Divine Imagination Part 3 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue

Praise the Lord, friends, and welcome to the program. We’re gonna talk about the Divine Imagination, but we’re going to actually talk about in this Divine Imagination teaching, how the blood of Jesus Christ purges our consciousness from dead works. Our performance makes us focus on the performance of God and helps us move into the purposes and plans of God for our life. Stay tuned. Friend, it’s so good to have you with us today. I am so glad to have Aaron. We’re gonna be talking about the Divine Imagination, and today we’re gonna be sharing on how the Divine Imagination purges your conscience. And if you want your imagination to work like God wants it to work in a positive way in your life, you’ve gotta let, you know what, the blood of Jesus, you’ve gotta let the word of God do its work on, you know, so you can move into what God asked for you.

Well, and I’ve seen just a lot of amazing stories of how the blood of Jesus, how, you know, His redemption has really affected people in their hearts, in their souls. You know, people who’ve struggled for years with a lot of anxiety, needing medication, needing constant, you know, just having panic attacks, how God just completely has healed them from that. Sometimes it’s a process. Not always just an instantaneous thing, but the blood of Jesus really does purge your heart, purge your conscience, purge your soul.

I’ve come into a completely new place. I’ve been serving Jesus for 52 years. I’ve been born again, 52 years, baptized in the Holy Spirit, 46 years, you know, preaching the word of God for well over 40 years. And you know what, I’ve recently come into some revelation and it’s changed the way I look at things. It’s changed the way I think. And God’s really helped me go to a new place. And I know it’s gonna lead to growth in the church, growth in our ministry, good things in my life. Mom’s like, “Man, this is amazing.” It’s just very, very healthy, very positive.

Yeah, and one thing I wanna say too, just about just growing and letting God just kind of heal your heart and purge your conscience, your thoughts, some people get hung up, you know, the enemy really tries to attack people in their thought life. That’s where he wants to wreak havoc is in their souls. And I actually just saw a testimony this morning of someone who comes to church here on Facebook. Several years ago, I know she was, I’ll just tell some of the story. But her husband, they were living outta state at the time in a different area, but her husband got COVID and passed away, and she was very upset by it. I think he had other health challenges, but she actually blamed her church at the time in that other state because they kept having church during COVID and her husband really wanted to go. And she was just really hurt and trying to find someone to blame. And they moved back here to Colorado, her and her, she has an adult daughter, would come to service. And even, like COVID was done, you know, I think even the president said it’s done, but they’d always be wearing masks. And I know they just, you know.

Dealing with a lot of fear.

Yeah. Dealing with fear. But they’ve really stayed connected. And I just, you know, just recently, she got a brand new job and just really, you know-

Turned a corner.

Turned a major corner. And I just told Heather, it’s really awesome when people can just get through offense, when they can get through bitterness because there’s just such great blessing on the other side of that.

Amen. Amen.

And sometimes it’s hard being in that and one thing that the enemy does when you’re just dealing with that stuff in your heart, like he really tries to make you imagine things that aren’t really there and imagine problems that aren’t really problems. Imagine people who are, you think they’re problematic, but they’re actually the ones that could help you a lot. But if you can get through that, man, there’s such great blessing on the other side of that.

The devil doesn’t care how he does it. He don’t care how he does it, he just works. Wherever your weaknesses is, he’ll work on you. But you can overcome. Amen. By the blood of the lamb, by the Word of God, by your testimony. You know, you’ve got the scripture in Psalm 20:4, and it says that, “God will grant you according to your own heart and fulfill all your counsel.” And you know, part of God doing that is working with your imagination and working in your relationship with God. Psalm 37:4 you have as a scripture, and it says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Now that’s talking about your spirit, right? Your spirit, man, part of your heart, or your spirit and your soul. But there’s a process by which that takes place, and that’s what you want to talk about in purging your conscience. And so, you know, you can jump into these scriptures on purging your conscience. It’s really, really good. But for you to get the desires of your heart working, God has to start, right, in your conscience.

And sometimes it’s a process as well. And I actually wanna read from a different translation, Psalm 20:4, ’cause it’s one of my favorite verses. I actually used to have it written out on a postcard taped to my flute, probably for over five years growing up, like when I was in high school, just dreaming about what I wanted to do down the road and where I wanted to go to college and study. But it’s says Psalm 20:4, and it says, “May He grant you according to your heart’s desire and fulfill all your purpose.” And I love that ’cause there’s purpose that comes from God and it relates to your heart’s desire, it relates to your imagination, to your dreams.

Amen.

And, you know, God, and something that you were mentioning too, like sometimes it is a process. When God works through your heart, your imagination, your soul, sometimes it’s a process. So, and again, I’ve seen a lot of people set free of just previous hurts and difficulties and anger, anxiety, and fear. But sometimes it’s a process. And, you know, one story I’m gonna share is when I met my wife here at church, we’ve been married five and a half years now, but she’d been married before for seven years and her husband passed away from cancer and she moved here to go to church and to the Bible school here. And when she moved here, she didn’t wanna get married again. Just, it was a difficult marriage and going through, you know, all the health things, it was just very, very difficult. And we met, got, you know, met and started dating, and initially she didn’t even wanna do that. And we broke up for a little bit and got back together. Eventually we got engaged and she just kind of wanted to get the wedding over with. Wasn’t too excited about it. She even just went to like eBay and bought a dress for $100 from China. But God was working in her heart and making her imagine something different with me. And over the course of a few months, as we’re getting ready for this wedding, she decided, you know, things were shifting in her heart, but she wanted to go buy a different kind of dress. And she went to a store and she actually picked out the most expensive dress in the store. So she went from $100 dress to actually a $4,000 dress, which is a lot of money, and when she told me, you know, it was before we were married and before we were budgeting too much together or whatever, but God took care of it. But to me it was a testament of what was shifting just in her own heart.

Right.

In her own imagination. And it can be a gradual thing.

Amen. Well, it is a gradual thing. You know, I believe that God will work with our soul, like I just talked about a revelation that I had about myself and challenges that I’ve had and how God’s brought me to a whole new place. And here I’m 60. I had a major change, right, when I was eight years old, to receive Jesus as my Lord. Another major change when I was 14 years old, received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, began to find out who I was in Christ, the promises of God were for me, knew I was called to preach at that age. And then a major change, really, when I was 30 years old, I got a revelation of grace. I’d been pastoring at that point in time for about seven, six to seven years. So major revelation change, major change in the way I ministered. And then, you know, so that happened, what, when I was 30, so that was 1994. Major revelation of finances came in three areas when I was 14, then, when I was, in 1994 when I’ve been married 10 years, and then in 1998, when I was actually 34 years old, getting a revelation of taking the limits off of God through Mark Hankins. And so I’ve had major, major revelation changes. And then recently, I’m 60 years old, and got a major revelation about dealing with certain things in my life and dealing with rejection. And it just helped me come to a whole new place in life. But if you’ll allow the Holy Spirit to work with you, God will bring you to new places. And through a major revelation, you get major breakthrough. Every one of those different aspects of revelation that I’ve received, I’ve had major breakthrough in my life and God wants to have major breakthrough. And sometimes if you don’t get that breakthrough, you’re not gonna move into ultimately what God has for you.

And you know, a lot of this breakthrough, that revelation that comes, it comes in your soul.

Right.

You have to understand it with your mind, with your emotions, with your will, with your, that soul part of you and when there’s something that shifts there, it’ll actually affect your imagination. It’s kinda like your soul working in the future.

Right.

God cares about your soul for right now, but He cares about how your soul affects the future as well.

Right.

And that part of you really affects your future. Like we said, the Bible says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he, so he will be as well.” And I wanna read now from Hebrews 9. I’m gonna start in verse 12 and read a few verses here, because the blood of Jesus actually affects your soul. It purges your conscience, the scripture says. So it says here in Hebrews 9:12, “Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood, He entered the most holy place once for all having obtained eternal redemption, for if the blood of bulls and goats and ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal spirit, offered Himself without spot to God, cleansed your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”

Amen.

So he’s saying here that Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice. He’s a better sacrifice than the Old Testament sacrifices. The Old Testament sacrifices could purge your flesh. Could change what’s on the outside, but it couldn’t change you on the inside. It couldn’t change your soul, couldn’t change your heart, couldn’t change your imagination, even.

Yeah, and you know, I’ve got some great revelation on this and we’re gonna have to come back after the break in a little bit and talk about this. But man, this is an amazing thing when you begin to realize what the blood of Jesus Christ has actually done for us. And it not only has purchased our salvation, but purchased our redemption and our freedom and the promises of God and eternity. And so it’s an amazing thing.

And the blood of Jesus, it’s an eternal sacrifice. We have eternal redemption. So that means it’s happening all the time on you, that redemptive work. The blood is working in your life right now. It’s working in your body, it’s working in your heart, it’s working in your family. The blood of Jesus is working right now. It is an eternal redemption.

Amen.

And there’s no more sacrifice. There’s no more performance. There’s no more struggle. You just enter that place of rest through the blood of Jesus.

Yeah, it’s just changing your mind to see like God wants you to see. So we’re gonna be back right after this break. If you need prayer, give us a call. Blessings. Friends, we’ve been sharing today on the Divine Imagination, and we have this entire teaching online, downloadable audio, downloadable video, absolutely free of charge. We actually have hundreds of hours of this. Plus syllabuses, plus children’s curriculum, all of this free of charge. Go to our website, Charis Christian Center, and get it.

You can have nothing better than the word of God. Your ways are not better than his ways. Your thoughts are not better than his thoughts. Your morals are not better than his morals. Your righteousness is not better than his righteousness. I don’t care how many people vote a certain way or think a certain way about a certain issue, if God says it, that settles it. You don’t get a vote on truth.

Friend, I’m so glad that you’re with us. We’re talking about the Divine Imagination, but now we’re actually talking about the power of the blood of Christ and how you can, the blood works to purge your consciousness from dead works. And there’s different aspects of those dead works. It says this in Hebrews 12:14, actually in verse 13, he talks about, in verse 12, he says, you know, Jesus didn’t enter the holy place in heaven, the tabernacle in heaven when He died, with the blood of goats and calves, okay, with these Old Testament sacrifices. “But He entered one time,” it says, “into the holy place in heaven, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” I like what you said, that thing’s working it, it’s constantly working. And I gave examples of how, you know, this has been working in my life for 52 years, from the time I’m eight to now, I’m 60. It’s just been really working. But then he says in verse 13, “If the blood of these bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean,” so they dealt with the flesh, with the outward man. “Sanctifies to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ,” in verse 14, “who through the eternal spirit, offered Him,” Jesus is an eternal spirit. He has an eternal spirit. He said, “Who offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience,” right, “from dead works to serve the living God.” So what are dead works? Dead works is actually talking about our performance. It could be talking about the works of the law. “By the works of the law,” the scripture says, “there’s no flesh justified in the side of God. It’s evident for the just to live by faith.” So I think that’s the major aspect it’s talking about. But again, dead works. Our works, our ideas, our thoughts, our plans, right? We’re talking about the Divine Imagination. So if you let the blood of Jesus work in the way God wants it to work, it gets you focused off of your performance, off of your ideologies, your plans, your thoughts, and it moves you into the plans and purposes of God for your life. And I believe that’s where the Divine Imagination really works at an amazing level.

And the blood affects you. The blood of Jesus affects you on the inside. It affects your soul, it can-

Amen.

You can even allow it to affect your imagination. So maybe you’ve had this imagination that just, it’s full of fear, it’s full of doubt, it’s full of, you know, just destructive thoughts.

Amen.

The blood of Jesus can actually affect that, can shift that, can change that. You know, and looking here at Hebrews 9, talking about the Old Testament sacrifices, they could do something on the outside, but they couldn’t really change you.

Right.

You know, and when the priests would lay their hands on the scapegoat, they’d send the goat off into the wilderness and they’d be laying the sins of the people on that goat, and it would go off into the wilderness. It would be removing their sin, but it couldn’t make them righteous. The blood of Jesus.

It couldn’t purge their conscience.

It couldn’t change them. The blood of Jesus, when Jesus died on the cross, He took your sin upon Him.

Yes.

But because He’s that New Testament sacrifice, it actually, He gives you His righteousness.

Yeah.

And so a lot of people still look at the sacrifice of Jesus in an Old Testament lens. They think, “Well, He took my sin, but I’m not really righteous. I’m still a sinner.”

Well, here’s the deal. Okay? So here’s a couple scriptures that go along with this. If we go to Colossians chapter two and talk about this, it’s so powerful. I just want to go there. Colossians chapter two, it says this in verse 13. “You being dead in your sins and the trespasses of the uncircumcision of your flesh. Has He quickened, has He made to live together with Him having forgiven you for all trespasses?” So Jesus forgave us for all sin, right? His sacrifice paid for all sin, past, present, and future. Right? There’s only one sacrifice. When you read Hebrews 9 and 10, it’s talking about the sacrifice of Jesus. He says, “Then it blotted out.” So you were talking about the sins before you got saved, but it also blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us. So the lie and all this performance mentality, which was contrary to us, He took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross. Verse 15 says this, “And having spoiled all principalities and powers, Jesus conquered the devil.”

Mm-hmm.

Right? So Jesus is Lord of heaven. He created all things, Jesus was Lord when He walked on the earth. Lord over sin, Lord over sickness, Lord over demons, Lord over lack.

Mm-hmm.

Lord over death, Lord in every realm. But then He went to the grave and He conquered, now what gave Jesus dominion over the devil? The scripture says in Romans 1, I think it’s verse four, that Jesus was raised from the dead by the spirit of holiness.

Mm.

He had never sinned. So that’s what gave Him dominion over the devil. But when we look back at the scripture, what gives us dominion and authority over the devil, and he talks about that in verse eight through 10 here. “But what gives us dominion is the fact that we’re forgiven” because it was sin that gave Satan an inroad, right, into Adam’s life. And Satan really usurped authority. But then when we’re forgiven, when we’re righteous, we have dominion, we have authority over the devil, and God is not remembering our sins or iniquities anymore. That’s the new covenant. It talks about that in Hebrews chapter eight. When we look into Romans chapter eight, I want to show you one scripture talking about the blood that Aaron’s been talking, it really fits this in Romans 8:25, the scripture says this. Actually Romans, it might be Romans 4:25, excuse me. Romans, it’s in Romans, and it’s talking about the past tense. Romans 3:25, I’m gonna get there yet, okay. Romans 3:25. He says, talking about the blood of Jesus, “The redemption that’s in Christ Jesus,” in verse four, he says in verse 25, Romans 3:25, “Speaking of Jesus, whom God sent forth to be a propitiation,” a payment or a covering, “through faith in His blood to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed.” Now, most people look at that and think, “Well, that’s what I did before I got saved.” No, that’s talking about the past tense of the cross, that’s talking about the finished work of the cross. Jesus said, “It is finished through the forbearance of God.” In other words, God knew that you were gonna sin, but He forgave you anyway. He paid for it anyway. So when we come into Christ, when we’re forgiven, it’s all sin, past, present, and future. Jesus paid for it all. Now you’ve gotta believe it to receive it. Right, because there’s sin that people do, there’s shortcomings that people have, they don’t even know it sometimes. But the blood of Jesus took care of it all.

And that purging, that cleansing is really important.

Amen.

I kind of did a study on this word for purging your conscience. And when I did that, the Greek word there, it’s used in a lot of places in the New Testament, the Greek word to purge your conscience or to cleanse it, it’s katharizo and it’s kinda like catharsis.

Cauterize.

So to cauterize, yeah, to cleanse a wound, catharsis. It’s like a moment of release, of just breakthrough. And it’s the same word that’s used when Jesus would heal the lepers, He would cleanse the lepers. So if you can imagine just someone with leprosy, you can really visualize it, it’s a very visual thing. But that’s what happens to your conscience, the same way Jesus would-

He just cleans it. He just washes it. He just, that’s what, man, and it happens in so many areas when you allow the spirit of God and the Word of God to work, right? And the blood of Christ. Man, it’s like, “Oh, I’m free. Thank you Jesus. I’m so free.”

And as I was studying-

Thank you for healing me.

That word on cleansing, I just looked at all these lepers that Jesus healed, that were healed in scripture. And that’s what He does to our conscience. That’s how He wants to affect our soul as well. Sometimes we neglect talking about the soul because it’s very hard to picture. But like I said, it’s a very important part of who you are. It is really who you are and where you dwell. You can’t escape it. And yeah, that’s really where the enemy tries to attack people primarily. So I wanna read this account in Luke 5, starting in verse 12.

Yeah but we’ll have to come back more in Hebrews too.

Yeah.

And talk about this ’cause there’s so much to say here.

Well, if you wanna say a little bit more, it’s fine.

Well, when we go on down and talk about the blood and the work of the blood, you know, he talks about the Old Testament, right? And he says in verse 22, “Without the shedding of blood, there’s no remission.” So he was talking about Old Testament sacrifices, but when he talks about the Old Testament, he said in Moses, in verse 19, “When he’d spoken every precept to all the people, according to the law, took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop and he sprinkled the book.” Can you imagine this? Taking this blood sacrifice and sprinkling the book, right? This is the covenant of God. And then sprinkling the people. And he said something, he said, “Saying this is the blood of the testament or the covenant that God has adjoined to you.” You know what, God has enjoined the promises of this new covenant to us through the blood of Jesus. And that was a type in His shadow. You know, God wants you to be healed more than you want to be healed. God wants you to be blessed more than you wanna be blessed. God wants you to have peace and prosper and walk in righteous more than you even want it. But God enjoined this covenant to us, in the old covenant, it was with those blood of animals, so on and so, but now it’s the blood of Jesus. And now, those promises are secured by the promise. They’re covered by the sacrifice. But this blood not only did that, it sanctified the believer. And we’ve been sanctified by the offering of Jesus. It says this in Hebrews chapter 10, “Once for all,” Hebrews 10:2, that we don’t have to have another sacrifice. We don’t have to have another offering. The blood of Jesus did the work. What we gotta do is believe in the blood of Jesus and then see that blood will never lose its power. It’s still working on us, like you were talking. And then here, he goes on in verse 14 of Hebrews 10 and says, “For by one offering.” This is one of those amazing grace scriptures. He has perfected them forever, that are sanctified. That blood has made perfect, finished, fulfilled, consecrated, completed, carried out, accomplished, brought to an end, brought to a close by an actor event. It was the cross of Jesus that did it all. But that’ll work when you believe on Jesus and get saved. That’s just the beginning. And as you walk with Jesus, that blood never loses its power. Amen. I’m so glad that you’ve tuned in. I’m so, we’re gonna be teaching more, Aaron, on this consciousness area. You’ve got some great examples from the life of Jesus. We’re gonna be sharing about it in tomorrow’s broadcast. Tell your friends about the broadcast and you can go to our website where we’ve got much more teaching on these subjects, downloadable audio, downloadable video, free of charge. If you want to partner with us or if you need to receive prayer, give us a call today. Blessings.

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