Imagine God’s Good Intentions

Recently my 18-year-old daughter spent 2 days in the hospital with a resistant strain of pneumonia. When the doctor’s strategy didn’t work for her, we were tempted to worry. It was also difficult to see her suffering and feeling so bad.

My wife spent almost the whole time with her and the other children were stuck at home with dad. Her illness caused serious changes in our regular schedule and quite a bit of inconvenience for our family. We were forced to miss our church’s yearly marriage conference where I always teach and my wife and I get to spend 2 days alone. Her illness and all that came with it did not feel like a blessing from the Lord.

During this same time, I have been studying the concept of hegeomai, which means to guide your imagination into seeing God’s good intentions in all that He allows into our lives. James, the half brother of the Lord used this word to give one of the greatest commands in the scriptures. He told 1st century Jewish believers that God wanted them to find total joy in their adversities. Here is what he said

James 1:2-4 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4 Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

He told them and now us that being surrounded by difficult events in life is a reason to rejoice. The word consider is a command and indicates that God has enabled us to actually do this. When we are suddenly surrounded by difficult circumstances, we are to “hegeomai” about these circumstances and if we do this properly, it will cause us to view them with pure joy.

So, what is hegeomai and how do we use it to arrive at a place of pure joy about the difficult events of our lives?

First, the koine Greek word hegeomai means to guide your imagination. It means to use the creative faculties that God designed into the human soul to envision different scenarios. Normally, when adversity hits we use hegeomai to visualize all the other negative things that might come from this event. Seeing these other adversities does not make us feel joy. Instead we use our imagination to produce fear, anger, discouragement and other mental sins. Instead, James tells us to use our imagination to visualize God’s good intentions and to see all the good things He intends to bring to you through this adversity. James says to stop visualizing the negative and visualize God’s good that He is creating in our lives. If we will do this and actually believe in these scenarios of good, it will bring us great joy instead of fear and anger.

This is what I have been learning and putting into practice in my own life. I have to tell you that the application of this concept is not easy but yields incredible rewards in every area of life. I have stopped visualizing so much negative and feeling discouraged about it and instead I have been asking, “what good are you doing here Father?”

When our daughter came home from the hospital, my wife and I decided to teach this life approach to our children. We made a list of all the good things that we could see that God had brought about and might bring about later. We came up with 13 items that God had or would do for us that we considered good. Then we sat down with our children and asked them to think of good things that God might bring out of this event. They thought of things immediately and as we read down the list and added to it, we were all amazed at what God was doing. We went from worrying, being inconvenienced and frustrated to being thankful and joyful that God loved us so much to bring all of this about. My wife and I were very grateful for having the opportunity to brainstorm about God’s goodness with our kids. We took the opportunity to train them to look for the good God is working in the lives of His children.

I would like to make a suggestion for your life. Look at something in your life that is creating trouble for you right now. Use your imagination to think of all the possible good things that God could bring about from this difficulty. One of our “goods” was that while mom was away, the other kids and dad had a chance to bond in a close way. Think of every conceivable good that might come out of this. Then, visualize God actually bringing it about and see yourself in it. See it happening and feel the pleasure and confidence that you will feel when it happens. Enter into the good intentions of your heavenly Father using the eyes of your heart and allow yourself to feel the joy that comes from being loved and cared for by God.

Also, I would suggest that you make this a regular practice with every difficult event that happens in your life. Write down all the good things that you think God might be trying to accomplish using the difficulty. This will enable you to dwell on God’s good intentions for you instead of what you are missing or what you are losing. This is how you find total joy in adversity.