And I said to the king, “If it please the king, let letters be given me for the governors of the provinces beyond the River, that they may allow me to pass through until I come to Judah, and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king’s forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress which is by the temple, for the wall of the city and for the house to which I will go.” And the king granted them to me because the good hand of my God was on me.
Nehemiah 2:7-8
Meditate to create. Your spirit is a “creation chamber.”
Whatever you put in it grows. When God said, “Let Us make man in Our image,” one of the many qualities He gave you was an imagination. But it works best when you use it to create with the Creator. Your imagination gives you the ability to rewind the tape playing in your mind and visit your past or fast forward it to peer into a potential future. Nehemiah, in preparing for his big “ask” to the king, prayed to God for help. This invited God to strategically speak into his plans. Bringing God into your planning allows you to see what God foresees so you can be ready to capture the future as God creates it.
Meditate + Incubate = Imaginate. One quality of all successful leaders, whether they are athletes, business owners, people in ministry, or moguls in the marketplace, is they all leverage their imagination in a productive way. How do they do this? By bringing God into their planning process through prayer and meditation. This allows Him to “download” His thoughts and His “creative process” into your plans for you to accept or reject. In any new venture you are beginning, bringing your plans and putting them before God during prayer invites Him to touch, increase, and multiply your efforts. As you bring God into your plans, insights for the journey ahead will spring alive in your heart that come with His foresight and favor. Whether I am preparing to speak to a large group, sell a big client, or lead a new team, I enter my meditative planning state with an invitation to God to breathe on me. With paper and pen handy, I document what I hear and perceive, for God has chosen journaling to clarify through the pen what the Spirit has spoken. By “imaginating” with God, He will show you what to anticipate on the road ahead and how to plan for the unplannable.
REFLECT TO CONNECT
- What would be a productive vs. destructive use of your imagination?
- What project could you bring God into so He can co-create with you in your imagination?
- What does it mean to “see yourself doing it” before you do it? What did Jesus mean when He said that He could only do what He saw the Father doing? Did He see the future in prayer?
Bringing God into your planning allows you to see what God foresees. When you see it, you can seize it.
