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How a Redeemed Imagination Frees Us from Anxiety’s Power
Inside Out 2 (2024) introduced audiences to an emotion most of us know well: anxiety. One scene provides insight into a critical facet of how anxiety operates as well as the path toward freedom from its tyrannical rule—imagination!
After Joy and company are thrown out of HQ by Anxiety, they stumble into Riley’s “imagination center.” Inside, a giant televised Anxiety stands over the workers, demanding the incessant creation of worst-case scenarios to “help” Riley.
“They’re using Riley’s imagination against her!” is the cry. Joy springs into action, creating positive “imaginings” that bring Riley temporary relief.
This scene demonstrates two important facets of the relationship between anxiety and imagination. First, when left unchecked, anxiety hijacks our imaginations, assaulting us with fearful fantasies of a godless future. Second, imagination must be actively redeemed. Whereas Joy can only counteract anxious fantasies with positive ones, our imagination in Jesus’s hands becomes something greater than wishful thinking because truth fuels a redeemed imagination.
Eyes of Your Soul
Your imagination is like the eyes of your soul. It’s your ability to form new ideas and images not currently present to your senses. It’s more robust than thought—intertwining emotion, meaning, and problem-solving with both tangible and intangible experiences.
Our imagination in Jesus’s hands becomes something greater than wishful thinking.
Imagination is essential to our makeup. It’s an integral part of how we worship God with our whole being (Mark 12:30). It’s a powerful faculty either exercised under Christ’s lordship or co-opted by the world, the flesh, and the Devil. It will work for us or against us. Just as our physical eyes can be blinded, uncultivated imagination can be hijacked.
Hijacked Imagination
Anxiety itself isn’t always sinful. Put simply, anxiety reflects that something we love feels threatened. It can be a natural response to life in a world where fear is loud, suffering is visceral, and God is invisible. But anxiety can also be distorted—intensified by unresolved trauma, disordered loves, or faulty perceptions.
Unchecked anxiety seizes on an undisciplined imagination, hijacking it with stories filled with lies and half truths. Anxiety drowns out the proclamation “Fear not, for I am with you” (Isa. 41:10) by deceiving our imagination into believing that the God on whom that promise hinges is absent.
We become the sole protagonist in a bleak story where everything depends on our ability to survive. Imagination, designed to bring spiritual truth to life, becomes a canvas painted with landscapes of dark and disparate worst-case scenarios.
We envision every what-if scenario to prepare ourselves for every imagined disaster. In the end, we shoulder matters “too great and too marvelous” for us (Ps. 131:1) and end up trapped in anxious spirals. A delayed response to a text message becomes rejection. Unexpected car repairs become financial ruin. A difficult conversation becomes relational collapse. Though the catastrophic scenarios are imagined, our emotional response is real.
Reclaimed, Redeemed, Repurposed Imagination
The “father of lies” (John 8:44) has always tempted God’s people to doubt God’s presence and care. Satan even tempted Jesus to question his Heavenly Father in the wilderness. Christ overcame this temptation in the face of visceral suffering and, in turn, left us the Holy Spirit to open our spiritual eyes, enabling the experience of unseen truth through stories, music, and images to shape our response as we face temptation and suffering.
Unchecked anxiety seizes on an undisciplined imagination, hijacking it with stories filled with lies and half truths.
Christ equips us to counteract fear not through positive fantasy but through an embodied vision of truth.
“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). Redeemed imagination, or “imagination put into the harness of faith,” bridges the seen and the unseen to become a powerful force of clarity and courage. Imagination establishes hope that doesn’t flee from danger and never puts us to shame. It beholds Christ and his outstretched hand above the waves, reaching toward us as we cry, “Lord, save me” (Matt. 14:30).
In Christ, God reclaims our imagination from the spiral of anxiety and repurposes it to empower courageous daily living in a broken world, with certainty that he’s near, even in the darkest moments.
For example, when we’re faced with unexpected car repairs, the story of manna can stoke to life scenarios of how God could faithfully meet today’s needs, perhaps through a church benevolence fund, borrowed car, or rides from friends.
When waiting for a text response, instead of jumping to anxiety-fueling, assumption-based judgments, practice humble curiosity. Maybe the other person’s phone died or he’s in a meeting. Pray for him as you replace mind-reading with question-asking.
Learn to See as You Walk by Faith
We often think of spiritual warfare in defensive terms. But the battle against anxiety requires a holy offense. One of the most underused weapons is a redeemed imagination. We must shift from thinking our imagination is only for childhood play or adult escapism and instead embrace it as an important aspect of a flourishing faith.
One of my favorite illustrations of this is from Smallville, where young Clark Kent is learning to harness his super-hearing by filtering out the chaos to hear his father’s voice. You’re surrounded by similar illustrations that make truth vivid enough to rewrite anxiety’s stories. Here are a few practical options:
Seek out rest and quiet. Slow down and take stock. Have you forgotten how your imagination works? These unhurried moments are where you cultivate it. Organizations like The Rabbit Room and their publications—like Every Moment Holy, Adorning the Dark, and The God of the Garden—are good starting places when learning how to creatively kindle redeemed imagination to life.
Find people who experience life differently from you. I’ve learned so much from friends whose joyful spontaneity pulls me out of my penchant toward melancholy. Let other people expand how you abide in and enjoy God’s presence.
Audit your intake of anxiety-fueling content. Social-media feeds, streaming media, cable news, horror movies, and so many other sources flood our minds with dark narratives. Minimize your doomscrolling and be mindful of the temptation to be overinformed.
Nourish your imagination with beauty and goodness. Savor good fiction, beautiful art, the splendor of creation, the power of music, stories of God’s faithfulness in biographies and testimonies—not just for worship but to remember that God is a God of wonder, order, and delight.
Read children’s books. Seriously. We never outgrow the simple truth of the gospel that beckons us to childlike faith. If you have kids, read aloud to them often. It’ll benefit your imagination as much as it does theirs.
It’s your turn! Practice imagining great things of our great God. Celebrate when you notice your imagination growing in healthy directions, where God’s truth and his goodness loom larger than the falsehoods and fears that try to dominate your mind. Remind yourself often that God created your imagination and is sovereign over it—and no matter what you can imagine, he will do abundantly more with his power at work in you (Eph. 3:20).
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