The Divine Imagination Part 6 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue
The Divine Imagination Part 6 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue
The Divine Imagination Part 6 from Pastors Lawson & Aaron Perdue. In this episode of Grace For Today, learn how you can build a picture of victory so big on the inside of you that the devil can’t defeat you.
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The Divine Imagination Part 6 – Transcript
Welcome, friends, to our broadcast. I am so glad that you’re here today. I have my son, Aaron. We are gonna be talking about the divine imagination, and specifically we’re gonna be talking about rehearsing the victory. You need to get a picture of victory in you that is so big, that the devil cannot defeat you, that you can walk in that victory that Jesus already won. So stay tuned. Blessings.
Friends, we are so happy to have you with us today, and I’m excited about the message. And so I’m gonna let Aaron just go ahead and jump in. We’ve been teaching about the divine imagination.
Amen. Well, I love sharing on the subject about the divine imagination. We started in 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24, and it says, “Now, may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.” So we’ve been talking some about spirit, soul, and body, and really the imagination fits into the soul. Your soul is your mind, your will, your emotions, and also your attitude, your thought life, your dreams, your imagination fits in there. And a lot of times when the Bible talks about the imagination, it talks about it in a negative context because a lot of people haven’t figured out what the divine imagination is. They’re just using their kind of carnal, fleshly type imagination. But really, God has an imagination.
Amen.
God has dreams, he has emotions. We’re we’re created in his image. He has a soul. He has a heart for you. But God has an imagination. I actually believe before God spoke the universe into existence, I believe that God imagined the universe. I believe that he even imagined you. He imagined every single star in the universe. You know, the universe. It’s amazing. I just saw something recently about how long it takes our universe, you know, our solar system to orbit the Milky Way. And it takes millions. Like, it would take millions upon millions of years that the Milky Way is so huge. And that’s just one of myriads of galaxies. And I believe before God even created the expanse of the universe, he imagined it all. He imagined every galaxy, every star, every social system, every person, every single human being like you right now, I believe before God even said, let there there be light. He imagined you. He knew that you would exist.
Praise the Lord.
And he imagined good things for you. God doesn’t have an evil imagination, a harmful imagination. He doesn’t, he doesn’t imagine bad things. Dream bad things for you. God only has good imaginations towards you.
You know, Jeremiah 29:11 says, “I know the thoughts I think towards you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a hope and an expectation.” And it’s talking about just exactly what you’re saying, that God has a good plan for our life. Ephesians 2:10, going along with what you’re saying, says this, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God before has ordained, that we would walk in them.” And if you study that out in the Greek, it means before the foundation of the world, God had a good plan for your life. God had a purpose for you. God had good things for you to do. You know, we live in a world that really is plagued with death and destruction. There’s a lot of suicide, different things. And I think a lot of that is because we’ve taught people that there is no God. And you know, if people don’t have this foundational belief that there is a God and he has a purpose for my life, they can go astray, and get lost in a lot of the atheistic teaching really that’s out in the world today. But there is a God, he does have a plan. We’re part of that plan. Paul said this in 2 Timothy 1, that he saved us and called us with the holy calling before the foundation of the world. That all fits in, Aaron, with what you’re saying.
And God is a, that’s the first thing we learn about him in the Bible, is that he is a creator. You know, God is a creator. And if you just look at creation, it’s beautiful. It’s magnificent. All creation points to God, all creation points to a creator and just a magnificent creator at that. God doesn’t create bad things. He doesn’t create any screw ups. And where the enemy has screwed things up, God always has a plan to restore. He has a plan to redeem. He has a plan to buy things back. So even when things go wrong in this Earth, it’s not God’s fault. God always has a plan to restore and to make things better.
That’s amazing. And he does make things better when you put your confidence in him. You know, some people, I think when they look at different destruction and evil, they account it to God. And when they account it to God, that causes ’em to turn their heart against God. But when you know that God is good, that he’s the author of good, that he only does good, then that takes away that. And I think religion has wrongfully accused God many times. A good friend of mine says this, that there is no proclaiming atheist. We know there are no true atheists, because according to Romans 1:20-21, every creation knows its creator. But everyone who proclaims to be an atheist or an agnostic, they’re really angry at God about something. And most of the time it’s things God did not do because God is a good God and he only has good in store for his people. You say, well, why is there all the evil? Well, a lot of people fail to acknowledge that there is not only a God, there is a devil, and just like God is good, he has good for you. There’s a devil and he’s evil. And I think, you know, Jesus said it this way in John 10:10. And I know these are very basic things for some of us, but some people still don’t have a grasp of these basic principles of the Gospel. And Jesus said, “I’ve come to give you life and that life more abundant, but it’s the thief that comes to steal, kill, and destroy.” And so in my understanding, everything good comes from God, and everything evil comes from the devil. Praise God. And Jesus came to bring us into the good things of God.
I think when you understand how good God is, that actually causes your imagination, your thought life, how you think about God to be more positive and even divine. You know, a lot of people just have constant negative, pessimistic thoughts, just imagining the worst case scenario. You know, the world often kind of blast the worst case scenario. They really put fear in people. You know, God doesn’t want you to live by fear. He wants you to live by faith.
Yes. And that’s just, you know, that’s the way it is. And so we’re gonna live by faith. We’re gonna walk by faith. God is good and God helps us. Praise God.
Yeah.
And when you understand the Scripture, and really what the Scripture says, I believe it causes faith to rise in your heart. You know, Romans 10:17 says, “Now then faith comes by a declaration and declaration by the mouth of God.” That’s the literal Greek interpretation of that Scripture. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the mouth of God or the Word of God. So when someone comes and declares who God says that he is, it causes faith to rise in your heart. And when you understand the Old Testament is a progressive revelation of who God is. That he is our provider, that he’s our healer, that he’s our deliverer, he’s our sanctification, that he’s our peace, that he’s our righteousness, and that he’s always there. He’ll never leave us or forsake us. That’s the seventh redemptive names of God. And God progressively revealed himself. And then in the Gospels, we look at Jesus, and Jesus came to put a face on the Father, and he’s the open demonstration of who the Father is. And Jesus, you know, did all those things. He provided, he healed, he forgave, he freed. You know, that’s who Jesus is. And then when you understand the Epistles, you understand that Christ now is in us and God has these good things in us. We’re created in Christ Jesus. Just where we started a while ago in Ephesians 2:10. “Under good works, which God, before the foundation of the world ordained, that we should walk in him.” And when you begin to get that as a foundation in your thinking, you begin to move into a positive way of thinking. And like you said, most of the time in the Scriptures, when the imagination is used, it’s used as evil. And I believe that’s ultimately because when God created us, he created us with, you know, 90% I believe of our faculties were to be used for spiritual things and 10% for natural things. But when Adam fell in the garden and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he gravitated towards the negative things. And so eventually that knowledge of sin, that that old, you know, black old nature kind of took over, and to where in the days of Noah, man’s thoughts were only continually evil. But I don’t believe we started out that way. And so I believe as born again people, since we have the spirit of Christ in us, as we renew our mind in the Word of God and begin to think godly thoughts, we can take back that 90% of our soul that was used for negative things, or you know, supposed to be used for godly things and use it for godly things, amen. Things of the Spirit.
Amen. I wanna talk about rehearsing the victory. God spoke something to me about the imagination. And really, if you can’t imagine something, you’re not gonna go there in the natural realm. You know, God spoke to me several months ago that I need to imagine that I’m raising people from the dead.
Hallelujah.
You know, the Bible says that we can actually lay hands on the sick, see them recover that we can, you know, there are people in Scripture, there are people today who’ve prayed over people and seen them raised from the dead. But if you never even imagined it, never really thought about it, if that opportunity presents itself, it’s probably hard for you going to to do it. You know, if you can’t even go there in your mind, you’re not gonna really execute it in the natural realm.
Right.
God spoke to me and just said, “You need to start imagining that you’re raising people from the dead.” And around that same time, there was actually someone at church who died between services here. He’s on the prayer team. You can tell the story because you were the one who prayed over him and saw him come back to life.
Well, I was just out in the front in between services. This was back in April of 2022. And I got, one of our volunteers came and got me and said, “Pastor, you need to go pray for this person, Herb Carter.” And so I said, “Well, I’m visiting with these new people.” She said, “I’ll take care of them. You go right now.” So I ran back there where the prayer team was, and they were gathered around Herb, praying. And right when I got there, Herb, his face was just white and he was sweating. I could tell he was in cardiac arrest. I’ve seen that happen before. And so his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped over like this. And so I came around the corner and man, I just, you know, I laid my hands on him. They said I hit him. I don’t know, just a natural part of me, but I commanded his heart to start. I commanded his blood to flow. I laid my left hand on his back, my right hand on his chest. The rest of the prayer team was gathered around praying. In a little bit, you know, his eyes rolled back at his head. He picked up his head, his color came back. As he sat there, he began to talk to us and everything cleared up. And you know, we ended up taking him to the hospital to check him out. And his wife rode with him. Another person drove him, another person took their car, but they kept him in there for all night, 24 hours. They couldn’t find anything wrong. The doctor put a harness on him for two weeks and couldn’t find anything wrong. And praise God, Herb’s been going everywhere. But anyway, we had two people were there that took his pulse, who had a nursing background. One said he had no pulse. The other said when she took it that his pulse was threaded. It’s like it was coming back. And so, praise God, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And the Scripture, you know, promises these things. You know, I don’t think it’s a big hard thing when something like that happens. It’s just part of your normal Christian life. And Andrew Wommack has raised at least three people from the dead. He’s my mentor. And Andrew says, you know, he’s been called to pray for many more who were not raised from the dead. And he said, “If it’s there, it’s works. “If it’s not there…”
But if you’ve never even heard about someone, you know, healing someone or raising, if you never even heard about it, never even thought about it, never even imagined it. You know, that’s what God was really speaking to me, is you need to at least start imagining these things. That’s why it’s really important to share testimonies, to be around other faith-filled believers who are believing God, at least dreaming about these things, desiring these things. If you’re around people who don’t even think about it, it’s probably not gonna happen.
Praise God.
So it’s really important to rehearse the victory. I got this from Exodus 17.
I’m there. It says here in Exodus chapter 17, where do you want me to start?
Start in verse eight.
In verse eight. “Then came Amalekite, and fought with Israel in Rephidim. And Moses said unto Joshua, ‘Choose that man and go fight with Amalekite. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand.’ So Joshua did as Moses had said unto him and fought with Amalekite. And Moses and Aaron and Hur went up to the top of the hill. And it came to pass when Moses held up his hand that Israel prevailed. And when he let down his hand, Amalekite prevailed, but Moses’ hands were heavy, and they took a stone and put it under him. And he sat there on, and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands one on one side, the other on the other side. And his hands were steady till the going down of the sun. And Joshua discomfited Amalekite and his people with the edge of the sword. And the Lord said unto Moses, ‘Write this for a memorial in a book and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua, for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalekite from under heaven.’ And Moses built an altar and called the name of the place Jehovah-Nissi, for it is said, because the Lord is sworn that he will have war with Amalekite from generation to generation.”
That’s awesome. So that’s where I got this idea about rehearsing the victory. And we’re gonna kind of talk, after this short break, We’re gonna talk about how you go about rehearsing the victory and why it’s really important in your imagination to rehearse the victory. So stay tuned, we’ll be right back after this break.
Bless you.
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 Into 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 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 carischristiancenter.com. Friends, it’s so good to have you back with us, and we just read this Scripture in Joshua 17:8-
Exodus 17:8.
Excuse me, Exodus 17:8-16, that talks about, you know, when Joshua led this first victory as Israel was coming, you know, out of Egypt into the wilderness. And as he led this first victory, the Lord spoke to Moses in verse 14, Exodus 17:14, and said, “Write this for a memorial in a book and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalekite from under heaven.
That’s awesome. You know, this is actually the first time Joshua is mentioned in Scripture. This is the first battle he had a face. He never had any prior experience. You know, the previous encounter they had against an enemy, against Pharaoh’s army, God just wiped them out, you know, in the sea, or God just wiped them out. They didn’t have to raise a sWord, they didn’t had to do anything. But here, Israel had to physically fight themself. God was helping with them. You know, there are different types of battles. You know, sometimes God does everything. Sometimes you have to stretch out your arm and apply your faith as well. So this is an instance where they had to had to grab their swords, grab their shields, and go fight this battle. And this is the first battle that Joshua fought. He had to command this army. And God helped, they won. But God spoke to Moses, said, “Write this down for a memorial, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua. Recount it to Joshua.” So Joshua would have to fight a lot more battles, probably hundreds of battles after this. But I believe every time before he fought a battle, he would go back and remember, rehearse this victory. Remember that first battle he fought against the Amalekites and he remembered that God was there fighting with him. God is Jehovah-Nissi, the Lord our banner, the Lord our victory. If I trust in him, he’s gonna prove himself strong on our behalf. So he would go back and he would imagine that victory. A lot of times people just imagine defeat. They imagine failure, but you need to imagine the victory. And man, you can imagine someone else’s victory too. Like I, when God spoke to me and said, “You need to imagine yourself, you know, raising someone from the dead.” I would imagine my dad praying for that, that prayer minister of church, Herb, who was raised from the dead, who had a heart attack passed out, no pulse. I would imagine myself in that situation laying hands on him and commending his heart to recover.. You know, the Bible says the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. That means if Jesus did it, you know, he said that greater works than these shall you do. If Jesus did it, we can imagine ourselves in Jesus’ shoes. We can imagine ourselves laying hands on the sick and seeing them recover.
Praise God. You know, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. We just had a woman that came here just a week and a half ago on a Sunday. And you know, this woman, they brought her from Indiana, another state, she’s probably between 25 and 30 years old. She had stage four cancer. They’d given her only six to 12 months to live. And you know, mom had a word at the end, mom didn’t know this, but she had a couple of words of knowledge about healing. And, you know, she thought one or two people had come forward. She said, “Run up here right now.” The Spirit of God was really moving. And you know, I went ahead because this dad and this daughter had talked to me before service and I said, “Come on up now,” I told him to come at the end, but I said, “Come up now.” And we laid hands on her and spoke to those tumors. We spoke to that disease, we cursed it in the name of Jesus according to Deuteronomy 28:27. And we prayed that the same spirit that raised up Jesus from the dead would quicken her mortal body, that this cancer would go into remission. And I gave her a couple of testimonies about people who were supposed to die in a real short order, and we’d prayed for in the past, and how they were healed and how God raised them up. And of these same symptoms, essentially. And so I gave that to her and her mom called in on Tuesday and she’d been back to the doctor and they said, “The doctors are amazed. They don’t know what’s happened. They can’t explain it.” These tumors have all shrunk significantly. They said her blood pressure, they couldn’t do any type of operation on her with anything or different things. Her blood pressure had went down significantly. They had no explanation for it. One of the tumors was in a place that they couldn’t take care of it. It had completely moved. And praise God, you know, immediate results. We’ve seen these things happen over and over. And you know, we’ve believed these promises, right, for years. We’ve seen a lot of these things happen for years and years and years. But you know, when, one thing I did when I went up there to minister to this young woman, I told her about a woman in Dallas that was healed of stage four cancer that they’d given only months to live. I told her about a woman in Kit Carson who was healed in 1990, and she had been to Mayo Clinic and she had cancer and they said she had less than six months to live. And praise God, she was completely healed. She’s healed today. She’s well, she’s healthy, she’s strong. You know, the Word of God works. And you know what, what you you can do by sharing a testimony is get people to begin to see themselves healed. And if they can get ahold of that picture again and see themselves healed. And I believe, you know, when Moses told this to Joshua, Joshua got a huge picture of victory on the inside of himself. And I believe that’s why God told Moses, “Rehearse this in the ears of Joshua.” God wants you to get a picture of victory on the inside of you so big that the enemy can’t stuff it out. Whether it’s a picture of health or healing, or seeing other people healed, seeing people raised up, seeing the power of God flow in their life, or prosperity, you know, and seeing the promises of God operate in your life. You know, what you see on the inside, you know, is eventually what you’re gonna possess on the outside. And I believe, through the Word of God, we can get a picture of victory on the inside of us that’s so big that the enemy can’t steal these things from us.
They’re like practical things you can do also to rehearse the victory, to just imagine being victorious. Imagine being successful. You know, when I grew up as a kid, we lived in Kit Carson, Colorado. It’s a very small town, less than 300 hundred people in eastern Colorado. And when I was around nine or 10 years old, I played the flute and started taking lessons, and I was the only flute player in Kit Carson. I didn’t have anyone better than me to look up to, or things like that. So my dad would drive me three hours one way to flute lessons with a professor at the University of Northern Colorado. And I’d have a two hour lesson once a month with her. It’d be three hours one way there, three hours back. But one thing she told me to do was to, for a month when I was practicing, she said, you know, “Every day when you practice this month, I want you to imagine that you’re the greatest flutist in the world.” She said, “Imagine that you’re a James Galway, who at the time was the greatest flutist in the world.” So when I get my flute, I pretend I was James Galway playing, and I really enjoyed it, but that actually helped me improve a lot because I was using my imagination in a positive way. You know, a lot of people actually lose the battle. They lose the game before they even get into the game.
You know, there are athletes, there are sports teams that, that they, they’ve already lost before, you know, before the whistle has even been blown before the kickoff. They’ve already lost because-
You’ve gotta win that battle.
They’re just imagining defeat.
You gotta win that battle in your mind. You know, you talked about how the imagination can be evil. I’ve had the devil put like, a neon sign in my mind. You failed, you failed, you failed. You know, it can be used negatively, but you know what? I turned that around. The devil is a liar and I’m not gonna listen to it. And you know, you just have to get it down in your spirit. What God promised you is true and begin to see that victory on the inside. You know, the Bible says, I believe the Bible implies this, that faith sees the invisible, right? It talks about this in Hebrews 11. And faith hears the inaudible. And when you can see what God sees, what God says in your spirit, when you can see that. It may be not visible in the natural realm. And when you can hear the voice of God and what God is saying above all these other voices that are speaking in the world, I believe you’re moving to a place where you can begin to, you know, have the impossible. God is a God of the impossible. And what is impossible with man is possible with God.
That’s awesome, man. God can speak to you through your imagination as well. I remember when my wife and I were first married, I just really believed that we would have a baby girl someday. And you know, about seven months after we got married, she told me she was pregnant. And I just, I never even imagined having a son yet at that point, you know, a baby son. But I imagined having a baby girl. So we only talked about girl names. We never even discussed boy names even before we knew the gender. And you know, we have a girl, and we had already picked out the name before we even knew medically-
Praise God.
If it’d be a boy or a girl. So God can speak to you through your imagination.
Amen. So we appreciate you tuning in and being with us. We’ve got more to say. We’ll be here tomorrow and the next day continuing to teach on this. Tell your friends about the broadcast. And you can watch this on our website at charischristiancenter.com. If you need prayer, be sure and give us a call today. Thank you so much, and God bless you.
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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.
Amen. We’re gonna have a lot of fun. We have Cathy Duplantis coming. So make plans and register today.
[Narrator] 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 charischristiancenter.com. Thanks for watching “Grace For Today.” This broadcast has been made possible by our faithful partners. If you would like to become a partner, need prayer, or have a question, please call us at 719-418-4000. Or to partner online, go to charischristiancenter.com/give. You can write us at P.O. Box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 08962. See you next time on “Grace For Today.”
