Imagination (1 of 4)

Mike Connell

How many have made it a way of life? [Laughter] Well we're going to talk about fantasy and daydreams probably next week. I want to just start off today and begin to just talk about the whole realm of imagination and particularly just the whole area of it; the power of your imagination and what it can do with you and where it can take you. If we are going to walk with God the Bible tells us one of the things that God does is that He gives us dreams. A dream is an imagination. It's a picture of what could be in the future, and so if you and I are going to move prophetically and move into the things God has for us we must be able to receive the prophetic dreams or imaginations or images God gives us. We must also be able to deal with the other imaginations that come in, and my experience that most believers live out of imaginations which are vain and remove them from what God is doing, rather than managing and dealing with those imaginations and positioning themself to move with what God has.

So in these coming days ahead we're believing and wanting that you would begin to breakthrough into greater realms of seeing, of hearing God, of dreaming and looking at possibilities. The walk we have in God is always a walk of possibility, so I want to over about three or four weeks just lay out the whole area of imaginations and lay a foundation today just about how your imagination works and affects your life. We'll then look at the whole area of fantasy and daydreaming, which is a particular kind of bondage that people get into and yet you can be in it and controlled by it, and limited by and not even realise it. It's become so much a part of your life. Then I want to talk about some of the keys to deal with your imaginations, how to cleanse your imagination, how to confront imaginations which come in; then we want to open up to receiving things from the Lord. Amen. [Amen.] So it's going to be great, great stuff. I really felt this on my heart, so imaginations are just pictures in the mind aye, pictures in the mind; images of things that haven't yet happened.

So what happens in your imagination's going to affect the course of your life. Whatever's going to happen, it happens in your imagination, it's going to affect the course of your life so I want to just share three or four things today. Number one, the first thing I want you to understand is God designed us to be creative. God has designed us to be creative. You say well I'm not the creative type, thinking in terms of doing art and craft. But listen, that's a very, very limited sphere of being creative. God has made us and designed us; every one of us has got the potential to be quite creative and innovative. I'll show you why that's true biblically in a moment, but it may not be operating very well in your life because that power of imagination and innovation and creativity may be suppressed and held down by various kinds of bondage. That's why we want to be able to identify the things that hold you back, then I want you just to repent of it and get it out of your life so we can all move on, because we need what you have.

So imaginations can release creative things in our life so the first thing, I want you to have a look with me in Genesis 1. We're going to read in verse 26 through to 28; Then God said "Let Us make man in Our image. The first thing we see is in verse 1, in the beginning God did what? God created... He did what? [He created.] He created. How do you create something? You imagine it, then you put your hand to bringing it into being, so you've got to imagine it first of all. So God created, so we see here it says now in verse 26, God said let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, birds of the air, cattle, all the earth, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in His Own image; in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. Then God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiple; fill the earth and subdue it.