The Great Pretender

God gave us, not only two eyes, but more importantly, two sets of eyes: our physical eyes, and our spiritual eyes of the heart. We work at keeping our physical eyes healthy, e.g., with ‘20/20 vision’, but we tend to focus them on spiritually unhealthy stuff. The stuff on which we repeatedly focus our physical eyes seeps in and eventually gets locked deep inside of our spirit, coloring and shading our spiritual eyesight, in general, and especially to what God promises. Living in a carnal world, it seems rather impossible to reverse this dynamic in order to have well developed spiritual sight and discernment, both insight and ‘outsight’. Outsight (yep, it’s a real word) refers to being able to perceive externally, beyond yourself and your normal frame of reference. 

Could the key answer to this conundrum be something as simple as..... pretending? As children, we all learned to pretend, and we got pretty good at it. What happened to this critical skill as we aged? Out the door it went! Yet Jesus says to believe upon Him, and to come to Him as children. Most sermons I have encountered that touch on this topic speak of the innocent faith of children. They skip over or fail to consider the keen ability of children to pretend. In pretending, children act as if there is a ‘supra-reality’ that temporarily transcends their current, factual actuality. The stronger their intensity to ‘act-in’ this supra-reality, the weaker their desire to ‘act-out’ their factual actuality, and the more fun and joy they experience. As a result, they not only look forward to their next pretending session with friends, but individually they even create pretense scenarios. We’ve all ‘been there, done that’, right?

Friend, this may well be what Jesus is calling you and me to do, and to be concerning the great, promised-based supra-reality He has made available to us. His supra-reality transcends every known factual actuality we can ever encounter. Our ability to walk in His supra-reality requires a less sharp set of physical eyes ever ready focus on harsh actualities surrounding us, and a keen set of spiritual eyes that lock onto God’s exceeding promises, extract critical insight therein, and apply effective outsight within our world.

As you rekindle your pretending skill and flame, you will increasingly become God’s ‘Great Pretender, infusing fresh, greater meaning into a phrase from the song by this title (“The Great Pretender”, by The Platters, 1956):

Oh-oh, yes I’m the great pretender...
Too real is this feeling of make-believe...

~o~

Consider this summary in rhyme:

 
God’s promises for life require an imagination actuated.
But what is the key to getting your imagination activated?
It’s pretending - acting-out what we imagine as Truth in God’s Book,
Irrespective of actualities on which we must daily look.

If ‘believing/having faith’ you find too difficult,
Try pretending – your key to start getting God’s result.
Remember, it’s something you did so well as a child,
That critical skill with which you should now reconcile.

Are God’s promises to you dead words, not worth the read,
Or life-giving source on which you daily look and feed?
Walking by faith requires imagination’s proactive use.
Try pretending’s child-like way; give imagination a boost.

Don’t think God’s concerned with what you imagine? Check this out:

--And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5)

--And the Lord smelled a soothing aroma. Then the Lord said in His heart, “I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done. (Genesis 8:21)

--He has shown strength with His arm; He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. (Luke 1:51)

Happy Pretending~