Hearing and Seeing the Story

Imagination is one of the greatest gifts God has given us. As image bearers of God, we have the ability to see things in our minds. We can see things that are real and things that are not real. Things from the past and things we hope for in the future. Our imagination allows us to go to galaxies far, far away and it allows us to entertain hopes and dreams for our children.

Too often, preachers fail to utilize this good gift for the purpose of preaching. As preachers, we need to cultivate good imagination habits, and we need to utilize the power of imagination for the glory of God and the proclamation of His truth.

To do this, I think preachers need to read more and to write more. We need to read more stories. We need to study mythic tales like The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Narnia series, the Brothers Grimm, Homeric myth, and medieval legends. Not for content’s sake but to learn how to tell a story.

One of the things you will notice when you read this kind of literature is that you will see pictures in your mind as you read. I still remember how astonished I was with Peter Jackson’s computer-generated Gollum in the first Lord of the Rings films. He looked just like the image from my mind

Reading mythic stories will help you to see and think in pictures, which will help you see the picture of the biblical narratives when you are preparing to preach them. It tills your imagination’s soil and makes it a fertile field for the Holy Spirit to bring God’s wonderful story to life. We cannot preach the picture until we see the picture.