That's very, very powerful. Now I want to really develop that part another time. I'll do that and just to pick up that whole area of receiving prophetic input, of the area of the imagination and possibilities, because if we're going to grow we must break out of current thinking and expand our thinking. You've got to come to greater thoughts, bigger thoughts, expanded thoughts. One difficulty in living in a small rural area is that you tend to lock into little thinking, and you interact a lot of the time with people who are in a very self-centred little world. And when you're in that world that people - if you interact with that too much then you begin to become small and you're just concerned about yourself as well. But God wants us to have a vision of greatness, of great things, of what could take place in our community. What could we do? Oh, immediately the imagination come up: it's too hard. You can't do that. So there are imaginations that lock us up with unbelief that we could do things that are really significant, and we must decide that we're going to push past those and begin to develop different ways of thinking, be open to other possibilities from God.
Okay, so one source of imaginations is the Holy Ghost. He wants us to get locked in there. Here's another source of imaginations and that's wicked spirits, evil spirits. How do evil spirits trouble us? How do they afflict us? Why? What they do is this. They impose upon your thought life and they drop pictures into your mind, images of things that they want you to ponder on and think on. When they drop the image in, then you feel overwhelmed by that at the moment and you're not aware of the presence of God, so when temptation comes or these vain imaginations come out of the demonic realm, they invade you and they begin to fill your mind and emotions and you begin to picture things. So for example you may begin to start to think about a certain person. Fear strikes your heart, then you begin to fear this conflict you're going to have with them. You begin to [unclear 00.09.58] Before you know it you're working out in your mind this imaginary conversation you're going to have and how it's all going to work out. You end up being carried by an imagination that causes great fear to rise in your heart.
The doctor comes and says something and before you know it you've got imagination and you're dreaming there; you're at your grave and you're already watching them bury you. Your mind sort of went away somewhere instead of actually anchoring on what God says about our life. So that's how demons come and afflict us. They drop imaginations in. For example you take Eve, in Genesis 3:1-6. It said - this is what the devil did. This is how he always does it. He said did God say you shouldn't eat that? So the first thing he does is challenge the truth. See, he challenges the truth, and then he begins to put a picture in your mind. He said look at that tree. You know what? If you eat that you will become like God. Oh really? I like that - and then she began to look at it, whoa and began to think about it. Wow! Like God? Yeah, yeah, that's pretty good, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then she took and she ate.
Then when she'd eaten she gave it to someone else, and this is what happens with vain imaginations. A thought comes into your mind, you begin to ponder on it, before you know it you've gone down there and you've eaten it. You've taken it in, you've taken it onboard, you start to talk and now you're talking with someone else and now you're starting to give it to them. So for example you hear a story about someone. You haven't stopped to hear whether it's the truth or not. You suddenly get these thoughts in your mind. Before you know it you've got all these imaginations about some person you've never even talked to to establish the truth. One of the greatest reasons we have conflicts in relationships is people get ideas in their mind what the other person thinks or wants or is really on about. We get an imagination. We fail to actually check out the truth, the facts and ask the questions. We just let the imagination build in our mind and we're wound up before we even talk to them. That happens all the time, all the time.