Not long ago, I attended a retreat at which a college student, freshly discovering his call to an intercessory prayer ministry, spent hours every night praying by name for everyone on the retreat. The last morning when I ran into him, he said, "Sue! As I was praying for you, I received a word from the Lord for you."
Uh-oh. I'd heard this before. And every time I had taken it to the Lord, asking if there were anything to it, the answer was no.
My defenses up, I smiled and said, "I'm listening." He got a very thoughtful look on his face and said, "I have to get it exactly right. . . OK, the words were, 'Guard against vain imaginations.'"
I thanked him for this and promised to immediately take it to the Lord. I had barely breathed, "Lord, is there anything to this?" when the lightbulb came on in my spirit and I knew EXACTLY what this was about.
Oh yeah. This was from God, all right.
For about a year, my husband and I had been carrying around an open wound on our souls. We had been deeply hurt by several people we had trusted and loved, and it is not exaggeration to call it traumatic. Every single day of that time I had engaged in fantasy conversations in my head with the people who inflicted so much pain—except they weren't really so much conversations as monologues, with me lecturing on how badly they hurt us and how dishonoring their actions were to us and to God. . . yada yada yada.
Vain imaginations. Yep, this word was right on the money.
And God was so incredibly tender and grace-ful to merely exhort me to "guard against" them. Not, "You bad girl, you've been sinning against my sons in your mind. Repent!" Not, "And who are YOU to set yourself up as judge and jury? Look at your own fleshly heart, kiddo!"
Just, guard against them.
So I confessed my sin of indulging in self-vindicating fantasy, and resolved not to go there again. It didn't take long, of course, before my mind returned to what had become a familiar and comforting indulgence—an emotional "binkie." I stopped and said, "Well Lord, what am I supposed to do instead?" He didn't even have to say anything, just wait for me to connect the dots since I already knew. "Oh. I should be praying for them instead, huh?"
Okay. Fleshly sigh.
The biblical pattern for changing behaviors is to replace and displace the old with something new, and eventually the temptation to indulge in vain imaginations about this issue faded with disuse. It still pops up occasionally, but I know what to do with it.
"Vain imaginations" is a good term for a lot of popular mental sin we so easily rationalize: engaging in internal arguments with people who aren't even there, the lusting that accompanies sexual pornography for men or emotional pornography for women (steamy romance novels). We all spend time thinking about things that are empty, fruitless, and harmful to our spirits.
And we all need to guard against them.
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This is deep, Sue, and it's honest and easily trusted. Thank you for sharing. I heard the Lord whisper these words to me in my heart and immediately went in search of the phrase, "Vain imaginations" throughout HIs Word. Once again He is my Deliverer, and my Eternal Salvation. We can be given to the Spirit or to the flesh. In this day I am set free. Praise Him for His most personal Word and Love. If we read to know that we are not alone, I have done a good thing today. And so have you. Thanks for writing and keeping this instruction for those of us who might long to learn so that we might gain the knowledge of God. To Him be praise forever and ever. Amen.
Thank you, Sue, for sharing this. I do this a lot when I'm not walking by the Spirit. Now I know what to call it : ) I know it doesn't please God... I have found that things rarely if ever work themselves out in the way I imagine in my head, though God *does* ultimately work things out, in a way that glorifies Himself. Mostly when I am in prayer, like you said - for the othe person - and then for my own heart. There is a lot to be said about abiding - staying in prayer, in the Word, and in the Spirit. Thanks again for the reminder, also for the reminder about how God still speaks today and how we must use discernment in listening.
As a single woman, I did this all the time in the romantic way. I would imagine how this guy or that guy would finally come to his senses and be blown away by me. I finally realized how much of my waking hours were spent on this (and how damaging it was to my psyche). I thought about what it would be like if I never married, was 80, and still doing this in the nursing home. With quite a bit of battle, I was finally able to curb my "vain imaginations" (I love this term).
How often do I do this! That's a good term for it--those imaginary talks I have where I share, they repent, all is well (after they do some serious apologizing, of course, and maybe offer to buy me a pony to make it up to me).
Thank you for sharing.
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