The Imaginary Handbook

Hubby and I were having a discussion that other day, and he said something that brought a lot of clarity to me. He talked about an imaginary handbook we tend to follow our lives by. This immediately prompted a question in my heart. “Who created the imaginary handbook?”

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog called, “Who Told You?” The imaginary handbook is a continuation of that thought. Remember in Genesis, when Adam and Eve sinned, and God asked Adam, “where are you?” And when He talked with Adam about the sin, Adam responded to God and said, “we went and hid ourselves behind the fig leaves because we knew we were naked.” God asked them, “who told you that you were naked?”

I want to pose a question to you. What imaginary handbook have you been following? Whose pattern have you been living after without even knowing who said it? And even if you knew who said it, are they God? Were they prompted by the Holy Spirit to say it to you?

Why has it been ok to live out what someone else has spoken? Why have those things become law in our lives? The imaginary handbook is based on a majority of those who live in doubt and defeat but don’t want to acknowledge that fear is what drives how they live.
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Before making decisions, let’s check the motives of those decisions. Of course not all fear is bad, but the fear that brings torment is not of God. We should never live under a pressure to be something, do something, or have something. That pressure comes from the imaginary handbook. There is only one Book we should be patterning our lives after, and that’s the Word of God.