The Book of Job reveals the following:
But there is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty gives them understanding. Job 32:8
You have a spirit, given you by God, and through your spirit God intends that you communicate with Him, receive from Him, and join with Him. It is impossible to know God without the activity of your spirit.
At the same time, when you were in your fallen state, outside of Christ, living in death, the result of sin, your spirit became tainted and resulted in your waywardness from God, and your inability to see, hear, and speak about genuine reality both invisible and visible accurately. Everything coming from your spirit as a result of the fall tainted your thinking, feeling, speaking, and acting.
Within the tainting of your thinking processes as a result of the fall, your imagination and your intuition became defiled and operated at a level of distortion. The apostle Paul gives us clear indication that all of life whether lived in sync with the Holy Spirit or in league with the "flesh" is supernatural. To live in sync with the Spirit is to be moved upon and energized by the power of Christ. To be in league with the "flesh", however "natural" you perceive that to be, is to be subject to the powers of darkness, the rebel holders of authority under the dominion of Satan, the prince of the power of the air.
The Biblical truth is that you are either in sync with the Holy Spirit or you are in league with the fallen powers. All of life is supernatural even for people that don't believe in the supernatural.
It was C.S. Lewis who made it clear in his classic book The Screwtape Letters, that the enemy of our souls will do one of two things. He will either convince you to believe there is no such thing as the devil and demons, or so preoccupy yourself with their reality that it consumes you. Neither extreme is healthy for a true child of God.
For the child of God, spiritual warfare is not something they can avoid. In fact it is something that they have to embrace as an aspect of their spiritual growth and enlargement that requires their willingness to fight the good fight, laying hold of faith and a good conscience.
As a child of God, your deepest heart's desire is to be led and guided by His Spirit into all truth. His Spirit influences your motivation in your life, and you want to love God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength.
Part of your learning journey requires your participation with the Holy Spirit in the renewing of your mind (which in the Greek is the term and concept "nous"), which includes far more than your ability to cognitively think or memorize Scriptures.
The mind is far more than your thoughts. The mind includes not only cognitions; it also includes perceptions, reasonings, intuitions and imaginations, and more.
We tend to only focus in on the cognitive aspects of the renewing of the mind in the current culture, whereas the early Church fathers were far more extensive in bringing the saints along the learning journey of renewal by teaching on the imaginative and intuitive faculties of the spirit and the mind.
Your imagination and intuition enable you to use your faith to lay hold of the unseen realities and the meaning of God and His wondrous creation, both visible and invisible.
We are told by the writer to the Hebrews that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 4:18 that we are to focus our attention on the unseen, fixing our eyes on the eternal, invisible realities rather than on the temporal, passing dynamics of our current situations and circumstances.
Again, C.S. Lewis referred to that invisible realm and that invisible world as "the unseen real". For C.S Lewis, whose books such as The Chronicles Of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, which have inspired children and adults for almost the last century because they are packed with spiritual truth and insight, faith is about believing in the unseen real. For Lewis, and for you and I as true believers, what is in the unseen realm is where all reality originates.
In fact, you cannot have a Biblical worldview without both believing in the unseen real, as well as SEEING the unseen real!
So the real issue is:
· How do we SEE the UNSEEN?
· How do we HEAR the UNHEARD?
· How do we SPEAK the UNSPOKEN?
Guess what? All of that requires the renewing of your IMAGINATION and your INTUITION by the Holy Spirit!
The cleansing of the powers of your imagination and intuition are a work of the Holy Spirit that enables you to know God more intimately, receive His grace more readily, worship Him more freely, and SEE everything through NEW EYES.
Jesus said that the "pure in heart" would SEE God.
That requires a cleansing of the heart so that the imagination and the intuition are freed from the taintings and defilement of the fall, and freed from the evil that corrupted our hearts, so that child-like wonder can be restored and life can be experienced at a level of grace and glory as God intended.
Failure to recognize the functions of your God-given imagination and intuition leave you sorely deprived in your experience of intimacy with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.
Being made in the image of God, your symbolic faculties (imagination and intuition) were intended to serve you in providing the necessary means to picture the world of the Spirit and sense the world of the Spirit more clearly and accurately.
Sadly, because of the fall, those faculties fell into disrepair and a realm of unhealthy fantasy. All too often, while we readily reject those kinds of unhealthy and unclean intimations coming to our minds, we tend to shut down our imagination and intuition altogether out of fear, never allowing the Holy Spirit to sanctify them for His intended original purpose.
Isn't it amazing that in the 21st century when the culture has become so "image-driven", that the ability to activate the powers of our sanctified imagination and intuition have been shut down?
What would happen if you could reawaken the powers and faculties of your God-given imagination and intuition?
- How would it impact your faith walk?
- How would it impact your creativity?
- How would it impact your ability to abide in Christ?
- How would it impact your career?
- How would it impact your calling?
- How would it impact your ability to reach your desired objectives and goals?
- How would it impact your ability to master transition and move through the cycles of change?
- How would it impact your times of prayer, waiting on God, and receiving clear guidance from Him?
I could go on, and on...
It is a day and it is an hour when there needs to be a recovery by the help of the Spirit in your life of the sanctified use of your holy and precious imagination and intuition. It is an important dynamic in the renewing of your mind that is so sadly overlooked and neglected. That neglect leads to you being deprived of some wonderful pathways to fulfillment and satisfaction in your life journey and adventure.
If you are ready to reawaken the kind of child-like wonder that Jesus said is part of Kingdom living, and you are serious about becoming all that God intends for you to be, then I want to invite you to invest in your future.
Spend two and a half hours with me on Thursday night, May 24th beginning at 7:00 p.m. for a Webinar I'm hosting and teaching called:
HARNESSING YOUR IMAGINATION AND INTUITION
TO PROVE THE WILL OF GOD
This will be an investment in your life that will be multiplied back to you many times over in terms of your life in the Spirit. There will be dimensions of breakthrough, freedom, deliverance, cleansing, healing, and release, which will be the result of learning the truths tied to this aspect of renewing your mind.
You want to be sure not to miss this opportunity, because it will be well worth the time you spend with me in the rich truths of the Eternal Word of God.
The early registration price expired a few days ago, and the price is now$109, which for the content you will receive, and the impact it will have, it is quite a value add. However, I want to make you this offer. Sign up right now, Click here to register for $99 today. If you wait until tomorrow to sign up it will be $109, and we are also going to limit the number of people who can sign up in the last two days before the event. So you don't want to miss out. Act now.
I look forward to spending quality time on Thursday night with you as the Spirit of God opens the Book, your heart, your mind, and your will to His glorious power and presence, and releases you to a new dimension of life in Him!
Stay Strong,
Dr. Mark Chironna
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