Imagination

<<mind’s eye>>

A faculty of the mind, enabling a person to visualize and develop ideas that are not yet in reality.

Imagination can be put to both good and bad uses.

Our minds are creative mechanisms exploring possibilities, devising plans, developing new or better methods and different approaches that have not been tried before. Imagining involves being able to think through the issues, refining various concepts or solutions together with daydreaming, or meditating – having fed information into the mind at a later stage a brilliant idea emerges. Visualizing what can be done, and the goals you would like to reach, is powerful when coupled with proclaiming the promises of God. Having a positive mental attitude is a great advantage – being able to think beyond the normal confines or boundaries and seeing yourself fulfilling your God-given calling, utilizing the divine resources available.

Although often being triggered by an outside source, imagination and the associated desires can take residence

within preoccupying and distracting us; God hates those who devise wicked schemes (Prov 6:16-19; Mt 15:19). The Bible instructs us “In regard to evil be infants”, guarding our thoughts, for thinking and contemplating can become a desire that will be acted out if the situation presents itself (Prov 4:23; 1 Cor 14:20).

God declared, “Every imagination of man’s heart is evil continually” (Gen 6:5, 8:21). We are to monitor our thoughts and replace the wrong with good. It takes discipline and effort to center our thoughts [meditate] on what is good, wholesome and pure (Phil 4:8). Otherwise, the enemy will direct them towards evil; hence, we are to bring every thought into captivity (2 Cor 10:5). We are to take authority over our thought life, controlling it instead of yielding to its carnality.

Jesus said, if an act is sinful so is the intention, the mental visualization or fantasy – such as having lustful imaginations towards a woman (Ex 20:14,17; Mt 5:28). Job had set in place a self-discipline boundary, a ‘covenant with his eyes’ not to look with lust upon a girl (Job 31:1). Am I increasingly exercising self-control and guarding my thoughts in the

Do I control my imagination or does it control me?

area where so many people fall? Men are not to view an attractive female as an object for sexual fantasy but rather, with absolute purity, a person made in the image of God, praying they will come to know Jesus as Saviour and be a ‘sister in Christ’ (1 Tim 5:2).

Worrying is the imagination exploring all the wrong options – the solution is to have a thankful optimistic faith in God. Undue fantasizing can be harmful to a person if it disengages them from the realities of this world.

What the apostles preached was not a product of their imagination, of cleverly invented stories they made up, but was solidly based on verifiable facts such as has been recorded in the Bible and is to be the resource for all our spiritual thinking (2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:16). Paul stated God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to His power that works within us (Eph 3:20).