Destined To Win Part 15 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue
Destined To Win Part 15
Destined To Win Part 15 from Pastors Lawson and Aaron Perdue. On this episode of Grace For Today, we discuss the relationship between children and parents. What we invest in our children makes a tremendous impact on where they go in life.
Destined to Win
When Jesus saved you, your destiny changed completely! He radically transformed us and brought us from death to life, from sin to righteousness, and from defeat to victory. Pastor Lawson goes through the book of Ephesians in detail and shows us exactly why we are destined to win. We are no longer fighting to be overcomers, we are made victorious through Jesus and any weapon formed against us will not prosper! Jesus came to give us life and have that life more abundantly! Because of God and his great love, we are destined to win!
Destined To Win Part 15 Transcript
Praise God, friends. I am so glad that you are with us today. I’m gonna be teaching on something with my son, Aaron. You do not want to miss this broadcast. We’re gonna talk about the relationship between children and parents. And it’s so important that you get this understanding. We are destined to win. And what we invest in our children, says a lot about where they go. So open your heart and receive God’s good word today. God bless you, friends. I’m so glad that you’re with us today. I’ve got Aaron here. We’re teaching on the book of Ephesians. And this is our fourth week. Man, it has been powerful. We are finally in Ephesians chapter six, where Paul talks about, “Finally my brethren.” But before we get into that, we’re gonna continue to talk about how we walk out the Christ life. You know, in the first three chapters of Ephesians, Paul talks about who we are and what we have in Christ. We have been blessed with the Christ life. We are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. We were dead, but now we’re alive in Christ and the grace of God has changed us. But then he begins in Ephesians 4 and Ephesians 5 talking about, since we are seated in this position in victory, how we walk it out. And he says, “We walk worthy of our calling. We walk not like the world walks. We renew our mind. We walk in love, we walk in the light, and we walk circumspectly, intentionally.” And then he says, “We do this in relationships.” Yesterday we talked about, and if you didn’t get yesterday’s broadcast, you can go to our website and you can just get that. You can get these on demand, every week we put up the week’s broadcast, but you can get what we talked about yesterday and the husband and wife relationship. But then he goes on and talks about, we walk it out in relationship between parents and children and between employees and employers. So that’s what we’re gonna be talking about today.
We’re destined to win and we’re destined to win relationally. God wants you to have victorious relationships. He wants to have winning marriages, He wants to have winning families. He wants your kids to be winners. And he also wants you to win just at the workplace, with just, you spend a lot of time at work and your career and God wants you to just be a winner at work. You know, whether it be with your bosses or your employees, or with your colleagues. If you spend a lot of time there, develop relationships there. God wants you to win at work. And I love, we’re gonna talk about it today, but your attitude really affects those types of relationships. You know, your attitude in marriage, your attitude with your kids, but also your attitude at work really affects if you’re gonna win at work or not.
You get a sorry attitude, you’re not gonna go very far with your employer.
[Aaron] Your heart really really makes the difference, so.
Dr. Lester Sumrall said, Anybody who seats to brag on what you’re doing as an employee, they ought to be fired. He was kinda rough, but you know, he had a hundred people work for him and he took very good care of them.
It’s a team effort, you know.
Praise God.
I know one thing we try to do here at the church, you know, with our staff or different volunteers, we’re all part of a team and it’s a team thing. You know, I help with the music ministry here and I try to develop a team atmosphere. It’s not just one person-
[Lawson] Amen, show. Glory to God.
A one man show, the one man show it’s the Jesus, It’s about Jesus, he gets all the glory, so.
Yes, well, you’ve done a wonderful job with the worship since you’ve taken over the administration of it. And I really never wanna go back. And, you know, we’ve got people that are on our team.
Multiple leaders.
That have traveled the world and led worship and played in worship bands and different things. And they’re so excited about what’s happening. And you know, we had it where we didn’t even have one backup worship leader and now we’ve got five people that can lead a team. It’s just-
Yeah, if you’re are some type of boss, some type of leader, maybe a leader of a volunteer group at church or a leader at at work, you know, developing a team atmosphere with-
It is really, really great.
Yeah.
And so when we look at Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, and here in Ephesians six, he, you know, we talked yesterday about husband and wife relationships, but Paul says this in Ephesians 6:1, “Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth. And you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the care and the teaching of the Lord.” Praise God. So, when we look at this, there’s a lot of things and sometimes it’s not easy to quite know, you know, how do we honor our father? How do we honor our mother? We’d really try to do what God wants us to do in that area. I know I shared, I think it was just in yesterday’s broadcast about how your beautiful wife, Heather, has really honored myself and your mother. And it’s such a pleasure to have her in the family. And we love all of our daughter-in-laws. They’re all born again, they all know Jesus. They all hear from God. They’re great wives for their husbands in their selective fields. But we’re especially blessed to have Heather here. And you know, when God brought her to you, she’s a blessing to you. She’s a blessing to your mother and I, our family. She’s also a huge blessing to this church. And so we thank God for Heather. And so Aaron, you know, why don’t you talk about how children need to obey their parents in the Lord and different ways that we can honor, you know, our father.
Yeah, so, you know, first of all, it says, “Children obey your parents in the Lord.” So this applies to, you know, children who are living under your roof, who you’re training up, you know, I’m no longer a child. I’m still my dad’s son, so I try to honor my father, but my dad doesn’t command me the same way he would do when I was a younger, when I was a little kid.
[Lawson] No.
But you know, it’s important, right now I have an eight year old son and almost two year old daughter. But we’re teaching them to obey their parents, obey mom and dad because if they can obey us, they’re gonna be able to obey God someday.
[Lawson] Right.
And you are all children of God. So you all need to be able to hear the father’s voice, you know, God, our father, and obey it. And listen to it. And so we’re trying to teach our kids obedience, you know, the eight year old and the two year old. And they’re both very great kids. They’re just very special gifts from God. But obedience is not always an easy thing to teach. You know, just the two year old, or almost two year old, my wife was out of the house for a little bit and I was just watching the two year old on my own. And I was trying to clean up and do some things and she went into the dining room where we have a big plant. It’s about three foot tall in this pot, this tree. And she likes to get in and get in the dirt and start gardening ’cause she knows I love gardening and she likes going too but she got in there and, you know, got dirt everywhere, all over the dining room. And I just very lightly spanked her on her leg and she like fell apart, you know, it was like the worst thing ever ’cause-
She knows how much you love her.
She’s a daddy’s girl and then, so I blocked off the dining room, I put a little fence up and then I put like an end table, a coffee table and this other way to get in the dining room. And I went back to work, but then a couple minutes later I didn’t hear anything. And she’d actually pushed the end table out of the way. Like she pushed it clear into the other room and got in the dirt again. Just went, you know, like a fool returning to its folly. So she got another spanking and, but she’s learning. So just, this is the next day. So this is yesterday. She got in the dirt again with Heather but we just saw the dirt there in the dining room. And Heather didn’t know when it had happened, but she took Ada over and then Ada just sat down on her butt like, she’s like, I’m not getting spanked. Like she said, “No, no, no,” she doesn’t know many words and she just sat down on the… So she’s learning what’s right and what’s wrong.
Right, well, she’s a lot like you.
Yeah.
I remember when you were about two, and I told you to take the trash out or do something and you said no, you went to do it. You walked down the hall, but you were stomping your feet saying “No, no, no.” Because you knew you would get disciplined and there is a proper way and an improper way to discipline. I still believe in the Proverbs way of discipline. I believe it’s the best. I’m gonna stick with that, it’s worked very well. I have three very good boys, they love Jesus. I may not have always done it properly, but I’m gonna tell you I still think it’s better. I don’t think time out works.
Yeah, God is after our heart. And any type of discipline that you-
You gotta get your children’s heart going in the right direction.
Yeah, it’s a heart thing. It’s discipline that helps the heart, that’s the key. So, “Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother.” And this is really powerful. And Paul reminds who he is writing to here about this particular commandment. It’s a commandment with a promise. And that promises is to have long life.
[Lawson] One of the 10 commandments.
And you know, I’ve actually just outta curiosity kind of studied, looked at longevity studies, just places where people live a long time. Like there’s two places where there are more centenarians, people who are 100 years or older, more centenarians than anywhere in the world. One is a community in Japan and one is a community in Italy. But the thing about those two cultures in the, you know, eastern culture is that they’re very much, it’s very much a community-based culture. A very community-based mindset. So, you know, the Hebrew, you know, Israel is an eastern culture, you know, and people look after the elderly, they take care of the elderly, they’re not a burden, they’re actually a blessing. That’s how the elderly are viewed oftentimes in eastern cultures. That the elderly are not a burden, they’re a blessing. And the Bible talks about this too, that the glory of young men is their strength, but the splendor of old men is their gray heads. So there’s something splendid about elderly people and you know, so I believe that’s why there’s a lot of longevity in that particular place. Also in Italy, there’s a lot of longevity in this small community because it’s a very… People look out for each other, they talk to each other, they spend time just out on the porch talking to each other. Having a community is really important for your complete health.
You know, that goes for here. People need a community, they need it. What is a good church is really a community of faith. They have found, they’ve done studies, people that attend church regularly live longer. They have better health. in the pandemic, they said the only people that had as good or improved mental health was the church, people who regularly attended church. And so there’s a value to that. Also, you know, he says, you know, you honor them and it’ll be well with you. You will live long on the earth. You know, these are commandments with promise and just good things happen when you obey God and when you go the way the scriptures-
And really the attitude, like we were talking about these, the attitude is what God, your heart, you know, so you know, your parents, are they a burden to you or are they a blessing to you? Do you view them as that?
We need to see them as a blessing. I wanna talk about something that you just mentioned. Go back to it. You talked about the glory of young men is their strength, but the splendor of old men is their gray hair. Dr. Lester Sumrall said this, he said, We need the young men so we don’t dry up, but we need the old men so we don’t blow up. And you know, we need the wisdom right, of the older generation, but we need the strength of the younger generation. And you know, I know you and me are a little anti typical. We’re a little different because I’ve got a lot of fire in and you always, you think about things really well before we do them. So you actually have a lot of wisdom for your years and different things that I believe that God has given.
But you know, unfortunately here, at least in the American modern day church, there’s a lot of separation amongst the generations. Like a lot of people say, well that’s just old people at that church, or that’s just young people at that church. You even watch music videos. It’s all people who are 25 years old, no one else. That is not the church.
25 Year old people in skinny jeans.
The church is multi-generational. It’s multiracial, it’s multi nationalities. The church is very-
You know, you have people on your worship team that are in their teens. You have people that are in their seventies, you know, you honor all of those people. You’ve got, you know, over 50 people in your total worship team that you, and we have amazing worship. I’ve just been, it’s just been amazing.
And people have different backgrounds. Some people have classical music backgrounds. Some people have punk rock backgrounds, some people have, you know.
Yeah, and we respect people from all these different backgrounds and we respect their strengths. We build relationships based with people on their strengths. And it’s so important, you know, some churches, I know a church and this church went from 3000 to less than 300. But they said, listen, they told some different people that were 60 or so, “You can’t be on the worship team anymore, you’re too old.” What a tragedy, you know, to trash our wisest people. Now, maybe if their voice is weak or something, we do something different, we use them in a different area. We employ them in a different area. But this is just, it’s a tragedy, you know, it’s all about how it looks sometimes to the outward man and not about what’s really ministering to God. I know you coming from a classical background, you know, you’ve, you know, studied music at a very, very high level, higher than most people in the world. You’ve got your doctorate from Rice University in music. You’ve got your undergrad at music from Carnegie Mellon, your masters from Rice University, study with two of the best teachers in the world in your field. And yet you’ve seen some of these opera singers. You know, they may not be just a… They don’t probably fit the skinny jean picture, you know, but they’re great. They got great voices and you know, the attitude of worship that comes from the heart that’s so important that all of this comes out.
Be a person of honor. You know, honor other people. Honor, honor, just be a person of honor, amen.
[Lawson] Praise God.
Look about, look out, find ways that you can honor other people.
Amen, we’re gonna be right back and we’re gonna continue to share. You don’t wanna miss it. We’re gonna talk about fathers and children. We’re gonna talk about employees and employers. You don’t wanna miss it so stay tuned. Friends, I’m Pastor Lawson Perdue, and I’ve been teaching “Destined to win” from the Book of Ephesians. This is one of the greatest teachings that I have ever done. I’ve had more requests for this teaching than almost any teaching we’ve done. I’ve got it in eight parts as I taught it in church, in CD form, also in a USB. And then I also have the teaching in 16 parts as we’ve taught it on television with my son, Dr. Aaron Perdue. And in this 16-part teaching, I am just thrilled with all the different things that was brought in. So you can get the eight part CDs or the USB that has all the video and audio, or you can get the 16 part as taught on television. Call us and let us know what you’d like to have. We have a special offer today and we’re so blessed to have you Check out our website, charischristiancenter.com. We have this and many other materials, and we have all of these things online for free, blessings. Friends, I’m so glad that you stayed connected. We are right here in Ephesians chapter six. We’re talking about relationships and how we walk out our Christian life in relationships. And we talked about in the broadcast yesterday about husbands and wives, it’s a great broadcast. You can go get it charischristiancenter.com on demand if you want to get that. And it’s absolutely free of charge if you watch it there, just on demand. But you know, here he’s talking about children and parents. We talked about that in the first part of the broadcast. But then he begins to talk about “Fathers provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition, the care and the teaching or the, you know, the care and the warning of the Lord.” Admonition also means to warn. And so it, when it says, don’t provoke your children to wrath, don’t irritate them. don’t exasperate them, don’t bring resentment to them. You know, I never tried to do that to you boys. I might have a little bit, but I didn’t try intentionally.
Well, fathers are leaders in the home. And one thing I say about leadership, the number one rule of leadership is showing up. If people want to be worship leaders, I say, you gotta show up, you show up to practice, you show up. You are there, you’re faithful, you’re committed. But fathers need to show up. That’s a big problem in society today, is the lack of fathers. The fathers who just abandon their families.
It’s a real tragedy. And it’s worse in some cultures than others. But, you know, there’s a study, we have Rich Phipps who does our men’s group. He’s a great man of honor, a great leader. And he’s taught that if a husband, if a father in the home.
Goes to church.
Goes to church and takes the lead spiritually, over 90% of the families will follow him. If it’s the mom.
Only the mom, yeah.
Only the mom, it’s like in the 20s. The teenager down in the teens. So it’s very important for fathers. Fathers, take that leadership, provoke not your children to wrath. You know, that kids need to know how much you care. We had three boys, you guys were involved in sports, you were involved in academics, you were involved in church. We tried to be at everything we could. If we weren’t there, probably we had three sons doing three different things in three places and there’s only two of us. But we tried to be there for you. And we invested in you as young men. We not only invested in you spiritually, we invested in your education, we invested in your music, we invested you in sports, see, and I think Christians really make this mistake a lot of times, they just focus on the spiritual aspect. But your kids are not just a spirit. They have a soul and they have a body. And you know what? I think it’s good for kids to be involved in sports at a certain level. I think it’s good for kids to be involved in music. Music does something in your brain. Really helps people with mathematics and science. And you know, your brother Andrew was accepted to University of Colorado Boulder in music and in engineering. Now he ended up going to Colorado School of Mines because ultimately he wanted to study engineering. But he works on the worship team at his church and served there for years and years playing, he’s a phenomenal musician. Your brother Peter is a good musician. You’re a phenomenal musician, phenomenal leader here in the church of that team. Not only that, all the, you lead all the pastoral teams.
I wanna say something too about parents and children in regards to education. There is not a one-size-fits-all program for education. I wanna say this because I just saw something last week. A very influential, you know, Chris, he is Christian, but he’s more known as a political speaker. But he just said anyone who sends their kids to a public school is sending their kid to the meat grinder. That’s a terrible statement because there are a lot of great public schools out there that it is not a one-size-fit-all thing. So God has anointed you to raise your kids. So that might mean homeschool, that might mean public school. That might mean charter school. That might mean Christian school. God will give you direction in how to lead your kids. How to raise your kids up.
You know, we want our kids to be leaders, right? We wanna raise them to be doctors and lawyers and bankers and pastors and-
To impact, to be the light.
To impact society. We have this teaching seven mountains, right? We wanna influence the business world, the art world, the sports world, you know, but we can’t send our kids to a school to get an education. Now listen, I put all of you guys, I threatened you with homeschool. Now I got some great homeschoolers in my church that do a fantastic job. I know some great people who’ve really done a great job teaching their children and they’ve went to top universities and done very well. But I also know people who haven’t done very well, you know, helping their children in the realm of education.
There are great, you know-
And it’s just a tragedy when we say, you know, they don’t give me any choice. I own two homes in Colorado Springs right now.
You have to pay taxes.
I own an office building in Monument, which is a great school district, great conservative leadership in the schools. A great, even though we’re in a liberal state, we’re in a conservative area, and that’s a great school district and they don’t have a lot of this liberal nonsense teaching. I pay over $27,000 a year in real estate tax on my office billing that I personally own. And most of that goes to the school. And you’re gonna tell me as a Christian that I can’t put my kid in public school?
No, and if you’re a family that home schools or is Christian school or public school.
God bless you, whatever you’re doing.
You should show up at your local school board meetings and make your voice be heard. You know, if you’re paying taxes there, you have the right to make your voice heard.
I just found this out about Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa is, I mean, Oklahoma is a red state. I mean, Colorado’s a blue state, it ain’t even purple. But El Paso County’s red, where we pastor. And the rural areas are very red in Colorado. Just a couple liberal, you know, but Oklahoma’s a red state, it’s a conservative state. And yet in Tulsa, they were teaching this CRT because the believers did not get involved in the school. We have to get involved.
You know, my son goes to a great charter school and you know, actually last year, his teacher is a member of our church. So we really tried to honor her, give special gifts to her. But we try to honor those teachers. Even when I prayed over kids going back to school on Sunday, I really felt on my heart that I should pray over kids going back to school. But I also prayed, I had people from our church raise their hands if you’re a teacher and we had a, you know, pretty large number of people who work full-time in education raise their hands and-
Listen, I valued education, right? Some things I learned from my family, they didn’t value education the way I value education. But we taught you from kindergarten up, you get good grades and you do well at school and it’ll help you in life. And you guys applied yourself. So you went to Carnegie Mellon University, right? And you went to, but we invested the gospel in you and the light is stronger than the darkness. And you know what? You made it.
Well, it’s up to parents. It’s up to fathers to train your children with the admonition of the Lord. That is not up to a school system.
It’s not only up to the church either.
Yeah.
And a lot of people, you know.
It’s up to fathers.
We have the kids one hour a week, two hours a week at the church and you know, you have them how many hours at home and yet you’re gonna blame the church if anything goes wrong. And some of these kids come to church they’re little hellions, I’m sorry. And they don’t want any discipline whatsoever. Kids hitting, beating other kids. And we have to bring them into subjection and their parents get in there, it’s tragic.
Well, even here in Colorado Springs, we have a great very, a very good Christian school, but I know they don’t, all the teachers there don’t have the same understanding of grace that we do. So I’d rather teach my children myself about the grace of God, about the grace of Jesus, about the ministry of the Holy Spirit than have a Christian school that-
Yeah, teaches law, that’s very, law, legalism will kill you. Just like sin will kill you. Roman six that sin will kill you. Roman seven says legalism will kill you. And you know what? I got a revelation of grace when you were only seven years old and your mother says that if I wouldn’t have got a revelation of grace, you kids wouldn’t have done as well as you have. And I really believe that. So we had a grace-based teaching, but we really, you know, brought you up with this attitude. It took us a lot of effort to get in places that taught where we had good education available to you. And we honored that and respected that. And God’s blessed you and God’s blessed your brothers, you’re all leaders, right? Financially, you’re leaders in business, leaders in the church, you know, and God’s blessed all three of you. But that didn’t happen accidentally. And it wasn’t by taking this standoffish attitude, you know, and if we, if the church gets out, tools out completely out of the education system, where’s it go? And we’ve seen people with the best intentions that we love, okay, that are homeschooling. Oh my God, I went in and my 12 year old was, you know, naked with a 12 year old girl. You know, boy, well, you gotta pay attention to what’s happening. It’s not just the school system. Kids have, you know, sin is bound in the heart of a child, rebellion, but the rod will correct, you gotta watch over ’em, you gotta train them, you gotta teach ’em, you gotta encourage ’em. That doesn’t mean you always spank them, but you talk to them constantly. And you know what, this is so important and it’s so important that we understand this.
God wants your kids to succeed. God wants to bless generations after you. Your kids are destined to win. God has a great plan for your families.
Your brothers couldn’t be in the positions they’re in if they didn’t have a good education. And so you need to help your kids get a good education. They are a spirit, they possess a soul, and they live in a body. If you need prayer, you give us a call, we love you.
[Narrator] Do you know your true position in Christ Jesus? You have been saved, raised up and seated in heavenly places with him. You can stand against any attack of the enemy from a position of victory, you are destined to win. You can get the eight part live teaching on CD for $48 or on USB for $35. Or get the 16 part as seen on TV USB for $59 when you call 719-418-4000 or visit charischristiancenter.com.
Praise the Lord friends, I wanna invite you to church this coming Sunday morning, whether you’re in Colorado Springs or whether you’re wherever you at. If you’re in Colorado Springs, you can see us Sunday morning at 8:30 or 10:30 AM live. But you can also watch us with our livestream congregation at 8:30 or 10:30 AM or you can go to our website and get it anytime at charischristiancenter.com.
[Narrator] 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 could write us at P.O. Box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80962. See you next time on Grace for Today.
