Craig Kinsley
What do you think of when you hear the word “imagination”? Most of us think of our childhood. Maybe you had an imaginary friend, or you might remember imagining situations while playing. My wife, for instance, can tell me about detailed imaginary instances that she remembers from her childhood.
Although children love the whole imagination realm and are easily engaged there, I want us to begin to appreciate that imagination isn’t just for children. Actually, it is a powerful path to prophetic revelation and meditation.
OUR IMAGINATION IS GOD'S IDEA
Whether you realize it or not, you use your imagination everyday. Let’s look at it this way. Scripture speaks of “the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4:12b). This would be what your heart thinks and meditates on. This is the imagination.
In God’s infinite wisdom, He created the imagination and He desires us to use it. However, many times when God wants to speak to us through our imagination we have either regarded it as foolishness or our imagination has been so clouded with unholy images and experiences that we have been hindered from hearing God properly.
In fact, those unholy images in our mind must be dismissed and we need to surrender our minds to Jesus Christ. That’s essentially what sanctify means. In the dictionary, sanctify is: to set apart as holy; consecrate; to make free from sin (Webster’s New World Dictionary).
With this in mind, I actually heard the Lord say to me: “Son, I want to root up and pull out the evil in the hearts of My people.” Therefore, through this teaching series we are going to learn how to sanctify the imagination for God’s purposes.
WE'RE MADE TO BE LIKE HIM
The Lord has specific plans and definite purposes for our lives. After all, we aren’t a haphazard creation! It ravishes my heart with the love of God to think about how we are created in His image. God said:
“Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (Gen.1:26).
Also, God’s thoughts toward us cannot be numbered! He thinks about you all the time. In the same way that we have an imagination, God has an imagination, and it’s fixed on you! The Father uses His imagination to meditate on His love for you. David had a revelation about this and so he wrote:
“Many, O LORD my God, are Your wonderful works which You have done; and Your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to You in order; if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered” (Psalm 40:5).
One particular day when I was praying, the Holy Spirit used this particular verse to heighten my sensitivity to the prophetic realm. Here’s what I heard the Holy Spirit say: “If My thoughts towards my people are innumerable, all you have to do is align your thoughts with mine. If you do this you will come into a river of prophetic revelation.”
So in the same way that God has thoughts fixed on us, when we have our thoughts fixed on God it opens our spirits to increasing knowledge of Him and prophetic knowledge for ourselves and others.
As well, since we are created in the image of God, we are made to be creative, as He is. Our creative nature and imagination sets us apart from the rest of creation. This is where true worship comes from—the creative imagination. When our imagination is sanctified and holy, we can choose to set our thoughts on God and use the creative process of our thoughts in worship.
Our creative nature, when used with our imagination, actually has power to transform our lives and bring the reality of God’s will into our present circumstances.
There is a saying among Christian teachers, “what you behold, you become.” I believe this to be biblically accurate because when we set our thoughts on the Lord, we become more like Him. Paul the apostle spoke to the Corinthian church about this. Here’s what he said, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18).
In fact, as we use our imaginations to mediate on the will of God and what His Word says, it brings the power of His will into our lives. This revelation was on the heart of King Solomon when he wrote: ”Commit your works to the LORD, and your thoughts will be established” (Prov. 16:3).
Consequently, as we become committed to the Lord, the desires of our heart, out of a sanctified imagination, actually become a reality. The Father is interested in what is on our heart. Most of us have prayed a prayer like this before: “Father, make my will Your will.” Actually, God’s heart is that out of a sanctified imagination we would share our heart desires with him. He has always desired to preserve our will as “co-laborers with Christ.”
When we commit ourselves to God, our thoughts will be established. This point is illustrated through King Solomon’s statement: “But the LORD said to my father David, ‘Whereas it was in your heart to build a temple for My name, you did well in that it was in your heart” (2 Chron. 6:8).
It was in David’s heart to build a temple for the Lord and he received the pattern, or plans, in writing when God’s hand came upon him (1 Chron. 28:19). I believe God inspired David’s sanctified imagination and he received the temple model in his heart before it became a reality. (Solomon actually built God’s temple.)
A HEART FIXED ON GOD
David’s heart was fixed on God and I believe that deep in the heart of every person is a desire to know God. Let’s read the words of God that Paul repeated to the Israelites: “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart…” (Acts 13:22).
The Bible promises that if we seek Him, He will be found (Matt. 7:7). People often ask me why it is that some seem to hear the voice of God and encounter Him more often than most people. I believe a key answer is that we need to have a loyal heart, a willing mind, and be like David— a man or woman after God’s own heart (1 Sam. 13:14).
A loyal heart requires an imagination, or “thoughts of the heart” that are totally fixed on God. When our heart is loyally fixed on God alone, we can be sure that we will not only encounter heaven, but the priorities of our life will fall into place.
However, I’ve noticed that many believers have a hard time encountering God because their heart is pulled in so many directions. So I’ve have made it a spiritual discipline to use my imagination to fix my thoughts on God instead of allowing my thoughts to be pulled here and there. Every night while I wait to fall asleep I discipline myself to fix my thoughts on God instead of worrying about the day and about what tomorrow will bring.
Unfortunately, many Christians think about the problems surrounding their day. When this happens, they actually use their imagination to empower fear and anxiety. Instead of focusing on the problems with a kingdom mindset that says, “God can fix that; He’s a big God,” they focus on the problem and actually make it out to be bigger than God. But let’s resist that temptation and remember that what we behold we become.
WHAT WE BEHOLD WE BECOME
I remember at 19 years of age, when God first exploded into my life, I began to behold some great and awesome revelations about my destiny. Without any effort on my part I began to receive visions and revelations about what He was going to do with my life. I would receive revelation about coming moves of God before I had even read prophetic words surrounding these events.
I was amazed because when this was happening, all I had from past experience was a Southern Baptist upbringing with a cold devotion to God. But my past didn’t stop God. During that time I would lie on my bed and imagine all that God would do with my life. I would think about thousands of souls rushing to an altar and falling on their faces. I would see people jumping out of wheelchairs and women screaming that they could now see for the first time. I would imagine angels of God descending into meetings and bringing revelations and the presence of God.
I received these revelations before I had experienced anything even remotely like this! It’s also a wonder to me to think that I imagined that all this would come to pass when I was about 40 years old. But instead, these meditations and thoughts at 19 years of age have already begun to happen in my life now. Today, I am dreaming bigger!
However, back then, if I had wanted to simply dwell on my present circumstances and all the problems, I could have easily done that. I was living with my parents. I had just been delivered from a life of drugs and alcohol, leaving all of my friends behind. I had all but dropped out of college and I didn’t have a single dime of income to my name. But none of that seemed to matter when I fixed my gaze on Jesus with great inner devotion.
Perhaps some of you are facing temporary circumstances that are painful and hard, but if you will just set your heart on God you will always be full of God. Remember, what you behold you become. So what is your heart set on?
David advised his son Solomon to know God; in other words to behold his God, “and serve Him with a loyal heart and with a willing mind…” (1 Chron. 28:9a). We discussed the importance of having a loyal heart and a willing mind earlier, and this bears repeating. A willing mind is a mind, or imagination, that is totally open to the leading of the Holy Spirit. This is a crucial key to the prophetic ministry because being open to the leading of the Holy Spirit is integral to possessing an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit and walking in prophetic ministry.
Since the Holy Spirit will use our thoughts to express His will for a given situation, we need to seek God. Moses told the people: “But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deut. 4:29).
Seeking God with all our heart and soul certainly catches God’s eye. When Samuel came to Jesse to anoint the next king of Israel, which would turn out to be David, God reminded Samuel of that principle. “For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7b). Seeking and following God begins in the heart and leads to actions.
HOW GOD USES AND INSPIRES THE IMAGINATION
When we set our sanctified imagination on God, His will is made known to us because the imagination is the place where God most often speaks to us. We often call our sanctified imagination “the eyes of our understanding,” or “the eyes of our heart.” Paul spoke about this to the Ephesians when he said: “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Eph. 1:18 NAS). And when the eyes of our heart are enlightened it leads to other realms of prophetic revelation.
Did you know that “the eyes of your understanding” (the eyes of your heart) actually means the mind, will, intellect and imagination? Our spiritual eye, the place where we begin to see into the realm of the Spirit, is our imagination! This is the same place that we daydream. So we need to learn to quiet our minds and let God speak to us in our imagination. But much of the time Christians seem to have trouble coming into visions of God because they do not know where their spiritual eye is. They simply close their eyes and wait for a vision to appear. All the while they are just staring at the closed eyelids.
But it works in this way: I can ask you to picture a red fire truck right now. Go ahead and picture it. Now, in your mind you saw a red fire truck. This is how God brings images to your spirit, except it isn’t you just thinking of the image, but it is God who initiates it. We can quiet our minds and focus our heart on Jesus and expect him to use and to inspire our imagination or “the eyes of our heart.”
WE HAVE NATURAL SENSES AND SPIRITUAL SENSES
Did you know that in the same way we have natural senses, we have spiritual senses? The imagination is part of our spiritual senses. The more we learn to exercise this sense, through soaking and contemplative prayer, the more we learn to access that realm at will. God always desires to speak to us. Remember, His thoughts toward us are innumerable. If we will sanctify our imagination and quiet our own thoughts, God can insert His!
When we get this revelation it opens the doors of revelation in our imagination. I learned this principle, that God would give me His thoughts, through those times lying on my bed before sleep. I would allow God to insert images and pictures into my mind. Soon I found myself having internal visions and eventually I would fall into a trance and actually have heavenly encounters.
Dreams work in the same way. God has always spoken to His children through dreams and He continues to do so today. We’ve had countless testimonies recently of dramatic changes in people’s lives because of dream interpretation. I have actually had times when I encountered angels and even the Lord Himself through dreams.
But having said that I am also aware that the Lord wants to alert us to the danger of entertaining a carnal imagination because carnality will not only defile and tarnish our dreams, it will affect our ability to maintain a pure stream of God’s prophetic revelation. Because this area is so important, we’ll discuss it in greater detail next week so that we can identify problem areas, root them out, and replace them with a heavenly mindset.