that we are more than we really are. Neither self-loathing nor self-worship helps us find our authentic voice. It is only when our inner voice responds to the voice of God that we begin to truly find to find our own voice. As critical as it is for us to understand that art is always an extension of ourselves, the creative act is also an expression of our essence.

It is equally important for us to realize that our guiding narrative determines the story we tell through our lives. Our inner voice not only informs us of who we are, but affects everything we touch. And in the end, becomes the driving force through which we strive to shape the world around us. The principal creative act described in Genesis chapter 1 begins with God speaking the universe into existence. God speaks out of who He is and everything in creation is a declaration of His glory.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“What if the creative act is not an act against God but a reflection of His image within us?”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“Who we were created to become already exists in the mind of God. It’s placed in our physical DNA and in the longings of our soul. Our lives are supposed to be a manifestation of the imagination of God, and whatever else we leave behind—the life we choose to live and the person we choose to become—is the ultimate expression of the artisan soul.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“Most people who describe themselves as visionaries are actually saying something quite different. They are abdicating their responsibility for the details. Details matter. The more someone or something matters to us, the more the details relating to them matter to us.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art

“If we are inherently spiritual creatures, we are by our nature creative beings, yet we live in the fear that if we aspire to be more we will discover ourselves to be less.”
― Erwin Raphael McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art