The Divine Imagination Part 3 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue
The Divine Imagination Part 3 – Lawson Perdue and Aaron Perdue
The Divine Imagination Part 3 from Pastors Lawson & Aaron Perdue. In this episode of Grace For Today, you can change the course of your life and move into the victory that Christ has provided for you by changing the what you see on the inside of you.
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The Divine Imagination Part 3 – Transcript
Friends, thanks so much for tuning into the broadcast. We are so glad to have you today. And we’re gonna be teaching from my son Aaron’s brand new teaching on the divine imagination. We’re gonna be talking about how you can move into the victory that God has already planned and prepared for you by changing the picture on the inside of you. The picture on the inside of you leads to the picture on the outside of you, so stay tuned and you’ll be blessed.
Friends, I’m so glad that you’re with us today. Aaron’s with me and we’re teaching on his brand new teaching on the divine imagination. And Aaron, I’ve heard a lot of Bible teaching over the years, and I’ve never heard people say some of the things that you said in this series, and I thought they were powerful. And I really feel like this will help people move from just hearing the word of God to really receiving the promises in their life. And so, go ahead and you can share a little background. We were in 1 Thessalonians 5, talking about rejoicing, always being thankful, praying positively, not getting negative in your prayer and spirit, soul, and body, how the word is a seed that’s sown in our spirit. That’s where germination takes place. Gestation is in the area of the soul, right? So that’s the time period that takes from a seed to germinate to harvest. And then harvest is over here in our body. But this area of the soul, and this is where this divine imagination works. And you can also have a negative imagination, right? And we talked about that in the last broadcast, but how that negative imagination will actually cause things to go awry and stop the promises of God, or it will allow negative things to happen in your life that are ungodly.
Yeah, that negative imagination, that just carnal imagination, that’ll actually paralyze you with fear, that’ll paralyze you from taking opportunities that God has put before you. So as an example of this, I wanna talk about David, when he had the opportunity to face Goliath. You know, every Israelite soldier there had an opportunity. You know, he was a pretty awesome deal. You know, the Philistines were attacking the Israelites and the Philistines made this deal. They took out their champion Goliath, who was huge. Their great fierce experienced warrior. And they said, rather than just all of us kill each other, we’ll have our champion fight, you guys pick your champion, and whoever wins will win it all. Like, we’ll become your servants or you’ll become our servants and slaves. So they had Goliath out there, and I just wanna kind of read about this opportunity that was presented to any Israelite who would stand up and face Goliath. So, we’ll read about this. Let’s start in verse 17.
1 Samuel 17:17
Yeah, it says, Jesse said to his son David. So David was, you know, he was young. He was probably a teenager at the time. He was a, you know, the Bible said he was good looking ruddy, he probably looked like me. Ruddy means to be redheaded. So he’s probably a small, you know, redheaded musician, you know, and he wasn’t even sent to battle. His older brothers were sent. But Jesse, his father, said, you know, take now for your brothers an ephah of this dried grain, these 10 loaves, run to your brothers at the camp and carry these 10 cheeses to the captain of their thousands and see how your brothers fare and bring back news of them. Now, Saul and all the men of Israel were in the valley of Elah fighting with the Philistines. So David rose early in the morning, left the sheep with the keeper, and took the things and went as Jesse commanded him. And he came to the campus. The army was going out to fight and shouting for the battle. For Israel and the Philistines had drawn up in battle array, army against army. David left his supplies on the hand of the supply keeper, ran to the army and came and greeted his brothers. Then as he talked with them, there was the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name coming up from the armies of the Philistines and he spoke according to the same words. So David heard them and all the men of Israel, when they saw the man that said they fled from him and were dreadfully afraid. So we can see what everyone was experiencing in their soul, in their thought life, in their attitude, in their imagination. And so they were filled with fear. They were imagining this huge monster of a warrior just ripping their heads off, you know, chopping their arms. They were imagining like a horror film, but they’re the main character in it. And so they were running away dreadfully afraid. Verse 25, it says, so the men of Israel said, have you seen this man who has come up? Surely he’s come up to defy Israel, and it shall be that the man who kills him, the king will enrich with great riches, will give him his daughter, and give his father’s house exemption from taxes in Israel. So here’s a great opportunity.
Right?
David heard about this opportunity that the man who kills Goliath will get great riches, will also marry the king’s daughter, he’ll become royalty. And not only that, him and his entire house will be exempt from taxes in Israel.
That’s a great benefit.
That is awesome. So, David, I think he started getting really excited. He started imagining, you know, being rich. You know, he was just taking care of his father’s sheep, you know, just playing his harp. He’s imagining, man, I could be rich, I could marry a princess. I could also be, you know, not not be charged tax for the rest of my life and my dad will like me. He maybe won’t just leave me out in the back of the woods taking care of the sheep because he’ll be tax-free as well. So he’s imagining all these things. You know, David could have been very, he could have been unthankful.
[Lawson] Right.
David had a lot to be unthankful about. He probably wish wishes that he was there with his brothers, that people thought he was, you know, more than what they were thinking of him. He could have been unthankful that, you know, this army of Israel, all my brothers, all these soldiers here, thousands of Israelites are just a bunch of chickens!
Right, now I wanna stop just a minute, because David saw from a different perspective. The rest of Israel was dreadfully afraid. But David began to say, what’s gonna be done? Because he saw something different from the inside. And it, because he saw from the inside from a divine imagination, he began to say some things differently. See, I believe what you say comes from what you see at a spiritual level. And the Bible actually says, death and life are in the power of the tongue. I also believe that David, if you studied chapter 16, he had been anointed to be the king of Israel.
[Aaron] So he’s already imagining that.
So he was anointed to bring Israel into victory. So he began to, he saw things differently, he said things differently. One reason was because the anointing on him. And you need to understand the anointing of God on you, and it will cause you to see things differently. It will cause you to speak things differently than the rest of the world around you. You know, the Bible actually says in 1 John 2:20, you have an unction, you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things. And he’s talking about anointing of truth and anointing of life. And every born again believer has an anointing of truth, anointing of life. And if you begin to go from that perspective, that will lead you into victory. I say that we’re all anointed to live the Christian life just as much as anybody else.
Yeah.
Now we may be anointed to minister to people differently, but to live the Christian life, we have the exact same Spirit of Jesus with every other believer. And we have an anointing of truth, we have an anointing of life, and we can walk into that. So, you begin to think that, and so David began to speak differently because he sees things really from a different perspective. But that didn’t excite everybody, did it?
No, he was starting to, we could look at verse 26, when David heard about what would be done, you know, to the person who could defeat Goliath. David, it says, in 1 Samuel 17:26, David spoke to the men who stood by him saying, “What shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?” The people answered him in this manner saying, “So shall it be done to the man who kills him.” So they’ll be given riches, marry the king’s daughter, and be tax exempt. Verse 28’s, kind of interesting. So now Eliab, his oldest brother. So Eliab is the oldest brother. He heard when David was speaking to these men. And it says that Eliab’s anger was aroused against David.
Right?
And he said, why did you come down here and with whom have you left those few sheep? He’s saying, he’s really talking down to David. Like, who did you leave with those few sheep?
Right.
You know, you’re just a little piece of scum. You’re a little wimp. You just have a few sheep in the wilderness. I know your pride and the insolence of your heart for you have come down to see the battle. So, he’s upset really with David’s heart, with his imagination, with what’s coming out of it. Eliab is very, man, sometimes a faith-filled spirit, a faith-filled imagination, it’s gonna offend some people who don’t think that way.
Now Aaron, you have a very high level of education in the area of music. You’ve got a doctorate degree from Rice University. You’ve got your undergrad at Carnegie Mellon. You’ve won some major competitions, you’ve traveled around the world and played in amazing venues. But you’ve taught a lot of students. And you said something before that you notice when kids are in grade school, they kind of dream big and they get in junior high and they start to kind of thinking smaller. And they get older, and a lot of times they allow the world around them to steal their dream. Talk about that a little bit.
Just the way imagination works. I think people are actually born with a certain creativity, imagination and, just as people grow up, maybe it’s the school system, maybe how they’re raised by their parents. A lot of people just by the time they reach junior high can’t think creatively or with imagination at all. And a lot of adults can’t either. I would say, I actually heard a study that Bill Johnson, Pastor Bill Johnson spoke about imagination that only 2% of adults have any imagination at all, really.
Well, you know, I’ve bought some fixer-uppers. You’ve seen them. They say about 90% of people can’t see beyond what they physically see. They can’t see the potential. And for instance, when we moved into Colorado Springs, we moved onto a $300,000 house. We bought a house for just over $200,000. Now, at that time, it was a lot of money, but we sold that house a few years later for $520,000. The people that bought it did some work on it and sold it for $675,000, which kind of amazed me, even. I don’t believe they were totally honest about everything. But anyway, I was honest in myself, so I’d give that to God. But at the same point in time, you know, we could see differently. I had a woman from our bible study group that was helping to start the church. She came over when we first bought it, and she told her husband, I don’t know what Lawson has done to Barbara, you know? And then she came over two weeks later and man, we began to transform that house. And she’s like, she was amazed at what happened in two weeks time. And as we owned that, we lived in that house for 10 years. You boys were in junior high and high school there. Y’all graduated from high school in that Cheyenne Mountain School District in the southwest area of Colorado Springs. But we did even a lot more transformation and renovation. But you know, I said that because David was young and they were kind of looking down on him. But he thought big, he dreamed big because he had an anointing from God. And the very next verse, he says in verse 29, what have I now done? Is there not a cause? There is a purpose, there is a plan of God for your life. There is a reason that we are here and it’s greater than ourselves. And you know what? We need to realize that, you know what? If I really believe, if we are either helping someone accomplish the plan and purpose of God, or we are walking in the plan and purpose of God for our life, it’s bigger than ourselves.
Yeah and man, like, I like what you’re saying too, just how a lot of people can’t see potential. They can’t imagine the potential there. And I was, you’re kind of sharing how I brought about how, like, I noticed this with my students that, you know, elementary students were a lot more creative and just imaginative than even junior high students. And sometimes when I was teaching flute lessons to students, I would just ask ’em, you know, if they’re maybe playing just a little simple melody, I would ask ’em, you know, if there was a movie going along with this song, what would be happening in the movie? And younger kids could kind of paint a picture. Well, it’s a night scene and there’s trees and the moon and there’s a wolf howling ’cause it’s kind of spooky sounding. But around the age of 12, around the age of 13, it’s just a complete shutdown. They don’t answer anything at all because they’re just taught, you just have to be a computer and just compute. You know, I’m asking a question that there is not a computation to solve. You’re supposed to create something in your mind and picture what would be, and there’s no right or wrong answer. It’s very subjective, but, and a lot of people, like, I think, I think it’s probably, yeah, less than 2% of adults have lost.
I guarantee you it’s less than 10% just with fixer upper homes, for instance. Now maybe people could see better since shows like HDTV that show people fixing up stuff. But a lot of times people just have, they cannot see beyond what they physically see.
And here when David, you know, there were probably thousands of Israelites there, and maybe some of them began to picture what it would look like to beat this guy. But they were running away afraid. They were imagining what it would be like to lose.
[Lawson] Yeah.
To be dead and to, you know, to face this guy. But David, David was imagining, he was tapping into that divine imagination. The divine imagination is what leads you to victory.
Amen, praise God.
So, yeah.
We’re gonna take a short break, very short, and we’ll be right back and we’re gonna continue to talk about how you can develop this imagination on the inside of you and what it will cause you to do. So stay tuned, we’ll be right back, 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 churches, he was ministering and it, 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 wanna 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, I’m so glad that you’re still with us. We’re sharing on the divine imagination and we begin to talk about, David saw differently, David spoke differently, David acted differently. Why’d he do it? Because the picture in his heart was different than the picture in other people’s heart.
And we’re kind of talking about how he tapped into the divine imagination. And part of that was through being thankful. You know, we see, we’ll read it here in a bit, when he actually faces Goliath. We know that he was being thankful for just, for what God had done in his life. He could have been unthankful, he could have been, you know, very upset about how his brother, his oldest brother Eliab treated him. Eliab’s so mean to me. I have the worst family. They’re just a bunch of bullies. He could have been unthankful about how the king viewed him. The king was kind of worried about him facing Goliath. The king said, well, maybe wear my armor. Hopefully it’ll help you. I kind of doubt it will. He could’ve been upset, unthankful about the king. He could’ve been very unthankful, you know, just as he’s approaching Goliath, maybe he didn’t really see how big he was, you know, across the valley but as he got close, he could have started and been, man, could he have just been, you know, a foot shorter or something?
I’m not very big, but when I was a little boy, my dad told me, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Lester Sumrall wasn’t very big. But you know what? He said something about Smith Wigglesworth. He said, Smith Wigglesworth said, in the spirit, I’m about nine feet tall. Praise God, you gotta see from a spiritual perspective, because it’s not you, but it’s greater as he that’s in you than he that’s in the world. And it’s the anointing that’s on your life. And God has anointed you. God has called you. God has a purpose for your life. And it’s greater than anything that other people may see about you. And, when you begin to move into that, and you know, Saul was just looking at David and looking at Goliath and he’s like, what are you gonna do? And then David said, no, I’m gonna go. But David began to look, you know, he said, you know, he talked about what God had done in his path.
He was thankful. That’s what I wanna share. He could have been unthankful, but he was thankful. You know, he said, isn’t there a cause? He said that someone’s gotta stand up for what’s right.
Hallelujah.
There is a cause, there is a purpose for us being here. You know, he was thankful. He was imagining, you know, what’s gonna happen when I beat this guy? I’m gonna imagine being rich and royal, tax-free. You know, he was thinking about, hey, I might not have a sword with me. I didn’t really come to battle, but I have this pouch, it can hold up to five stones. You know, I think he was thankful for his sling. He was thankful that, hey, I’ve killed a lion. I’ve killed a bear. This giant’s not gonna be, you know, and really my God is greater than this punk, than this uncircumcised Philistine. He was very thankful for his God.
[Lawson] Amen.
And he was thankful for Israel. He said, these are the people of the Almighty God.
[Lawson] Amen.
And like, he shouldn’t be defying these people here. So, he was very, very thankful. And that’s what really led him into victory.
He began to talk about what God had done previously. You know, when the lion and the bear came, he could have said, oh, that’s just a little lamb, I don’t care. And what you do when nobody’s watching, you know, the Bible says that God chose David when he was among the sheep folds. And God saw his heart out there worshiping Him, out there doing the right thing no matter what anybody saw, protecting the lamb, taking it from the lion, putting his own life in danger, taking it from the bear. God sees you and God knows your heart. And there may be people who’ve done the right thing to you and looked down on you and you’ve been out in the back 40. But there’s a day that God’s gonna bring you forward. And you gotta keep your eyes on that. And you know, sometimes I’ve got really upset because some of these people that are out there, and you really started talking about this, they’re really focused on fear. They’re really focused on a lot of, you know, things. And a lot of this isn’t really true. I see a lot of things in the body of Christ and I’ve had some people get really upset with me because I will not stand and endorse a lot of fear-based teaching. And, I am, I’m just, you know, violently against it because I see it in the body of Christ. And I see that it really hinders the body of Christ. It really hinders the church from moving in and possessing, it paralyzes me.
Well, you’ve seen how just a lot of fear-based teaching, fear-based ministry, fear-based prophecy has really neg negatively impacted people. You know, a couple of years ago, and we see it as pastors ’cause we’re with people on a continual basis. Some ministers aren’t really with people. They’re just living in their cave. And we see how it impacts people. You know, I prayed for a woman. She had lost her husband. I went to go to her house to give her some flowers and a card, pray with her. She was in her 80s and her and her husband were very into following different prophetic ministries. But she took me down to her basement to see if Latricia could use her husband’s desk. And her basement was full of five gallon buckets full of dry food. Probably ’cause she believed, you know, the blood moon thing from some prophet, you know, just.
Y2K, all this stuff.
Her entire basement.
The day the dollar dies. And a lot of these ministers have made hundreds and hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars off selling a lot of fear-based stuff. And sometimes there’s a basis in truth of things that will happen in the future. But you cannot live based on that fear and really move into what God has for you and possess it. And I see it’s been so very negative. I am very, very against that teaching.
Well, fear is a great motivator.
I saw this in the early 1980s. I saw that in the late 1990s. I’ve seen it most recently. And it just keeps cropping up and people just keep buying this bag of lies. And I get really tired of it. So, I’m speaking out ’cause I’m tired of the church sitting back and taking second seat to the world and the world really prospering, and the church, just suffering along and in the name of the Lord, not even keeping up with inflation and investments and different things. And so I’ve taken some major risks and I’ve had some challenges, but I’ve overcome because I never quit believing God. Now, there’s some amazing things. We may have to talk about this in another program, but, you know, go ahead and move into what you have here, Aaron.
Yeah, I just wanna share a little bit. If you look at 1 Samuel 17, we’ll look at verse 40. So it says David, he took his staff in his hand. He chose for himself five smooth stones from the brook, put them in his shepherd’s bag in a pouch which he had, and his sling was in his hand and he drew near to the Philistine. So the Philistine came and began drawing near to David. And the man who bore the shield went before him. And when the Philistine looked about and saw David, he disdained him for he was only a youth, ruddy and good looking. So the Philistine said to David, am I a dog that you had come to me with sticks? And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. And the Philistine said to David, come to me and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beast of the field. And I love that David, he didn’t just, he didn’t let the the giant have the last word.
Amen.
David spoke up, he said to the Philistine in verse 45, you come to me with a sword, with a spear, with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts.
Yeah, and he began to tell him, today, God is gonna deliver you in my hand and I’m gonna feed you and your brothers to the birds. Praise God, and your whole Philistine army. And I like it, after he killed the Philistine, you know, he took the head of Saul to Jerusalem, right, the capital of Israel. But he took his armor and he hung it in his tent. Praise God, and I think that led David from victory to victory because he thought, man, if I could kill him, I can kill ’em all. And you know, somebody said this, they said Solomon didn’t have any giants to kill because David killed them all. He got a picture of victory in him that was so big.
Oh, I love it when he hits him with that stone and goes and picks up Goliath sword and chops off his head. It actually took the Philistines and it took the armies a few moments to realize what had happened. Because they weren’t imagining this to play out like this. They were imagining, the Israelites were probably imagining David.
And when that happened, the Philistine giant, their big champion fell. It struck fear into the hearts of their enemies. And Israel prevailed, praise God, and won a great victory.
So this divine imagination that comes from being thankful, it’s what really gives you victory. Fear-based imagination, fear-based thinking. It not gonna lead you into victory.
Amen.
It’s gonna lead you into defeat.
[Lawson] Hallelujah.
Into survival mode. Really, it doesn’t take much imagination to just survive. It doesn’t take much imagination to live in fear, to really, to be on the defense, to be retreating in life. It takes more imagination to to be on the offense, to be growing, to be increasing. You know, David was a man of a positive imagination, of divine imagination. You know, he had a divine creativity. He wrote songs, he wrote poetry. But man, war is also a great place fighting. If you’re facing a battle, that is a good time to start tapping into the divine imagination.
And the battlefield is your mind. The battlefield is your soul, your mind, your will, and emotions. So take, the only power that Satan really has over you is the power of deception. So take the word of God, get a hold of the truth. Amen, begin to dream God’s dreams. Begin to talk about what God’s doing. Begin to think about it. Begin to, you know, thank Him for what He’s done in the past, and move into what God has for you. God has an amazing, awesome, good plan for your life.
Amen, yeah, so just imagine that abundant life. I like what Jesus said that He didn’t, He came to give us life and to give it to us more abundant. You know, you can start dreaming, start imagining, and being thankful for what Jesus wants to do, that abundant life. Don’t just be satisfied with a mediocre, lukewarm type of life. Jesus wants you to have an abundant life.
Praise God, I wanna remind you today that you can go to our website, Charis Christian Center and you can get this and literally hundreds of hours of teaching absolutely free of charge, blessings. Friends, I certainly hope that you’ve enjoyed the program today and it’s ministering to you to move into that which God has for you. And I wanna say a great big thank you to all of our partners for helping us share this gospel across the United States and across the world. It’s because of our partners that we can take this message of grace and faith around the world. If you would like to join our partners and receive that blessing, give us a call today, blessings.
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