Last week we chatted about writing down your goals. We ended with the quote by Albert Einstein, “Your imagination is everything. It is a preview of life’s coming attractions!” This week, I’m going to say a little about “vision” – or imagination.

The sad thing is, most Christians have tossed the baby out with the bathwater. Because there are scams and the like about “positive thinking” and imaging and imagining, we tend to think it isn’t “right” to use our imaginations. We have stopped imagining and (day) dreaming!

Yet God is the very one who created our imagination! He knows the power of imagining. If you recall in the story of the tower of Babel, He confounded their language so they couldn’t talk among themselves and “see” themselves building a tower to Heaven. It isn’t about the tower, it is that these were wicked men who banded together for evil, not good. The Bible says that God said in Genesis 11:6:

And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language;
and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them,
which they have imagined to do

Here the imagination is another word for planned or thought up. It is in a bad sense: to plot or think evil.

In Habakkuk 2:2, the word “vision” (Hebrew châzôn) means a sight (mentally, like imagination, imagine); a dream (like daydeam). It also means to form a mental image of; to conceive; to produce by the imagination; to think; to believe.

Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich (1937), which was published during the Depression, stated, “If you do not see great riches in your imagination, you will never see them in your bank balance.”

We actually see people “imagining” or envisioning all the time and don’t really realize it. People who worry about everything – who imagine the worst – always seem to draw what they are worrying about to them. They will fret and fret that they might get cancer. They worry until it finally becomes a reality in their life. Then they’ll proclaim, “SEE? I told you so” – without ever realizing they meditated it until they had a vision of it in their lives.

They imagined they’d get it – and they did. It would most likely have been the stress that contributed but they believed it and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. They imagined the preview of life’s coming attraction – disease.

It is important to take time every day – even just a few minutes – to sit quietly and just think. Dream; see yourself doing something that seems impossible or out of reach. God specializes in the impossible!

You know what you already have in your life – your current financial state, savings account, debts, excess weight, relationship problems, or undisciplined children. Imagine them being changed – different – better. Imagine what you want. Imagine what you’d do with the extra money when your debts are paid off. Imagine your new wardrobe as the weight comes off. Imagine!

If you can dream it, God can do it. But, if you don’t dream or envision anything, you will receive that, too. Nothing.

Proverbs 23:7a states, “Proverbs 23:7a (HCSB) for as he thinks within himself (in his heart), so he is.” It is vital that we be careful what we focus on and think about, just as much as it is vital to write our goals, dreams and visions down!

Make sure your imagination is founded on the Word of God (Bible)!