During an extended period of grieving, I allowed work, and other distractions, to keep me away from this blog. More than two years later, with grief reduced to only an occasional heart-searing pain of regret and remorse, work came to an end as well, although distractions never end.
Still, I still found myself unable (or unwilling?) to take up my blogging "pen" until this week when I received an anonymous comment on an older post about Babylon. As I reread the Babylon post, some words I had written about man's imagination being evil caught my attention.
Clearly, all that man can imagine is not evil.
After all, imagination (our "mind's eye" as it is sometimes called) allows us to "see" ourselves in the place of Peter as he wept bitterly upon realizing that he had three times denied any association with Jesus whom he had claimed to love. ["...Lord you know all things, you know that I love you..." John 21:17; "And Peter wept bitterly" Luke 22:62]
This same imagination begs an answer from us individually to the question: Am I capable of denying Jesus as Peter did?
The answer is always: yes. We humans whom God came to save are absolutely capable of denying Jesus, of denying God, for they are One and the same. ["...he who has seen me has seen the Father..." John 14:9; "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God." John 1:1]
We are completely capable of turning away from the Hand that has reached out, not to harm us, but to save us. ["For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11]
This same imagination can put us in the place of the prodigal son as he returned home laden with the weight of his former rebellion against his Father, only to find the Father rejoicing in his son's return, rather than finding himself being accused and punished as he knew he deserved. ["For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry." Luke 15:24]
We have not actually laid our eyes upon Jesus in any physical sense, but by virtue of our imagination, we do "see" Him as we read the Word of God, we imagine all that Jesus said and did actually happened just as the Word of God said it did, and eventually, by the will of God, we come to believe it to be true. What we call faith is a gift that comes from God, but is created by God within us with the aid of our imagination, as God so designed. In this case, imagination is used, as our Creator God intended, for good.
But...
If something, a distraction, for example, causes us to turn away from the Word of God for any significant period of time, we are also capable of using imagination in ways that are evil, as our memory of God's Truth falters within us, our faith slides downward, and our imagination rises up and begins to doubt God's Word, to believe that which is not in alignment with God's Word, and to create ways of asserting itself against God Himself.
Sin is listening to our own imagination, when it tells us something that is contrary to God's Word, and believing it.
And sin is always subtle, not wanting to reveal itself to us, for the goal of sin is to defeat us, imprison us, destroy us...and to do so eternally, not just in the here and now.
Ironically, our only weapon against this enemy of ours is the Word of God, the very thing from which we allow ourselves to be distanced because of work, for example, and other distractions, such as:
...dysfunctional family members and their dramas,
...financial worries;
...unbelieving co-workers or friends,
...unbelieving spouses,
...our own wicked hearts.
Without the last item being true, none of the former items could affect our faith. After all, we allowed these distractions to pull us away from the Word of God. The fault lies in us alone. Always has, always will, for we are drawn away because of our own lusts, as God's Word rightly declares:
"But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust has conceived, it brings forth sin: and sin, when it is finished brings forth death." James 1:14-15
Lusts might include:
...our need to be needed by dysfunctional family members, spending time on their problems rather than with God;
...being moved by a fear of not having enough money versus trusting that the Lord will meet one's every need;
...escaping unpleasant realities by jumping into the distraction of worldly things (becoming "of" the world, rather than being "in" it just long enough to testify of God's love to mankind) rather than escaping to the loving arms of the Lord Himself, our shelter, our help in time of need, our Savior;
...driven by loneliness to the wrong place and the wrong person, believing the world's version of "love" rather than God's declaration of its true meaning, and, for the sake of the "better" version of love that the world offers, overriding, with various rationalizations, all that the Word says about what love between a man and a woman should look like, and about not being united with an unbeliever (then blaming God when the relationship ends, tragically for all concerned).
If we allow ourselves to be pulled away from the Word of God, even pulled away by intellectualizing the Word versus letting the Word cut through to the marrow of our very being in order to remove the evil in our hearts, then our imaginations are free to "create" thoughts in opposition to God's TRUTH; thoughts that MUST be taken captive by the Word of God or will take us captive instead. ["...take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." 2 Corinthians 10:5]. Thus, our imaginations can be used for evil, leading us to our own destruction.
I am thankful to "anonymous" for drawing my attention back to an old post, drawing me back to this blog, and through a decidedly pre-ordained circumstance, helping me once more to "see" sin...
...in me.
Still, I still found myself unable (or unwilling?) to take up my blogging "pen" until this week when I received an anonymous comment on an older post about Babylon. As I reread the Babylon post, some words I had written about man's imagination being evil caught my attention.
Clearly, all that man can imagine is not evil.
After all, imagination (our "mind's eye" as it is sometimes called) allows us to "see" ourselves in the place of Peter as he wept bitterly upon realizing that he had three times denied any association with Jesus whom he had claimed to love. ["...Lord you know all things, you know that I love you..." John 21:17; "And Peter wept bitterly" Luke 22:62]
This same imagination begs an answer from us individually to the question: Am I capable of denying Jesus as Peter did?
The answer is always: yes. We humans whom God came to save are absolutely capable of denying Jesus, of denying God, for they are One and the same. ["...he who has seen me has seen the Father..." John 14:9; "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God." John 1:1]
We are completely capable of turning away from the Hand that has reached out, not to harm us, but to save us. ["For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11]
This same imagination can put us in the place of the prodigal son as he returned home laden with the weight of his former rebellion against his Father, only to find the Father rejoicing in his son's return, rather than finding himself being accused and punished as he knew he deserved. ["For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry." Luke 15:24]
We have not actually laid our eyes upon Jesus in any physical sense, but by virtue of our imagination, we do "see" Him as we read the Word of God, we imagine all that Jesus said and did actually happened just as the Word of God said it did, and eventually, by the will of God, we come to believe it to be true. What we call faith is a gift that comes from God, but is created by God within us with the aid of our imagination, as God so designed. In this case, imagination is used, as our Creator God intended, for good.
But...
If something, a distraction, for example, causes us to turn away from the Word of God for any significant period of time, we are also capable of using imagination in ways that are evil, as our memory of God's Truth falters within us, our faith slides downward, and our imagination rises up and begins to doubt God's Word, to believe that which is not in alignment with God's Word, and to create ways of asserting itself against God Himself.
Sin is listening to our own imagination, when it tells us something that is contrary to God's Word, and believing it.
And sin is always subtle, not wanting to reveal itself to us, for the goal of sin is to defeat us, imprison us, destroy us...and to do so eternally, not just in the here and now.
Ironically, our only weapon against this enemy of ours is the Word of God, the very thing from which we allow ourselves to be distanced because of work, for example, and other distractions, such as:
...dysfunctional family members and their dramas,
...financial worries;
...unbelieving co-workers or friends,
...unbelieving spouses,
...our own wicked hearts.
Without the last item being true, none of the former items could affect our faith. After all, we allowed these distractions to pull us away from the Word of God. The fault lies in us alone. Always has, always will, for we are drawn away because of our own lusts, as God's Word rightly declares:
"But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust has conceived, it brings forth sin: and sin, when it is finished brings forth death." James 1:14-15
Lusts might include:
...our need to be needed by dysfunctional family members, spending time on their problems rather than with God;
...being moved by a fear of not having enough money versus trusting that the Lord will meet one's every need;
...escaping unpleasant realities by jumping into the distraction of worldly things (becoming "of" the world, rather than being "in" it just long enough to testify of God's love to mankind) rather than escaping to the loving arms of the Lord Himself, our shelter, our help in time of need, our Savior;
...driven by loneliness to the wrong place and the wrong person, believing the world's version of "love" rather than God's declaration of its true meaning, and, for the sake of the "better" version of love that the world offers, overriding, with various rationalizations, all that the Word says about what love between a man and a woman should look like, and about not being united with an unbeliever (then blaming God when the relationship ends, tragically for all concerned).
If we allow ourselves to be pulled away from the Word of God, even pulled away by intellectualizing the Word versus letting the Word cut through to the marrow of our very being in order to remove the evil in our hearts, then our imaginations are free to "create" thoughts in opposition to God's TRUTH; thoughts that MUST be taken captive by the Word of God or will take us captive instead. ["...take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." 2 Corinthians 10:5]. Thus, our imaginations can be used for evil, leading us to our own destruction.
I am thankful to "anonymous" for drawing my attention back to an old post, drawing me back to this blog, and through a decidedly pre-ordained circumstance, helping me once more to "see" sin...
...in me.
