Loving Life – Part 9 Lawson and Aaron Perdue

  Friends, I’m so glad that you tuned in to the broadcast. Today, we’re gonna talk about overcoming evil and doing good. And we’re gonna talk about seeking peace and pursuing it and living in peace with God and people. And you cannot do that in your own strength. So stay tuned and we’ll share how you can walk in this aspect of victory. Blessings. Friends, I’m so glad that you’re with us today. I’m glad to have Aaron. We’re talking about loving life. And actually, last week, we talked about the foundation for loving life. And you need to have this good foundation. God is always good. The word is always true. Jesus is always Lord. And do you know what? We are blessed. And if you get that foundation, you can begin to move into it. Now, this week, we’ve been talking about more how that happens in our life, and we talked about seeing good, and then we talked about speaking life. But we’re gonna move into another area, and Aaron’s gonna read in 1 Peter 3.

 

  All right, so here in 1 Peter 3, I’ll start in verse eight. It says, “Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another. Love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous, not returning evil for evil, or reviling for reviling. But on the contrary, blessing, knowing that you are called to this, that you may inherit a blessing for who would love life and see a good day is let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayers but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. I love that he’s quoting, you know, the Psalms there just to prove out his point of how we should treat other people having compassion, love as brothers, talking about that brotherly kind of love, phileo love, be tenderhearted, be courteous. You know, a lot of people just in society today aren’t very respectful, not very courteous. We should always be courteous to everyone around us. You know, not just people who can benefit you, but you should be courteous to everyone. It doesn’t matter if they’re at the top of society or at the bottom. You should treat everyone this way. And I was actually just talking to our children’s pastor yesterday, and we were talking about someone who isn’t here anymore, but she just said, you know, that this person kind of thought very highly of himself. He is a very prominent person, but she just said, “The way he treated me was just like, you’re just kinda nothing. Just the way, just his manner, just the way he.” And I said that’s a big red flag to me because I actually said, you know, someday when my daughter, I have a three year old daughter right now, someday when she is old, older, and gonna get married, one of the number one things I’m gonna look for, you know, her future spouse, is a man needs to be kind.

 

  Right.

 

  Like, is this a kind person? Is he kind to everyone? Is he gonna be kind? Some people just aren’t very kind, not very courteous. And that’s a…

 

  You know, mom and I last night, talking about that we were at a dollar store. And, you know, it was in a kind of, an area that’s not the best area of town. And there were homeless people sitting outside, you know, and the people working looked rough, and people in there were shopping and I talked to ’em and spoke to ’em, and they were just, you know, I think they were kinda shocked that I was talking to ’em and being nice to ’em. And they responded very, you know, very, very nice, in a very nice way. And mom said, you know, people are happy again as a whole. But we were kind to them, we were kind to the clerks, we were kind to the people that worked there. And you know, when you sow kindness, you reap kindness. And that’s what he’s talking about. He’s talking about relationships. And these weren’t people that we have a long, sometimes it’s harder like in your marriage, right? And people in church that you have a long term relationship with than people just out on the street. But we need to be kind to everybody. You know, the Bible says that God is good to all, his tender mercies are over all of his works. Paul said, you know, be good to all men, especially those that are of the household of faith. And we need to sow kindness. And if you sow kindness, you reap kindness. But if you get caught up in arrogance, you know, that’s just very, very negative. And I don’t wanna be a bitter person. I don’t wanna be an arrogant person. You know, the Bible says that a haughty spirit is before a fall. And only by pride comes contention. If you’re angry, and this is, for me, this is good. ‘Cause sometimes it’s challenging for me to control my attitude, right? And so if you’re angry and upset, it’s because there’s pride somewhere and you gotta get over your bad self. And I know people that I highly respect in ministry sometimes, you know, there’ve been things done. I don’t know if it’s them or people that work for them or whatever, but you know what? Just takes a period of time to get things worked out in my soul. Right, my spirit’s good, but I just have to work it out. And you know what? These people don’t control my destiny. God controls my destiny, and God’s gonna get me where he wants me to go. And God’s gonna provide for me. I’ll tell you what, if he has to bring ravens and bring bread and flesh in the morning and bread and flesh in the evening, God is gonna take care of Lawson Perdue. I mean, I’m confident in God is who he said he is, and God will do what he said he’ll do. And you know what, praise God, I remember Lester Sumrall talked about this when he started out preaching. He had to go around the world on a ship to meet Howard Carter. He didn’t even know where Howard was, but God told him go to the bottom and work up. And so he preached in the largest church, Full Gospel Church in California, in Southern California, and for like two weeks. And then he got on the ship and the pastor gave him like, I don’t think pastor gave him anything. If he gave him anything, it wasn’t much. And he paid his ticket on this ship and had like $5, almost nothing. And a person said, “Lester, you’re gonna go to China and starve to death.” And Lester just looked at him and said, “If I go to China and starve to death, I want you to come to China and put a tombstone over my grave that says, ‘Here lies Lester Sumrall. Starved to death, trusted Jesus.'” He said, “With those words, we parted.” By the way, he’s up like 80 years old when I heard him preaching this, and he said, “In those days, I need a little more sanctification.” And he said, “These days I need a little more sanctification.” In other words, we’re all growing in this, you know. But I’ve seen people that will say negative things about Andrew Wommack preaching healing. And Andrew responds the same way. He’s just like, “If I die sick, you come put a tombstone over my grave that says, ‘Here lies Andrew Wommack. By Jesus’ stripes I was already healed.'” And when you get that bold, I’ll tell you Andrew’s gonna live a long time. He’s gonna be healthy. Because he’s already going in that direction. I believe he’ll be healthy up into his nineties and be preaching the gospel. Amen, because he’s just already going that direction. He’s believing that, speaking that, living that, amen? And your attitude has a lot to do with what you receive. Amen. But we gotta beware about being bitter, praise God. Go ahead, Aaron, share some more.

 

  You can go on to your next point.

 

  So we’re talking, if you’re gonna love life and see good, we talked about number one, you gotta see good. But number two, we said this, you gotta guard your tongue. You’ve gotta speak life. And we talk for two days on speaking life and the power of your tongue. And I talked too much the last two days, but it’s something that, you know what? It works in my life and it’s working, and I see the fruit of it. But then in verse 11, it says, let him hate evil and do good and seek peace and pursue it. So if we’re gonna love life, first of all, we gotta see good, the perspective of how we see things. Do you see from a positive viewpoint or negative viewpoint? You gotta see good. You’ve gotta speak life. You have the power to choose life. And part of it is by what you believe and you speak. But the third thing is hate evil and do good. And I’m gonna tell you this, not only hate evil in other people. Many of us are good about this is Lawson Perdue. I gotta guard this about hating evil in the world, hating evil out there, but we gotta hate the evil in our own life. It’s kind of like you’re saying like hate arrogance, right? It’s good to have a good opinion of yourself, to see yourself the way God sees you, But you should have a good opinion of other people. And he says let him hate evil and do good. Did you know what? You cannot hate evil and do good in your own strength. Jesus said there is none good but God. Let him seek peace and pursue it. Did you know you can’t have peace in yourself apart from Jesus? We live in a world, the Bible says as much as possible, but live peaceably with all men. But when we talk about hating evil and doing good, you know, it’s kind of like negative thinking. You don’t just overcome negative thoughts. You have to replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts. And you don’t just, you know, overcome evil. You have to overcome evil with good. In fact, Romans 12:21, I believe it is, says this, “Overcome evil with good.” Praise God, the way you overcome evil is with good. So you’ve gotta replace evil with good. You’ve gotta begin to let the Lord. You know, I was a really honored child. I was saved when I was eight, but I did a lot of negative stupid things even before I got baptized in the Holy Spirit when I was 14. And my mom prayed to God and she said, “God, would you help me with Lawson? I can’t do anything with him.” And then she took me to this Bible study of Andrew Wommack and my life completely changed. And you know, I got so involved going to church in reading the Bible. You know, I went to church three times a week. If they had special meetings, I’d go to church 10 times in two weeks. You know, or more, praise God. We, the Pentecostals, I mean, all we did is go to church. But you know what? I got so turned around that I was so involved going the right direction. It was hard to go the wrong. And it wasn’t that there wasn’t evil that I could have been involved in, but I was so connected to God in my relationship with God that I just walked out a lot of the darkness. And a lot of the things that my friends struggle with, I didn’t struggle with. Praise God. So you don’t just do that on your own. Did you know what? It takes a relationship with God to overcome evil. It takes a relationship with God to do good. It takes a relationship with God to walk in the peace of God. You know, and so a relationship with God is necessary, and without a relationship with God, you’re not gonna hate evil and do good. You’re not gonna seek peace and pursue it. You can’t do this in your own strength. It takes the strength of God.

 

  I love hearing 1 Peter 3:9. He talks about, you know, how to inherit a blessing. You know, God’s will is for us to inherit blessing. And you know, here in verse 11, it talks about seeking peace and pursuing it. So your goal should be peace with other people. You know, I’ve kind of observed some people are just always at the center of drama. And they’re more of a problem maker than a problem solver. And you know, I always like problem solvers, especially people who are close to me, people on staff here at the ministry. I like it when people are problem solvers, not problem creators. But you know, some people, they’re just always at the center of problems. They’re always at the, you know, they’re the center of the spokes of drama and problems. And your goal should always be to seek peace and pursue that. And Jesus said, there’s blessing attached to that. Blessed are the peacemakers, not the troublemakers.

 

  They shall be called the children of God. And we’re gonna come back in more and talk about this. And I’m gonna give you a piece of wisdom that came from Andrew Wommack, my mentor, in relationships. And it is powerful, talking about having peace in relationships because there’s mistakes that I’ve made. And you know what? I’m very loving as a whole. I just accept people for who they are. You know, I grew up in the country. I trust everybody till they prove me wrong. Your mom grew up in the city. You know, she grew up in the hood. And so she doesn’t trust people sometimes till they prove it. And I think there’s a balance in that. But at the same time, there are people that have deceived me. There are people that have deceived mom and I both actually. But later in this thing, I could see the fruit of these people. And I had to break off some relationships, so on and so forth. And I’m not out here badmouthing these people and saying things about ’em. But at the same point in time, did you know what? I learned some wisdom from Andrew Wommack. And I’m gonna share that when I come back. And this’ll be valuable information for you, information from an older minister to a younger minister. So stay tuned. I got some great advice when we come back. Bless you. Hey, friend, I have a question for you. Do you love life? I believe that God wants you, as a believer, to love life, to enjoy living. And I believe that God has given us the peace in his work so that we can do that. So go to our website at Charis Christian Center and download this teaching absolutely free. Blessings. It doesn’t happen by osmosis. The will of God is not just automatic, it takes faith to believe God. And you know what? When you pray in the Holy Ghost, the Bible says that you build up your most holy faith praying in the Holy Ghost. You just can’t put yourself in neutral and think you’re gonna go anywhere. Friends, I’m so glad that you stayed with us. And I told you, after I came back from this break, I would tell you something that Andrew Wommack told me, and this actually has really, really helped me. But there was a certain issue, and I was on the wrong side of it, and I’d kind of been warned by people but I just couldn’t see the challenges and the difficulty. And like I said, for people, for me to make a judgment, and listen, I’m not the judge, but you are to discern good and evil. And as Christian leaders, sometimes we have to make decisions about things. I talked to Andrew about a certain situation. I said, “Andrew,” because there were people around him that had warned him, and actually, some of them had warned me, but it was kind of after the fact that we were already in this situation, and Andrew Wommack, I said, “Hey, what these people are saying is true, and this is the fruit that I’ve seen after a period of time, and so guard yourself in this relationship.” And Andrew told me, “Lawson, if someone,” and this is really connected to what you’re saying, “what you’ve seen in certain church relationships, ministry relationships, work relationships, if somebody has a lot of drama around them,” Andrew said, “I just kind of hold, keep myself at arm’s length.” And Andrew and Jamie Wommack, they are champions in one area that is really fantastic. And that is they walk the love walk. They do not speak evil of people. They do not speak negative or speak death about people, but yet he’s very wise. And I’m sure that, you know, life has taught him some of these things that if some of these people have a lot of drama around them, you gotta just watch ’em. And you don’t just jump right into a situation. And so I’ve made a few mistakes in areas, and that’s one of ’em and I learned somewhat the hard way. But you know, God still takes care of us and protects us and takes us where he wants us to go. So we’re talking about if we’re going to love life, we’ve gotta see good, speak life, and then it says let us hate evil and do good, and let us seek peace and pursue it, for the eyes of the Lord, you know, are over the righteous and the eyes of the Lord are over the evil. And God ultimately is the one who gives you an inheritance and gives you a reward. So we wanna get the right reward, we wanna have the right result. The only way this, you know, really works is through a relationship with God to hate evil and do good, to seek peace and pursue it. You can’t do that in your own strength. And in Luke chapter, where is it? Luke chapter 10. In Luke chapter nine, Jesus sent forth the 12. And then in Luke chapter 10, he sent forth the 70. And in the 12, he gave them power to heal sick and cast out devils. And the 70, he told ’em to heal the sick and preach the kingdom of God. When they came back, Luke chapter 10, beginning in verse 17, they returned again with joy, it said, “Lord, even the devils are subject to us through that name.” So they were marveling that they had authority over the devil. And Jesus said to them, “I beheld Satan fall from lightning, you know, fall from heaven as lightning.” Well, the devil is not who he used to be and the death, burial, and resurrection, I believe Jesus was somewhat speaking forward into what was gonna happen in his death and resurrection. But he said, “Behold, I give you power. I give you authority,” in the Greek, “to tread upon serpents and scorpions and overall the power or ability of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” So Jesus is telling him, “I’ve given you this authority.” However, they’re rejoicing because they’re casting out devils, right? They’re rejoicing because demons are coming out. I’d rejoice too. I thank God we have authority over the devil. But he says, “Not withstanding, this is what I want you to think about. In this do not rejoice that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” We need to rejoice because our name’s in the Lamb Book of Life. We need to rejoice because we have a relationship with God. We need to rejoice because God loves us. And did you know what? Overcoming evil comes through a relationship with God. Overcoming evil. You can’t overcome evil and do good, except through a relationship with God. You can’t just walk in peace and stay outta drama except by our relationship with God. But in a relationship with God, it’s that that gives you power really over the enemy. And it’s that that gives you power to live in the victory Jesus promised us. You know, and so overcoming evil and doing good, it’s not performance but it’s an overflow of the life of God in us. Do you know the 10 Commandments couldn’t make anybody holy. All of the commandments, all the law couldn’t make anybody holy. The law could just show people their sin, but it couldn’t free up from it. But it was through a relationship with God. And Jesus came to make a relationship with God a reality. So it’s the overflow of the life of God that helps us to overcome evil and do good. It’s a overflow of the life of God that helps us walk in peace. We talked about this scripture in Hebrews or Romans 12:18, as much as possible, live peaceably with all men. But Hebrews 12:14 says, “Follow peace with all men.” And he says, “And holiness, without which no man shall see God,” or experience the kingdom of God. Follow peace. And when we read, and if you have a King James version, Hebrews 12:14, I wanna read this to you outta the King James version. If you have your Bible, I want you to look at it. He says, “Follow peace with all men and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.” But in the King James, the word men is in italics. That means it’s not in the original language. So this bears out what I’m saying is that, number one, it takes a relationship with God. And if you’re gonna be at peace with people, first of all, you gotta be at peace with God. And then you gotta be at peace with yourself. And then you can be at peace with people. You know, the Bible says, love your neighbor as yourself. If you don’t begin to see yourself the way God sees you, see your happiness, you brought up this Aaron, it’s not in another person’s head, it’s not in what somebody else thinks of you. Your happiness is through your relationship with God. But when you’re at peace with God, then you can be at peace with yourself. And when you’re at peace with yourself, then you can be at peace with people. It begins through a relationship with God and then it continues in your relationship with God. You need to understand what God thinks about you. I had a situation years ago that there was a person in my family, and they’d done something that really hurt me. For two years, I was pastoring at the time, every meeting I went to, God said, “You forgive.” I’d say, “Man, I got the love of God in me. And I love them, I forgive them.” I’m like, “God, help me forgive them.” I knew I had the ability, but mom spoke to the situation, and mom spoke into the situation and she said, “This is what happened.” And this person actually had taken me out of a will. And this had been promised to my dad, things that were promised to my dad and me. And it hurt me in the natural. And Mom said they didn’t do this because they didn’t love you, that this is the only way they thought that their dream could go on. So they took you out of the will, not to hurt you, it wasn’t about you. It was about they wanted their dream to go on, and they had lost all these people in their life. And when she did that, it healed the hurt in my soul. And so I was able then to forgive, right? And I had peace with God, ultimately, I always had that. I never lost that. But I was able to get peace with myself and then I was able to forgive this person and be at peace with them. So all these things, overcoming evil and doing good, seeking peace and pursuing it, it all comes from a relationship with God. And if we’re gonna operate and if we’re gonna love life, he goes right through it. See good. Number one, you gotta see good. Do you see? Are you focused on good things? Are you focused on positive things? He says let him see good. Let him refrain his tongue. He who will love life, 1 Peter 3:10, and see good days, you gotta begin to see good. You gotta see from God’s perspective, see from the perspective of the promise, not the problem. And he says let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips that they speak, notice, he speak life and speak the word of God. And then he says let him hate evil and do good and seek peace and pursue it. He says for the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous and his ears are open to their prayer. Man, God sees you. God knows you, God hears you, and God wants to help you, but you gotta begin to focus on what God’s focus is, amen?

 

  I wanna say, yeah, I wanna say something that I think will help just free a lot of people. Here in 1 Peter 3:9, it says, not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling. But on the contrary, blessing, knowing that you are called to this, that you may inherit a blessing. You know, one thing that’ll help you just in your relationship with other people is when you give, when you do good things to other people, just do it as a gift to them. Just out of your heart, you know? And don’t expect something in return. Sometimes when you expect, you know, the courtesy to come back to you, and it doesn’t happen, you get upset.

 

  Right, man, that’s true.

 

  And just let things go sometimes. Just if you’re really good at someone and they were not good back to you, they treated you poorly, they dishonored you, whatever, just let it go.

 

  And Paul’s talking about marriage right here. And some of you, this is a word from God, what Aaron just shared, in your marriage. And there’s some things you just need to let go.

 

  Well, this applies to a lot of things too. Sometimes people can’t, don’t always return the goodness back to you just ’cause they’re unable to. They’re just a very broken person, very hurt person. Sometimes they’re unable just to give back or to return that. But when you wanna reach out to someone when God’s, you know, love is just pouring out for you, just do it as a gift to them. However they respond, don’t take it personal. You know, just a year and a half ago, my wife wanted to reach out to her biological father. They had a very estranged relationship. You know, he dealt with a lot of alcoholism and drug use for most of his life. And she was primarily raised by her mom and stepfather, but she just wanted to reach out to him and send him a nice card and a gift. And I said, you know, just do that but just do it as a gift. You know, don’t have any expectation of something in return. ‘Cause you know, he usually wouldn’t reach out back to her. But she wrote him a very nice card just saying that she loved him and that God loved him, just ministered to him, shared scripture, and gave him a gift. And recently, she actually found out that he passed away, but he had that card hanging up on his refrigerator. So even though he wasn’t able to really express a lot back to her, it really touched him and blessed him. You know, I think he really did love her, just he didn’t know how to show it. He didn’t know how to show it. And I think my wife knows that it’s not a personal thing against her that he wasn’t really there for her.

 

  Yeah, Aaron, I’ve had some people be really honor to me. You’ve observed some of this and, you know, I’ve just reached out and responded in love. And I’ve realized afterwards that they were going through a tremendous amount of pain. And sometimes you don’t know the pain or the problems another person’s going through.

 

  So just don’t take things personally.

 

  Don’t take it personal. Just let it go, amen. And that’ll help you. Praise God, I trust that you enjoyed the broadcast. I certainly have enjoyed it myself. And we’re gonna be back tomorrow at this same time. Tell your friends about the broadcast, and if you need prayer, give us a call. Blessings. Friends, we don’t want to leave this broadcast without giving you the opportunity to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord. Pray with me right now. Heavenly Father, I believe that Jesus Christ is your Son. I believe that he died for my sins. And I believe that you raised him from the dead and made him Lord. I surrender my life to you. In Jesus’ name, amen.

 

  God is the author of life, and every gift from him is perfect and good. If you have breath in your lungs, you have a reason to rejoice. You can love life because God is good. His word is always true. Jesus is Lord and his blessing is upon you. We’d like to bless you with a digital copy of the teaching “Loving Life,” a $20 value free of charge. Download it today 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 PO Box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80962. See you next time on Grace for Today.