God has created every human being with the ability to imagine with their mind. In the Christian world, we call this process sanctified imagination. I find that God often uses our imagination to speak to us about different aspects of our lives and the lives of those around us. I like to call this divine imaging. When we think our imagination is purely evil or comes from an evil source, we often cut off a huge portion of how God chooses to interact with us. Therefore we miss out on important ideas, creativity, solutions, inventions that God desires to reveal to us. I am not saying everything we imagine in our mind’s eye is good or of God, but more often than not it has been the way God has chosen to reveal His heart to us.
The question you may be asking is how does divine imaging matter to how we live our lives? When we first understand that God desires to reveal His heart to us and the world around us, we will understand the importance of divine imaging. One practical way I interact with divine imaging is when I wake up early in the morning before I go to work or meet anyone for work or a relational meeting, I like to lean into divine imaging with God. I begin to imagine myself meeting the client or friend and imagine what we would be talking about and what God wants to do in that meeting way before I ever enter the meeting. In the Bible in the book of Revelation 13:8, it says, that Jesus was the Lamb who was slain before the foundations of the world. That means before Jesus died on the cross at Calvary in real-time, He had already died within the realm of eternity. And that often the works we are called to do have already been prepared beforehand before we ever act on it (Ephesians 2:10). Therefore I would like to propose that Jesus knew about the work He would do on the cross before we ever stepped into His human body. In the same way, life is not about doing something “new”, but doing what God has already done and accomplished in eternity. This is such a beautiful reality because we won’t need to carry the burden of doing something “new”, but all we need to do is step into what God has already done. The Prophetic gift allows us to do so because we are peering into the spectrum of eternity which includes both eternity past and eternity future. And when we can see what is ahead we know how we can participate in the works of God. So coming back to the topic of divine imaging, we can begin to interact with clients, co-workers, friends, etc… way before we ever meet them in real-time. The Bible is the book of Colossians talks about having our speech full of grace and seasoned with salt so that we would know how to answer each person. The Spirit of God always has the best response or solutions to every scenario. And not only does He have the best solution, but also the best wisdom and strategy of how to get to the place of resolution.
A story of this is when I knew I had a full day of back-to-back meetings that day, the first thing I did in the morning is begin imagining myself meeting each of these people I was going to meet that day. And allowing the Spirit of God that is not limited to time and space to show me the conversations beforehand. I remember for the first person I was meeting that day, the Holy Spirit putting thoughts in my mind as I imagined myself having coffee with that person. And how the Spirit reveal to me that the person I was going to meet is struggling with loneliness and being heard. And simply felt the prompting of the Spirit for me to just to listen to him with my whole heart. So I chose to obey and participate in what God wanted to do for this person, to listen to his heart and to be present with him in the pain. And later during the actual meeting, it turned out to be just as the Holy Spirit revealed through the divine imaging experience. And the guy felt so loved and cared for not just by me, but he could feel God’s presence as I just simply listened to him share about the challenges he was going through.
In another divine imaging time, I was imagining myself having lunch with my next appointment with a co-worker. During lunch I pictured us catching up and engaging in small talk. And suddenly I felt like in that divine imagining time that God opened up a vision and I started to see something relating to the person I was meeting. In the vision, I saw that God wanted to bless this person with a new business. So when the time came to meet this person in real-time, the initial conversation was just as I imagined. And then I got to share the vision I had received with the person, and as I shared about this new business venture that God was unfolding, I started to see into what this business would be about, the purpose, and the impact this business would make. The lady friend was dumbfounded by what I had shared because these last few weeks she had just been getting ready to launch a business. And she had only told a few people, so she was amazed that I would receive such accurate detail about her life and business plan. But the reality of this is that I didn‘t know any of that, I was just simply, sitting with the One who knows all things through divine imaging. And it caused the lady to be so encouraged that God knew about her business and supported what she was pursuing.
We have had many experiences with divine imaging and spiritual interacting with people in the Spirit before ever meeting them in real-time. We have seen people give their lives to Jesus because of these interactions that the Spirit of God is initiating with us. I find that the more room and space we give to God, He will always show up in ways that exceed our ideas and thoughts. We hope to inspire to you explore divine imaging in your life and begin to see the beauty of God‘s aroma manifest through your life. We have learned that the simplicity of following God’s voice no matter how big or small the movement of obedience, always shows us and reveals Himself to those around us. And we simply just get the honor of sitting in the front seat and experience Him amongst us.
If you want to get coached in learning how to engage in more divine imaging feel free to book a individual prophetic coaching session with us to explore different personalized ways you can be interacting with the Spirit of God now. Don’t waste another moment, but start creating an intentional relationship and room with the Spirit of God in your life.
Powerful article. I totally agree with the importance of using the imagination in a sanctified way.