Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord Himself, is the Rock eternal. –Isaiah 26:4

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.- 2 Corinthian 10:5.

“What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.”-
Psalm 8:4-5

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him. –John 3:16-17

Walk in His Promises
You laughed when I told you I’m free.
You said, “No one is free in this world.”
But Jesus purchased my freedom,
And it says so in God’s Holy Word.
Have you not read of the love of our Savior?
Do you not know He died on the cross for you?
Or perhaps you understand in your head,
But in your heart can’t believe that it’s true.
Well, I will gladly share my testimony,
Tell you all that God is doing for me.
I will gladly walk the same path with you,
Until you, too, know that you’re free.

Please let me support your journey,
Let me help you learn who your Father is.
I’ll  help you to banish your unbelief,
So you can be healed by His promises.
For the Lord is doing a new thing.
And crafting for you a new heart.
He is preparing to welcome you home,
By offering a brand-new start.
He is reaching out His righteous right hand,
Inviting you into His love.
He is whispering gently to your fearful heart,
Saying, “Child, you are enough.” 

You need only to take His outstretched hand,
And believe what you’ve just heard.
And if the enemy taunts you with unbelief,
Read him the truth from God’s Holy Word.
The Word will send him scurrying,
For he will know he’s out of his league.
And as you watch him scurry away,
Your heart will begin to believe.
Watch the world you once viewed in grayscale,
Turn brilliant with living color.
Hear your heartbeat, once barely audible,
Beating like heavenly thunder.
Receiving this gift will change everything,
For you will discover who your Father is.
And when you offer your faith to Him,
In return, He’ll give you His promises.
Linda Troxell © 06/29/2023

The Gift of Imagination

Imagination is a gift that God gave only to humanity, His most beloved creation. And it has remarkable applications. It is our imagination that allows us to conceptualize our ideas and consider the different ways to implement them. It enables us to conceptualize complex problems and their solutions. And it allows us to anticipate the future and prepare for it. For example, only humans can visualize an upcoming event and use their imagination to prepare for it. Let’s use a job interview as an example. 

With a general understanding of what a job interview is, we can picture our upcoming interview and consider different ways to manage it. Knowing that we want to impress the interviewer immediately, we can use our imaginations to rehearse how we will dress and what we will say. We can anticipate questions we might be asked, like the time-worn, “What are your weaknesses?” Using our imagination, we can try out different answers and pick the one that best suits us. The interview might not go as imagined; it probably won’t, but still, just rehearsing it in our minds often builds our confidence.  

But imagination can be used for much more than rehearsing job interviews. It allows us to conceptualize better ways of doing things, from rearranging our kitchens to be more efficient to improving production in a factory by visualizing how it could be more efficient. It can facilitate the improvement of a tool or piece of equipment by allowing us to conceptualize and analyze the flaws and then imagine how to eliminate them. Every new invention is driven by imagination, just as every new discovery in science, medicine, or technology begins in someone’s imagination. And without the gift of imagination, how could we have extraordinary art, epic novels, or important movies? Without question, our imagination is a great gift God has blessed us with so we can help move His plan forward by blessing the world.

While problem-solving, invention, and epic art are essential to the world, imagination also benefits each of us personally. Imagination helps us to mitigate stress and escape into a problem-free reality through those self-soothing interludes of “what ifs” we call daydreams. Daydreaming gives us precious moments of tranquility in a world where all is well. Those interludes often break down barriers of anxiety and fear to clear the path for us to enter into God’s presence. Conversely, as much as our imagination can bring us peace or even bring us closer to the divine, it also has the potential to destroy our peace and block our access to God. 

For, if we allow him to, the enemy will hijack and pervert our imagination to create anxiety through the potentially terrifying, sometimes paralyzing, experience of “what ifs” we call fear and worry. Both of these experiences are made possible through God’s gift of imagination, or in the latter case, the misuse of that gift. Yes, like all gifts from God, our imagination can be used righteously, or it can be corrupted. The difference is determined by our free will. 

It’s easy to think we have no control over the things we imagine, which leads to anxieties and fears. It’s easy to believe these nasty things just independently insert themselves into our thoughts and create footholds for themselves. It’s even easier to think that once they are there, we have no control over them. But if we are being honest, most of us know that isn’t true. The truth is that with discipline and trust in God, we can prevent our negative thinking or stop it once it begins. But many Christians don’t want to, or don’t know how to, do the work it takes to build a relationship with God and the trust it brings. And it does take work and discipline to create a deep, honest, and open relationship with God. 

However, that relationship is essential. The degree to which we trust God is inversely related to the enemy’s success in corrupting our imagination and using it to create fear and anxiety. If our trust is rock solid, it will be easier to stop those negative imaginings in their tracks and disengage from the enemy’s manipulation. But when our trust in God is shaky, or worse, nonexistent, it will be nearly impossible to identify the presence of the enemy that allows him to persuade us to imagine all manner of negativity. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord Himself, is the rock eternal. -Isaiah 26:4

Our imaginations can help us build a relationship with God and keep it in good standing. It can bring God into the room with us. Now, before you think I’m totally bonkers and stop reading, let me explain that assertion. Of course, God will not physically be in the room. But who among us has not had powerful dreams that seemed so concrete that we had to work hard to remember it was only a dream? These dreams are the most powerful when there are strong emotions involved. For example, if in the dream someone hurt you somehow when you wake up, you are actually angry at that person. Well, imagination can be just as powerful. Using it in our prayers and meditation on God’s Word can powerfully affect building and maintaining our relationship with God. 

Just think of how beautiful it would be to “see” Jesus in person, to actually see the kindness and pure love in His eyes, eyes trained on you! Or how healing it could be to “feel” God hug you and hold you in His arms. This powerful imagining in prayer can make our relationship with God feel tangible and more personal, creating a deeper relationship. It can make our prayers more effective simply because we are praying from a place of deep emotions, powerful love, comfort, and safety that can only come from God. How much more, and more often, will we desire to pray and read the Bible with those images of Jesus in our minds? I can make reading His Word one of our favorite pastimes.

Some of you might have been warned that visualization is part of a false gospel because, recently, there has been a rash of criticism regarding the practice of visualization. It has been bundled into the condemnation of “the prosperity gospel” or “new age thought.” In the critics’ view, visualization is part of preaching a feel-good fantasy gospel aimed at simply keeping pews full rather than preaching the actual gospel. I will avoid getting in the middle of that; generally, it’s not a helpful debate. But I want to rescue visualization from the claims it’s part of a false gospel. Visualization has come to be rejected as invalid simply because of its association with a false gospel. But, we must remember that just because a particular belief or practice may exist in an unacceptable environment does not mean the belief or practice is itself invalid. Visualization is nothing more than the use of our imagination. In my example above about the job interview, the term visualize could replace the term imagine without changing the meaning one bit. Visualization = imagination.

Consider this quote, made by Walter Wink, a well-respected 20th-century theologian who taught at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York, in which he uses the words imagine and visualize interchangeably:

“Intercessory prayer is spiritual defiance of what is in the way of what God has promised. Intercession visualizes an alternative future to the one apparently fated by the momentum of current forces. …Even a small number of people, firmly committed to the new inevitability on which they affix their imagination, can decisively affect the shape the future takes. These shapers of the future are the intercessors.”

Psychology has long promoted visualization as a way to affect the future. This belief, and the research that supports it, has been adopted by most present-day motivational speakers. It also spawned a new career path, Sports Psychology. The boundaries of Sports Psychology have expanded over the years. Still, it began and became known mainly for teaching athletes to use visualization to “rehearse” upcoming games. The team members were trained to visualize a game and themselves performing effectively in many scenarios common to the game. So, for all intents and purposes, they were imagining how they would play in the game. Visualizing or imagining their successful performance in different game scenarios would help them, through a kind of virtual muscle memory, to more quickly and effectively respond to similar situations in an actual game. After the idea gained interest, visualization did come to be used by the new age movement. However, in the movement, visualization was used to “create” the future using vision boards, boards on which one attached images of what one wanted to manifest in life, as an aide to manifest those things through visualization. The idea fits well with the new age philosophy that our minds are dynamic and our thoughts creative; thus, through visualization, we can manifest our thoughts.   

Why am I telling you this? There is a connection. I promise I’ll get there. Having a successful relationship with God requires that we seek His face daily through things like reading His Word consistently and spending time in worship every day. These things allow us to know who God is, to hear His voice, and to distinguish it from the enemy impersonating God. If we can’t make that distinction, we are unable to …demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthian 10:5. If we are unable to do that, we will probably not be able to control the negative thoughts that the enemy puts in our minds. To make those distinctions, we must know God, know His character, and be familiar with scripture. 

Here is the connection: think about how much more powerful it might be to know God’s character from reading scripture, hear His voice in your heart, and have an image of Him connecting it all. It would be akin to remembering a friend’s face as you tell someone about them. To have the God you imagined, the Jesus who hugged you and made you feel loved, with you in your prayers, makes it all come alive. Alive in a way you haven’t experienced before. How much more familiar would scripture become with that image of God to inspire your understanding? Having that image to recall makes reading scripture more exciting and more desirable, allowing you to understand it at a deeper level. All of this can help you to develop a deeper and more authentic relationship with God.

I know, for many of us, prayer, and probably reading the Bible as well, is an obligation; something we have to do as good Christians, but not something we want to do. And that’s a shame. Because God looks forward to the times we read the Bible and pray. That’s because those are the times we are building our relationship with Him, getting to know God in a personal way. It is in those times that we begin to learn that He is trustworthy. And it is also the time in which God hopes we will let Him into our lives and hearts. Someone is probably saying, “But doesn’t He already know everything about us?” Well, yes, yes, He does. But think about the difference in your own experience between knowing about someone and really knowing them. They may both be considered relationships, but the first is an at-arms-length casual relationship, and the second is an open, intimate, and personal relationship. The relationship God wants with His children is not the first but the second; it’s something His heart yearns for.

How we think of God is vital in establishing our relationship with Him. So many of us, when we hear the word God, think of a distant man in the sky who is angry and vindictive. We believe His sole reason for having a relationship with humans is to catch us doing something wrong so He can punish us. Well, who could want to establish a loving relationship with that guy? God wants us to know that the relationship He wants is that of an adoring Father wanting to love, protect, and help His beloved children. We can change how we think of God using our imagination. If you begin to visualize God as loving, caring, and easy to talk to in your prayers, you will start to think of Him that way outside of prayer. And He will soon be someone with whom you want to have a relationship. 

I hear the groans from some of you about the work involved in developing such a relationship with God. And I know there are some others who, having had a complicated relationship with an earthly father, cannot connect the word love with the idea of father. But becoming a Christian solves all of that. Once we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we begin the process of sanctification. In this lifelong process, we are slowly transformed to become more like Jesus. Someone may be asking how that changes anything because it still sounds like a lot of work. But, in fact, we need to do no work. Our transformation is God’s work. Our role is only to open up, receive, and cooperate with His work. I’ll admit it does take some trust in the beginning. But God takes care of that as well if you ask Him to. When we risk allowing God to love us, we will be amazed by how quickly He will show His love in a way that allows us to trust and believe His promises.

This essay began by talking about God’s enormous gift of imagination and all of its benefits. A gift He gave only to us humans, His greatest love. But in our walk of sanctification, we find that God has many gifts we have passed over because we refused to get to know Him. One of those mind-blowing gifts is free will. It is the gift that sets our God apart from any other god. Our God loves us enough to give us the freedom to love Him or not, to obey Him or not; indeed, only our God loves us enough to allow us the dignity of choosing for ourselves. 

As much as God’s gift of free will points to His generosity, kindness, and love for us, that love is dwarfed by His most profound gift. God’s ultimate kindness, generosity, and love are expressed in the gift of His Son, whom He sent to die for our sins so that we might have eternal life with His Father in heaven.  For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him. –John 3:16-17   

WHAT WILL YOU USE YOUR IMAGINATION FOR TODAY?

Let’s pray:

Father, sometimes we forget the many ways you have blessed us. We have arrogantly come to expect your blessings. Forgive us for that arrogance, Father. Forgive us for overlooking the miracle in your love for humanity. Forgive us for forgetting what David asked in
Psalm 8:  “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.”- Psalm 8:4-5. Lord, you, the creator of the mighty and powerful universe, had no reason to create humans but for your generosity and desire to love. And all you ask for in return is our loyalty in choosing to love you back. Your commands are designed to bring us to holiness and keep us safe and free from the enemy. But instead of being grateful for those instructions, if we even read your Word enough to recognize them, we ignore them, thinking we know better than you. Lord, forgive us for our pride and impertinence. We ask your help today to begin a new relationship with you as we repent of our pride. Lord, help us to read your Word with a thirst for its wisdom and a new respect for its inerrancy. Help us to pray without ceasing as we bring you into every part of our lives. For, Lord, without you, we have no meaningful life. You, Lord, are our rock, our champion, and our safe place in all of life’s storms. You are always faithful and always on our side; help us, Father, to always be on your side by bowing to your sovereignty and submitting fully to your commands. Bless us, Lord, as we endeavor to honor you by obeying your command found in Micha 6:8 – “Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.”
Humbly, we pray this in the name of your Son and our Savior Redeemer, Christ Jesus, Amen!