Visualizing What God Has for Us

Our last meditation led us to reflect a little on Jabez’s very expressive “Oh,” which evokes so much about the life of prayer. We said that in the life of prayer and the life of faith, it is so important to reach that red-hot point, that point of focus, passion, urgency, and extreme need, when we come and throw ourselves at the feet of the King and ask for justice and grace for a pressing need we have.

I was saying that God often waits until our life, our prayer, our petitions reach that point of focus, because often we are asking without understanding everything our request entails.

Sometimes we are not even prepared to process what we are asking of the Lord. Sometimes we have not refined our petitions enough for the elements of selfishness and carnality within them to fall away, so that our prayer has that quality of purity and alignment with the will of God and the principles of the Kingdom of God. And God spends time waiting, allowing us simply to work through these things before answering our petitions.

Often God even waits until we are emotionally prepared and mature enough to process the answer we are asking of the Lord and hold on to it, instead of squandering it through an immature character that would waste God’s blessing if He gave it to us at the appropriate time.

These are all reasons why God waits for our prayer to reach the level of purity and urgency expressed by that evocative “Oh” of Jabez.

Another thing that exclamation of Jabez suggests to me is that sometimes we need to daydream. We need to visualize in our minds and in the Spirit the things we want, to see them as though in three dimensions. All of this helps give power and effectiveness to the petitions we bring before the Lord.

Jabez said, “Oh, if only You would bless me.” It is as though he were visualizing that other life he desired, an alternative to the gloomy, sad, and to some extent unsuccessful life he was living. I imagine that at some point he was walking along a lonely road or looking out a window and dared to daydream. He dared to visualize the things he wanted to receive from God, to visualize what his life would be like if God granted certain requests.

I believe that when he said, “Oh, if only You would bless me,” he was unconsciously thinking about what his life would be like, what his social standing would be, what his financial situation would be, what influence and reputation he would have. All these things were being visualized in that “Oh” he uttered, weren’t they? We have to visualize.

The Bible says that in Hebrews chapter 11 the heroes of faith, including Moses, were looking toward that city built by God, not made by human hands, and greeted it. You do not greet something you have not seen in your mind, and they lived within the blessing they were seeing. That is why Moses left behind the privileges of Egypt: he was visualizing something different that God had for him.

I have learned in my life that visualizing, daydreaming, imagining the things we are asking of the Lord and seeing them on the screen of our minds—as with many other things in life—daydreaming, visualizing things, developing the ability to see things in three dimensions in our minds, has been a tremendous resource in my professional and ministerial life for many things I have wanted to do. And I believe we Christians do not daydream enough because, I think, no one has told us that we can do this; and when we were children, our parents did not help us develop that imagination, that ability to see things.

I have learned that this is a great resource for the life of faith, and that we have to visualize things as though we were savoring them, as though we were seeing them right there in three dimensions. That, too, is something like part of the act of prayer itself. Often the Holy Spirit Himself will lead us to visualize things.

That is why God gives us visions. That is why, for example, I see Joseph seeing his parents and his brothers bowing before him: it was like a vision of the future. And I believe Joseph drew strength from that vision for a long time when he was in prison, when others were accusing him and it seemed as though there was no hope for him. It is possible that those dreams were there sustaining him. In the same way, dreams of what God has told us are very important and keep the Word of God alive within us. That is why it is so important, isn’t it?

Jabez dares to imagine an alternative for his life. That “Oh” suggests that he was not content with his life, that he needed a change and was rebelling against his situation. That is why that “Oh” was so important. God bless you, and we will continue our meditation later.