Possessing Our Destiny – Part 2 Lawson Perdue

But what you gotta do is begin to see God. I try to see God in every person. I try to see the good things of God in every person. With my staff, I try to look at the good things they’ve done and value them for what they’re giving. I don’t try to look at all what’s wrong. And do you know what? If you look for what’s wrong, you’ll find it. And if you look for what’s right, you’ll find it.

Praise the Lord. Friends, we’re beginning our series today and we’re talking about understanding our destiny and possessing our destiny through our relationship with God. The goal of the gospel is to know God. So open your heart and receive the good word of God today. Blessings. I’m gonna start in my message, praise the Lord, about possessing our destiny. And I stole this title from Barbara ’cause Barbara’s gonna be preaching in two weeks on Mother’s Day. And I said, “What are you gonna be preaching on?” She said, “Possessing our destiny.” I said, “I think I’ll just preach on that.” So we’re gonna preach this series together, praise God. And I believe it’ll be good. But I want to go to Jeremiah chapter 29. Many of you are familiar with this. You’ve heard it a lot. But I want to go to Jeremiah 29. I wanna start reading in verse 10 through verse 13. Jeremiah says, “For thus sayeth the Lord, after 70 years be accomplished at Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word towards you in causing you to return to this place.” So what Jeremiah was doing, Jeremiah was prophesying to them that they were gonna be taken captive by Babylon. They were gonna be exiled from their land. But he says after 70 years, after their 70 years, I’m gonna visit you and I’m gonna perform my good word to you. But you know, God knows the end from the beginning. And so he told them beforehand about trouble that was gonna come. And then he told ’em, listen, I’m gonna perform my promise. Don’t worry about it, my word is still true. But you know, God does what he says. He says, I know the thoughts that I think towards you in verse 11, “Sayeth the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you an expected in.” God has an expected in and it is good. “Then you will call upon me and you will go and pray to me and I will listen to you.” Did you know your destiny is in your creator? And you find your destiny in your creator and you fulfill your destiny through your relationship with God, through your relationship with your creator. Praise God. He says, “You’ll call and pray to me and I will harken to you, I will listen.” Even though things may look bad, even though it may be difficult, even though you may not be getting what you, you know, really wanted to happen. God still has a plan. God still has good things he wants to do and you just keep reaching out to him. He says in verse 13, “You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all of your heart.” Did you know God spoke to the children of Israel? I think this is like Deuteronomy chapter four, verse 29. But he said, “Even if you go to a foreign land where they will for Gods, if you will search for me with all of your heart, you will find me and not another.” You know wherever people are on the planet, no matter what religion it is, no matter what background they are, if they will search for God and seek for God with their whole heart, they will find God. They will not find another. You know, years ago, we had this girl that came to our church. She loved Jesus. They had like four children. Her husband wasn’t a believer, he was either an atheist or agnostic, but I lived in Cheyenne Wells, 25 miles from Kit Carson. And I went over to visit one day and he was there and he was telling me, well, he didn’t believe in God or he didn’t believe, you know, if it was possible, you know, to know that there was a God, one of those things. And so I just asked him, I said, “Hey, will you pray with me and pray to God that if he’s real, he’ll reveal himself to you?” And he said, “Yeah, I’ll pray that.” So I prayed a prayer, lead him into prayer, and he prayed, God, if you’re real, reveal yourself to me. And you know, he worked in the oil field. He had a terrible problem with drug and alcohol. And you know what? He got caught on his job doing something like cocaine. I mean, it was terrible. But rather than his company firing him, they sent him to a drug dry out place. It was a Christian place in Norton, Kansas. And you know what? He got saved and delivered from drugs. And you know what? If you’ll call on God, God’s gonna reveal himself to you. You’re gonna find Jesus. You’re not gonna find something else. He is the one true God. Amen. But your destiny is in your creator. And God, his thoughts towards you are good. You know if you’re going the wrong direction, you might make a bad turn or something, God just reroutes you. But he knows how to get you. The gifts and callings of God are without repentance. And God knows how to get you where he wants you to go. Praise God. So stay close to God. Amen. Now, if we go to Jeremiah chapter one, we’ll start reading in Jeremiah chapter one, in verse five, it says this, “Before I formed you,” God is speaking to Jeremiah in the belly, “I knew you. Before you came forth out of the womb, I sanctified you, I set you apart, and I ordained you. I chose you to be a prophet unto the nations.” Do you know this church is not just a city church, this church is a world church. Do you know I had a lady I met in first service and she was here from Canada. I met a man out in the entryway in this service, and he’s from Nigeria. We have people from different states. Last Wednesday night we had a lady from Minnesota. We have people come from all over the world and this is not gonna stop. It’s not gonna slow down, it’s gonna increase. It’s gonna be more and more because this is what God has called us to do. And he said, “Then I said, ‘Oh Lord God, behold I cannot speak, I’m a child.’ But the Lord said to me, ‘Do not say I’m a child, for you will go to all I send you. And where whatsoever I command you, you’ll say.'” You’re gonna go where I tell you to go. You’re gonna go to who I tell you to go. And you’re gonna say what I tell you to say. “‘Do not be afraid of their faces for I’m with you to deliver you,’ says the Lord. Then the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, ‘I have put my words in your mouth.'” Verse 10 says this, “See, I have set you this day over the nations and over kingdoms to root out, to pull down, to destroy, to throw down, to build, and to plant.” Now, number one, God said, I ordained you. I chose you before you were born. I had a good plan, so to speak, for your life. Amen. I believe that God has good thoughts, God has good plans for every person that’s ever been born in this planet. And then he says, this is the purpose that I have for you. He says in verse 10, “I have set you this day over nations and kingdoms.” He talks about four things in the negative, to root out, to pull down, to destroy, to throw down. And then he says, to build and to plant. You know, Dr. Sumrall was talking about this scripture one time and he said, “Anybody can tear something up.” Some of you think you’re called to be prophets and all you do is got negative to speak. You never build anybody up. You are not called. Some of you think you have the gift of discerning of devils. It’s not the discerning of devils. It’s a gift of discerning of spirits. And if you turn that thing around and use it on yourself, you won’t use it anymore at all. Some of you are just deceived. I’ll tell you, it takes a wise person to build something. And you know, sometimes before you can build and plant and grow, you gotta root it out, you gotta pull down, you gotta throw down, you gotta destroy. Years and years ago when I was sitting in one of Andrew’s Bible studies, he talked about how, you know, he saw some of us and it was like we were in a alfalfa field. And if you’ve ever seen alfalfa, I grew up in the Southeast Colorado, Arkansas Valley, under the Fort Lyon Canal. They raise lots and lots of alfalfa hay and it almost looks like clover, but it’s green and grows purple leaves. But anyway, in an alfalfa field, if you want to kill it, you gotta get down deep and get rid of the root. And he said, it’s like you got a shovel. And if you go out in an alfalfa field and try to kill one alfalfa plant with the shovel, it’s nearly like an impossible task because these roots will go down and do you know what? They don’t go down a foot or two, they’ll go down six foot, some of them. And you know, you can take a disc where, you know, it’s wide and you go about so deep, they’ll go six or seven inches deep, maybe a little deeper than that if you got soft soil. But you can run a disc across a alfalfa field and rather than kill anything, it’ll make it grow. It’ll just cultivate it. But if you wanna, for instance, kill alfalfa, you gotta plow it deep. And Andrew had this vision, he said, some of you got like a, you know, you’re starting with like this shovel, but pretty soon you get moving and you’re gonna have like a horse with a one bottom plow. And you might be plowing it, you know, a foot or so deep and then you graduate and you get like a 80 horse or a hundred horse tractor and you got a two or three bottom plow and you’re rolling it over 18 inches and that’ll kill it, you know? But then if you really graduate, you can get like a 500 or 600 horsepower tractor and you’ll just be, you know, you might be have an 18 bottom plow taking a 24 foot swath or something and you’re just. But you know what? You start little in the things of God. And if you’re gonna grow and if you’re gonna be what God wants you to be, you gotta get rid of some junk. And some of you got more junk than others. And if you don’t let the Lord work by his Holy Spirit, and if you don’t renew your mind in the word of God, I’m gonna tell you, you’re never gonna get where God wants you to go. You’re never gonna accomplish what God wants you to accomplish. Amen. I wish you all would. You know, Kenneth Hagin said this, Papa Hagen, he said, there’s a lot of ministers. Now we’re talking about fivefold ministries. Jesus gave some of ’em to the church. But he said a lot of them never get to their intended purpose to what God wants for them to do. Do you know, when I was 14 years old and baptizing the Holy Spirit, God called me to preach and God showed me some things. Did you know, there was things that God showed me when I was baptized in the Holy Spirit that I didn’t even enter into for 25 years, till I was like 39, and they were just beginning then. Friends, I’m so glad that you’ve been watching today. We’ve been sharing on possessing our destiny. We have a lot more of this teaching available. It’s on our website, it’s free of charge, downloadable audio, downloadable video. So go there to our website at CharisChristianCenter.com and take advantage of this and many other teachings, blessings.

I just had this headache, like a migraine or tension headache. When we came into the service, he said, it’s on your left side specifically right along your head right here and he even motioned that way, and said something like this power of God’s going to come on you. I just felt like this electricity, it felt like it outlined my whole entire body. Then I just felt, wow, just touched by God.

Remember of 2021, I asked Aaron, Aaron, my son is very prophetic. He’s like Barbara, he hears God very clearly, it’s really, really amazing. But I asked Aaron, I said, “What do you see for ’22?” He said, “I don’t know, dad, what do you see?” And later that afternoon, or it was either later in the afternoon or early evening, I was home and I was sitting on my couch and the Lord began to speak to me. And the Lord told me, he said, “2022, you’re gonna see great miracles.” But he said, “In 2022 it’s gonna be a year of separation.” And then in February, 2022, Barbara got a word and Barbara said, “Listen Lawson, for a little bit, the church is gonna go way down.” She said, “People are gonna leave.” She said, “The money’s gonna go down.” She said, “But don’t worry about it at all, because it’s gonna stop and it’s gonna turn around.” And then she said, “It’s grow and it’s gonna go far beyond where it ever would’ve been before.” Do you know what? That is painful, even when God tells you ahead of time. And we watched that happen. But I just got the reports last week. I didn’t really look into him in depth until this week for our first quarter of finances. And I’ll tell you that the turnaround has begun. And in the first quarter of 2024, we had just a little bit, but we had increased, we went beyond where we went in the first quarter of 2023. And not only that, our net worth as the church went from 19 million to 24 million. About 12 million of that’s the building, but it is super natural what God has done for this church. It is absolutely amazing. And you know what? God has a plan for this church. God has a plan for this ministry and it is good. You know, Aaron stood on this stage, I think it was two years ago in our camp meeting. And he said that we would have a hundred million dollar like endowment and we would use this endowment and we would be given $10 million a year to missions and other ministries. And you know, it took me a little bit to wrap my brain around that. And I said, “Well that’s for Aaron.” But you know what God has recently showed me, It’s not just for Aaron. I’m gonna see that. And I’m gonna tell you it’s not gonna be that long and it’s supernatural. And we are already doing things that are absolutely amazing. Most of you don’t know this, but our outreach ministry right now is exploding. Our phone calls here at the church in the last several months, have went from about 20 a day to about a hundred a day. And our outreach ministry, we’re hearing from countries, this work week we heard from Canada. But we’re hearing from countries all over the world, Africa, India, Europe, South America, Mexico, Canada, and people are getting a hold of our teachings. They’re getting hold of our things and they’re using them. And it is supernatural what God is doing right now in our outreach ministry. It is amazing to me. Praise God. And I’m just thrilled. You know, we’re developing, right now, this new children’s curriculum and we got the first year done last year, put it on the internet in October. I would be happy to be honest with you, if we were in 15 churches, we’re already in over 50 countries. That is supernatural. And you know what, we’re getting ready. I just got the last two quarters of the second year of children’s curriculum and we’re getting ready to put that up here in the next few weeks. But I’ve gotta go over the final edits to the last two quarters, so on and so forth. But now we’re laying out what we want taught in junior high. And I laid out what I wanted taught, but I didn’t know how to teach it exactly. And you know, I prayed for Nancy Sutton, she came here to youth on Wednesday night and then Thursday she was in Aaron’s office. And I went in there and I told him, “God is gonna show you, God has anointed you how to do this.” And you know, it’s been over 20 years since we could have a really good curriculum. And the curriculums that are out there, even that call theirselves spirit filled, do not teach the baptism of the Holy Spirit, do not teach the gifts of the Holy Spirit, do not teach faith, do not teach healing, do not teach a lot of the promises of God, and this one does. And I’m telling you, churches are telling us, children’s pastors are telling us, this is amazing. Hallelujah. And I’m telling you, we haven’t even begun to tap the surface. But that’s just one thing that we’re doing. We’re doing so much. God is helping us in so many ways and multiplying what we do. But it is supernatural. But see, I didn’t even know parts of this until God just, he reveals as you start working with God and going where he tells you to go and doing what he tells you to do, then he begins to reveal pieces and things to you. Praise God. And part of doing what God’s called you to do is just finding a need and filling it. Amen. Some of you get so super spiritual about stuff that you’re, man, just be practical. I am a very practical person. And so find a need and fill it. Find a hurt and heal it. Amen. Praise God. There’s plenty of places. So God spoke to Jeremiah and God said, “I called you before you were even born and I’ve got a purpose for you.” But before you can really build and plant, sometimes you gotta get rid of some of the old junk in your life, and some of you had more of it than others. And some of you got a bunch of religious junk in your life that you think is good and it’s not good. I’m telling you, there’s nothing harder to deal with than religion because people get religious and they think they’re on the right track and they’re not. And I’m telling, if you don’t obey the written word that you know, you’re not really going very far, very fast. Amen. So I wouldn’t live in rebellion. If I knew God said something in the word, I’d live by it. Amen. Anyway, God called Jeremiah and he called him, he says before he knew us, before we were formed in our mother’s womb and connected with our call, there is a purpose. I believe God has a purpose for every person on this planet. And you know what? I believe there’s people that are called into business, people that are called into medicine, people that are called into the arts, people that are called into education, people that are called into all kinds of different areas. My sons, when they went to Cheyenne Mountain High School, their coach, the weightlifting coach and head over that department, was a ordained Baptist minister and he kept a Bible right on his desk. Man, he had dropped his hat to preach and preached at the drop of a hat, but he made a difference in hundreds of kids’ lives. And you know what? Wherever you are, you need to be making a difference. God wants you to make a difference in whatever field he’s called you, wherever he’s called you. It’s really easy to criticize somebody else when they’re operating in their calling. You know, you can criticize somebody. My grandmother had this saying that, you know what? You should walk a mile in somebody else’s shoes before you criticize them. And it’s really easy to criticize other people. But some of you, what people do is a lot harder, you know, than it really looks. I remember Andrew Wommack, when he started on television in like the year 2000, his ministry just began to explode. And people would come in the next few years and say, this is just amazing how, you know, this is just instant success. And Andrew’s like, yeah, 30 year instant success. And I remember Andrew from the late 1970s when he lived in an apartment and held six bible studies a week. And taught, get up at 4:00 AM in the morning. His Bible studies were at 7:00 PM Monday to Saturday night in different places in Southeast Colorado and Southwest Kansas. And you know what? He lived in this little apartment and got up and made radio broadcast at 4:00 AM in the morning out of his closet. He worked like a dog. And you know what? Nobody criticized, well a lot of people actually did. He doesn’t talk a lot about Lamar, Colorado, where I’m from, because it was so painful being there. These people that were supposed to be spirit filled, fought him like crazy. It was nuts. But anyway, do you know what? He has grown and prospered and God has helped him. Amen. It’s literal amazing what he’s done and I respect it. But you know what? Andrew’s a different person than me. He’s got different callings, different giftings, different anointings. I’m not gonna try to be Andrew. I love him. We teach nearly everything the same. But you know what? We’re completely different about the way that we operate. You know, I watched Jesse Duplantis, a teaching from him last night. It was fantastic. Now practically, Jesse and I operate a lot more on the same speed than what Andrew does because that’s just the way we think. Jesse and I think in a different way. Praise God. Amen. And I love Jesse. Amen. I love Andrew. Amen. And I value what they do. I value what Jesse does. But it’s much different than what Andrew does because they got different giftings, different callings, different anointings. But what you gotta do is begin to see God. I try to see God in every person. I try to see the good things of God in every person. With my staff, I try to look at the good things they’ve done and value them for what they’re giving. I don’t try to look at all what’s wrong. And do you know what? If you look for what’s wrong, you’ll find it. And if you look for what’s right, you’ll find it. You know, Dr. Lester Sumrall was a phenomenal leader, but he built relationships with people based on their strengths. Andrew Wommack is the same way. And they have people from different areas that are completely different. You know, Lester Sumrall, he’d have a relationship with one pastor over here and this guy would be on a different side of issue. Another pastor over here, they’d be on a different side. And did you know what? If you got those guys together, they might choke each other, but he’d have a great relationship with them ’cause he looked at their strengths. Andrew Wommack is exactly the same way. He builds relationships with people based on their strengths. Now he has a lot of wisdom in dealing with challenges, dealing with problem people, so on and so forth. And he also has a lot of people around him that protect him from a lot of the nonsense, ’cause there’s a lot of nonsense. There’s a lot of nonsense around here. But you gotta just choose not to get involved in it. You gotta believe the truth. But God called Jeremiah from his mother’s womb.

Friends, we’ve been teaching on possessing our destiny through our relationship with God. And did you know if you need prayer today to receive Jesus Christ, to come into a relationship with God or to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit or any other promise, I just want to invite you to call our prayer ministers. We have trained prayer ministers that are here, that are ready to receive your call, ready to minister to you the grace of Jesus Christ. I know that God wants you to possess what he promised you. And if two or three of us agree as touching anything that we ask, it will be done by our Father, which is in heaven. Give us a call today to receive prayer or to become a partner and help us share this message of Jesus around the world. Thanks so much. God bless you. We’re waiting to receive your call now.

To understand your destiny, you must first know your creator. In order to step into the good plans that God has for you, it is essential to have a relationship with Jesus. You’re not here by accident. We’d like to bless you with a digital copy of Possessing our Destiny, a $20 value, free of charge. You can download your copy today by going to CharisChristianCenter.com.

Friends, in the last few months, we have heard from over 50 nations in the world. People from all around the world are downloading our curriculum, our syllabus, our downloadable audio and downloadable video teachings, our confession cards, and all of these great teaching materials. And you can go receive it too at CharisChristianCenter.com. Receive these resources and be blessed. Friend, I invite you to pray with me right now. 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 on the third day. And right now, I surrender my life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen. Thanks so much for being with us today. Blessings.

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.