What stops you? Quite often we are stopped by the fear of looking like a loser. We are afraid that we will be made fun of. We are afraid of what someone else might think if we fail. We imagine all sorts of negative possibilities.
We imagine. Such a powerful ability, the imagination! That power alone makes us like God. But without wisdom, imagination is a cruel taskmaster.
Why?
Do you think humans were designed to live in the present or the past or the future?
The present, right?
Well, where do you spend most of the time in your mind, in your imagination, in the present, or in the future?
Well, I think we spend very little time in the present. Many people spend a big chunk in the past, but the rest of the time most spend trying to figure out the future.
When we spend time with God we spend it in the present. He dwells in our present, although much can be remembered and learned by looking back, only go for a visit and not an extended stay. And for sure God does not dwell in the future when we visualize or imagine. Our imagination of the future, which is almost always dictated by fear of some kind, rarely, if ever, pictures Jesus alongside us.
Why is that?
It is our desperate attempt to get some control over something we can't. It is impossible for us to take power over the future because it is not even real, nor will it ever be real. We try and play God, imagining the evil that we fear becoming reality, and then we try and make plans and contingencies to avoid what we fear.
So why do we have so much fear in our lives?
Because we don't believe. We don't know that Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Father love us. The person who lives by their fears will not find freedom in God's love. That does not mean rational fears regarding legitimate dangers, but imagined fears, and especially the projection of those into the future. To the degree that those fears have a place in our hearts, we neither believe that God is good nor know deep in our hearts that God loves us. We sing about it; we talk about it, but we don't know it.
Today, ask the Holy Spirit to teach you what it means to really believe that God loves you.
--with thanks to Wm Paul Young and "The Shack"
g-ram
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