Imagine

You know, I've written about the great and inspirational hero's journey that one of my heroes, Jesus Christ, lived. And I've talked about how that expressed the profound love that he had for humankind. I even described the horrific and unfair and brutal crucifixion you can read about in the. In the Gospels, which are very disturbing, really, if you think about that unfair death. But lately I've continued to think a lot about Jesus, particularly his death when I'm tempted to do wrong or to commit an action that flies in the face of what Jesus preached as far as the way we're supposed to live our lives. And I would encourage you to do the same. Even if Jesus Christ is not someone who you follow as intensely as I do, it can be very powerful to match up that type of preaching with the temptations that you have. So let me give you an example. Frankly, it's difficult to steal or cheat or lie or lust or covet and otherwise selfishly and sinfully act when you're consistently dwelling upon how much God wants for you to be an obedient and precious child. And that can be a yearning so great by God that he sent his one and only beloved son, Jesus to die on a cross for your sins. So that means that when I get tempted towards doing what I know in my heart to be wrong, I can imagine. I can imagine. And I encourage you to try this exercise out. Imagine, just for a moment, a loving heavenly father gazing down his beloved son Jesus and seeing that son's body brutally scorched, a cat of nine tails tearing his back to shreds, bruising blows to his face, stumbling down upon stones with a massive cross on his back, thick nails thrust into the thicks of his wrist and ankles, cramping horrifically in pain and alone, with a crown of thorns deeply perforating his skull, unending agony and thirst and asphyxiation from hanging and a spear piercing his side. And then imagine how much love for you that took for a father to witness this happening to his own dear son. Try to feel in your being what God must have felt when he saw his perfect son's body destroyed in the most horrific way imaginable. If you yourself have a child, imagine how it would have felt if that had been your own precious, innocent child. Are you able to see now how much God loves you and the great price he and his dear son paid so you could have access to salvation, eternal life. Are you able to better understand why one of the greatest ways in which you can acknowledge this sacrifice is by loving God, loving others, following God's commandments, and walking on a straight, narrow, and admittedly often difficult path. But here's the deal. When you constantly remember and imagine that suffering, it's a very powerful method to keep you on that path. It's a good reason to own and consistently see some kind of imagery of a cross. Like some people tattoo a cross in their bodies, others wore on a necklace, some display as wall art. But no matter the method, that constant reminder of Jesus crucifixion, the imagining of how great God's love is can be very powerful, at least for me. It keeps me wanting and motivated. Do the right things when I know that great sacrifice that was paid, that great gift that was given to me. And if you believe that and you believe that in your heart, man, it's so much easier to make the right choice when the time comes, by God's grace still. But if you remember that death and you remember that sacrifice, you remember that gift, and you remember the massive amount of love that it took for that gift to be given to you, it's very, very hard to live a life in which you're basically defying the sanctity of that gift. So imagine. Imagine the death. Imagine the love. Imagine and keep that on your mind constantly, in some way, even visually cross on the wall. You know, some people, again, will do a cross tattoo. I didn't do that. But I've got cross necklaces. I've got, of course, a Bible by my bedside. But these constant reminders of how great that love was and how precious you are can really keep you on the right and the straight and the narrow path. So I hope that imagination exercise will be helpful for you.