The Power Of A Positive Imagination Part 5 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue
The Power Of A Positive Imagination Part 5 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue
The Power Of A Positive Imagination Part 5 with Pastors Lawson and Aaron Perdue. As we conclude this series on Grace For Today, you can grow your faith and vision toward the plans and purposes that God has for your life.
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The Power Of A Positive Imagination Part 5 – Transcript
Friends, today we’re gonna be concluding our message on the power of a positive imagination, and we’re gonna be talking about faith and vision, and how by faith and vision you can move into the things that God has planned for you from the foundation of the world. You don’t wanna miss this. Praise God. It’s great information, it’s great teaching, and it will help you possess God’s divine destiny.
Friend’s I’m so glad that you’re connected with us today. I’m sharing with my son, Aaron. We’ve been talking all week, and this is our last broadcast on talking about the power of a positive imagination. And today we’re gonna talk about how your vision determines your future. If you don’t like where you’re going you can change it.
Mm-hmm.
And the way that you change it is by faith and vision, and God is the one who gives you that. Praise God. And so we’re gonna be, we’ve been sharing all week on Roman’s chapter one, verse 21, developing the picture on the inside of you, and how the picture on the inside of you determines the picture on the outside. So we said we have to glorify God, we wanna become thankful. We wanna become purposeful and positive in our imaginations, and finally we’re gonna talk about this, how light and understanding will flood our heart. How we move into vision, and vision determines our future. So we’re gonna talk a little bit about revelation that comes from God. We’re gonna start here in Genesis chapter 13:14-18. Aaron, if you’ll read Genesis 13, verse 14 through the end of the chapter.
Mm-hmm. So it says here the Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, lift your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northward, southward, eastward and westward, for all the land which you see I give to you and your descendants forever. And I will make your descendants as the dust of the Earth so that if a man could number the dust of the Earth, then your descendants also could be numbered. Arise, walk in the land through its length and its width for I give it to you. Then Abram moved his tent, and went and dwelt by the terebinth trees of Amara which are in Hebron, and built an altar there to the Lord.
As we look at this, there’s just a number of things that are being said. The first one, God speaks to Abram after Lot separated from him. You know, God had spoken to Abram in Genesis chapter 12. This was a number of years earlier, like 10 years before this. And God had spoken to him, and said I want you to go to the place that I show you, and I want you to leave your father’s house. Well he partially obeyed God. He started moving in that direction, but he took with him Lot. And so when they begin to grow and prosper, and Lot’s servants got in strife with Abram’s servants, and Abram separated himself, then the Lord said “Lift up your eyes now and look “from the place you are.” If you wanna move to a new place, if you want to go into new things, you have to begin to lift up your eyes and look. You have to begin to see the possibilities in other places. And he said look North, South, East and West for all the land which you see I will give it to you. God will give us what we can see. And I’m talking about we talked about getting the picture on the inside, and letting the picture on the inside change the picture on the outside of us.
Mm-hmm.
If you can’t go to a new realm on the inside and in your thinking, it’s gonna be hard for you to go to a new realm in your possessing. Praise God. I know, Aaron, your brother Peter, he moved back to the United States, moved to Miami, and he had been serving in 3G Capital and Restaurant Brands International for a number of years, but before he bought his first house, I mean I was actually very challenged, and I think at a pretty high level considering where I came from. And he said “No, dad,” they were buying a house in Miami, and he said “These areas that you’re telling us about, “they’re hurricane areas.” I said “Well a house over there is a third as much “as the house where you’re buying.” He said “Yeah, but when the hurricanes come they flood.” And so Peter actually bought a house, and wow, I was really amazed. But I prayed for him a lot and different things. One of George Bush’s aids or something had owned this house, and he had all these different liens on it, loans on it, it took ’em two months to close that house, but that house has increased by nearly 30% in the first year that they’ve owned it. And it was challenging to me. But they think in a different way.
Yeah, I like what the Bible says. It says where there’s no vision the people perish. It’s really important that we have vision. And really I think when the Bible’s talking about that, where there’s no vision, it’s talking about revelation from God. God needs to place vision, you need to have vision stirred up in your heart, in your soul, in your imagination. You need to have a positive vision for your future, and that will give life to you, that will, it’ll help you grow.
Right. So we need to get vision. I believe God is the author of vision. God told Abram “Lift up your eyes from the place you are, “and look for all the land that you see “I will give it to you.” You know that word that says where there’s no vision the people perish, it goes on to say, I think it’s Proverbs 21, verse 18 or something. It’s right in there. But anyway it goes on… Proverbs 29:18. But it goes on to say but he that keepeth the law happy is he. Where there is no vision, where there is no prophetic enlightenment or insight that people are casting off all restraint, but he that keeps the law, happy is he. You get vision from the word of God. God is the one who is the author of vision. Also I believe you can get vision from hanging around people with vision. It’s hard to play better ball when you hang around poor ball players. If you wanna play better ball, you gotta surround yourself with better ball players. I know, Aaron, in the music world you studied under two of the greatest teachers in music, in flute, where you have gifting, where you have ability, in the whole world. And actually you’ve won some amazing competitions, but when you first went to the first place you were very challenged because of the level of musicianship. But that caused you to go to a higher level of musicianship, being surrounded by greater people, being taught by people that are beyond where you are.
And by being around people who have big goals, and who have vision-
And dreams.
Yeah.
You know, we ended the broadcast yesterday talking about how there’s a lot of people that don’t have much purpose, they don’t have much vision, they’re thinking only about themselves, and not other people. They’re not dreaming big. And God wants us to dream big. I like to say think big, it doesn’t cost anyone. Lester Sumrall several years ago, this is when we first started pastoring at Kit Carson, I came up here to Colorado Springs, it was a church on the west side, Dr. Sumrall was speaking, I had a friend with me, but he got up and said this package of book is $50,000, he said oh no, it was $50. It was probably $75 regular, he was selling it for $50. But he said it’s hard for me to think that small anymore. He just began to think in a different realm. And if you wanna go higher places, and do more things, you have to begin to think in a different realm. And I like to tell people it doesn’t cost anymore to think bigger, it actually costs you to think small. So you gotta break out of that small thinking to be able to move into what God has for us. Praise God. And it will affect you, and not only, he said “All the land that you see, “I will give it to you,” in verse 15, Genesis 13:15 and he says “To your seed forever.” Not only will your thinking and your vision effect you, it will effect those that are closest to you, your children. I know when we moved to Colorado Springs, it was one of the hardest things that we ever did to move from a community, where we sold our house about the top of market at that time at any house that had ever been sold there for $85,000. And then we moved in and bought a fixer upper here in Colorado Springs for $213,000. I mean it was a major job. And we put 50% down. We had to go to six banks before we had a banker that would loan us the money. And these banks kept telling us… The first banker we went to, she said across the desk from your mom and me, and she said “Well you can’t even afford “to buy a lot in this school district, “let alone a house.” She was looking at my 1040s, I was looking at the word of the Lord. And I said “Listen, if I couldn’t do it “I wouldn’t be here.” And it’s because, you know what, not only had I heard from God, I heard from a prophet of God who knew nothing about the situation. Said you need to pursue this. It’s good for you, it’s good for the church, it’s good for your family. Praise God. And we pursued it. And it was good for you, it was good for your brothers, it was good for us. God used that to bless us. It was challenging. Finally, after I went to the sixth bank, this guy said listen, I will prove your income in another way, and I’ll get you the best loan that we can get. Praise God, he did it. And he not only got that loan, he got another loan for me in the future. You know I went from owning that one house to owning three houses on the west side of Colorado Springs. I’ve sold that house now, and now I only have mine and one rental. But we bought an office building in the meantime, personally. And we’re still paying for that, we still have a loan on it, we still have a loan on our house, but God’s blessed us, and helped us and increased us. Praise God. We went from where we couldn’t even afford anything here to buying a church building on the west side, and building it out on the downturn, and buying this church. And when we moved in this church we bought it at a bank auction, but we moved in debt free. This church is worth three times what we paid for it. That’s the tax valuation. That is God. God has blessed us, and God has helped us. But if you want God to bless you and help you< you’ve gotta begin to see different. You’ve gotta begin to believe different. And it’ll challenge you in the natural realm. Praise God, it might challenge other people in the natural realm. But you begin to see. And when it becomes such a revelation to you on the inside you can’t help but think that way.
I like when God spoke to Abram, he wanted him to get a picture, a literal picture of… Some of you might need to actually get a real picture, print out a picture of what you’re believing for and put it on your wall-
Yes.
So you can see it.
Yeah. Glory to God. I’ve seen people do that. And you just get a picture. And God tells him “Listen, I’m gonna make your seed,” and then he says “as the dust of the Earth, “if they can number the dust “they can number seed.” You can’t number the dust. No man could do that, only God could do that. He says “Rise, get up, walk through the land, “in the length of it, the breadth of it, “for I will give it to you.” You talked recently, Aaron, about, and you live in a super nice place that God’s blessed you with, and God’s helped you, and it’s increased in value, but you went on vacation for one night to Vail, with one of your friends from high school, and you both had your wives. And you were walking, and looked at this house, and Heather asked you “How much was it worth?” And she said “10 million?” And you said “No, I think 40 million.” You went and looked it up on the internet, it’s worth $43 million. Man, you’re not gonna go there unless you’re thinking a different realm. I know that would be offensive to most Christian people thinking about a preacher owning a house that’s worth 43 million, that’s better than heathen owning it. People get offended because Jesse Duplantis owns a jet. Not that he got a home run deal, bought this 50 some million dollar jet for $4 million. It was on the market. It had a few hours on it. They were offering it for over 12 million, they sold it to Jesse for four million, and did over about $2 million of work on it just to bless him. Praise God. But Jesse preaches hundreds of meetings a year, and he can’t get there on United Airlines or Delta Airlines. Man, it takes a jet to do all he’s doing. Lester Sumrall had a jet. And Lester’s traveling, he preached 300 meetings outside of his own church a year, plus he was in his own church 50 out of 52 Sundays. I’m talking about 300 different cities. There was no way he could get there without a jet, and people would criticize him. And he had his own jet. He’d say they don’t criticize the toy company for having a jet. They don’t care if these liberal Democrats have five jets, but God forbid a preacher have a jet and be blessed. You know what, it’s just a tool to be used in preaching the gospel, in winning souls and building the kingdom of God. God is to be served, tools are to be used, people are to be loved. We need to keep doing what God’s called us to do. But you can’t get there by thinking little. You’ve gotta begin to dream big. Jesse talked about, when he had hardly any money, he was filling up his car, and a jet flew over, and God said “I’m gonna give you one of those someday.” And he didn’t stop. Praise God. Man, if you know what jets cost, it challenges your natural thinking. But you’ve gotta move out of that, and you’ve gotta move into the thinking of God so you can possess the dream of God. God has a dream for every one of us. Amen. I believe God wants you to have a good family, God wants you to prosper. He doesn’t want anybody to be poor, defeated, sick. But you’ve gotta change the picture on the inside, and you change it by the word of God, the spirit of God, the people of God. We’re gonna take a short break, and we’ll be back right after this short break. Thanks for staying tuned. 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 fame. 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 purposes of God. And also my series The Power of a Positive Imagination, one of my most requested series. If 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. Praise the Lord. I’m glad you stayed with us. We’ve been talking about moving into the vision, purpose, plan that God has for us. And God, he has an amazing plan. And we talked about how God said lift up your eyes and look, in Genesis 13:14-18, from the place where you are. For all the land that you see, I will give it to you and your seed after you. Arise, walk through the land. Through the breadth of it and length of it. Inspection proceeds possession. And then Abram built an altar there. You know what, it takes God to do those things. You want your vision to be big enough that without God you can’t do it if God doesn’t show up. Man, thank God I’m thinking bigger than I used to think. Hallelujah. God is helping me move into more things. Hallelujah. And so God is the one who gives vision. We said we can get vision from people of vision. We wanna talk a little bit about faith and vision. Hebrews 11:3 says by faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which are made were not made of things which do appear. Praise God. By faith, the worlds were framed. I believe the vision that we have is like a framework for the picture that God wants to create in our life. And we gotta get a vision. We gotta get a picture of what God wants. And I believe you get the picture on the inside before you get the picture on the inside. And we talked about this word imagination from the Old Testament, it’s the Hebrew word yetzer. And it means mind, work, purpose, framing, framework, creative ability. And I believe in Hebrews chapter 11, we talk about these heroes of faith, I believe they got a picture on the inside. Enoch saw himself walking with God. If you study that out, when it says Enoch, the seventh from Adam walked with God, and he was one, if you study the genealogies in Genesis, you can find that Enoch, when he was a little boy, Adam was still alive. I believe that Adam talked to him, and talked about how he failed, and how he missed God. And how he one day walked with God. And I believe that Enoch began to dream, and began to think about I can walk with God. Amen. And then one day he walked with God. He was not. The Bible says that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, seventh generation, he prophesied behold the Lord comes with 10,000. He prophesied of Jesus coming in the future. Hallelujah. He saw things in the realm of the spirit. Enoch actually named his son Methuselah. And his son Methuselah was the oldest person to ever live. If I’m correct, Methuselah lived to be 969 years. And it means at his death the deluge comes. And that happened in the year of Noah’s flood, happened, if you study the genealogy, it’s in the year that Methuselah died. That is just literally amazing to me how these things fit together. I believe Noah saw himself building an ark. He did something, most Bible scholars believed it never even rained on the Earth, but God spoke a word to him, told him build an ark, there’s gonna be a flood. What’s that? The dew came up and watered the Earth before the flood, most Bible scholars believe that. Noah built this ark 450 feet long, 75 feet wide. 75 foot high. It was an amazing feat. Three stories. Put all the livestock, different pairs of these, two pairs of some, seven pairs of some. What an amazing task. Sometimes faith looks like a lot of work. He was about 100 years in building that ark because he had a word from God. He had a relationship with God. Abraham looked for a city whose builder and maker was God. Sarah, I believe saw herself conceiving, received strength to conceive the seed. Isaac saw himself blessed and being a blessing. Jacob saw the children of Israel returning to the Promised land. Joseph had a dream that propelled him through the pit through Potiphar’s house, through the prison, through the palace. Moses led the people of God. Joshua saw himself possessing the Promised land. Rahab saw herself as a daughter of God. You know, you gotta see yourself where God wants to take you. You can go back if you see it that way, but you don’t have to. David saw himself as king of all Israel, financing the building of the temple. Ruth saw herself as mother to a king. Let’s talk about this. What do you see? What’s your vision? Aaron, you’re great in the realm of the prophetic. Two years ago, you were at a prophetic meeting, and you said “I see thousands “and thousands of people coming to Christ “in the Middle East, there’s gonna be a great revival.” And now we hear from ministries that we support in the Middle East that are taking gospel to these nations where it’s illegal to take the word of God. And we hear of thousands of people coming to Christ. Many more turning away from Islam, coming to Christ. It’s a marvelous thing that God’s doing. You said you’ve seen this. Praise God. Words create pictures. You’ve seen this. Having $100 million fund, giving over $10 million a year away to missions and other ministries. Praise God. I believe that’s a picture for your future that God gave you. And I believe God brings that to pass. Jesus tarries. Hallelujah. We’re moving into these things by the grace of God. Hallelujah.
Amen.
You need to see yourself blessed and being a blessing. How do you see yourself, if you don’t see it it’s gonna be hard to posses it, but if you start seeing it you can start possessing it.
You kind of opened up Hebrews 11 here, which is called the faith hall of fame. All these people of faith, they had great vision. They had great revelation from God, but they also acted upon that vision that God gave them. But without that vision they wouldn’t have any faith to do anything for. It starts with vision. It starts with that dream that God places in your heart.
Amen. God has a dream for everybody. God has a plan, and it’s a good plan. And faith in God. I think a lot of times what people call faith is really hope. Hope is when you know it’s out there, and it’s a possibility. Faith is when it’s in you, when you know it’s yours. Praise God. On the inside. There’s a difference between hope and faith. What a lot of people call faith is really hope. They’ve heard a promise, they believe it might be a possibility. But I believe faith, it’s a reality on the inside before it’s a reality on the outside. You begin to see it on, I see myself healed, I see myself healthy. I see myself strong. I see myself wealthy. I see myself blessed. I see myself… How do you see yourself? I see myself as a leader in my community. I see myself doing different things. Praise God. Words create pictures. Andrew Wommack- Andrew Wommack’s given me over 20 words now in the past, and all but one of them, well there’s two of them now that are, one of them is in the future. Praise God. But I believe it’s gonna come to pass. Praise God. And the other one, I believe we’re in the midst of right now. He prophesied. This was years ago. He prophesied nine years ago. And I’ve seen 20, at least 20 words of wisdom that he’s given me over the past 40 years come to pass, but he gave me this one word, and he said “Listen, something’s gonna happen, “and you’re gonna have a flood of people coming to Charis Christian Center. And recently we’ve been seeing this happen. I had some people Sunday that were in church. You said we had several families that drove over two hours, I had one family came, they said “Pastor, we drove over nine hours to get here.” They drove from Kansas City. The week before we had people from Nevada. We had people from Indiana that came here specifically to be prayed for. Thank God for the power of God. Thank God for miracles. Thank God Jesus is the same. Thank God the word of God still works. But I believer that we’re gonna have a flood of people at Charis Christian Center. Hallelujah. It’s happening. We’re seeing it. We’re seeing people come from all kinds of different backgrounds. Different places. Hallelujah. Your mother, last year, in her woman’s conference, she said how many people? Over 780 people registered to come to a woman’s… That’s influencing 780 families. Glory to God, that’s a lot of people. Glory to God. Now we’ve got, we’re believing for over 1000 coming up. Glory to God. Moving into the things, possessing the promises of God. Possessing what God wants us to possess. Going where God wants us to go. Doing what God wants us to do. We can’t do it without faith and vision. You know you said without faith, Hebrews 11 says it’s impossible to please him, because he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. So what happens when you have faith? You just seek God because you believe number one, he is, and number two, he is good to those who diligently seek him. He rewards those who diligently seek him.
When you seek God too, he’s gonna give you vision, he’s gonna give you revelation.
Amen.
He’s gonna give you revelation from the word of God. He’s speak to your spirit.
Amen.
The Bible says deep calls unto deep. The deep, the deep things of God, he’ll call to the deep things in me. He’ll speak to your spirit.
Amen. Praise God. Matthew 6:33, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And all these things shall be added unto you. I wanna say a great big thank you to you for tuning in, for being part of the broadcast today. Thank you so much. I believe the word of God, it’s changed my life. I came from a very poor background, and had a challenged. My parents were challenged relationally in their marriage, they were challenged financially, they were challenged physically with their health, but we heard the word of God, and it changed our life. And that word changed my life. And I believe that word will change your life as you believe it. And I wanna let you know you can get on our website, you can watch these teachings for free. Hundreds of hours of teaching literally on our website. You can watch our shows at the beginning of the week, we put up every week. You can watch our shows for the week. Also I wanna let you know if you haven’t partnered with Charis Christian Center and Grace for Today, I would encourage you to become a partner. I believe Charis Christian Center, and Grace for Today, our ministry, has an anointing of increase. And I’ve seen many people, when they become partners with us, they begin to increase like never before. We’ve had people in a short period of time that were stuck financially, increase 300%. And I’m not talking about, they had quite a bit of resources when they came, but God increases people when you’re selling into life giving ministries. Praise God. So get on our website, CharisChristianCenter.com, get that free material, share this with your friends. Share the broadcast with your friends. And we would love to see you again. Praise God. God bless you. We appreciate you.
[Narrator] Imagination is a very powerful force that works on the inside over everyone. The thoughts of your imagination create the framework of your life. Get the imagination package which includes insights into faith with Jess Duplantis, Divine Imagination, and Power of a Positive Imagination CD series all for $49 when you call 719-418-4000, or visit CharisChristianCenter.com.
Friends, the scripture says if you will continue in the word of God, you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. If you go to our website at CharisChristianCenter.com, you can get all of our materials there on the website as you watch them, as you listen, absolutely free of charge. And we’ve done that just to be a blessing to you. And I believe that the word that has freed me will free you. Blessings.
[Narrator] 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 could write us at P.O. Box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80962. See you next time on Grace for Today.
