Christian Living | Holy Spirit | Faith & Healing | Kathryn Kuhlman | Marriage/Family | Classics | Prayer

Issue 17

Living Water Newsletter for September 3, 2007

THOUGHTS & STUFF

Obi Wan Kenobi
Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?

Isaac Barrow
Nothing of worth or weight can be achieved with half a mind, with a faint heart, and with a lame endeavor.

Emily Dickinson
There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away.

Imagining the Possible

"In the beginning" God created us, but before He created us He designed us. Makes sense. And He designed us so that we are far better able to live in the realm of our imagination than in the physical realm—100,000 times better, in fact.

God gave us 100 million sensory receptors with which to see, hear, feel, taste, and smell—to experience the physical world in which we live. But He gave us 10 billion synapses with which to think, ponder, and imagine—to experience the invisible world of our mind, spirit, and imagination.

Consider this—

It is the Imagination
that lights
the Slow Fuse
of the Possible.

The young lady who wrote that is shy beyond pain. The only photograph of her is taken when she is eighteen. When friends come to visit she asks them to speak to her from an adjoining room through a half-open door while she stays hidden behind a wall. She bakes and works in her garden, but rarely leaves her house. She never marries. She lives a seemingly uneventful and unproductive life.

Yet when she dies in 1886 at the age of 56, over 1700 poems from her imagination are found hidden in a bureau drawer.   After her poems are published, a minister writes to her family, "I bless God for Emily,—some of her writings have had a more profound influence on my life than anything else that any one has ever written." Of her work it is said, "her range is that of any soul not earth-bound by the senses."

Emily Dickinson lived in the invisible world of her imagination, yet her writings about love and life and death are more profound than that of multitudes of writers who live earth-bound lives. How is that possible?  It is possible because God designed us to make it possible. He designed us so that we would be able to live by faith and not by sight—live in an unlimited world not bound by physical experience.

The World Has It Wrong

The world says that we are human beings with an occasional spiritual experience. But God says that we are spiritual beings with an occasional human experience—if we will believe it.  That's why the Bible equates what God can do because He's God and what you can do by faith. "With God all things are possible" (Mark 10:27)—"All things are possible to him who believes" (Mark 9:23).

God created us in His image so that by faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ we could function like He does, but the world is doing its worse to recreate us in its image and not believe anything about God or ourselves. Unfortunately, there are a lot of folks sliding down that slippery slope. But we've got the Word of God to tell us better.

Get Over On the Possible Side

"All things are possible to him [or her] who believes!"  Wow!  I wonder if Jesus really meant that?  Maybe He was just fooling around. Or maybe He was speaking metaphorically, whatever that means. Of course, He is the Son of God, so maybe, just maybe . . .

The thing is, you see, He also said, "Whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him. Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you." And He wasn't talking about a metaphorical mountain, He was talking about a real mountain with real dirt, real rocks, real trees, and real bushes.  That's how powerful God has made faith for us. It's up to us whether or not we believe the Word of God and use what God has given us. Smith Wigglesworth said, "Someday a new Christian is going to come along and believe everything in this old book and put us all to shame."

So What Is Possible For You If You Believe It?

In one word, child of God . . .

Everything!
 

Forgetta 'bout It
$10.39 - From Mafia to Ministry

James Gilmore of Mongolia
Do not we rest in our day too much on the arm of flesh? Cannot the same wonders be done now as of old? Do not the eyes of the Lord still run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong on behalf of those who put their trust in Him? Oh, that God would give me more practical faith in Him! Where is now the Lord God of Elijah? He is waiting for Elijah to call on him.

God Can Do It Again
$9.59 - God Can Do It Again

P. T. Forsyth
It is well to get rid of the idea that faith is a matter of spiritual heroism that is only for a few select spirits. There are heroes of faith, but faith is not only for heroes. It is a matter of spiritual adulthood. It is a matter of maturity.

Achieving Your Divine Potential
$12.79 - Become all you were created to be

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