A Sober Mind

Rarely have I heard a message in church of prayer being imaginative or using your imagination when praying. Rather, there is more emphasis on reining in our imagination by bringing every thought (good and evil) into captivity.

Prayer that fails to imagine leaves our conversation with God flat and dull. When we stay focused on facts, figures and logic we fail to see through the eyes of faith the impossible made possible Yes, we should use our minds by reasoning and understanding, but it is very limited in perceiving the mind of God.

Imagine your friend reading aloud the newspaper, reporting back to you some news story while never making eye contact and saying nothing on a personal, intimate level of how their day went or what is on their mind. Sadly, much of our prayers is reporting to God news that never asks, "God what do you see?"

Think of the amount of energy used in our informal conversations filled with emotions, gestures, facial expressions and vivid illustrations and examples – so why should prayer be any different?

When we pray our minds should be captured by seeing through faith what God is doing supernaturally - even if the present circumstance may not have changed or things seemingly got worse.

Paul writes in I Corinthians 2:9, "But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." (KJV).

For us to truly be imagine the things God has in store for us, our families, and community of believers is have certain toxins released from our thinking.

Our minds can be intoxicated by the world, their way of thinking and behaving. Our minds can be affected by distress and difficult circumstances. I Peter 1:13 says we must gird up the loins of the mind. In the original, to gird up the loins of your mind means to tie a belt around your "fertile, productive" parts of the mind, namely your imagination.

Recall one of the pieces of the armor of God is the belt of truth. To tie a belt around your waist is representative of protecting the productive area (the loins) with God’s truth as we do our mind. In other words, our imagination is very creative. Anxiety can be intoxicating inflaming the mind, impairing judgment and fueling a wild imagination. Fear is another toxin that can feed on your imagination to distort what you see or don’t see. The end result is we are not fixing our minds on the things above but on earthly things.

Isaiah 26:3 gives us a promise of peace for a mind stayed on Christ. That promise would extend to our imaginations – we are not imagining the worse – but we are at peace. When we have a sober mind, we can think rightly and imagine accurately the things God has in His mind for us!