Did this happen to you in life? Did you get scared as a child over something that caused you to create an “icon” in your imagination, an image that still sits on the desktop of your mind today?
Let me illustrate. When I was about four years old, we had a puppy on Hughes Street in Wichita Falls. It was a dark winter evening when my mom and sister went out the back kitchen door to feed the dog. I tagged along this one time, and as we stepped out the door my sister innocently said to my mom, “I wonder it that man will be out there, again.” Suddenly I was scared. I thought to myself, “What? A man? There’s a man out there? Are we in danger?” I got scared. You see, the night before there was an innocent man minding his own business down the side street, under a street lamp. It was not scary, at all. But I did not know the context of my sister’s innocent question. It caused a fear to rise up in me, and thoughts of murder, stabbing with a knife, or some such danger that I had heard on the television came to my mind. Seriously.
It created an “icon” in my mind: a dangerous dark figure who was going to “get me.” It haunted me again, later in life. In the sixth grade, we did three-dimensional art work inside a shoe box for art class. Remember those? The art piece by Joey F. was the same thing: a man he saw out his bedroom window, smoking under a lamp post. Scary!
Many of us have these “icons” in our minds. Some might be from our flesh, and some might be God letting us know that this “icon” has some kind of control over us. These “icons” become “vain imaginations” that need to be torn down, as they keep us from receiving the knowledge of God (2 Cor 10:4-5).
What can we do to get rid of these “vain imaginations?” Let me tell you about a fun experiment we did on a Pure Heart Weekend a few years ago.
One weekend Deanna revealed that she is often tormented by old memories from her childhood, memories that were scary and left her terrified at times as a child. One Halloween, she said, when she was a small child no more than 5, she either saw this for real or she imagined it: she has in her mind the scary memory of a skeleton riding a mini-bike down the street.
Now, before you laugh, remember your childhood. Most of us, when we were small children, heard our family talk about something scary, or we saw something scary, and our mind created a frightening “icon.” We made up an image in our mind that can remain even today. Deanna had such a memory, and from her childhood this “skeleton on a mini-bike” had tormented her often.
On that weekend, she said if her husband were out of town, she would feel fearful and alone at night. At such a time, her adult fear and worry would trigger old childhood memories with similar emotions, and Deanna would recall her childhood memory of the skeleton. The old childhood dread would be stirred up. Now you understand, as an adult she did not imagine that this skeleton was outside her house on the mini-bike! No, no. It’s just that her momentary fear as an adult was compounded by the arousal of her old, familiar childhood fear. She would feel more fear than she needed to.
At the retreat, I had her get down on her knees to pray. We prayed to the Father, thanked Him for her union with Christ, for the mind of Christ, and for resurrection life with its authority and power. Then I told Deanna to command that “imagination” in her mind to come present itself. We paused a moment. I asked, “Can you see the skeleton on the mini-bike?” She waited a moment, then she said, “Yes. I see him.”
“Is it riding around on the street?”
“Yes.”
I said to her, “Walk out into the yard with authority. Scream at that skeleton like you would command your disobedient dog, and tell him to get over here. Tell that skeleton that you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, that you have the mind of Christ, and that you have authority over him, that he is no longer going to harass you and scare you!”
She yelled at the imaginative icon. There was a pause, then she told me what happened: “He came over, and as he approached he got smaller and smaller. He got so tiny, he was trembling. When I told him to ‘Get out of here!’ he shot-off like a rocket, out of sight! He’s gone.”
With that, Deanna and the Holy Spirit took authority over that imagination in her mind. Feel free to try this at home.
-Carter
(Tell me how you need help with the renewing of your mind. I’ll try to provide help in future blog posts.)