Cleansing the Imagination (3 of 4)

Mike Connell

Page 5 of 9
Many children live out the dream their parents have for them instead of discovering their own dreams. You understand? So training children is about discovering what God's put in them and helping them move towards the thing God gave them. So one area of the dreams of our heart are really good, but there's another heart - the Bible says that also out of the heart of man comes defiling things. So the second thing that comes out of the heart of man, you think them up yourself because you've got issues in your heart and that is, it says - I'll give you the verse. Here it is in Mark 7:21, for from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts. So some imaginations arise from stuff in your own life you need to get cleaned up. Some imaginations are dreams and visions given from God; some imaginations are dreams that come out of your heart that God has put in there, wired in you. Some imaginations come from the demonic realm to try and derail you, get you off track, and some dreams come out of actually issues in your own heart.

So what'll happen is because you're always under observation the demonic realm can see the issues of the heart and they can actually exploit you and manipulate your fears and your beliefs and set things up to get you going, get you stirred up. Some people, if you watch them for a little while you know what stirs them up, what presses their button. Isn't that right? You know, and you know what'll happen? While you've still got that button there it's going to be pressed all the time: press, press, press, [unclear 00.17.19]. You come out of your corner like that. You know, I don't know what your button is. It could be anger, it could be resentment, could be lust, could be rejection, could be self-pity, could be alcohol, could be any kind of thing, but all the devil's got to do is come along, see the button, push and away you go! Because you're controlled by that unresolved, un-dealt with issue of the heart. That's why it's important to deal with issues of the heart and the way we think and how we [work. 00.17.44]

So here we go, so some of the things that get in the heart, I'll just drop them out for you and I'll look at them another time, just straight out undisciplined thoughts; thoughts of fear - what's going to happen? What's going to happen? That house may not come true! The church prayed, it didn't come true, oh God You've let me down! I mean all of that kind of stuff. It goes on. Don't think it doesn't go on and don't think they didn't think that. They would have had to battle those kinds of thoughts, got the whole church praying and it got worse. Please don't pray for me again! [Laughter] You understand? Because of the wrong imaginations, see immediately it surfaces in the heart, oh God's going to let me down and these things come up. So sometimes they're just things, undisciplined thoughts, so here you are. You're going to go to have this appointment. All the time you're going you've got all these thoughts and you mentally run through how it'll all run. By the time you get there you're in a major state - and you haven't even spoken a word yet, because you've mentally done a run through the thing and got your imaginations [tied away. 00.18.42]

Fear, fear is an imagination of the future that's very, very bad for you. In spite of that God says God has not given us a spirit of fear, but fear when you let them run your life, they create imaginations, pictures of the future that are really bad and you just cringe inside and draw back. So that's one of the areas. Another area is the area of fantasy escapes, comforts, just finding a place. That's one area that things come. Another area is memories of past hurts, memories of past hurts. When you've been hurt in the past you have a memory of something that really hurt you and something comes nearby that looks like it and you suddenly get stirred up again. All the imaginations come back up again. You begin to see yourself having the same thing happen again; then you get wound up. A lot of people get wound up quite easily you know. They can't work out - lovely Christians, they get wound up, do these weird things, because they've got issues of the heart not dealt with.