Key Scripture: Proverbs 28:26

He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool: but whoso walketh wisely, he shall be delivered.

Relevance

"You saw her bathing on the roof. Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you. The baffled king composing hallelujah."

Leonard Cohen's famous song, "Hallelujah," and King David's brief, adulterous affair depict the lures that draw us away from the presence of God to the distant, sinful realms of the imagination. 

When King David saw Bathsheba on the roof, he spent time looking. He looked long enough to engage the spirit of lust. In doing this, he opened a particular door for a brief moment when nobody else was around. 

That longer-than-necessary look permitted Satan to embed the picture of Bathsheba's body in David's mind. The length of time was crucial, as it allowed the image sufficient time to download from his head to his heart, thereby fulfilling the catch by giving desire a foothold. Once there, it dug in like a fishhook.

Comparable to most people who have been on that hook, lust convinced David not to remove it, despite any inner wrestling he may have done. You may think that is obvious. But the spiritual changes that occur to get to that place are more subtle than we are awake. 

David was drawn out of the Spirit—his sole fortress of immunity.  

Once the image was in his heart, the fishhook dug in, causing spiritual paralysis. He couldn't remove the hook because the lust was more potent than his fortitude or armour. It was authorised to bypass it. David chose his own armour—the power of the Living god— to fight Goliath, and won. Yet, he had no power at all in this battle of unlawful passion. Had he wanted to win, he could have prayed for help. However, with lust being lust, people rarely ask for God's help.

Had David remained in the same Spirit that caused him to dance before the Lord, the scenario would have been vastly different. It wouldn't have been a situation of a married man ogling over a parapet.

In the Spirit, David may have seen her by chance. Still, he would have been oblivious to the sexual element and walked away without any images attaching themselves, leaving her to her privacy (if you can call it that).

David would have looked away without giving her a second thought, as if he were looking at a tree, a house or a horse. That is the purity of mind the Holy Spirit gives the believer who relinquishes his mind, heart, and soul to Christ.

It is also the method we employ to distinguish if we are led by the Holy Spirit or have allowed ourselves to walk in the spirit of the flesh. 

This scenario provides a further revelation: David's big failing. In that fleeting time-lapse, he was not present in the "right here, right now" moment where the Holy Spirit dwells, and where we must live daily. He allowed himself to be momentarily transported into an ungodly, imaginative world, where Satan more easily counselled him and counsels us should we venture there. 

When Jesus told us to deny ourselves daily, that also includes denying the mind's visits to the world of evil thoughts. Many Christians spend a considerable amount of their lives visiting and revisiting those imaginative places, justifying the trips as inner battles between the flesh and the Spirit. But it is far more sinister than that. 

We've all experienced challenging temptations that transport us into our imagination, whether sexual, as in the case of David, or themes of ego, power, revenge, anger, or similar, where we rehearse scenarios in our mind, even carrying some out. 

The importance of the here and now 

2 Corinthians 10:5 instructs us to cast down evil thoughts. We do this to stop entering our imaginative world, committing sin, and then returning to the present to repent. We can't effectively repent without sincere repentance, laying ourselves at the foot of the Cross. 

We save ourselves a lot of heartache by remaining in the here and now and the presence of the Holy Spirit. By the here and now, I mean we discard the imagination when it tries to take over, and stay as we are right now in this world. We remain the person we are now, the same age, with the same occupation, looks, and intelligence, or lack thereof—reality. We must live in reality every minute of every day. It's our only safe and proper place where the Lord can minister to us and use us. 

Sinful imagination takes us to other places altogether, away from the protection and direction of the Holy Spirit. To combat this to-and-fro confused double life, the Lord wants us to always remain in conscious clarity, where we have the presence of mind, as opposed to subconscious daydreaming.

This is also the only place we can fulfil scripture's 'sound mind' conviction. We cannot be of sound mind in unholy imaginative places, which create chaos and lead to mental and spiritual instability. 

If our imaginative place is harmless and not associated with sin, then that’s fine. However, danger lies in taking our eyes and thoughts off the present, where our God, ministry, and prayer life are and which is the only place we can genuinely exist in the Spirit.  

King David wasn't the only biblical person we can illustrate with imagination troubles. 

The disciple Judas tried to follow Christ, but his imaginative desire for wealth and power continually kept him distant from the spiritual riches of walking with Jesus. Therefore, his spirit remained small, and his lust grew to the size of what his spirit should have been. 

Again, Ananias and Sapphira in the Book of Acts attempted to deceive the other disciples after they failed to acknowledge their greed and pride. This husband-and-wife team may have even been at Pentecost and baptised with the tongues of fire, yet they were still able to fall into cheating and lying despite their new empowerment.  

How do we fix it?

We must address how we use our imagination. We do that by shutting the doors to the various entrapments and not opening them again.

We fall when thinking we can take a sneak peek or sneak thought of the lure without the hook penetrating. Modern technology and humanism have turned this menace into a pandemic, including among Christians. 

What we should understand is that each mental visit to that iniquitous abstract world is a thought-sin requiring repentance.  

We may think, "I can't help it?" "I'm only human?" "Just because I'm in jail doesn't mean I can't look out!" "A few short thoughts of vengeance won't hurt me",  "A quick glimpse is ok", "It's only a white lie", "I'd like to see him killed." These and other thoughts open those dreaded doors.   

There are many lures mentioned in the Book of Proverbs that God tells us to address. I have listed a few below. They begin in the mind and use the same image transfer process from the mind to the heart. It all needs to end.  

Prov 6:16-19 These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, A heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that are swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.

The Lord hates these spots in our garments, and some keep them all their lives. These and similar issues begin in the imagination in times of weakness, and we are drawn away from the presence of the Holy Spirit, into a world where we relinquish control.

If we want to be of any royal value to our Lord and Saviour, we must put a stop to the visits. Overcoming these very things is a life pursuit on our journey toward maturity and spiritual elderhood. 

Result

There is a place in the Spirit where we grow beyond the plagues of lust and the imagination that turn the keys that generate them. This is the land of spiritual peace, the Sabbath or Rest the Lord calls us to live in (Hebrews 4:1). 

Within that broad rest is a rest from temptation. We have resisted Satan, and he has fled for a time. We stood firm in the light, and darkness retreated. That is why, once Satan has retreated, we must keep the doors closed and the light on. 

As a final note, some might think we are judged by our actions, rather than our thoughts, and thus rendered innocent. Yet, think on this. Since Jesus judged us guilty of adultery if we have imagined the act, thoughts are now actions if they reach the heart. 

Today's prayer

Precious Father, thank you for the innocence of thought to which we can attain. How beautiful it would be to have a mind like Jesus. 

Photo by Laura Baker