Four Keys To Faith Part 1 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue
Four Keys to Faith Part 1
Four Keys to Faith part 1 with Pastors Lawson and Aaron Perdue. In this episode of Grace For Today, gain a revelation of how you can make a decision to follow Jesus each day! When you are decisive about following God He will back you up!
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!
Four Keys to Faith Part 1 Transcript
Welcome to the broadcast, friends. I am so glad that you are connected with us today. And I have a very special guest today, I have my son, Aaron, and he is a tremendous man of faith. And we’re gonna be talking about the first key of faith, which is making a decision, make a decision to follow Jesus and to surrender to His will, and it will change your life for good because God’s plan for you is better than yours any day of the week. Bless you. Friends, we are here today and we are talking about four keys to faith. And today, we’re gonna specifically talk about making a decision. My good friend, Jesse Duplantis, said something one time and it just stuck in my mind. He said, “Most of the time, in the realm of faith, I made a decision and God honored it.” So we’re gonna talk about making a decision. You know the Bible says in Hebrews 11:6, it says, “Without faith, it is impossible to please God, for he that comes to God must believe that He is and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him.” Faith is pleasing to God and we can please God with our faith. Praise God.
That’s awesome. Well, it’s great to be on the show, I’m Aaron Perdue, I’m Pastor Lawson’s oldest son. I’m here on staff at the church, and it’s great to be here with you all on the show today.
Praise the Lord. So, we’re gonna be talking about, really, faith today and in the New Testament, there are two themes that really stand out, the realm of grace. And that is what God has done for us in the realm of faith. And faith is our positive response towards the gospel. But this aspect of making a decision, I believe that’s very foundational in the realm of faith. Great people of faith are decisive people.
Amen.
You know, Andrew Wommack, I believe, is a great man of faith. He’s a decisive person. He makes a decision. He sticks with it. Praise God. You know?
I think God allows us to make decisions a lot of times, too. I remember when I was praying about going into full-time ministry. About six years ago, my dad offered me a position here at the church as the associate pastor. And at the time, I was completing my Doctorate in Classical Music, and I was praying about what to do. And I felt that God was nudging me in the direction of ministry, but I really felt that He was telling me that, “Aaron, it’s your choice. You can decide to stay in music, you’ll succeed in music, but it’s your choice to go into ministry. And if you go to ministry, you’ll be very successful in ministry and do a lot of great things for the kingdom.” But God gave that decision to me. So, faith, I think a lot of times, it’s like what you said, it’s making a decision and just going for it, and God backs it up. We need to hear from God, but God wants us to make decisions. He values our free will.
Yeah. Part of this, I’m talking about, and I was gonna talk about that aspect with you, but it’s whose plan are we gonna follow? Are we gonna follow God’s plan or our own plan? And God’s plan for us is better than our plan for us any day of the week.
[Aaron] Amen.
One of the first ones, when we talk about great people of faith, if you look into Hebrews 11, it’s an aspect of the faith hall of fame, and all these different people of faith. Abel chose to bring his best offering. Enoch chose to walk with God. Noah chose to build an ark. Abraham and Sarah chose to become pioneers and go out into a land that they would later receive for an inheritance. So what are the key decisions that we make in life? Well, I think the first key decision that we make is who are we gonna serve? And Joshua 24:15 says, “Ask for me in my house, we will serve the Lord.” And I remember, Aaron, when you were in high school, you made this statement, “You can be in drugs, you can be in alcohol, you can be in witchcraft, you can be involved in sex, or you can serve Jesus.” And that was simply, to me, just you saying, “I’ve made a decision, I’m gonna serve Jesus. And there’s all these other things that are available, there’s all these other things that are out there, but I have made a choice. I’m gonna follow Jesus Christ.” And I just don’t buy this stuff that everybody has to succumb to their surroundings. And I know when we moved to Colorado Springs, a lot of my ministry mentors were really concerned about us moving here. And I knew that you were already, you were gonna be a freshman in high school between your eighth grade and freshman year, you were very secure in who you were. I knew Andrew, our middle son who was going into seventh grade, was already very secure, very stable. I didn’t know about Peter. Peter was just going into fifth grade. But one day that summer, we were driving across town and there’s a store that sells alcohol and tobacco. And Peter said, “I can’t believe anybody does that to their body and destroys their body with that.” And I thought, “You know what? I don’t have to worry about Peter. He’s very secure too.” And praise God, all of you boys have made good choices. You all made a choice at a young age to serve Jesus. You followed through with that. You all went to secular colleges, but you were surrounded with a lot of wickedness. I know one time I went to visit you in college when you were in Carnegie Mellon. And some of the kids that were around, you said, “Dad, did you notice they were high on drugs? I didn’t even notice, but you could tell, but that didn’t affect you.
No. I was actually talking to a young man who’s about 18, 19 years old here at the church, recently, I took him out to lunch. He helps me out by serving on the music team. And I just asked if he ever thought about going to college and he said he was thinking about it. But I just said, “You’re gonna be okay because you’ve decided to follow Jesus.” But I said, “If you go to college and think, ‘Well, I’m just gonna find myself in college,’ you’re gonna get lost really easily.” If you think you’re gonna find yourself in the world, you’re gonna lose yourself, you’re gonna lose your purpose, you’re gonna lose what you’re created to do. You have to find yourself in Jesus. You can’t find yourself in the world. You can’t find yourself in relationships with other people. You can’t find yourself in money or in success, or in a career. You really find your true purpose in Jesus. So you have to make the decision, I’m gonna follow Jesus, no turning back. You gotta serve somebody.
Amen.
There’s a song that says, “You gotta serve somebody, it might be the devil, it might be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody.” A lot of people serve themselves, serve their own feelings, serve this present evil age.
Yeah. And it’s not even… You went to Carnegie Mellon University and got your undergrad, your B.A., and then Andrew… Or you went to Rice University and got your Master’s and your Doctorate, and both secular colleges. But you did very well there. You were part of the Christian community, what there was, you said. Carnegie Mellon, you didn’t have a lot of other believers there, but you found a church. You had to ride a bus, two buses actually, took you an hour and a half to get to church, but you got involved in a church family. You did really, really well there. You got involved in a good church in Houston. You did well there. Your brother, Andrew, went to Colorado School of Mines. And for a while, he commuted back and forth to Colorado Springs because it’s about a little over an hour drive, so it wasn’t too bad to Golden. But he got his B.A. and his Master’s there. And then he got married, and him and Brie found their own church in Denver. And they did very well, they never wavered. And Peter went to Princeton University, our youngest son, and Peter was involved in a Christian faith group, evangelical faith group, Faith and Action at Princeton University. And he started out the first year, it was about 25 students. And he was in the leadership. By the time he graduated, they had over 500 students. Such a revival there on the campus and they couldn’t find enough people to facilitate all the different Bible studies. So, a lot of times people look at all the negative. And I know at the time you guys were going to college, there were a lot of different people. And there was a Christian person that does things, and he said, “Well, 90% of people lose their faith. Students lose their faith when they go to college.” And I just didn’t buy it.
They probably didn’t have faith to begin with.
That’s right. I don’t believe 90% of anybody loses their faith. They never really had faith. They never were born again. I don’t believe that 90% of believers reject their salvation. I just don’t believe that. I don’t believe that’s scriptural. And there were people quoting that, trying to get people signed up in Bible college. But even some of the top Christian schools, I used to tell people that went to these top Bible schools, “Now, there’s two kinds of people here. There’s people that are like you that love Jesus. And then there are people that their parents sent them here to get saved, and you’ve gotta figure out the difference.” And I learned that observing people that went to some of these top, full-gospel Christian schools. And so it’s not just where you go to college, it’s a decision that you’ve made in your heart that I’m gonna follow Jesus, I’m gonna serve Jesus. Jesus Christ is my Lord. There’s no other way. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the father except by me.”
A faith-filled life is a purpose-filled life too. I went to college but I went there with a purpose. I wanted to become the best musician I could be. So I was there not to try to find myself, try to find a way of thinking, try to find a different… I was there to become a really good musician. And that school at the time had the greatest flute professor that I wanted to study with. My brother, Andrew, went to school because he wanted to become a great engineer. He wasn’t going there to try to… He was going there by faith to become a great engineer. So, there was purpose driving him and keeping him on track.
Right, your son, Peter, graduated from Princeton, did very well. But after he graduated, him and his wife, Kendra, went to a graduation at Stanford University. And I remember Peter talking about how he was horrified how so many young people didn’t live with purpose. And purpose will keep you going in the right direction. And I know I taught you boys from the Book of Daniel, which is another story, but purpose is one thing you wanna live with. They purposed in their heart not to defile themself with the king’s mead. And it was about their covenant with God. We have a covenant with God and that changes our life. So, when you make a decision to serve Jesus as Lord, to serve, to surrender to His lordship, it changes your life. And then you have a purpose that’s greater than yourself. The second is key decision, I think, that everybody needs to make is what are we gonna believe? Are we gonna believe the Bible is the Word of God? Are we gonna believe the scriptures? And talking about this, I had a good friend and he was a Lutheran pastor. And he grew up and he was actually molested as a young child and thought he was homosexual. He never acted out, but all through college, and then he went into ministry school and he went to a conservative Lutheran school. And at this school, he came to the point that he had to decide whether the Bible is the Word of God or it wasn’t. And he said, “I made a choice that if the Bible was the Word of God, then I was not gay because God doesn’t make people… That’s a choice that people made.” And he said, “I made a decision to believe the Bible, to believe the Word of God above what people’s thinking is,” so on and so forth. And in Deuteronomy 30:11, it says, “This commandment, which I command you this day, is not hidden from you neither is it far off. It is not in heaven that you should say who will go up to heaven and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it, neither is it beyond the sea.” In other words, what you were talking about living with purpose, if God wants you to do something, you know what? God will get you there and He will connect you to the people. Everybody is within four relationships of anyone they need to connect with to do anything that God has called them to do. And so, “Don’t say it’s up in heaven and we can’t get there. Don’t say it’s beyond the sea that you should say who will go over the sea?” This is Deuteronomy 30:13. “For us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it. But the Word is near you in your mouth and in your heart that you may do it.” The Word is near you, it’s your choice. And this actually is quoted in Romans chapter 10. And in Romans 10, when Paul quotes this, he’s actually talking about Jesus already came from heaven, lived on the earth, lived a sinless, holy, perfect, pure life, died on the cross for our sins. God raised Him from the dead and now it’s your choice whether you believe the gospel and receive Jesus as Lord.
Yeah, I love what it’s saying here, “For the commandment, which I commanded you today.” So God’s Word, it’s saying it’s here. You know, when you hear God’s Word, faith is not inactive. Faith is a very active thing. That’s why the Bible says, “Faith without works is dead.” Faith is a very active thing. And I just like that, these verses here in Deuteronomy 30, God is saying that once you hear the Word of the Lord, you’re without excuse. You have to take action. You can’t say, “Well, if it’s in heaven or it’s too far away, it’s across the sea,” like-
Right. Well, Jesus has made salvation ultimately available to everyone. And the gospel actually says that everybody is without excuse. We can’t blame anybody because the Word is near us. It’s in our heart and in our mouth, that is the Word of faith that we preach.
And I like that it’s saying too, it’s not too mysterious, you know? Like, when God speaks, it’s not too mysterious. I love what it says here, Deuteronomy 30:11, “For this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious.”
[Lawson] Yeah, that’s in the new kingdom.
Some people act like God is so mysterious, like, faith is a mystery-
You can’t know it.
but it’s not.
Like in the Book of Acts, they built an alter to the unknown god. Paul said, “To who you ignorantly worship. I now declare to you.” So we’re gonna take a very short break and we’ll be back right after this break. Stay tuned. Friends, this week, we’ve been sharing on faith in God will change your world. And I am so happy to be sharing with you this faith package. I have this book from my good friends, Mark Hankins, Mark and Trina Hankins, on “The Spirit of Faith.” We have “World Changing Faith,” one of my best series. We have “Four Keys to Faith.” And then finally we have “Have Faith and Doubt Not.” These are some of my very, very best teachings on the realm of faith. And if you begin to understand faith, I believe it will literally change your life. It’s changed mine, praise God. It’s changed my financial position. It’s changed my spiritual condition. It’s changed my physical condition and it’s all good. God wants to do good things in your life and He does it through grace and faith. So if you want to get this teaching, just give us a call today or check us out online. Thanks so much and blessings. Praise our Lord, friends. We’re back and we’ve been sharing on faith makes a choice, praise God, and we made it a choice, first of all, to serve Jesus. Now, we’re in Deuteronomy chapter 30. We’re gonna jump into verse 15. He says, “See, I’ve set before you this day, life and good, death and evil, in that I commend you this day to love the Lord thy God, and walk in His ways, keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgements that you may live and multiply, that the Lord will bless you in the land wherever you go to possess it.” You know what? God wants to bless you. You know, He said, Jesus, the scripture says to bless us in turning us from our inequities. But if we’re gonna walk in that blessing, we have to make a choice. Now, you went to school to be a musician and you made this decision, I think, very early in college. In fact, you were sharing it, Charis Bible College, and I heard you sharing it one day, but you were talking about how many of the students around you, that they were poor managers of their time, they were poor managers of their money, and they were poor people. So you made a decision while you were going to school to be a musician. You said, “Daddy, I’m gonna be a good manager of my time, I’m gonna be a good manager of my money, and I’m gonna be a millionaire.” Now, you made that decision, what, how old were you? 19. 20 years old?
Yeah.
And you’re a millionaire already. So supernaturally, God has blessed you and God has helped you. Now, God did that, right? I don’t actually pay you a lot for being an assistant pastor, but you made a decision to be blessed and God honored that decision. And while you were in college, God gave you different ways, supernaturally, you believed to pay off your college debt. First of all, the devil tried to kill you when you were a senior in college, and you made a decision laying in a hospital bed that, praise God, by the time I graduate, I’m gonna have a thousand dollars in the bank and I’m gonna have all my bills paid. And when it didn’t even look like you could work and you started buying and selling things, and that happened. And then you made a decision to pay off all your college debts supernaturally. And I told you, you could do it in a year if you’d believe God, you said, “Daddy, I believe it and I’ll do it in six months.” Praise God and it happened, just like you said.
Yeah.
Praise the Lord.
That’s true.
And then I remember when I dropped you off to go ahead and get your Doctorate after you got your Master’s. And I told you, “Aaron, if you’ll believe God,” I texted you a message, “by the time you graduate from college with your Doctorate, you’ll have a hundred thousand dollars.” Now, most people have a few hundred thousand dollar debt. You had zero debt and you had all your college debts paid off, and you didn’t have a hundred thousand net worth when you graduated from college. You had a $200,000 net worth because you made a decision to believe God and God gave you a way through an online business that you developed. And you were making $10,000 a month while you were in college. But see, you made a decision, first of all, to believe God and live in the blessing. And you know what? If you make a decision, then God will give you creative ways and stuff to work those promises in your life. And it’s different things for different people because we’re all unique, but it starts with a decision in your heart. And so God said, “Choose life.” He goes on down there and He says, “If your heart turns away and you don’t hear, and you’re drawn away and worship other gods and serve them,” in verse 17, He says, “I denounce that you will surely perish and that you will not prolong your days where you pass over Jordan to go and possess it. But I call heaven and earth to record,” verse 19, Deuteronomy 30:19, “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore, choose life that both you and your seed shall live.” Praise God, so we’ve chosen life. I chose life, praise God, and it’s affected all my children in a positive way. I believe that’s going on down and affected my grandchildren in a positive way. Praise God, and we wanna see this covenant with God, this relationship with the Lord renewed in the third generation, praise God. But you made a decision, praise God, you’ve made it. Tell us about some more decisions you’ve made.
Yeah, I just love that, God says, “This is your choice. You can choose between life and death, blessing and cursing.” And I like that He just gives the answer there, choose life, there’s a better way. You know, some people just really don’t want to choose God, don’t want to choose His ways, and it doesn’t lay down a good path. So always, always choose God, always choose to follow Him and to hear His voice, and just do what God tells you to do.
Amen, so key decision, who are we gonna serve? We’re gonna serve Jesus. We’re gonna serve the Lord. What are we gonna believe? We’re gonna believe the scriptures. We’re gonna believe the promises of God. I made a choice. I’m gonna believe whatever God says in His Word. When He promises healing, I’m gonna believe it. When He promises peace, I’m gonna believe it. When He promises prosperity, I believe that. You know, somebody said, “Well, I don’t know what I think about this prosperity gospel.” It’s not the prosperity gospel, it’s the gospel. And it’s just, well, the first thing is, what does the scripture say? What does the Word of God say? Well, I don’t know. Well, I know, Jesus, His Lord, praise God, and He not only paid for my forgiveness, He paid for my health. He paid for my financial and physical prosperity. And the third thing is, whose plan are we gonna follow? And I’m gonna read these scriptures if we have time. In Hebrews 11:23-29, but it talks about Moses, and Moses made a decision that he was gonna follow God’s plan, praise God. And you talked about this early in the broadcast, but you made a choice to follow God’s plan for your life. And God’s plan for your life is a good plan. “By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment.” By faith Moses,” this is Hebrews 11:24, “When he was come of years, refused to be called the son of Pharoah’s daughter. He chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a seizing. Esteeming the reproach of Christ’s greatest riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he had respect to the repayment of the reward. For by faith, he forsook Egypt not fearing the wrath of the king. He endured, seeing Him who is invisible through faith. He kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, bless he that destroyed the firstborn would touch them. By faith they passed through the red sea as by dry land, which the Egyptians talking about doing were drowned.” So by faith, Moses refused, he chose, he esteemed, he respected what God said, he forsook Egypt, he did not fear the wrath of the king, and he endured seeing Him who is invisible. Moses made a choice. Now, you’ve made lots of choices.
Yeah, I think in the world today, there’s a lot of pressure to compromise the Word of God. The Word of God is very clear. I love what God just says, that “there’s life, there’s death, there’s good, there’s evil, there’s blessing, there’s cursing.” A lot of just modern Christianity here in our country tries to water things down not to offend people, not to make it so black and white, but don’t compromise God’s Word. When God speaks through His Word, the Bible, it is very black and white, it is very clear. Jesus is Lord, He’s either Lord or He’s not, you know? So don’t compromise the Word of God. Don’t try to water it down, just receive the Word completely. And I like that you said that earlier in the broadcast, you really have to make a choice concerning the Bible, concerning God’s Word. Is this God’s Word or is it not? I remember a few years ago, I was watching a documentary about Billy Graham. And at the time he was in college, he was going to Wheaton College, a Christian college. And he was kind of wrestling in his heart whether or not the Bible was the infallible, the perfect Word of God. Is it God’s Word? Is it perfect or is it not? And he said, “You know what? I came to the point where I just said, ‘You know, by faith, I’m gonna believe that this Bible is the absolute perfect, pure Word of God.'” And he said, “Whenever I preached, I would just preach the Word of God and that’s what changed lives. That’s what brought thousands upon thousands of people to Jesus was because I preached the Bible and the Bible is the Word of God.” So if you’re wrestling with that in your heart, am I gonna believe the entirety of God’s Word? You need to say, “Yes, the Bible is God’s Word. It is perfect, it is pure, it’s infallible, and God’s Word is powerful.” That’s one of the greatest, the first greatest faith decision you can make is really to follow Jesus to say that He is Lord, but He is now not just Lord, but He’s your Lord. But the second decision you make is I’m gonna believe the Bible. I’m gonna believe God’s Word.
Amen. You know what? Believe and the Word of God will change your life. And I know I was pastoring for six years before I got a revelation of grace and that really changed my life. But I had a young man that came to my church those first six years and then went to college and he said, “Pastor, the church was growing and people were being ministered to and healed, and set free and saved and filled with the Holy Spirit. And I asked Barbara, mom, I said, “Why do you think that was, ’cause I didn’t have a revelation of grace?” She said, “Because you taught the Bible and you taught people faith. You taught them the Word of God.” And the Bible says that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. And when you teach the scripture, when you teach the Word of God, it’s the Word of God that builds faith in the hearts of people so that they can receive what God has promised them. And you have received so many of the promises of God, I’ve received so many of the promises of God. And I haven’t received everything that I believe for, but I’ve received lots of it . And a lot of things, I receive, and then I have to believe in it. I’m believing God today for more than I’ve ever believed Him for in my life. Praise God, faith isn’t a dead thing where you’ve arrived. You just keep going in this realm of faith. And it’s a marvelous thing. So we just have a few seconds here. And before we go off today, do you want to say anything to the people?
I just love the show, that we’re talking about faith. I think a lot of people have a lot of misunderstandings about faith. They think faith is a very mysterious thing, but I like what God says, it’s not too mysterious. You know, God’s Word is playing His will, it is playing His desires for us, they’re written down, recorded in scriptures. So, faith is really just putting action to what God says, in your heart, you’re gonna actively follow God. You’re gonna actively believe the Word of God, apply it to your life. And if you’re looking for a Word from God, I just encourage you to spend time in the Word. You know, God leads us and guides us from His Word. So if you’re looking for direction in life, I want to start actively applying faith to my life, spend some time in the Word of God. God will speak to you, He will minister to you, and He will lead you and guide you through His Word.
Praise the Lord. I wanna say a big thank you for staying tuned with us today. If you need prayer, give us a call today. You know, we talked about making Jesus your Lord. You can do that, you can be healed. You can receive the promises and if you wanna become a partner or receive our product, give us a call today, we would love to hear from you. Blessings.
[Narrator] What is faith? Do I need more of it? And how do I exercise what I have? In this package containing Mark Hankins’ book, “The Spirit of Faith” and CD series, “World Changing Faith”, “Four Keys to Faith” and “Have Faith, Doubt Not,” you’ll learn the answer to these questions and more. You can get this special package for $59 when you call 719-418-4000, or visit CharisChristianCenter.com.
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