Most people give more importance to love and faith than they do to hope.
Look at 1 Corinthians 13:13,
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
Since love is the greatest of the three, and hope is just before love, hope is the second greatest—even above faith. Hope is more powerful than many realise. Something the Lord shared with me that really made this truth come alive is that hope is a positive imagination.
For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.
—Romans 8:24-25
Here, Paul said hope is for something that isn’t seen or present. Once it’s present, there’s no reason to hope for it. So, hope means looking at something that you can’t see. You may think, Well, if you can’t see it, how are you looking at it?
You can see things with your heart, and this is what I believe the imagination is.
Isaiah 26:3 says,
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.
The word “mind” is translated “imagination” four other times in the Old Testament. So, you could say: “The Lord will keep you in perfect peace when your imagination is stayed upon Him.”
Many Christians would reject the idea of imagination because they relegate it to something that’s childish. But imagination is seeing with your heart what you can’t see with your eyes, and you use this every day.
You think in pictures. If I said “apple,” you wouldn’t see the letters a-p-p-l-e—you’d see an apple. You might picture a red or a green apple, but I could refine it by saying “a big red apple.” The more words I used, describing the apple, the clearer the picture would become. You can’t think of something you can’t picture. You need to be able to picture something to truly comprehend it.
Imagination is how you think, meditate, understand, and remember things. You can’t do anything without an imagination.
You have to take the Word of God and let it excite your imagination!