A thought by H. Norman Wright DMin. from his book, A Better Way to Think: Using Positive Thoughts to Change Your Life (p.44). Baker Publishing Group (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)
It seems that daydreams, creativity, and potential go together.
Norman says, “Do you dream by day? I do. In fact, some days, I do it a lot, especially when I’m in the process of crafting a book. Or as I prepare for a presentation, I go over the material in my mind, adding ideas as they come to me. Or as I anticipate a vacation or an encounter with someone, I imagine what might happen.
“God gave us this wonderful gift—a twofold ability to see. We can visually observe what goes on around us. We also can ‘see’ pictures in our minds. The latter ability, especially, can help us achieve wonderful things… or that same imagination can hold us back when we use it in a negative way...”
He goes on, “Our imaginations are busy with pictures and ideas all day long. It’s too bad we don’t have a device that’s able to record and recall all of these ‘pictures,’ and track the time we spend on them. On second thought… perhaps it’s best we don’t.
“There are times when we retreat into the safety of our daydreams when our real world isn’t pleasant. Children do this when they live in a hostile or unsafe environment.
“But there are differences between imagination, daydreaming, and fantasy. Imagination is a creation of the mind, the ability to form a mental image. Daydreaming is usually a wishful creation of the mind. Fantasy is using the imagination to create mental images that are often unrealistic.
Norman says, “Christian writer and pastor A. W. Tozer describes imagination in this way:
“Like every other power belonging to us, the imagination may be either a blessing or a curse, depending altogether upon how it is used and how well it is disciplined.
“We all have to some degree the power to imagine. This gift enables us to see meanings in material objects, to observe similarities between things which at first appear wholly unlike each other. It permits us to know that which the sense can never tell us, for by it we are able to see through sense impressions to the reality that lies behind things.
“Every advance made by mankind in any field began as an idea to which nothing for the time corresponded. The mind of the inventor took bits of familiar ideas and made out of them something altogether nonexistent. Thus we ‘create’ things and by so doing prove ourselves to have been made in the image of the Creator.”
God our Creator has made each one of us with so much potential. Would you allow God to harness your creativity thus proving yourself to have been make in His image? Would you?
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