I had an interesting “day-dream” recently. Before I get to the specifics and why it is important I should say that I am generally not a proponent of day-dreaming. This is because such thinking is often just a manmade tent for me to store all of my highlight reels of personal awesomeness or other examples of things I would control and fix–if I were God. In other words day dreaming is often musings upon what it would be like if God were not God and I was.
But this was different.
I was thinking about several unbelievers that I knew. These are people we are prayerfully trying to see brought into God’s family. I was thinking about many of their natural qualities as image bearers and musing upon what they would look like if God were to bedazzle them with the glory of Christ and put a gust of grace in their sails.
Think of the family-man whose love and service to his family gets traction in the church, the family of God as he serves his brothers and sisters. Think of the business man who sells out day and night for his company now becoming obsessed with the profit margin on the gospel balance sheet. Think of the Mom who is so filled with compassion and love for her kids becoming, because of the gospel, completely sold out for the priority of young people seeing and savoring the compassion of Christ. Think of the single guy who is obsessed with partying and chasing lust who becomes riveted on community in the body of Christ and loves the Lord’s Supper for what it means. On and on we could go.
This type of day-dreaming seems healthy and good. It is for me anyway. At its core it does not showcase myself as God but longs for God to act like God as he saves others powerfully! It is good, healthy and prayerfully motivating to see footprints of common grace because they make you long all the more for redemptive grace in their lives. May it be so!