The Abundance Of Grace Part 1 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue
The Abundance Of Grace Part 1 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue
The Abundance Of Grace Part 1 from Pastors Lawson & Aaron Perdue. In this episode of Grace For Today, you’re going to learn that there are two things that you need to reign in life!
The Abundance of Grace
Jesus came to give you life and to give it more abundantly! In order to reign in life, you will need two things: the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness. There is nothing you can do to earn God’s righteousness. It is so immeasurable, so vast, so incredible that it can only be received as a gift.
The Abundance Of Grace Part 1 Transcript
Welcome friends to the broadcast. I’m so glad that you tuned in today. We have my son Aaron, with us on the broadcast. We’re teaching his series on Abundance of Grace. And last week we talked about how Grace frees us. This week, we’re talking about how Grace transforms us. And so in this program, we’re gonna be talking about how we rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to move into the victory that Jesus already won. Stay tuned. Blessings. Friends, it’s so good to have you with us today and we’re sharing from my son Aaron’s teaching. He shared this in church and I liked it so much I asked him to share it on the program, but we’re talking about the abundance of grace. And we began last week talking about how grace frees you, but then we begin to move into the fact that grace transforms you and we’re gonna be looking at that today. And so Aaron, we started with this scripture in Romans Chapter 5 Verse 17. It says, ” If by one man’s offense or Adam’s transgression sin death reign by one much more those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one Jesus Christ” We can reign in life through Jesus.
A lot of people don’t realize that God actually created us to reign in life and in the Greek that talks about reigning as kings, as queens, I know in the news right now there’s a lot of talk about the royal family because Queen Elizabeth recently passed away. But we are royal in the kingdom of God. God wants us to reign as kings, reign as queens. Jesus is the king of kings, so that to me means that we’re supposed to reign in life as kings and to do that, it requires the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness.
Praise God. So we talk, first of all again, about how grace frees you, but now we’re talking about how grace transforms you. You wanted to talk a little bit about purpose. And so you said you wanted to go to First Corinthians Chapter 1, Verse 26 to Verse 31 and I’ll read that and then let you comment. He says, ” For you see your calling brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called, but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. God has chosen the weak things of the world, to confound the things which are mighty and the base things of the world which are despised has God chosen, yes, and the things which are not to bring to not the things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence, but of Him, of God are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” So when we look at that verse in Verse 30, he says, “We are of God in Christ.” And then he says, “Christ of God is made unto us.” It’s not talking about something that we did, it’s something that Jesus did for us. Wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, that according as it is written, “He who glory has let Him glory in the Lord.”
Yeah. To me, that’s a very transformative verse. You know, His wisdom becomes our wisdom. His righteousness becomes our righteousness. His sanctification, His redemption it all gets translated to us.
Amen. So I have the mind of Christ. I’m the righteousness of God in Christ, and I’m sanctified by the blood of Jesus, and I’m redeemed from every curse. And that’s not by my performance, that’s by his grace. And when we begin to understand that, it really changes.
And there’s a reason why God gives us his grace. That whole passage starts off, “For you see your calling” that word calling is talking about your purpose, your assignment, your destiny. And as believers, you have a divine destiny, you have a divine call on your life and if it’s from God, it’s gonna be greater than what you can do on your own. He says, it’s not about your wisdom, not about your might, not about your nobility. God likes to actually choose, like he said, the foolish, the weak, the base to confound the wise. You know, I was thinking about our church here. You know, I believe that God called you to move here to Colorado Springs and plant this church, plant Charis Christian Center, begin this television ministry over 20 years ago. But if you looked at where you’re at now, you think God would’ve had maybe someone else. Like you came from a town, our town was just 300 people. Now we have close to a thousand people here every week at church. That’s three times the size of the town we were from. You know, if God was saying, Hey, I want to call someone to plant a church of this size, a ministry of this size, you think he would’ve called someone from a bigger place.
It’s really interesting how, you know, I grew up in north of Lamar, Colorado on the farm, but Lamar’s a town of about 8,000 and then God called me when I first started pastoring to go to Kit Carson and Kit Carson’s a town of less than 300 people in a county that’s only 2,200 people that covers 2,400 square miles Cheyenne County and yet God called us there. And it was amazing as we were there, you know, Andrew Wommack came and ministered for me and Lester Sumrall came and ministered for me. You know, success is being where God wants you to be and doing what God wants you to do. And God raised up people in our church that have went all around the world. And Carrie was, Nordquist is now Pickett, but she grew up in our church and now she’s become, the Director of Charis Bible College. She spent several years in Russia running a Bible school and working for Andrew Wommack Ministries and so you never know who God’s gonna raise up. And so, you know, the Bible says, “Don’t despise the day of small beginnings” but really God put me in a really small place but he did something there. He put me there so he teach me how to think big because he put some people around me and really good friends, Jim Mitchik and Irvin Mitchik and Aubrey Shotten and these guys all started out with very little, but they operated big and they grew big and they prospered and they taught me how to think in a really different way and I believe that affected my ministry and it was very positive and I thank God for relationships. You know, some people are kind of short-term relationship people. I’m a long-term relationship person and so I still have a very positive relationship with those families and of Jim’s family, we’ve ministered to four generations in his family. It’s really, really amazing.
I like something you said yesterday. We had a staff meeting with some of our staff yesterday and for the devotion, I talked about Naaman, the Syrian general of the army, the commander of the Syrian army in Second Kings 5, who was a leper. And the how he found out about Elisha and about the God of miracles was through an Israeli slave girl that was in his household and he listened. I think you kind of brought up something really interesting yesterday that you have to learn how to listen to people, and not despise others though you might think they’re in a smaller position or a weaker position. This Israeli slave girl was in a much weaker position than the commander of the Syrian army, but he listened, and he went to Israel, he got permission to go to Israel and when he was there, he ended up finding out where Elisha lived and went to Elijah’s house but Elisha wouldn’t even go down himself. He sent a messenger, so again, he had to listen to someone who was…
A servant of the prophet.
A servant, and he didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want to go do what the servant of the prophet told him to do. He became furious, it says, and then he had to listen to his servants. His servants said, Hey, you better, you came all this way, you better just do what he says. So he had to listen three different times to people who are less important on the surface.
And there’s a scripture in First Corinthians 12, it says, “There are many voices in the world and none of them are without significance.” You know, I believe that everybody’s voice is important. Now everybody’s voice, it may not be the voice of God, but one thing I try to do. The Bible says in the multitude of counselors there’s safety. I try to listen to a multitude of counsel and then that’s one of the ways that I hear God, right? We hear God through his word. We hear God through his spirit. We hear God through the peace of God. We hear God through the gifts of the Spirit but Godly counsel, and I really like the last one, Godly counsel. In the multitude of counselors there’s safety. The Bible says, “He who walks with wise men shall be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.” And you know, we need to listen to the right people and it’ll help us go the right direction and accomplish the right things.
Yeah, and as we look at this passage in First Corinthians Chapter 1 Verse 26 about our calling, we all have different callings, but God’s grace is gonna help you do a better job than on your own strength. Maybe you’re called to be a great dad, a great mom, a teacher, a pastor, a doctor, with God’s grace on your life, with his wisdom, with his, you know, with his grace, he’s gonna help you do a better job than you could in your own strength.
Yeah. And it’s really amazing when you read that it’s not through our worldly wisdom or ability or knowledge, but it’s through the ability of the Spirit of God. You know, and I’m teaching a series right now on grace and myself and the grace life and God’s given me some direction about where we’re going, but it’s not by our brains or our brawn, but it’s by the Spirit of God, and when you have to realize that it’s not by our great intellect or our great physical ability. And many times we make a mistake in the church because people come in maybe that have been really successful in the world, and we try to immediately put them into leadership in where they really need to realize that their strength is from the Lord and we rely on his wisdom. We rely on his Spirit to help us.
That’s awesome. Yeah, and one person I was kind of thinking about, you know, God just said he doesn’t want any flesh to glory in his presence. I was thinking about the story of Gideon in the Old Testament. This is from Judges 6 and 7. But Gideon, God had a great purpose for him and he wanted to accomplish it through his power, through God’s power, through God’s grace on Gideon’s life. And I think of all the people to pick in all of Israel to deliver Israel. And he said, Whoever I’m gonna pick, he’s gonna be a mighty man of valor, he’s gonna deliver them as one man. He chose kind of the really on the surface, the weakest person. Even when the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon and I just think it’s really interesting cuz this angel was probably really excited to get chosen out of all the heavenly hosts, this angel was chosen to go meet this mighty man of valor who would deliver Israel as one man. He was probably super excited and met Gideon and said, You mighty man of valor and Gideon started talking back to the angel and just said, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You know, I’m from the weakest tribe. I’m actually from the weakest half tribe, not even from a full tribe. I’m from a half tribe and I’m the weakest of the half tribes and my family’s the weakest of all the families and of my family, I’m the the weakest one. My father doesn’t even value me. I’m the weakest one in my father’s house. And he said, you got the wrong guy.
Interesting. You know, Gideon’s out. He does not look like that person. He’s out in the back 40 and he’s just trying to hide out and thresh enough wheat, for his own, his four, no more for his own personal family. And a lot of people have that idea. They’re not thinking about other people, they’re just kind of thinking about me and my four no more. And God comes and speaks this word to him and says, You’re a mighty man of valor.
He gave him a new purpose. So, you know, Gideon’s purpose at that point was just to survive, just to be able to make a little loaf of barley, and to do so, he was threshing the wheat down in the wine press where it was dusty and he’s just trying to hide from the Midianites so they wouldn’t steal his, the little amount of wheat he could fit down there in the wine press to hide from them. So his whole purpose in life was just to survive. And I think a lot of people are just living life like that, just trying to survive, trying to get by, trying to take care of themself, maybe therefore, I think Gideon was just take care himself, just looking out for number one and that was it. You know, and this angel just tells him he’s a mighty man of valor, he’s gonna deliver Israel as one man. And you know what I love about this story is it’s really a great story of faith, but it’s a great story of grace. God’s grace always meets Gideon wherever he’s at, and he tries to help encourage Gideon and help him step into that calling that he has for him, and it takes a few tries before God’s able to help Gideon step out in faith, build up his confidence in order to step out and do those things. But even as Gideon begins to step out, God continually makes Gideon realize it’s not about your strength, it’s not about your ability. It’s, I want myself to get the glory. You know, God wants to get the glory in this situation. So one of the first things that helps Gideon is that he has a revelation of who God is.
Right.
When he realizes that he’s speaking to the Lord, he has kind of a panic attack. He’s like, he probably thinks, well I’ve been talking back, you know, he was telling this angel, Well, where is this God of miracles that I’ve heard about that delivered the Israelites from Pharaoh, and they crossed……. like I don’t believe in it.
Judges 6:13. Yeah.
Yeah. He was really speaking a lot of doubt and unbelief. And when he realizes who he is talking to, he falls on the ground. The angel tells him to put out an offering and this angel reaches out his staff and zaps it, fire comes up from it and Gideon kind of panics. He’s like that angel probably could’ve zapped me for all of my blasphemy. And it says in Verse 22, it says, “Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the Lord. So Gideon said, Alas, oh Lord God, for I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face. Then the Lord said to him, Peace be with you. Do not fear. You shall not die.” And I think this is God speaking to him directly. You know, after that sacrifice was consumed, it said that angel disappeared, and he’s kind of having a panic attack, and God speaks to him, the Lord speaks to him and says, “Peace be with you. Do not fear, you shall not die. So Gideon built an altar there to the Lord and called it the Lord is peace, or Yahweh Shalom, Jehovah Shalom.” And he had this revelation that God is for him. He wants to take care of me, he wants to be at peace with me, even though I’ve…..
Right. We oughta talk about that. And we’re gonna take a short break and come back right after the break and talk about this Hebrew word shalom. And the Lord calls himself Jehovah Shalom. One of the seven redemptive names of God, so we’ll be back right after this break. Friends, I want to tell you about our grace package. I received a revelation of grace in Andrew Wommack’s ministry in 1994 after I’d been pastoring for six years. It revolutionized my life and it’s helped me in so many different ways. I actually have been called to preach and filled with the Holy Spirit in Andrew’s ministry 16 years prior to that, but when I received a revelation of grace, it changed me. We’ve also included a great teaching from my son, Aaron Perdue, on the Abundance of Grace, a single CD on entangled, a great message on grace from Aaron and my series on Galatians, The Grace of Christ. You don’t want miss this teaching, just like it’s revolutionized my life, it will revolutionize yours. You can share this with your friends. If you don’t want call in and get this, you can actually listen to these free on our website at charischristiancenter.com. We want to get the word to you, blessings. Well, we’re back and we’re actually in Judges Chapter 6, and where Gideon sees an angel of the Lord, I actually believe that that’s a pre-incarnate form of Jesus that he sees. And so the angel of the Lord reveals himself to him and Gideon’s like, Well, how do I know that I’m gonna do this and the Lord really speaks to him and says, Well, make a sacrifice and he makes the sacrifice and fire comes out of the rock and consumes the sacrifice. Now, that rock again represents Jesus, right? The sacrifice represents Jesus, the fire represents the Holy Spirit. But after this, like you said, Gideon was really afraid and the Lord said to him, “Peace be unto you. You will not die” in verse 23 “And Gideon built an altar there and called it Jehovah Shalom to this day and it stands in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.” Now when you see this Jehovah Shalom, when the Hebrews greet one another, they say, Shalom. When they depart, they say Shalom. And we know it as peace, the Lord is my peace. But it’s also, see Gideon says, I’m the poorest of the poor. How are you gonna use me to deliver anybody. It’s also that the Lord is our provision. And when the Bible says that God delights in the prosperity of his servant, Psalm 35 Verse 27, again, this Hebrew word shalom is used. So it’s peace and prosperity. So it means wellbeing, God’s peace, God’s wholeness, God’s wellbeing, God’s provision be with you in every area of life. And thank God, when we come into a relationship with God, based on what Jesus has done, and we have the Holy Spirit’s presence in our life, we can begin to move forward in God’s provision, God’s peace, in all of the good things that God has for us.
And I love the story too. The next thing that the Lord speaks to him, it says that same night the Lord spoke to him and said, You need to go take your father’s bull and build an altar for me in the place of that altar to Baal. You are to tear down that altar of Baal and take your father’s bull. So tear down your father’s idol and his father was probably a leader in that community, so had the altar for Baal there in his backyard. So you’re to tear that thing down and build an altar to the one true God, and to build an altar there to the one true God. and to take your father’s bull and you know, Gideon being this great man of faith, he doesn’t go in the middle… like he goes in the middle of the night, he tries to sneak around and do it, but people find out, and man, when people’s idols get torn down, they’re out for blood. We’ve seen this here in the country when Roe v Wade got voted down, you know, abortion is an idol to many people in this country but when that law got overturned.
The liberals, they have so many lies about it. All Roe v. Wade, when they took that away, it said then now it’s the state’s decision. And we have some states that have stood up, praise God against this ungodly thing, abortion. It’s one of the, I think probably the most terrible sin as far as our nation, all these millions of babies that have been aborted.
But as idols get tore down though people, it’ll rile some people up. So these people got riled up, they were out for blood, they wanted to kill Gideon. They came to Gideon’s father and said, Who did this? We wanna to kill him. And something interesting happens, you know, Gideon’s father, who before probably didn’t really like Gideon, Gideon said, I’m the least in my father’s house. He knew his father didn’t have a good impression of him. His father gave him a nickname. He said, you are the one who contends with Baal. You’re that little Baal fighter. So he actually ascribes a new identity to Gideon and said, You’re the one who contends with Baal. Your name is now Jerub-Baal, which means to fight or to contend with Baal. And his father stands up for him and said, We aren’t gonna worship Baal, we’re gonna worship the one true God.
Amen. You know what? We need some people that will stand up. And now I said something about abortion. I want you to know that if you have had an abortion, God loves you, God forgives you, praise God. But at the same point in time, we need to stop this craziness. And it was amazing in COVID, they were demanding that people had COVID shots, giving them no choice about the matter and what happened to my body, my right, my body, my choice. And then, what people don’t realize is that child, in the case of abortion, has no choice. And so that’s a life and it’s the life of the innocent, the blood of the innocent, and so we stand strong for conservative principles here at Charis Christian Center and we stand strong for biblical principles and make no apologies. God is pro-life, period. If you don’t like that, you could argue with him if you get to heaven. Praise God.
Yeah. So in this story about Gideon, we really see what God was talking about that no flesh shall glory in his presence. So Gideon begins to assemble an army, right, and he gets 32,000 people signed up to fight with him. And God doesn’t want the glory to go to any person, or any group of people. He wants the glory. He wants everyone to know that this is me, this is my power, my grace working through whomever I choose. And just so you know, I chose the weakest of the weak and that’s who I’m gonna use to show off.
So God says, whoever’s afraid you can leave, right? And about two-thirds of him leave.
Yeah, he was down to 10,000 recruits after that. So, you know, if you’ve been in the military you aren’t given that option, if you’re afraid, just go home. That’s never a military tactic.
And then God said, that’s still too many. You gotta get it down more. And so he says, you take him down to the creek and anybody that picks up their hand and laps like a dog, keeps their eyes up, those are who you take. So he takes it from 32,000 to 300 and Gideon and 300 men supernaturally deliver Israel.
And it’s really, you know, God was with Gideon every step of the way, even when he is down to 300 getting ready to attack the Midianites, Gideon was still dealing with fear, but God wanted to encourage him. And God actually told Gideon to go down in the middle of the night to the enemy’s camp. And Gideon took a friend with him, he’s probably too scared to go on his own and when he was down there, he was outside of a tent and he heard an enemy soldier telling this other soldier in the tent he had this dream and is a dream of a loaf of barley. You know, this story starts off with the Gideon making a loaf of barley down in the wine press. He said, I had this dream that this loaf of barley came tumbling into our camp and just it destroyed us. And Gideon got really fired up. He realized something that this dream, it was fear coming upon that enemy army. And this army, I have the numbers of that army, but it was over a hundred thousand. There were over a hundred thousand people in that army.
So God took 300 men and delivered Israel from an army of over 100,000 people.
And this is a beautiful picture of peace versus fear. You know, that army fear was coming upon them. And Gideon took his 300 men and all they had when they were about ready to go out and attack, they just took empty jars and torches and trumpets.
Right.
Like if they had any type of weapon it’s probably tucked into their sock cuz they had to hold a torch, hold a trumpet, hold a jar, and Gideon just said, we’re gonna surround this army. When I give the command, when I blow the trumpet, I’m gonna say the sword of the Lord and of Gideon too. And you sound your trumpets, you break your jars. And they did that and just fear consume that army.
Sword of the Lord and Gideon.
Then they destroyed themselves and 300 people full of faith with that revelation that Jehovah is shalom overtook an army of a hundred thousand.
Praise God. You know, I’ve always said this, you and Jesus are a majority. And what I mean by that is that you and Jesus will win. Praise God. When you know that you are on the Lord side, the Lord is on your side and you’re working with him. The Bible says, if God before us, who can be against us? And so this is a great example of really trusting in the Lord. It’s not by our might, it’s not by our power, but it’s by the power of the Spirit of God. And when we trust in God, amen, he can bring us through to the victory that he has for us. You know, God had the victory. He knew the victory was there ahead of the battle and Jesus has already won the battle and the victory is already ours. And when we begin to understand who Jesus is, we enter into the victory that he’s already won. Aaron, pray for the people really quickly before we got off.
Well, I just thank you God that you are transforming lives, your grace is transforming lives. So I just just thank you for everyone watching this program right now, Lord, I just thank you that you are filling their hearts with courage, you are feeling their hearts with hope, Lord, and I thank you that your grace is transforming them. They are going from survival to thrive mode. They will reign in life as kings and queens in Jesus name.
Thanks so much for being with us. If you need prayer, give us a call today. God bless you, we appreciate you.
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