It seems everyone I know right now is suffering monetarily,
physically, and spiritually.

Call it a recession, the dogs days of summer, the end of days,
whatever you like. But it's tough out there on us folk working music
for a living (and for God!)

If you are reading this and saying to yourself, "This guy has no idea
what I'm going through...", well we kinda do.

You may feel like you are on a Christian music castaway on a barren,
desert island. But friend, you are not alone. We're all fighting a bit
right now. It's the 9th round of a scheduled ten round bout, and we
are on the ropes, just hoping for the bell to ring.

You see, when our hearts and minds are focused on doing God's work,
and we're making amazing progress as many of our artists are, that's
when the bad guy likes to mess with us. Or mess with our circumstances.

I heard a friend say the other day, "I just had to give control to
God, and quit worrying. Since I've done that, money always comes in
when it needs to."

Now I know that seems like an easy way out, but it is pretty biblical.

Philippians 4:6 (The Message) - Don't fret or worry. Instead of
worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into
prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense
of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and
settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces
worry at the center of your life.

So that's the first thing. We have to give it up to God when we no
longer have the answers.

What's next? Reach out.

As I talk about all the time, we have a tendency to stay in our holes,
trying to come up with our little plans to get ourselves out of this mess.

But just like we need to get out to grow musically and creatively, we
need to be in community with folks and share our needs, petitions, and
hopes. We need the prayers and support of other Creative Christians to
at least commiserate with right?

I always see these tough times (and I am just digging out of one) as
the times when I am forced to look at my whole life and see how I can
fine tune this thing. Maybe a road I start down because of these tough
times can turn out to be a whole new world of opportunity.

Also, creatively, tight and lean times force us to be creative with
less. I REALLY wanted to buy a new keyboard lately. I mean I wanted it
bad. It would have opened up so many new musical roads.

Instead, I delved back into software and tools I already had, and
found way cool sounds and options I didn't even know I had. Why?
Because I simply couldn't afford anything new. So the tough times
forced me to dig deep and I found amazing new things to work with.

So, if this is raining on your pity party, then I understand and
apologize. I do have a tendency to be a hard-core optimist (just ask
my wife!)

But if your head and heart are down, get into your Bible. Get into
your equipment. Get in touch with your creative friends or mentors.

Just resist the temptation to give into defeat. That's exactly what
our enemy wants. But the beauty of all this is that God can use these
rough spots in our life to teach us lessons, and even better, make us
stronger so that we don't get here again!

Keep your head up. Stay cool. Stay Creative.

Your friend,

EC
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Eric Copeland is the rather overly-optimistic head of Creative Soul,
an artist development, production, and label services company in
Nashville, TN. Try not to get too mad at him for being Mr. Sunshine,
but he's just coming out of a ringer of a few months where the enemy
has been trying to convince him he made some mistakes. But God was
bigger than this! And now he's trying to spread the
news...www.CreativeSoulOnline.com