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

DC-Mentality As Seen by Lee Atwater

Lee Atwater (1951-1991), known as a brutal, consummate political strategist and hardball Republican National Committee chair, became a repentant believer and foe of “DC-mentality” before he died of brain cancer.  Before he died, he said, “I acquired more [wealth, power, and prestige] than most.  But you can acquire all you want, and still feel empty. It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. [The leaders of the ‘90s must] speak to the spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society. . . . What is missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart.”

--from A Cup of Coffee at the Soul Café by Leonard Sweet, p. 19

Absolute Power

There’s an old adage that says, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” While this may seem absolutely true, it’s absolutely false. There is only one who has ever known absolute power, and that is God. Yet He is the only one who has never abused His power. This is exactly what separates God from the rest of us. He really is different from who we are without Him. In fact we find that God does exactly the opposite of what we would expect with unlimited power.

(p.77)

Corruption is not an issue of power; it is an issue of passion. Power simply allows us to unleash our passions. What is hidden when we are powerless is exposed when we are empowered. With absolute power what you see is what you get. The power and authority that Jesus held did not change Him but allowed us to see Him in His purest form. The reason it appears that power corrupts is that power magnifies what is hidden within us. We can appear to have integrity when in fact all we are is powerless. It is not an act of integrity to treat someone well or justly when we are afraid of him or feel powerless to do otherwise. You cannot call someone “moral” simply because he is restrained from acting on his deepest desire. Otherwise Hannibal Lecter would be considered the ultimate expression of morality simply because he was strapped into a straitjacket. He’s not moral just because he can’t eat you. True morality in this case would be that he no longer wants to have you for dinner.

(p. 78 -79)


--From Uprising: A Revolution of the Soul by Erwin Raphael McManus