The above is some art produced by one of my good friends and co-conspirators John Doublestein. Now there’s a boy with an active imagination!

It seems as if I need to repent of something pretty significant that I have suppressed for a long time now. It seems as if I need to share with you something that is holding me back from going any deeper with Father and with what He is doing in the world.

I read a few months ago in the Irresistible Revolution that we are Christ-followers are supposed to have a “prophetic imagination” for the world in which we are a part. Because we are living in an already/not yet reality in God’s Kingdom, there are parts of our world that don’t sync with the Kingdom that is breaking in. Christians are called to speak out against the darkness and describe the Light.

And we are supposed to do so in a way that catches people by surprise.

Holy, Holy, Holy is the LORD God Almighty

Who was, and is, and is to come.

This phrase plucked out of the book of Isaiah describes God in a way that is catching my attention as of late. The LORD is, was and forever will be HOLY. Holy means different, or separate, or other. This kind of God needs no introduction, because you immediately sense his presence when he walks in the room. His foreign nature is at once repelling and compelling. God is, was, and will always be – a surprise.

It is this kind of God that controls the universe – a God who is faithful to those whom he loves, but yet radically unnerving the status quo, speaking prophetically to those in power, and challenging our notions about who he is and what life is all about.

Jesus challenges our comfort zone by using his imagination. “How shall I describe the Kingdom of God? To what shall I compare it? It is like…” and immediately Jesus launches into a story that symbolizes both the unknown Kingdom that is coming to parts and pieces of ordinary, everyday life.

It’s the imagination of Jesus that gets him killed. His visions of the Kingdom of God were not unique, and his passion for God was common in his day. It was his unique ability to creatively critique his culture with a prophetic imagination – using all sorts of medium and story.

For most of my life I have considered myself a fairly creative guy. I was in musicals, symphonies, TV-shows, and I drew comic strips, authored books, and consistently created new characters and ideas somewhere from the deep recesses of my brain. Some dismissed me as crazy, but what I didn’t realize was that this sort of imagination was God-given, and could be God-driven, if I saw ushering in God’s Kingdom as a priority in life.

Enter the college years. I feel as I look back on my days in higher education as if I had to choose between creativity and orthodoxy. My missions and ministry teachers at ACU, while forming and shaping me into the man I am today (of which I’m grateful) never told me much about the importance of simply daydreaming, imagining, and creating my way through ministry. Missions and ministry seemed more like a ship to be run, rather than an adventure on the ocean seas.

If you want to build a ship, don’t summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs, and organize the work, rather teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean.

– Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I feel like in most of my education, I was taught all the intricacies of buying wood, preparing the tools, handing out jobs, and organizing the work…all the while slowly losing my love of the deep, expansive ocean. What I believe I am just beginning to realize again is the need for Father to redeem my own imagination for his purposes, and to see what flows from that.

What might that look like for my personal life? It might mean you might be seeing more artwork, videos, and even…dare I say…poetry on here. What might a redeemed imagination look like in my social circles? It might mean painting murals together or writings songs with other musically-inclined friends. What might it mean in mission to my city and world? It could mean assembling a dramatic performance for Earth Day (which is like…tomorrow!) or making a GIANT slip n’ slide in the poorest neighborhood in Abilene just to bring joy to people there, or producing a YouTube film that parabolically critiques an individualistic society that refuses to meet their neighbors, yet has a “second life” online.

The point is not what people come up with, the point is the imaginative impetus that sparks the action. It stems from a intimate connection with Father which develops into a dreaming together of what could be possible if we teamed together, Spirit and Flesh. The adventures born out of a prophetic imagination are endless.

And this is only the beginning….

Last 5 posts by Mark

• Brain Dump - October 8th, 2008
• God is Wholly - October 2nd, 2008

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 21st, 2007 at 12:32 am and is filed under Art, Creativity, Prophetic Imagination. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.