Seeing Is Believing: Experience Jesus through Imaginative Prayer

by Gregory A. Boyd

Publisher:

Baker

, 2004

Overview

One of the most common problems with Christians in our modern secularized world is that they don’t feel the reality of Jesus. They believe in him and love him, but he somehow doesn’t seem to enter their daily lives in a real sense. Some might say, “You ought to pray more.” Others would advise, “You ought to witness more.” While this may be true, Gregory Boyd argues that you don’t get closer to God just because you “ought to.” Boyd believes that the way to true spiritual transformation and feeling the presence of God in your life comes from a little “R and R”: rest and reality. Boyd encourages readers to stop striving and learn to rest in an experience of Jesus as real. The best way to do this, he says, is through imaginative prayer. Seeing Is Believing aims to teach readers how to use God’s gracious gift of creative imagination to know him better and feel his presence in their daily lives.

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Key Features

• Teachers readers how to use God’s precious gift of creative imagination
• Encourages readers to stop striving and learn to rest in an experience of Jesus
• Discusses the benefits of imaginative prayer

Contents

• The Futility of the “Try Harder” Solution
• The Pattern of This World
• Four Aspects of the Flesh
• Overcoming the Flesh
• The Power of Imagination
• Imaginative Prayer in Scripture and Church Tradition
• Resting in Christ
• Healing Memories
• But What About . . . ?
• You Become What You See: Growing in the Fruit of Love
• Jesus Throws a Party: Growing in the Fruit of Joy
• Jesus Closes the Terrified Eyes: Growing in the Fruit of Peace

Top Highlights

“From my personal experience as well as fifteen years of conducting ‘Experiencing Jesus’ seminars, I can tell you that for many people, nothing is as transforming as the realization that you need to rest rather than work harder and the discovery that you can experience Jesus as real by allowing the Holy Spirit to inspire your imagination.” (Page 16)

“It is, in short, the way of life that is controlled by the lie that says we can and we must find the fullness of our lives in what we do rather than simply in who we are because of who God is.” (Page 36)

“You see, it’s not so much what we intellectually believe is true that impacts us; it’s what we experience as real.” (Page 12)

“While there is an important place for endeavoring to fulfill oughts in the Christian life, the most fundamental thing believers need is to have regular times when they rest in an experience of Jesus as real. We need to have times when we cease from all striving and experience as real the truth that Jesus passionately loves us as we are, not because of what we do. We need to rest in a real experience of God’s care for us, God’s joy over us, and God’s peace with us. We desperately need to have times when we simply experience Jesus ‘face to face’ with the same intimacy and realness that a husband and wife share (Exod. 33:11; Isa. 62:5; Eph. 5:25–32).” (Page 14)

“You see, God doesn’t destroy who we are with all of our memories, our habits, or our past associations when he re-creates us in Christ Jesus. He rather seeks to transform all of our memories, habits, and past associations on the basis of our re-created identities. As we all know from experience, this takes time. We do not automatically see and experience ourselves as we truly are in Christ. Therefore, to some extent we continue to think and act as though what is true about us in Christ were not true.” (Page 30)

Praise for the Print Edition

The imagination is one of the great, untapped capacities of the Christian soul, and imaginative prayer is like diving into the ocean and discovering a world of wonders never before glimpsed or even guessed at. Read Seeing Is Believing and discover the great gift from God that you may have been missing.

—Luci Shaw, author, Water My Soul

Gregory Boyd has a way of cutting through all the jargon to get at essential truths. So many books on spirituality offer ‘pie in the sky’ solutions, but not Seeing Is Believing. I love the way Boyd explains and helps us to live out the true identity that we have in Jesus Christ.

—Robert Webber, author, The Younger Evangelicals

This is one of the most comprehensive books ever written on the subject. Tracing from the early church right up to present day writers, it is scholarly, biblical, and thoroughly Christ-centered. I believe it will not only clear away much misunderstanding, but inspire many to experience the healing freedom and deeper relationship with Jesus that comes through imaginative prayer.

—David A. Seamands, author, Healing for Damaged Emotions

Product Details

• Title: Seeing Is Believing: Experience Jesus through Imaginative Prayer
• Author: Gregory A. Boyd
• Publisher: Baker
• Print Publication Date: 2004
• Logos Release Date: 2014
• Pages: 224
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Prayer › Christianity; Imagination › Religious aspects--Christianity
• ISBNs: 9781441220165, 080106502, 9780801065026, 144122016X, 080106502X
• Resource ID: LLS:SNGSBLVNG
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T03:03:38Z

About Gregory A. Boyd

Gregory A. Boyd (Ph.D., Princeton Theological Seminary) is a pastor at Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Previously, he was a professor of theology at Bethel University, also in St. Paul. His books include Recovering the Real Jesus in an Age of Revisionist Replies, Letters from a Skeptic, God of the Possible, Repenting of Religion, Seeing is Believing, Escaping the Matrix, The Jesus Legend, Myth of a Christian Nation, Is God to Blame, God at War and Satan and the Problem of Evil.