My mother-in-law languished in a nursing home in deep depression, thinking she faced kidney dialysis. Imagining the worse and believing a lie, she just wanted to die. She didn't know the problem was not her health as much as it was her imagination.
It was the prophet Isaiah who said perfect peace came from those "whose imagination is stayed" on God (Isaiah 26:3).
We are not to let our relationship with God to be determined by our circumstances. Jesus told the woman at the well (John 4) that the place of worship was not geographical but spiritual.
The apostle Paul was bound for Jerusalem. He didn't know specifically what he would be facing, but he knew it wasn't good humanly speaking. Certainly there was imprisonment and suffering. It didn't bother him. His only desire was that "I may finish my course with joy..." (Acts 20:24).
My imagination must stay solidly on God.
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