Heather Bellamy spoke with Tamsin Evans, the Founder and CEO of Pure Creative Arts about how to find what your place is in this world and how to step out into it.

Tamsin Evans

Tamsin Evans is the Founder and CEO of Pure Creative Arts. They are an organisation working to creatively see a generation set free and released into their full potential, working in schools and through theatre. She has just released a new book called Take Your Place and Heather Bellamy spoke with her to find out more.

Heather: So first of all, what is the book about?

Tamsin: The book is looking at what it means for each person to know who God has made them to be; to fully be themselves and to take the unique place that he has for them. So it's looking at identity, purpose and what it means to step out and trust God in obedience. It uses my own story from the organisation that I set up, Pure Creative Arts, and looks at how that journey can be different for each one of us.

Heather: In the book you talk about wrestling with God about what he was asking you to do with what became Pure Creative Arts, so what was that wrestle and how did you work that through?

Tamsin: After I had begun the journey of following what I felt God was calling me to do with Pure, I was reading a book about a missionary who was working in Mozambique and I began to wrestle with thoughts like, "Should I not be going there and doing something in the Third World?" Or, "Is it really ok that I'm here in the Western World, working here with these issues that I am working with?" And I felt God speak to me specifically about, "This is what I have called you to and this is where I have called you to, and I have not asked you to go and do that, I have asked you to do this".

A lot of the areas that Pure Creative Arts works with are areas of eating disorders or self-harm, the blockages standing in the way of us being able to fully be that person that we've been made to be. It doesn't even need to be an issue like an eating disorder or self-harm, but so many of us have all these layers that we put around ourselves. We think, 'I need to be different, I need to look different, I need to behave in a different way, I need to be more like them', and we lose what it means to be that unique person we have been created to be. Then the world misses out and we miss out from freely being that person. I just wanted to be obedient to God, but when God calls us, he calls us in the unique way he has made us and a lot of what he has put on our heart is what he has made us to do.

Heather: What would you say are the main issues facing young people today?

Tamsin: We had some research done, looking at the main issues facing young people. Some of the top areas that came up in that report were 'dissatisfaction'. That was dissatisfaction with life and with what they were doing. There was another one, which was to do with sex and relationships and decisions around that area. Another one was fatherlessness. What I mean by that is the lack of a father at home, or a good role model in their life. That is a huge one. Our society has got broken down families now like never before. Another one would be the whole area of image. In our society there's so much pressure from the media to look a certain way. These images that we watch on a television screen, or we look at on an advert are not even real; they've been air-brushed. So there is this perfect image that we are looking at and it is very easy to aspire to try to be like and it isn't even real.

Heather: In your book you also talk about shame and how to get free of it. How have you found that you can get free of shame?

Tamsin: Shame is something that we all experience in different ways. It can be because of something that has been done to us; because of our own weakness, or our own sinfulness and mistakes. It can be for any sense of falling short. The truth is that we have fallen short; none of us are ever gonna be perfect. When we try to strive, or be perfect, then we are always gonna fall short.

The incredible thing as a Christian is that we know that Jesus came. God sent his son Jesus to die for us and when that happened Jesus took all our mess and all our rubbish on himself. There was this incredible exchange that happened. So if we confess that we believe in him, then we can be forgiven. I just love that.

I mess up every day and make mistakes and do things that I wish I didn't, but yet the God that I know and I believe in, is a God of grace and he's a God of forgiveness and he's the God of a second, third and fourth chance. So often we think we have done something that God can't forgive, or we get locked up by things that have happened to us and we feel like we can't tell anybody, but God is so full of grace. When we bring those things to him and we say, "God I give you this, would you come and forgive me?" Then we know the power of the cross, is that through his death and blood that those things are wiped out and gone.

At a young age I definitely thought that there was stuff I had done that God could never forgive me for, but there was a moment when I had a sudden realisation that when God said he died for me, that everything that I had done was wiped out and washed clean. There is a blank canvas in front of me and a fresh start. That's not just a once thing. God knows we are weak and imperfect and so we can come to him again and again and find forgiveness and restoration.

Heather: What sort of things do you do in Pure Creative Arts?