Worshiping God In Our Imagination: Spirit and Truth

Faith means God isn't interested in you seeing HOW he is going to save your world/situation/dream/promise. God wants those who are His to see Him.  He is the "how" of all of His promises.

When God gives you a promise, learn to believe the promise, not the "how" you think God will use. Then you will be counted among the faithful, and protected from creating a false image of God.

We see dimly. God sees clearly. He refuses to violate the boundary lines of or our heart. Your heart, or your mind, will, and emotions, is communicated with through your imagination.

Ezekiel and Jeremiah are two great examples of how God practically communicates with man.  Ezekiel traveled all over the middle east in his imagination, or what is called "in the Spirit," communing with God. We read His words thousands of years later because the Spirit of God testifies that what Ezekiel SAW was from God. Same is true of Jeremiah, Isaiah, David, Daniel, etc.

Jeremiah 1:9-12 NKJV — Then the LORD put forth His hand and touched my mouth, and the LORD said to me:

“Behold, I have put My words in your mouth. See, I have this day set you over the nations and over the kingdoms,

To root out and to pull down,

To destroy and to throw down,

To build and to plant.” Moreover the word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Jeremiah, what do you see?” And I said, “I see a branch of an almond tree.” Then the LORD said to me, “You have seen well, for I am ready to perform My word.”

God communicates through what we see in our minds eye.

Satan wants to capture your imagination so he may communicate with you.  This is why music, images, and words are so powerful to change your heart, for good or evil. Whatever is put on your imagination goes into your heart, or what you think, what you feel, and what you will to do.

It is out of your imagination that sin comes. It isn't "eating that, or drinking that" that God calls sin. Jesus defined sin as what you are thinking, feeling, and acting on:

Mark 7:18-23 NKJV — So He said to them, “Are you thus without understanding also? Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him, “because it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods?” And He said, “What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, “thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. “All these evil things come from within and defile a man.”

The war in the world is for your heart... Your imagined solutions are literally your God. You worship what you imagine to be valuable/desirable, worthy, helpful, and strong. You worship what you fear, both having to deal with and what you fear losing.

Revelation 13:4 NKJV — So they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?”

It is very important to worship God with your imagination in the areas of what you want materially, what you want to happen or see happening, and what you fear having to deal with or fear losing. When God gives a promise, whether in His word, or from another believer, or in communion with Him in your imagination, Satan tries to steal faith out of it by tempting you to imagine HOW.

"How" is God's domain. God is looking for faith in God, not in our imagined solutions God might use.

God gave man an imagination to speak to him. God puts an impression on your imagination to communicate with you, but it's still your imagination. Everyone imagines differently. If I asked 20 people to imagine a swimming pool, several will imagine a square one and several will imagine a round one, and several will imagine an irregular one, but all I said was "pool."

This is how faith works in concert with humility.  Faith believes, and humility recognizes that what I am imagining... The media God uses to communicate... Is human. It's weak. It's less than.

1 Corinthians 13:7-13 NLT — Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless. When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

This means when I really have faith, I also have humility.  Love operates in humility, or it isn't love.

1 Corinthians 13:1-7 NLT — If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

Love is growing cold all around you right now. 

The Bible promises that must happen. This is the way it works:

1. The pressure that is flooding the world is demanding solutions.  Darkness is increasing, and with darkness comes uncertainty.
2. With uncertainty comes impatience, doubt, fear which leads to offense and betrayal.
3. This creates a confusing mix of culture where many, in a fleshy/human attempt to be "faithful" without being humbled imagine God doing all sorts of things God isn't going to do.
4. This doesn't increase love, it kills it. It stirs more pride, false expectations, disappointment, misrepresentation of God, impatience, and bolder more delusional imaginations... it grows like a strange fire of false faith. This has literally resulted in the holocaust in the past.

Matthew 24:7-14 NKJV — “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. “All these are the beginning of sorrows. “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. “And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. “Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. “And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. “But he who endures to the end shall be saved. “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.

The way to stay steady in this current, prophesied, and promised intensity is to learn what you don't know... to embrace the humility of vulnerability in believing God, or what the Bible calls "faith."

Hebrews 11:8-10 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

The Bible says God fulfilled this promise when Abraham and Sarah stopped imagining how He would and simply knew He would:

Romans 4:16-20 NLT So the promise is received by faith. It is given as a free gift. And we are all certain to receive it, whether or not we live according to the law of Moses, if we have faith like Abraham’s. For Abraham is the father of all who believe. That is what the Scriptures mean when God told him, “I have made you the father of many nations.” This happened because Abraham believed in the God who brings the dead back to life and who creates new things out of nothing. Even when there was no reason for hope, Abraham kept hoping—believing that he would become the father of many nations. For God had said to him, “That’s how many descendants you will have!” And Abraham’s faith did not weaken, even though, at about 100 years of age, he figured his body was as good as dead—and so was Sarah’s womb. Abraham never wavered in believing God’s promise. In fact, his faith grew stronger, and in this he brought glory to God.

This is the faith the Bible is talking about: Faith in God, not in what we imagine God will do. A frenzy of zeal and proclamations of what God is going to do isn't really Biblical faith.  You won't find that in the Bible at all, except as it relates to false prophets:

2 Chronicles 18:10-11 NKJV — Now Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah had made horns of iron for himself; and he said, “Thus says the LORD: ‘With these you shall gore the Syrians until they are destroyed.’ ” And all the prophets prophesied so, saying, “Go up to Ramoth Gilead and prosper, for the LORD will deliver it into the king’s hand.”

Right now, there is a lot of impatient imagining what God is going to do being used to stir up "worship" but it isn't worship of God. It is mostly a worship of politics, power, and (false) flesh-feeding "anointing." It is literally vain imagination.  It is similar to the feeding frenzy of false hope offered by false prophets to the deluded kings of Israel's past.

What the Spirit of God is inviting the Body of Jesus into is Spirit and Truth worship of God by embracing God's sovereign desire for faith, not eyesight.

What we are supposed to see is our need for God's kingdom to come from INSIDE our heart into the world. That means we need God to rule our imagination before He destroys our perceived enemies. God will get this type of Bride for His son, the only question is, "will you and I be be a part of that Bride?"

So, to successfully navigate this moment in time, you need to learn to see and embrace in confidence how you aren't ready for Jesus to come... How you lack faith. This is called "Spiritual poverty" in the Bible. 

To see our lack rightly, we need to see where we lack the personality of Jesus...

*Trusting His father no matter what He saw.

* Loving enemies

*Blessing those who curse you

*Praying for those that use you

*Extravagant generosity with what you need to live on

*patience, kindness, gentleness, joy, peace, goodness, faith, self control

If you want to become a saint in the last days, you need to faithfully worship God with your imagination gazing on who you are relative to Jesus, not imagining what God should do with everything but you!

The question that needs to burn in our heart as we come, in our imaginations, before Jesus is, " where do I lack these ^".  As you wait for God to do the things only He can do, it exposes your doubt, impatience, jealousy... as He exposes these, if you mourn(pray) your lack and let the pressure and God's promises to you move you into God... whatever He chooses to do being the only solution that you will accept into your imagination... You will change into something like Jesus!

This is literally the Biblical plan to make you more like Jesus:

2 Corinthians 3:14-18 NKJV — But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 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.

This is the witness God is raising up in the Church for Israel: a people who refused earthly imagined solutions to the world around them, and instead choose to give their imaginations to God for Him to reveal HIMSELF to the heart of those that want Him.  This was what David's Tabernacle was for. It changed everything and filled Israel with a national vision and humility to trust God.

We must watch the FRUIT of those prophesying promises of "what God will do." If I am truly operating in Biblical faith, I don't run over people with what God tells me, because I'm not really sure how He will accomplish His word... I just know He will and when I see it I will be amazed.

Someone who thinks they have the word of the Lord but does not exhibit the meekness of the Spirit is in great danger of not only being disappointed, but being false. It doesn't mean they don't have the word, it means they don't have the heart of the Spirit. There are many/most false witnesses, not because they can't hear a word from God, but because they arrogantly assume they know how God will perform the word.

2 Corinthians 1:17-22 NLT — You may be asking why I changed my plan. Do you think I make my plans carelessly? Do you think I am like people of the world who say “Yes” when they really mean “No”? As surely as God is faithful, our word to you does not waver between “Yes” and “No.” For Jesus Christ, the Son of God, does not waver between “Yes” and “No.” He is the one whom Silas, Timothy, and I preached to you, and as God’s ultimate “Yes,” he always does what he says. For all of God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding “Yes!” And through Christ, our “Amen” (which means “Yes”) ascends to God for his glory. It is God who enables us, along with you, to stand firm for Christ. He has commissioned us, and he has identified us as his own by placing the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the first installment that guarantees everything he has promised us.

Paul wasn't "wishy washy." He was faithful.  He just didn't know HOW God was going to do what he believed God would for sure do. The flesh misunderstands this, but the Spirit embraces the sovereignty of God to lead... No matter where He takes us or when.