Emily Parker shares a Fusion message from Tamsin Evans, the Founder and Director of Pure Creative Arts.

Tamsin Evans

Hearing other people's personal experiences and journey can help encourage us in our walk. Knowing others have overcome in life helps us to face the challenges in front of us.

I'd like to share with you something Tamsin Evans spoke about. I interviewed her on Fusion, my Cross Rhythms radio show. Fusion encourages young girls to rise up and discover who they were made to be.

Tamsin is the Founder and Director of Pure Creative Arts. They work through theatre and education to help people with their self-esteem and identity. Through their projects they aim to help young people find a way to be released into their full potential.

Tamsin shared her experience of learning the plans and purposes God had for her life through setting up the organisation Pure Creative Arts:

"When I was 13 God said to me at a Christian conference, as I was watching a theatre company perform, "I want you to do that".

My response to that was, "Oh, that can't be God talking to me, because God would tell me to go to India, or to do something that I didn't really want to do." So I put it to one side.

As I went through the rest of my school and through my A-Levels and was making a decision about what to do next, it became all about academic achievement and what universities wanted of me. It became about the guy I was dating and where I was going to be. It wasn't about what had God said to me and what God's plans for my life were.

At that time I was predicted A's & B's, but every university that I applied for I got rejected from. All these rejections came through the door and at the same time, the guy I was going out with, who was at one of the universities I'd applied for, just stopped contacting me and rejected me.

I felt rejected in every way by that, but God really used that time to begin to say, "Who have I created you to be? Who do I say you are? What have I made you for?"

In that time I began to say, "Ok, God. I'm totally broken. I don't know who I am. I don't know what I'm meant to do. I put my trust in you, rather than looking to whether guys fancy me and whether I'm dating this guy, or whether universities want me or I'm achieving well. But actually what do you say God?"

God really began to speak to me about who he said I am. There's a verse in the Bible in Ephesians 2:10 that says, "You are God's masterpiece, created for the plans and the works that he planned for you to do long ago". I love that scripture because it says firstly that we're God's masterpiece and for me that was really important.

God began to speak to me through Psalm 139, about the way he created me like no-one else and the plans and the purposes he had for me. That he'd made me his masterpiece and he made me uniquely. Then secondly, it says in that verse that he's made you for the plans that he had for you long ago. As I began to realise that my identity was in who God says I am and how God sees me, I began to say, "God who have you made me to be? What are the plans you have for me?"

The scripture in Jeremiah 29:11 says, "God knows the plans he has for us, the plans to prosper us, not to harm us. To give us a hope and a future." I began to say, "Ok God, you've got a plan for my life and you really want to do something to prosper me. Something that's good for me. I began to ask God, "What does that look like?"

That began the journey of me starting Pure and following all that I believe God has made me to do.
God has got a plan for your life too. You are his masterpiece. He has made you like nobody else. It is so easy to compare yourself and look at other people, but it says in Romans 12:6, "Let's just go ahead and be what we were made to be without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other or trying to be something we aren't".

There's no-one else like you and there never will be. God has put you on this earth at this time for something that no-one else but you can do.

I want to encourage you to ask God, "God what does that look like? I'm your masterpiece, how have you made me to be unique? What are the things you planned for me to do long ago? I want to look like what that looks like."

Take the place that God has for you in this world."

If you want to find out more about the work of Pure Creative Arts then head to the website: purecreativearts.co.uk.