Watch. Stand. Pray. 365
Day 143 – Fantasy: Counterfeit of DreamingFantasies come in many shapes and sizes, but they have in common that they make fantasizers unable to function. Porn makes it difficult for men to interact with women. Romans fiction has the same effect vice versa. Daydreams about money keep people broke, so don’t put up a poster of an expensive car or house unless you actually have a timeline and step list planned out for making the money to buy it.
Fantasy is healthy as a genre, but numbing as a lifestyle. Humans were endowed as the Image of God with creative imaginations. Seeing results in your mind, knowing that something is possible, keeping your mind focused on your goals—that is vital and necessary. Fantasy delivers some of the thrill and a variance of the ideas, but it leads to a dead end. Fantasy is the engineering of criminal brilliance, the devil’s plan to make people think they are dreaming of the light at the end of a tunnel when they’re really looking at the headlights of an oncoming train.
Anyone can become addicted to fantasy, whether gaming, movies, novels, clubbing, or just wasting time under the delusion that you’re getting something done by creating to-do items and checking them off. When fantasy addictions beckon your return, think about something else—anything else. Get out of the house, go for a walk, pray. When someone is deeply addicted to anything, reading the Bible is the most likely time for the devil to attack with more calls to fantasize. Resist.
Fantasy is an addiction, even in genre. Addictions take thirty to ninety days to break. The key to breaking addictions is to control your thought life. If you must become dependent on others to break an addiction then you are not in control of your own life. See the fantasy for what it is, then take back your place at the helm of your thought life, then fantasy will be less impossible to break out of at any stage and more likely to help you in the long term.
The best way to avoid a life of fantasy is to fill your mind with a real dream, with a grounded, plotted, God-sized dream.
