Imagination and Prayer

    Imagination often opens the door to faith. If God shows us a shattered marriage whole or a sick person well, it helps us to believe that it will be so.  Children instantly understand these things and respond well to praying with the imagination. I was once called to a home to pray for a seriously ill baby girl. Her four-year-old brother was in the room, and so I told him I needed his help to pray for his baby sister.  He was delighted, and so was I since I know that children can often pray with unusual effectiveness.  He climbed up into the chair beside me. “Let’s play a little game,” I said. “Since we know that Jesus is always with us, let’s imagine that he is sitting over in the chair across from us. He is waiting patiently for us to center our attention on him. When we see him, we start thinking more about his love then how sick Julie is.  He smiles, gets up, and comes over to us. Then, let’s both put our hands on Julie, and when we do, Jesus will put his hands on top of ours.  We’ll watch the light from Jesus flow into your little sister and make her well.  Let’s watch the healing power of Christ fight with the bad germs until they are gone.  Okay?”  Seriously, the little one nodded.  Together, we prayed in this childlike way and then thanked the Lord that what we had prayed was the way it was going to be.  Now, I do not know exactly what happened, nor how it was accomplished, but I do know that the next morning Julie was perfectly well. 

Let me insert a word of caution at this point.  We are not trying to conjure up something in our imagination that is not so. Nor are we trying to manipulate God and tell him what to do.  Quite the opposite.  We are asking God to tell us what to do.  God is the ground of our beseeching, as Juliana of Norwich put it, and we are utterly dependent upon him.  Our prayer is to be like a reflex action to God’s prior initiative upon the heart.  The ideas, the pictures, the words are of no avail unless they proceed from the Holy Spirit who, as you know, is interceding for us “with sighs too deep for words” (Rom. 8:26). 

Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline p. 41-42

Myth vs. Jesus

I SAW IT WITH MY OWN EYES
3B. Eyewitnesses

The writers of the New Testament either wrote as eyewitnesses of the events they described or recorded eyewitness firsthand accounts of the events.

II Peter 1:16
“For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.”

They certainly knew the difference between myth, legend and reality. A professor of a world literature class in which I was speaking asked the question, “What do you think of Greek mythology?” I answered with another question, “Do you mean, were the events of the life of Jesus, the resurrection, virgin birth, etc., just myth?” He said, “Yes.” I replied that there is one obvious difference between these things applied to Christ and these things applied to Greek mythology that is usually overlooked. The similar events, such a the resurrection, etc, of Greek mythology were not applied to real, flesh and blood individuals, but rather to mythological characters. But, when it comes to Christianity, these events are attached to a person the writers knew in time-space dimension history, the historic Jesus of Nazareth whom they knew personally.

The professor replied, “You’re right, I never realized that before.”

S. Estborn in Gripped by Christ explains further the above. He relates that Anath Nath “studied both the Bible and the Shastras. Two biblical themes in particular deeply engaged his mind: first, the reality of the Incarnation, and second, the Atonement for human sin. These doctrines he sought to harmonize with Hindu Scriptures. He found a parallel to Christ’s self-sacrifice in Prajapati, the Vedic creator-god. he saw too, a vital difference. Whereas the Vedic Prajapati is a mythical symbol, which has been applied to several figures, Jesus of Nazareth is a historic person. ‘Jesus is the true Prajapati,’ he said, ‘the true Savior of the world.’” 6/43

J.B. Phillips. cited by Blaiklock, states, “I have read, in Greek and Latin, scores of myths but did not find the slightest flavour of myth here. Most people who know their Greek and Latin, whatever their attitude to the New Testament narratives, would agree with him . . .

“A myth may be defined as ‘a pre-scientific and imaginative attempt to explain some phenomenon, real or supposed, which excites the curiosity of the mythmaker, or perhaps more accurately as an effort to reach a feeling of satisfaction in place of bewilderment concerning such phenomena. It often appeals to the emotions rather than the reason, and indeed, in its most typical forms, seems to date from an age when rational explanations were not called for.’” 3/47
(p.5)

from Evidence That Demands A Verdict by Josh McDowell.