Vain Imaginations

Hi friends, this is Joni Eareckson Tada and welcome to Joni and Friends. 

Fantasies, silly thoughts, vain imaginations, useless daydreams. These are the sorts of things which, if you let them, will puff themselves up so high in your head and heart that you’d swear they were true. A furtive thought that lingers on your mind and begins to wear a rut, repeating itself time and again. Maybe it could be a false hope; it could be an unfounded fear; whatever it is, it doesn’t belong in your head. It’s nothing but a vain imagination.

And I know from experience that if you let these vain imaginations grab hold of you, they become just that: powerful strongholds. And every time you rehearse that daydream it’s like laying more bricks, making the stronghold higher in your head. The more you repeat the imagination, the more powerful the hold it has on you – so powerful that even when you want to kick the thoughts out of your head, you can’t. The pull of the imagination has become, at that point, too strong.

Now you can try the self-help route, the old turning over a new leaf. “I’m not going to think these thoughts. I’m not going to let these imaginations rule my day. I’m not going to waste any more time daydreaming.” I’ve tried to do that. You know, single-handedly dismantle strongholds in my mind. But it doesn’t work. And that’s why I am so grateful for 2 Corinthians 10:4 because it says, “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.” Christians have got divine power, and that’s the key. Divine power – power to tear down every vain imagination. And the next verse goes on to assure you and me that we can actually “demolish every stronghold that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and [then we can] take captive every thought [and] make it obedient to Christ.”

It is possible. It is within your grasp. You really can make your thoughts obedient to Christ. I’ve tried it, really, it works! Now it may take time, but by the grace of God, that high tower in your thinking – it can come down. For instance, not long ago the Lord gave me power to tear down one of those strongholds in my head. And when it happened, I kind of like to picture it like as a demolished tower, all the stones and the bricks, the mortar, dirt, dust in a big heap. The stronghold is in a rubble, and it no longer has grip on my mind. But the landscape still needs to be cleared. And so every time when I’m tempted to start daydreaming that daydream again, every time by the grace of God, I say “no” to that tempting thought. It’s like a little more of that rubble gets cleared away; a few more bricks get dumped in the ditch. But conversely every time I entertain a tempting thought, every time I let it linger in my head, oh friend, I honestly can almost see that stronghold begin to build itself up from the foundation.

So is there some vain imagination, some stronghold gripping you? Tackle them with divine power – divine demolition – and you make that thought obedient by the grace of Christ – obedient, in fact, to Christ.

And hey, if you need more inspiration, you just have to go to my blog today at joniradio.org. Again, that’s my blog at joniradio.org.

© Joni and Friends