Think Again!

Chapter 16: Maximizing God’s ROI: Cultivate Your Imagination • 147

and dreams, their hopes and fears. I try to see them as God sees them, people waiting to be liberated into participation in his Kingdom. Imagination looks beneath the surface of pain and despair and sees a new situation of beauty and hope. Imagination sees what is created in the image of God, waiting to be set free by the Spirit, making people to be who they were meant to be. Imagination is not wiping the slate clean but building on the good that is already there. You need imagination to do that kind of work – to see the good and liberate it. But that kind of imagination involves anguish and pain. You are in good company because the prophets and apostles before you lived lives of anguished imagination. They knew what it was to invite critics, attract unhealthy dependence, and craft a message out of their anguish. But there is yet another challenge to cultivating your imagination: It takes time, effort, and failure. Time A good return on investment takes a long time to produce. Matthew 25.19 says, “Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them.” The effective stewards, those who doubled the venture capital given to them, took a long time to achieve that return. They did not pursue “get rich quick” schemes. Imagination waits in expectation that God will give wisdom, but maybe not on your timetable: “They that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength (Isa. 40.31).” This is not a despairing waiting, but an expectant waiting, a peaceful waiting. Imagination is at work while you wait. This is the waiting that the apostles had when Jesus told them to wait for the coming of the Spirit. Imagination takes time .