We discover things about God from the Scriptures. What
we read helps us "see" Him. When we
read the Word it reveals to us what we are to think when we think of Him
and "see" Him in our minds - our
imaginations.
Isaiah 26:3 "You keep
him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts
in you." The Hebrew word translated "mind"
is used only in this verse. It could be translated "womb of the mind."
It means "the forming place." In other words it is the imagination. That
is where we "see" God.
How you "see" God will greatly effect how you treat
others. If your God is a cruel, judgmental and condemning God, then you
will treat people, even people you love, the same way. If your God is
like a policeman, always ready to give a notice of any violations of the
the law, you will be the same. If your God seen in your imagination is
loving, covering, patient, kind and caring, then perhaps you will be that
way, too. Think about the way terrorist conceive of their god and look at
the terrible values they project in their life choices.
Our God Is Love
Beloved, let us love one another, for love
is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent
his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent
his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we
also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we
love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us
of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has
sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses
that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.
God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in
him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have
confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in
this world.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to
do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
We love because he first loved us.
If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he
who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has
not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever
loves God must also love his brother. 1John 4:7-21
So how is your imagination? Where does it go? You have this promise,
that God (Who is Love) will keep you in
perfect peace whose imagination is stayed on HIM, because you trust in
HIM.
And this will bring about a beautiful expression of the God Who is love in
your relationship with others.
"Lift up
your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things."
Isaiah 40:26
The people of God in Isaiah's day had
starved their imagination by looking on the face of idols, and Isaiah made
them look up at the heavens, that is, he made them begin to use their
imagination aright. Nature to a saint is sacramental. If we are children
of God, we have a tremendous treasure in Nature. In every wind that blows,
in every night and day of the year, in every sign of the sky, in every
blossoming and in every withering of the earth, there is a real coming of
God to us if we will simply use our starved imagination to realize it.
The test of spiritual concentration is
bringing the imagination into captivity. Is your imagination looking on
the face of an idol? Is the idol yourself? Your work? Your conception of
what a worker should be? Your experience of salvation and sanctification?
Then your imagination of God is starved, and when you are up against
difficulties you have no power, you can only endure in darkness. If your
imagination is starved, do not look back to your own experience; it is God
Whom you need. Go right out of yourself, away from the face of your idols,
away from everything that has been starving your imagination. Rouse
yourself, take the gibe that Isaiah gave the people, and deliberately turn
your imagination to God.
One of the reasons of
stultification in prayer is that there is no imagination, no power of
putting ourselves deliberately before God. We have to learn how to be
broken bread and poured out wine on the line of intercession more than on
the line of personal contact. Imagination is the power God gives a
saint to posit himself out of himself into relationships he never was in.
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