Imparting Success To The Next Generation – Part 6 Lawson and Barbara Perdue (Updated)

  Welcome to the broadcast. It’s great to have you with us today. We’re continuing to share on imparting success to the next generation, but today, we’re gonna begin sharing about priorities in life and we’re gonna specifically be sharing on our relationship with God. Open your heart and receive the good Word of God today. I believe that you’re going to be blessed. Friends, it’s awesome to have you with us today. I am so glad I have Barbara with me and we’ve got a great message to share. It actually comes from Barbara’s book, “Imparting Success to the Next Generation.” And what we’re gonna begin to talk about this week, is we’re gonna be talking about priorities in life. And it seems like a lot of times when people are really struggling, if you go back to the foundation and you get your priorities in order, then things begin to go better. So success in life really begins with the relationship with God. So our first priority needs to be our relationship with God. So Barbara, I’ll let you go ahead and open with the scripture.

 

  Yeah, well, if you have your Bibles or if you have a pen and paper and you’re able to watch us today, write this down. I love this. In Mark 12:30, and it says this in more than one place. It says this in the Old Testament. It says this in the New Testament, but “You shall love the Lord God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment.” And I like how it says, in other words, in every part of our life, we’re supposed to give Him everything. That’s who we are supposed to just really wanna have a relationship and spend time with it. A lot of times people think, you know, well, God’s a good God and, you know, I’ll just be really busy and I’ll just give Him the leftovers at the end of the day. But that’s not what this is saying. He literally wants to be part of every part of our life and be first place and, I know, hun, we’ve experienced this firsthand. Isn’t there something amazing when you really do put God first?

 

  Amen.

 

  When you take that time, even if it’s just one scripture or a whole chapter, but take the time to spend a little time in the Word, a little time praying and seeking him, it really is like, supernaturally, your day is just lengthened. It just opens up the day. It seems like you have plenty of time to get everything done, and I love that.

 

  A couple things when you look into this scripture in Mark 12:30, “Love the Lord God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength,” the first thing that I see, that spirit, soul, and body. So you love God from your spirit, you know, and your heart really, scripturally, is a combination of your spirit and your soul. About 97% of the time, when I read the word “heart,” I’ve studied it out in the scriptures, it’s talking about a combination of your spirit and your soul. About 3% of the time, it’s talking only about your spirit. So he says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul.” Now, the soul was defined by Dr. Lester Sumrall, by Oral Roberts, by, you know, many major Bible teachers in the spirit-filled realm, as the mind, the will, and the emotions. So we start with our spirit, it goes to our soul. And then he says, “with all your mind.” Part of your soul is your mind. And then he says this, “And with all your strength, with all of your body.” So we’re to love God, spirit, soul, and body. But then he goes on and says this. He says, “For this is the first commandment.” Again, this is our first priority is walking in a right relationship with God and it begins with our spirit. Jesus said, “You must be born again.” If you’re gonna experience God’s kingdom, you’ve gotta be born again. You’ve gotta be born of the spirit. So it starts with our spirit, it goes to our soul, our mind, our will, and our emotions, then with our body. And then, you know, this is the first thing, this is the priority. And then he goes, in verse 31 says, “The second is like it. You will love your neighbor as yourself.” Now, we’ll be talking later in the week about our relationship with our family, and specifically, our relationship with our spouse. But that just comes out of this. And he says, “There is no commandment that’s greater than these.” So you’ve gotta get the foundation right. And I know we were talking about that last week, but the foundation is our relationship with God and every other thing comes from our relationship with God.

 

  Yeah, you know, I really believe that we were created to worship God. He desires to have a relationship with us, and He desires to be first place in our lives. But I think a lot of times, people don’t understand that. Why are we created?

 

  Right.

 

  You know, why are we here? Why did God create us in His image, with His personality, His intellect? And a lot of times, you know, I wrote this book, the teaching years ago, and then we turned it into a book. But I think it’s so important for everyone to understand that you are created in the very image of God. And God has amazing plans for us, and He created us to worship Him. Some people get so worked up, they don’t know exactly what they’re supposed to do. But you know, start with worshiping God.

 

  Just honor God every day. Put God first. And worship can look like a lot of different things. But you know, the scripture actually says this in John 4:24, “God is a spirit. And those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth.” And we were created for the pleasure of God. And you have this in your notes later, probably in the week, but you know, man, when God created Adam in the garden, he walked and he talked with God. He had fellowship with God. He had a relationship with God. You know, this is what John the Beloved writes, right? He was the disciple who… He calls himself the disciple who Jesus loved. He was one of the closest three: Peter, James, and John. And he writes him who we have seen, who our hands have handled. He’s taught in 1 John chapter 1. We’ve come into relationship with God. We’ve come into fellowship with God and, you know, we want to come into fellowship with you, but truly, our fellowship with is with the Father and his son, Jesus Christ. And when you study this word for fellowship in the New Testament, it’s talking about communication, it’s talking about communion. A partnership of sharing, and I know you’ll bring this out in the teaching, you know how different people had a relationship with God and how that affected their daily life. You know, if you really have a relationship with God, it’s gonna affect your daily life.

 

  That’s right. That’s right. And if you want to, you can go ahead and read Matthew 6:33.

 

  In Matthew 6:33, the scripture says, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God. And His righteousness in all these other things shall be handed unto you.”

 

  You know, unfortunately, I think our culture or the world’s culture that’s taught is seek all the things first. And so, that’s so opposite of what we’re teaching today and what we see in the Bible. I love what it says. “Seek ye first.” God, seek Him first and all these things will be added unto you. You’re His children. He wants to get good things to you without you striving on your own. And I like what you brought out about, you know, different ones, fellowship. And you know, Adam and Eve walked in the cool of the garden with Him. There’s so many other examples we’ll be getting to, but when you think about, that’s the Old Testament, the old covenant. How much more right should we be talking with God and walking with God in this new covenant? And I loved it. Not too long ago, I had some special speakers come to Flourish, our women’s ministry, which meets on Thursday, and we also live-stream this. But this person was just awesome. He said a lot of times, people ask him, “Well, teach me or tell me: How can I hear from God? How can I hear from God myself?” He put it so simply. He said, “Look in your Bible and every time you see those scriptures in red, that’s Jesus talking to you.” And I thought that was a really neat example. But you know, the Bible also says, “My sheep know me. My sheep hear my voice.”

 

  Yeah. And another, they will not follow. And I hear the voice of God, you know, through a still, small voice. The Bible talks about this, you know, with the prophets in the Old Testament, how there was a great fire, there was a great wind, there was a great earthquake and God wasn’t in those. But then He was in the still, small voice. And we have a spirit and we commune with God from our spirit. And one way God will speak to us is through His Word, not only in the gospels, through the words of Jesus, but you know, God speaks to us through all the scripture. “The Word of God is alive and full of power,” the scripture said, and I’ve had God speak to me from Job. I’ve had God speak to me from Isaiah, I’ve had God speak to me all through the scriptures from the Book of Philemon. God has given me different words. So it’s not only the voice of God in our spirit, but all the also the voice of God speaking through the Word. And Jesus said this in John 6:63. He said it’s the spirit that quickens the flesh prophets nothing, but the words that I speak to you, they are spirit and they’re life. And there’s a difference in the written word and the spoken word. And Jesus will speak His word to you. He’ll cause his word to come alive. And I’ve had God speak to me, like I said, all over the scriptures at different times. And I know God gave me a word from Philemon and I acted on that word for 13 years. And you know, I was carrying out that word. You know, God spoke to me in the year 2001 about coming to Colorado Springs. January 4th, 2001, I was sitting at my desk in Kit Carson in the church that we had pioneered with a group of believers from Eastern Colorado and God dropped it in my spirit to come and start a church. Charis Christian Center, and I’ve been doing that. You know, a lot of people, they think, you know, God told them to do this, and you know, it’s like they’re almost goofy. But you know, I have one word from God I’ll share with everybody today and that’s do what God told you to do last. And you know, if God gives me a word, I keep doing that until God tells me to do something different. And I fully intend to be acting on that word that God spoke to me January 4th, 2001, about working with this church. Now there’s gonna be different aspects and God’s spoken different things to me since I’ve come here. You know, there are different things that are coming out of this church and you know, we’re working. You know, He said we would do more in media ministry and television and that’s what we’re doing right here. He said we’re gonna do more with pastors and churches. We’re helping pastors and churches all over the world and different ones in different ways. But He said, “You’re gonna do more with Bible school.” And I teach at Andrew Wommack Charis Bible College. And you know, a girl that was raised up in our church is a major leader there, Carrie Pickett at Andrew Wommack Ministries. And you know, God gives us ways and we can speak to different people through these things.

 

  Well, praise God. I just wanna share quickly, Psalm 63:1. It says, “Oh God, you’re my God. Early, I will seek you, my soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water.” That’s a beautiful illustration, isn’t it? Of seeking with everything in you, seeking with yourself.

 

  Yeah, somebody came to me the other day and they said, “Well, how do you, you know, follow God? How do you follow His voice?” And so I’m like, “Many times, I’ll just ask God, like, early in the morning. God, I want you to direct my steps today. I want you to direct me as I speak different things, as I talk to people, minister to people.” I ask God for wisdom very often. And you know what? God gives us wisdom. And we’re gonna come back and talk more about how you can hear God’s voice, so stay tuned. Blessings. Hi, friends. We’ve been teaching from Barbara’s book, “Imparting Success to the Next Generation.” These are principles that will help you establish a strong marriage, a strong home, and be a blessing to your children. We’ve also made the syllabus for this free of charge on our website at CharisChristianCenter.com. Blessings. At the foundation of all my teaching, I believe that God is good and the Devil is evil. It’s the thief that comes to steal, to kill and to destroy, but I have come to give you life and that life more abundantly, that life extremely excessive, abundant. You know what Jesus wants to give you? Extremely excessive, abundant, good life. Praise the Lord, friends. I’m glad you stayed with us. We’ve been sharing today on priorities in life. And many times, when people’s lives break down, it’s because they have a breakdown in the foundation. They have a breakdown in the basics. And if you get the basics right, and start with a relationship with God, begin every day with asking God for wisdom, asking God for direction, asking God to help you, praise God. Begin every day in the word, spend time in fellowship, in relationship with the Word. And not only just force feeding yourself the Word, but take time and let the Word of God speak back to you. You know, this is a living word. It’s not just words on a page. The Bible isn’t just a book of history, that’s perfect history, isn’t it? But the Bible, the Word is life and there’s power. And when you approach the Word that way, it changes. You know, Peter said, we have a more sure word of prophecy. When he said that, he was talking about we have a more sure word than Jesus standing in our midst, being transfigured with Moses and Elijah and Jesus. And you know, Peter said, “Let’s build three tabernacles.” And God spoke from Heaven and said, “This is my beloved son. Hear him.” In other words, Moses, the prophets look forward, you know, to Jesus. The law looked forward to Jesus. Moses and Elijah represented the law and the prophets, but the gospel’s about Jesus. And so we have this relationship. But even though Peter, James, and John were all there and experienced that personally, in the book of Peter, Peter says, we have a more sure word of prophecy. Now, if you would get that, you know, dogmatic maybe, and maybe that’s not the right word, but about the scripture and letting the scripture speak to you, God speaks to us through His Word and He speaks to us through His spirit and He’ll use it. And spend time with God, spend time in His Word. God will speak to you. Praise the Lord.

 

  Well, in the first half we brought out that, you know, we are created to have a relationship with God, to worship Him. And I love to get up and I love to look in my Word and glean from that and then I like to go walk and I like to spend a lot of that time just praising Him and thanking Him. And I love what it says in Psalm 42:1. It says, “As the deer pants for the water brook, so pants my soul for you, oh God.” It goes on to say, “My soul, thirst for God, for the living God.” But you know, as the deer, I love how these are beautiful illustrations of a life that really seeks the Lord. You know, we’re talking about our first priority being our relationship with God, with the Lord. And when you think about that, we read in Mark 12:30, it’s in the Old Testament, New Testament, love the Lord God with everything. And you brought out soul, spirit and body, which was beautiful, but when you think about that, you know, you have an enemy who wants to distract and derail you, but God has amazing plans for us. And if we’re saying that God is first place, I believe that’s gonna change our priorities for the day. It’s gonna change what we do. It’s gonna change maybe even some decisions. If I’m saying God is really first place in my life, it’s gonna look differently, isn’t it, than if He’s not? It’s gonna really affect the godly decisions we make in pursuing a life after Him.

 

  Yes, and we need to pursue God with all of our heart, with all of our strength, with all of our soul, with everything in us. You know, spirit, soul, and body, we need to pursue God. And you know, it’s not like God is living on the inside of us. You know, I talked about asking God for wisdom, but years ago, Andrew Wommack was in our church in Kit Carson, this is over 30 years ago, and he was ministering and he asked if he could pray for anything for me. I said, “Yes, pray for me to have wisdom.” And he said, “Well, do you know where wisdom is?” And you know, I just said, “No, I’m not gonna…” You know, and he said, “Well, wisdom is in you because Christ is in you.” And Colossians 2:3 says that Christ is the head of wisdom. So you have the wisdom of God in you, in your spirit. And when you pursue this relationship with God, you can learn how to discern the voice of God.

 

  Amen. There’s just another scripture also that goes along with what we’re sharing. This is Psalm 34:1, but I love it. “I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth.” I’m gonna bless him at all times.

 

  Barbara, you’re a person who just, you live this, and many times, I come in the house and you’ve got worship going down in the kitchen, I’ll go upstairs. It’s quite a ways from our kitchen to our master bedroom. And I’ll go upstairs, you got worship going there and you’re just worshiping God, and I think, you know, you and Aaron, both of you’re very prophetic and you hear God very clearly. I hear God, but maybe not quite as well as you and Aaron. But I think it’s because you spend time, you know, in the presence of God, you spend time worshiping God and you don’t like to get just so busy doing this, doing that and everything because you like to spend time with God in the Word, you like to spend time with God. And not that I don’t do these things in worship, but you really prioritize that. I know one thing Aaron likes to do. You like to go walk in the day, and like you say, you’ll praise God and glorify God. Many times, you take pictures of the geese and the ducks and the deer and all the beauty of the creation that you see and you just take time to see that. I think so many times, people don’t. But Aaron has developed this just love for gardening and different things, really raising like flowers and trees and different things. And he has this gorgeous yard. It’s on a golf course here in Colorado Springs. And the person who used to take care of the whole golf course, it’s on a large golf course in Springs, used to live at this house, we were told later. It’s a big lot, and man, he’s got all these different kind of flowers and he’s learned all these different things about caring for him. But he just enjoys going out there and spending time, I think, in the presence of God, and spending time just, you know, where he can clearly just, you know, just hear God and in a different way maybe.

 

  I think what you’re trying to say maybe is really appreciating God’s creation. A lot of times, people are just so busy, they don’t even take time to really truly be amazed at everything that God has created. Again, we’re talking about, first priority, having a relationship with Him. And in the past, I know, especially as a young mom, you know, we pioneered our first church and also were building our family, and really, you know, we had to build some strong priorities with our time with God, our time with each other, our time with our children. I just would see, a lot of times, people put too much emphasis on all the committees they would be involved in and sometimes, you really just kind look like a gerbil on the hamster wheel. And I’m like, “Are we really producing anything or doing anything?” And so again, I’ve just learned over the years from pastoring in a smaller area, pastoring in a larger area, these priorities, like you said, strong foundations hold true wherever you are. And you know, we get those priorities out of sync, it just kind of throws everything out of sync. So again, we’re really emphasizing this teaching right now on the priority of putting God first, and just again, enjoying time with Him, enjoying His creation. And I just even love when I’m out walking, even today, I saw as the sun was coming up and the warm glow, it just starts casting this warm glow on the trees and on the mountains. And, you know, I’ve been doing this every day and it’s just such a huge miraculous event for me every day to see the sun come up. I’m like, “It’s a brand new day.” You know, I love the scripture. People here at our church have heard me say this more than once, but this is the day the Lord has made. Rejoice and be glad in it.

 

  Amen. You know, you have this scripture of Psalm 34:1, and again, I see you live this out. And so you’re not teaching something that you don’t live. And I think this is something that really affected our children in a positive way, is because we live what we preach. But Psalm 34:1, David says, “I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise will continually be in my mouth.” If you’ll make praise just part of your daily life where you’re praising God, thanking God. I liked what you said about thanking God. You know, we have these different things, you know, confession cards and one of them we have is a prayer for our children. And you asked me spontaneously to pray for a bunch of young ladies at your women’s conference, your Rejoice Women’s Conference. And when I did that, you know, we have a man that comes to our church and he used to be over the children’s ministry at a church of over 10,000 people. And he must have been online watching or something, but he’s like, you need to take that prayer and print it. So we’ve made this free of charge and we’ve made it available. You can download it on our website or you can call the church offices and they can mail this out to you. We have other ones. You have scriptures that you prayed over our children, but we have several different ones. One on divine healing, one on who we are on Christ, one on provision. But if you’ll call that, we’ll mail that anywhere in the United States, or you can download it on the internet free of charge. We also just recently took your entire syllabus on “Imparting Success to the Next Generation,” and this is what you got the foundation for this book you wrote, which is a fantastic book. And we’ve put it on the internet. We’ve recently put my Romans syllabus, my Bible Covenant syllabus. We’re putting my 1 John teaching, but all these things, and we’ve made them free of charge. And we’ve got a children’s curriculum that we’re developing and it’s costing me thousands and thousands of dollars to do this, but we’re taking this stuff and we’re just making it available because we wanna bless the world with the Word because the Word will change your life.

 

  Amen.

 

  Amen. So we ought to constantly be praising, blessing God, magnifying God, you know, and then ask God for wisdom. Ask God for direction, He’ll give it to you. Amen.

 

  And I do have this in my notes. We’re going to teach on it a little bit more, but since we’re kind of here, not really having much time to go real far, I do wanna go to 1 Samuel. Let me get there. And I love what this says here because it talks about how when we have God in our life, he really empowers us and changes us into another person. And this is talking about Saul. So again, this is 1 Samuel 10:6. I gotta get there quickly here.

 

  Well, it talks about this, actually. Samuel was anointed Saul, and he said when he anointed him, he said, “The spirit of God is gonna come on you and you are gonna be changed into another man.” And when that happened, Saul then met this company of prophets and began to prophesy with them. And they said, “Is Saul among the prophets?” And so do you know what? The spirit of God lives in us today as believers, and so we not only have the spirit of God that comes on us to minister, we have the spirit of Christ in us that leads us into the anointing on us. That’s a whole nother teaching. We don’t have time to share it, but if you need prayer today, I want to encourage you to call in. We have trained prayer ministers that are ready to pray for you. If you want to get some of these free materials, be sure and call in. We would love to hear from you today. And if you want to partner, we’d love to receive your gift. Thank you so much, and blessings.

 

  It is important to keep God first, family second, and our ministry third. In a busy world, it is essential that we understand and act upon these priorities. Raising kids to love the Word, value family, and live with purpose will bring them great success. Get your copy of Barbara’s new book, “Imparting Success to the Next Generation” for $15.99. Go to CharisChristianCenter.com and order yours today.

 

  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. Friends, if you’ve never received Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, I want to give you an opportunity to pray with me right now. Pray with me and surrender your life to the Lord. 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 on the third day and made Him Lord, and I surrender my life to you in Jesus’ name.

 

  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 ride us at PO Box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80962. See you next time on “Grace for Today.”