The Supernatural Fruit of the Holy Spirit -Part 6 Lawson and Aaron Perdue

  Friends, I’m so glad that you’re here today and we’re gonna be sharing about “The Supernatural Fruit of the Holy Spirit,” specifically talking about the fruit of goodness and how the goodness of God is manifest in our life through generosity. You don’t wanna miss this teaching. Stay tuned. I believe you’ll be blessed. It’s a great day, and I’m so glad that you’re with us. And Aaron, I’m glad to have you. We started teaching last week on the subject of the “Supernatural Fruit of the Holy Spirit,” and this is a teaching from my son, Aaron. I loved your teaching and we taught on the first five fruit of the Spirit last week, but we’re gonna continue sharing on the fruit of the spirit. Today Aaron, we’re talking about goodness, and I love this, when you taught it at church, it was such revelation and so jump into the word today. We’re gonna have a great time.

 

  Yeah, we’ll just start at Galatians 5:22 and 23 where the fruit of the Spirit is listed out here by Paul. And he says, but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And I like thinking about these fruit of the Holy Spirit. They’re really supernatural because they come from what’s on the inside of you. The moment you believe on Jesus, you go from darkness to light, from death to life, the spirit of Jesus is placed on the inside of you. So you’re given a new nature because you have a new nature, you’re gonna produce fruit from what’s on the inside of you. You’re given the nature of Jesus. These fruit, they’re really a byproduct of what happened in your spirit when you were made a new creation. And something that you’ve said, dad, you’ve kind of broken these nine fruit of the Spirit into three different categories. You said the first three fruit deal with our relationship with God. So love, joy, peace, we covered those. They deal with our relationship with God. The next three fruit correlate to our relationship with others. So we’ve talked about long suffering, about kindness, now we’ll talk about goodness and how that’s demonstrated towards others. And the last three fruit correlate to our relationship with ourselves. So we’ll get into these three fruit later on in this week. But faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. You have to have a relationship with yourself. You know, you are a spirit, you possess a soul, you live in a body, and sometimes you have to speak to yourself.

 

  Amen.

 

  Sometimes you have to rule over yourself, rule over your emotions, rule over… You know, you have to possess yourself. And a lot of people don’t really understand that. They just kinda let whatever thoughts or whatever feelings they have just really run amuck with them. And that’s kind of a very worldly type philosophy. But we’re not of this world. We’re of a different kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. So we are to really possess ourselves, possess our souls. So we’ll talk about goodness today and how that’s really demonstrated towards other people. And I love something that we kind of talked about last week a little bit, that in Galatians 5:21, the second half of that verse, it says, “those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God,” talking about the works of the flesh. You know, practicing these things and not inheriting the kingdom of God. Conversely, you need to practice the fruit of the spirit, make a practice of these things, and that’ll affect your inheritance with the kingdom of God. So when you practice something, you do it intentionally. You make it a priority, you do it on a daily basis, and it just doesn’t happen by accident. You know, I have a nine year old son that I try to teach the piano to, and when he gets in trouble somebody, he says, “oh, that was an accident.” You know, that’s a classic excuse for many people.

 

  Yeah.

 

  You know, when they get in trouble, it was an accident, but you don’t accidentally practice, you know, the piano and you don’t accidentally practice, you know, long suffering. We talked about how long suffering is demonstrated to other people through honor.

 

  Amen.

 

  And you don’t accidentally practice kindness. You know, kindness is demonstrated through the words you speak, and goodness is really demonstrated through the grace of giving. We know that God’s nature is good because of the gifts he gives. God doesn’t give any bad gifts.

 

  Yeah, you know, the Bible actually says in James 1:18 that every good and every perfect gift comes down from above, from the father of lights with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. So God only gives good things. That’s all he has to give. And, you know, really that’s the heart of everything that I teach as far as doctrine from the Bible. You know, a lot of people account a lot of things to God that are not good, but Jesus also said this, you know, the Bible says, “let every word be established in the mouth of two or three witnesses.” And Jesus said in John chapter 10, verse 10, “it’s the thief that comes to steal, kill, and destroy. But I have come to give you life and life abundant.” And so basically, if it has to do with good or life and life abundant, I think every good thing comes from above, from God, from the Father of light. Every good thing comes from Jesus, from the Holy Spirit. And if it has to do with stealing, killing, and destruction, plainly, the scripture says, that’s from the devil. And so I just basically say God is good and the devil is evil, and God does good, and the devil does evil. If you add one O to God, you got good. And if you take the D off of devil, you got evil. So the devil is evil, and God is good. And those never meet. And if you keep that at the heart of your thinking, it will help you. Now in the Old Testament, sometimes people get confused because in the Old Testament, people didn’t really know who the devil was. You know, Satan’s only mentioned about 10 or 12 times in the entire… I think 12 times in the entire of the Old Testament scriptures. And about 10 of those are in Job. And even if you look in Job, you can see that the devil is the one that is causing destruction and evil if you read the context of what’s being read. But a lot of times in the Old Testament, people just accounted everything to God because they didn’t really have authority over the devil. Like we have authority over the devil.

 

  We have a greater understanding of who God is too now that Jesus has come and now we’ve been given the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

  Yeah.

 

  You know, Job is… You know, like scholars think “Job” was actually like the… One of the oldest books of the Bible written. So Job didn’t have, you know, Isaiah, he didn’t have Psalms, he didn’t have Malachi, he didn’t have the gospels, he didn’t have Paul’s letters. He didn’t have the word of God. You know, Jesus, when the devil tried to attack Jesus, tempt Jesus, he countered him with the Word of God.

 

  Yeah.

 

  The word of God is powerful. You know, we have the word of God. So when… We can, you know, really discern if something’s from an attack from the enemy or not based upon the word, based upon, you know, who we know God to be, a lot of believers still attribute everything to God, which I think is completely insane. And they even take the definition of the word good and twist it around.

 

  Yeah, and I mean, if you get in some of these, you know, extreme cases, you know, of people believing in an unreal… God is a sovereign God, but he acts according to his word, and he has limited himself by his word. But some of these extreme people think God makes people sin, and God is not making anybody sin. That is crazy.

 

  Now, God is completely good. And, you know, if you go back to the Garden of Eden, the original lie was, you know, hey, if God really cares about you, if he really loves you, why can you not eat from this tree?

 

  Yeah.

 

  You know, I actually saw just this morning on social media, a little video popped up and it was a fantastic video. It was one of my favorite apologists by the name of John Lennox. He’s a math professor at Oxford University, and he really loves God and goes and debates, you know, atheists. But he was at a debate and the someone, this atheist, you know, intellectual person asks, you know, if God is really so good, you know, why did he hold back like, and say, “you can’t eat from the…” “Why did he not want, you know, mankind to be like him and to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?” And as this, you know, atheist, you know, is debating John… John Lennox got this huge smile on his face and he is like, “that’s a really good question and I’m glad you asked it. And it’s actually that question was first asked by a snake.” And he went on and just saying how Adam and, you know, Eve and all of mankind was created in God’s image. And how we’re his sons and his daughters. We’re made in his image and just-

 

  Created with dominion and authority and-

 

  And he just went on for several minutes just talking about everything that God has given us, how he’s so good. He gave us Jesus Christ. His only like… That question just backfired. He just got this huge smile on his face. And he said, “you know, that question was asked by a snake.”

 

  Basically.

 

  And he said, “that was the original lie.”

 

  Yeah, well, you know-

 

  Is God really good?

 

  He doesn’t have any, you know, more… He’s just done over the same thing. And if you actually look at this, the same temptations in the Garden of Eden came to Jesus when he was tempted in Matthew Four and Luke Four. And then they’re also talked about in First John chapter two, verse 15 to verse 17. And they all have to do with the lust of the flesh, the lust of eye and the pride of life. And Satan is the original liar, right? And he came and he actually got Eve to thinking she was missing out when she was made in the image of God and created with the dominion and authority and buried blessed. And you know, Satan uses that same victim mentality to get people to miss out because they have the wrong understanding of God. Go ahead.

 

  And it’s kind of interesting that we’re talking about this, you know, just yesterday Andrew Wommack was at our church and he was preaching on just, you know, prayers that maybe take time to receive and God’s not the problem.

 

  And he did a big altar call at the end for people who’ve become bitter towards God because they felt that God was the problem.

 

  And they think they’re more good than God is. And and he’s saying God is not the one who’s holding back. God answers prayers. Sometimes things are hindered because of you or because of other people or because of, you know, demonic activity but it’s not… God’s not at fault. And, you know, many people stood up. You know who-

 

  Yeah. Hey, that is in my thinking 101, don’t blame God. Man, if you start blaming God for your problems, you are in bad shape and you’re not going anywhere good fast. So don’t blame God-

 

  Yeah, God is completely good and we know he’s good because of the gifts he gives.

 

  And you know, his nature is inside of us, so we should want to have goodness flowing out of us and really goodness flows out of us through the grace of giving and giving is so important. And we talked about how these different fruit really affect your life. We talked about how some of these different fruit even affect your longevity. Like if you operate in long suffering towards other people and just keep being kind towards other people and you know, honor other people, it actually affects not just your health, but even your longevity. Goodness, I think it impacts your longevity, but also more importantly, the quality of your life.

 

  Right.

 

  You know, people who are givers, they’re less bitter, they’re less offended, people who make it a practice of giving. And certain things you have to practice. You know, I’ve really learned a lot about giving from a great minister who comes to our church. He’s actually on our legal board here, Mark Hankins. Man, Mark Hankins is a huge giver. And you know, a while back we were having camp meeting here at church and he’s busy preaching every morning, every night, but he talked to my son Fischer, he said, “hey, I want to take you to, you know, Scheels, here in Colorado Springs is a great huge sporting goods store called Scheels. And it’s an awesome store. It’s actually Christian owned, they play Christian music when you walk around there. But he told Fischer, “hey, I wanna buy you a pair of shoes.” And this is when he had a little break in the afternoon and we went over there and, you know, Fischer picked out the most expensive pair of Michael Jordan shoes for 140 bucks. And I’m kind of thinking, “well, okay.” And then Mark says, “well, you need another pair.” And got him another pair. And then he said, “Aaron, you need a pair too.” And he bought me a pair of really nice shoes and-

 

  Listen, I love generous people. And you know what? Andrew Wommack, Mark Hankins, Jesse Duplantis are three of my best friends. And they are phenomenally generous. Aaron, you and Heather are tremendously, tremendously generous.

 

  But when you make a practice of the grace of giving, it’s actually a really exciting thing and it affects the quality of your life. You know, I like something that Winston Churchill said. He said, “we make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” And too many people just fought… You know, fall into this consumeristic mindset where they’re just kind of thinking, “well, what’s in it for me?”

 

  Right. I actually think this is what hurts a lot of young people and people actually looking for a church. Because they’re actually looking at… They’ve been so self-serving, they’re looking at what can I get rather than what can I give? And I think it really helped you boys, when you left home and went out to different areas and went to different churches. You had always been serving in the church. So you weren’t looking so much for what you could get as what you could give. How can I benefit this church? How can I-

 

  Yeah and… You know, this is actually very rare. I’ve been pastoring now for seven years, but it’s very rare to have people come up and just say, “hey, how can I help?”

 

  Right.

 

  I’ll help however you need me. Do you need ushering? Do you need someone with kids? Do you need someone with youth? You know, do you need help on the music team? And they’re quite like, “where do you need help?”

 

  How can I serve?

 

  And just how can I help?

 

  You know, some people come in kinda with their own agenda. “Like I have…” “You know, I have God’s, you know, greatest, you know, understanding on the “Book of Revelation,” and you need to let me preach on Sunday morning about, you know, the mark of the beast and that’s what this church really needs.” And that’s really not having a kind of serving type of mentality.

 

  I think everybody’s voice is important. You know, the Bible actually says that there are many voices in the world and none of them without significance, but that doesn’t mean they’re all from God. And so you have to differentiate that. And, you know-

 

  Well, we literally just a few weeks ago had someone, you know, wanna sing in the choir and she came to a practice but then left early. And then we asked her, “is everything okay?” And she said, “well, I don’t sing songs that other people write. I only sing songs that I write. And you know, you need to let me just sing the songs that I write on your platform because it’s really not your platform. It’s really not your stage. It’s Jesus’s stage.” So-

 

  Yeah well-

 

  So anyhow. That’s a little kooky. That’s the fruit of kooky. Anyways, we probably need to take a break here pretty soon.

 

  Yeah, we’ll take a break and we’ll come back and talk more about the goodness of God and specifically the goodness of God working in you. So stay tuned. It’ll be good. Blessings, we appreciate you. Friends, I certainly hope that you’ve been enjoying watching this broadcast. My son Aaron taught this series on “The Supernatural Fruit of the Holy Spirit” here in Church Live. And it is fantastic teaching. In fact, I had one of my staff say that’s one of the best teaching that he’s ever done. So you can get these live teachings from the church by accessing our website free at charischristiancenter.com.

 

  Before we came here, there was a disconnect between what God offers us and what we feel like we have to earn. This is a place that really teaches God’s grace. And I’ve seen my dad be transformed. Every morning, I say, “Jesus, thank you because of your word and because of your blood, I’m more a man of faith today than I was yesterday.”

 

  Friends, I’m so glad that you stayed with us and Aaron’s sharing, and we talked about the supernatural fruit of goodness. God is a good God. And when you’re born again, you have the spirit of Christ in you, in that you have the spirit of Christ in you, you have the goodness of God in you. And Aaron, you brought this up and it really bore witness with my spirit. I have never heard anybody else teach that the goodness of God is really reflected in generosity. But you begin to talk about that. And you know, the Bible actually says in the Book of Psalms that the Lord is good to all his tender mercies are over all of his works. It says in another place in the Book of Psalms that he opens his hands and satisfies the desire of every living thing. When God revealed himself to Moses in Exodus chapter 34, I think it is, the scripture… The Lord came by Moses and he said, “I’m the Lord and I’m good.” The very first thing that he says about himself is that he’s a good God. And God is the giver of life. He’s the giver of all good things. But when you get born again, you have the spirit of Christ in you, and you have the goodness of God in you.

 

  That’s true. And you know, we need to make a practice of these things, and it affects your inheritance. And that inheritance is, you know, length of days, but also quality of days. And man, you really do make a life by what you give.

 

  And true goodness, we talked about how all these fruit of the Spirit, they’re really all interconnected, and true goodness, really flows from the love of God. And because God loves us, he only gives good and perfect gifts. You know, Jesus is the greatest gift the Father could have given us. And Jesus is 100% good. He’s 100% perfect. He just radiates the love of God, the light of God, and he’s always giving good gifts. You know, I love what John 3:16 says, “for God so loved the world that he gave.”

 

  And when you love, you give. He gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. And you know, this is really important for everyone watching this to realize right now God is not done giving. He gave you Jesus, but he’s not done giving and he still wants you to continually experience his goodness.

 

  He wants to continually rejuvenate you with his goodness.

 

  Yeah, so again, we talked about this last week, but all of the nine… The fruit of the Spirit flow forth from the first one, which is love. And the Bible says that God is love. So joy and peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, they all flow forth from God’s love. And when you get involved in that, a scripture that goes with what you’re saying right now is Romans chapter eight, verse 31 in verse 32. And the scripture says, “if God be for us, who can be against us?” And then he shows us how that God is for us in verse 32. He says, “he that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all.” God did not spare Jesus, but he delivered… And God sent Jesus to the cross for us while we were in sin. How shall he, the Father, not with him, the Son Jesus freely give us all things. That means if God would give us Jesus, God would give us anything. So if God would give you Jesus, why wouldn’t he heal your body? If God would give you Jesus, why wouldn’t he provide for your need? If God would give you Jesus, why wouldn’t he give you peace? All these things flow forth from the nature of God. And you know, we’ve got the life of God flowing in us, and we have the nature of God. And so you’re talking about that’s reflected in generosity. When the goodness of God is in you, you want to give.

 

  And when you really think about how much God loves you and loves other people, it actually… Man, it causes you to want to give. You know, I like this term called a love offering.

 

  You know, I don’t hear it too often, but it’s really when someone just gives someone a gift because they just feel God’s love towards them. Here’s a love offering for this person, and it’s actually a really awesome thing to do. You know, yesterday, I was just thinking about how incredible God is and how… We were celebrating our 22nd year anniversary at our church. And I know God still has more things in store for this ministry, but I was just thinking how good God is and the things that he’s done here at the church, the thing, you know, he’s done. You know, in your life and, you know, we had Andrew Wommack here sharing, I know you were impacted by his ministry when you’re 14 years old and it just, you know, changed the trajectory of your life. And, you know, after service, my wife was cooking a meal and we actually, you and mom were coming over for lunch, and Andrew Wommack was coming over and some of our friends from Mexico, Bobby and Lynn Crow weren’t able to be here, but their son and daughter-in-Law came but I just felt like I was supposed to give a love offering to Andrew Wommack.

 

  And I just asked him right after service, “hey, I just feel like I should give you a nice watch.” And, you know, I collect and sell nice watches as a hobby and to make some extra money. And I just asked him, you know, “would you like a nice watch?” I saw he was wearing an Apple watch, and I don’t like Apple watches. ‘Cause to me they aren’t even a real watch. They’re like a little computer on your wrist, but some people really like having that. But he said, “no, I think I’d like a watch” and I was telling him some different watches I had, and I mainly have Breitling watches, which he knows because, you know, he’s familiar with Kenneth Copeland, who likes Breitling watches. And I said, “well, I have one Rolex I bought, and if you, you know, just pick whichever one you want.” And he got to my house. I just pulled out my nicest ones. And the Rolex is actually the most expensive watch I paid for. I got it for lower six grand and it’s worth like 10,000. I’d sell it, make money on it and… But he was excited, you know, and he said, “you know what?” Someone gave me a Rolex 20 years ago, but I kind of had a poverty mindset then and didn’t wanna wear it, so I gave it away. But I kind of regret that. And I said, “well, if you want it, it’s yours.” And he got the Rolex with the black face, and it fits him really well. And I’m really excited-

 

  It’s not flashy. It’s a really-

 

  I’m really excited he got it. And he said, “you know, God’s redeemed the time.” And he prayed, “you know, Aaron and Heather, I just pray for a hundred fold return with persecution.” And I said, “well, I’ve already experienced enough persecution, so I’ll just take the a hundred fold return.” But actually when I was driving home, I called Heather and told her, “you know, I’m going to give him any watch that he wants.” And I was kind of surprised that no one’s given him a Rolex since in 20 years. And, you know, we need to honor people and give love offerings to people and-

 

  But I told Heather and she’s like, “you know, I was thinking, you know, you were gonna give him a watch and I had this picture of you just letting him pick one out.” And like she said, “I didn’t think you would do it.” And I was like, it’s funny, God, when he asks me and Heather to do something really super generous, he’ll usually tell us both at the same time, and then we’ll be talking about it and he’ll just confirm it, so-

 

  So, man, when you make a practice of giving, it’s a fun thing. And it really… I believe it affects your quality of life.

 

  And God only has good things to give. And man, when you just operate in that grace of giving and just expressing God’s goodness to people, that really destroys the devil. You know, God is completely good. And Jesus was just a demonstration of God’s goodness towards us. And First John 3:8 says, “for this purpose, the son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil.”

 

  Hallelujah.

 

  And then when you are just flowing that goodness towards other people, you are just pounding the devil.

 

  And you know what, Aaron? You talked about giving to a person that, you know, a lot of people know and different things, but I know like you and Heather are super generous. I believe I’m a very generous person in a lot of different ways. Mine is reflected a little bit different than yours and different people that we know. But, you know, Heather is… It’s not uncommon for Heather to give somebody a 100 dollar tip for a $20 meal, or bringing groceries. I mean, I think she’s giving people two or $300 that delivered groceries to her house. And you know what? We’re not saying that to be rewarded by you, but what we’re saying is, you know, God is a generous person, and when you get God working in you, you become a generous person. Amen. And I know, you know, there are people that say, “hey, we wanna be like Charis Christian Center. We wanna be like, you know, Pastor Lawson and other ministers,” but they don’t operate in the generosity that we operate in. I’ll just be frank with you. And if you want to see that type of blessing working in your life, you know, it works, you know, the Bible talks about sowing and reaping. And you know, if you’re not a partner with this ministry, we’re sowing the word all around the world. I’ve helped people all over the world. You could call us and become a partner. And I believe that you will reap a great promise. Blessings.

 

  We have access to the supernatural fruit of the Spirit as believers. When we choose to walk in the spirit, we will receive the inheritance that God has made available to us. We’d like to bless you with a digital copy of the teaching, “The Supernatural Fruit of the Holy Spirit,” a $20 value free of charge. Download it today at charischristiancenter.com.

 

  Praise the Lord. Friends, I want to invite you to church this coming Sunday morning, whether you’re in Colorado Springs or whether you’re… Wherever you are at. If you’re in Colorado Springs, you can see us Sunday morning at 8:30 or 10:30 a.m. live. But you can also watch us with our livestream congregation at 8:30 or 10:30 a.m. or you can go to our website and get it anytime at charischristiancenter.com.

 

  Thanks for watching “Grace for today.” This broadcast has been made possible by our faithful partners. If you would like to become a partner, need prayer or have a question, please call us at 719-418-4000 or to partner online, go to charischristiancenter.com/give. You can write us at P.O. box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80962. See you next time on “Grace for Today.”