Use your imagination.
That’s one of the messages in Dr. Dave Martin’s latest book, The 12 Traits of the Greats.
Perhaps best known as a Christian success coach, Martin believes that using your imagination can help bring your dreams to life. He more than believes it—he knows it.
That’s because Martin has put this principle into practice in his own life. He says keeping God’s vision for his life in clear view has helped him find success in business, ministry and life.
Charisma News caught up with Martin to discuss how we can use our imagination and faith to grab hold of God’s will for our lives.
Charisma News: One of the chapters in your book is about called “Imagination: Bringing Your Dreams to Life.” Tell me a little bit about how we can use our imagination in a godly way.
Martin: A lot of times people think “Imagination … is that New Age? Did Walt Disney come up with that?” But it’s really a God thing. God came up with the imagination.
It goes back to Abraham. God said, “Abraham, come out of your tent. Look at stars in the sky. Get a picture of the descendants that are to come out of thee.” David heard that whosoever defeats the giant gets his bills paid off—no more taxes—and gets the king’s daughter. David asked them to repeat that one more time. I think he just began to imagine, begin to picture, where he was going.
In the book, I looked at Jim Carrey, who did the same thing in the early ‘90s when he was on the show In Living Color and doing stand up comedy. He had a desire to be in major motion pictures. He wrote himself a check for $10 million and he dated a check for Thanksgiving 1995, four years from where he was. Within two weeks of Thanksgiving in 1995, he signed a deal for the movie The Mask and got paid $10 million.
Charisma News: How can Christians apply this in a practical way?
Martin: I was thinking one day. I was in my parents’ house and I was looking around the house. On the walls there are pictures of our vacations and my senior picture from my high school is still up on the wall there. (The hair was nice!) I thought, 90 percent of the walls of our house are covered with pictures of our past. And so I thought What if I just had one wall of my house where I have pictures of my future?
So I started a dream wall, a vision board. I put pictures of what I wanted to see in my future, things I would believe God for and even just things from a natural place, like where I want to take my family on vacation. I put pictures up there and got a vision of where I was going. Something has to be seeable before it’s believable and believable before it’s achievable. So get a picture of where it is you want to go and what it is you want God to do through your life.
Charisma News: I like that. So many people, especially Christians, think the imagination realm is New Age and it’s not. The New Agers just stole it from us. Do you know what I’m saying?
Martin: Right.
Charisma News: Using our imagination is biblical. Of course, you can cross the line with it. But as long as we’re maintaining biblical principles around it we can use our imaginations to see ourselves walking in God’s will for our lives.
Martin: Yes, and so many times we throw stuff out because you hear words like visualization or imagination. It’s really just seeing through the eyes of faith. But we throw it all out because, like you said, New Age took it in and the enemy will always take something and make a counterfeit it. A lot of times the Christians are missing out on so much that God has for them and the success that God has for them. The Bible says, “Commit your actions to the Lord and your plans will succeed. Meditate on my Word day and night and you’ll have good success.” All throughout the Bible God is telling us “I want you to be a success. I want you to succeed in life.”
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