And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

Genesis 11:6

INTRODUCTION

After the flood in Noah’s day, man was faced with a new challenge. The earth had been destroyed previously because man imagined evil…continually. So God saw fit to wipe out most of the earth’s human and animal population because of the corruption mankind had allowed to develop.

Now man was afraid that what had happened before may very well happen again. Therefore, he began to plan for what he considered a possibility…another destruction of the earth by a flood. There is a natural tendency to fear or to think that what has happened in the past may happen again in your life. So here man tries to prepare for it by building a tower that will reach unto the heavens.

UNITY AND IMAGINATION OF MAN

Now there are 2 elements that God ties to their ability to accomplish such a feat as building this great structure called the Tower of Babel. The attributes that God names are 1) unity and 2) imagination. God asserts that a united group who imagines themselves doing a thing is virtually unstoppable. He says, “Nothing will be restrained from them.”

I understand that the context is that of a people who, due to their fear and unbelief, decided to build this structure for protection in defiance of God. However, there are principles here that we can extract from what God said about them.

There is strength in unity! So we need to understand that the greatest weapons that can be used against you are those that would cause division, if effective. If you will read the entirety of this passage, you will find that in order for God to stop them, He had to first divide them. In the earth, our greatest victories will be in our unity, but our greatest defeat can easily be traced back to our division. Let’s move on to imagination.

Let’s think about something here. Even though mankind was almost wiped completely out because of man’s misuse of imagination, God didn’t remove man’s ability to imagine. He chose to keep it intact. Why? This is because the imagination is man’s tool to create. And if you take away man’s ability to create, you have taken away his ability to act like his God.

So this should help us to understand that God is not a proponent of destroying a thing solely because it has been used to cause harm in the past. This is because God knows that the imagination can be used for good or evil. It’s a matter of choice.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Have you considered how these principles of unity and imagination can be used to serve your family, your church, or your job? God gave us these 2 elements as the key to being virtually unstoppable.

How do you use these principles at home, for example? You establish a vision or mission for your family. In order for unity to be established, you must sell the vision to your family and get them to “buy in” or agree to support the vision. Children must be taught the vision as the way the house is governed.

What about imagination? This is your plan as to “how” the vision will be carried out for the family. Each member of the family needs to have a clear understanding of both their own roles and how their roles connect with the roles of the other members of the family. They all must be committed to the vision.

Finally, you must think, plan and execute as if nothing will be restrained from you…because it’s the truth.