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Cleansing the Imagination (3 of 4) Mike Connell 23.08.2008 pm
We've been talking about imaginations. I want to just take it another step this time and talk about cleansing your imagination, cleaning up your act, cleansing your imagination. Let's go into 2 Corinthians 10:3-5. Here it says now for though we walk in the flesh - that's where we live in a human body - we don't war according to the flesh. In other words there's a spiritual battle we're engaged in - for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. So we have weapons and there is a warfare we're involved in, and they're not carnal but they are mighty through God. Ooh, that's good, mighty through God see, mighty through God - no use unless you use them of course, but mighty through God for the pulling down of strongholds, casting down arguments, every high thing - sorry, imaginations, every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity into the obedience of Christ.
So very clearly you and I are in a warfare. There's no escape from the warfare. When you go out of here you'll be in it; when you come to up-rise tomorrow morning you'll be in it. We are engaged in a spiritual warfare and Jesus Christ came not just to set us free and connect us with God, but to empower us to have dominion, to actually win the war. That's a good thing to win the war. It's messy if you lose it. Yesterday we had people came and they won the battle against a whole number of things. It was great, so we were looking at one particular area it's very clear here that the battlefield is in your imagination, and we saw how God designed us to be creative. We're made in His image to be creative, so let's just summarise what we looked at. We saw God has made you creative. You can create a new life. God has given you a sexual ability to do that. Notice it takes two people to create the life. God has also given you an imagination, the capacity to picture something that is not yet in being and then to begin to work to bring that picture into being.
That's how God worked. He saw it in detail and then began to speak and act and it came into being, so whatever we see someone imagined it, someone dreamed it all up, and so we have that power to be creative. Your imagination's a major part of that. Your imagination is your capacity to picture things that aren't there, and your imagination talks to you. So whatever's going on in your mind, in your imagination is talking all the time. In the secular area they call it self-talk; you're always talking to yourself. You're always listening to something going on in your mind and if you have a vain imagination - a vain imagination is a picture which is completely opposed to what God has to say. It is completely opposed to God's perspective or viewpoint, and so it's a vain imagination. It's empty. It has no life and a vain imagination will take you out of what God has for you. It says vain imaginations exalt themself against you personally experiencing and knowing God.
So many believers live well below what God called us to live out and to be and to do. Why? Because there's areas of our mind, imagination, thinking that need to be renewed if we are to walk in power and in life and victory. So for example, someone stands in front of you and they're sick and you come to pray for them. Almost the first thing that comes up is how bad the sickness is, and unless that imagination is overcome no faith will rise in your heart to bring a miracle from heaven to earth. Your imaginations will lead you somewhere, so we need to understand and get in touch with what's going on in that brain, what we really think about, dwell upon where our mind goes. Last week we saw about fantasies which are a way - they can be positive, they can be dreaming about things that could be. But many times fantasies are an escape from reality into a world we can control and become incredibly addictive, and so today I want to deliver you.