Seeing Is Believing: Experience Jesus through Imaginative Prayer

By Gregory A. Boyd

One of the most common problems with Christians in our modern secularized world is that they don't feel the reality of Jesus. Sure, they believe in him and love him, but he somehow doesn't seem to enter their daily lives in a real sense. Some might say, "You ought to pray more." Others would advise, "You ought to witness more." While this may be true, we don't get closer to God just because we "ought to."
Boyd believes that the way to true spiritual transformation and feeling the presence of God in your life comes from a little R and R: rest and reality. Boyd encourages readers to stop striving and learn to rest in an experience of Jesus as real. The best way to do this, he says, is through imaginative prayer. Experiencing Jesus will teach readers how to use God's gracious gift of creative imagination to know him better and feel his presence in their daily lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Apr 1, 2004
• ISBN: 9781585583447

Gregory A. Boyd

Gregory A. Boyd (Ph.D., Princeton Theological Seminary) is a pastor at Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Previously, he was a professor of theology at Bethel University, also in St. Paul. His books include Recovering the Real Jesus in an Age of Revisionist Replies, Letters from a Skeptic, God of the Possible, Repenting of Religion, Seeing is Believing, Escaping the Matrix, The Jesus Legend, Myth of a Christian Nation, Is God to Blame, God at War and Satan and the Problem of Evil.

Book preview

© 2004 by Gregory A. Boyd

Published by Baker Books

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ISBN 978-1-5855-8344-7

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For my covenant group

Greg and Marcia Erickson, Alex and Julie Ross, Dave and Terri

Churchill, and all of our children

Over the last ten years you have taught Shelley and me the true

meaning of friendship and community in Christ. Our shared life

together is part of everything I am. I really love you guys!

When the Spirit of truth comes,

he will guide you into all the truth.

Jesus

contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1 The Foundation: Growing by Resting

1. The Futility of the Try Harder Solution

2. The Pattern of This World

3. Four Aspects of the Flesh

4. Overcoming the Flesh

Part 2 Experiencing Jesus

5. The Power of Imagination

6. Imaginative Prayer in Scripture and Church Tradition

7. Resting in Christ

8. Healing Memories

9. But What About . . . ?

Part 3 From One Degree of Glory to Another

10. You Become What You See: Growing in the Fruit of Love

11. Jesus Throws a Party: Growing in the Fruit of Joy

12. Jesus Closes the Terrified Eyes: Growing in the Fruit of Peace

Appendix: But Is It for You? Answering Questions about Imaginative Prayer

Notes

acknowledgments

Several words of appreciation are in order. First I need to express my gratitude to all the churches and organizations that have sponsored and promoted Resting in Christ seminars over the last sixteen years. I also appreciate the encouragement and feedback, both positive and negative, I have received from the thousands who have participated in these seminars. Your input greatly improved the seminars and significantly influenced this book as well.

I deeply appreciate and respect Baker Book House for agreeing to publish this work, knowing full well that its message may be controversial in certain quarters. I am particularly grateful to Bob Hosack and his outstanding editorial team for the excellent work they’ve done editing and reworking this manuscript.

I also need to say, very emphatically, that neither the seminars nor this book would have been possible were it not for the loving support and continual encouragement of my wife, friend, and soul mate, Shelley Boyd. No one except the Lord and I knows how much of you permeates this and every one of my endeavors.

introduction

Why doesn’t God make himself more real? Lateffa asked with an exasperated tone.The bills I gotta pay, they’re real. The job I gotta hold, the kids I’m raising, the car that won’t work, the ulcer that acts up, they’re real. But God just seems like a vapor in the wind. I mostly do all the things Christians are supposed to do. I pray, go to church, worship, give money. But honestly, most of the time my faith doesn’t seem to relate to the real world! It’s hard to keep going on sheer commitment."

I knew exactly what Lateffa, a friend of mine, was talking about. I think on some level most of us do. We probably don’t say it out loud very often, but all of us at one time or another wonder if all this Christian stuff is real. We believe God exists and cares about us but never or rarely have a profound experience of this truth. Naturally we wonder if we’re just involved in wishful thinking. We talk to God, but he doesn’t talk back. So prayer seems unreal, like we’re talking to the ceiling.We believe we’re saved and have the Holy Spirit in our lives, but we rarely feel God’s transforming power in our lives.Whatever spiritual growth we’ve experienced seems more the result of our own hard work than that of the presence of God in our lives. Like Lateffa, many of us are tired of fueling our faith with mere belief and sheer commitment.

Wondering whether Christianity is real is not the same as wondering whether Christianity is true. If you question the truth of Christianity, you can do something tangible about it.You can read books, take a class, or talk to someone about it. But what can you do when you’re already convinced it’s true but don’t experience it as real?

Particularly frustrating is the Bible’s promise that our faith will be filled with real things. People in the Bible experienced God all the time! They heard from God, saw visions, and seemed to sense God’s presence wherever they went. Furthermore, the Bible tells us we’re supposed to experience God’s transforming love, joy, peace, and power in our lives.Yet, like Lateffa, we often feel as though the only things we experience as real are the bills, broken-down car, irritating ulcer, and so on.

Why Aren’t We Transformed?

This lack of a real experience of God in our lives is not at all an academic problem; it has huge practical implications.You see, it’s not so much what we intellectually believe is true that impacts us; it’s what we experience as real. For example, most people who sleep around know it’s true they could contract AIDS or some other sexually transmitted disease. Yet they don’t experience the possibility as real—at least not as real as whatever pleasure or other benefit they receive from having multiple sex partners. If a close friend of one of these individuals contracted AIDS, however, then perhaps the possibility would be experienced as real and would be much more likely to alter the person’s lifestyle.

In the same way, a person can believe Christianity is true, but it will affect his or her life only to the extent that it’s also experienced as real. When all we have to go on is our belief that it’s true, devoid of any real experience, our faith has little power to make us significantly different from non-Christians.

Through the media and other means, the values of our culture are communicated to us in experiential, vivid ways. They impact us. The experiences we’ve had and the messages we’ve received while growing up are vividly remembered and experienced as real. They impact us. And our inclinations to live in sinful, self-centered ways are continually experienced as real. They impact us. But our faith? Well, our faith is often experienced as unreal, something we simply believe and hope to experience as real when we die, but it doesn’t impact us in an experiential, real way right now.

So is it surprising to learn that the faith of most American Christians makes very little practical difference in their lives?[1] In terms of what we believe, we differ significantly from non-Christians. But in terms of how we live—what we do with our time, how we spend our money, even our basic moral practices—we differ very little. Where is the radical, transforming power Christians are supposed to be experiencing?

You Ought To . . .

If you have ever complained to another Christian about not experiencing the transformation that the Bible promises, you might have run into a dose of righteous indignation. The problem, I can hear someone saying, is that you aren’t taking the Word of God seriously! You aren’t committed enough! You aren’t praying enough! You aren’t willing to count the cost! You aren’t preaching enough against sin! You ought to put God first, ought to witness more, ought to read your Bible more, ought to be in church more, ought to, ought to, ought to!

Who could argue against any of this? It’s all true. We ought to! Yet the more fundamental question is, why don’t we? Is it really just a matter of our lack of willpower? Are we really going to change ourselves or others by proclaiming these oughts more loudly, with more anger, and with more frequency? This approach may indeed motivate people to change their behavior, at least temporarily, but it doesn’t usually result in a permanent change in heart or attitude. It doesn’t transform us in the core of our being.

Often people try hard to do all the oughts, but eventually they grow tired. Striving to fulfill an ought on the basis of sheer commitment is fatiguing, especially when the ought flies in the face of what we experience as real. Remember, it’s not what we believe intellectually that impacts us; it’s what we experience as real.The ought to approach pits an ought that we believe is true against everything we experience as real. Because what we experience as real impacts us, the ought is going to have a hard time winning.

Even if the ought does win by our sheer willpower, can we say that this victory is evidence of the abundant life Jesus came to give us? Are our efforts to be more loving, more joyful, more peaceful, or more holy really what is meant when the Bible talks about the fruit of the Holy Spirit and the new righteousness we have in Christ Jesus? I don’t believe so.

Rest and Reality

While there is an important place for endeavoring to fulfill oughts in the Christian life, the most fundamental thing believers need is to have regular times when they rest in an experience of Jesus as real. We need to have times when we cease from all striving and experience as real the truth that Jesus passionately loves us as we are, not because of what we do. We need to rest in a real experience of God’s care for us, God’s joy over us, and God’s peace with us. We desperately need to have times when we simply experience Jesus face to face with the same intimacy and realness that a husband and wife share (Exod. 33:11; Isa. 62:5; Eph. 5:25–32).

Unlike the popular ought to approach, this book argues that the solution to the lack of transformation in our lives is not to strive harder. Indeed, I will show that striving on our own is part of the problem, not the solution. The solution, rather, is to do less. In one sense the solution is to do nothing but to do it as we rest in an experience of the love of God in Christ as real.

Imaginative Prayer

Church folk often assume the difference between those who are passionate about prayer and those who are not is the level of commitment, but I’m convinced this judgment is misguided. Over the last twenty-five years I’ve come to see that the difference is rather that people who are passionate about prayer tend to experience prayer differently than others. They experience prayer as being about real things. They thus experience prayer as important, meaningful, and rewarding.

By contrast, those of us who find it hard to get passionate about prayer typically experience prayer as little more than an obligation. It does not seem real to us. It’s not necessarily that we’re less committed. To the contrary, it may take more commitment for us to pray ten minutes than it does for passionate people to pray one hour! It’s just that we haven’t learned how to experience the things of God as real in prayer.

The all-important question and the question the modern church rarely if ever asks is, how do some people experience prayer in this powerful real fashion? The answer this book proposes is consistent with Scripture and church tradition but utterly surprising to most modern people. It is that people who are passionate about prayer tend to be people who, usually without knowing it, use their imaginations in prayer in a way that other people do not.They may picture Jesus in their minds when they talk to him. They may hear Jesus responding to their words when they pray. They may see with the mind’s eye the person they’re praying for and perhaps imaginatively signify that the person being prayed for is benefiting from the prayer.

The particulars vary greatly, but in all cases these people vividly and concretely enter into an imaginative world that they experience as real.They somehow have hit on the secret of opening the imagination to the Holy Spirit to make the things of God real to them. Anyone who experienced what they experience when they pray certainly would do more of it! And anyone who experienced prayer as sheer obligation, as most of us do, would tend to do less of it.

Experiencing Spiritual Truth as Real

Just as many of us struggle to feel passionate about prayer, we also struggle to experience spiritual truth as real in our lives. For example, Scripture says Christians are temples of the Holy Spirit, but how many of us feel that way? As with prayer, we have largely forgotten how important imagination is when it comes to experiencing spiritual truth. This is hardly surprising, for as we shall see, we all have been strongly influenced by the scientific revolution and Enlightenment worldview. Unlike most people throughout history, including people in biblical times and culture, we tend to view the imagination not as a vehicle to access reality but as a way to flee from reality. Tragically, we view imagination primarily as a means to create fantasy. We have been taught to distrust the imagination in spiritual matters—a distrust that has catastrophic consequences for our spiritual growth.

We have largely forgotten the truth that while the imagination certainly can be merely imaginative, it also can be the means by which we experience spiritual truths as real. As this book will show, the Bible as well as church history teach that a central way people experience the living God and are transformed is in our imaginations.

For example, the apostle Paul contrasts the veiled minds of unbelievers who have been blinded by the god of this age with the unveiled minds of believers who are enabled by the Holy Spirit to see the glory of the Lord in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 3:14–4:6). As they do so, Paul says, they are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor. 3:18). The seeing, clearly, is of a spiritual sort and takes place in what today we would call our imaginations.

We might say imagination, when guided by the Holy Spirit and submitted to the authority of Scripture, is our main receptor to the spiritual world. Sadly, the modern Western world has been largely dismissive of this receptor. This, to a large degree, explains why modern believers do not experience their faith as real and do not experience radical Spirit-inspired transformation. It also explains why, though we try so hard, we gain so little and are so tired.

From my personal experience as well as fifteen years of conducting Experiencing Jesus seminars, I can tell you that for many people, nothing is as transforming as the realization that you need to rest rather than work harder and the discovery that you can experience Jesus as real by allowing the Holy Spirit to inspire your imagination.

Outline of This Book

I will develop my case in the following manner. Part 1 of this book shows why resting in Christ is absolutely essential for healthy Christian growth. Chapter 1 exposes the futility of what I call the try harder solution—the mistaken assumption that any problem can be overcome by working harder at it. In chapter 2 I’ll explain why we struggle against what the Bible usually calls the flesh, the worldview that keeps us from experiencing the truth about God and the truth about us. In chapter 3 I show why the try harder solution is counterproductive by fleshing out four fundamental aspects of the flesh. Chapter 4 shows how the Holy Spirit overcomes our bondage to the flesh by countering these four aspects of the flesh. It also shows why we need to cease from our striving if we are going to allow the Holy Spirit to do this liberating work in our lives.

Part 2 demonstrates why the imagination is so central to spiritual growth and how the Holy Spirit uses it to make Jesus real to us. Chapter 5 shows how central the imagination is to everything we experience as real. In chapter 6 I demonstrate from the Bible and church history how central imagination is to experiencing Jesus as real.

Chapter 7 outlines an imaginative spiritual exercise I call resting in Christ. This book is largely a written version of a seminar I have led on this form of prayer over the last sixteen years. During this time I have consistently found that the discipline of resting in Christ, if practiced regularly, can be a means of revolutionizing the spirituality of people. By focusing on the use of Spirit-inspired imagination in prayer, resting in Christ positions people to experience Jesus in a face to face manner (Exod. 33:11) that can be as real as any relationship in life. Frankly, I know of no other spiritual discipline that is as transforming and as healing as the discipline of resting in Christ.

In chapter 8 I provide an example from my own life of how the Lord can use our times of resting in Christ to free us from the deceptive messages of traumatic memories. In chapter 9 I respond to three obstacles and objections people sometimes confront as they endeavor to allow God to use their imaginations to transform them. In particular, I show how the concern that using the imagination is a New Age practice is completely unfounded and damaging.

Finally, in part 3 of this book I provide three case studies of people whose lives have been transformed by resting in Christ. I had the privilege of working with Mark and Joan, the two people whose stories are told respectively in chapters 10 and 11. Chapter 12 is about a woman named Roxanne who also had a profound experience of resting in Christ.

Throughout the book I will illustrate ways we can be transformed from one degree of glory to another as we behold in our minds the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It is my earnest prayer that this book will help readers experience Jesus as real and be continually healed and transformed by this experience.

1

the futility of the

try harder solution

You ought to love your neighbor as yourself. It’s your Christian duty.

The Bible says you should rejoice and give thanks to God in every circumstance. Stop being depressed and start rejoicing!

Jesus commands us not to worry about earthly matters. So stop your worrying! Don’t you trust God?

I know it’s hard work, but one of the fruits of the Spirit is patience. Sometimes you’ve just got to grit your teeth and bear it.

"How can you go on having that ungodly habit of yours when the Bible says Christians are supposed to have self-control?

You ought to have more respect for yourself and concern for your Christian witness!"

You ought to. You need to. You’ve got to. You’re supposed to. You better." Do these sorts of exhortations sound familiar? Perhaps you have heard admonitions such as these from the pulpit, from books, or from Christian friends. Indeed, maybe you, like many others, were raised on them. They are usually spoken with the best of intentions. But do they actually work in changing people for the better? Have they ever helped you grow spiritually in the long run?

What statements such as these have in common is the assumption that willpower and hard work are the primary means by which we grow spiritually.They reflect the prevalent American-Christian belief that a person’s character can be made more Christlike, more fruitful, simply by trying hard.They reflect the frequently held assumption that any lack of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, any deficiency of love, joy, peace, or patience, is primarily the result of a lack of effort on our part to work at producing the fruit.[1] They reflect the misguided view that the problem in people’s lives is their behavior.

The Inadequacy of the Try Harder Solution

The try harder solution is popular because it’s simple and seems so commonsensical. Just let people know what they’re supposed to do and motivate them to do it. It’s that simple. Not only that, but the try harder solution often seems to produce immediate results. If exhorted in the right way, using the right motivation, many people will respond by changing their behavior, at least in the short term.

You Can’t Simply Will Yourself into Spiritual Fruit

In the long term, however, the try harder solution rarely works. I do not mean to suggest there is no place for exhortations that encourage people to try harder. Also, I certainly don’t want to be understood as saying there is no place for the exercise of our wills in our spiritual growth.The choices we make and the will we exert are extremely important. What I am saying, however, is that we are being naive and unbiblical if we think that our effort is the primary way we bring about fundamental change in our lives. While willpower plays a role in overcoming behavioral problems, it cannot itself change fundamental aspects of a person’s character. For example, willpower alone cannot make an unloving person into a loving person or a depressed person into a joyful person.

Indeed, when it comes to fundamental aspects of a person’s character, exhortations to try harder

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[rosanna_faaola · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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