Today’s New Covenant nugget is from Isaiah 26:3
You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.
The Passion Translation says, “Perfect, absolute peace surrounds those whose imaginations are consumed with You; they confidently trust in You.”
The Hebrew word for ‘whose imaginations’, or ‘whose mind’ is ‘yêtser.’ According to the Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon, the Hebrew word yêtser means “imagination” that forms and frames up. Imagination frames up one’s reality. Our imagination must be set apart for God and continually be made holy… to be holy is to belong to God exclusively.
Isaiah the prophet is giving a revelation which is a ‘stress free’, ‘anxiety free’ formula… stress and anxiety has everything to do with the imagination!
If we allow the devil to lure us into the area of our imagination, then there will be no peace of mind. Temptation is primarily aimed at the imagination (our visualization center)… before a thought becomes totally toxic, it must transition from a mere thought to something visualized in the area of our imagination.
To live in a state of ‘perfect, absolute peace’ one’s imagination must be ‘totally stayed on Him’, or ‘totally consumed’ with the Lord and His Word.
Holiness in the area of our imagination is a journey and a process… ask the Holy Spirit to coach and train you to start using your imagination as intended by God. Take a scripture of a promise, and then visualize yourself enjoying the promise… for example, if you are bent over in pain, and unable to walk with ease… visualize yourself walking, and dancing, and making twirls. Imagine yourself doing things you could not do, and going places you could not go.
Set aside time to take a promise in the Word, and then let your imagination run… the more time that you spend imagining stories and promises in the Word, the more that perfect peace will take over your thoughts… don’t just pray to the air, imagine yourself sitting, having coffee with the Lord, imagine yourself hugging Jesus, imagine Him looking into your eyes saying, “I love you, receive my perfect peace’.
An imagination that is consumed with the Word, the promises of God and with visits and stories that include visualizing Jesus will produce a state of continual, perfect peace.
The enemy wants you to visualize yourself failing, being evicted, fighting, in strife and in trouble with no escape or solution… when you find your stress levels rising, immediately use your imagination to visualize yourself receiving a million dollars, receiving a promotion, or receiving an unexpected blessing… take your thoughts (your imaginations) captive and see yourself receiving a miracle from Jesus.
Let the inner child rise up in you and, instead of entering the land of ‘Oz’… enter the land of ‘The Kingdom of God’… a technicolor, 3D, peaceful, miraculous land of friendly, powerful angels, beautiful, talking animals and clear golden streams… a land where you can walk the streets of gold talking to Jesus and where every promise in the Word becomes a reality. Everytime you start stressing, go to the land, and stay there for a while… then just start living, ‘kinda’ in-between that land (the realm of the Spirit) and this… continually ‘seeing’ beyond whatever you are facing!
“Perfect, absolute peace surrounds those whose imaginations are consumed with You; they confidently trust in You.”
In His amazing love, Nick
