The Divine Imagination Part 2 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue
The Divine Imagination Part 2 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue
The Divine Imagination Part 2 from Pastors Lawson & Aaron Perdue. In this episode of Grace For Today, you’ll find a way of bringing those things that you see in the word as promises into your reality.
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The Divine Imagination Part 2 – Transcript
Friends, I’m so glad that you tuned into the broadcast today. I have my son, Aaron, teaching with me today, sharing a brand new teaching. And he shared some things in this that I have never heard. And believe me, I’ve heard a lot of preaching in my days. But it’s talking about the Divine Imagination. And if you wanna move from just hearing the promises to seeing the manifestation of those promises in your life, you want to get ahold of this teaching. Blessings.
Friends, it’s so good to have you today. And we are sharing on Aaron’s series, “The Divine Imagination”. And Aaron, when you taught this, I got so excited. And you know what? The word of God works. And if you’ll let the word of God, you know, in God’s word, change your mind, the word has already been planted in your spirit when you’re born again, you can see the harvest in your body. You can see what God promised come to pass. And you know, there’s a lot of people that the word of God has created hope in them, right? They’ve heard the promises, but they’re not really moving into faith. And I believe what we do in our mind with the word of God, with our imagination, has a lot to do with moving from hope into faith, and actually receiving the promises.
I like yesterday, how you were talking about the word of God, how it relates to your spirit, the eternal part of you, your soul, which is your mind, your will, your emotions, your thought life, your imagination, and also your body. You said that the word of God, it’s conceived in the Spirit, it germinates in your soul–
Well, actually, germinates in your spirit.
Germinates in your spirit,
And then it–
Gestates. Gestates in your soul, and then–
So that’s the time. Gestation is the time from when a seed is conceived to when it’s born.
And that takes place in the soul.
It takes place in the soul. And that’s in the plant world and in the animal world both, in the human world also. So praise God, that’s a natural thing. But Jesus said if you can understand the parable of the sower, you can understand the entire kingdom. And so the sower sows the word, and the word is sowed into our heart, into our spirit. We’re born again by the incorruptible seed of the word of God that lives and abides forever. But from the time that we really believe that word, when it germinates in our spirit, and then when we see the physical manifestation, or the harvest, right, or the birth of that, that is what we call gestation. In a human, it’s nine months. In a horse, it’s 11 months. In corn, it might be 90 or a hundred or 120-day, or 180-day corn from the time it germinates to the time you have harvest. But that, you have to have that process. And in that process of gestation, the battlefield is the mind. And that’s where the devil a lot of times tries to defeat us. And we said you’ve gotta guard your heart, your soul. That’s talking about, your soul. Guard your heart, because the devil’s trying to sow seeds of discord, seeds of bitterness, unforgiveness, seeds of poverty, seeds of lack, seeds of anxiety, seeds of sin, adultery maybe. But if you deal with it in the realm of your soul, you are not, when it’s an evil thing, you’re not gonna see it in your body. A positive thing, you gotta hold onto that seed. You gotta hold onto that word, praise God. And that word will come to pass. You know what? An acorn just is a little old thing. And if you don’t let something snuff it out, it becomes a great big tree.
Well, even like, I like what you’re talking about the seed and how it relates to your soul. They’re also bad seeds. You know, in Hebrews it says, “Be careful lest the root of bitterness, by which many have been defiled.” You know, bitterness and a critical spirit, unthankfulness, these are bad seeds. If you let ’em root too long, it’s gonna produce a bad harvest. It’s gonna cause your imagination to work in a very negative, destructive way.
So in these negative areas, we need to deal with those things in our soul, and don’t let ’em take, don’t let ’em hold on, take root.
Don’t let ’em take root.
Just rip ’em out. Just like you have flowers and you have plants that you grow. And boy, when you see weeds in there, you get ’em, you pull ’em out, you get rid of ’em. Well, in the same way, when we see negative things, we need to get rid of it. But we have to protect the positive promises of God as they’re germinating in our spirit, where they can go through this period of time. It’s seed time, and then harvest, where we can have a harvest off the promises of God.
Yeah. So I kind of started talking a little bit about this yesterday, but I wanna show you where I got this revelation from scripture on how your thankfulness literally directs, or navigates, it points your imagination in the direction it’s supposed to go. So your thankfulness directs your imagination. So I got this when I was reading through Romans 1. So let’s start in verse 20. We talked a lot about how God created the world, how he imagined the heavens and the earth into existence, but I like how this kinda relates to creation. So it says in Romans 1:20, “For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power in God, and so that they are without excuse.” So this is saying that there is evidence that there is a creator. Whenever you see beauty, whenever you see order, whenever you see organization, there is a creator behind it.
Amen.
You know, I have a doctorate in classical music. When I turn on the radio and I hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, ♪ Dun dun dun dun dun ♪ I don’t think, I don’t hear that and think some cat just walked across a piano and made this melody happen. You know, some people, they see the mountains, they see the stars, they see the suns, and they think, “Man, isn’t it amazing that there’s just a big explosion and all this occurred?”
That’s–
A big bang.
Stupid.
That is very stupid. “A fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.'”
So he says right here in verse 20 that, “The invisible attributes of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by those who were created,” those things that are made, “so they are without excuse.” What that is is a philosophy of man, right, that Big Bang Theory, that’s called.
It’s anti-God, it’s anti Creator.
The theory of evolution, they call it the “Theory of Evolution” because there is no fossil record. There is no fossil record, because evolution is a lie. God is the Creator. He created the universe.
Yeah, so again, whenever you see beauty, whenever you see order, whenever you see organization, there’s a Creator behind it. You know, my wife and I, for our honeymoon three-and-a-half years ago, we went to Italy, we went to Rome. We got to see the Sistine Chapel. When I saw the Sistine Chapel, which, you know, there’s a famous painting right in the middle, which is Adam’s finger touching God’s finger. It represents creation. When I saw that roof, that beautiful roof, I didn’t think, “Man, there’s just this explosion of paint. And isn’t it so amazing that every little droplet of paint landed in the perfect order for this beautiful artwork to exist.” No. We know that there was a creator behind it. It took time, it took thought, it took talent, it took skill. Whenever you see beauty, thought, order, organization, there’s a creator behind it. But there’s also a destroyer. Whenever you see chaos… Chaos is not from God. Chaos, you know, in life, in relationships, in societies, in your own heart, chaos is from the devil.
There’s been a lot of crazy chaos the last few years.
Yeah, chaos comes from the enemy. So, Romans 1:20, there clearly is a God. But I love what it says in verse 21. This is where I got this revelation that your thankfulness will direct your imagination. So it says, “Because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful.” So it says they did not glorify God as God. They did not glorify him as the Creator. They became unthankful. So God… And people are doing this today, they’re not glorifying God as God. You know, like you were talking about how the spirit behind this theory of evolution, this spirit behind the big bang theory, even this spirit behind there is no male and female, that you can pick and choose your gender, doesn’t matter how you were born, that spirit behind it, it’s anti-God, really, it’s anti Creator, because he created them male and female. And if you deny a Creator, you’re gonna, if you hate the Creator, you’re gonna hate yourself, because you are his creation. That’s what people do. They end up hating who they are, end up hating their own gender, hating their own race, their own…
You brought this out in your teaching. When they dig your bones up 10,000 years from now, if that should be, if that should happen, they’re gonna be able to tell whether you were a man or a woman, by your DNA.
That’s true.
And you know, some people think they’re a cat, and they’ve got some supposed hundred, over 100 genders. That is a bunch of malarkey.
Well, you can just see how far that imagination in the wrong direction, when the devil gets a hold of someone’s imagination, even a group of people’s imaginations, things can become very destructive, very, very crazy.
“And their foolish heart was darkened.” It goes right into this.
“They were not thankful, and became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts was darkened.” So it’s saying here that they did not glorify God. They were unthankful. Unthankful is, it’s kind of a big deal here in Romans 1:21. It says they became unthankful and they were vain in their thoughts. Their foolish hearts were darkened. So that unthankfulness twisted their imagination into a negative way. But if you’re thankful, if you glorify God, if you’re a thankful person, if you make it a habit of being thankful, that’s gonna direct your imagination in a positive way, the way that God…. And God has an imagination as well. You know, the neat thing about really great creators, really great artists, really great composers, they want to leave a piece of themself in their artwork. So if you hear a symphony by Beethoven, you can kind of know what was going on in his life. You can kind of know what was going on in his heart. Like one of his very stormy symphonies, Symphony Number Five, it goes, ♪ Da na na daa ♪ ♪ Da na na na ♪ It’s very stormy. But he was actually losing his hearing at the time, and that was a big deal for him as a composer. So you can, even in his music, you can see what’s happening in his life. You were created in God’s image. You know, God as a Creator, he wanted to leave his imprint, his ID, on his creation. And the greatest aspect of his creation, the crown of his creation, was human beings. And, man, if you hate the Creator, you’re gonna hate yourself. And that’s what we’re seeing today, that people just hate how they were born.
Well, and it doesn’t lead them in a positive way. You’ve talked about how you were in a very high level of education in the musical world, and a lot of people were exploring different sexual avenues, other than biblical sexual avenues, but it’s that they haven’t identified with God and who God says they are, and how, when people follow this out and do different things, that over 98% of them are very, very unhappy, because ultimately it’s not that. It’s a problem in their relationship with God. And this is what Paul’s actually, he’s actually talking about in this portion of scripture, man’s need for Jesus, man’s need for righteousness, standing with God. And he actually says, you know, what we talked about, how they’ve created philosophy, idolatry, lust, all kinds of ungodliness. And sin, you know, just sin that’s rampant. And when he goes down and explains this sin in the non-church world, he says they’re unthankful and unholy. And you talked about how if you’re being unthankful, it is leading you in the wrong direction. We need to be thankful. And thankfulness, I am so thankful to God. You know, I went to school in Wiley, Colorado. It was K through 12, about 400 kids or something. And my best friend in high school, I talked to him the other day, one of his nephews had called me. He’s become very successful. I’ve become very successful. He lives in Garden City, Kansas. But I called him up and he said, “I am so thankful. God has been so good to me.” And you know what? That day I’d been out and exercising early in the morning, and I was looking, oh, you know, at Pike’s Peak and Garden of the Gods, and I was thanking God for the beauty of creation. I was thanking God for my tennis shoes. I thank God for, you know what, just little things. We are so blessed! You know what? We need to constantly be thanking and praising and glorifying God. And when you do that, it turns you around, and you go from negative to positive things. And we’re gonna come back right after this break, and Aaron’s gonna begin to talk about how you go from a negative to a positive imagination through thanking God, through glorifying God, through glorifying God for being God. And it brings light, understanding, right? It brings a positive imagination that helps you move into the plans and purposes of God. So stay tuned. We’ll be back right after this short break. Blessings. Friends, I wanna share with you about our special product that we’re offering. I’m teaching, and with my son Aaron, also with Jesse Duplantis, on a couple of different things. Number one, “Insights to Faith”. Jesse Duplantis made a statement years ago in my church as he was ministering, and I just haven’t been able to let go of it. He said, “Most of the time in the realm of faith, I made a decision and God backed it.” We’re gonna talk about that. We’re also talking about this, my son Aaron’s, one of his newest series, “The Divine Imagination”. Tremendous, tremendous revelation that I believe will help you move into the plans and the purposes of God. And also my series, “The Power of a Positive Imagination”, one of my most requested series. You want to get this product. If you can’t call in and get it physically, you can watch it online for free, or you can pay a small fee and download this information on our website at charischristiancenter.com. Friends, we’re back here and we’re right. We’ve been in Romans 1:21, and we’ve been talking about how the world unbelievers, non-church people, even when they knew God, they did not glorify him as God. Now, there’s ways that church people miss God, and a lot of times they get over here, being unthankful. And he really addresses that in Romans 2, but this is what he’s literally, “And they became vain or futile, empty,” to be vain means to be without power or direction, “in their imagination.” You want your directions to go in a positive way, and you can be purposeful in your imaginations.
I’ve seen some people, even as a pastor, who become pretty unthankful with a certain situation. Maybe it’s in their marriage, or maybe it’s even towards someone at the church, or even towards a pastor. And when you let unthankfulness just take root in you, it makes your imagination work in a negative way, and you start imagining problems that aren’t really there.
Completely. I’ve seen this happen. I’ve had people tell me, “Well, I had a dream and you were just chewing me out, and you were railing on me.” And it’s not even true!
So that unthankfulness, it’ll cause an imagination to work in a destructive way, so you’ll start imagining problems that aren’t really there. You’ll also start imagining solutions that are actually very negative solutions. For instance, like if you take a marriage relationship, and a husband becomes very unthankful for his wife. And if you’re married, that that is your wife, that is the wife that God has given you.
You know, the Bible says, “If you’re married, don’t seek to be unmarried.”
Yeah. But if you’re very unthankful, you’ll start imagining, “Well, what if I married this other person?” Or, “What if I…” And that’s very, that is a road that is gonna be very destructive.
Andrew and Jamie Wommack, and Andrew teaches a lot of this that you’re teaching. And Andrew has been married, we just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. It was a wonderful time. I got to be there at the celebration. But he talked about how one time the devil started leading him and he started thinking about, “Well, what would it have have been like if I would’ve married this other girl that was in my high school class?” And boy, he stopped it immediately. And you know what? That’s how the devil sows negative seeds.
And he probably started thinking that after he got in a fight or something too.
Yeah. Who knows? I’m not gonna say Andrew got in a fight.
Usually when those thoughts kinda start happening, it’s usually after, after–
I will say Jamie’s a very strong person, and she’s a very good person. They’re a good fit, and they’ve had a, you know… Jamie’s a lot like your Momma. And Andrew, in ways we’re a lot alike, in ways we’re very different. But your Mom and I are both very strong people. We have very strong opinions. One thing that helps us in our marriage is we communicate. I heard about someone, and I don’t know if it’s even true, but that they divorced their wife, and it’s just completely against everything they’ve ever said or taught. And it’s really a sad thing. And if you’ve had a divorce, Jesus loves you. Half of the church divorced, but listen, we can stop some of the crazy right now by going to the word of God. And it’s not like, your Mother and I, we’ve had very strong disagreements at times. But your Mom is a tremendous communicator. And you know what? Communication is a key to being able to work through issues and move into more positive territory. And so we’ve got a very good marriage. We’ve been married, at this time, 38 years. God’s been very good to us. But it hasn’t been always easy. And I think sometimes people just, they look at you and they think, “Well, boy, you never have any problems.” People tell me, “Every investment that you’ve made turns to gold.” Well, God has blessed us. He’s helped us. He’s increased us. I’ve made a lot more positive decisions, and done a lot more good things than negative, but I’ve made some negative investments. I’ve had some challenges.
Well, there’s difficulties in life. There’s difficulties in relationships. There’s difficulties in ministry.
But you’ve gotta learn how to go to the word of God and let the word of God, and the promise of God–
And a divine imagination will help you find the right solutions. Sometimes you’re your own biggest problem, and that ungodly imagination will make you imagine other people being the main problem, when really, it’s something that, you know, just turn that mirror on yourself, and you’ll see the majority of the problem.
I got plenty of issues, I’m not gonna… Somebody asked me the other day in Bible school if I had problems realizing this wasn’t me. And I’m like, “Nope, I don’t, man. I know that I’m not good enough. I know that I got challenges and issues.” But you know what? We’re human people. Dr Lester Sumrall said, “Every man of God has clay feet.” In other words, we’re all human. And I believe that you’re actually stronger when you know where your own weakness is. But this area, you know what? You can let the word of God create a picture, right? And you understand there’s a God, that he has a word. And he says in Romans 1:20, “Invisible things of God from the creation are clearly seen, being understood, even his eternal power and Godhead, that they are without excuse. But as we know God,” we turn this around. Instead of letting it be negative, we begin to glorify God, begin to magnify God. And then when we begin to glorify and magnify God, we become thankful, and just begin to thank God for every positive, good thing in your life. If you’re struggling in your family, in your marriage, you take 30 minutes a day, and take a yellow notepad or something, and you just write down every positive, good thing that you can think about your mate, and you focus on that and begin to thank God for it. I heard about a person, they were thinking about getting a divorce, and things were really rough. And they started doing this, and they started just focusing on the good. About the first day, they could only think about one good thing. So for 30 minutes, they thanked God. And then all of a sudden they began to think about another one. And the next day they began to thank God for those two things. And then two became 10 and 20 and 50, and all of a sudden they were spending 30 minutes a day, and there were just so many things that they could thank God for. But you know what? That’ll work in reverse. And so what we’re saying is take this around, when he’s talking about unbelievers, and become thankful, and let your imagination work in a positive way and begin to dream about possibilities. Hallelujah. Norman Vincent Peale wrote a book, “Possibility Thinking”, years and years ago. Praise God, he was a Methodist guy. Glory to God. God used some good Methodists in the past. And he said, “And their foolish heart was darkened.” Instead of having darkness and corruption rule your heart, you’ll have light and understanding rule your heart.
Here’s another quote I was thinking about. I still love history today, but I loved history growing up. And one of my historical figures that was one of my heroes was Winston Churchill. And there’s a quote of his, kinda talking about what you were mentioning. But Winston Churchill said, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity.” So a pessimist is just gonna imagine the difficulties, even in great opportunity. But an optimist will see the opportunities in every difficulty. So that optimist is gonna actually imagine, imagine the opportunities that are there, even in difficult times.
You know, I’ve got one of my mentors, and he’s been struggling a very bad physical battle for, he’s up in his eighties, for a period of time. But I just talked to his son last night. And his son said, “Even in this difficulty, he is still positive.” And, you know, that’s how I like to be. And that’s the people I like to hang around, is positive people. People that believe in God, people that, no matter how dark it is, they see the light. And you know what? I talked to him a while back. He’s a wheat farmer, and he’s got an eighth grade education. Multimillionaire. And he’s helped a lot of people become multimillionaires. But I talked to him and he said, “I need help getting out of bed. I need help getting off the toilet.” But he was talking to me that day about $12 a week, you know. And as a kid, it used to be two dollars. And he was just thanking God for the good. And you know what? Even though you can be facing some very difficult problems, if you’ll decide to focus on the good, it will lead to good things in your life. And good things, this has led to good and blessing in the lives of people around him.
And I have a just one extra thought I wanna share before we’re done for the day. But when I first got this revelation from Romans 1:21, how your thankfulness directs your imagination, the first group of people I shared this with was our church worship team. And really, every believer is created to be a worshiper. In the Bible, Jesus said that true worshipers are gonna worship in spirit and truth.
Exactly. John 4.
And the foundation for godly worship, the foundation for godly creativity, it’s always thankfulness.
Amen.
So if you wanna be a true worshiper, if you wanna worship God, if you wanna worship Jesus in spirit and truth, the foundation is always thankfulness.
You know what? We need to constantly thank God for our salvation. We need to constantly thank God for every good thing that we have. I’ve went through some really negative challenges, difficulties sometimes at business and relationships, other things. But God has spoken to me and said, “Lawson, look at what you have and not what you lost.” And you know what? Grief is an overwhelming sense of loss. But when I’ve done that, it’s helped me move out of that challenge, out of that difficulty, into the supernatural blessing of God.
Amen. So I like what you said too, about how someone was given marriage advice, and that was just to write down something that they’re thankful for. Maybe you’re someone who’s just been kinda trapped in negativity. You shared that study that I found is from the Cleveland Clinic. The average person thinks 60,000 thoughts a day. Of those 60,000 thoughts, 80% are habitual repeated thoughts that you just have every day. And of those, the vast majority are negative. So a lot of people just wake up thinking, “I’m so tired,” “I’m so sore,” “I’m so poor,” “No one likes me.” Just kind of reset your soul, reset your thought life, and just physically take a pen and paper and start writing down what you’re thankful for.
And begin to magnify God and magnify his word, his promises to you, and it will turn your life around for good. If you need prayer today, I want you to give us a call. We have prayer ministers that are waiting to receive your calls. Thanks so much. And God bless you.
[Announcer] Imagination is a very powerful force that works on the inside of everyone. The thoughts of your imagination create the framework of your life. Get “The Imagination Package”, which includes “Insights Into Faith” with Jesse Duplantis, “Divine Imagination”, and “Power of a Positive Imagination” CD series, all for $49 when you call 719-418-4000, or visit charischristian center.com.
Hi, ladies. I am so excited to invite you to our Rejoice Women’s Conference, February 9 through 11. This is an event for women 13 and up. It’s time to rejoice.
Not only are you gonna have a lot of fun and laugh a lot, you are also gonna experience the power of God when you see signs, wonders and miracles.
[Heather] Amen. We’re gonna have a lot of fun. We have Cathy Duplantis coming, so make plans and register today.
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