The Idealist

AN IDEALIST-A MISGUIDED OPTIMIST   

Webster defines an idealist as, “an impractical person; a person who represents things as they might or should be, rather than as they are.” For example, the young girl who believes her marriage will be free from all trouble, or the teen-age boy entering service believing he will return from war as a hero without a scratch. Such immature imaginations are idealistic, that is, “It just ain’t so.”

CHRISTIAN IDEALIST

Christians can be idealistic about spiritual things. Many have manufactured a life void of all problems. They believe they simply turn everything over to God, thus taking themselves out of the equation. This sounds good, but it is not reality. We are never removed from the picture. It is always us and God within the frame together (Philip.4:13). It is not I without God; nor is it God without I. It’s God and I together.

CARNAL IDEALIST VERSES SPIRITUAL REALIST

The carnal idealist rejects everything not within his or her plan; a Spiritual realist accepts all things as God’s plan. That is, when one is living for Him. Within the realm of the realist “all things are possible with God.” It is not so with the idealist, he or she “limits the Holy One of Israel.”  All things must come up to their ideal of what God will do in any given situation; if not, to them, God could not possibly be in it.