We love the story of the prodigal son because we too were welcomed back with a robe and a ring. But sometimes we don’t feel like He is celebrating us each day" We know Jesus said He would be with us and that God’s unmerited favour is upon all His children, but we don’t feel it.

Once when I felt like this, I discovered the problem was in my imagination and not with God. Our imagination creates our feelings and affects our behaviour. The Bible says, "As a man thinks in his heart so is he."  The imagination creates its own reality, and even if something is not true it can still affect you. If you think you are a grasshopper in the face of giants and therefore can’t enter the Promised Land, you will be right.  Or even if God is favouring you but you don’t think He is, you will live in fear and insecurity- a crippled and stilted life. Our wrong thinking doesn’t change the fact that God is with us, but it changes our ability to feel it and enjoy our Father. But if we imagine the truth; that He is in us and walks with us and has His loving arms about us all day, we are confident and enjoy beautiful fellowship with Him.

God gave us our imagination to be a meeting place with Him, so the enemy of our soul tries to fill it with memories of inadequate fathers, wrong images, or seeing our lives as small and inconsequential.  In the end, the One who gave us the imagination as a sanctuary in which to meet God and walk together with Him, is squeezed out of His meeting place.

Friend, reclaim your imagination and fill it with true thoughts of our Father’s presence and favour toward you. Close your eyes and imagine Father favouring you, loving you, coming to you, embracing you and helping you.  For that is all true; anything else is a lie - imagine the truth and let faith arise.