Expanding Our Horizons – Part 9 Lawson and Aaron Perdue

  Praise the Lord, friends. I’m so glad that you’ve tuned in. Today, we’re gonna talk about how God is serious about you receiving your inheritance. God wants you to possess your Promised Land. The Bible actually says in Acts 20:32, that He is able to build us up and give us an inheritance among those who are sanctified. Blessings. Friends, I’m so glad that you’re with us today, and we’ve been teaching from the Book of Joshua about the process of receiving God’s promises. And in Joshua 1, God had spoken to Joshua. And basically, the promise that he gave him in Verse 3 was every place the sole of your foot will tread, have I given to you? The very next verse, He says, “All the land of the Hittites and to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your coast.” Just because God says that He gives you something doesn’t mean that you’ll never face problems. In fact, many times, you know what, the path of obedience has contrary winds. Problems, many times, are evident that this is what God has called you to do. This is a land that God has called you to take. So rather than just think a problem is because maybe God didn’t call you to do something, you might realize it’s because God called you to do something, that you are the answer. You are the one that God has called to deal with this problem and to overcome this problem by faith. Then he goes on and says in Verse 5, “I will be with you.” We need to remember the presence of God is with us. Today, we’re gonna talk about what it says here in Verse 6. He says, “Be strong and of a good courage, for unto this people shall you divide for inheritance the land which I swear unto their fathers to give them.” Do you know what? God wants you to possess your inheritance. And when they possessed their inheritance, they prospered. So there’s five things there. The promise, the problem, the presence of God, possessing your inheritance, and finally, prospering. You know what, I believe that God wants everybody to prosper. It is His will, it’s His promise. Now, we’re not gonna get into that today, but we’re gonna talk today about how serious God is about us possessing our inheritance.

 

  And I love when you preach this at church. We actually have this entire series available for free download on our website. So if this has really encouraged you, I always love great just preaching from the Bible. My dad’s a great preacher. Whenever he gets up and preaches, he just preaches from his heart, he just has his Bible. He doesn’t even have a podium, he just goes preaching the word. But if you want to hear more of this teaching, just go to our website. It’s actually a free download. You can download the audio, download the video, and we have all of it. We’ve actually made all of our teachings available free of charge. So it’s just thanks to our partners, we’ve been able to do that. And if you partner with us, I wanna say a huge thank you because… And we have people all around the world.

 

  Amen.

 

  Download these teachings. We actually just looked at it from all six continents. I think every continent but Antarctica, we’ve had people download our teachings, so-

 

  In the last few months.

 

  So our partners really help us reach a lot of people. And I saw you can actually take cruises to Antarctica at different times of year. So maybe someday, we’ll have downloads from Antarctica.

 

  Praise God, so we’ve made it available. Again, there’s just hundreds of hours of teaching. It’s absolutely free of charge. We have a free Children’s Curriculum on there that we’ve made available. And actually, we’ve been… It’s been numbers of countries just in the last few months from all around the world, where people are getting these free teaching, this free Children’s Curriculum. We literally got, I believe, hundreds of churches now that are… And we just started putting this out last year. We’re gonna have the second year available this year of Children’s Curriculum, then we’re gonna develop a Junior High Curriculum. But you know what? It’s costed me thousands and thousands of dollars to do this, and we’re making it available free of charge. If you wanna partner with this, this is great ground. Amen, and we’re making a difference around the world.

 

  That’s awesome. And I love what God spoke to Joshua here, “Be strong and of good courage.” We need to have good courage. When you hear the promises of God, there might be problems that you face, but as you spend time in the presence of God, it’s gonna encourage you.

 

  Amen.

 

  I always love our services here at church. I always just leave feeling very encouraged.

 

  Praise God.

 

  I’ve been pastoring for eight years now, and I remember when I first started pastoring, my dad here gave me some advice. He said, “You should always encourage people.”

 

  Amen. I want people to feel better when they leave than when they came. And I don’t want it to be depressing. I want them to be encouraged. I know years ago, Andrew Wommack stopped by our service, and he’d actually been to another church in town, and he said it was so depressing. He said, “I had to come get encouraged.” And man, that day, I was on fire. I was just preaching. I actually didn’t realize that he was there till later, and then I went and saw him, and he said, “I had to come by your church and get encouraged, and it was just so good.” But you know what? We want to possess our inheritance. And God is serious about us possessing our inheritance. Aaron, I want you to read this Scripture in Numbers 33:55-56. And this talks about the children of Israel possessing their promise and what will happen if they don’t. God is serious about it.

 

  So it says here in Numbers 33:55. “But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall be that those whom you let remain shall be irritants in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall harass you in the land where you dwell. Moreover, it shall be that I will do to you as I thought to do to them.”

 

  So, you know what? Your giant might be different. It might be an addiction, it might be a physical sickness, it might be something that’s keeping you, whatever is keeping you from possessing what God promises you. But right here in Numbers 33:55, God says, “If you do not drive out these inhabitants, it will come to pass that they will be pricks in your eyes and thorns in your side.” They’ll vex you. Man, there are things that God wants you to possess. There are places that God wants you to take. it was just last week, there was a man that came to me that was doing some volunteer service here at the church with his business. He actually has a number of people that work for him. But he told me, he said, “I’ve been in this church for eight months, and in eight months God has delivered me from alcoholism and delivered me from drug addiction.” Man, it is powerful. And you know what I told him? I said, “That’s what the gospel should do for every person. That’s what the grace of God should do.” And when you really understand grace, when you get a revelation of it, that’s what it should do for every believer. And I don’t know what your giant is. I know the one thing that troubled me for years was my mouth. I said things that were just terrible, you know? And, but through me, number one, receiving the Holy Spirit, that helped me. And then later, getting a revelation of grace. When I got a revelation of grace, it gave me major, major victory in the area of my tongue. And we need the Holy Spirit to help us in every area of life. But you know what? There are things that God wants you to possess, and God says if you don’t take these things, if you don’t run these giants out of the land, they’re gonna come and vex you. And then He says in Verse 56, Numbers 33:56, “I’ll do unto you as I thought to do unto them.” Man, I do not want God to have to do to me what he wanted to do to my enemies. That is terrible. And you know what? God is serious about inheritance. He wants us to possess what He promised us.

 

  I love that God just spoke to Joshua, said, “Be strong and of good courage.” I think that’s a word for many of you watching this right now, that you need to just take courage and just keep trusting God and realize that he has an inheritance for you. I love that word inheritance. We see it a lot through Scripture, especially in the New Testament and the writings of Paul. Paul talks about us being co-heirs with Jesus. So that means if Jesus attained it, it’s ours. So the joy that was set before him, that’s now our joy.

 

  Amen.

 

  And the peace that Jesus paid for us… He’s called the Prince of Peace. His peace is now our peace.

 

  Amen.

 

  And his righteousness is now our righteousness. We can go right into the throne room of the Father. We can enter with boldness just like Jesus entered that throne room.

 

  Amen. You know what? God, again, wants us to possess the promises. He’s given us all the… The Bible actually says this in 2 Corinthians 1:20. All the promises of God in him are yes and Amen to the glory of God by us. God gets glory when we walk in the promises. And it takes a couple things. Number one, it takes His grace. Number two, it takes our faith. One thing that came to me, Aaron, as you were sharing, is this, that don’t be discouraged if you fell down. The Bible says this. A righteous man falls seven times and gets back up again. If you fell down, get back up again. That’s the difference between the righteous and the unrighteous. Don’t get discouraged and don’t just… Don’t be complacent. Don’t stay in that place. Rise up through the power of the Spirit of God. Rise up through the promises of the word of God and take your Promised Land. Micah says this, “When I fall, I shall arise.” And if you fell down, you get back up. You keep trusting God. You keep praying in the Holy Ghost. You keep going to the word of God. You surround yourself with some godly friends, stay connected, get in a good Bible-believing spirit-filled church where people there are believing God for His promises to come to pass. Amen? If there’s not one in your area within a reasonable driving distance, you can go to charischristiancenter.com, you can go to YouTube, and you can… Actually, we live stream all of our services on Sunday morning and Wednesday night. You can see those and you can be encouraged in the word.

 

  And here at our church, we actually have, I think, close to 20 families that drive nearly 100 miles to be here. We have a lot of people local, but a lot of people who drive a few hours to be here. So we always try to make our online church a really good experience for people ’cause sometimes, the weather prevents people from coming, but we have a lot of people that join us online as well. So you can join us Sunday mornings, Wednesday night. If you’re here in the States, I know we have people even in oVerseas that live stream. And it’s different hours, obviously, when they live stream. But-

 

  Praise God. We have people almost every week that are from another continent. And we have people from Asia, we have people from Europe, we have people from Africa. And when we do these special events, we do a couple big special events a year, one of them is our Rejoice Women’s Conference and the other one is our camp meeting that we do in the summer. And we do things for the entire family. But you know what? We have people from a number of countries that will come, and all over the United States, different places. And so, praise God, we want you to get encouraged in the word of God, be encouraged in the Spirit. And God wants you to possess your Promised Land. He wants you to possess your inheritance. So don’t be lazy, don’t be slothful, but follow those who, through faith and patience, inherit the promises. We’re gonna come back and talk more about how we can do it. Blessings. 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 and 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.

 

  Mark Hankins was already talking. I heard him mention that joy is a serious business of heaven, and all of a sudden, I heard the Holy Spirit tell me that the burden of heaviness has been lifted from you. So just going into that service and just hearing that and having that, the Holy Spirit active and the anointing active in the service, lifted it just like that.

 

  Friends, I’m so glad that you stayed with us. We’re gonna talk about some more promises that God has given us, specifically in New Testament about possessing our inheritance. Aaron, a lot of people talk about, “Well, the children of Israel had these promises of healing, and health, and prosperity,” but that’s really not a New Testament thing. But it is a New Testament thing. And I can give you many promises in the New Testament about health, healing, prosperity, and different things.

 

  I’ve been wanting to say this, too, about the promises, and that it’s that the promises always remain. The promises of God don’t fall away. They don’t disappear. And if you haven’t attained, received one of those promises, it doesn’t mean it just disappeared and went away. all of God’s promises, they’re still available. They don’t disappear.

 

  Amen.

 

  That the promises that we find in the Word of God, the word of God is eternal. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the word of God remains forever. The promises of God remain. the writer of Hebrews talks about that promise of rest.

 

  Amen.

 

  That the Israelites, many of them didn’t receive ’cause they died in the wilderness. But he said, the writer of Hebrews says, there actually remain… That promise of rest remains to us even thousands of years later.

 

  Amen.

 

  That promise of rest, which is really a promise of resting in Jesus and the finished work of Jesus, that you don’t have to fight for it, you don’t have to struggle for it. There is a promise of rest and peace because of Jesus. That promise didn’t disappear.

 

  Amen. One of-

 

  And it remains.

 

  One of these promises that we’re talking about of possessing our inheritance in the New Testament is actually Hebrews 4:1. And it says, “Let us therefore fear lest a promise of being left of us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.” And he’s actually talking about how the children of Israel under Moses’ leadership did not enter into the Promised Land. But he goes on and talks about how God, in seven days, created the heaven and earth. And after six days, he created it, and then he rested the seventh day. And then He talks about this, He says in Verse 6, Hebrews 4:6, “Seeing, therefore, it remains that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached did not enter in because of their unbelief.” We talked about this earlier in the week in the broadcast, that God had to let an entire generation of the children of Israel die off in the wilderness because they refused to believe Him. And so they did not enter in because their unbelief. But He says this in Verse 7. He says, again, he limits a certain day in David, saying, “Today, after so long a time as it’s been said, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” So what happened is God gives this promise right to Abraham in Genesis 13. That’s about 2000 BC. Then, Moses lives about 430 years after God ultimately gave that promise to Abraham. And so 430 to 450 years later and then about another 40 plus years after Joshua comes, to bring the children in to begin to possess what God promised Abraham. But it’s not till 1,000 years later or 1,000 years after Abraham that David ultimately was the one who took the children of Israel in. So it takes time for these things to come to pass sometime, to possess their borders. David was the one who brought Israel to possess Jerusalem and possess all the borders that God ultimately promised to Abraham. 1,000 years later, Joshua began to bring them in about 500 years later. But then about 1,000 years later, David ultimately brings them in. But it sits here in Verse 7, again, he limits a certain day, saying in David Hebrews 4:7, “Today, after so long a time it’s been said, today if you’ll hear his voice hardened, not your hearts.” And if you look at this prophecy through David, he’s actually talking about Jesus. Jesus… He says, “This is the day the Lord has made,” and he’s talking about a stone will cry out of the wall when a beam of timber will answer. It’s talking about the cross. It’s talking about Jesus, the headstone of the corner. But he says, if Joshua… Actually, Verse 8 is translated in King James as Jesus. But other translations say, if Joshua had given them rest, then by bringing them into the Promised Land, then he would not have spoken of another day in David. So he makes this promise that we talked about last week in the broadcast to Abraham about the borders of their inheritance. Then Joshua, about 500 years after Abraham, he actually shows Abraham that his children are gonna go into bondage for over 400 years and then come out with great wealth. Joshua begins to take them into it, but then David takes them to possess these borders. But he said it really wasn’t in David. Ultimately, it’s about Jesus. And he says, “Therefore, remains therefore a rest. Jesus is our rest.” He’s talking about the finished work of the cross to the people of God for he that has, in Verse 10… Hebrews 4:10 has entered into his rest, has ceased from his own works, even as God did from his. Just like God rested on the seventh day after the six days of creation, He said He is rested. Jesus is seated at the right hand of God. Jesus has finished the work. He said these three beautiful words in John 4:19 when he died on the cross, “It is finished.” Man, the price has been paid, and we, by the grace of God, by faith, can enter into the grace of God. He’s really talking about grace in Hebrews 4. But then in Hebrews 6, he talks about some things you were talking about.

 

  I love that we’ve been talking about Joshua leading the Israelites into the Promised Land, receiving their inheritance, this place that God had promised them centuries before. Joshua’s actually a great picture of Jesus.

 

  Amen.

 

  Jesus is the one that leads us into the Promised Land. He’s the one that leads us to receive our inheritance. So all these-

 

  Amen.

 

  I mean, there’s so many parallels. It’s just a great picture of us as believers that Jesus is the one that leads us. And we can be strong and of good courage, and realize that there are promises for us, that God wants us to take possession. I love that word possession.

 

  Amen.

 

  The promises, they aren’t just for you to look at and to hope for, but we’re to take possession of the promises that God has for us. And we don’t do it on our own. Jesus is the one. He’s the commander of the Lord’s armies that goes before us, and helps, and really is the one that fights these giants. We can put our faith in Jesus. He is our champion.

 

  Amen. So Jesus is the grace of God, but we gotta, by faith, lay hold of Jesus and what He’s promised us. And the Bible tells us, “See, the response to grace is this.” In Hebrews 4, he is talking about grace. He’s talking about resting in what Christ done. But in Hebrews 6, he talks about the natural result of understanding the gospel or grace is faith. See, in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything. That’s Galatians 5:6. But faith, that works by love. Faith works when you understand what Jesus has done, when you understand the gospel or the grace of God. But he tells us in Hebrews 6, “Don’t be lazy, but follow those who through faith and patience in here at the Promised…” And it goes on, and it talks about this eternal word of God that you were talking about, Aaron, earlier, which is so powerful. He said, “Because when God made a promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater.” Hebrews 6:13, he swore by himself saying, “Surely blessing, I will bless you. And multiplying, I will multiply you.” God couldn’t go to the justice of peace and get a sworn affidavit. So He swore by himself, “Man, we have the eternal word of an eternal guy. We have the unchangeable word of an unchangeable God.”

 

  And God is unchanging. One thing I wanna say too, going back to Hebrews 6:12, is that you do not become sluggish.

 

  Amen.

 

  So this is talking about faith, faith is not a sluggish thing. Faith is not a lazy thing, and we’re to imitate those. So if you’re gonna imitate people of faith and patience, and that word patience in the Greek, it means to be consistent. So we need to imitate people of faith, imitate people who are very consistent.

 

  Amen.

 

  Sometimes, we just imitate people who are very famous or very popular, maybe have a great personality, they have a big following. But really, the people we need to imitate are people who are people of faith, people who keep trusting God no matter what. They’ve been trusting God for years, for decades, and that they’re incredibly consistent.

 

  Amen.

 

  I’ve had words for people. Sometimes, in charismatic circles, people can be flaky at sometimes, and it’s actually kind of disappointing me. Flakiness is not gonna produce fruitfulness. Faithfulness leads to fruitfulness. I’ve told people, “Hey, this is a word for you to be around people who are consistent.”

 

  Amen.

 

  “Be around people who are stable, who are just very consistent in their lifestyle and in their relationship with God.” And that’ll help you. The journey of faith shouldn’t just be this rollercoaster up and down. We sing a lot of songs in the church world about, “You’re the God of the mountain, the god of the valley.” Just this… They just think it’s like this rollercoaster journey. But a true journey of faith is very consistent.

 

  Amen. Every day, the believers should get better and better. We used to sing this song in the church, “Every day with Jesus is sweeter than the day before.” And when you understand the grace of God, when you understand the gospel and you’re not focused just on you and your performance, you’re focused on the finished work of Jesus, it causes you to begin to move out of this mountaintop valley. That was in the Old Testament. That’s how Israel was: mountaintop, valley, mountaintop. Because when they focused on God, the promise, they were on the mountain, and they focused on their failure and they were in the valley. But when you focus on Jesus, you just move like this into the things of God. When you focus on the eternal word of the eternal God, when you focused on the finished work of Jesus and what He’s accomplished, you just keep moving. Things get better and better with Jesus. They get brighter and brighter. The Bible actually says this in Proverbs 4, that the path of the just is like the dawning of the day that gets brighter and brighter until the perfect day. That’s how our relationship with God should be. But we need to focus on the finished work. See, there’s a aspect of the promises that’s already finished. For instance, in 1 Peter 2:24, the Scripture says, “By His stripes, you were healed.” And there’s a finished work, and we need to focus that this work was already done at the cross. Now, I’m just believing God so I can receive it. When you understand how powerful the word of God is, it’ll change your life. And the Scripture actually talks about that in 2 Peter 1. I believe it is when we put our eyes on Jesus, it’s more powerful than Moses and Elijah appearing to Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration when you understand that, the powerful word of God.

 

  I have a word for some of you watching right now too, and that’s that God’s grace for you, His love for you, His compassion for you, His mercy for you, it’s incredibly consistent. It’s actually so consistent that in Scripture, it says it’s new every morning. That means He has new grace for you every day, He has new love for you every day, new mercy for you. So even when you fall down, His grace for you is there. That at that moment, it’s new every day. So God’s love for you, it’s incredibly consistent.

 

  Amen. If you need prayer, if you wanna become a partner, I encourage you just to call in today. We have trained prayer ministers that are waiting to pray for you. And if you haven’t received Jesus, pray with me right now. Heavenly Father, I believe Jesus Christ is your Son. I believe He died for my sins. I believe you raised Him from the dead on the third day and made Him Lord. And I surrender my life to you. In Jesus’ name. Amen. Hi, friends, I wanna invite you to go to our website, charischristiancenter.com, where you can receive hundreds of hours of teaching, free of charge, downloadable audio, downloadable video. We’ve made this available for you and we’d love to have you go there and check out what we have available. Thanks so much and God bless you.

 

  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.

 

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