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-- © GodSpeak International 2008 --
-- Do not republish without written permission from <copyright@godspeak.net> --

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND CONTRIBUTING RESOURCES
Author: Teresa Seputis ts@godspeak.net http://www.godspeak.net

Encountering God

Lesson 13
Submitting Our Thoughts and Our Imagination To God

By Teresa Seputis

Left to our own carnal devices, our imagination is the breeding place of sin and evil. The bible says so in Genesis 8:21: "the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth."

But God is able to redeem our imagination when we submit it to Him, and it can become a powerful tool in helping us to experience God. In fact, there "line" between directing a sanctified imagination to the Lord and meditating on God is very thin--they are practically the same thing. Well, more precisely, engaging our imagination under the Holy Spirit's direction is one of the many ways that we can meditate on the Lord.

The bible encourages us to meditate on the Lord over and over again. We are to mediate on His law (e.g., figure out how to apply it to our day-to-day lives). We are to mediate on God's works and deeds, or to remind ourselves of the great things that He has done. We are to mediate on His ways--or what He is like and what pleases Him. Let me share just a few of passages about meditating on the Lord:

Psalm 4:4
"...Meditate within your heart on your bed, and be still."
Psalm 63:6
"I remember You on my bed,I meditate on You in the night watches."
Psalm 77:6
"I call to remembrance my song in the night; I meditate within my heart, and my spirit makes diligent search."
Psalm 77:12
"I will also meditate on all Your work, and talk of Your deeds."
Psalm 119:15
"I will meditate on Your precepts, and contemplate Your ways."
Psalm 119:23
"... Your servant meditates on Your statutes."
Psalm 119:27
"Make me understand the way of Your precepts; so shall I meditate on Your wonderful works."
Psalm 119:48
"My hands also I will lift up to Your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on Your statutes."

King David learned that he could submit his mediations to God and be spirit-led in them. In fact, he modeled a wonderful prayer for us in Psalm 19:14: "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer."

When we apply this to our imagination, the question becomes, "Lord, how can I engage my imagination to think about You and Your word and Your ways and Your works? How can I use my imagination in a godly way to get to know You better?

There are many places in God's word that encourage us to meditate on the Lord, and I believe that can include engaging our imagination (under the Holy Spirit's guidance) to get an idea of what it must have been like to live out some of the bible stories or what it must be like to encounter God. But before I go into more detail about how to engage our imagination to help us move into encountering Him, I need to point out something very important.

God has created us differently and we are all unique from each other. Because of that, many of us will have somewhat unique ways of putting our imagination under His lordship and using it for His glory. There is not a single "right way" to do this and what works for someone else may not work for you.

Let me give you a few examples of how this is done. I know a Christian artist who lives in the Yukon Territory of Canada. She is a gifted artist in the natural (a painter), but at times she gets strongly inspired by the Lord and creates pieces with incredible spiritual impact. I stayed in her house one time, and she told me how she gets "inspired" to create spirit-led art. She starts by looking for an inspiration for a painting in much the same way as any artist would. But then she takes it a bit farther.

Once she has a concept, she takes it before the Lord and asks Him to activate her imagination. She she closes her eyes and "sees" the image--and asks the Holy Spirit to help her picture the things He is most interested in. It may be they play of light in a certain area, or it may be a certain shape or color or texture. Then as she focuses on those specific details, she lets her imagination run with them. Take the play of light in one corner of a room, for instance. She may imagine an angel in that location, and then begin to consider what the angel might be doing there. She looks to see God's purpose in that detail as well as in the overall picture. She begins to imagine why the Lord would send an angel to that location and what He might want to accomplish. She engages her imagination to see what she is about create from a spiritual perspective.

Sometimes it stops there, and she simply goes to work on painting what she prayerfully meditated on. But other times God jumps in and gives her a direct encounter with Himself. It is like her imagination prepares her and takes her to a launching point for jumping off into a direct encounter with God. That encounter may (or may not) be directly related to he details she imagined for the painting she was preparing to create.

But at the moment where God steps directly into the process with His tangible presence, the painting is forgotten or put aside. She puts all of her focus and attention on God and on whatever His agenda is for their encounter. As a result of this practice, this artist has grown very close to the Lord, and she has become very in sync with His quietest whisper.

Let's take another example. I have a friend who is a worship leader. He loves to strum his guitar and worship the Lord. At time he engages his imagination to hear the melodies or songs of Heaven. He goes quiet before the Lord (stops strumming his guitar) and imagines what the heavenly choir before God's throne would be signing at the moment. He asks the Holy Spirit to give him ears to hear heaven's melodies. He doesn't always hear anything, and may go back to strumming worship melodies on his guitar.

But sometimes he does "hear" heaven's melodies. It is often very faint, like he is hearing them in his mind's ear instead of with his physical ears. He tells me that he let's the melody flow through his being him until it seems to become a part of him. He didn't use these precise words, but I think he means that his spirit is memorizing this melody. After the melody has become a part of him, then he imagines what words might go with this melody. Sometimes he hears "angel voices" singing them. Other times the words just come to him as he focuses on the melody.

He has written a number of worship songs using this technique and some of them have become congregational favorites in his church. At times that is as far as his sanctified imagination takes him--to write a wonderful worship song.

But other times God launches him from this place of imagination into an actual open vision. He has been "caught up into the Heavenlies" to worship with the angels before God's throne. Sometimes what starts as godly imagination or meditation ends up turning into a direct spiritual encounter with God.

I am not a painter or a musician. If I tried to use my imagination to focus on colors and shapes and textures, it would not mean much to me. I doubt it would help to draw me into an encounter with the Lord. Likewise if I tried to engage my imagination to hear Heaven's melodies and worship, I would probably just end up remember some of my favorite worship music and not be able to break through into a direct encounter with God. What works for an artist or a musician would not work for me.

But I am a writer and what works for me is "putting myself into the story" (a writer's technique). E.g., I read a bible passage and then I imagine what it would have been like to be there and live through it. I don't just do it on my own, I invite the Holy Spirit to come into it and to do it with me and to give me a better understanding of Who He is and what it is like to serve Him. A lot of times when I do this, God meets me in it and gives me a better realization of what He is like, but it doesn't always turn into a direct supernatural encounter with the Lord. But there have been times, many of them, where my imagination prepared my spirit and focused my attention on Him, and then He used it as a launching point to bring me into a direct encounter with Himself.

Let me share my first one of these experiences with you, so you can get a feel for what it is like. Again, the way I use my imagination to engage God might not work for you--but you can prayerfully sort out how God would like to help you learn to use your imagination for His glory and to help propel you into direct encounters with Himself.

My story won't make sense if I don't give you a tad of background. There was a time when my imagination was very ungodly. My thinking was not sexual in nature, but I found lots of ways to sin in my thought life, all involving imagining certain things. It became a stronghold the enemy had over me. Then God broke that stronghold and set me free from it, giving me back control over my imagination. But for many years, I was terrified to use it, afraid that I might fall back into bondage. Then one day, I prayed, "Lord, please bring Your presence into my imagination. Let it be used for Your glory." I didn't really expect God to answer that prayer, and I was quite surprised the first time He did.

God asked me to stretch my imagination toward heavenly things and things of God. I struggled with doing that for several weeks. Then one day I was reading the story of how God delivered Israel from Egyptian captivity. I came to the part in Exodus 14 where God parted the Red Sea for the Israelites to pass on dry land, and Pharaoh forced his army to pursue them through the parted sea.

I found myself wondering what it must have been like from the soldiers' perspective. I mean, God was a pillar of fire standing between them and the people they were chasing. Chariot wheels were falling off, slowing them down. They were marching between giant walls of water towering over them. I wondered what it was like from their perspective, since they were enemies of God.

Suddenly I felt God telling me to let my imagination run with that. At first I was afraid to do that because of the past problems I'd had with enemy oppression regarding my imagination. But God promised to be with me and invited me to let Him use my imagination to His glory, just as I had prayed.

So I mentally "became" one of the foot soldiers chasing the children of Israel. I remember feeling very nervous about entering the tunnel between the ocean as the water towered over my head on both sides of me. But I knew that I'd face instant death if I did not move forward, because my commander would thrust me through with his sword. So I pressed in. Somehow in the midst of all this, I ended up somewhere near the front of our line.

When I saw the pillar of fire form before me, I suddenly realized that this was really a powerful God. I found myself wishing that I could know this God, Who cared so greatly for His people and protected them in such powerful ways. I found myself dropping to my knees before this God. I knew that I would get run through with a sword from my commander if I did not get up, but somehow knowing this God seemed more important than life itself.

(Let me explain that this was what I call a "pretend." I knew it was not real. I knew that in reality I was sitting in my prayer room, but I could still sense and identify with the feelings and emotions of this "pretend" soldier much more than if I were watching a movie in a theater.)

In my pretend, I found myself praying, "Oh God of the Israelites, I want to know you. Is there anyway that this is possible?"

Just then, flames from the pillar of fire shot out and devoured the solder who was advancing toward it on my left. I did not move, but remained kneeling before God. I could literally feel His presence and His holiness (just like I have felt His presence in a vision or other times when He chose to manifest Himself to me in a tangible way.)

I knew this was a pretend, but God's presence in it was very real. I sort of pulled out of the pretend scenario, becoming frightened of how involved I had become in it. God spoke to me and told me it was Ok and that He was with me. He told me to allow my imagination to continue and to get to experience Him from this perspective.)

So I allowed the pretend to continue. I remember feeling surprised that my captain never ran me through with my sword. The other soldiers near me began to retreat after the one was consumed by the flame. But I remained kneeling before this God. For a little while, I felt the same holy terror I once felt in a "real vision" when I was transported before God's throne and saw some measure of His glory.

I knew that, in the pretend, the blood of Jesus was not covering this foot soldier. I expected the fire to devour my "character." But instead God began to speak to the soldier. He said that He would accept the soldier as His own if the solder desired to honor and serve Him. The soldier would have to lose his physical life with the other soldiers, but God would grant him eternal life if he believed on God. Still in the "role" of this Egyptian soldier, I expressed a very real commitment to His Lordship in my life, whether I was to live or die.

I remember feeling astonished by the grace that God had for those who turned to Him, even back before Jesus came to die for mankind. I was filled with a sort of awe of God's mercy and goodness in the midst of judgment, and of God's willingness to be found by anyone who would seek Him.

As I was pondering that, the Lord reached down and caught me up into His presence. At first, the wonderful things I had been pondering about God became more and more tangible and I could feel His live and His presence strongly. Then suddenly I realized that was physically no longer in my prayer room, and I was surrounded by this very bright light. I wasn't able to make out any of the details of my surroundings--I couldn't see anything but this really bright light. In fact, it was so bright that I could still see the brightness through my eyelids even when I squeezed my eyes closed.

I became frightened, and thought that maybe God hadn't liked me using my imagination for spiritual things--maybe He had struck me dead for it. But then God spoke to me--I could hear His voice both inside my head (the still small voice He so often uses) and also with my physical ears at the same time. His voice was warm, loving and gentle all at the same time. It was almost musical, but was speaking, not signing. He told me not to be afraid, and suddenly the fear all drained out of me.

I had an amazing encounter with God at that point. I wasn't pretending anymore, this was completely and totally real. It was a supernatural encounter with God. I wasn't the Egyptian soldier any more, I was just me. And God was loving on me, and He was manifesting Himself to me. God had reached down into my pretend and drew me into a real supernatural encounter with Him.

I am not going to share most of the details of that encounter, but I will share this one thing. It was one of the first things that He spoke to me. He said, "See, isn't it wonderful when I bring My glory into something? Aren't you glad that you gave your imagination to Me? Don't you like what I am doing with it?"


-- © GodSpeak International 2008 --
-- Do not republish without written permission from <copyright@godspeak.net> --

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