Greenhouses, Gymnasts, and Holy Imagination

So last week I talked about how corporate worship is a spiritual discipline--part of building the greenhouse for our soul. I wanted to post some about the whole idea of spiritual disciplines because I think that they're both important and poorly understood--which makes for a bad combination.

First off, the problem that most folks have with spiritual disciplines is that they think of it primarily as an issue of will-power. And while I would agree that there some will-power involved in getting up early out of bed to spend time with the Lord or to spend time in prayer rather than watch Sportscenter, I don't think that will-power is the starting point.

I think the place where we begin is Holy Imagination.

Right now, there are nine-year-old girls all across America who are bouncing around on gym mats, running across balance beams, and catapulting their little bodies across a piece of gym equipment at outrageous speeds because their imaginations have been captivated by one dream: competing in the Olympics. They wake up rather than hit the snooze bar because they can picture what it is they are waking up for. Their disciplines serve their goals. They are entranced with something that makes the pain and agony and possibility of injury all worth it.

The great writers of the Scriptures write about God in the same ways.

They are captivated by the wonder and glory and power of God, and by the even more wonderful and glorious idea that God would want to do a work in them and through them.

Most discussions about spiritual disciplines are like coaches taking us to the gym and telling us to run through all these paces without any discussion of the Olympics. Just do all this stuff, God says to. But apart from the imagination-capturing promises and images in Scripture, we are stuck with just our will-power. And so we flounder.

The church has historically been suspicious of imagination. Redeem our minds, yes; our wills, oh my, yes; our hearts, definitely. But our imaginations? It seems to easily spins out of control, probably better to keep that safely repressed in the margins. This is why there are so few artists among our ranks as Christians.

But we need to embrace this part of how God made us. We need to ask the Lord to redeem our imaginations so that it might be pressed into service for his glory and our good. We need to ask the Spirit to capture our imaginations with the promises and passions and glorious images of the Scriptures so that we might be more entranced with Jesus than with the bed. We need to be so captivated by the idea that God wants to change us and use us for his purposes that we are willing to forego ___________ (insert your own thing here) in order to embrace a much greater good.