Bulldog Faith Part 3 – Lawson and Barbara Perdue

Praise God. Friends, we are so glad that you’re tuned in today that you’re here. We are sharing from my wife Barbara’s teaching on Bulldog Faith. And if you’re gonna operate in Bulldog Faith, you cannot have a meltdown party. Now, if you’ve had one, praise God, you can move forward, you can get over it and you can move into the things of God. So stay tuned and we’re gonna share this from the scripture. You will be blessed. Friends, we’ve been sharing all this week on Bulldog Faith, and it’s actually a teaching that Barbara did when we were on the East Coast teaching in our first ever Charis Camp meeting in Grace Life Church with Pastor Brian and Ashley Clark Greensboro, North Carolina. They came out of our church and started a church and then we helped them buy a building there. They’re great pastors doing a great job, but you actually had this message, and I knew your title, but I didn’t know what the message was gonna be. And then at 2:00 AM the morning you were gonna teach this on Saturday morning, God woke me up and gave me a word. And while we were, when you were sharing, and I didn’t know what you’re going to really teach on, I just knew you shared the exact word. And so I thought, that’s amazing. And then Pastor Brian got up and said, “This is a word for our church and this is gonna help us. And I believe it’s gonna help them move to the next level.”

Well, and praise God, we know today we’re so happy that you have tuned in and you’re sharing part of your day with us. We know that this is gonna be a good word for you, and really propel you forward. The word of God is full of so many truths and we’re just so excited to encourage and empower you today with this word. And I believe you’re gonna do just a little review.

And as you talked about this, your first points in your message on Bulldog Faith was number one, stay stirred up. And you talked about staying in the word of God, staying filled with the Holy Ghost, surrounding yourself with good friends who encourage you, and also staying connected in the local church. Then you talked about in the second message, don’t be distracted. You know, if the devil can’t get you bad, he’ll try to get you busy. And there’s things that come and try to choke the word. So it’s not effective in your life. So don’t get distracted. But I’m gonna let you go ahead and move forward in your message and share your next point, which I think is powerful.

To praise God, as we mentioned, we’ve been ministering on Bulldog Faith. In other words, you’re gonna get a hold of that scripture, a hold of that word from God, a hold of the biblical promises that you see in the Bible. And you’re not gonna let ’em go no matter what, no matter what challenging circumstances. ’cause we know what the Bible says. Thanks be to God who always say, that word with me always causes us to triumph. But sometimes getting from A to B, that in between, you know, we’re a culture and society who are used to a microwave moment, if it doesn’t happen in five seconds, sometimes people feel a little disheartened and you know, I love that we can share our testimonies, empower you in the word of God. But there’s a lot of biblical stories honey, that you know, I really enjoy looking at, okay, what’s this look like in the Bible, and I feel like all these comments we say today in society came from some of these biblical stories. And one of them, this next point I wanna share is don’t have a meltdown party. Did you know this is in the Bible? Have you ever got with someone, or had someone call you and waste your day talking about you know, doing a melt? It seems like misery likes company and I just wanna encourage you today, do not have a meltdown party, you know, get with some positive friends, but every now and then people seem to wanna get together and just fall apart because something has not come to pass like they thought it should. And we’re gonna be looking in Exodus, and I think we can really learn a lot from this because again, we’re people and these are strong stories.

Well, and I wanna say, you know what, it’s really easy sometimes to let this circumstances, let your emotions get the best of you. And sometimes it’s because of a history you had or different challenges you’re dealing with. But at the same point in time, you can figure that out. And when you do these certain, when you stay in the word of God, when you stay filled with the Holy Ghost, when you stay around godly people, you know, I recently had something that happened and it really upset me. But I had my daughter-in-law give me a word. And my daughter-in-law gave me this word, and she’s a powerful minister of the gospel, Heather here and she ministers here in the church too. And they have Aaron and Heather right now help with youth and help in a lot of different areas. But she gave me this word and she said, Lawson, because challenges that you faced in your childhood and dealt with with certain people in your family, you don’t react to rejection very well. You don’t respond to it. And you know, it really helped me. And then I had a person in our church, Dr. Delron Shirley, who was my dean at Dr. Lester Sumrall’s World Harvest Bible School years ago, his wife, and they’ve been in our church for a number of years. Their powerful ministers of the gospel, they run Teach All Nations ministries. Dr. Shirley has ministered in over 70 countries of the world. But his wife, Peggy gave me a word and she said, you are dealing with the spirit of rejection. And it was tied to the same thing my daughter-in-law said. And I put the things together and she said, you don’t need to let that get the best of you. You need to step over that and move out of that. And between those two things, I have come to a new place in life and I am really moving forward because the fact was because of these things that happened earlier in my life, I did not deal with rejection well. In fact, there would be some times that God was trying to remove people from my life and it was better for me. And some of these things that I initially took as negative actually are working out better. They’re positive. But I took it as negative because I just didn’t deal with rejection very well. And I took it as rejection when really it was protection or its preparation for God to take me to the next level. And so sometimes God removes people or God takes you into a different realm and there’s things that God is wanting to do in your life. And so sometimes you’ve gotta look at that. I actually heard Dr. Phil speaking and he was speaking actually at a Trump rally, but he said the number one thing that people fear is rejection. And the number one thing that they crave is acceptance. Now we know that we’re accepted in the beloved. And I believe that can be healed through the gospel when we really understand it. And I believe that God has taken me much farther than I could have gone if I didn’t really understand the gospel of grace. But at the same point in time, we can have weaknesses in our life. And when we figure out what they are, we can move forward and we don’t have to be stuck somewhere. So, you know, you may feel like, but don’t let your feelings, don’t let your emotions rule you. Let the word of God in the spirit of God rule you.

That’s a great testimony. So we are gonna look at Exodus 32:1, and it says, and this is talking about we know that Moses had led the Hebrew children out of bondage and anyway, he had went up to to talk to the Lord and the people felt like his coming back was delayed, and so they got distracted and so they, anyway, so this is Exodus 32:1. You know, I like, and I wanna share the scripture before we say much more, but we had another, a prophetess who wrote a book called “Delay is Not Denial.” So you remember that why we share these scriptures here today. But Exodus 32:1, it says, now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down, and I have that word delayed, no one likes the word delayed.

No, we like it to be instant. We want our hamburger in one minute with Dakota, McDonald’s, and Burger King.

And so it says, “When the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron and said to him, “Come make us gods that shall go before us. For as this Moses, the man who brought us up and out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” I think this is interesting where it says, “Come, let us make our own gods.” They just saw God do amazing things for them. We can all say, I can say to you and everyone watching God has been faithful to me. So to turn my back on Him and get some little figurine and hold it up and say, this is my God and this is who’s helping me, is just ridiculous. But again, these are some really powerful things that we can learn from this story today.

Yeah, you know, the Bible actually says, was the 10 commandments was, make no other gods before me. And you know, you should have no other God before me and make unto you no graven image. And that’s what they were actually doing, but anyway, go ahead.

Yeah, and you know when we would read the 10 Commandments, I always thought that was interesting ’cause I didn’t grow up in a culture. I grew up in a very traditional background. I didn’t grow up in a culture that made little images. But you’ve traveled around the world, you’ve traveled to Nepal where someone kept running ahead of you, And they were literally going to all these different stations and ringing the bell and spinning the wheels to worship all these different gods before they went to work.

And they were praying out of fear. They were trying to appease the wrath of these gods, which is, you know, this was in Katmandu, Nepal when I was in a mission trip actually with Dr. Delron Shirley and his wife Peggy. And I was out jogging in the morning and this person kept sprinting ahead of me. And what he was trying to do was pray to as many gods as he could because really their religion, Katmandu is known as the city of over 300 million gods. And it’s a religion based in fear. But Christianity is not based in fear. Christianity is based in faith. And the fact is today that Jesus has already appeased the wrath of God through his death on the cross. So we don’t wanna live in fear.

Man, that’s a good word. I’m gonna share a couple more scriptures here. And it says in verse two, and Aaron said to them, “Break off golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me. So all the people broke off the golden earrings, which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron.” So isn’t this interesting? And verse four, it tells us, “And he received the gold from their hand and he fashioned it with an engraving tool and made a molded calf. Then they said, “This is your god, oh, Israel that brought you out of the land of Egypt.” This is to me just astonishing. Again, they saw how God was with them, doing signs and wonders. And because there was a delay, they fell apart, had a meltdown party. The last thing you wanna do is when you’re trying to get from A to B, you wanna get around people who are gonna help stir that faith up.

Right, not people that help you in your meltdown.

Not have a meltdown party. So again, avoid meltdown parties. Don’t fall apart when something’s delayed. And for sure, and I mean.

We’re gonna come back after the break.

Yes.

And you’re gonna share what this meltdown party, a literal meltdown party that they had. And you know, I don’t know, but a lot of Christians are bad about this. And they get about around a bunch of people, they’re not really connected in the word of God. They’re being led by their emotions rather than being led by the spirit, they’re being directed by their emotions rather than being directed by the word of God. And they have a meltdown party. And so Barbara’s gonna come and share about this literal meltdown party. You’re gonna see what it is when we come back after the break. So stay tuned, but if you need prayer right now, if you need to receive the baptism of Holy Spirit, if you need prayer, give us a call during the break. We would love to hear from you. Thank you. Praise the Lord friends, I am so glad that you’ve been watching today. We’ve been sharing on Bulldog Faith and we actually have a lot more to share on this. This is my wife Barbara’s message. I believe it’s one of the best messages that I have ever heard. So go to our website and download these other messages plus many more free of charge at CharisChristianCenter.com.

Learn to listen to the Holy Ghost and I love what Barbara said when she came up today. Turn up the word and turn down the news. Start believing what the word says about you. And if you start believing it, you might start, and you better watch what you’re believing. You better watch what you’re saying. You might get it.

Friends, we’ve been sharing from Barbara’s teaching on Bulldog Faith and today we’re talking about don’t have a meltdown party. And we’ve been sharing all these things leading up to this. But Barbara’s gonna share right here from Exodus 32, how these children of Israel who were following Moses supernaturally being delivered and yet they had a huge meltdown party. And God doesn’t want, if you’re going to get where God wants you to go, you cannot be having meltdown parties. We all have challenges, we all have difficulties. I’ve shared some of my own challenges, but at the same point in time, we’ve gotta move forward. We can’t stay in that thing that’s been holding us back. So Barbara, go ahead and share about this literal meltdown party.

Well, we had just read in Exodus 32:4 before the break, and it talks about how Aaron received gold from their hand, he fashioned with engraving tool and made a molded cap of all things to make an engraved image to worship a cow. Then they said, “This is your god oh Israel that brought you out of the land of Egypt.” I just think that’s terrible to say this is who brought us, this golden image hadn’t done any anything. And so anyway, in verse seven, the Lord said to Moses, “Get down for your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves.” You know, again, fear is not faith. It’s two totally opposite things. They got inpatient. You know, we talk about, it’s really important that you have one or two really good friends. So when you’re having a difficult time or a difficult day or just a difficult season, you have people that you can call and say, can you join and pray with me today?

Amen.

And we’re so happy to let you know if you need prayer today, we would love to agree and pray for you.

You know, and something came up to me while you were sharing that it’s so easy to forget, you know, we’re in Exodus 32, but in Exodus 20, Moses met God on the mountain and God gave him the tablets, right? And the first commandment was, “You shall have no other god before me.” The second commandment was this, “Don’t make any graven image.” And right here they broke both of the commandments. It is so easy to forget what God’s told you to start operating in the strength of your flesh rather than the strength of the spirit and move away from what God has for you. But you don’t wanna do that.

Well, I like what it goes on. I wanna really expound on verses eight and nine and it says, “They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them.”

Lawson Well same thing. Yeah.

They have made themselves a mold, a calf and worshiped it and sacrificed it and said, “This is your god oh Israel that brought you out of the land of Egypt.” And then verse nine says, and the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff necked people.” They were stubborn, they were not wanting to.

Oh that is a bad word.

You know, we don’t wanna be stubborn and not do what we see in the Bible, be stubborn and not move and walk in faith, but walk in fear. You know, really being impatient, and being impatient is not good. And really thinking, you know, there’s a delay so I have to fall apart.

Right, you know, we had a employee here and you know, he quit. He was very emotional like this. And I didn’t personally deal with this person a lot, but he worked with our son Aaron, and he was going around and just saying all these lies. And people knew as a whole that they were lies. But anyway, in this situation, I was a little disappointed because I had just gifted him, you know, a huge gift that I had really blessed him and really helped him and his family move to another level, just before he got really emotional quit. And so when this happened, you know, I was upset for about a day, but it’s actually God helping the church move forward. And I think it helped him move forward too. So the end is good, but I was going down the highway and I thought I should call Cecil and Lisa Paxton. And they’re ministers that are from our church and they’re very good friends and they’ve ministered the word of God to us. They’re very seasoned ministers of the gospel. And they’ve helped me a number of times. They actually helped me when I was going through this thing, dealing with rejection. And I went by to see ’em and they ministered to me that day and really helped me, they’ve given me the word of the Lord on occasion, been very accurate. But I was going by to see them. And when I went to see Cecil, you know, I kind of told him what it went and he said, “The Lord’s giving me one word, stubborn.” It was really interesting. But you know what? Our son, Aaron worked with this person and our son Aaron said, “This person is very stubborn.” So don’t be stubborn.

Barbara Don’t be stubborn.

It’s the stubbornness is as witchcraft and rebellion. My rebellion is the sin of witchcraft. But stubborn, don’t be stubborn.

Amen.

God is saying boy. And there’s sometimes Christian people that are stubborn and it’s not good for you.

Another thing that goes along with what we’re talking about is it’s very interesting to me. I wanna talk about quick complaining, you know, these people got together, had a meltdown party and complained about God. And complained about Moses who God had appointed to help them.

Yes.

The oversight.

Complaining is a major problem.

It just seems so easy to do. It is just funny. You just wake up and it’s either too cold or too hot or too dark or too sunny or too something. And you know, I’m just thinking how all of us are, you know, it’s just so easy. And you know, both of us really try to make a point, like to say, this is gonna be a great day, you know, God’s with us.

And I’m not a complainer. And I despise complaining. And your mother told you, you know what, if you complain, you’re gonna be like the children of Israel. And their bones were strewn in the desert.

Yeah, we both had fathers that were like, if you don’t quit complaining, we’re gonna give you something to complain about.

You don’t quit whine and we’ll give you something to whine about.

It was my mother who would bring up the scriptures. And I heard this a lot, especially during those teen years. She would say, you know what happens to people who complain a lot? Your bones end up in the desert. She’s talking about the children of Israel. And it’s interesting to me, I’m gonna read some scriptures on a good complain.

Well, before you get in this, let’s just talk about it a minute. Because remember when our kids were little, we had ’em watching these Willie George videos and Ken Blount was on there and they had this one, and I bet we played it a hundred times for the kids. But it’s like, you complain too much. And I bet they said it over and over in this, but it just got in your mind. Don’t be whining, don’t be complaining. And like you said, my dad raised me, he was old fashioned, disciplinarian, and he’s like, you know what, if you don’t quit whining around, I’ll give you something to whine about it. It was old fashioned Proverbs Solomon kind of discipline, you know, and he meant it. And you know, your dad raised you the same way. And you know what, it helped us. But a lot of this younger generation, they had been babied to their own detriment.

Well, it’s interesting to me in the Bible, whether it’s Old Testament or New Testament, there’s a lot of things that say do everything without grumbling. And it’s woven in and out everywhere about different things. And so I kind of get the point. What we’re supposed to learn here is quit grumbling, quit complaining,

Hey, if you wanna make it to the next level, you gotta quit complaining and you gotta quit whining. And some people would never make it. But you know, God let an entire generation of these children of Israel die off in the wilderness because they wind and they complain and they forgot. They soon forgot. Don’t forget what God has done. If you’re complaining, you are not thanking God. You have forgotten the good things that God has done. You need to make thanksgiving a lifestyle and you need to just begin to rejoice in the Lord.

Tell me what that scripture with prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.

Let you let your request. It’s Philippians 4:7. Verse six says, be careful for nothing, I think. But he says this, I’ll read it in Philippians 4:6, He says, “Be careful, don’t worry about anything but everything by prayer and supplication.” So pray about it, ask God about it. That’s what supplication means. Just to go to the Lord and ask him with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. And if you wanna get your prayers answered, do you know what? If you sandwich your prayers, your supplications asking God between thanksgiving, you’re gonna get a lot more of your prayers answered.

Amen.

It just works better that way.

Well I have it here in Exodus, we’re still in the Book of Exodus, but this time we’re gonna look at 14:4. And it is talking about when again, Moses was leading out of Egypt. And we know that God had sent a lot of plagues. You know, Pharaoh’s heart was hardened and God had sent numerous plagues that were really mocking their gods, that they worship like they there was a plague of frogs because they worshiped one of their gods was the god of a frog. And so anyway, it’s talking about this. They had been let out but the Pharaoh’s heart was hardened again and was pursuing after them. He said, yes, you can go, worship your God. Go, then in Exodus 14:4, it says, “Then I will harden Pharaoh’s heart so that he will pursue them and I will gain honor over Pharaoh and over all of his army that the Egyptians may know that I’m the Lord.” And they did so. And I like when you read the Bible, God is always telling us the outcome. And oh by the way, your outcome is victory. Everywhere I see in the Old Testament and New Testament is your outcome. I am giving you this land.

Yes.

But there are gonna be some giants. But the ultimate key here is there’s going to be victory. He is like they’re gonna see who God is. But again, you can only imagine sometimes those emotions overtake you when you have people pursuing you. You know, we talk about up against a rock and a hard place.

Well this is where it was.

A lot of these sayings come right on the Bible.

They had a mountain on one side. They had the Red Sea on the other side and they had Pharaoh’s army behind them. So it looked like they were toast.

That’s between a rock and hard place.

That’s right. That’s why I said a lot of these sayings actually come outta the Bible like don’t have a meltdown party, don’t get your jewelry together, and with your friends and melt it down and turn it into a tote or a calf and say this is God. And so anyway, it’s really important that you know, we need to move forward in what God has called us to do. But complaining or grumbling is not gonna propel or move us forward.

Yeah, I think we’re gonna have to take that point and share it tomorrow about move forward. And this is the point that God really gave me at that church. He actually woke me up at 2:00 AM before you preached this. I didn’t know what you were exactly gonna be preaching. I knew your title and God told me, “Tell them to go forward.” And so I shared at the end of your message how God had woke me up at two and told me to share this to go forward. And the pastor actually said, “This is a word for our church.” And there were a lot of, most of his church was there and the leaders and they’re ready to move forward. And I believe they’re going to a new dimension. They’re going to a new level and they’ve already done fantastic. They’re fantastic pastors. They’ve done a fantastic job.

Well, you know, praise God. We just wanna remind you if you need personal ministry, you can call that number and also we just didn’t have enough time today or even this week to share this entire message. But you can go to our website, download these things for free, watch the entire message and share it with others. If you have never been here at Charis Christian Center, we like to personally invite you to come worship with us on Sundays and Wednesdays. We would love to see you get a chance to meet you. We know that you’ll be encouraged.

So thanks so much for being with us. If you wanna become a partner and help us share this message of grace and faith in the love of Jesus around the world, we would love to hear from you today or if you need prayer to receive Jesus or receive the Holy Spirit or receive a promise, give us a call.

Announcer Are you ready to strengthen your faith like never before? Pastor Barbara’s Bulldog Faith series teaches you how to hold onto God’s promises, overcome challenges, and live victoriously. We’d like to bless you with a digital copy of Bulldog Faith, a $25 value free of charge. Don’t miss this opportunity to grow in your faith and experience God’s power in your life. Visit CharisChristianCenter.com today,

Friend, we here at Charis Christian Center and “Grace For Today” believe in being good stewards of the resources that God has given us. So we pay a professional service that’s actually available to help you do that in a couple of ways. Number one, you can make a will absolutely free of charge with professional legal help. And number two, you can go to Tax Smart Ways of Giving. You can find them all on our website.

Hey everyone, I want to invite you today to subscribe to the Charis Christian Center YouTube channel where you can get hundreds of hours of teaching and different materials absolutely free. We live stream all of our services there and so check it out. Charis Christian Center on the YouTube channel. Thanks so much and have an awesome day.

Announcer 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 7194184000 or to partner online, go to CharisChristianCenter.com/Give. You can ride us at P.O. Box 63733, Colorado Springs, CO, 80962. See you next time on “Grace For Today”.