Spirit of Generosity – Part 1 Lawson and Aaron Perdue

  Praise the Lord, friends, and welcome to the broadcast. I’m so glad that you’re connected with us today, so glad that you’re tuned in. Tell your friends about the broadcast. We’re gonna be sharing all this week on the spirit of generosity. And today, I’ve got my son Aaron here. Later this week, I’m gonna have Pastor Mark Hankins with me, and you’re gonna learn some great truths in the realm of sowing, but not only sowing, reaping, so stay tuned. Friends, it’s so good to have you today. We’re glad to be with you, and I’m glad to have Aaron. And we’re sharing all of this week on the spirit of generosity. Generosity will change your life.

 

  Yeah, it’s good to actually plan to do generous things. You know, the Bible says a generous man devises generous things, and by generosity, he shall stand. And I’ve seen people who just really live their lives to bless other people. They live their lives to be generous, and they stand. They don’t fall over. Even when they’re going through difficult times, they remain standing. But people who aren’t very generous, they fall pretty easily, and it’s hard for them to get back up. And I’ve seen people, when they stop being generous, they stop being generous to their spouse, to their families, to their church. You know, they get very just self-centered, almost. And it’s not too long, and then they aren’t standing very long. They can go through some difficult times and not really get back up. So generosity causes you to stand. It causes you to be resilient and just keep popping back up.

 

  That’s great. The scripture you mentioned, Aaron, is Isaiah 32, in verse eight, and it says, “But the liberal or the generous devises generous things, “and by generous things, he will stand.” Praise God. You know, one reason I like pastoring a good-sized church is because we’ve always sowed seed from our church. Even we pastored in Eastern Colorado in a smaller area, we sowed a lot of seed. And I see a church as a great tool to be a giving thing. In fact, we support 60 to 70 ministries every year that we give to, and we give to about 30, 35 ministries every month. But, you know, so when you start sowing seed, you know, the church is like a spiritual house. If you do this in your natural house, I actually have a good friend, and this friend counseled thousands, thousands of people for years, mostly believers. And he said, “I never saw a married couple “who was tithing in a financial problem “that they could not get out of.” But he said, “If they were not tithers, “if they were not givers, a lot of times, “they were in major financial problems.” And so he says, “The liberal, the generous, “devises liberal things.” That word liberal in the Hebrew is the word nadib, and it means generous, willing-hearted, liberal, free, magnanimous. Praise God. So, you know, somebody who’s a generous person, willing-hearted, liberal, you know, that’s free, that’s big in the realm of giving. He says, “They devise generous things, “and by generous things, they shall stand.”

 

  I like that you said giving is a way of sowing seed.

 

  Right.

 

  You know, if you’re gonna sow seed, it’s because you expect a harvest.

 

  Right.

 

  And when people stop giving, when they stop investing, when they stop, you know, having that generosity, it’s because they aren’t expecting a harvest.

 

  Right.

 

  They’re prophesying drought. They’re prophesying famine in their life. But when you’re giving, you’re actually, it’s a prophetic act. You’re sowing into the future. You’re sowing into the kingdom of God.

 

  Amen.

 

  So you’re prophesying your future. You’re prophesying the harvest.

 

  Amen.

 

  But if you stop giving, that’s a dangerous place to be in.

 

  You know, 2 Corinthians 9, I think it’s verse 10, says that God gives seed to the sober. And I determined when I was a child, my dad taught me to tithe when I was only like four years old and he taught me the principle of tithe and told me about it. When I got my first paycheck, I was like 13 years old. I drove tractor all summer and I didn’t make much money, maybe, you know, two or $3 an hour, but I made 1,300 and some dollars and I went, I think I made, my paycheck was like $1,338 or something for the whole summer. And I took a check to my Sunday school class for $135 and tithed on my very first paycheck. And I’ve always tithed. In fact, my pastor told me, I was 19 years old, getting, planning on getting married and I didn’t make very much money then. And my pastor told me, “Lawson, you’re a tither and you’re a giver and you’re never gonna lack.” And it’s been the truth. I’ve never lacked.

 

  That’s awesome. And tithing, you know, something’s very special about the tithe. You know, it’s mentioned before the law. Abram tithed the first time in scripture to Melchizedek. So Melchizedek blessed him and Abraham gave a tithe. It wasn’t something that he owed, he gave it because that was his act of faith on his response to that blessing. When Melchizedek said, “You’re blessed by the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth.” Abram believed that. And then because he believed it, he tithed. If you believe that you’re blessed, you’re a giver. You’re generous, you tithe. The tithe is mentioned in the law and the tithe is mentioned after the law. It’s mentioned in the New Testament. It’s mentioned in Hebrews that as believers, we now tithe to Jesus. He’s the one that receives our tithes. But in the law, it says the tithe is holy to the Lord. And I believe that even though that’s mentioned in the law, I believe that the tithe is still holy to the Lord because you’re asking God to be a partner with you in your finances, you’re trusting him. You know, you’re not just tipping God or paying God or trying to, you know, you’re a partner. You’re asking God to partner with you. And, you know, a percentage denotes partnership. You know, if you’re a partner in a company, if you owned 10% of Apple, you would want Apple to do well.

 

  Yeah.

 

  10% is a large percent, but you would want it to do well because you have, you know, you have ownership in that company. You want God, God wants, if you’re partnering with him, if you’ve asked God to partner in your finances, you know, 10%, and I think as New Testament believers, you can go beyond that.

 

  Right.

 

  You’re not limited to that, but God’s gonna want you to do well because he knows that you’re investing into the kingdom. And when you invest into the kingdom, you invest into the gospel, you invest in a ministries that preach Jesus. Lives get saved, people get healed, people get set free. God wants that to happen. And, you know, so he’s gonna bless you so you can be a blessing to his kingdom.

 

  Yeah, not only Aaron, when I started tithing with my first paycheck, when I was about 17 years old, I remember giving my first $1,000 check to a missionary. And he’s actually a pastor now. And he’s from India, he’s got a doctorate degree, he speaks eight different languages, but he was a missionary at that point in time traveling around the world. And that was a huge gift, you know, for me making maybe $3 an hour around that when I was 17 years old. And, you know, so I would work about 200 hours a month. So $1,000 gift, right, on top of my tithe was probably more than half of my summer income that I gave that I sowed the seed. But you know, the Bible says that God gives seed to sowers. And now I’ve not only given $1,000 gift, I’ve given personally 20,000 at one time, but then, you know, in addition to that, and I give regular, I give more than I’m used to make in a month, I give every week. When I started out pastor, I give more every week than I made per month when I started pastoring. But, you know, we’ve, as a ministry, we’ve sowed $100,000 gifts. And, you know, it’s not gonna stop right there. And, you know, we pastored this church in Eastern Colorado, and we gave about $50,000 a year away from a community of 300 in a county of 2,200, less than one person a square mile in that county. And we gave over $50,000 a year to missions, outreach, other ministries. And you know what, if you determine to be a giver, God will see that you have seed to sow. And we determined in that church that we would give from the very beginning. We determined when we came here, when we had almost no people and no money, that we would give first. And we’ve always given first. Mom and I always give first. And did you know what? We have never lacked. Now, sometimes it looks like there’s not a lot extra, but God multiplies our seed sown, and it comes back to us. You know, the Bible says when we give, it will be given back to us good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over shall men give to our bosom.

 

  I love, you know, the Bible oftentimes, when it gives you instruction, it shows you what the promise attached to that instruction is. And the instructions on giving, there’s often a promise attached to it.

 

  Oh, sure.

 

  Even in Malachi 3, when it instructs us to tithe. And as new believers, those promises are still there. But one promise for tithers is that God would rebuke the devourer. And, you know, there is an enemy. There’s an enemy that comes to kill, to steal, to destroy, to devour. And the Bible talks about how it’s a shame, you know, if someone, you know, accumulates, you know, wealth and does well, but then it’s just wiped out and the enemy eats it or the enemy gets it all, you know, the devil wants to wipe people out. He wants to wipe them out financially. He wants to wipe them out in their health. He wants to wipe them out relationally. But that tithe, that generous heart attached to it, there’s a promise and God rebukes it. I believe that he silences the enemy and the avenger. And something about, you know, that New Testament generosity is that it really does silence people. It silences the enemy, but it also speaks the gospel. It speaks the power of God. It speaks the grace of God. So I remember years ago, I’ve been pastoring for eight years now, but I was finishing up my doctorate at Rice University, one of the top, you know, music programs in the country. I was finishing up my doctorate and I had a student who was in his upper 80s who was a retired sociology professor. And he had taught his entire, you know, career at Rice. And he was very, you know, not, he wasn’t a believer. And he’s actually very, you know, liberal politically. He was actually the first professor that sponsored the first LGBT, it was before there’s a Q club at Rice University. And I told him, you know, I taught him for about a year or two. And he really liked me a lot because I was, you know, getting my doctorate. He had his doctorate from Princeton and he would take me to the professor’s club at Rice University and treat me to lunch there and was kind of coaching me about, you know, getting a job in academia. But then I told him I was gonna become a pastor and it like shocked him. But I told him around the time that I decided to become a pastor, I was here visiting church on a Wednesday night. And we raised, I told him we raised enough money to build two houses for pastors in Nicaragua. And I said, normally, you know, just on Wednesday night with not that many people. And I said, at first I had just $100 offering, but I told him, I felt God told me to add a zero to it. And I made it $1,000. And because I did that, we had exactly enough money to reach that goal to build two houses. It was a God thing. And that actually silenced him. He couldn’t say anything to that.

 

  Amen, praise God. So, you know, we’re gonna come back in, we’re gonna have more stories. We’ve got a great week of programming come up, but we’re gonna come back right after a short break. And we’re gonna talk more about this spirit of generosity. If you need prayer, feel free to call in during the break or anytime, God bless you, we’ll be right back. Friends, I am so glad that you are watching today. We’ve been talking about the spirit of generosity. I have my good friend, Mark Hankins with me, who has a tremendous revelation in the area of finances. And for any new partner that gives any partnership of any amount in the United States of America, we’ll send this book to you, “God’s Extravagant Generosity” free of charge.

 

  I’ve been dealing with sciatic nerve pain in my right leg for multiple years. We were actually about to walk out of service when my wife redirected me to the front. She told me that you were talking about nerve damage. Yourself, Erin, and your dad were in back of me and you guys were praying over me. I just felt this movement in my hips and in my back that I haven’t felt like a freedom. The next morning, I tried to move in the ways that I didn’t in the past, and it felt completely healed.

 

  Praise the Lord, friends. I’m glad you stayed with us and I’m glad Erin’s here. We’ve been talking about giving and receiving the spirit of generosity. You know, we were sharing from Luke 6:38, where the scripture says, “Give and it shall be given to you. “Good measure, press down, shaking together, “and running over, shall men give into your bosom.” This is interesting. You give into God’s kingdom, right? You talked about in the tithe, Hebrews 7 says, “Now Jesus receives our tithes,” right? But when you give in a spiritual realm, you receive in the natural realm. But then he says this, “With the same measure that you meet, “it will be measured back to you again.” So I like to say, if you give it out in teaspoons, God’s gonna give it back to you with a teaspoon. If you give it out in shovelfuls, it comes back in shovelfuls. If you give it out in buckets, it comes back in buckets. But if you give it out in truckloads, it’ll come back in truckloads. With the same measure that you meet, it’ll be measured back to you again.

 

  The word for measure, too, it kinda also speaks about in the same manner, like the same way that you give. You know, I’m very methodical as a person. I plan things out very orderly, and that’s usually how I give. I plan things out. I’m very methodical, very orderly. I always give a tithe on the first day of the month. Every month, I just add up everything I made throughout the month, and it’s the first thing I do on the first day of the month. When I marry my wife, she’s a tither, but she’s also very more spontaneous just as a person, and she likes to give spontaneously as well. And since I married her, before I married her, just money would come back kinda systematically to me, predictably, but now, because she also sows spontaneously, it comes back spontaneously. So it’s good to plan to give, to set in your heart how much you’re gonna give, what percentage you wanna give, but also it’s good to be led by the Spirit as well and not just be limited by what you’ve already planned out. Sometimes you need to be flexible and listen to the Holy Spirit. One way God speaks to us is financially, and he’ll lead you and speak to you financially very specifically, and money, it’s the least of all things. So if you can hear God’s voice in the realm of finances, you’ll be able to hear his voice in other realms as well. Some people wanna hear God’s voice, wanna get wisdom from God, want to receive instruction, very specific direction from God, but they’ve kind of shut off their ears in the realm of finances from hearing from God. And if you’re gonna shut off God there, I don’t know if you’re gonna be able to hear him in other ways.

 

  Well, you know, the Bible’s very specific in Luke 16. Jesus said, “If you’ll be faithful in that which is least,” then you know what? God will give you that which is much. And when he’s talking about least, he’s talking about finances. And he says, “If you won’t be faithful “in that which is least, “God is not gonna give you that which is much.” He’s talking about spiritual things. So if you are not faithful in the area of finances, you’re gonna limit God by your own action, so to speak, or your own belief in your own thinking in that realm, you can limit God.

 

  Yeah, and I remember several years ago, a young man came to me. He was volunteering at the church in another department, helping in the youth ministry. And he came to me because he wanted to be a pastor someday. So I told him two things to do right now as a young man, if you want to pastor someday, number one, be faithful serving, and number two, be a tither.

 

  Right.

 

  I said, “Do those things.” You know, that’s bottom line.

 

  Right.

 

  If you wanna work full-time ministry, you need to serve wherever you’re at faithfully, and also be a tither. And you know, he actually kind of quit serving, quit coming to church. I’m sure he quit giving. It went somewhere else. But then a couple of years later, there’s a transition that youth minister stepped down, and he found out about it. And he came to me like really eager wanting a job. And I told him, you know what, I look for any person, you know, who wants a job here. And that’s someone whose heart is really here, who’s really faithful here. And he told me, “Well, my heart’s really here.” And we didn’t really have an opening in that area. But you know, he came to church one time and said this would be his place. But he only came one time.

 

  Right.

 

  It’s just, time reveals a lot of things. Time reveals a lot of things. Finances reveals a lot of things. And faithfulness reveals a lot of things.

 

  Yeah, Jesus said where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And you can tell what people value by where they put their finances. And so, yeah, we have people a lot of times tell us their heart’s with us, but you could look at their giving. It reveals their heart, so.

 

  Yeah, and he even, that one time he came, he told our children’s pastor that, “I’m gonna be the next person in this position here.” And she told me that, I just kind of laughed. And I just said, “Well, we’ll just see, time will tell.” And he never came back after that one time, so.

 

  Yeah, anyway, praise the Lord. You know, the Bible actually says this in Luke 16 also. Jesus said, “If you will not be faithful in that which is another man’s, then God will not give you that which is your own.” And like when I’ve served in a church, I volunteered for years, seven years. I volunteered in a church in Lamar, Colorado before I went to Bible school. And you know, I gave hundreds, if not thousands of hours to that church and never received any financial payment for it. But God has always taken care of it.

 

  That’s awesome. Yeah, and again, if you wanna be able to hear God’s voice, you know, specific voice.

 

  Right.

 

  I believe we can all, you know, hear God from his word and have a general sense in our heart from what God is doing. But to hear his very specific voice, learn to hear it in the realm of finances. I remember when I was about, I was 24 years old. I just finished my master’s and I had a year off from school and I was gonna be applying for doctoral programs. I believe God that would pay off all my student debt, which was about $30,000 in a year’s time. And I didn’t have a job. So it would have been very difficult in the natural, but.

 

  So you’re a flute player and you had no regular job.

 

  But yeah, let me tell my story here. So I was at church on a Sunday morning and I had, you know, I was just barely getting by. I was sleeping on an air mattress and just barely able to afford food to eat for the week. And there was an older woman standing next to me at church. And at the time I was going to Lakewood Church in Houston, which is the largest church in the country. You know, 50,000 people go there a week. And this woman next to me, I just felt during worship that God told me to give her all the cash I had. And that was all the money I had. And that was my, you know, lunch money for the week. And I just felt, I actually felt God’s compassion, you know, flowing through me to her. And I’m usually, you know, not the kind of person just goes and hands out money to every homeless person I see on the street. Like that’s a very mercy gifted person. That’s not really how I’m wired, but I could tell it was God leading me to do this. So I just, you know, tapped on the shoulder and handed her, it was about $82 in cash. I just told her that God really loves you. And you know, I felt him tell me to do this and it really ministered to her. And then about an hour later after church was done, I was walking out and a gentleman tapped me on the back of the shoulder and he just handed me a wad of cash and told me that God told him to do this. And I asked him, you know, “Hey, did you happen to see me early in church?” He said, “No, this is the first time I’ve seen you.” And it was almost the exact same amount as like $84. And I was, you know, I was excited that I had lunch money again for the week, but I was more excited because I knew that was statistically impossible for that to happen. I knew I heard God’s specific voice and he confirmed it right after. So I was so excited because I heard God very clearly, very specifically and he confirmed it, you know, right after.

 

  Praise God.

 

  And, you know, God soon after led me to start a business buying and selling things, buying, selling watches. And within a year I had all my debt paid off.

 

  Yes.

 

  But I believe if I hadn’t have trusted God with that very specific instruction in terms of giving.

 

  Yeah.

 

  He wouldn’t have led me into other specific things. As well. And we need to learn how to hear God’s specific voice, you know, concerning your job, concerning where to be planted in a church, concerning relationships, you know, you need to learn how to hear God’s specific voice. But I believe one way he speaks to us is specifically is in terms of finances.

 

  Right.

 

  And when you learn how to hear him there, it’ll help you hear him in other ways.

 

  Yes.

 

  And I know people who think they’re very prophetic, very spiritual, and if I know they aren’t givers, I don’t listen to ’em. ‘Cause I don’t think they really hear from God.

 

  Hmm.

 

  And there was actually a ministry that was kind of connected here. And I found out that the minister, you know, had stopped tithing. And his definition of tithing was, you know, it wasn’t the first 10th, but it was, you know, after you pay everything, after you pay all your bills, after you pay all your staff. And I stopped giving to him. I told my wife, I don’t wanna give him one more cent. I said, he’s a liar. And, you know, I said, I don’t wanna have anything to do with him. And ’cause people who say that they hear the voice of God and communicate, but aren’t givers, they aren’t honest. They’re deceivers.

 

  Right, right. Well, they’re deceiving their own selves. You know, the Bible says this in James 1 or James 2, it says, James 1, it says, “Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own self.” And so really the only person that’s really being deceived generally is you’re just deceiving yourself. So you don’t wanna be just a hearer of the word. You wanna be a doer of the word. And like you said, if you can’t do it with the least of these things, if you don’t do it in the realm of finances, then it’s, you know, it’s gonna limit you in greater spiritual things. It’s gonna limit you in other things. And so I think there’s some tests that we have to pass. And I think one of them is a money test. You know, what do you do with your finances? And it really says a lot about where you’re going and what you’re going to accomplish in life.

 

  Amen, and generosity, it’s exciting.

 

  Yes.

 

  Yeah, it’s an exciting thing. It’s not like you have to do it. It’s a very exciting thing.

 

  Oh, yeah, I love to give.

 

  And it’s very exciting and God’s blessing is on it. And man, it’s very, it’s, I was teaching my 10 year old son about this. He was saving up to buy a PlayStation and he was very excited to get this PlayStation. And someone had given him some money that helped him get it. And he’s very excited. I said, you know, you should be just as excited about giving, you know, and it’s okay to be excited to buy this PlayStation. It’s okay, you know, God wants to bless you. And, you know, but you also need to be excited about giving.

 

  I get more excited about giving than I do spending. I love to give, but you know what? When you start giving and if you start giving at another level, you’ll start receiving at more levels. And, you know, the Bible says in Timothy that God gives us richly all things to enjoy and you can’t beat God giving. And I had a lady early in my ministry, her name was Betty Shotten from Southwest of Eads, Colorado. And her and her husband, Aubrey came to our church and Betty would always say, you just can’t beat God giving. Amen, and that’s the truth.

 

  Amen, and I wanna right now just thank all of our partners who make this possible. You know, we’re able to share this message, to preach the gospel, to teach the Bible all around the world through this television ministry. So I wanna thank all of our partners. If you’d like to become a partner or just make a one-time gift, you can call us right now here at the ministry. You can also go to our website to do that. But thank you so much for investing in the gospel, for believing us and supporting us. We love you so much.

 

  Yeah, we’re sharing all around the world. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll be back tomorrow. Blessings.

 

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