Imagination is a God-given gift; but if it is fed dirt by the eye, it will be dirty. All sin, not least sexual sin, begins with the imagination. Therefore what feeds the imagination is of maximum importance in the pursuit of kingdom righteousness.
Interpretation
Imagination is valuable but must be nurtured thoughtfully to promote righteousness.
The quote highlights that imagination is a divine gift that can lead to positive or negative outcomes based on what is consumed visually. Therefore, being mindful of the influences that feed our imagination is crucial for cultivating a righteous lifestyle and avoiding sinful thoughts and actions.
In practice
In a sermon about the importance of safeguarding your mind.
Both God's love and God's wrath are ratcheted up in the move from the old covenant to the new, from the Old Testament to the New. These themes barrel along through redemptive history, unresolved, until they come to a resounding climax - in the cross.
It is a cheap zeal that reserves its passions to combat only the sins and temptations of others.
Many of us in our praying are like nasty little boys who ring front door bells and run away before anyone answers.
There is a certain kind of maturity that can be attained only through the discipline of suffering.
The kingdom of heaven is worth infinitely more than the cost of discipleship, and those who know where the treasure lies joyfully abandon everything else to secure it.
Failure to believe stems from moral failure to recognize the truth, not from want of evidence, but from willful neglect or distortion of the evidence.
The human race has improved everything, but the human race.
It is life, more than death, that has no limits.
All imperfections are forced upon the imperfect, so the 'perfect' can live content and oblivious.
One thing, however, I know with certainty: violence, or the direct threat of violence, of the kind we have seen in the past few days, is totally unjustified as a response to any published word or image.
Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild.
The reason people turn to supernatural explanations is that the mind abhors a vacuum of explanation. Because we do not yet have a fully natural explanation for mind and consciousness, people turn to supernatural explanations to fill the void.
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