A Conversation with Charity Williams | Kingdom Creativity Series, Pt. 1

Ever wonder if your creative expression truly matters in God’s kingdom? In this inspiring and joy-filled conversation, Michele Kus interviews Charity Williams, founder of Hope Words, whose journey from the ICU to prophetic painting shows us that creativity isn’t just a hobby but a divine partnership with heaven. 

In this episode, the first in our Kingdom Creativity series, Charity shares her remarkable journey of discovering her creative purpose. What started with painting encouraging words and images on her shoes (“because I was looking down so much”) became a healing and hope-filled ministry that invites others to encounter God through art, creativity, and joy. 

Charity unpacks the difference between worldly creativity and kingdom creativity — the kind that co-creates with Holy Spirit to shift atmospheres and release heaven on earth. She shares how God freed her from perfectionism with these powerful words: “What you see in your mind is what I show you, and what comes out gets to look like you.” 

Whether you’re an artist or not, Charity will help you see yourself as creative because you were birthed by the Creator Himself. Her refreshing perspective reminds us that creativity flows not from striving but from our identity and relationship with our Creator. This conversation will ignite your imagination and childlike wonder, and will remind you that it’s not about being perfect. It’s about being YOU. 

Tune in and start seeing your creative expression through heaven's eyes — as a powerful reflection of God’s image on earth. 

CONNECT WITH CHARITY! 

Hope Words website

Hope Words on Facebook

Hope Words on Instagram

Hope Words on YouTube

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing the Kingdom Creativity Series
• 1:07 Meet Charity Williams of Hope Words
• 6:22 The Birth of Hope Shoes
• 9:02 Growing Up Creative with God
• 13:11 Kingdom Creativity vs. Worldly Creativity
• 19:13 The Freedom of Co-Creating with God
• 24:14 Connect with Charity online!

Transcript

Michele: 0:00

It's Friyay, June 13th, and this is Today's Kus Word. Welcome to Today's Kus Word. I'm Michele Kus, your spiritual growth coach, and we are launching into a super fun new series on kingdom creativity and co-creating with God. I'm doing my very first podcast interview. You don't want to miss it. Hello, hello. Well, I was away in Georgia on vacation, but I'm back and I am so excited to share with you my very first podcast interview where you will meet my friend, Charity Williams, who's the founder of a creative and super encouraging ministry called Hope Words, and in this interview she is dropping some incredible nuggets of inspiration. I'm actually going to break the interview up into several episodes because there's so many golden nuggets. I don't want you to miss any of them. So here is the first installment of my interview with Charity Williams. I hope you love it.

Michele: 1:08

Welcome to Today's Kus Word. I'm your host, Michele Kus, and I have a very special treat for you. Today I'm doing my very first podcast interview. I have never done a podcast interview before and it's always just been me teaching or talking or leading you in meditations or putting random songs up, and I felt a couple weeks ago kind of a nudge from the Holy Spirit to start interviewing people that I think that the Lord wants more people to know and some hidden gems, if you will, and so I prayed about it, and the first person who popped to mind is the person on with me today, who is Charity Williams, and which is funny because Charity and I have never actually met in real life.

Michele: 2:09

We know each other by via social media probably, like a lot of you do. And it's one of those things, though, like do you ever connect with somebody on social media and you kind of low key stalk them? That was me with Charity Williams. I kind of low-key stalked her for a while because I remember one of the early posts she had painted a pair of shoes with all these encouraging words all over the shoes and my daughter, ironically, had done something very similar at a similar time in, at a similar moment in time, and so I thought, oh, that's interesting.

Michele: 2:51

So I kind of started stalking Charity and found out she has a ministry called Hope Words, which I think is a good complement to Kus words. So we'll give you the hope and I'll give you the Kus um anyway. So she's one of those people that I've never actually met in real life, but I kind of feel like I know her in a way, and we run with a lot of the same people, we love a lot of the same people and run in similar circles. So I want you to get to know Charity Williams, and we're going to be talking today about kingdom creativity and co-creating with God, and I can't think of a better person to talk to about this topic than Charity Williams. So, Charity, thanks so much for hopping on Today's Kus Word with me today.

Charity: 3:44

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I love that you, low key, stalked me.

Michele: 3:51

Yes, yeah, you have a super stalkable social media presence because it's so fun, it's so artistic, it's so colorful and creative, and I'm going to give you guys all of her social media links so you can go stalk her as well, because she's super stalkable. So, Charity, I want to get to know you a little bit better and I want the people who listen to this show get to know you a little bit better. So tell us the story behind Hope Words, how it got started, or even just a little bit about you and how you got started in your journey.

Charity: 4:35

Yeah, sure, so I guess I'll kind of do both. I've always kind of been. I've always been creative, since I was a little person, you know, just always drawing, always doing something creative, crocheting, you know, creating with my hands, whatever it could be. As I grew up, that kind of faded, because I grew up and I was like, well, this isn't as important, so kind of had seasons where, you know, it got shelved for a while and it got put aside and then it would come back out and then it would go back on the shelf, and so it's just kind of one of those things.

Charity: 5:20

But in 2017, I got super sick and I landed myself in the ICU for five days. I stopped breathing and it was super crazy, but God, you know, has restored my life since then. You know it's been a journey over the last eight years of healing and you know, overcoming anxiety and panic and depression and all of these things that came with that trauma. But in that time, I started painting shoes, as you know, and you know I was sitting in my kitchen one day and I was looking at my feet and I was depressed and I was like God, like you know, I had just those moments where I was like it would have been better if I wouldn't have made it like this is so hard. You know, my kids would have could have moved on, my husband could have moved on, they wouldn't be stuck with this vegetable of a woman in their house. Just, you know, I felt like I was just weighing everybody down because I was just stuck. I was just not well and God told me he's like I want you to go to the craft store and I want you to get a pair of shoes and I want you to paint hope on them because you need hope. And so I grabbed this pair of shoes, my first ones, and I drew flames on the toe and I wrote courage. You know, like I have courage, you know. And so I just wrote all these words and all these vibrant colors that were just so opposite of what I was feeling, so opposite of what I was experiencing, because I needed, I needed hope. I needed hope on my shoes because I was looking down so much. And so Hope Shoes was born and I went on to have the opportunity to paint lots of different shoes for lots of different people around the US, and that was super amazing.

Charity: 7:08

And then it's kind of morphed into Hope Words, and I guess the vision behind Hope Words is words of hope. You know it started with the shoes. Words of hope. I've always been my husband calls it a fonter so I always love to draw, lettering, I love to font, I love. You know, words have always been, I mean, even when I was a little kid. They've always been so important to me.

Charity: 7:38

And so you know, Hope Words, it's the words of hope, and then also hope words in the sense of moving toward hope. Jesus is our hope, he's our anchor, and so we're going toward hope, we're going hope words, you know, in every step that we're taking. And so that's where Hope Words kind of came from. And you know it exists to help people encounter God, to experience Him firsthand for themselves, to experience His healing, to reignite their creativity, to tap back into that creativity that he imprinted on their DNA when they were, you know, formed in their mother's womb, and to uncover that, discover that again, and then to help them walk in that purpose, help them walk from that place of who am I, that identity of who God says that they are. And so, yeah, so that's what we are, that's what we do.

Michele: 8:39

I love that, and I had no idea about the play on words with hope words, like moving forward toward hope. That is so cool.

Michele: 8:50

Yeah, so tell me a little bit about your personal walk with God and how that how you feel like that shaped your, just your creative journey.

Charity: 9:03

I've always been creative. It's always been there, you know, and God has. I was raised in a Christian home and so I was raised knowing that God was there and was available and was my friend, went through seasons as a kiddo that you know, God was my only friend. You know, my siblings are much older than me and there weren't really kids in the church that I grew up in and so I was alone a lot. I thought, you know, but I knew God was with me. I didn't have language for I didn't have language for what I did, but I would always find myself talking to God. You know, it was just like, like I remember being little and just like swinging on my, my swing set in the backyard and giggling because God told me a funny joke and I was like you know, and it was just like I didn't, I didn't know what was happening, I didn't, I didn't have language for it, I didn't understand. I just knew that God was real and that like he actually talked to me and I didn't know if he talked to other people like that. I cause I had no grid and um, you know, so we would, we would sit and we would draw and, like I could, just I could feel Him around me, I could feel His presence, I could feel His delight. You know, as a child, and I would sit in church and I would see somebody and I would like I'm going to draw them a picture. They need something, you know, they need some encouragement. So I would color a picture or draw a picture and then I would go give it to them. I had no idea what I was doing, I was just, I was just listening, you know, I was just playing with Jesus, I was just being in his presence. And so, you know, as I've grown up, kind of like the creativity, like I said earlier, ebbs and flows where, you know, I've felt super close and super like God is accessible, he's right here, and then had those times where I'm like God is so far away and there's no way he could love me. I'm just, you know, evil, wicked, sinner that I am, you know those types of mindsets that we get ourselves in sometimes and it's like so that you know, the walk has been that, but God is so faithful and it has formed my creativity because, you know, he made me creative. He made me creative from day one to want to create, to want to be in His presence, to want to, you know, bless other people with the creativity that he put in me. And you know, now I understand what he was doing. You know, I understand now what was happening, but I didn't have a grid for it until I was an adult. So, yeah, it's just kind of.

Charity: 11:47

I was thinking about the question and I was like you know how the Trinity is like one Like I feel like me and God and creativity is just like this ball. It's just like one, like I feel like I feel like me and God and creativity is just like this ball. It's just like one like we just kind of move together and it's always been, it's just always been that way. I don't know. So I don't know if that really answers the question, but that was just what I thought of it's like we're one, it's always been, we've always been. Yeah, so yeah.

Michele: 12:18

I love that and I love that you said that you would draw pictures for people if you felt like they needed something. It's almost like you knew, even as a child, prophetically, like this person needs a word of encouragement, or you know whatever it is, like you were moving in the prophetic and didn't even know it.

Charity: 12:39

I had no idea.

Michele: 12:41

Yeah, didn't even have that language when you were that age.

Charity: 12:47

No, not until I was an adult and I went to a creativity class that was kingdom creativity and I learned. I was like, oh, that's a thing. I did that when I was little. That's amazing. So, it's crazy yeah.

Michele: 13:01

Yeah. So I have to ask so why is it that creativity is essential to the kingdom, and how does kingdom creativity, so you said you went to a class on kingdom creativity, so how is, maybe we would say like creativity in the world?

Charity: 13:25

Yeah, no, I think I think you know. First, creativity is essential to the kingdom because, you know, back in Genesis, like, God made us in His likeness and His image, right, he formed us in that way. So from the very beginning he made us creatives, he made everybody with that creative DNA imprinted on us, imprinted on our hearts and our minds. We were made to create, we were made to reflect Him, to be like Him, to have His likeness and in His image. And he calls us to have dominion and be fruitful. And so it's like that's from the very beginning. It's so important. And as kingdom creatives we get to partner with Him and you know we get to. I always say, you know, I look to see what heaven is saying or doing, and so that is that's kingdom. I always say, you know, I look to see what heaven is saying or doing, and so that is that's kingdom creativity it's God. What are you doing? What are you saying? Where are you in the room? What are you moving on in this moment? And how do I partner with that? How do I co-create with you in that? How do I, you know, how do I become that conduit from heaven to earth? Through my hands, through my words, through my hug even. You know I'm known at church for my hugs because I'm like you know what? Okay, every time I hug someone I want heaven to come through me and encounter their heart so they feel God's love through me. It's not about me, it's not about my arms, it's about being that conduit from heaven to earth. And so you know that goes into kingdom creativity, that goes into just being a kingdom, you know, person. God did give creativity to everyone He created right, it's in the beginning. He made man in His likeness and His image. So everyone, no matter if they're following God or not, creativity is, it is. And so the difference between kingdom creativity and the world's creativity is that they don't yet know their true identity. They don't yet know Him in the way that brings life. That brings that you know. Know Him in the way that brings life. That brings that you know there are, I mean, you see so much creativity in the world and it's just, it's mind-boggling, but they don't yet know how to partner with Holy Spirit and they don't yet know how to absolutely just shift the atmosphere the way that God designed that creativity to do. And so you know it looks different, because when kingdom creatives create, we actually shift. We actually shift the world and we're bringing heaven to earth and we're, you know, we're manifesting His presence and we get to draw other people into the kingdom and get them to begin to create too. So, yeah, it's super important and it is very different.

Charity: 16:35

You know, I was thinking too. You know the enemy can't create, right? So he was a created being. He is not capable of creating something and he wasn't made in God's likeness and His image. So he loves to try to steal that creativity and use it for His kingdom. And when we create, we create by the Spirit, whether it's Holy Spirit or whether it's, you know, the world's spirit. And I'm not saying that everybody that doesn't know Jesus is evil, wicked. I'm not saying that at all. They're not filled with Satan. That's not what I'm saying. But there's two kingdoms, right?

Charity: 17:20

So when we, as kingdom creatives, create from Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit manifests on the earth and those that create not from that place of knowing Holy Spirit, you know it's just kind of false.

Charity: 17:34

You know it just is kind of. It kind of is. Sometimes it is dark, sometimes it is used for, you know, Satan's glory, if you want to call it that. But he loves to. He loves to lie to us and tell us that creativity doesn't matter. And I think that's one thing that I struggled with, you know, kind of a lot. You know, growing up was, oh, it's just a hobby, oh, it's just silly, oh it's just childish, oh, it's just. You know, I'd always have some reason as to why I shouldn't be creative until I realized that it's a lie. You know, I'm like Satan is just trying so hard to get to stop me from doing the one thing of reflecting God's image and likeness on the earth, like he doesn't want that. So of course he wants to shut that off. And so, yeah, it's absolutely imperative that we're creating, you know, co-creating with God and bringing the kingdom to the earth.

Michele: 18:30

Yeah, and I love this phrase that you use co-creating with God because I think that's a new perspective for a lot of people, like even people who are highly creative in the kingdom. A lot of times, just think of it as I'm going to use my creativity for God, right, or I'm going to do this for the kingdom, but don't necessarily see it as I'm co-creating with God. And I love some of the stuff you were saying about tapping into what is heaven doing, what is heaven saying, what does God want to release on the earth and how can I partner with him to release that on the earth? Do you want to say more about?

Charity: 19:13

Yeah, co-creating is. It's just, it really is coming from that place of our identity in Christ. You know who he says we are and coming from that place of that position of authority. You know where. You know it says we're seated in heavenly places, where we're beings that live in two realms at one time. You know which is that new creation that he made us. When we come into the kingdom, when we receive Jesus, when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, you know we're made a new creation and the Bible says that we're seated in heavenly places and we also live on the earth. So when we are co-creating with Him, like I said earlier, we're literally bringing heaven to earth, we're literally partnering with Him.

Charity: 20:04

So you know, I used to struggle because I would see, I'm a seer, so I see in the spirit. I see, you know, pictures or words or whatever just kind of blip across my imagination and it's like a video a lot of times, and I would get so frustrated trying to co-create with him because I would get stuck and I would go, ah, what I see in my mind, what I see is so beautiful and so wonderful, and then I take it to the page and it looks like a two-year-old drew it. I'm like I don't understand. You know, I get so stuck on that like perfection of wanting to just make it so perfect for him, because I wanted to, I wanted to honor him, I wanted to make, you know, make it, make it look beautiful, and and he told me one day I was, I was just kind of I don't like this, and he was like. He was like you know, what you see in your mind is what I show you, and what comes out on your paper gets to look like you! Like you're co-creating with me. It gets to look like you too, and so I think that just set me free from that like that perspective of perfection and comparison. It's like I don't, I don't have to be, you know, the best artist in the world, I don't have to be the greatest, I don't, I don't, I don't, I just get to look like me.

Charity: 21:28

And I think, you know, creating with Him is coming from that place of like that intimate intimacy with Him, that place of you know, God just flow through me and you know, and I think, too, we can get into that. You're saying creating for God, and we can get into that place of striving really easily, where I'm going to do this for God, I'm going to do that for God, I'm going to, you know, and it just becomes all about works and striving and almost trying to earn. It just becomes all about works and striving and almost trying to earn our place with Him, his stamp of approval on our life Like God. Do you love my picture? Is it good enough? And he's like, of course it is. It looks like you.

Charity: 22:17

And so I think when he begins to heal our hearts, we begin to understand that it's a relationship. It's not about works and working for Him and you know being busy bustling for Him but it comes from that place of resting in Him and Him moving through us. And so I think that's really what that co-creating is is like God, you love me so much that you show me so much. You show me these amazing, beautiful, wonderful things and I get to co-create on the earth and I get to bring heaven to earth and it gets to look like me. I mean, how wonderful is that? You know, instead of looking at it and going, oh, it doesn't look like what I wanted it to look like. It's like actually I love it. You know it might look like a two-year-old drew it, but that's okay because it looks like me and I'm fun and I'm.

Charity: 23:06

I think it's just important to just come from that place of like rest, resting in Him. You're not striving to earn, you're resting by knowing and you're resting in that identity and it's pleasurable, it's delightful to co-create with Him and it takes the pressure off. You know, it takes that pressure off of like I have to be something, I have to do something, I have to show up and be amazing. It's like I just get to be me and I just get to release the kingdom. And how exciting is that. You know how freeing is that to just there's no pressure on me. You know it's like I just get to play, I just get to be and it's enough.

Michele: 23:47

I love this interview. You just get to play, you just get to be, and that is enough. And that is what I got for you today, my friend. Isn't Charity great? I hope you loved this first part of our Kingdom Creativity teaching series and my first podcast interview and if you loved it, make sure you share it with a friend and make sure you connect with Charity and everything she's doing. I've dropped links to her website and all of her socials down in the show notes, so be sure to check those out, and Charity goes live and does a 15-minute teaching every Wednesday on her Hope Words Facebook page. So make sure you check that out for more nuggets of wisdom and inspiration from Charity, and keep an eye out for her brand new Hope Words podcast, which I heard is launching soon, and part two of our conversation is going to continue next week. So make sure you're following this podcast on your favorite platform so you don't miss it. Thanks so much for joining me today on Today's Kus Word and I will see you again next time.