Is Imagination a Gift?

God designed us to be like Him in imaging and creating...

The series on Imagination continues with friend and fellow kingdom traveler Eric Vaughn. Settle in for this one. It's a journey of thought and exploration. Thanks, Eric!

What is Imagination?

Well, Merriam says, “it’s the act of power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality.” I feel that is a fair assertion of what the imagination does or has the capability of doing.

Biblically speaking, imagination is the function of the eyes of our heart, and the eyes of our heart give us the ability to image God and the truths of God in measures of His fullness. For example, within the eyes of the heart, our divine gift of design to imagine, we are given the ability to image who He is, who He made us to be, what the measure of His intentions and actions are towards us, and what the fullness of His Glory is for us in Jesus Christ. God gave us the ability to envision His glory in fullness. WOW!

Imagination is the means of understanding who God is, who we are, and where we are going with Him in this journey. God designed us to be like Him in imaging and creating; we are invited to create with God through our imagination. Through His choosing and design of us, we can SEE with our heart. We are invited into a process of imagining life with the Holy Spirit. For example, initially, if one cannot imagine in the eyes of the heart that Jesus is the Son of God sent by the Father and was the propitiation for sin on our behalf, one could not be saved. As Romans 10 says, with the heart you (“see”) and believe by faith unto righteousness and with the mouth, you confess unto salvation. The faith confession in Christ is preceded by a seeing and believing in the heart unto righteousness. This is how one must be saved. You might have heard of Christ being crucified and why, but if you cannot see Him as able to save you, you won’t believe it, and much less confess with faith Jesus as Lord.

It is impossible to have faith apart from Imagining and believing that He is who He says He is. When we image by faith with the eyes of our heart the benefits of our inheritance in God, we begin to see some or more of the land He has purposed for us in Christ, such as salvation, healing, prosperity, deliverance, shepherding, hearing His voice, prophecy, co-laboring with Him, service, exploits of faith, etc…

This gift of imagination is a centrical part of our design as human beings and is subject to another part of our design: free will. Because God designed us with free will or the power of volition, our imagination or the eyes of our heart are subject to or a part of our free will. So, the eyes of our heart are not always submitted to God for His glory; thus, we can come up with some wicked imaginations and subsequent thoughts, measurements, and judgments about ourselves, the world we live in, and even GOD. I am not going to speak to the negative possibilities of the ability to imagine negatively other than to reference the amazing eyes of our heart’s abilities and its’ possibilities towards the evil as well as the glorious.

Just consider for a moment the story of the Tower of Babel. A people utilizing the eyes of their heart envisioned creating a portal into heaven not ordained of God to communicate and fellowship more freely with the metaphysical side of creation, including demons. In addition to the gift of imagination that God gave to man (those who were at the Tower of Babel), God set forth into action the power of the law of agreement. The story tells that “what” they had imagined and agreed upon with their thoughts and actions could happen and was possible to them because of the gift of imagination and the power of agreement. Even God took notice of their imagination, accomplished thoughts, and subsequent actions. So it will suffice for me to say the eyes of our heart should be submitted to the Lord as intended and that the power of this gift was given to all men.

When God said in the beginning, let us create Man in Our Image, He was basically envisioning a creation that could like Him imagine. Imagination is the first step in creating. We are given the wide-open ability to imagine, and that was given to us by God. We can meditate upon His Word and imagine His ways and abilities. We get to imagine ourselves walking in the same nature and relationship as men and women of faith of old (Hebrews 11). Imagination, it seems, is always available, nearly boundless and in all ways a powerful tool given to us as human beings.

We are invited by the apostle Paul to receive the impartation of the Spirit of wisdom and revelation into the eyes of our heart in the true knowledge of Christ.

We are invited to imagine or see with the eyes of our heart the environment God desires to make known to us. As we invite the Spirit of wisdom and revelation into the eyes of our heart, we get to project and create within our environment His kingdom come and His will be done in us and through us on earth as it is in heaven. (I believe this is called dominion.)

I think Henry Ford is credited with saying, “Whether a man believes he can or can’t, he is most likely right.” If one cannot imagine a positive desired outcome, they will most likely never arrive at one. We are invited to ask God for His perspective of every situation with the help of the imparted power of the Spirit of wisdom and revelation.

The ability to see the outcome as God wills requires an imagination that sees and believes that He is, He is able, and He is willing to do good for us.

The ability to see and understand that God is good is paramount to our imagination.

Imagination is something one cannot simply turn off. It is constantly engaged even when we sleep. Our imagination is such a core part of our existence that we almost let it go unnoticed, like as plain as the nose on our face. Words spoken to us engage it, thoughts that come to us engage it, emotions we feel influences and engages it. “It” really is the center of our being, who we are.

If I were to say to you, “There is war 5 miles away,” you would not be able to stop the following images that come into your being. You have a choice of doing what you will with the images and subsequent thoughts that come, but it is nearly impossible to stop the images, whatever they might be coming from. Thus making decisions, measured judgments, and then actions to the words “There is a war 5 miles away”.

Let’s see how it works. I will say something, and you try to NOT image it.

“BLUE FISH”……. (Pause) “Blue FISH”.

“Red Ball”…..(Pause ) “Red Ball”.

“Heaven”…..(Pause) “Heaven”.

Were you able not to image these things?

When we hear, we instinctively imagine in some way and think about what we have heard. For example, what does this mean for us now or in the future? This is the work of the eyes of our heart or imagination. When Abraham heard what God had promised him, to become a father to many nations and that there was promised land to be possessed, Abraham considered and began to envision what that meant. He believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Our ability to think, reason, and have faith is tied to our ability to imagine. If you cannot imagine or see who God says He is or what He says about you and your future, then you probably will never possess it.

In Ephesians 1, the Bible speaks so directly to the gift of our imagination, it says God was so good that He lavished grace on us in Christ. Lavished his grace upon us!

I like to imagine this lavishing of grace like the Father pouring His grace like thick pancake syrup; that grace pouring over me, flowing from the top of my head to the bottoms of my feet. I cannot get out of that kind of lavish outpouring of Grace, and I do not want to. What a picture of God’s lavished grace.

Descartes, the Philosopher, says, “I think, therefore I am.” He uses the word “think” regarding our intellect being the outcome of our perceived or imagined truth. He explains his philosophy that if a man can imagine that there is a chair or a pencil, an instrument of use for this purpose or that, then it exists before his thinking. His thinking merrily agrees to the heights of his imagination, which he says comes from the true source of a “good God.” Imagining it, thinking about it, and then agreeing with it leads to implementing steps or actions to see the particular imagination manifest into being. Abraham heard God imagine what that would look like, and Hebrews 11 says he set out on his journey. Creating anything and starting anything takes some form of imagination.

God imagined this world we live in perfectly. He imagined our design, and through His imagination of creation, He spoke out into existence the world in which we live.

As believers, we call this having faith in it, faith in who He says He is, who He says we are, and all the blessings He’s offered us in the fullness of Jesus Christ.

We are invited to imagine who Jesus is, who the Father is, who the Holy Spirit is, and who we are to them. We are granted permission by God to imagine how their divine roles in our lives impact and empower us to live in His truths and realities. As we take permission and engage our imagination, we get to see, believe, and confess those truths into the manifestation of salvation in our current realities.

Our imagination is where life springs from. The heart is the wellspring of life, and we are to guard over it. As we guard or tend with God through the lenses of the eyes of our heart, it allows us to see the immeasurable goodness He has intended for us in Christ more clearly.

The idea of imagination has captured my thoughts most of my adult life primarily because of the treasure of truth revealed to us in Ephesians 1:17-19. It says, “I pray for you that you would have a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the true knowledge of God so that the eyes of your heart would be able to ‘see’ IMAGINE - the hope of the immeasurable abilities of His calling, the riches of His inheritance in us and all the saints & the power of Holy Spirit towards us who believe.”

Eph. 1:17-19 is stating that we need Holy Spirit to impart to our imagination the God-empowered ability to see with the eyes of our heart. The hope of the endless offering of salvation in Jesus Christ, God‘s tremendous love and value in imagining and creating each one of us as His personal Inheritance, and the surpassing power of the Spirit that raised Jesus from death that is towards us who believe.

WOW!

He wants you to see and understand the general ways He made each of us like each other, being in Christ, AND the specificities of the unique nature in which you reflect His glory by design. He wrote in a scroll concerning your life before one of your days had been lived. Imagine what God wrote on a heavenly scroll concerning your individual design and best life in Him as His inheritance.

He formed you in your mother’s womb and has seen your unformed matter; He knows your DNA forwards and backward. It also says He has scrutinized your path forward and backward. (Psalm 139)

It will suffice to say that He knows you and the plans He has for you, works He created before the foundation of the world for you to walk in, just like Abraham and the scroll written over his life. Jesus had a scroll written about Him that only He could fulfill, Messiah. Jesus fulfilled His works, declaring in the end, “It is finished!” Jacob contended with man and God over his scroll, and his name was changed to reflect his stewardship of his divine journey. It is with the eyes of our hearts that we must approach God to see with Him, to imagine with Him upon this life and calling in Him.

Our imagination is at the core of our identity of existence, that is, by design of a good God. God invites us to imagine how He sees us and what He has in store for us in Christ Jesus. He has invited us to imagine how great He is and how willing He is to help us His children. He has invited us to imagine who He has made each of us to be, His inheritance, and where He has us going in this life journey with Him. This is the faith journey of worship He envisioned for us and one we should, by faith, begin to imagine and respond to with Him.

I encourage all of us to engage the eyes of our heart in the discipline of practice; we need to meditate with Him and imagine with Him. Ephesians 1:3 says, “He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.” What does that look like to you?

Ephesians 2:4-6 says, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised up with Him, and seated us with Him in the Heavenly places in Christ Jesus, SO THAT in the times to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” What do you imagine that looks like for you right now?

With respect to death and resurrection, I like imagining myself wrapped in barbed wire (the law) and baptized into His death - underwater 6 feet. I am there baptized, 6 feet deep, wrapped in the barb & I am not merely holding my breath but DEAD. And then Holy Spirit raises me to life with resurrection power and sits me in Christ at the right hand of God.

I like practicing or exercising my imagination through deep breathing and emptying my thoughts about life, and the stress of those thoughts might have brought to my emotions and body. I relax my body through deep breathing, and as I breathe Him in, I exhale my life and self out to Him. And then, I like to allow Him to drop something into my imagination, and I begin asking Him questions about it. Sometimes, after deep breathing, I will ask Him a question and see if He responds with pictures or words. In it all, I have already imagined that no matter my experience within in the time set aside for such an exercise, He is with me, and he is filling me up like oil in a lamp, whether I see it or feel it. Whether I go to the depths of Sheol or the heights of Heaven, He is there.

Peter went on the rooftop and meditated with God. Peter went atop a roof and got himself positioned with God, and God spoke. Peter “saw” a vision. His imagination saw what the Lord was saying to him, and he subsequently responded or at first just reacted to it. But he believed what he was seeing from the Lord, and he went on to receive Cornelius at the door, and God walked Peter through his process of accepting the Gentiles as God’s possession.

When prophets of old would “see” visions and words of the Lord, it came through the divine gift of imagination. Jesus said to Nathanael, “I saw you sitting under the fig tree before Phillip called you.” I think we often minimize this incredible gift of design called imagination. It is spiritual. It connects us from the metaphysical to the physical.

We get revelation in our imagination, and we create images with God, or He creates images in us; it is both sometimes. This is how He often heals us in our emotions and thoughts as well. He brings us back to experiences through our imagination, and He shows us the truth and where we got stuck by believing lies according to our negative experiences. We get to repent and re-imagine life in that area with Him.

My recommendation for walking in this incredible gift of our design we call imagination is to pray Ephesians 1:17-19 over yourself and your heart every day. Those three topics reveal Genesis 1 - Revelation 22. The hope we have in His calling, the riches of HIS inheritance in us, the saints, & His surpassing power towards us who believe.

Let Holy Spirit journey with you in the realm of imagination, in the realm of the Spirit. Do not believe the devil when he tells you religious lies that this is bad, wrong, or a waste of time because he will. But instead, trust the Shepherd of your soul and His word; invite the Holy Spirit into your imagination, the eyes of your heart and practice with Him this amazing part of your life. Set aside time to practice your imagination, engaging Him and your life; seeing with the eyes of your heart that you are sitting with Him in Heaven. What might He say? What might He show you as you engage Him?

Shalom,

Eric

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