Imagination and Faith — Paris Reidhead

Faith in God's Purpose and the Christian Life

On Friday night last, we talked about faith in reference to our God's purpose and desire that we should not be wasted, and then we spoke about faith in respect to believing that there's a distinction between intellectual assent and faith, trying to define the term in that context.

Then I spoke to you on the last morning hour, Monday I believe, on, by grace are you saved through faith? Now today I want you to see another aspect of faith in respect to the Christian life, and I begin reading with Ephesians 3 and verse 14.

Christ Dwelling in the Heart by Faith

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.

Now that's the text, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that you being rooted and founded in love may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know, and that is to experience the love of Christ, which passes the intellect, the grasp of your intellect, in order that you might be filled unto all of the fullness of God.

Now notice this next text. Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end.

Amen. Now the text again, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. Will you turn to Hebrews chapter 11, the 11th chapter of Hebrews, and I want to read a few verses of comment on this subject of faith.

I'm particularly concerned about the first and the sixth. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And in verse 6, but without faith it is impossible to please him, for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

And the subject today is faith as it relates to these personal aspects of the Christian life. Now let's talk about faith again, so that you get absolutely clear in your mind what it is. I've used this definition, I will probably refer to it again before I leave Sunday night, but don't get weary with me.

If you grasp it and see it and begin to put it to work, it's going to be worthwhile. Faith is the sight of the soul. Faith is the eyes of the human spirit. Faith is the ability of the human mind to see what is not there for eyes yet to see.

But what's going to be there, because it ought to be there. Now it's important for you to have some understanding of this. Faith therefore is very closely linked to imagination. God has given to you most marvelous power.

He's created many things that are stronger, faster, can fly and crawl and all sorts of things, but he has given to you that God-like part of you, that part that's your spirit, he's given to you the same capacities on a limited level that he has on an infinite level.

Now, faith is part of this. Faith is the sight of the soul, that's imagination, that's the ability to look at a tree and see a piece of furniture, to look at ground and see metal and then to see automobiles or tools.

It's the ability to look at the moon and say, we're going to go there and come back safely. Faith is that ability that we have been given of God to imagine and then to implement our imagination. When we lived on the farm in New York State, we had what we called a very clever horse.

Imagination, Intelligence, and Human Invention

Beauty was a very pleasant horse kind of a person and knew lots of things, very smart, too smart for me, for instance, I would ride her and she didn't like to have me. I couldn't figure out, well, there were several reasons why she didn't want me, a pound a reason, I guess, and she didn't want me to ride her.

And so we'd be going along very smoothly and then she would turn on her, just on a dime and leave me on the ground or clinging to her neck or something. It took all the pleasure out of it because I never knew when Beauty was going to do this.

Now, if the girls or my wife rode the horse, she never did that sort of thing. It was just heavy men that she didn't like and she'd found out how to get rid of them. We put her in a pasture with a barred gate and one time we came out and found two of the bars on the ground and Beauty was out alongside of the road eating.

And this got to be kind of a habit. In fact, she'd come to our window and stand there, we'd just stand there quietly until somebody made a noise and then she'd whinny and insist that she have breakfast right then before anybody else ate.

She not only opened the gate for us, but she also opened the gate for the others and showed them how to get out. And when we tied it, then she found out how she could untie the knot. She pulled at it and bit at it until she got the rope cut through or untied and she went out alongside the road where she thought the grass was greener and it probably was.

Now, Beauty was clever and she had learned some things and she remembered them. But she didn't have the kind of intelligence we have. We could devise and invent and imagine a gate that Beauty couldn't open.

We had to do it, it was a little expense, a little effort, but we were able to do it because all she had was instinct and a very limited kind of memory and some type of learned skills. She'd done something and it worked.

God has given to us a far higher kind of intelligence than he's invested in any of his creatures. He's given us the ability to imagine complex, involved, difficult things and then to proceed to bring to pass those things, to invent what is necessary to achieve the goal that we've seen.

Now, if you understand that, then you begin to understand something of why he said he had made us a little lower than the angels and crowned us with glory and honor. And you'll understand why David said, and Christ quoted him, ye are gods.

God has given to us on a finite, limited level, the same attributes that he possesses on an infinite level. And unfortunately, the average person doesn't understand this and the average Christian doesn't seem to understand it.

But our text, this text that I have, that Christ shall dwell in your heart by faith, is like having the key to Fort Knox spiritually and in terms of the accomplishment of God's purpose. It's a marvelous, marvelous truth and I find lots of people can quote it who don't have any understanding of what it means or how it works.

So I'm talking to you today from a first and natural level, how this thing of faith operates, that I'm going to apply it spiritually because I want you to understand the difference it makes. Now, let's take a case in point.

James J. Hill and the Faith to Build the Great Northern Railroad

Many years ago in the state of Minnesota, there was a man who was a Morse code telegraph operator in a railroad office in St. Paul, Minnesota. And his name was James J. Hill. Now, he never made much money.

He wasn't very successful. He had a little home and a family, but somehow deep within him there had always been a desire to achieve and he'd never known quite how to do it. Now, he'd learned the Morse code and that was a trade so he could be a telegraph operator.

But as he listened and as he read the messages he sent for his railroad company and other railroad companies, he realized the sad state of railroading in the Northwest. Now, the Union Pacific had been put through.

That was Abraham Lincoln's great desire to see the United States banned by a railroad. And so a lot of money had been appropriated and a lot of time had gone in and it was really a miracle that got the UP across the country.

But James J. Hill looked at the map that was there and he saw this really almost unexplored great Northwest territory going clear out to the Pacific Coast. And there were three little railroads. One of them went out of Chicago and stopped somewhere.

One of them went out of St. Paul toward Chicago and stopped somewhere. One of them went north toward Duluth and stopped somewhere. One of them went out west. And they just were sort of nothing. And he began to get an idea as he would type out these messages.

Now, get first, I want you to get the first. The first thing that happened was James J. Hill got an idea. He got an idea. And everything worthwhile in life begins with an idea. This is how it all began.

Before there was a world, God had an idea. And when God spoke, he simply spoke his idea into reality. That's what creation is. First you get an idea and then you take the necessary steps to bring it to pass.

Well, James J. Hill got an idea. And his idea was this. Why have three little railroads that don't amount to a hill of beans? Put them together. Put their resources together. And then get some financial help and some assistance.

And get one railroad, one good solid railroad, that in his mind he called the Great Northern Railroad. Wasn't that a good name? Great Northern. Union Pacific was the southern one. He had the Great Railroad and the Northern Railroad.

Great Northern Railroad was his idea. And so the Great Northern Railroad was to have it begin in Chicago and go through Minneapolis and go clear out to Seattle and Tacoma. And open up that whole territory.

And it wouldn't be done with government money the way the U .P. had. It would be done by private financing. Well, he first did the first step. When you get an idea, it's to get all the information you can about it.

And that's what he did. So he began to study about railroad financing and organization and corporate organization. And he started to do his homework. And pretty soon he knew more about railroading than the people on the railroad.

And he just did it on his own time. Now, he had an idea and he was nourishing that idea. He was learning. Then he began to talk to the right people about the idea. And he said, you know, you ought to do this.

Oh, they couldn't do that. That's the first thing that happens whenever you get an idea. You go to your friends and they say, it'll never work. Well, obviously it'll never work because if it had worked, they'd have done it, wouldn't they?

And so right back before we had square wheels because it'll never work to make them round. Well, this was the idea with J .J. Hill. They'll never work. Well, he said, I think it'll work. And they thought about it a little bit.

And people never hear anything till they hear it for the first time. Did you know that? For the fourth time. Excuse me, I said first time. They never hear anything until they've heard it for the fourth time.

But if I tell you something now and you say, you go home and hear it on the radio, you hear it on the news, and you come back tomorrow and I somehow say it again, you say, well, we believe that all the time.

And you heard it the fourth time and hearing it the fourth time, that makes it true. So J .J. Hill knew this. And so he just began to sow the seed in the people that he knew in the railroading industry and the top people.

And finally he said, all right, if you're so smart and you think you can do it, do it. He said, well, that's right, I'll do it. And so they made him a telegraph operator, the president of the Great Northern Railroad.

Well, he'd never done it. But he had found out how to do it. Well, he went ahead and he got the financing, he got the people, he got the railroads together. And the time came when the men who were laying the track from Tacoma toward the east in Montana met the fellows who were laying the track from St. Paul in Minneapolis toward the west.

And it was a great day of celebration when they drove the golden spike. J .J. Hill was a good businessman. He didn't have a golden spike, he just had a gold-plated spike. And so they drove that gold-plated spike into the railroad and there they were.

Well, the newspaper reporters came in and they said to Mr. Hill, how'd you do it? Well, he said, it's easy. There's just three rules. And anybody can build a transcontinental railroad that'll follow these three rules, or they can do anything else they want to do.

The Three Rules of Faith: Define the Goal, Find the Way, and Act

So these reporters got out their notebooks, well, they were all going to become tycoons overnight. And so he said, the first rule if you want to build a transcontinental railroad is this. Find out exactly what you want to do.

Find out what you want to do. Don't do it until you know exactly what you want to do. That's the first rule. Then he said the second rule, he said nobody ever builds a transcontinental railroad because they just go out and start laying ties and they say, oh, look at that, we ended up at the Pacific.

That's not how you do it. You don't do it that way. You have to set your goal. You have to define your goal. You have to refine your goal. You have to eliminate everything that isn't part of your goal.

If you want to succeed, you've got to define exactly what you want to do and when you want to do it. Then the second rule, said Mr. Hill, is a very simple one. It's more difficult than any of the others.

After you've decided what you want to do, then find out the best possible way to do it. Don't start doing it until you've found out how to do it. Because otherwise you're going to use your resources and waste your energy experimenting and you can't afford to experiment in this kind of a thing.

So he said the first thing is find out what you want to do and the second thing is find out how to do it. Then he said the third rule, very simple, do it. That's the easiest. But he said the reason most people fail is because they start to do it before they found out what it is they want to do or how to do it.

You will take these three rules and you will begin to understand what we're talking about when we're talking about faith. Faith is the sight of the soul. Faith is an idea in the mind. Faith is a picture in your intellect of what you want to become a reality in your life or in your work or whatever it is.

Now young people, it's terribly important for you to realize what I'm saying is the key to your effectiveness as a Christian and in your service for Christ. You've got to realize that it begins with an idea.

Then you have to reinforce that idea with information. You have to refine that idea to the point that you know now it's a goal and then you've decided, you've found out how to reach the goal and then you take the steps to do it.

Well this is what happened. The Great Northern Railroad opened the Pacific Northwest because one man, a telegraph operator, had faith. Now do you understand why the scripture says where there is no vision, the people perish?

Somebody has to have vision. Somebody has to be a leader. Somebody has to go before. Somebody has to blaze the trail. Somebody has to have the idea. Now we're trying to govern society and the church by consensus.

And usually what consensus is is when people have a discussion. You know you go to a Sunday school class and it's a discussion class. What that means is that everybody is pooling as ignorant and hoping that somehow out of that something worthwhile will come.

But as far as the Christian life is concerned, everything worthwhile that ever occurs, occurs because somebody's had an idea. An idea is the beginning of everything worthwhile. This tabernacle was an idea.

Some people that owned a farm looked up and said, well right there in those trees we could have a place where people would come to meet. And before it was a tabernacle it was an idea. And when I was here when the building went right to these first posts they were talking about the time when they would put a wing on and put some extension on.

They had to enlarge it. And it was an idea. And then the next time I came back and they had the extension on, the floor in, they had the doors. And they'd improved it tremendously. But first it was an idea.

When I was here three years ago, I lived in one of these little cottages back here. And the kids were hammering on the piano all afternoon and I was trying to work and pray and think. Boy, it just wasn't any good.

So I said, well you know one of the things you've got to do is get a place for the speakers where they'll be quiet. Where they won't have the pressure on them that they have when they're caught here between the thumpings and two pianos in both ways.

And they get discord in their, discombobulated in their inner minds listening to the sounds from the piano in the youth chapel and the practicing here. It's too much. So I come back this time and they've got the gatehouse out here.

And a quiet place for the speakers. Well first it was an idea, and then it was an awareness, and then it was the appropriate steps to implement the idea. Now this is the way everything in life occurs that's worthwhile.

Nothing in life worthwhile ever happens. We have to make it happen. Now how else can I illustrate it? Well let me go to when I was ten years a pastor in New York City. And I would drive up the West Side Highway, the Hudson Parkway, Henry Hudson Parkway.

Vision Applied to Engineering and Impossible Problems

And there I would see the George Washington Bridge. How many of you have ever seen the George Washington Bridge? Well to my mind it's one of the most beautiful structures a man's ever made. Especially at night coming down the parkway and seeing it across the skyline of New York as a great, well I don't want to get too poetic, but it's just those lights swinging down there.

It's just beautiful. And every time I look at it I think how it began. You know how it began? There was a bridge engineer that lived up in the Fort Washington area, opposite where the bridge is now. And he worked for a bridge engineering firm downtown.

And he used to walk his dog and take walks down in the park along there. And he'd sit down on the stone and he'd look out and he'd see the ferries. Because the only way you could get from New Jersey to New York was by a ferry in those days.

And they were talking about a tunnel, but that hadn't come and they said there never could be a bridge. It was utterly impossible for the bridge industry to ever erect a bridge across the Hudson River.

It was too deep, it was too wide, it was too big, it just wouldn't work. But he sat there with a pad and he began to doodle and design and put some ideas down. Then he made a mistake. He went to his office and he said, Hey, fellas, I got an idea for a bridge across the Hudson River.

And you know what they said to him? Ah, you've lost your mind. You can't build a bridge across there. Don't you know they said it'll never work? Well, it'll work. Ah, this guy's crazy. He thinks he can build a bridge across the Hudson River.

Well, he went ahead. He didn't talk to his friends anymore. And he just designed. And he solved one problem. He solved another problem. He threw up a lot of drawings. And then when they said there has to be a bridge across the Hudson River, he came down with the plans.

And so they made him the chief architect and design engineer for the George Washington Bridge. And there it is. And he put 400 percent, four times more. Well, actually, it was about six times more strength into that bridge than it needed.

They put the second level on it, quite strong enough to carry that. They can put the third level on it. They can put the fourth level on it. And it's still strong enough to carry it. Because this fellow had solved the problem.

One of the largest things of its kind. Well, I was pastor in New York City. And Robert Moses, who was in charge of the parks and the head of the Tribe Oil Bridge Authority, kept writing in the newspaper that we had to have a bridge over the Verrazano Narrow.

And of course, then the engineers wrote letters to the editor and said, Robert Moses has lost his loving mind. There is no possibility of building a bridge over the Verrazano Narrow. It just won't work.

It's impossible. It can't be done. And so, Robert Moses, somebody said, why don't you go see the fellow that designed the George Washington Bridge? He was in retirement. He was 76 years of age. And so he found him.

And he said, sir, can you, I forget his name, he said, can you design a bridge that'll be effective over the Verrazano Narrow? That's right out against Staten Island and Fort Hamilton. And the old man looked at him and said, Mr. Moses, you've asked the wrong question first.

Do you need a bridge over the Verrazano Narrow? He said, we've got to have one. And the old man said, well, if you've got to have it, we can have it. That's all I need to know, that you've got to have it.

So next time you get to New York, ask whoever's there, you go over, drive over the Verrazano Bridge, Verrazano Narrow Bridge. Now don't stop, or they'll knock you down in the funnel of one of those ships that's passing underneath.

But just sort of tip your hat or salute. A man 78 years of age, when he finished the design of the Verrazano Narrow Bridge, the same man who designed the George Washington Bridge, the man who said, it can be done if it has to be done.

He got an idea. And he was willing to follow it with the research and the study that it needed. Now do you begin to understand what faith is to me? Faith is the sight of the soul. All the other people saw were problem.

They saw difficulty. They saw handicapped. This old man looked from Fort Hamilton to Staten Island, and he saw a bridge, so high above the water that you could put the Queen Mary on top of the Queen Mary and carry a piggyback under the bridge and it wouldn't scrape the funnel.

Faith as Seeing Salvation Before It Is Experienced

And it stands there now as a monument to a man who had faith. In our definition, faith is the ability to see what isn't there yet to see but what's going to be there because it ought to be there. Now, I said a man comes to Jesus Christ with a load of sin and the memory of his crimes against God, and he looks at Jesus Christ dying and he says, if I kneel down here and if I receive Christ as my Lord and Savior and I confess my sin to him and I forsake my sin, God will forgive my sin, the burden will be taken off of my heart and I'll get out of my house with peace.

Now that's faith. Faith is the ability to see the difference that Christ is going to make to a sinner before he makes the difference. You see, that's why we're saved by faith. If people were saved by feeling, everybody would be saved.

But you've got to see it before it happens, then it happens. If you wait and say, well, if I feel it, then I'll believe it, then goodbye, friend. There's no hope for you because that's not faith. Faith is the ability to see the difference that's going to be made before the difference is made.

Faith is the sight of the soul. Faith is that ability to see yourself forgiven because you've met the conditions. Because Jesus Christ died and rose again, you can come to him. Now we're talking about something else.

Christ's Indwelling Life and the Surrender of the Believer

We're talking about Christ dwelling in your heart through faith. We're talking about the fact that Jesus Christ wants to come into you and live in you his own life. Now, when you received him as your Lord and Savior, you were born of him.

But now he's asking you to present your body to him, your brain, your eyes, your ears, your heart, everything you are, just the way a light bulb is presented to the socket. He wants you to present yourself to him.

He wants you to surrender yourself. He wants you to surrender your brain so that living in you he can use your brain to think his thoughts and get them back in the world. He wants you to surrender your eye so that living in you he can use your eyes to see men in their need and see them as lost and needing a Savior.

He wants you to present your ear. He wants you to present your heart So they can be moved, that he can use it again and be moved with compassion. He wants you to present your feet, your hands. He wants you to present your lips, to present your body to him the same way a light bulb is presented to the socket.

Now what happens when you present a light bulb to the socket, when you put it in? Well you make a connection, and that connection makes possible the flow of energy. A little while ago, our good brother Murray was going to play the organ, and he went to fiddle and then nothing came out, because it didn't have a connection, it hadn't been plugged in.

Now what happens when he plugs it in? What comes up there? Electricity. What's electricity? Is there anybody here today that can define electricity? Now don't say you can't, don't do it, I'm not going to trick you.

I remember reading about a young fellow in college who was sleeping in a class after lunch, and the professor, it was a physics class, and the professor said, Smith, stand up! And he shook himself and stood up, and he said, Smith, define electricity!

And Smith shook his head, and he scratched his forehead, and he said, Oh, he said, Professor, I knew it before class, but I've forgotten. And the professor tore his hair, he said, Just think, only you and God have ever known what electricity was, and you've forgotten.

Because nobody has ever defined electricity. Nobody has defined electricity. I said that in a meeting in Cranford, New Jersey some years ago, and we were a young fellow from university, a sophomore in college, say it's wonderful to be a sophomore in college, listen, live it up for kids, because you're never going to know as much again.

You know more than the freshman, and you don't know how much more there is to learn. That's the high point of your intellect. You'll never be as smart again as you are as a sophomore in college. That's the most wonderful way.

You're going to be amazed how much your father learned, between father and mother learned, between the time you're a sophomore and a senior. They really get educated. But at the time you're a sophomore.

Well, he was a sophomore in college, and he said, You know, Mr. Redhead, I'm so glad that the friends I invited to come to this meeting didn't come. And I said, Well, all right, I guess you got something you want to tell me, huh?

And he said, Yes, I'd like to tell you that I think that it's very, very bad when preachers start talking about science. I said, What did I say? Well, you said no one has ever defined electricity. And that everybody knows that that's not correct.

Well, I said, What is electricity? And he smiled and he's driving the car. He said, Electricity is the flow of electrons from the negative to the positive pole. Oh, I said, Thank you. I appreciate that.

Now, there's just one little question that helped me clarify this. What is an electron? And even in the car was nothing but the green light from the dashboard. I could see him blush because he'd been caught.

You see, an electron is a small particle of electricity, and you can't define a thing by by changing the word that doesn't define it. Nobody has ever defined electricity. We know it's energy. We know it's power.

We don't know what it is, but we know that if you understand the rules, if you have imagination enough to apply it, then you get the benefit from it. Benjamin Franklin ran a key up a wire cord on a kite.

Electricity demonstrated its power. It was Thomas Edison that found the filament, the tungsten filament that made possible the incandescent lamp. And now we've gone ahead and refined it. But remember, all of these things began as an idea.

And Thomas Edison had thousands of experiments hunting for the right, the right filament so that he could have this lamp. What was it? Faith. Faith is the ability to see the room lightened by electricity when up until that time, all they've had is coal oil in a kerosene lamp with a wick.

Faith is the sight of the soul. It was faith that gave us electricity. Now, let's apply it directly to you. Christ will dwell in your heart through faith. What does this mean? Well, it means simply that if you have the intellectual ability to see the difference that electricity will make in a light bulb, if you have the capacity to see the difference that electricity will make in a light bulb, then you have the ability to see the difference Jesus Christ will make in your life.

That's what we're talking about. Christ shall dwell in your heart through faith. Christ in you, the hope of glory. Now, what difference does it make that Christ is in you? What's the difference in your life?

Faith Applied to Temptation, Learning, and Christian Service

Any? Is there any difference? For instance, suppose you have a particular kind of temptation. I don't know what it is. You tell me the thing where you failed the Lord last, and your heart troubled about it.

Can you believe that if Jesus Christ was somehow living inside of your body, and that temptation were to come, that Christ has enough power and enough ability so that you wouldn't have to yield to it?

Because Christ is in you. Can you imagine? You know where you failed the Lord last time. Now, can you just imagine Christ living in you? And when that next temptation comes, you just say, Lord, you answer the door.

You know, I can't handle this. And because Christ is in you, you don't yield to the temptation. You don't submit to this thing. You overcome it as you've wanted to do. Do you see the difference that Christ will make in your life?

If you have ability to see the difference he will make, then when that thing happens, that's what's going to happen to you. Christ will make that kind of a difference. When you sit down to learn a lesson, and you say, oh, my mind is so heavy, and it's so tired, and I just can't learn, I can't think.

But Lord Jesus, you're living in me, and you can quicken my mind to see what's in your word, or to learn the lesson that I have to have, or to solve the problem that's before me. Can you see the difference that Christ will make?

If you have the ability to imagine the difference that Christ will make in your life, then when you get to the situation, that is the difference he will make. That's the difference he will make. Some people say, well, I can't teach a class.

I can't do this, I can't do that. But look, you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. And Christ dwells in your heart through faith. Can't you imagine yourself saying what you need to say, or doing what you need to do, if Christ is in you?

No, this is what we mean. Christ shall dwell in your heart through faith. You have brought him into the equation. You put him into the situation. And because you've been able to project to that place where always you've failed, now you see Christ in you, walking through that situation without failure.

When you get to that place, you walk through it because you've programmed yourself for it. You've prepared yourself for it. Now, you've got to understand that there's nothing mumbo-jumbo about this. There's nothing self-hypnotic about it.

It's just simple scriptural truth that Christ dwells in your heart through faith. And faith is the ability to see the difference Christ will make in your life. You say, well, I can't witness to people.

I'm just so timid, I never know what to say. But Christ is dwelling in your heart. Can't you see him strengthening you, and helping you, and enabling you to have whatever witness he wants you to have?

Now, if you learn this principle right now, you've learned the basic thing that's going to enable you to live the kind of a life that you want to live for the glory of God. Faith is the sight of the soul.

Prayer for Christ to Live His Life Through Believers

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the possibilities that are implicit in the life of each person in this room this morning. And we're trusting, Father, that somehow the word may bear fruit, it may take root, it may have free course and be glorified.

That Christ, who heals, who gives life, who gives wisdom, who gives strength, Christ, who is our life, will be free to live in us his own life because we've met together this morning, and because something of thy truth has come to our hearts.

For Jesus' sake, amen. Your defense, Father.