Expanding Our Horizons – Part 6 Lawson and Aaron Perdue

  Praise the Lord, friends, and welcome to the broadcast. I’m so glad that you’ve tuned in today. We’re gonna be talking about expanding our horizons, and we’re specifically this week talking about the process of receiving the promises. You see, the promises are not automatic. If you’re gonna go where God wants you to go, do what He wants you to do, receive what God wants you to receive, you’ve got to, first of all, begin to believe what He said. Friends, it’s great to have you with us today, and we’re so glad that you’ve joined us. We’re talking about expanding our horizons, and this week we’re gonna be talking specifically about the process of receiving the promise. You know, the promise is not automatic, and a lot of people think, you know, if God wills something, then that’s how it’s gonna be. Like He’s this master controller in the sky, but that is not the gospel. That is not the truth. There are many things that are God’s will that people don’t receive. And it’s because you’ve gotta believe it to receive it. It’s the grace of God that makes things available, but it takes faith to receive them. Such as salvation. The Bible says, “For by grace, we’re saved through faith and that not of ourselves. It’s a gift of God.” In Ephesians 2:8. And it’s not only the grace of God. The grace of God made salvation available to everybody, but without our personal faith, we will not receive it.

 

  And God has a will, and that’s where we find His promises. We can understand God’s will from reading scripture and also looking at the life of Jesus. Jesus was the express image of the Father. That means He was the exact person of the Father. So if you see that it was Jesus’s will, if you see that it was in His nature, if you see that’s who Jesus was, that’s who the Father is. So we know God’s will, and we know His will from His word, from the promises, and we can believe those. You know, as you read scripture and see all these great people of faith, God speaks a word of promise to them, and then they, you know, they respond.

 

  You have to believe it to receive it. Here’s another aspect we were just talking about. But you know, the Bible says that God is not willing that any would perish, but all that would come to repentance. But yet when you read the scripture, you find out there’s a lot of people, “wide is the path that leads to destruction”, Jesus said, and many are going there, and narrow is the path that leads to life, and few are going there. So it takes faith to possess what God provided by grace. And when you look at the gospel, there’s these two major themes of the gospel, which are grace and faith. And grace essentially is what God’s done, and faith is our response to it. And you have to have both of those. And if you teach all grace, you get off over into this, you know, just too much focus on sovereignty. And if you teach all faith, you get into works, but you’ve gotta have the balance of grace and faith to receive what God has for you.

 

  And I like thinking of it this way too, that balance of grace and faith, I like to think of the order, you know, the chronological order of grace and faith. Really, grace comes first and faith comes second. You know? God gives us His promises and then we believe it and we act upon it by faith, but by some people like to try to make things happen. And then make God’s grace happen. But God’s grace is given to us first. And most everything, He’s already accomplished at the cross through Jesus. So He’s already done it, and we now can respond and receive it by faith.

 

  Amen, so we receive the grace of God, we receive the promises of God by faith. And so we’re gonna talk about the process of the promise, and we’re gonna start in Joshua 1:1-3. Aaron, you can read those and we’ll kind of jump off there.

 

  Yeah, so it says here in Joshua 1, “After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spoke to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses’s assistant, saying, Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people to the land which I am giving to them, the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon, I have given you, as I said to Moses.”

 

  Amen, so God made this promise, and He basically said, I’ve given you this land. You know, God has made a lot of promises to us in Christ. The Bible says all the promises of God, in 2 Corinthians 1:20, “In him are yes, and in him, amen to the glory of God by us.” And God made this promise to Joshua, but it didn’t mean it was automatic. The promise was actually, in the next verse, followed by problems. There were difficulties, there were challenges, there were things that they had to believe God for. But the first step in possessing the promised land, or possessing what God has for you in this process, the promise, is you got to believe to receive. And if you’re gonna receive the promises of God, you gotta believe them.

 

  And God’s actually spoken to me from this third verse here. “Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon, I have given you, as I said to Moses.” You know, God’s promises, His kingdom, it’s limitless. Basically, like God doesn’t set limits on what you can believe for. It’s whatever you can, whatever your foot can touch. You know, God’s kingdom is limitless. The way that you enter it is incredibly narrow. You know, you mentioned that scripture that Jesus talked about on the Sermon on the Mount, that, you know, wide is the gate that leads to destruction, but narrow is the gate that leads to life. And really, the narrow way, God spoke to me this, it’s narrow because it’s only Jesus. Jesus is the only way into the kingdom of God. You know, He’s the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Him. So the narrow gate, that narrow gate is Jesus. Everything else is the wide path.

 

  Amen, you know, Jesus said, “I am the door. By me, if any man enter in he will find pasture.” Go in and out and find pasture. And Jesus is the only way to the Father. He’s the only one who was God, who became a man, who lived holy, perfect, pure, never sinned, died on the cross for our sins. And then God raised Him from the dead and made Him Lord. There is no other way of salvation. But when you go, come into this pasture, if you read this in John 10, Jesus said you can go in and out and find pasture. There is an abundance of provision in Christ. There is an abundant life that is available to everyone in Christ. God doesn’t leave anyone out of these promises. You know, Jesus went on in John 10:10, talked about this, and said, “It’s the thief that comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but I have come to give you life, and that life more abundantly.” Extremely abundantly, extravagant, when you study it out in the Greek. It’s amazing. And so God’s will is for everyone who believes on Jesus to be saved and have a rich, full abundant life. And His will is for everyone to be saved. But not everyone is being saved because not everyone is believing Jesus.

 

  And I just love that it says, “Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon, I have given you.” So He’s saying, wherever you go, I’m leaving it up to you. I’ve given it to you, you’re gonna cross over into what I’ve given you, but it’s up to you to possess it.

 

  Amen. We have to possess the promises of God. And so God’s promised good things. God made good promises right here to the children of Israel, but they had to believe Him. They had to go take the land. And there were giants in the land. There were difficulties, there were problems. They had to remember that God was with. And there’s different aspects of possessing the promise. And we’re talking about this process. And so the very first step in entering into the promised land and possessing what God wants you to possess, is believe in what God said. So, you know, the Bible actually says this, in the Old Testament, says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” The fear of the Lord. So respecting our relationship with God through Christ. Respecting what God said in His word, respecting Jesus, believing Jesus. That’s the very first step. And once you believe on Jesus, He is the door to the good things of God. And you go in and out through Him and you find the abundant life that God has for you in Christ.

 

  I love here in Joshua. You know, it starts off, this is, you know, right after Moses passed away. And you know, here it says that he was Moses’s assistant. And that’s actually kind of a lower level position, you know, than probably what he actually was. He was really the commander of the army. And that’s how he assisted Moses, was by leading, you know, thousands of people into battle.

 

  And he had been leading them for, you know, 40 years, basically since Moses, you know.

 

  Since they were three days-

 

  Into the promised land.

 

  Into the promised land. They had to, you know, fight the Amalekites very early on. So maybe it wasn’t three days, but it’s shortly after in their journey. But Joshua, I think, you know, in the wilderness, he kind of learned that every battle you face, it’s always different. You know, the first time when the Israelites were leaving Egypt, God just swallowed up, you know, the Egyptian army in the Red Sea. But the first time Joshua was mentioned, he had to fight against the Amalekites and that’s where Moses had to hold the rod up in the air for them to prevail. And Aaron and Hur came alongside and helped hold his arms up. And that’s where we got the name Jehovah-nicci, the Lord is our banner or our victory. So Joshua kind of learned that, you know, every battle’s different. Sometimes you rest and sometimes you actively participate, you know, in the fight.

 

  You have to trust God in that battle. And one thing that happened, and I think we brought this out maybe just a bit last week in the teaching, but when they went in the promised land, after that battle and they won that first battle, and you know, God spoke to Moses in Exodus 17 and he said, write this victory in a book and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua. God wanted Joshua to get a picture of victory on the inside of him that was so big that he would remember it for years to come. And then it was actually about 40 years, or a little over 40 years later, that Joshua was actually leading the children of Israel into the promised land. Moses now had died and now Joshua was taking over. God had to let a whole generation of people die off in the wilderness because they refused to believe Him. And if you refuse to believe, you know what? You are not gonna receive. I love this scripture in Isaiah 7:9, and it says, “If you will not believe, surely you will not be established.” So the first step in possessing your promised land is believing what God says, believing Jesus and believing the Word of God. And you know, the Bible actually says that God has magnified His word above His very name. And we need to believe the word of God. And there are lots of places where believers just refuse to believe the word of God. There are lots of places where people believe what they wanna believe no matter what the scripture says. And it’s about time for us, as the body of Christ, to rise up and put our focus back on the word, back on the scriptures and say, you know what? Every promise of the Bible is mine. Every chapter, every verse, every line. If God said it, that settles it, I’m gonna believe it so I can receive it.

 

  Awesome, and I think, yeah, that’s the first step is knowing what the promises are. When you hear a good preacher preach from the Bible, you’re gonna hear about the promises of God. There’s thousands of scriptures that talk about God’s promises, and they’re all available to us through Jesus.

 

  We’re gonna come back in the last part of this broadcast. We’re gonna have a very short break, and we’re gonna talk more how we can possess the promised land. Friends, I’m so glad that you’ve been watching today. We’ve been sharing on expanding our horizons. We have multiple hours of this teaching in downloadable audio, downloadable video, and many others, free of charge on our website at CharisChristianCenter.com. So take advantage of these resources and be blessed. It says some brought forth 30, some 60, some 100 fold, I believe 100 fold ground. That’s the ground is talking about our heart. The word is talking about the seed. How many of you know the seed is consistent? The word is consistent, but our heart is what changes. In fact, your heart is producing a harvest. If you don’t like the harvest you’re getting, you gotta change the seed you’re allowing to remain in your heart. Friends, I’m so glad that you stayed with us. We are right here in Joshua 1 where God spoke to Joshua and said, every place that the sole of your foot shall tread, I have given it to you, praise God. We need to believe God so that we can possess what He’s promised us.

 

  And I love just understanding the promises of God. I love the story of when you were a young person, I guess you were 14 at the time that, you know, your mother, my grandma, bribed you with fish bait to go to a Bible study. And when you went to the Bible study, the preacher, he was Andrew Wommack, and at the time he was just doing home Bible studies. This is over 40 years ago. But I know that you said he just held his Bible and started preaching from the Bible and you heard God just speak to you, just saying to listen to him. He knows what he is talking about. And he was preaching from the word of God. But as he was preaching, you got excited. And you’ve said this, that you got excited because you realized you didn’t have to live sick, poor, and defeated by the devil. You were excited to hear the promises preached.

 

  Amen. I was 14 years old. I had been born again for six years. I received Jesus at eight years old. But in this Bible study, actually it was the first one I went to was in Southwest Lamar, Colorado on Oak Street, the corner I think of Oak and 9th. And my cousin lived right across the street in his little ranch style house. But we went in there and Bobby and Jane Apple actually rented that house or something, but Andrew, he was his own song leader and he led the songs with the 12 string guitar. And then he put the guitar down and he hooked up a mic. He had just a little cassette recorder, and he pushed record on this thing. And he held his Bible in his hand just like this. He was just standing there. And the Spirit of the Lord spoke to me. I was born again. The Spirit of Christ was in me. And I heard Jesus say to me, listen to this man. He knows what he’s talking about. That was over 40 years ago. Praise God. And I’ve been listening to Him ever since. And you have to realize where I was coming from. My dad had epilepsy. My mom was a school teacher. They didn’t have a lot of money. My dad couldn’t work a job outside of our family, you know, a farm, so on and so forth, because of his physical limitations. We lived in a tin house, you know? And, you know, drove cars with hundreds of thousands. So we struggled, you know, financially, we struggled physically. My parents were nearly to get a divorce. My dad had nervous problems along with part of the physical challenges he had. And so it was just very difficult. But when we started believing God, you know what? Things began to get better. But that very first night when Andrew held his Bible, the Spirit of God spoke to me and said, listen to this man. He knows what he’s talking about. And what came to me that very first night was, I don’t have to be sick or poor or defeated by the devil. I can believe God. I got a Bible full of promises that I can believe. And you know what? God is no respecter of persons. He’s only a respecter of faith. And if you’ll believe God, you can receive those promises in your life.

 

  And really, you need to keep your focus on the promises, not on the problem. You know, we’re starting at the very beginning of Joshua. Joshua and one other person were the only two people, you know, over the age of 20 when they entered, you know, the wilderness that got to go into the promised land, and Joshua and Caleb. They were the two. And you know, they were part of the spies that Moses sent to go spy out the promised land. And when they came back, the other spies, the 10 other spies had a very negative report. They just said, we’re gonna get devoured, we’re gonna get, you know, they kinda went along, you know, with the news that had been going on for 40 years, just complaining and not really trusting God, not really focusing on the promise. But Joshua and Caleb, they both put their focus on the promise.

 

  Yeah, well, God had to let those spies that wouldn’t believe, when you’re in the Book of Numbers, when they first went in, He had to, in Numbers 14, you can read about it. But He had to let them die off in the wilderness. And then 40 years later, Joshua and Caleb, you know, a little bit over 40 years actually, were taking them into the promised land. And Joshua and Caleb were the only two of those original spies that went into the land. And it was God’s will for all of them to go in. I don’t believe it was ever God’s will for Israel to be wandering around the wilderness for 40 years. But God had to allow them to die off because they refused to believe Him.

 

  And man, God’s promises should excite you, but a lot of people don’t even hear about the promise to begin with. You know, recently at church, I just had a word that our church would have a lot of centenarians. That means people who live to be 100 or older. And after church, I was picking up lunch at In N Out, we have the very first In N Out in Colorado is right by our church. They’re expanding all throughout the state now, but I ran into several people from church and this one gentleman was so excited because he knows the exact verse that he can believe to live to be over 100. And he’s saying, no one ever talks about this. And I’m excited that there was a word about that. And I’m believing to be over 100 years old. He was really excited. And the promises should excite you. But some people don’t even know about the promises or when they hear it, they just refuse to believe it.

 

  I’m telling you, people have watered down the word of God. They have watered down the promises of God. They’ve done it because it makes them, you know, more popular. But you know, when I came here to Colorado Springs and started this church, and we had a really slow start, it took us six months, you know, of Bible studies to get a handful of people. And then it took us another six months, took us a year, to get to 40 people. Man, I rejoice when I drive up now. I’ll see 40 cars in the parking lot, you know, a half hour before we start church, and I’m just rejoicing. We got more cars in the parking lot than we had people after the first year. And you know, I mean, it’s still taking time, but you know, I said early, I’d rather have two or 300 people that know how to believe God and understand what the word of God says than thousands and thousands that don’t know anything about the word of God. And now, you know, God’s given us about 1,000 people that attend church on a regular basis. I believe that’s growing, that’s increasing. You know, every week we have a couple of thousand people that call the church home. But you know, thank God He’s brought us, but we haven’t done got to the point where we’re at by compromising the word of God and just preaching this feel good gospel. We gotta tell people the truth. If you want people to receive the promises, you gotta preach the promises. If you want people to receive healing, you gotta preach healing. If you want to receive, their financial needs met, you gotta preach what the Bible says about it. It’s amazing how many people, again, just believe what they wanna believe no matter what the Bible says. It’s time for us to get back to believing the Bible, to believe that the promises of God. You know, I remember years ago we were in another location and the youth were doing an outreach around there and they went up and some older lady, they were raking the leaves in her yard and they said where they were from and she said, “I watch that man on TV, and if you look at what he says in the Bible, it’s really there.” Praise God. You know what? We need to have the word of God. The word of God works.

 

  When people are full of faith and believe the promises, when you get around them, your vision’s gonna expand. You know, something my dad kind of taught me and my brothers growing up, he’d say, if you wanna play better ball, play with better ball players. And you know, I was a musician, so, you know, my parents tried to get me in good programs where I could stay with good teachers and be around other, you know, really advanced students, but when you’re around people who are like that, they just think bigger. And it helps you think bigger too. So, I’m really glad you’re connecting with us watching this show because when you hear the promises of God, the promises, hearing the promises is what expands your vision. It helps you see bigger. And God has great promises. And He’s not limiting you where you’re at. You know, I love what He spoke to Joshua and just said, every place that the sole of your foot treads will be yours. So, you know, you need to take the limits off God.

 

  Amen, you need to begin to see in a different realm so you can go there. You know, we studied last week about Abraham in Genesis 13, and God spoke to him in verse 14 after Lot separated him from and said, all the land that you see, I will give it to you. And it’s amazing how God will put you around people that think bigger. One thing God did with me, God, after we left the southeast corner of Colorado, Lamar, Colorado, where I was raised, born and raised, you know, we moved to Indiana and went to Bible school with Dr. Lester Sumrall. Now, one thing I began to see bigger when I got around Dr. Sumrall, ’cause I’d been raised in a church basically of 100 people all my life. And I got to Dr. Sumrall’s and he had a church in South Bend, Indiana of about 2,500 to 3,000 people that met there weekly. And not only that, he had a worldwide evangelistic program. And while I was with him, God gave him a vision and he started Feed the Hungry, this worldwide feeding program. And you know what, Lester just thought big. He had 12 television stations. He was on satellite television. Also he had two big radio stations that go all around the world. I can’t remember the exact name. But he thought big and he really was evangelistic. And you know what? That helped me. But then God took me from South Bend, Indiana in this church of 2,500 to 3,000 and he put me in Kit Carson, Colorado. And it’s a really small place. And you know, I had people that thought, why is Lawson going to this place in Kit Carson that’s so small, a town of 300 in a county of 2200 people that covers 2,400 square miles. There’s less than one person per square mile. But in the church we started, God, we had one person who was there. There were five families that helped to start this church. And this man had several thousand acres. And he thought big, but God soon brought two other farmers that had thousands and thousands of acres. And these men became mentors to me, Jim Mitchuk, Irvin Mitchuk, and Aubrey Shotten. And I learned from all of those guys. And these guys basically started with nothing and borrowed money and God blessed them. They were in cattle and they were in wheat, you know, and I learned from those men. And I got a vision and I began to think bigger. I remember talking to Jim Mitchuk about, you know, I was gonna buy 10 or 15 cows and I had like 30 cows before I went in ministry. And he said, Lawson, if you’re gonna buy 10, you ought to buy a semi-load. That way if you make money, you’ll make it. If you lose it, you’ll lose it. But God took me to a really small place and put me with some people that thought big. And it began to help me think in a new place. And if you can’t think it, it’s gonna be hard for you to possess it. It’s gonna be hard for you to believe for something that you can’t go there in your mind.

 

  Well, and God’s spoken to me before too, and He said, you need to start thinking bigger, expand your horizons. And if you can’t think about it, it’s hard to believe for it, and you’re not gonna see it happen. You know, God spoke to me and said, if you wanna see someone raised from the dead, you have to start thinking about it and even imagining it. And just, I have one word of encouragement for you. As God just helps expand your horizons, expands your thinking, it might be offensive to some people.

 

  Oh yeah, it’s offensive sometimes when you think big and believe big. But you know what? We’ve gotta go there. If we can’t go there in our mind, we will never go there physically. Praise God? And so God is a big God, and I believe God thinks big, we’re made in His image. But you know what? This all begins with Jesus. And just like we said at the beginning of the program, you need to know Jesus. And if you don’t know Jesus, pray with me right now. Heavenly Father, I believe that Jesus Christ is your son. I believe He died for my sins. I believe you raised Him from the dead and made Him Lord. And I surrender to you, in Jesus’ name. Blessings. Friends, our broadcast can now be seen by over two thirds of the world’s population and it’s our partners that have made this available. I wanna invite you today to become part of this blessing by becoming a partner of Charis Christian Center and Grace for Today. So we would love to hear from you. And thank you so much for prayerfully considering this today. Blessings.

 

  As you grow in wisdom and understanding, you start to get a bigger picture of what God has in store, but you have to see it in your spiritual eyes before you can go there. With Jesus, you have incredible purpose and your future keeps getting brighter. We’d like to bless you with a digital copy of the teaching, Expanding Our Horizons, a $15 value free of charge. Download it today at CharisChristianCenter.com.

 

  Friends, I’m Pastor Lawson Purdue and I love church! And I’m excited about church. You know, Jesus said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” And I wanna invite you to come to church whether you’re in Colorado Springs or wherever you are in the world, you can connect with us online. Sundays at 8:30 and 10:30 AM. Or you can just get on our website and watch us at CharisChristianCenter.com. Blessings.

 

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