Expanding Our Horizons – Part 2 Lawson and Aaron Perdue

  Welcome, friends, to the broadcast. We’re gonna be sharing today about how faith begins with what you see. And if you can see something on the inside, you can possess it on the outside, but you’ve gotta change the picture that’s on the inside of you. So how do we begin to change the picture on the inside so we can possess what God promised on the outside? Stay tuned and receive the good Word of God today. Friends, it’s so good to have you with us today. We’re sharing on “Expanding Our Horizons”. And we’re talking today about Abram and how Abram possessed the land that God wanted him to possess. But actually, God had spoken to Abram in Genesis chapter 12, and He had told him to leave his father’s house and go to a land that He would show him, and He would bless him and make his name great, and bless those that blessed him, curse those that cursed him. In him all the families of the earth would be blessed. He partially obeyed God, but he didn’t completely obey God, and he took with him Lot. But then in Genesis chapter 13, Lot separated himself from Abram and after Lot separated himself from Abram in Genesis 13:14, the Lord spoke to Abram and said, “Lift up your eyes and look for all the land that you see. I will give it to you and to your seed.” So possessing what God wants us to possess begins with seeing what God wants us to see. And this, we talked about a scripture prior to this in a broadcast, but it was in Proverbs 29:18. And it says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keeps the law, happy is he.” And so the Word of God creates vision on the inside of us. And really, it’s not only what God shows us, but it’s what the revelation that He gives us from His word that causes faith to work in our heart. And faith a lot of times begins with what we see and specifically what we see in the Word of God.

 

  You know, here in Colorado, a lot of people live along the front range of Colorado. So that, like Colorado Springs, Denver, Fort Collins, all these, you know, most of the major cities are along the front range. And that means we’re on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains and we can look out towards the east, which is just plains. You know, I grew up in Eastern Colorado, it’s where my dad first pastored, where it’s just flat and plains. But there’s some neat things about being along the front range along the eastern slope is there’s a lot of homes that are built on the side of the mountains, and people like those homes because they have great views. Oftentimes you can see 60, 70, 80 miles, you know, out from your living room window.

 

  Yeah.

 

  And, you know, the downside of this to some of those homes though are, like, it’s hard to get up there. It’s hard to, you know, get up there, especially in the winter when the roads are icy and those roads are very slanted. And, you know, God wants to expand your horizons. He wants to expand your visions. And it’s not necessarily an easy thing to get to a place where you can see, you know, and have a large horizon. But God has the biggest horizon of anyone, you know?

 

  Amen.

 

  He created everything. He can see the end from the beginning. So when you have a relationship with God, He’s gonna give you His insight. He’s gonna help you expand your horizon. So His dream can be-

 

  Amen.

 

  Your dream, you know?

 

  Amen.

 

  I like, there’s an old hymn that says, “Be thou my vision, O Lord unto me.” So that’s saying, God, I want your vision to be my vision. I want what you see-

 

  Amen.

 

  To be what I see, I want your heart to be my heart.

 

  Praise God. Amen.

 

  And when you really encounter God, when you have a close relationship with Him, He’ll give you dreams, He’ll give you revelation,

 

  Praise God, and, you know, one aspect of that is the Word of God. And that creates faith. You know, when you see what God wants you to see, then you can begin to believe for and begin to move-

 

  And a lot of people don’t really step into faith because they don’t even know what to believe for. They don’t even know what God’s heart is for them, what God sees in them. So a lot of people that’s, and that’s really the starting point is knowing God’s will, knowing his heart, knowing his desire. And if you don’t know God, what God believes, what God hopes for, what God wants for you, then it’s impossible to have faith for it.

 

  Faith begins where the will of God is known. For instance, a lot of people still pray prayers like in the area of divine healing, “Lord, if it be your will.” But we should settle that with the Word of God. It is the will of God to heal us. Jesus took stripes for the healing of our body at the same time that he took our sin. And so just like it’s God’s will to forgive us, it’s God’s will to heal us. And in Mark chapter 1 there was a leper that came to Jesus and said, “Lord, if it be your will, heal me.” And Jesus said, “I will: be thou cleansed.” Faith begins just exactly like you said, Aaron, where the Word of God is known. And when we look at Hebrews chapter 11 talking about what we see and talking about faith, it says this, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” I believe this is talking about these people of faith. Their lives had substance because they had hope in God. Their lives had evidence of a God that you could not see. And so when you hope in God and the scripture, the Word of God is what creates hope on the inside of us. David said this over and over in the Book of Psalms, “In your word have I hope.” So, when you begin to hear what God promises you, for instance, in the area of divine healing that creates hope in your life for health and for healing. You know, when you begin to hear what God says about his provision for you, that creates hope in your life in the area of your needs being met, and really in every area of life if you can go to the Word of God and get a picture from the Word of God of what God wants you. And when we go on down in Hebrews 11:3 it says, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”

 

  And I love how, you know, people who understand faith and understand how it works, they have to, you know, help people get a picture of it for their own life. You know, years ago I went to some healing meetings that a healing evangelist was putting on. Billy Burke is his name. He grew up in Pittsburgh and he was healed when he was 10 years old at a Kathryn Kuhlman meeting. He was actually sent home to die of brain cancer. And his grandma took him to a Kathryn Kuhlman meeting and she said, “She’s gonna lay hands on you and you’re gonna be healed and you’re gonna live and not die.” and she,

 

  Amen.

 

  You know, his grandmother took little Billy, 10-year-old Billy, to a Kathryn Kuhlman meeting in downtown Pittsburgh at the First Presbyterian Church.

 

  Amen.

 

  I actually went to college in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University. And my church helped, you know, get ushers and volunteers to help Billy Burke hold these meetings in Pittsburgh. And it was actually at the exact same location, First Presbyterian Church in downtown Pittsburgh. I played my flute there with his, you know, worship leader. But I, a lot of people that came to the meetings were, you know, just giving death sentences basically. And they, a lot of ’em, you know, didn’t have much background in in Christianity. A lot of ’em never had gone to church, they just heard that there was a healing.

 

  Healing evangelist.

 

  Yeah, and they kind of went there. And the way he would stir up faith in people, he’d start off his meetings, you know, just worshiping Jesus, but also just having people share testimonies.

 

  Praise God,

 

  Who’d been at the meeting the month before. But as he would have people share testimonies, he would share just little bits of scripture that related to their testimony to teach people about healing, about faith. But just by people sharing their testimonies, that caused a stir in people’s hearts.

 

  Amen.

 

  He was creating an atmosphere of faith by having people share their testimonies, and that helped people get a picture of it for their own life. And just phenomenal miracles would happen.

 

  Amen.

 

  But a lot of times, people just have to be able to picture it for themself.

 

  Yeah, You gotta get a picture on the inside of what God wants you to have on the outside. This scripture in Hebrews 11:3, “Through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God.” You know, you take and frame a picture, right? But this God framed the world by the Word of God. He had a picture of what he wanted to do, and then he spoke it into existence. And if you look at Genesis chapter 1, it says, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and earth, and the earth was without form and void. And the spirit of God brooded or hovered or moved upon the face of the deep.” I believe the Holy Spirit hovered over the deep creating a plan. And then it says about nine times. “And God said.” “And God said.” I believe the Holy Spirit had the plan and then God called those things into existence. In fact, the scripture says this in Romans chapter 4, that God “Calls those things that be not as though they were.” and that’s the way God’s word works in our life, is God gives us a picture with his word of what he wants us to have. And then if we begin to act like God, we begin to call those things that be not is, as though they were. We begin to see it on the inside. And just like I believe God had a picture of what he wanted to have in creation, and he called it forth by His word. And when we get a picture from the Word of God of what God wants us to have, then we can begin to call those things forth.

 

  And I actually shared that scripture with our worship team just recently, just this past Thursday. We, once a week, we have practices, and I’ll usually share a devotional scripture. And I shared Romans 4:17 that God “Calls those things that be not as though they were,” you know, he calls life into dead situation. I said, as a worship team, we really have to lead the charge and be stirring up faith in people and be calling those things that be not as though they were. And calling life-

 

  Amen.

 

  Over dead situations. And I heard something really interesting that Bill Johnson of Bethel Church said, and he told his worship team, you know, “However you wanna see the church body be in five years, you need to start singing it right now.”

 

  Hallelujah.

 

  And he was really talking about faith and where you go in terms of worship, you have to see it now, and then it’ll manifest down the road.

 

  You begin to see where you’re going. And you know what, we recently took a major step and we’re broadcasting to at least 10 times the audience that we were broadcasting to, and it’s costing a lot of money. But before we did that, I began to, this thing stayed in my heart for about a year to do. And I, it cost a lot of money, but I told some of my staff, because I said, “We’re gonna have to get ready. And I actually, we contacted Daystar and did these different things, and yet there was nothing happening. And my administrator actually texted me one day while I was teaching at Bible school and said, “Hey, we gotta get prepared to answer these phone calls that are gonna come in.” And I said, “Hey, I like your thought. You’re calling those things that be not as though they were, you’re like God.” And they hadn’t really responded to us that much, but within 20 minutes of when he texted me and asked that, and I texted him back, we got a text from Daystar, and they asked for more information, and by the next day, we actually had contracted this time, and now we’re doing it.

 

  Well, and during that season of waiting where you’re believing for something, you gotta start making preparation. You think about Noah, God told him what was gonna happen, but it took 100 years of preparation. So during that season of waiting, you know, go ahead and start taking steps to be prepared.

 

  Amen, get ready for what God wants to do. Some people just think it’s gonna happen overnight and just like we’ve talked before, it takes time. So stay tuned, we’re gonna come back and talk more about this right after the break. Blessings. Friends, I’m so glad that you’ve been watching today. We’ve been sharing on “Expanding Our Horizons”. We have multiple hours of this teaching in downloadable audio, downloadable video, and many others, free of charge on our website at charischristiancenter.com. So take advantage of these resources and be blessed.

 

  The church is the best thing that has ever happened to the world. I’m so thankful for the church. I’m so thankful for the global body of believers. I’m so thankful for local church bodies like this. I love the local church because Jesus loves the local church. This is the thing that is holding our country together.

 

  Friends, I’m so glad that you’re stayed with us and we are right here. We’ve been talking about, you know, faith begins with what we see. And God begins with the picture on the inside of you. If you can change the picture on the inside of you, you can change the picture on the outside of you. The picture on the outside of you will come and conform to the picture on the inside of you. And when we look in Hebrews chapter 11, we were in verse 3 in the first half of the broadcast. And it talked about, “Through faith, we understand the worlds were framed.” God created the world with his word. And I believe the Holy Spirit moved upon the face of the deep creating a planet. And then God with his words called it into existence. But if we get a picture of what God wants us to have by the Holy Spirit and the word on the inside, we can begin to call it forth with our words. And we can begin to, you know, walk like these things are happening. And like you said, make a plan to move into what God has for you.

 

  And I think, yeah, taking steps of preparation’s really important, you know. I just, yesterday some friends of mine that I made about 12 years ago, they went to Rice University with me. They both have PhDs in engineering and they recently moved back to Colorado. They did their undergraduate at Mines. They actually went to school with my younger brother, Colorado School of Mines, which is a great engineering school. They went there 15 years ago, they went to Rice and met me at Rice University. But they recently moved from Houston. They’ve both been working in Houston for about 10 years to Golden, Colorado. They wanted to move back to Golden, Colorado to be a part of the church that ministered to them when they were in college, they had such a strong tie to that church.

 

  Wow.

 

  They now have two little kids, but they wanted to, you know, they specifically wanted to move to Golden, Colorado to raise their two kids there and be a part of that church.

 

  Amen. So I just, I was really just amazed that, you know, they wanted to, just, shift their life, just to be a part of this small church. And man, church is so important, being connected to a good local church. But I, they visited me about six or seven years ago, right after I had moved here to Colorado on my own. So they knew me, that they knew me as a bachelor. It was just me and my dog in my house. But they came back, they happened to be in Colorado Springs and, you know, just reached out. I haven’t seen ’em in six or seven years and said, “Sure, you can come over, you know, you’ll get to meet my wife, my 10-year-old son Fisher, and my 3-year-old daughter Ada.” And, you know, they came over and it’s just neat to see how quickly God can shift things.

 

  Amen.

 

  You know, and they remember my old bachelor house with, and, you know, and things look a lot nicer now because my wife knows how to decorate and likes nice things, so they could just see that, you know, in their eyes, it was a very dramatic shift. But, you know, while I was waiting to, you know, for the right one to come across my path, I was making preparation. I was getting ready, I was saving up. I had bought a house. So even though I didn’t necessarily like that season of waiting, you know, I don’t think I got married till I was 30, 31. During that season of waiting, it, you can make preparation and be excited about preparing  Amen.

 

  And be excited about the future, but you can take steps of preparation right now where you’re at for what you’re believing God for.

 

  Amen, and one thing is, you know, you get a picture in your heart of what God wants you to do, where God wants you to go, what God wants you to have. And then you start taking practical steps toward it. Now, we were in Hebrews 11:3, where in Hebrews 11, the author of Hebrews talking about these Hebrews of faith, and he said, you can really see their faith by what they did, right? Faith is the substance of things hoped for. So because they had hope, they took action by what they did and by what they said. But right here in verse 13, we’ve been talking about Abraham. God spoke to him and said, “Lift up your eyes and look for all the land that you see, I will give it to you.” in Genesis 13:14. But here in Hebrews 11:13, speaking about Abraham and Sarah, it said, “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off.” Even though they had not received them, they saw them, and they were persuaded of them. If you see the Word of God, and you can see what God says and get persuaded of it, and they embrace them, you need to embrace the promises of God. You need to embrace the truth of the Word of God. And they confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims in the Earth. If you begin to see it and get persuaded of it and embrace it, you’re gonna begin to say some things differently. And you can tell that all these Hebrews of faith were people who not only took steps of faith, like Noah, you talked about him, by faith, he obeyed God and built an arc to the saving of his house. Abraham looked for a city whose builder and maker was God, but they saw it, and because they saw it, they got persuaded of it, and they embraced it. And when they embraced it, they began to say things differently. The Bible calls Noah a preacher of righteousness. You know, people mocked Noah, they scorned Noah. Most Bible scholars believe that it had never even rained on the earth. But then, you know what, God gave Noah this, you know, word that it was gonna flood and it was gonna destroy the earth and to build an arc, he  and it took him and his kids a hundred, over a hundred years to build this arc and get ready. But praise God, it happened. Amen, so a lot of times we spend time in preparation, but when you really get a revelation of the Word of God, you’re going to begin to say some things different because you see things different.

 

  Yeah. I love what it says here in Hebrews 11:13. It says, “They died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off.” You know, sometimes God will give you a promise, give you a dream, give you, just, a desire that, it’s so huge, so large, it’s not gonna just be accomplished in your own lifetime. You know, a lot of, especially here in America, a lot of goals and dreams are very, just, I think, nearsighted almost. But I think dreams that come from God, they’re always greater than yourself, always greater than your own capability. And oftentimes will affect-

 

  Amen.

 

  people outside of your own life, maybe your own lifetime. It might affect your children, your grandchildren. And the Bible says-

 

  Amen.

 

  A righteous person leaves an inheritance to his children’s children. So things that he believes for, he works for, he trusts God for, it’s not just for him to enjoy, for him to be blessed with, but to actually bless even, you know, multiple generations after him.

 

  Amen, You know, Abraham, God told him this in Genesis 13, “All the land that you see, I will give it and then go through it.” because he wanted him to get a revelation of it. But then he said, you know, Abraham moved from there and built an alter. It takes the grace of God to do it. We’ll talk about those things later. But in Genesis chapter 15, God gave him a dream and he showed Abraham that his children would go into bondage for 400 years, but then they would come out with great wealth and they would be greatly multiplied. And this actually happened, and it was later, about 500 years later, that Joshua actually began to take the children of Israel into this land that God promised to Abraham earlier. And finally it was in, you know, later, about 500 years after Joshua, that David actually took them in to possess all this land that God had promised to Abraham. So God spoke these things to Abraham, then showed him, through a dream, that his children would go into bondage, but yet they would multiply greatly and they would come out of this bondage with great wealth. And then Joshua began to take them into what God promised ’em. And it took another 500 years before David ultimately took them to possess all that God had promised Abraham. That was a thousand year word. You know, there, this is the timelessness of the word of God, and sometimes we’re so shortsighted, and people, if they don’t see something in the next 15 minutes, they’re upset, jump off the ship and do something else. But praise God, you gotta keep believing God. You know, that’s how the Word works. Jesus actually talked about the Word in Mark 4, and one principle of the word bringing forth the harvest in Mark chapter 4 was this, that immediately when the Word is sown, the enemy comes to steal the Word. But then after that, persecution and affliction arises because of the Word. And some people just don’t endure, you know, number one Satan coming to steal the word. But number two, persecution and affliction coming because of the word.

 

  I like something that you mentioned before with this teaching in, you know, if you want to get, just, more of this teaching, we actually have it available as a free download on our website. So if you wanna, just, hear my dad’s in depth teaching and preaching on this, he preached on this on a Sunday morning and goes very in depth. But one point that you made, I just love that you said it, it continues with what we get a revelation of. And I believe that when you get a revelation from God, it continues to grow.

 

  Amen.

 

  You know, insight, dreams, purpose from God, it’s something that grows and it needs to keep growing. You don’t wanna draw back. You know, you don’t wanna shrink back. You wanna keep growing with that, you know, revelation, that purpose, that vision, that direction that God has given you.

 

  Amen.

 

  And it does take time, for things to grow, you have to have a picture of it.

 

  Amen.

 

  But it takes time for that to grow.

 

  Amen.

 

  You know, I, a few years ago I moved with my family into a new house and I’ve really been getting into yard work and landscaping, but a lot of things that I plant, you know, it takes 20 years for it to mature. So I have to have a picture of what it’s gonna look like in 20 years. And if I only see-

 

  Amen.

 

  What I see right now and just plant, you know, all these trees right next to each other to make it fill the space right now in 20 years, it’ll be overcrowded and look like a jungle. So you have to picture what things are gonna look like 20 years ahead.

 

  Amen.

 

  And God gave Abraham pictures of what things would look like a thousand years ahead.

 

  Amen, praise God. And so I believe that, you know, like you said, God sees the end from the beginning and God calls those things that be not as though they were. And when we begin to get connected with God, we begin to get revelation. We begin to get a picture in our heart. You know, in Matthew chapter 6, Jesus said this, he said in verse 22, “The light of the body is the eye. Therefore, if your eye be single, your whole body will be full of light.” And that word for eye is vision or sight, ophthalmos. And not only do we have natural vision on the outside, but we also have spiritual vision on the inside that comes from our relationship with God, that comes from the Word of God. And there’s different ways that we can get vision. But if we’re gonna possess what God wants us to possess, we’re first of all gonna have to begin to see what God wants us to see.

 

  And your sight is so important. You know, how you see things.

 

  Amen.

 

  How you Perceive things of. Because it really affects how you act, how you walk, how you, you know, in Titus, Paul writes to Titus and says, “To the pure, all things are pure, but to the wicked and defiled nothing is pure.” That’s talking about your sight, how you see things.

 

  Amen.

 

  Do you see potential in other people? Do you see potential in yourself? Do you see purity in other people?

 

  Amen. But if you’re just looking for wickedness, just looking for what’s wrong that’s all you’re gonna see.

 

  Yeah.

 

  And we, all of us know people like that, they’re just looking for reasons to be offended and they’ll find ’em.

 

  Amen, if you need prayer today for physically, for healing, to receive the Holy Spirit, to receive Jesus as your savior, we wanna invite you to call us. And we don’t want to leave this broadcast without giving you the opportunity to know Jesus personally. So just pray with me today. Heavenly Father, I believe that Jesus Christ is your Son. I believe that He died for my sins, and You raised Him from the dead and made Him Lord, and right now, I surrender to you in Jesus’ name. As you grow in wisdom and understanding, you start to get a bigger picture of what God has in store. But you have to see it in your spiritual eyes before you can go there. With Jesus, you have incredible purpose and your future keeps getting brighter. We’d like to bless you with a digital copy of the teaching, “Expanding Our Horizons,” a $15 value, free of charge. Download it today at charischristiancenter.com. Hi, friends. I want to invite you to go to our website, charischristiancenter.com, where you can receive hundreds of hours of teaching, free of charge. Downloadable audio, downloadable video. We’ve made this available for you and we’d love to have you go there and check out what we have available. Thanks so much, God bless you. 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 AM live. But you can also watch us with our livestream congregation at 8:30 or 10:30 AM 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.”