On a Wednesday evening, I told the congregation, "Close your eyes and picture yourself on a Wednesday evening sitting in church listening to me give a teaching."  I did this to illustrate that all imaginations are not false or evil, but can be true.  Another problem is that it becomes difficult for us to see spiritually when we must always have a intellectual explanation.   God said, "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool"  (Isaiah 1:18).  In the natural, this make little sense although it is spiritually true.  Spiritual vision goes far beyond the five human senses.  Our physical senses would tell us that no man is able to walk upon water, but Peter did until he looked at the storm.

    In Ephesians 1:16, Paul begins a prayer for the church in Ephesus by saying, "Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers."
Then he writes, "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him"  (Ephesians 1:17).

"Wisdom" is seeing from God's perspective.  "Revelation" is to uncover or bring to light that which has been hidden.  The word translated "knowledge" is not head knowledge, but discernment knowledge.

The word translated "understanding" is the word for mind (dianoia)  in relation to the imagination.  The root word to the English word "imagination" is image.  The word translated "enlightened" is a word (photizo) from which we get the word "photo."

This word is also used "thy mind" in the verse: "Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind"  (Matthew 22:37).

And again it is used in "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people"  (Hebrews 8:10).

IN CONTRAST:  Another word is used for the mind concerning logic. "Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ"  (II Corinthians 10:5).

"Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise"  (John 5:19).   Jesus used the word "see".

"I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me"  (John 5:30).  Jesus uses the word "hear".

"For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them" (Matthew 13:15).  Here, Jesus uses both words.

NOAH:

"Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it"  (Genesis 6:14-16).  God spoke to Noah, but he may have also given him a blueprint in his imagination concerning the details.

"I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee"  (Job 42:5).  Hearing is one thing, but seeing in the mind is something else.

"And, behold, the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.   And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness"  (Genesis 15:4-6).  It was possibly daytime.  It may have been a vision.  God asked Abram to see in his imagination the stars as his descendants.  Some scholars suggest that he was to see the story of his descendants by the constellations in the heavens.

"According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it"  (Exodus 25:9).  How did the LORD show him?  Although God gave him some general verbal instructions, God also probably gave him some detailed pictures (images) in his imagination.

"And the LORD said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour"  (Joshua 6:2).  Joshua could not do this with his natural vision because Jericho was a great walled city with wall as much as one hundred feet tall and as much as thirty feet thick.  He had to use his imagination based upon faith in what God said.

"Then David gave to Solomon his son the pattern of the porch, and of the houses thereof, and of the treasuries thereof, and of the upper chambers thereof, and of the inner parlours thereof, and of the place of the mercy seat, And the pattern of all that he had by the spirit, of the courts of the house of the LORD, and of all the chambers round about, of the treasuries of the house of God, and of the treasuries of the dedicated things" (I Chronicles 28:11-12).  God gave the pattern (blueprint) to David and David gave it to his son, Solomon.

"And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha"  (II Kings 6:17).  The servant saw what he could not see in the natural.

"And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions"  (Joel 2:28).   This is a prophecy concerning Believers today in Christ.

"And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks"  (Revelation 1:12).  How does one see a voice?

"And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods.   And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink.   And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted"
(Genesis 30:37-39).  This story shows the power of vision or what we see.

"Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he"  (Proverbs 29:18).  We need to see spiritually or we perish or become at naught.

"For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee"  (Proverbs 23:7).  What we see in our minds and think about effects our lives.

"(For we walk by faith, not by sight:)"  (II Corinthians 5:7).   Faith is spiritual sight, not physical sight.

I got saved at the age of nine ... went to church from a child up... attended a Christian college and received a degree in Bible and also received a degree in from a well known seminary in the field of theology and even pastored a church ... then one day while I was speaking to a fellow employee ... God gave me a picture of the new birth in my mind.  I had studied and knew a lot of doctrine, but that day while sharing with a friend, God gave me a vision of the new birth.  I saw it in my mind.  I saw the Spirit of God uniting with with the spirit of man creating the new birth.

When I was praying for a client, I saw her dressed in white ascending into heaven to be seated at the right hand of the Father.  I shared the vision with the lady who needed to see herself pure before before God.

God gave me the word "peace" as I prayed about praying for an individual who was very ill, possibly critically ill.  When I prayed for the individual, I prayed that the individual would find peace with God and peace for his body.  In a short time, the individual was miraculously stronger.

One Sunday when a man came to the altar, I went forward to minister to him and led the man to the Lord.  The pastor later said that he knew that man would come forward and get saved and that I would go to pray with him ... I just bet he pictured it in his mind.

Once when I had chronic prostate infection .... I begin to use Scriptures on healing as medicine reading, memorizing, and meditating on the verses four times per day.  The most difficult thing was to see myself healed because I was in constant pain.  However, after about ten days, I began to see God healing me.  By the end of the two weeks, I was able to quit taking the powerful antibiotics which the doctor told me that I would probably have to take the rest of my life.

    Here is the picture.  We are the digital camera and God is to be the photographer.  The lens is our conscience. We get to choose what we focus upon and whether or not if it is clearly in focus.  The eternal battery is our new spirit in Christ which is rechargeable by the Holy Spirit.  Meditation and prayer are the means of turning on the battery.  The photographer is the one who presses the button to allow light through the shutter to imprint the picture upon the photo cell of our imagination.   The image stays in the temporary memory until our "intellect processor" prints a more permanent copy of the photo.

     However, there is a catch!  The subject of the photo is determinded by the photographer.  Furthermore, we have a choice of who is to photograph the picture. We can allow the flesh, the intellect, emotions, will power, or the Spirit to become the photographer.  Even if we allow the Spirit be the photographer, if our conscience is not in focus or there is dirt on the sensor, then the picture will come out distorted or flawed.  The Word of God helps keep us in focus and the sensor clean.

 God desire to give us REVELATION, but:

 Is your battery fully charged?
 Have you turned on your camera?
 What are you focusing on?
 Is the lens and sensor clean?
 Who have you allowed to be your photographer today?

Application:

Pray for one another:

The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,  (Ephesians 1:18).    The word "know" means discernment, not from the intellect.

KNOW what?
1. What is the hope (confident expectation) of his calling.
2. What the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.  In other words, we are to pray that the Spirit may reveal more and more of our inheritance found through grace.  It is unsearchable.  It is beyond word of speech.

3. What is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-wards. "exceeding" = to throw beyond the mark.  "greatness" = magnitude.  "power" = dunamis, from which we get words like dynamite.
4. According to the working (operation) of his mighty power (dominion might).

5. **** This is the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit that dwells within the Believer.
6. Jesus was not only raised from the dead, but he was and is in the seated position at the Father's right hand.  It was a position of the first born.  It was a position of favor.  It was a position of power, authority, and dominion above all ...

7. We should see that the Father delegated supreme authority and power to Jesus over all that is in this world and the world to come.

8. We are to know ( picture it in our minds) that Jesus then delegates this power, authority, and dominion to the church.  If you are a Believer, then you are part the body of Christ.

9. We should remember that God is a Spirit and the church, His body, is to be full the manifestation of God, filled with His Spirit.  This is a sobering truth when we see outward manifestation of the church as being less than what it should. Therefore, we should pray for the church as did Paul.

We are to share with others the vision (revelation of truth) which God gives to us as directed by the Holy Spirit.  That is the reason I am sharing this article with you.