I Can Only Imagine
Embark on a journey through the Gospels to discover Jesus’ encounters with broken people. Each day will include scripture, reflective stories, and prayer—all working together to reveal God’s incredible heart for you. Each day of this 6-day devotional contains video content with Bart Millard of MercyMe and exclusive movie scenes from the I Can Only Imagine movie. 6 Days
I can Only Imagine Devotional
Devotional - Day 1
In the I Can Only Imagine movie, the lead singer of MercyMe, Bart Millard shares his journey which inspired the famous song. Bart’s past became a defining and controlling factor in his life. In order to become spiritually healthy, he had to recall the past: his mother’s absence, his father’s abuse, and his own leaving. On some level, we can all resonate with Bart’s past and had hurts growing up.
Maybe your mother never left you; maybe your father never abused you verbally or physically; maybe you didn’t run from home at first chance. But Bart’s past is our past, because we all come from broken homes, live in a broken world, and bear the wounds of our own mistakes and the wrongs committed against us by others.
Why can’t we just forget about the past and move forward?
God has hard-wired us as a remembering people. In fact, a memory of the past is central to biblical faith—the Scriptures are full of commandments to remember all that God has done for us. To deny our own past is to put a lid on what God can do to bring about redemption and renewal in us. Spiritual growth requires a healthy recalling of our own past.
The biblical encouragements to “Remember” most often call us back, not to our own individual pasts, but to the past provision of God in history. Psalm 105 is a perfect example: The psalmist calls us to remember God’s promises to Abraham, His saving work in the Passover and exodus, and in leading His people through the wilderness. Remembering these things, according to Psalm 105’s conclusion, enables us to live rightly before God and others.
One of the best ways to discover God is to look to the earthly life and work of his own Son, Jesus Christ.
Jesus, the Son of God, best reveals God, his eternal Father. Do you believe that God Himself loves you because you have believed in his Son?
In the words of Jesus’ beloved disciple, “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love” (1 John 4:16).
Perhaps you have never experienced love and acceptance from your father or mother. Perhaps you wonder if there’s anyone who loves you unconditionally and accepts you just as you are. Perhaps this is God’s invitation to you to discover, through the life of Jesus in the Gospels, just how deeply the Father loves you.
The Passion Translation® Copyright © 2017 by Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
I can Only Imagine Devotional
Devotional - Day 2
For many of us, our view of God is based largely on our life experiences—particularly with our own fathers and mothers. By recalling truths about God and by recalling our own life experiences, we can become aware of who God is, how he has moved in our lives, and how his promises for future hope can be trusted.
Our thoughts about God determine much more than how we view him— they reveal and determine how we will approach all of life. When Jesus walked this earth, he demonstrated an eternal connection to the Father and revealed the heart of God. By looking to Jesus—in his actions, in his teachings, and in how his closest friends characterized him—we find the most accurate picture of God.
One of Jesus’ closest friends and followers, the disciple John, would go on to write the Gospel of John, Revelation, and the three letters we know as 1, 2, and 3 John. These five books are excellent places to discover not just the life and teaching of Jesus, but how Jesus thought about his Father.
So, what is God like?
First, John says that God is a father. By sending “his one and only Son,” God demonstrates that fatherhood is central to his identity and being. He has eternally existed as a Father, and the Son, Jesus Christ, has eternally enjoyed the fellowship of a good and perfect Father.
Second, John twice writes the famous words: God is love. God is not simply loving or full of love; He is love. In other words, love is not the primary thing and God secondary; “love comes from God,” meaning love can only be understood as an offspring of God’s nature.
Third, John tells us that God is for us. The Father did not wait for us to find our way to Him; we could never make it on our own, not given our sin against Him. God demonstrates his love for us—you and me and the whole world—by sending his only Son, so “that we might live through him.”
How could you not be transformed, encouraged, and strengthened by such a great God?
We all hold false images of him, doubt his love for us at times, and question his ability to fully provide for us. But he nonetheless invites us to bring those false images, doubts, and fears to him. He already knows what’s in our hearts and minds; bring these things before his throne of mercy and find healing in the love and power of his presence.
1 John 4:7-10
7 Those who are loved by God, let his love continually pour from you to one another, because God is love. Everyone who loves is fathered by God and experiences an intimate knowledge of him. 8 The one who doesn’t love has yet to know God, for God is love. 9 The light of God’s love shined within us when he sent his matchless Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 This is love: He loved us long before we loved him. It was his love, not ours. He proved it by sending his Son to be the pleasing sacrificial offering to take away our sins.
The Passion Translation® Copyright © 2017 by Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
I can Only Imagine Devotional
Devotional - Day 3
In America, millions of people grow up every year without knowing their father, with an absent father, or in a conflicted relationship with their father. David Blankenhorn has written, “The United States is becoming an increasingly fatherless society. A generation ago, an American child could reasonably expect to grow up with his or her father. Today, an American child can reasonably expect not to. Fatherlessness is now approaching a rough parity with fatherhood as a defining feature of American childhood.”
But fatherlessness is not limited to the literal absence of a father. Many grow up and live as adults with fathers who are neglectful or detached. There is a father, but he isn’t present. When his presence is felt, it’s not full of affirmation and affection. Similarly, others grow up with a father who was physically present but emotionally damaging.
What does it look like for those with a broken image of father to discover the true and better Father?
God the Father occasionally revealed himself to Jesus during his earthly ministry. God shows up to his only Son’s baptism, a defining moment that formally launches his earthly ministry of teaching and healing.
How did God reveal himself as a good and loving Father at Jesus’ baptism?
When Jesus was baptized, his Father was present. God was not absent from his eternal Son’s baptism and he is not absent from your own life either.
The Father sent his Spirit to make his presence felt. God was not only present, he made sure his Son felt his presence; in the same way, God wants you to know and feel that he is always with you.
The Father spoke words of affirmation – “This is my Son… with him I am well pleased.” God did not remain silent, but voiced his thundering affirmation of his Son. In the same way, we who are sons and daughters of God, take confidence that he is pleased with us too; not because we’re perfect, but because we are one with Christ and his perfect life covers our imperfect lives.
The Father expressed his love and affection – “This my Son, whom I love.” God is not only affirming, he is affectionate. He loves his Son. Perhaps you remember many times your earthly dad said, “I’m proud of you.” But how many times did you hear, “I love you”?
As he spoke over Christ, so our heavenly Father now speaks over all of his children, “You are my beloved!”
The Passion Translation® Copyright © 2017 by Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
I can Only Imagine Devotional
Devotional - Day 4
In I Can Only Imagine, Bart wanted nothing to do with his dad and left home as soon as he could. Years later, Bart hit rock bottom and finally did arrive back home. When he did, he certainly didn’t expect a transformed, loving dad. But God is full of surprises.
In one of his most famous stories, Jesus tells a parable about a son who ran away from home. Consider the story again, in a paraphrased form.
Jesus once told this story to a crowd who struggled to see God as Father. There was once a father who had two sons (Luke 15:11). The younger son wanted nothing to do with his dad, asked for his inheritance early, effectively wishing his father dead and breaking away from the family. Amazingly, the Father consented, sold off much of his assets, and let his son run away with his hard-earned life savings.
So the younger son set off for the big city, spending money like it would never run out. But it soon did. In fact, the economy bottomed out and he found himself broke and unemployed. The only job he could get was as a laborer on a farm. He was so desperate for food that he even tried the pig slop.
Finally, he hit rock bottom and knew his only way to stay alive was to go back home. As he walked, he rehearsed his apology speech over and over. He knew he’d have to explain himself; he’d have to get his story just right.
That’s when he saw something totally unexpected: His father running toward him. Before the son could get out a word of apology, his father tackled him, hugging him, and sobbing uncontrollably.
“Dad, I’m sorry…” the son began. But the father only shouted back to the family, “My son is home! My son is alive and he’s home! Stop everything. Let’s celebrate!”.
Jesus wasn’t telling his followers that they needed to turn from their lives of sin. If the son had been accepted back as a servant as the son had hoped, that would have made sense as a story about the son’s change of heart. But the parable is not about getting it right and pulling it together. It’s not about finding the right words to use or the right attitude to have.
The parable is about the love of the Father.
Jesus wants his followers to approach him just as we are without getting our stories straight. He wants us to come home and receive his love. He’s not looking for servants. He’s looking for his beloved children to come home.
Luke 15:11-24
The Passion Translation® Copyright © 2017 by Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
I can Only Imagine Devotional
Devotional - Day 5
One way we refocus ourselves on the true God is by discovering how Jesus presents Him to us through his teaching.
Throughout his teaching, Jesus was turning the world upside down: “Blessed are the poor in spirit… those who mourn… the meek… who hunger and thirst for righteousness…” (Matthew 5:2-6). The world values strength and independence; Jesus values weakness and dependence. The world values ambition and achievement; Jesus values the pursuit of humility and goodness.
But when he began to teach on prayer, he didn’t flip us upside down. No, he taught us to, through prayer, turn our hearts right-side up.
When you pray, Jesus told them, don’t pray to impress others. Instead, pray simply: Our Father in Heaven…
Did you catch that? Jesus gives us permission to approach God directly and as our Father! Having God as our Father means that we as his children, get regular, uninhibited access to him.
Imagine if you to get immediate access to the President. Unless you are a high-ranking government official, you most likely couldn’t get an appointment. And if you didn’t have an appointment, the Secret Service would certainly stop you if you got too close on your own. But the President’s children don’t need an official position in the Cabinet; they don’t need an appointment; they don’t even need a good reason to see him. They can simply walk right up to him, jump on his lap, distract him from his work, and enjoy his company. They are his children! Children have regular, complete, uninhibited access to their father.
How great it is to be a child of the Most High God! How wonderful to have regular, complete, uninhibited access to the most powerful, most patient, most loving Being in the cosmos. Simply put, we can approach him wherever we are, no matter what we’ve done, with no hint of fear. He is our Father.
When we realize who God is and how much he loves us, our whole lives can be reordered around his life-giving presence.
God has lavished his love on us by calling us his own sons and daughters. But John also tells us that God’s love is most fully visible not in receiving us, but in how much he had to give to receive us back. Since every one of us has broken God’s law and broken our relationship with God, the Father had to make a way for us to be restored – he had to give his own beloved Son up to death.
The Passion Translation® Copyright © 2017 by Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
I can Only Imagine Devotional
Devotional - Day 6
By reimagining a different future, we trust Christ to bring all things under his lordship and to guide us in each new season of life.
For instance, we have already looked at the remarkable reality that we are sons and daughters of God through faith in Jesus. But how are we made children of God? Through adoption!
When a couple goes through the process of adoption, their desire is to become parents, to offer a home and a family to a child that has neither. One day, they may have a child offered to them for adoption. They will be able to choose to adopt this child, and at that point, the boy or girl would legally become their own son or daughter.
Think about the spiritual analogies.
In adoption, an orphan is given a family and a home. As we saw yesterday, Jesus invites us to approach God as Father—with regular, uninhibited access. But our adoption also gives us a family and a home. The Church becomes our brothers and sisters in Christ. .
God chose us to be his sons and daughters before we were born—knowing full well how much we would sin, how often we would rebel, and how much patience we would require. And he adopted us anyway. This is God’s way of saying: “I gave everything to get you: It took years of effort and a huge cost for us to get you. There’s no way we’re turning back now!”
In adoption, there is a high cost to the parents and no cost to the child. We are heirs of Christ’s Kingdom. In adoption, we become legal, official sons and daughters of God. It’s a permanent decision. Adoption comes at an enormous cost to the parents. What does this adoption cost the child? Nothing!
It required the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. Adoption came at a grace cost to the Father.
We were adopted by God for the same reason that any parent adopts—out of sheer love. We are adopted “in love” and “to the praise of his grace” (Ephesians 1:4-6). God is not just full of love; God is love. Love is just an expression of God being God.
In his great love, he plans adoption, pays the cost, becomes our Father, unites us to a whole family of brothers and sisters, offers us his immeasurable wealth, and gives us the assurance that nothing can separate us from him.
The Passion Translation® Copyright © 2017 by Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
