I paid a big price to make art.
Not just in money.
In pain. In life experience.
Some of the art I’ve created has come from places I never would have chosen to visit personally. Yet, I did.
Grief. Disappointment. Addiction. Recovery. Mental health struggles. Questions I couldn’t answer. Seasons when God felt closer than my own breath and during seasons when He seemed inexplicably distant or perhaps when I was distant from Him.
For a long time, I’ve wondered why so much of creativity seems connected to struggle. Now I know.
Or at least, I’m beginning to understand.
Art has a way of making us look at what we would rather avoid.
It takes the things we experience, both the beautiful and the broken, and asks us to see them differently.
I didn’t choose every circumstance that shaped me over the course of my life.
But I get to choose what I do with what those circumstances have given me.
Maybe that’s why I believe being an artist is my spirit animal.
I make art because something inside me needs to tell the story.
And sometimes the story is about hurt. It’s about grieving the loss of someone or something that mattered. It’s about proclaiming, “I survived.” It’s about recognizing God was there.
I paid a big price to make art.
But I don’t believe the price was wasted.
Until my next post…
Be salty, stay lit.
Rainer Bantau —The Devotional Guy™
© 2026 Rainer Bantau | The Devotional Guy™ | All Rights Reserved
The Devotional Guy™ 
Thanks for reading my post and for taking time to reflect and comment.
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There is a voice you speak with your mouth, and there is a voice you carry in your heart. And sometimes, the second one is louder.
I was reflecting on the words of Jesus,
“For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” Matthew 12:34.
Your words do not begin in your mouth. They reveal what has been stored within you.
That means your heart has a voice.
You can say, that you trust God,while your heart is screaming fear. You can pray for increase while deep within you believe you are not worthy of it. You can declare that God will come through, yet secretly expect disappointment.
And this is why guarding your heart matters.
Isaiah 65:24 says,
“Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.”
The point is not that God literally needs to hear an audible prayer before He knows what you need. Scripture consistently presents God as knowing the heart and its deepest thoughts. The emphasis is that God is not limited to the volume of your voice. He sees what is happening within you.
Your heart influences how you think, what you believe, what you speak, what you tolerate, and ultimately how you live.
This is why Solomon gives us a serious instruction.
“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
Proverbs 4:23
Guard it from bitterness.
Guard it from unbelief.
Guard it from fear.
Guard it from comparison.
Guard it from voices that constantly tell you that God cannot be trusted.
Guard it from wounds that quietly become beliefs.
Because what you repeatedly allow into your heart will eventually find its way into your words, decisions and actions.
So before you ask God to change everything around you, ask Him to watch over what is happening within you.
“Lord, watch over my heart. Purify my motives. Correct my beliefs. Heal what is wounded. Remove what does not belong. Let my heart agree with Your Word, so that my mouth, my decisions and my life may flow from that agreement.”
Make a commitment from this moment and decide;
I WILL GUARD MY HEART. Follow up for more updates https://www.facebook.com/Ogechination
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