Person (6) Imagination

Our imagination is an amazing facility. It has tended to get a bad rap from Christians, who say, “Daydreaming is dangerous”. But that bad rap is unfair and limiting.

God created our imaginations good. They have been corrupted by sin, but he can renew our imaginations, so that we can benefit.

The imagination is like the memory, but whereas the memory relates to the past, imagination focuses on the future.

Our imagination is a bit like a television or monitor on a computer. We can use our imaginations to see pictures and hear sounds. We can smell the aromas, taste the flavours, and feel the textures in our imaginations. Just like the memory, our imagination can play the emotions that go with the events that we imagine.

The imagination itself is morally neutral. We can imagine good things and we can imagine evil things. Christians should be careful about how we use our imaginations because what we imagine affects the way we behave.

• We can imagine the future that God has promised for us. Filling our imagination with the things that he has promised and prophesied for us, increases our Hope and Faith.

• Imagination comes before creation. Architects imagine the house or building they are designing before they produce their drawings and plans. God imagined the world, before he spoke it into being.

• Books and literature are received through our imaginations. They inspire us to imagine worlds and people that do not exist. This can be great entertainment, but too much can be dangerous if we escape from the real world to much.

• Television and film bypass our imagination by communicating directly though our external senses. This may have had the effect of weakening our imaginations, which may have had a negative effect on our hope and faith.

• Dreams appear in our imagination. So do our daydreams. If they are from God, they can be powerful motivators. If they are from the devil, they can scare and cripple us.

• The imaginations of evil men are full of evil.
  

  The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every imaginations of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time (Gen 6:5).

  From their callous hearts comes iniquity; their evil imaginations have no limits (Ps 37:7).

  People who fill their imaginations with the benefits of evil will end up enjoying evil.

• The spiritual powers of evil can put things into our imagination. When the devil appeared to Jesus, he may actually have appeared through Jesus imagination, because he does not have a physical body. We need to deny those false imaginations as soon as they come, by declaring the word of God.

• When we are living in the Spirit, our imagination can perceive what is happening in the spiritual world. Understanding what is happening in the spiritual realms is really important for the Christian life. A few Christians perceive what is happening in the spiritual realms through their external senses. Most of us perceive it in through our imagination when the Holy Spirit displays what is happening there in our imaginations for us. More about this in Spiritual Realms.

• Imagination create empathy. If we can understand what life is like for another person, we can understand why they are behaving the way that we do. “Walk a mile in their shoes”. We should use our imaginations to increase our empathy for other people.

The imagination is a wonderful tool. We should use it for God, to increase our faith and hope, and grow our awareness of events in the spiritual realms.