When I lead prayer seminars on finding a visual “meeting place” with
God, I often bump into fear that this is a version of "guided imagery"
or “visualisation”–a psychological or New Age technique that can be
spiritually hazardous. How does this differ from meeting Jesus in some
internal picture? Have we crossed a line into enemy territory? Or have
we surrendered ground that was created for us and belongs to us?
In
my opinion, guided imagery has become
an evangelical boogie man, drawn on by Christians themselves to induce
fear of
all imagery, imagination and spiritual visions, right across the board
… even
where Scripture itself models and exhorts us to the true and righteous
use of
spiritual sight. There is paranoia of picturing anything, even to the
extreme
that if I picture Jesus I may get demonized. This fear is compounded
when we are asked by someone else to picture something in our minds. If
such fear were
justified, what would we make of reading a novel, or listening to a
story, or hearing
someone report a vision? In each case, a third party is "guiding us"
into a world of "imagery." Must we truly blindfold our spiritual eyes
for fear that seeing anything at all is dangerous? Surely the fear
itself is a door to deception and bondage.
Historically, whenever the church has
repented of spiritual blindness, the Lord has enlightened the eyes of
the heart
and restored the promise of the Holy Spirit for an outpouring of dreams
and visions. And in these cases, the religious spirit has risen against
us to cry idolatry, witchcraft, heresy, or New Age. One might well ask,
if the fruit of these warnings is spiritual blindness, which is the
false teaching? Should we not be far more alarmed that we don’t see at
all, than by what we may see and test by God’s Spirit, His Word, and
His church?
Some simple questions:
1. Does Scripture use imagery? Do the authors of Scripture lead us
into the imaginal world through dreams, visions, symbols and stories?
2. Does Scripture promise a Spirit who will guide us into all truth?
Does He offer us any protection at all from deception, illusion and
vain imagination?
3. Does this same Guide use imagery as He communicates?
4. When a prophet receives a vision and commands us to "behold" or
"gaze" or "lo", what is he telling us to do? When he
provides us with images, colours, textures and sounds, into what is he
guiding us? And what is he modelling? What makes any human safe enough
to say, "picture this"? Should we reject Isaiah or John for saying, "I
saw this … now you look at it too"? Is this really the guided imagery
of men … or is it simply the prophetic ministry of the Spirit?
5. When Hebrews says, "Fix your eyes on Jesus," or Paul says, "I
pray that the eyes of your heart would be enlightened," or Jesus
counsels us to acquire eye-salve, what eyes are they talking about? And
what are those eyes to look at? When Paul says that with "open face",
we behold the glory of the Lord and are changed from glory to glory by the Spirit, how do we do this? And does this sound optional?
We need to ask the Lord to open our spiritual eyes and to heal them
from blindness. We need to then follow the Holy Spirit as He guides us
into the Holy imagery of what David calls "the Hiding Place" where
prayer is a literal meeting with Jesus. There the Good Shepherd will
show and tell His sheep what they need to see and hear. He has promised
to grant us discernment and recognition of truth from error in that
place. And it is this Shepherd who commanded us to fear no evil, but rather, to "look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh."