Bulldog Faith Part 4 – Lawson and Barbara Perdue

Praise the Lord, friends, and welcome to the broadcast. I am so glad that you’re here. We are gonna be sharing from my wife Barbara’s message on Bulldog Faith. And we’re gonna talk about some examples from the Bible, how God delivered the children of Israel and set them free when they believed him. But we’re also going to use examples from our life in ministry and business, how God has delivered us and freed us. So stay tuned. Friends, I’m so glad that you stayed with us. We’ve been sharing on Barbara’s message, Bulldog Faith, and it is a tremendous message. And prior to this, in the days before, we’ve talked about stay stirred up. Don’t be distracted, avoid meltdown parties and quick complaining. But we’re gonna move into the next point. And that is move forward. You know what, you’re either going forward or you’re going backward. And so if you wanna accomplish what God wants you to do, you need to move forward. So Barbara, go ahead and share your scriptures. That’s awesome.

Amen. So we’re so glad that you are sharing part of your day with us. We’re so excited to just get you stirred up and encouraged and know that God is with you, hallelujah. And that we can move forward and it is time. I believe that’s a word for summon today. It is time to move forward. And God is gonna show you, he is gonna help you. He’s gonna empower you. It is going to be awesome. You’re gonna have a great testimony.

Amen.

And so this is, we’re gonna begin today in Exodus 14, verse four. So if you have a Bible, grab it. If you have a notepad, write these things down. “And this is 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. You know, we’ve been talking about how God appointed Moses to lead the children out of bondage, out of Egypt. And there had been numerous plagues that the Lord sent, and it was really mocking Pharaoh’s gods.

All these different plagues were, you know, like the blood in the river, they worship the Nile River, like the flies, they worship flies, they call ’em the God of the flies. Frogs again, they worship frogs. So all these different plagues were connected with different aspects of their heathen worship. And so in a way, like you say, it was like God mocking their heathen gods.

Well we know that God is God, I am the great, I am. There is only one God. We’ve talked about how different religion, different people in different countries, their culture is maybe millions of Gods. And you know, God is the one true God.

Yes.

And he was wanting them to see that he was God. And we talked about just briefly yesterday, you know, a lot of these things that we say we can see came outta the Bible. We’re talking about, you know, the, you know, being in a rock in a hard place.

Well, that’s right here.

That’s right here. We’re talking about how the Hebrew children were like what was their response to these difficulties? What is your response when you have some challenges and they’re like, we’re between a rock and a hard place. They felt like God had let them. And they’re like, what are we going to do? And you know, a lot of times we can tell that the Lord, the Holy Spirit is dealing with us and saying, quit complaining and use your words to speak my words, that I am for you. I’m not against you.

Yes.

I have good plans for you and to walk in and that you do have victory. And so we’re gonna go on here in verse nine through 10. And it says, “So the Egyptians pursue them all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh, his horsemen and his army, and overtook them camping by the sea beside.” I’m gonna let you pronounce that.

Pi Hahiroth.

And-

As good as I could say.

And praise God. And then verse 10 goes on and says, “And when Pharaoh drew near the children of Israel, lifted their eyes and behold the Egyptians marched after them.” “So they were very afraid and the children of Israel cried out to the Lord.”

Yeah.

And so, you know, I think we can all relate to being in a place like that where you feel like you’re in a rock and a hard place. And we-

Yeah, they had the mountains on one side. They had the Red Sea on the other side and Pharaoh’s army behind them. So it looked like, you know, we’re toast. But you know what, it’s not over till it’s over. And keep your eyes on God. There’s nothing too hard for the Lord. And so they begin to cry out to the Lord. And you can go ahead, Barbara, what’s your-

And we’ve been talking about these stories in the Bible because they’re amazing illustrations of maybe how we feel like things look so bad, what are we gonna do? And then sometimes when things get so bad, people get so full of fear rather than be built up in faith and you don’t make good decisions when you’re tired or when you’re full of fear.

Right.

You just do not make good decisions. And so we’re gonna skip on down to verses 11 through 15. And it says, “Then they said to Moses, because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness?” “Why have you so dealt with us to bring us up out of Egypt?” You know, he brought ’em out of the land of bondage-

Right.

Where they were beaten. And because they’re so full of fear, they’re thinking, you know, if go backwards, it’s better.

Right.

And it really was not better where they had been.

Right. Praise God. You never wanna go backwards, you wanna move forward.

They were complaining.

Keep moving forward in your relationship with God. And if you’re complaining, you’re not moving forward.

They were having a bad day.

Yeah.

Anyway, and then they go on verse 12. “Is this not the word that we told you in Egypt saying, let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians, that’s terrible.” “For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness.”

See, this is a problem. When you get emotional, start complaining and start looking at all the negative circumstances, you’re gonna start saying things with your mouth. You know, your emotions will get completely outta control.

You’re gonna start saying some really stupid things.

Yes.

And this one’s really stupid.

Right. And you know what? A lot of these people ended up ultimately dying in the wilderness. This was year, you know, in, you know, later, right? But you’re hung by your tongue. Death and life are in the power of your tongue. Now, God delivered them. They saw a mighty deliverance on that day because God spared them. But at the same point in time, you don’t want, there’s places that you don’t want to go. And if you don’t want to go there, don’t begin to whine and complain and just run your mouth negatively. If you can’t say something good. If you can’t say something positive, if you can’t say something of faith, then just don’t say anything at all.

You know, we talked about, there’s numerous places in the scriptures that say that keep your mouth shut. And again, we talk about how we were raised and that’s what I would hear from my parents a lot. If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. And we see that again in the scriptures in different instances. And so verse 13, it says, “And Moses said, the people do not be afraid.” I like that. He was really addressing what was going on here.

Right.

Even though they were complaining big time. And you know, we went, you know, we’ve talked about other things that they did. He’s like, do not be afraid. And I like that. I see that in the scriptures over and over.

Yes.

In very important times. Don’t be afraid because you just do not make good decisions when you’re full of fear. And then I like what this says, and I want you to talk about this. It says, “Stand still.” And what I have studied in the Bible, honey, whenever it says stand still, it’s talking about watch the Lord fight the battle for you.

Amen. You know, there’s numerous places where the Old Testament and the children of Israel were in a battle. And God said, “Stand still.” He said, “You’re not gonna need to fight in this battle.” “The Lord is gonna fight for you.” And they watched God work. And sometimes that’s what we need to do. Just calm down, get control of your emotions, breathe, right, and watch God work.

Amen. And so it’s, and he went on and said, “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will accomplish for you today.” And I love this. “For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall see again no more forever.” And that’s a good word for someone right now, something you’re going through. And you need to understand that this problem, God is gonna help you. And this problem is just not even gonna exist anymore. And that’s what-

Amen.

We see here.

You know what, our daughter-in-law, Heather gave me this word. We were in the middle of the pandemic. We had opened up our church, the health department in Colorado Springs and El Paso County was mad at us for opening our church. And so that we had one person on staff get covid and they found out about it. They let In-N-Out Burger across the pasture about a third mile, you know, have 68 workers who had covid and still be open. And yet we only had one person that they knew that they had covid and because we wouldn’t 100% comply with what they were telling us to do, which was completely ludicrous, did you know what? They were gonna try to shut us down. And they brought the news media, they had it on every major station, ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox News. And they came and attacked us and they said, “If you’ve been at Charis Christian Center and you have symptoms of covid, then you call the El Paso County Health Department because we want to know this information, so on and so forth.” They put it on a bunch of radio stations, they put it in the newspaper. I actually had one of the leaders in my church, Dr. Doug Weiss at that point in time, tell me, pastor, you could sue them if you want to for defamation and you would win. But I didn’t wanna sue my own, you know.

Community.

Community. But you know what, my daughter-in-law came to church that Sunday and she said, “These people that you see here.” And the news media was out here, we put signs at the front of the church. News media do not come in, do not enter this place of worship. This is a place of worship. This is a house of worship. But she said, “You’ll see them no more.” And you know what it’s like, God shut their mouths. They weren’t able to shut us down. They weren’t able to stop us. God stood up. God defended us. And you know what? When you do what God wants you to do, he’ll stand up for you. He’ll defend you, he’ll help you. But you can’t lay down and play dead for every government bureaucrat. And a lot of these people are on the wrong side. You know, I had, there was a person running for office in county commissioner, and I called him to interview him. And I said, “Well, what do you think about them shutting churches down, for instance, with covid?” And he said, “Well, you gotta follow the science.” I said, “Listen, if you’re in a government office, you need to follow the Constitution and not follow the science.” That is a ridiculous answer. And there was no science to this or other words, it would’ve been this wise, it would’ve been the same all across the United States. It was completely different whether you are in a red state or a blue state. And you know what? People need to quit being ridiculous. And they need to stand up. And I’m not gonna let people shut down my church. And you know what? That’s the last time we saw ’em. It was, I stood up in service and they were probably watching. We live streamed everything. I said, “Praise God.” You know what? They said, “There’s a possible outbreak at Charis Christian Center.” I said, “We are having an outbreak, we’re having an outbreak of the Holy Ghost.” “We’re having an outbreak of salvation.” “We’re having an outbreak of healing.” “So come on out to Charis Christian Center.” I said, “Nobody knew where we are, now you all know where we are so come on out.” “We’d love to have you at Charis Christian Center.” And God used what would’ve been negative to be positive. Amen.

Amen.

Praise God. Do you know we’re going to take a short break in just a few seconds and if you need prayer, you can come right here and give us a call during the break. We’d love to hear from you.

Praise God. You know, God is with us and amen. And we are so happy to agree with you, knowing that God will move mightily on your behalf.

Praise the Lord. We’ll be right back. So stay tuned. Blessings. 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. I believe that God the Father gave different motivational gifts. And I believe it’s just how you’re made up, your personality, different things about you. I believe God has given everybody motivational gifts. I believe the way you succeed in life is find out what your God-given gifts are. Friend, I’m glad you stayed with us. We’re talking about Bulldog Faith. One of my helpers said, “That’s a great example of Bulldog Faith.” Hallelujah. And I’ll tell you what, I’ve been operating this thing called faith for a long time and Jesus has been helping me. But we need to keep moving forward. And that’s really what you’re talking about, Barbara, here in these scriptures in Exodus 14. So go ahead and jump right here in the word where we left off right in Exodus chapter 14. I think we were in verse 14 and 15, if you wanna jump in there.

Well, praise God. I’m gonna actually look at Exodus 14, chapter 14, verse 13 through 15. We just left off with, and Moses said, “The people do not be afraid.” Boy, that’s a good word.

Amen.

“And stand still.” “And see the salvation of the Lord, which he will accomplish for you today.” “For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall see again no more forever.” What a powerful word. Verse 14. It goes on and says, “The Lord will fight for you and you, you shall hold your peace.” In other words, like our parents told us, keep your mouths shut. If you can’t say anything good, if you can’t say anything positive, if you can’t speak words of faith, then just like, be quiet, don’t say anything. And then verse 15, this is the point we really are talking about in this session today. And it said, “And the Lord said to Moses, why do you cry to me?” “Tell the children of Israel to go forward.” This is so-

Amen.

Powerful, honey. ‘Cause we’ve been talking about what do you do when you’re between a rock and a hard place? You know, you mentioned it’s so good. They had an an enemy pursuing them. They had the mountains, they had the Red Sea. And yet the Lord is saying, why are you whining and complaining? Like move forward. And there’s a lot of us, sometimes we get upset at God or we get upset at our spouse, our pastor, our you know, our boss at the workplace. And the Lord is saying, go forward. What is wrong with you? Go forward. Like quit whining.

Yes.

Quit complaining.

Yes.

Quit having meltdown parties and go forward in the promises and the things that he has has for us.

Well, you know what, you can’t do anything about what everybody else does.

That’s right.

But you can do something about yourself. And he tells Moses exactly how to do it. He said, “Tell him to shut up and go forward.” Amen. And he says, “But lift up your rod and stretch out your hand over that sea.” That rod represents the word of God, that rod represents our authority in Christ. Take the word of God, take the, and begin to speak the word of God. Amen. That word, that rod represents the anointing of God. Take the word of God, take the anointing of God. Begin to speak it out of your mouth. He says, “Stretch it over the sea and divide it.” You divide it. God didn’t say, I’m gonna divide the sea. He said, “You divide it, you take what I put in your hand.” You take the word in your hand and the word in your mouth and you begin to speak it. You begin to say what I say about the situation. And he says, “And the children of Israel will go through on dry ground in the midst of the sea.” You do something with what I’ve given you and I’ll show up for you. Amen, there’s so many times in the scripture that it looked like nothing was happening, but when people rose up and took a hold of what God had given them. Amen, they move forward into God’s plan, into God’s provision. Into God’s, in this case, deliverance. God is still a deliverer.

Amen.

We’ve seen people delivered by the power of God. We got a man that came to this church recently, the last couple of years. And he said, “When I came to this church, I was an alcoholic.” “I was smoking marijuana on a regular basis.” “But when I came to this church, God delivered me from alcohol supernaturally.” “God delivered me from smoking marijuana.” Hallelujah, it’s not good for anybody. Hallelujah. There’s better ways. Amen. To get set free. So believe God and get free.

Both Amen.

Hallelujah.

And so I’m gonna look at, I’m gonna go on, I like what you said. The Lord told Moses, “Stretch out the rod.”

Right.

And so with that, it says in verse 28, “And the waters returned and covered the chariots, the horsemen, and all the army of the Pharaoh that came in the sea after them.” “Not so much as one of them remain.” But I guess I actually need to go back just a couple of verses ’cause I thought this was interesting.

Go back here to verse 19 and verse 20.

That one I was actually thinking of 24 and 25. But in verse 19 and 20, it said, “The angel of God who went before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them and the pillar of cloud went from before them and stood behind them.” “So it be came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel.” “Thus it was a cloud and darkness to the one and gave light by night to the other so that the one did not come near the other all that night.” So God supernaturally.

So look at this. This cloud, right, fire at night, a cloud by day, it represents the presence of God among his people. Our God is a consuming fire. That’s what Hebrews 1229 says. And so it was God’s presence. So God’s presence came between the children of Israel and it lit their way to go forward. And then it was a cloud of smoke behind them and it made darkness to the pharaoh’s Egyptian army so they couldn’t move forward and it separated them. You know, I love this verse in Exodus chapter 11 and verse seven, but it says, “Against the children of Israel, this is with one of the plagues.” “Shall not a dog move his tongue.” You know what, there is a difference between being a covenant person of God and not being a covenant person of God. And God used literally the same thing to deliver his children. This is the Red Sea, right? He used the same thing to deliver his children and to destroy their enemies. And what looks like it can be your destruction, God can actually use to deliver you and destroy your enemies if you’ll walk by faith, if you’ll live by faith, if you’ll take a hold of the word of God and your authority in Christ and begin to move forward into what God has for you.

Amen, that is a good word. And it really leads up to the next two scriptures that I was really excited to share because I find this so amazing and I can look, I think all of us can be honest and look at things in the past and see how God really intervened. And so we’re still in Exodus 14, but this is verses 24 and 25. “This is now, it came to pass in the morning watch that the Lord looked down upon the army of the Egyptians through the pillar of the fire and cloud.” “And he troubled the army of the Egyptians.” Verse 25. “And he took off their chariot wheel so that they drove them with difficulty.” And the Egyptian said, “Let us flee from the face, from the face of Israel for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians.” They were like, okay, there’s a higher power. There is one true God, and he’s with them and you know, we’re the enemy. And they could see how the Lord was making things difficult for them. But I found that scripture very interesting that he took the wheels off the chariots and made it difficult for them.

Yes. And you know what? You can be in a situation, I’ve had this happen in business, in the cattle business. I’ve had situations when it looked like we were gonna lose everything. When we were gonna be destroyed for instance, by a drought. When the cattle price had went down, when the corn price and the feed price had went way up. And yet God told me, God, you know, spoke to me and God gave me a word. I remember, you know, I had one banker actually because I had lost all of our equity. And at that point in time we had about $40,000 of equity. And it had taken us several years to gain that equity. We started with nothing. We started with the horse and I took the papers from this registered horse and I gave it to a banker in New York City that bought a horse from me. He knew what this horse was worth. And he loaned me 10,000. And I went to the bank and borrowed another 20,000 to go with it. And I went and bought, you know, 40 head of cattle and we put them out on pasture that summer and all those cattle grew and make money. And then after a couple years he wanted his money back and I’d made that back. So it took me several years to make $40,000 of equity and I had a hundred thousand dollars borrowed. And I was praying in the spring about what to do in this situation. When I was praying, God woke me up at like 2:30 in the morning, said, “Go read your Bible.” And he said, “Your cattle will feed in large pastors.” I believe it’s in Isaiah chapter 30. And I believed that God was telling me, go buy all the cattle you can buy. So I filled my corrals. I bought several hundred cattle, I borrowed all the money that I could and then it continued to blow dirt. We were in a drought and the cattle price continued to go down and the corn price continued to go up. So my cattle that I had had $40,000 worth of equity by May, it looked like I lost all my equity. It looked like I was at a zero balance. But I went to another banker that was a Methodist banker I’d been dealing with in Wiley, Colorado. I went to the Baptist banker in Kit Carson, Colorado and the Baptist banker, I sit across the desk from him and I told, listen, I said, “I own more cattle than I’ve ever had.” And I said, “It’s not rain, but I believe it’s gonna rain.” “I believe cattle are gonna go up and I believe corn’s gonna go down and I’m gonna make more money than I ever made in my life.” And you know, this other banker was talking about foreclosing and taking my cattle from me and just selling me out. And there’d been some other things happening in my family, so on and so forth. I’d been taken out of a will. It looked bad. But did you know what? That Baptist banker said, “I think so too.” And he loaned me a hundred thousand dollars with no equity. And did you know what that was about the 1st of May. And I went and paid off that other baker. And did you know what it started raining May 28th. It rained all summer. The desert, the eastern Colorado prairie blossomed like a rose and cattle went up and corn went down. And I made more money than I ever made in my life prior to that time. By the next year I had 80,000. I doubled my money, but I went from 40,000 to zero before I went to 80,000. But you know, that was a testimony and that banker ended up coming to our church be getting filled with the Holy Spirit, becoming some of our best friends, you know. Watched our children when, when we went to meetings of Andrew Wommack with our children. But you know what, it can look like you’re in a terrible situation. But if you’ll believe God, God can bring you out of that situation and bring you the blessing if you don’t have a meltdown party. And if you’ll take the word of God and believe what he said and go forward.

I like what it, that’s a great testament. I like what it says in verse 28. “The waters returned and covered the chariots, the horsemen and all the army of Pharaoh.” It says in verse 29, “That the children of Israel had walked on dry land in the midst of the sea and the waters were a wall to them on the right hand and on their left.” “So the Lord saved Israel that day out the hand of the Egyptians and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore.” But in other words, the Lord brought them to victory.

Amen.

What looked impossible, God worked it all out for their good. He fought on their behalf. And we’re excited what we have to share tomorrow. But we do wanna just thank you again for spending part of your day with us. If you have anything you would like, agreement with prayer, please call that-

Amen.

Number on the the screen. God loves you. He’s working mightily on your behalf. If you’d like to see this entire message, you can check out our website and get more information.

I wanna encourage you today to call in if you need prayer again or if you want to become a partner, call in. We’d love to hear from you. Or you can go to our website where we have hundreds of hours of teachings free of charge. Blessing.

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 cares CharisChristianCenter.com today.

Friends, it’s great to have you with us today and I want to invite you to attend services with us at Charis Christian Center in Colorado Springs. The atmosphere is amazing. Recently in one service I had people from 10 Nations in several states. They watch us on a regular basis online and they said, “This is amazing.” So if you can’t come physically, come and attend online at Charis Christian Center or YouTube. Blessings. 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. Cares Christian Center on the YouTube channel. Thanks so much and have an awesome day.

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