Thought Picnic: Getting inspiration from within

Look inside, not up

Writing is an art of spontaneity, one for which I have not planned much before I begin to type. As Laurence Sterne wrote in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, “I begin with writing the first sentence, and trusting to Almighty God for the second.”

Somewhere between the ceiling and heaven, I might look for inspiration, then I realise God lives in me. As with prayers, a Christian need not look to the hills from whence cometh the help of the Psalmist in the Old Testament (Psalm 121:1) when Jesus said, “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me” (John 15:4).

We so easily forget the nearness of the divine already dwelling in us. Rather than using our inner ears and spirituality to listen and hear from the inexhaustible well of inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we look outward for a sign somewhere apart from us.

Just so connected

This is a blessing of connection that we miss because we do not tune in to the frequency of the spiritual radio that God has placed in us. Instead, we look to seemingly unintelligible and indecipherable data from extraterrestrial life forms of which we have barely any concept.

I can attest to the many times when the best ideas, insight, and inspiration have come from the quiet of meditation rather than from someone else. Sometimes, I step into the shower befuddled and step out enlightened.

Elsewhere in the Bible, we read, “For ‘who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?’ But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16). We have the mind of Christ, the Anointed One and His Anointing. That is just mind-blowing, a truth that has long escaped us, abandoned to the traditional hymn that suggests, “God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.” [Hymnal.net E675]

Use God’s library

Indeed, God is omnipotent and omniscient, and every wonder the hymn avers is an attribute of the divine. However, God is not hiding Himself from us, no, not at all.

Rather, He has made the library of His knowledge and wisdom available to us, indwelling our beings and giving us the Holy Spirit to teach us the truth, provide us with understanding, and guide us in all the vicissitudes of life. We are the most equipped for success in life, and we are totally oblivious to that gift.

From the basic things, such as beginning to write the first sentence, to the life-changing decisions of extreme consequence, we have the best resource that the universe has to offer. We can develop the ability to tap this resource by knowing we have it and affirming it from the Word of God, The Bible; His how-to manual.

Faith is making the impossible normal

Take off the limits

To dare to dream the impossible when the dreams are inspired by God who declares through Jesus Christ that with God nothing shall be impossible to him that believes is one key aspect of faith that becomes very personal to those who have experiences in life when looking back cannot explain but fully appreciate with gratitude that they have lived impossible dreams.

I am constantly challenging the frame of reference within which I exist about its limitations, the creeping claws of doubt, disbelief, and despair seek to clamp you down into the perfunctory, the crimps offer what is run-of-mill, as you limp along in life with nothing exceptional for a story or an existence.

Latch unto the extraordinary

Then from within you rises a storm of protest, defying every known physical, mental, or structural boundary, telling you that the lived experience of people who did wonders and told of miracles is not the stuff of fantasy left in the unimaginative construct of the cessationist who has determined and declared that modern day has no need of miraculous living.

Be it the ideas that blow the mind and move the footsteps of mankind in strides too grand to fathom, the thoughts that defy every natural force, the belief that you can write a better story that even fiction would struggle to express, or the knowledge that with God on your side, everything is rigged in your favour, just because it is God’s will and it exists because God so loved the world and for that, He gave us Jesus Christ.

Think the impossible

I feed my thoughts with inspiration and revelation, mountains are to be moved, and problems will pass into the memory of insignificance with the triumph wrought on the cross and lived by faith in God. The insurmountable is reduced to a plain and a man given just 5 weeks to live at prognosis is writing blogs of a miraculous existence some 15 years later. It is no achievement of mine, just the lovingkindness of God, great mercy, amazing favour, and a love that no words can satisfactorily describe.

That is what the Scriptures mean when they say, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.” [BibleHub: I Corinthians 2:9] What God has prepared for my eyes to see, my ears to hear, and my mind to imagine is predicated on my willingness to believe that God can do everything I can find examples and references about God in the Bible that has been done and duly recorded, with the promise that even greater things than those documented things are possible.

Live a different testimony

It is a world ready to be lived in, not many have found the spaceship of faith piloted by Jesus Christ and facilitated by the Holy Spirit to enjoy the stupendous splendour of that world. Until my last breath, I seek to walk and bask the in reality of that world, for that is why I exist.