Leon Fontaine - Meditation is Imagination
I wanna talk today about what's more important, what you believe or what you do. Your actions or your beliefs. Well, we can argue that different ways. But if you wanna look at as far as what your life will be like in the future, beliefs are more important than your actions. I'll give you a verse that'll help you. Jesus said onto him, "If you can believe all things are possible to him that he believeth". You see, really truly believing also causes you to act. It causes you to do the things that you believe in. Now if you do things but you don't believe in them, then there's no real power behind it because it's faith that moves mountains. The way to release that faith is to speak it, to have all the corresponding actions, etecetera.
But isn't it interesting that it doesn't say in Mark 9:23, Jesus said to him, "If you can do right, all things are possible to him who does right". It's not what it says. It says, believe. So the church has got it all backwards. We're busy preaching a storm about living right, doing right, getting everything right to the place that we want to do things that are right, don't get me wrong. But to the place where we are earning this miracle. Where we are trying to just change our behavior on our external without changing our beliefs inside. And it's not going to last. Reminds me of a cute story about a family that had invited another family. Both had children and invited them over for supper. So they're sitting down and the kids were at their own little table because they're three, four, five-year-olds.
So the host's daughter was talking and standing up and moving around and so they said, "Dear, please sit down. We're gonna say grace and start eating". And so she just kind of ignored them and didn't sit down and so after a second time, "Sweetie, sweetie. Please sit down. We need to pray and start eating". She didn't sit down. Finally he said, "Sit down or you and daddy are gonna leave the room and there's gonna be some trouble here. You'll get a time out". And this little girl sat down on her chair and looked at her friends and said, "I may be sitting down on the outside but on the inside, I'm really standing up".
Now that really shows what a lot of people are like. You can do a lot of stuff but if your beliefs aren't there, if you are not in faith, if you do not have the truth planted in your heart so that you believe from your heart, then most of what you do is not going to be lasting. If you don't believe that God prosper you, helps you to succeed, His favor is on your career, your business, then you can do all the right things. But there is not a heart belief that is behind that. Therefore, you're just doing it on your own. You're just trying hard with the arm of flesh with just working with your own ability because the ability that God gives you to change your world comes from a heart of faith.
Jesus says in Mark 11 that you can speak to mountains and have them move but you can't doubt in your heart which means you have to believe in your heart and this is what we're gonna look at today because you might even be a faith person that knows a ton of promises and that old beautiful hymn, you know, standing on the promises of Christ, my king. You can be standing on a promise for healing, for prosperity, for restoring your relationship. But if you don't know how to change heart beliefs, then you're just whistling dixy. You're just trying to live your life but you do not know how to change heart beliefs and this is crucial because Jesus is saying in John 16, when the spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth.
Now, if the Holy Spirit has to show you, guide you, and leading you into a truth, it must be because you don't know that truth. You don't have that truth in your heart. Anchored. The Bible talks about your heart being immovable but planted, steadfast, in grace, in the teaching of God's Word. Which is why the Bible says for example in John 8:32, "And you will know the truth and the truth will make you free". It doesn't say you'll make yourself free. It says the truth will make you free. The verse before verse 31 says, "If you continue in my Word, then are ye my disciples indeed and you will know the truth".
So if you are discipled, disciple means a disciplined follower. Did you know that we're always trying to discipline our outside world but very few people have learned to discipline their heart which is to become a disciple of the Word, to allow Holy Spirit to lead them into all truth. In order for you to change your outer world, you must change your inner world. You must literally take the promises of God and you must begin to see them on the inside. It's crucial because the language of the heart is not words. The language of the heart is dreams and visions. The language of the heart is very visual. It's what you're seeing on the inside. You can be working on your marriage, laughing, loving, trying everything you know to do. Inside, having a vision of divorce and positive you're gonna lose your marriage and things aren't gonna go better and until you change this inner believing, you can do all the right things. But it's your believing that's got to be in place. So this ability to allow Holy Spirit to lead you into all truth is crucial.
Now, if there is an area of your life, I'm gonna show you how to recognize what area that you need to focus on and allow Holy Spirit to teach you and bring truth to you. Now, the Bible teaches us in Matthew 12 that you'll know a tree by its fruit. Now I'm told by different people in the South that you can't tell the difference between a lemon, orange, and grapefruit tree until the fruit comes out. And then you know right away. The same is true for our lives. If you were to say, "Leon, I'm not sure what beliefs I have". Well, I can tell you. You see, if you have an area of your life that you can't produce fruit or what fruit means is results. If you can't get results in relationships, in finances, in your health, in your own mind, then that is an area where you do not have your heart anchored in the truth about it.
And so, you have a fearful belief. You have a wrong belief. You have an opposing belief. I call them misbeliefs. When you have a misbelief, you believe incorrectly. So you can be believing that your marriage is gonna end in divorce for example but it's never gonna be any happier. It's not gonna go anywhere special. That's what you believe. Even though you desire a happy, exciting, romantic, beautiful marriage, you can be going after that physically because you want it. But you've not done the heart work to believe it. You're gonna be so frustrated and every time it doesn't move as fast as you want it to, you're gonna go back to the emotions and the feelings that this heart produces as you really actually believe you're not going to make it.
You can be a single person looking for a relationship and while you're looking for someone to date, looking for someone to marry and hang out with, deep inside you've got this fear that predominates your life. That dominates your life and it dominates saying, "You're probably gonna be single. You're probably not gonna catch a good guy either or a good girl. There's none of them left out there". And although you're going through the exercise of getting what you desire, what you desire doesn't come to you til you believe it and you must believe it at the heart level. Not just believe it at the mind level.
You know something can come into your mind and New Year's. I'm gonna change my body shape. I'm gonna quit smoking. I'm gonna quit this bad habit. And you are so inspired that it's a new year, I'm gonna do it. But inspiration isn't believing. And so many people are inspired to change but it never lasts. Because in order for you to change your outer world, you must change your inner world. You must literally take the promises of God and you must begin to see them on the inside. Very few people do the work of meditation or imagination. There's synonyms. Meditation is imagination.
Joshua 1 says this, "This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth". Alright, out of your mouth? What are you gonna do? Shove a Bible in your mouth? No. You are to be speaking God's Word, God's truths. It says, "But you shall meditate therein on what these Biblical truths day and night that you may observe to do all that is written therein for then, you shall make your way prosperous and then you shall have good success. Have I not commanded you be strong"? Doesn't say he's gonna give us strength. He's already given us. It says, "Be strong and of good courage. Be not afraid neither be though dismayed for the Lord thy God is with thee wherever you go".
This is teaching us a real key that we must literally have an awareness of the promises of God. You must learn to speak God's Word out of your mouth and as you do, every day, in all of the areas you need God's blessings. Relationships, physical health, raising your kids, having your relationship, your romantic life as a married couple. Are you speaking the Word of God that you are blessed? As you confess God's Word, this speaking it out of your mouth begins to establish it in your heart. Then it says, "Beside speaking, you also must meditate". So it shows me that you can speak the Word of God and disconnect your heart. The Bible goes on to teach about that where prayer can become vain repetition. Just a whole bunch of hooey. Just saying stuff, saying stuff, saying stuff. But speak the Word of God and then meditate about what you are speaking on. Then it says, "Observe to do".
So here we have doing. We have speaking, meditating, doing. This is an important thing for you and I. Whatever you want, speak the promises of God. Now, let's use one as an example. Let's say that your health is not where you want it. Your energy. Something in your body, it could be a disease and so, you begin to speak for examples, Psalms 103. "Blessed the Lord oh my soul and forget not all of His benefits who heals all my diseases". As I speak that Word out loud, that is a promises from this book of the law or it just means the Word of God. This book of the law. So that I'm speaking that truth. Now, how do I attach my meditation to that truth? Well, say I've got a problem with walking and so that's, something is diseased in my joints and I'm speaking that I'm healed of all diseases. Now it says meditate on what you're saying day and night. Alright, meditate on it day and night. So what do I do?
Well, your heart is a picture place. It's a place that the language of your heart is dreams and visions and that's the language of Holy Spirit. So as I begin to declare that I am healed because of the Word of God, what Jesus did on the cross, as I take my time, I'll just bow my head or I'll just daydream and I'll see myself running with my friends. No, I don't run maybe now because maybe your joints aren't good and you gotta get healed. But you see yourself running. Now you can't run in the physical but on the inside, you can be running. You can see yourself laughing and what you're doing is you're moving ahead into your future and you're seeing what the old timers call the eye of faith. You are seeing the answer right now.
The Bible teaches us in Mark 11:22 and on, that when you pray, believe you have received, which is past tense. Which means the heart works only in the now and in past tense. It doesn't work in the future that one day, I'll be walking. No. It's seeing it now. So as you take the Word of God like He heals all diseases. Psalms 103. You're speaking it every day. You get up in the morning. Thank You, Father. You healed all my diseases. And then you meditate. You see it. And Holy Spirit, he will bring you. He will work with you. His job when you reads Acts 2 is to have your young men see visions, your old men dream dreams, your sons and daughters are gonna prophesy. He's talking here about the language of the heart. He is helping us to believe at a level that mankind has never been able to believe and use their faith before.
So going back to our analogy. I need my legs healed, my joints healed so I can run and jump and I declare new promises. Maybe I find another promise in God's Word where it talks about by His stripes, I am healed. And I use other verse and keep add, but every time I use those verses, it's like this picture on the inside rises up because I see at myself. We're jogging, with my wife. We're playing football with my kids. Running around with other friends. Things I've never been able to do and on the inside, daily I'm aware of the promises of God. Focused on the promises of God. Now, you say it, meditate on it. Now, you need to begin to do something. Now, confessing the Word is an action but maybe when I walk, I can just barely walk. And so, it hurts.
So one day, I get up and I decide to walk around the house, which I can do. But the next day, I decide to walk twice. This kind of doing seems to put pressure on your heart where your heart begins to rise up and you begin to do what you are speaking, what you are meditating on, you begin to add actions. Now you would never do anything that jeopardizes that. Like so many people think you have to throw your painkillers away. Throw the medication away that may be keeping this disease at bay and just truth God. No, medication doesn't stop the power of God. So while you're taking your medication, you're not qualified enough to get off. Just take the meds and believe God for healing. Continue this and as you see change, go to your doctor and say, "You know what, you gave me this pain medication for my joints and I'm finding now that I'm walking better. I can walk twice as far as I did the last time I saw you a few months ago and I'd like you to help take me off this meds. Would you please work on that with me"?
He'll examine your joints, look at your legs, and he'll work with you if he won't find another doctor. But we live in a world that's different from the world Jesus was in. They didn't have all the medications and drugs and although some of you don't believe in them, there are some that are very good and we, of course, medicine is an ongoing practice. It's a perfect science and we're growing in it. But many Christians and the world has often looked at people who believe in healing as foolish because we'll do foolish things. No, you don't have to do foolish things. Just do corresponding actions. In other words, where your faith is at right now, do corresponding actions.
And as your faith grows and you'll find that your heart begins to be established and is it ever amazing as you're believing God, you're speaking His promises about healing. You are meditating about seeing yourself jumping, walking, leaping, praising God. You begin to add actions to that by walking 20 percent further, by going upstairs a little bit when you couldn't before. These three in harmony have a phenomenal effect. Your heart just beings to believe and the Bible says in Romans 8 that if the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you, it quickens your mortal body. So healing doesn't come from heaven where we bug God enough that He releases it. It's already released into you and I.
Now we are learning to release it ourselves into our body, into our world. This is a dynamic portion of Scripture in Joshua 1:8-9 because it shows us how perfectly God's Word can work in our lives. You know, the greatest conflict that you're gonna discover is the difference between the thoughts of your mind and the believes of your heart. Because you can add information to your mind and think differently. While your heart and its beliefs were established long before you could even do it on your own. Parents, teachers, family, siblings, uncles, aunts, grandpas, grandmas, childhood friends, traumas that have happened to you and caused you to form judgements and beliefs.
All of these things have already established your heart beliefs and they're east to change if you do it the right way. It's like trying to take the wheel off a car. If you don't know how to take the lug nuts off and you don't know what they, how they work, you are gonna work really hard bashing with hammers and trying to rip that tire off. But when you understand the technology of putting, unlocking those, the nuts on that tire and then just pulling them off, it's as easy as pie. It takes a little bit of time to take it all off, put it back on, put them back on, lock them back on. It's just a process. But if you don't know that process, you are gonna be really, really frustrated. It'll take days and how you're gonna get that tire off with a sledgehammer or a pry bar or what you're gonna do. It's gonna be frustrating. That's like many Christians.
So we must learn to take God's Word and let Holy Spirit lead you into truth. Now he knows which truths you need. Get into God's Word, begin to focus on verses where you can get results then, this is my last time I'm gonna go through it, then you need to begin to speak it every day, what that promise as yours. Then you begin to see it done. The miracle's finished. What would you look like if your miracle was done and finished. Then every day, do corresponding actions. Do a little bit more and a little bit more and you'll find that your body will begin to recover.
You can apply that process a Biblical process of anchoring your heart, establishing your heart in the truth of God's Word, not the truth that you don't like in the outer world which is like, it's true, I can't walk very good. That might be the truth now but the Bible says don't look at the things that are seen but the things that are not seen because the things that are not seen that are going on in the inside of you, they are more powerful, more lasting than what you see with your eyes because faith, God's Word is great. It changes your world.