How big is your Imagination?

   I bet that little chicken I rescued that had gotten out this morning had a huge imagination of me as I tried to capture her and put her back in her safe pen from all those varmints that lay waiting her outside.

2 Samuel 22.  David’s song.

   We use our imaginations in so many ways and most are not pleasing to the Lord.  We imagine what someone thinks of us or what they are thinking while they are angry with us.  We imagine would happen if a person were taken away from us or if we could only have this person love us.  We imagine what we would do to a person that has hurt us; what words we could say that would let them know how it made us feel.  Those are a few of the negatives.

   How vivid and the amount of time and energy we will use to record that record and play it over and over in our minds as a recorded chant.  It keeps our emotions and our heart in turmoil.

And then one morning we see and listen to one whose imagination has been inspired and brought to a higher plane through faith and 2 Samuel is read to us with all the emotion and desire that David himself must have felt as he penned the words of his heart.  And we listen!

   “My enemies compassed me from all sides…”the Lord had delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul.” David had a heart for God and his imagination saw God so much bigger and greater than perhaps we can imagine.  David or nobody else could use more words than me, but when prayer time comes I hold to the verse that says when you pray be not as the heathen using many words.

   We don’t want to be like the heathen, but don’t we want to be like David and know and feel the magnitude of each and every word that is uttered in our minds.  Don’t we want that vivid imagination of our flesh that we so readily use to be changed to spiritual and sing those praises to the one and only God who deserves each and every word, to drift up as smoke from a sacrifice from the depth of our lips to his ears?

“The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; The God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my savior, thou savest me from violence.  I will call on the Lord, who is worthy to be praised; so shall I be saved from mine enemies.”

Listen to the vivid imagination that one will play in their minds and when rescued give the Lord a two or three sentence prayers of thanksgiving.

   “When the waves of death compassed (swirled) about me, the floods of ungodly men made me afraid, The sorrow (cords) of hell compassed (coiled around me) me about, the snares (torrents) of death (destruction) prevented (confronted) me; {NIV in ( ).

“Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations of heaven moved and shook, because he was wroth (angry).”

   Recently I experienced the maybe 30-60 second tremor of a 4.3 earth quake.  I was lying across the bed in the spare bedroom because I was having trouble sleeping.  I had gone there thinking maybe a change of mattress would help.  As I was lying there, I was really getting drowsy and I felt a bump against the edge of the bed.  My poodle is too small for this so I was attentive, but snuggled my pillow and then it was as if someone hit the edge of the mattress really hard twice in succession with their knee.  My first thought as I rose up on my elbow was that my husband had come to find me and bumped the bed real hard.  I even called out his name.  Then another hard jolt and I grabbed the edge of the mattress that appeared to be moving and when the north wall made a popping sound, with no doubt and my heart beating like a jack hammer, I bailed out of the bed and ran to our bed and probably shouted, “Eddie, we are having an earth quake.”  He mumbled your dreaming and told me to come to bed and go back to sleep.  I’m standing on the floor looking at the clock that now blinked 3:09 in red.  It was obvious the quake was over and he didn’t believe me, so I crawled back in bed and I don’t recall my exact words in prayer but I am sure they were as repetitive and the beating of my heart.  I don’t remember the  length of time I prayed with my heart beating so rapid and loud that I could feel it, but I glanced at the clock about 4:30 the last time I looked.  I cannot ever remember that sort of fear lasting that long or causing my heart to beat at that rate for that period of time. The verse in the last days men’s hearts shall fail them definitely crossed my mind as I fervently prayed.  Now if I feel anything remotely resembling a tremor my imagination springs into action and I see the ground opening up and swallowing twisted beams of iron and metal as our house twists and crushes our bodies in our beds.  Oh! Yes I do have an imagination.

   I want to see my God in my heart and my imagination huge as in verses 7-20. 

“In my distress I called to the Lord, and cried to my God; and he did hear my voice out of his temple, and my cry did enter into his ears.”  I believe in those early morning hours he heard my plea, “God help my unbelief.”  2 Timothy 1:7 came to my mind, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and a sound mind.” 

   For me believing not just knowing the scripture brought conviction and with all my heart I wanted my belief to turn into action and not just knowledge of scripture.  Conviction screamed in my ears and showed me a tiny glimpse of my sinful unbelieving heart as the phrase from Jeremiah kept turning over and over in my mind.  If you can’t run with the footmen; what will you do when the horsemen come?  Jeremiah 5:1 If thou hast run with the footmen, and they wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with the horses? And if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how will thou do in the swelling of the Jordan?

Oh! Yes I have imagination and it is huge.  I have a faith that seems more like a mustard seed in comparison.    

   My prayer this morning is found in 2 Samuel 22 and I want to grow in faith so that I see my God when I am afraid, when I trust in my God before I speak, when I know my God when I act and know that he says, “ go ahead share your thoughts admit your weaknesses, acknowledge without Christ you are nothing and glorify me by sharing your heart with others.” “Lord, God, my father, give me words of wisdom to know how to write my thoughts  so that they will show the one and only God of heaven and he alone receive glory.

   Go for yourselves Read 2 Samuel 22 out loud and listen to David’s song.  Use your imagination and read it first in old King’s English (King James) and then if you like modern easy then read it in the NIV.  Let it fill your heart and then pray the God of heaven will set your feet into action, which is also my prayer.  Let us be doers of the word and not hearers only.

   Let verse 51 resonate in our ears, “He is the tower of salvation for his king; and showeth mercy to his anointed, unto David and to his seed forevermore.”   He is our tower of salvation and we are also his anointed when we have accepted Christ as our personal Saviour.  Let our imaginations of God be huge and blot out our fears and lack of faith.