James 1:5-8 is another famous passage where reading “imagination” for “mind” might bring insight:<\/p>\n\n\n
5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
In the past, verse 6 has caused me no small amount of anxiety. How can one control whether he is doubting or not?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I always thought of doubt as something that just sprang from inside a person – uninvited and ungovernable.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
But James says one who vacillates between belief and doubt is double-MINDED.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Maybe I don’t have any control over the appearance of a doubt in my mind, but I most certainly can exercise control over allowing it to feed my imagination.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
In the time between my prayer for wisdom and its fulfillment, which direction do I encourage my own imagination to lean?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
It will be either towards confidence in God’s goodness or doubt in His power or presence.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
My spirit’s anticipation of the future plays out in my imagination, forming my “reality” as I wait.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
James says if I allow doubt equal time in my imagination, I am destroying my ability to receive God’s answer.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
James 1:5-8 is another famous passage where reading “imagination” for “mind” might bring insight: 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1737,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions\/1737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}