Tear Down Imaginations Or They Will Tear You Up.

Title: Tear down your imaginations or they will tear you up.

We are so able to identify evil when it comes in those clear vial, hateful waves. They stop us in our tracks! Take our breath way! Crush our hearts!

There are times when we see evil so blatant, so powerful that we shudder with fear and weep in despair.

On September 11, 2001 at 8:46 a.m. - American Flight 11 from Boston crashed into the North Tower at the World Trade Center. Onlookers were stunned and the media focused national attention immediately on lower Manhattan. At 9:03 a.m. - United Flight 175 from Boston crashed into the South Tower at the World Trade Center.

It became apparent in that moment that we were not simply witnessing an awful tragedy. Evil was at work.

But as the Apostle Paul warned the early church, there are those times that danger and evil lurks just as close only in this case satan comes as an angel of light.

ΠA good feeling,

ΠA warm imagination.

And yes there are imaginations that are not bad…

1.Mercy Me song - I can only imagine as an example.

2.Or saying just close your eyes and imagine what it will be like to see Jesus.

But there are also imaginations that do flood our mind, and do consume our time, that stand directly in opposition to all that Jesus wants us to do and be as believers.

This morning I want to talk to you about tearing down imaginations.

Now I’m going to address the internet probably more specifically but I want you to know that this is not just about the internet but about everything that we allow in our lives that takes our minds and hearts to places they should not be, and in fact that stand opposed to the God we love.

Turn with me in your Bibles to: 2 Corinthians 10:1-7 Read and pray

KING JAMES SAYS – Casting Down Imaginations…

This is a powerful passage of Scripture

Those who may not be familiar the church in Corinth was a somewhat troubling church.

Paul tells them that they come behind no church in the use of the Gifts.

But – to their bad, over and over he calls them carnal.

He has to take them to task more than any other of the churches, because while they sincerely believed in Christ, they were not sincerely living for Him.

Corinth was a roman province, steeped in false gods, temple prostitution, idol worship, and multiple pagan practices.

And over and over they would fall back into them so much so that Paul had to be firmer with them than any other the other church’s even though he was tough with the Galatians, the needs and problems in the Corinthian church were greater.

He begins in vs. 1 and 2 with a heart felt appeal to not have to come there and be tough with them.

He wasn’t trying to lord over their lifestyle, but rather to be sure they did not live by the same standards as the world lives.

He makes that clear when he says : some people who think that we live by the standards of this world.

Some think we do things, settle things in the same fashion as the world.

Some of that might be an eye for an eye.

Do as I say, not as I do.

But Paul says in vs. 3: 3For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.

Christians are different. We are part of the world, but live by an entirely different ethic.

Not guns, not tanks, not brute force. Not retaliation, not if it feels good do it.

But rather he says: 4The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.

We don’t live as they do, we don’t think as they do, we don’t respond as they do, we don’t speak as they do.

Our weapons are much different –

Let me just say a few to have this sink in.

In the world you do bad things to people who do bad things to you.

In Christ – You bless those who curse you, pray for those who use you.

If they hit you on the cheek in the world you put their lights out.

In Christ – You turn the other cheek.

You love your enemies.

You look on the needs of others.

Husband’s hearts are won to Christ by the gentle spirit of the wife, not by her putting her man constantly in his place.

You lead by serving- That’s what Jesus said, want to be great, then serve.

You see the world has its own brand of weapons, where the strong survive.

In Jesus system blessed are the weak…