Missions – Part 2 Lawson Perdue and Delron Shirley

  Praise the Lord, friends, and welcome to the broadcast. I’m so glad that you’ve tuned in today. We’re gonna be talking today about world missions and we’re gonna be specifically sharing about the blessing of giving. Did you know you can’t beat God given? And Dr. Shirley’s gonna share a testimony about how he sowed a seed and received a harvest. And I’m gonna share about how I sowed a seed and receive a harvest. You will be blessed. Friends, we’re so glad that you’ve tuned in today and I’m so honored to have Dr. Delron Shirley.

 

  Thank you.

 

  He was the dean of my Bible school in Dr. Lester Sumrall World Harvest Bible School, Bible College actually, in South Bend, Indiana. And also Indiana Christian University, which he changed the name. And I got my associate’s degree in Christian ministry at the Bible School in 1988, where I attended physically when you were there. You were great minister of the gospel and helped me. And then in 1992 after I started the church in Kit Carson, I got my bachelor’s in Christian ministry. And I always appreciated you and Peggy, your wife, and you have a great ministry, Teach All Nations, where you travel around the world and you’ve traveled to about 70 nations of the world. And we’re talking about world missions. We began yesterday talking about Acts 2:17. I used to love it when Dr. Sumrall talked about that, “In the last days, I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh. And we’re still living in those days.

 

  Yes.

 

  And we talked yesterday about a couple of the different places, how you were in college and saw an outpouring of the Holy Spirit here in America and saw, got involved and actually started sharing the gospel, and it went to your campus, and North Carolina State University, but it expanded to 22 campuses, part of the Jesus Movement, later part of the Charismatic Movement. And I was actually baptized in the Holy Spirit in the Charismatic Movement. I grew up in a traditional church and that that changed my life forever. My life has never been the same. But praise God. And then you saw in the 1990s, you were working in Nepal and you’re actually praying for Nepal for years. But then you saw an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. I actually traveled there to Nepal with you and now we’re seeing a lot of a move of the spirit in the Middle East. And I was talking about Iraq and then you were telling me more about Iran and this whole area is on fire with the gospel, and many, many people are coming to Christ. And this is wonderful that we get to see this. And I believe, my daughter in law actually, Peter’s wife Kendra went to Duke University. Where she went to Princeton, got her undergrad, and then went to Duke and got her law degree. And she worked there with a number of Christian professors at Duke University. And she went to church with them. And she actually worked on a lot of this human trafficking 

 

  Oh wow.

 

  In law and stuff. And Kendra’s a brilliant, brilliant young woman, but she actually went to a service, this was a few years back. But there was a number of churches got together and they went to one of these big baseball stadiums and they baptized over 500 believers that day.

 

  Oh wow.

 

  So don’t think the world is just going to hell in a hand basket.

 

  Amen.

 

  Because there are two things that are happening. There is a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the earth today, not only in these foreign nations, but in the United States of America. And there’s also a pasta. So you just gotta decide which one you’re gonna be on. But when the Holy Spirit touches you, you said there’s different things that not everybody’s gonna go to other nations. You might need to pray about whether God would have you go. There’s times that God’s had me go. There’s God times that God’s had me stay. And we need to be obedient to the Holy Spirit for the present time. But you said God also has people pray. He has people give. He has people involved. And I believe just like people are called to go, people are called to give.

 

  Amen.

 

  I believe I’m one of those people that’s called to give. And I get to give. I get so excited about giving. I actually gave a certain minister a $1,000 today and I was driving. I gave a few hundred dollars yesterday and I was driving out here today thinking about another minister of the Gospel. And he’s actually seeing a great outpouring of the spirit here in America. Philip Renner.

 

  Yes.

 

  And we’ve had him at the church and I dearly love Philip, but I was thinking, I need to give him a $1,000 in the next couple of months. And so praise God, we get to share the gospel all over the world. We get to be a part of what God’s doing. So Dr. Shirley, I’ve taken too much time.

 

  It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s good. But when you were in South Bend, Dr. Sumrall began a ministry called Feed the Nations. Feed the Hungry, Feed the Hungry, his son has Feeding the Nations. But he started Feed the Hungry. And when that happened, I think that a lot of the move of God among the churches in America really came out of his teaching people to give with compassion for other nations and for other people. There was a strong movement of what some people will label the prosperity gospel or whatever. And people were wanting to gain wealth for themselves and people were saying, “I’m blessing, I’m giving and I’m sowing my seed and this is my harvest.” But they weren’t really realizing that the reason God gives us a harvest is so that we have seed to sow into other nations and other people’s lives. And so anyway, back to the story about Feed the Nation, Feed the Hungry, my wife and I lived right across the street from the church. And you were at our house there where we lived.

 

  A few times. Yes.

 

  And I don’t know if you remember the walnut tree, but we had a huge walnut tree in our backyard that leaned over our house.

 

  It was a giant tree.

 

  Yeah it was, it was huge. And we saw that squirrels were going in one side of it in a hole and we would see they would come out the other side, which meant that there was a section at least 10 feet that was hollow on the inside of the tree. And it was leaning over our house. And Peggy got really nervous. She says with the windstorms that they have in Indiana, that tree could get blown over and if it falls, it’s gonna do tremendous damage to our house. And if somebody happens to be in the living room when it falls, they could be killed. And she was just insistent that I get that tree cut down. Well it was gonna cost me $800 because they had to bring out a cherry picker to do it ’cause they couldn’t just cut it with a chainsaw because that would just make it fall in our house. So anyway, this was the week before camp meeting that she finally talked me into getting it done. And I said, “Okay, but I can’t do anything until after camp meeting’s over. ‘Cause I’m really busy with the responsibilities I have with the ministry during camp meeting.” And so I said, “As soon as camp meeting’s over, I’ll call somebody, we’ll get it out.” Well, I didn’t have the $800 to pay for it, but anyway, I was just doing this to appease my wife. And then we were at the church during the camp meeting and Lester Sumrall got up and talked about Feed the Hungry. And I felt to give $500, well, I already didn’t have the 800 for the tree, now I don’t have the 500 to give, but I put it on my credit card and I said, that gives me a month to faith this money in,

 

  Believe it and you shall receive it.

 

  Yeah, exactly. So anyway, so that very day, because I lived right across the street from the church, I walked home for lunch. There was a guy standing in my driveway and I thought he was probably one of the guys that was there for the camp meeting. And he was just out taking a walk. And I walked up to him, says, “Hi, how you doing? Anything I can help you with.” Whatever. And he said, I work for a wood procurement company. And I was driving around the bypass, which goes kind of near our house. And he said, and I looked over and I saw that walnut tree ’cause it was a huge tree. It stuck up above the rest of the tree line.

 

  And that’s a way from the bypass there.

 

  Yeah, exactly. He says, but I saw that walnut tree. And so I got off at the next exit and I circled around until I found this house. And he said, would you be interested in selling that walnut tree?

 

  Yes sir, I would.

 

  Well, I wasn’t that quick. I said, well, I’m kind of attached to my walnut tree and have to be the right price. Well, and he says, I’m a wood procurement company, we need walnut for veneer, for some furniture we’re making. And he said, I’ll give you $500. Well, they were gonna cut down the tree for free. So that saved me the 800. And then he gave me 500 in cash, which was enough to pay for the pledge I had made for Feed the Hungry.

 

  Hallelujah.

 

  And that tree had been in my yard for years and years and years. There had never been a guy come looking for walnut except the day 

 

  This is super natural.

 

  The one day when I made the decision by faith to sow into the mission work.

 

  Now this is amazing. And I’m gonna talk a little bit about something that happened to me while I was at camp meeting and while I was giving. And I’ll talk about it in the next half of the broadcast. But 2nd Corinthians chapter 9:6 10 says, that God gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater and he increases the fruit of our righteousness.

 

  Exactly.

 

  And I have seen this happen. In fact, I’m gonna be beginning a new series on the blessing of generosity. And the first one I’m gonna talk about is seed time and harvest. And then I’m gonna talk about the tithers blessing. And then I’m gonna talk about the grace of giving. And then I’m gonna talk about the greatest gift and the greatest giver. And in the next four weeks I’m gonna be sharing that in our services in the church. And God actually gave me that title, the blessing of generosity a while back in the middle of the night, just a couple of nights ago. God woke me up at two in the morning, gave me the four titles, and it goes right through the scriptures. And I have seen this happen over and over and over again. But we cannot outgive God.

 

  Exactly.

 

  And it’s really, really amazing. But I have a story from giving at camp meeting, and I was actually in Israel in November of 1987 where God gave Dr. Lester Sumrall the vision for Feed the Hungry. And a tree growing up out of a river of blood. He said that was flowing towards him. And it had these different aspects. One of ’em was preaching the gospel, one of ’em was feeding the hungry. What was the other one? Probably the other branch was these pastors and different people that would get involved to help share this. But that was an amazing vision. I was there when he had the vision and then I got involved with that. And I was blessed as a result of it. And sometimes people think about when we’re asking people to sow a seed or to give an offering that they’re afraid. But you don’t have to be afraid because you can’t outgive God.

 

  Exactly.

 

  Amen. So I’m gonna come back. You just shared a giving testimony. I’m gonna share a giving testimony a little bit in the second half of the broadcast. You don’t wanna miss, this is an amazing story of how God bless me when I was sow in a seed into Dr. Sumrall’s ministry during camp meeting.

 

  Amen.

 

  Just like you told. So we’ll be back right after this break. We’re gonna be gone for a few seconds, but we’ll be back. You don’t wanna miss this testimony because you know what? Just like God bless Dr. Shirley and his wife Peggy, and he’s blessed me, God wants to bless you and you can’t outgive him. So stay tuned, we’ll be right back. Blessings. Friends, we’ve been sharing about world missions, but we could not effectively reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ without the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit. And so our special offer this week is outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We have downloadable audios and downloadable videos on our website absolutely free, blessings.

 

  Remember Lot’s Wife. Now is the time to stay focused. Keep looking ahead, keep looking unto Jesus. Really it’s all about Jesus. You need to stay focused on what really matters. I think it’s like a lot of us, we get distracted by things that don’t matter. And it really slows us down from where God is trying to get us, that causes us to lose focus. And what we really need to do is put your head down and go, go, go. Amen.

 

  Praise the Lord, friends, I’m so glad that you’ve stayed tuned and we’re talking about world missions and you know what, it takes money to share the gospel.

 

  It does.

 

  It takes money. I still remember the first $1,000 gift that I gave. The first thousand dollar gift that I ever gave was to a missionary. I was about 16 or 17 years old. And I had went to Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was a senior in high school. I went to look at Oral Roberts University. My grandparents wanted me to go to Oral Roberts University, but that’s not what God told me to do. And then I was also looking at Rhema Bible Training Center. I knew that God had called me to preach the gospel. And I went to see a friend of Andrew Wommack. His name was Steven Ratto, Dr. Steven Ratto. He was from India originally, and he was a missionary, traveled out of Tulsa for years and then became a pastor years later. And when I went to ORU, my grandparents wanted me to go there. They loved Oral Roberts and they loved Rex Humbard. And my grandpa was raised, he was Baptist and my grandmother was raised Methodist, but they loved both of these ministers. I found out later that I knew Oral Roberts, of course, was baptized in the Holy Spirit. Found out later when I was with Dr. Sumrall that Rex Humbard was also baptized in the Holy Spirit. And they really helped him when he started his church in South Bend, Indiana. But when I went down there, God said no to Oral Roberts. He said no to Rhema. And then later I was sitting in my mother’s trailer house and I was sitting in the living room, and I was reading a book by Dr. Lester Sumrall on Miracles Don’t Just Happen. And in the middle of that book, he had an advertisement for the Bible college, World Harvest Bible College. And when I saw that the spirit of the Lord spoke to me and said, “That is where you’re supposed to go to Bible college.”

 

  Great.

 

  Now, it wasn’t till a few years later that I went because it’s not only the place but it’s the timing and timing is very, very important in the plan of God, you can do the right thing and do it at the wrong time and make a mess outta everything. So you have to do the right thing and you have to do it at the right time. So anyway, but God later led me out, I went to Dr. Lester Sumrall and it was the right time. And I had my wife, Barbara with me, and Erin was just a little baby then when we went. But it was such a blessing. But years later, after we had graduated from Bible school and we were pastoring in Kit Carson, Colorado, we went to camp meeting one summer. It was in June. And we were giving, and I was probably given all that I could give, which may not have been a lot, but I might have given three or four, $500 during the week. But when I came home, there was a phone, a message on my answering service. And a man said, “Lawson, I wanna use the stakes where they surveyed.” We had four acres that was on the northeast side of Kit Carson, Colorado. And we want to buy an acre and the surveyor wants to use the stakes on your property to survey off of. I said, that would be great, you could do that. But then I called the man that owned the land because there was like 53 acres behind me. And I had an acre of at least, and this acre, I had med krells and I kept cattle on it. And I would buy cattle in the winter and grow them. And then I would turn ’em out to pasture in the summer. And I had about enough space for 200 cattle and I had grain bins on my property, and I’d keep the hay over there. But I had a neighbor just over a little ways. And he wasn’t so excited about that. So anyway, I went and talked to this man and I said, “Hey, I would like to buy.” because he had a feedlot that was cornered to my property, catty corner. And anyway, he said that he would sell me this feedlot and it was all falling down. I had to rebuild it. But he would sell that to me for a very reasonable price. I didn’t have the money, but he said he would finance me for the whole thing. And he agreed, I think to sell this feedlot to me for $12,000, which was a miracle. And it was like 12 or six, 12 acres. He would sell me for $12,000. And of course, I had to give him a little down payment. But then he financed the rest. I think maybe I didn’t have to give him anything down. And I, he’s financed me at that time for 8% interest, which was a great interest rate at that point in time. And then I gave up this lease and he sold 28 acres, I believe behind me for a $1,000 an acre to this other man. But we kept the corner so I could drive through from my property to this other 12 acres that I bought with his feedlot. And I rebuilt that feedlot and it was a tremendous blessing. And so I got my neighbor happy. Hallelujah. He paid 28,000 cash. The man financed me for eight or $12,000 for that piece of property with a feedlot. And it was a great deal for me and God blessed me. But it was through sowing a seed. I’d been at camp meeting and listen, I believe in giving. I love to give. And when you get involved in giving, they say you can’t beat God given.

 

  Amen.

 

  And it just comes back to you. So this scripture in 2nd Corinthians chapter eight, I’m gonna read it actually 2nd Corinthians chapter nine, it talks about giving. But when I went down to Oral Roberts University to look at that, the spirit of the Lord moved on me and God told me to give a $1,000 to this missionary, Steven Ratto from India. That’s the first $1,000. Now a $1,000 was a lot of money for me.

 

  I can’t imagine.

 

  I drove the tractor, I made about $3 an hour then. So that was over 300 hours of work that I gave. But my first $1,000 seed was to a missionary. And I’m still sowing all kinds of seeds. And I remember now, I gave 10,000, and I’ve given a 100,000 and God has multiplied me over and over again. And it’s so amazing when you get involved in this thing called the grace of giving. And in 2nd Corinthians nine, it says, “He who sow sparingly,” verse six, “Shall reap sparingly. He who sows bountifully shall reap bountifully, every man according as he purposes in his heart. So let him give not grudgingly or of a necessity for God loves a cheerful giver.” We don’t have to do this Dr. Shirley, we get to do this. And God is able to make all grace abound to you. If you don’t get involved in the grace of giving, did you know what you may miss out on grace that God has available to you in receiving.

 

  Well I would, I would rephrase that and take out the may. Instead of putting may, you may miss out, 

 

  You will miss out.

 

  I say you will miss out.

 

  Yeah, you will miss out. He says, God is able to make all grace. This is 2nd Corinthians 9:8. “A bound towards you that you always, having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work.” Praise God. I sowed some seed. Amen.

 

  Amen.

 

  Yesterday into a good work. And I sowed some seed this morning into a good work. And I’m gonna sow some more seed today into good works. Hallelujah. And God’s leading me. I just love to give. It’s so exciting. And he says, “God is able to make all grace abound towards you that you always have an all sufficiency in all things.” If you get involved in the grace of giving, God gives you sufficiency. You gave right to a great missionary work to feed hungry people in the world and to preach the gospel. And God came and took care of your need and took care of your seed also.

 

  Amen.

 

  May abound to every, we can abound to every, I know you and Peggy gift to all kinds of nations, all kinds of good works. In fact, what is your website?

 

  It’s Teach All Nations…

 

  Mission. Teachallnationsmission.com.

 

  Teachallnationsmission.com.

 

  Yes.

 

  So you can go there to his website, you can give to them, they sow seed all around the world in the gospel. And he says, as it’s written, we support your mission just a little bit every month, and then we give to special things. Praise God. And he says, as he is dispersed to abroad, he’s given to the poor, his righteousness remains forever, Now, he God, who ministers seed to the sower, will give you bread to eat. You don’t have to worry about the bread you eat when you’re a sower. When you’re a giver. He says, and multiply your seed song, he multiplies it. If it’s multiplied, it’s coming back to you.

 

  It is.

 

  In many days, in many ways. And he says this, he says, and increase the fruit of your righteousness. Praise God. We get to do this.

 

  Yes.

 

  Praise God. Dr. Shirley, why don’t you speak to the people a little bit about giving and pray for them and then well, so it up here.

 

  Grace King. Good. Alright. Yeah. Well, I would just tell you that many people ask me when did you become a missionary? And I say I became a missionary when I was five years old. But the truth is that it was 20 years later before I actually ever traveled outside the US. But at five years old, there was a missionary who came to our church and put on a presentation. And I decided to give 50 cents to the offering every month for missions. And I think I got like a dollar allowance at that point as a five year old kid. But I faithfully supported missions with 50 cents a month. And funny thing is that the next Sunday, our pastor got up and was bragging about how wonderfully the church had responded to that missionary offering the week before, and I thought, man, my 50 cents really made a difference.

 

  Well, praise God it did.

 

  Yeah. Yeah. It may not have made that much difference in the world, but it certainly made a difference in my life.

 

  Dr. Shirley, you never know what 50 cents would do for somebody. Every seed counts. I’ve always tried to be a very responsible with finances and what God gives me. And it just speaks to me whether somebody giving me a dollar or a $10,000. And I just thank God for what he’s given me. And I take it serious.

 

  Exactly.

 

  And I think God takes it serious. So I wanna say a great big thank you for being with us. And we trust that God will bless you and increase you. I’m telling you, you can get involved in the blessing of sowing, in the blessing of giving. And just like you sow a seed, it will come back to you and be a harvest. If you need prayer, if you wanna give, if you wanna become a partner, give us a call today. Blessings.

 

  Every Born again believer should be baptized in the Holy Spirit. Jesus commanded his disciples not to depart from Jerusalem until they had received power from on high. If the Acts two church needed the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we still need it today. We’d like to bless you with a digital copy of the teaching, the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit, at $25 value free of charge. Download it today at charischristiancenter.com.

 

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