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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 anyone 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 who
are His children 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, so that we will not believe anything about God or ourselves.
Unfortunately, there are a
lot of Christian 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" (Mark
11:23-24, NASB).
And Jesus
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, the healing evangelist, 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!
See you at the house!
Harold J. Chadwick |
