Steps to Victory – Part 1 Lawson and Barbara Perdue

  Friends, it’s great to have you with us today. I’m so glad that you tuned into the broadcast. We are gonna be sharing today about how Jesus identified with us and became a man. And when Jesus walked on the earth in His ministry, He walked as a man anointed by the Holy Ghost. When He overcame the devil, He overcame the devil as a man anointed by the Holy Ghost. And when we understand that, we can walk in His victory. Friends, we’re so glad that you’re with us today and I’m so glad to have Barbara on the show all this week and we’re talking about steps to victory. Thank God Jesus made a way for us to be victory victorious in life. And we can walk in the victory that He already won.

 

  I like that and I’m very excited about our teaching and ministry together this week. And as you mentioned, the title of our teaching is Steps to Victory. And I have it also in parentheses. Jesus has already paved the road to victory for us. You know, as you and I were raised and grown up in a more traditional background, I don’t really believe they really brought out everything that Jesus did for us when he walked that walk to be crucified and when He was beaten for us. And what that means, that we already, thanks to Jesus, already have a place of victory.

 

  Amen. You know, the Bible says thanks be to God who always causes us to triumph through our Lord Jesus Christ and we are triumphant in Jesus.

 

  I think you need to slow down. You just said something that I really liked. Because of Jesus, He causes us always to triumph.

 

  Amen.

 

  Always. I like that word always. ’cause some people think that’s just on certain days or only when I had a good year. But that means always.

 

  Amen. You know, when we’re born of God, which is really a result of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, we have the victory of Christ on the inside of us. We have the resurrected-

 

  That’s right.

 

  life of Jesus living in us. And I thank God for that. So Barbara, I’m gonna let you go ahead and jump into the Word of God today and we’re gonna be sharing all this week and talking about what Jesus did for us in His death, burial, and resurrection and what that really means to us as believers.

 

  Well, I’m excited. We’re gonna be starting in the book of John, which tells us a lot about Jesus and I get excited. We’re gonna start in John 1:14 and then even read verse 16. But in, again, John 1:14, it says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word is alive. We beheld as glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

 

  Amen. You know, Jesus brought both grace and truth and the Word of God is always truth, you know? Jesus said, “Sanctify them through thy truth. Thy Word is truth.” But if you have truth minus grace, what you really have is law. And law leads to death. The Bible actually talks about in 2 Corinthians chapter three that whoever has a ministry of the law is a ministry of condemnation and a ministry of death. But if you have truth plus grace, you have Jesus who equals life. So the way that we approach the truth determines whether the truth will produce life or death in us.

 

  I like that. And I like it as you and I receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It does just open up the Word of God. I know that wasn’t in the notes, but I just wanted to put it in there because it’s kind of interesting when I would go visit our other extended family who again went to more traditional churches, they were taught that no one could understand the Bible. And I thought that was so interesting. And a lot of times they would stand up and read number 28 out of the red book and then sit down and then you’d read number 48 out of the blue book. And there wasn’t a lot of reading out of the scripture because they really bought that lie that you can’t understand the scriptures. I can remember as a young child, as I began, like especially age eight and getting a little older to verse, or not to verse, but to age 10, I just thought, I’m gonna start reading the Bible for myself. And I will admit, I had the King James version, which I know you like, and I personally don’t talk verily, verily or thus say someone. But I like how it says here, “The Word became flesh and He dwelt among us.” And there is grace and truth. And the best place to get the truth regarding anything is the scripture. And what I saw, and I praise God, you and I both, regardless of what was the traditional church or the name on the church, we were taught the Bible stories. And that is a great place to start as a child in Sunday school or kids’ church, whatever your church calls it, but you cannot deny the power of God, even just learning those Bible stories like Noah, how he listened to God, you mean God talks to us? Yes, He does. God talked to Noah. And when I see that God always intervenes, God always gives a warning and it always has something to do with helping save other people.

 

  Amen.

 

  And getting His Word truth. You know-

 

  Amen. David and Goliath or Daniel in the lion’s den showed again the power of God to those who love Him.

 

  Amen.

 

  And even that king said, “Daniel, is your God, was He able?” When he came to check him, to see if he was alive the next day after being thrown in that den and I love how the king said, “Daniel, was your God able to save you?” And then of course, we know that they found Daniel alive even amongst all those lions. And the king even admitted, “Your God is the God.” And so we learned a lot just through these amazing stories in the Bible, how good God is, how much He loves us, and that He does talk to us.

 

  You know, there’s a couple things that I wanna share as you’re talking about that. You know, Jesus again in John 17:17 said, “Sanctify them through thy truth. Thy Word is truth.” David said in Psalm 119:130, he said, “The entrance of the Word gives light and gives understanding to the simple.” So I’ve always taken a simple approach toward the Word of God. If the Bible says that if God, that God said it, I believe it. But all these three people that you talked about, Noah and then David and Daniel, all of these people were people who stood for the truth. But we can see the grace of God in all of their lives. In fact, when we look at Noah, the Bible says that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And because Noah found grace, God spoke to him, God gave him direction, and Noah built an ark for the saving, the scripture says, of his house. It actually took him about 100 years to do that. This is amazing, realizing that most Bible scholars believed that there was not even rain on the earth at that time before the flood. Most Bible scholars believed that the dew came up from the earth in Watergate. But Noah heard God built this ark like 450-foot long, 75-feet wide, and three stories high. It was an amazing feat, him and his family. The Bible calls Noah a man of faith and a preacher of righteousness and the world scorned him, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. David is another great example of grace. In fact, when we study the Bible in Romans chapter four, it really tells us that we receive righteousness or a right standing with God by grace through faith. And He uses Abraham as an example of faith because Abraham really needed faith. But He also uses David as an example of grace because David really needed grace. And we need both of those things. We need the grace of God and we need faith, right? And then when you look at Daniel, Daniel spoke the truth, so on and so forth. But there was a grace on Daniel’s life and Daniel actually was an amazing person in that he obtained favor under four different world leaders in three different world empires. The Babylonian empire, the Medo-Persian empire, and then all of those empires, and then the Persian empire, He found grace. And so thank God for the grace of God that’s available to us through knowing Jesus. And so we receive truth from the Word of God, but we also receive grace. Now, Jesus is the embodiment of grace and truth. And when we receive grace and truth, that leads us to the victory that Jesus already won.

 

  That’s awesome. That just leads us right up to our next scripture in John chapter one, but we’re gonna skip down to verse 16 and it says, “Of His fullness, we have all,” I like that again, all.

 

  Amen.

 

  It’s for everyone who wants it. We have all received and grace for grace. And I like this in some other translations, it says it this way. So out of His fullness, we were all supplied with gift heaped upon gift. That is powerful. All supplied with gifts heaped upon gifts. Another way, and I like this too, regarding verse 16 and out of the words, complete perfection, we have all received and to us there has come wave upon wave of grace. And you mentioned just even a little more about Noah and how really it took, it was a lifelong task, a lifelong journey. I believe a lot of us, when God has anointing on our life and a calling on our life, it will take your entire life to fulfill it. You know, we’re all raised in this generation of zapping things in the microwave and only taking five seconds. And if it took five minutes, we must have missed God.

 

  Yeah.

 

  And you mentioned it took around a hundred years and we know from studying it and other people have even brought more revelation and knowledge how huge this ark was. And what it really shows me is I’m sure Noah and his family were ministering and preaching and telling people to get in the ark that the flood was coming and they laughed at him and scorned at him. That ark, it was not only large just to fit all the animals that were supposed to go on it, but there was space and room for people. God is not trying to keep anyone out of heaven.

 

  Amen. No, he’s not. God has made grace available really to all people and Jesus is the embodiment of that grace. You know, everything in the Old Testament and all these people we talked about, Noah, David, and Daniel, they were people who were examples of what God was doing. And really, it’s amazing that during every world empire and with every people group, God had people there who were sharing the gospel, so to speak. And the Bible actually talks about how in the Old Testament, the prophets prophesied of the grace to come. That grace we find in the person of Jesus Christ. And we’re gonna talk about in the second half of the broadcast how the grace of Jesus was really manifested through His death on the cross for us. So thank God for what Jesus has done. We’re gonna be focusing all this week talking about what Jesus did for us in His death and resurrection and how that has brought us into victory through our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So we’re gonna be back right after this broadcast. We’re gonna talk more about Jesus and Him identifying with us and what that means. So stay tuned. Bless us

 

  Friends, I’m so glad that you’re with us today. And I’ve been sharing with my wife, Barbara, and you can’t hit everything that we’re actually sharing about in these broadcasts, but you can go to our website and you can receive the teaching we’re sharing about in Barbara’s teaching, “Steps to Victory,” and my teaching, “Complete in Christ” plus hundreds of other teachings, lessons.

 

  I just had this headache like a migraine or tension headache. When we came into the service, he said, “It’s on your left side, specifically right along your head right here.” And he even motioned that way and said something like this power of God’s gonna come on you. I just felt like this electricity. Like it felt like it outlined my whole entire body. Then I just felt, “Wow, just touched by God.”

 

  Thanks friends for staying with us. In the first part of the broadcast, we talked about how Jesus is the embodiment of grace and truth. And really we talked about there’s different Old Testament examples. And through this Old Testament examples, we can see the grace of God, but they are really looking forward to the grace that is in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when we begin to understand the grace of Jesus, the Bible says of His fullness, we have received grace upon grace. But we wanna go ahead and talk a little bit about how the grace of God was manifest in the person of Jesus and as identification with us and what that means. So Barbara, why don’t you go ahead?

 

  Yeah, so for this, we’re gonna turn to Matthew chapter three and look at verses 16 and 17. And again, we just talked in the first half how the Word became flesh. Now we’re gonna talk about how Jesus identified with us. And it says in verse 16, “When he had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water and behold, the heavens were open to Him and He saw the spirit of God descending like a dove. And enlightening upon Him.” In verse 17 it says, “And suddenly, a voice came from heaven saying, ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.'”

 

  So when you study baptism in the scriptures, when we’re baptized in water, what that’s saying is that we’re identifying with the death and resurrection of Christ. That we die to sin, we live to God like in Romans chapter six. But what happened when Jesus was baptized in water? I believe that Jesus was identifying with the Father’s plan for His life. I believe when you look at the scriptures, you find that Jesus studied the scriptures as a young child. And I believe Jesus, as he studied the scriptures, he found out who His father said that He was. He also found out His father’s plan for His life. But then when He was 30 years old and He was baptized by John in the River Jordan, actually, I believe he was identifying with the plan that God had for Him. And just like we identify with Him, He identified with us fully as human people. You know, He was God manifest in the flesh. So He was fully God and fully man. But when He was baptized, then the Father said, “This is my beloved son in whom I’m well pleased.” The father spoke from heaven and the Holy Spirit came and sat on Jesus. And so when He identified with us, when He identified with this plan that God had for His life, and I believe at that point in time, Jesus knew that that plan included the cross. I believe that Jesus knew that that plan included His death. And I believe that he looked and saw those things and yet was willing to do that for humanity. So God had this plan, the Father from the foundation of the world. The Scripture actually says in Revelation 13:8 that Jesus was the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. But when Jesus was baptized, He fully understood that plan as a man and identified with it so that He could bring us to redemption.

 

  Yeah, that’s amazing. It really is amazing. And there’s some other things we wanted to bring out in this half how Jesus was tempted. And I don’t know, sometimes people don’t realize this. Again, He identified with us and He was tempted in everything just like we are. And we can see this in Matthew chapter four, we’re gonna look at verses three and four just to get started. It says, “Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, ‘If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.’ But He answered and said, ‘It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'”

 

  Yeah, so Jesus was tempted. And when you read this in Matthew four, it’s also in Luke four. Jesus was tempted, really, just like us. You know, in the flesh, with the lust of the flesh. The Bible talks about the lust of flesh just like Adam and Eve in the garden in Genesis chapter three. And He was fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. So He was hungry.

 

  Right.

 

  And yet Jesus overcame that temptation with the Word. So immediately after Jesus identifies with the Father’s plan for Him as a man, right? He identifies, I believe, with He’s gonna go to the cross, He’s gonna die for humanity.

 

  Right.

 

  He identifies with this whole thing. The Father says that He’s pleased with Jesus’ decision. Jesus made that decision to fully obey the Father. The scripture says in Hebrews that Jesus learned obedience by the things which He suffered. But immediately after He does that, the Holy Spirit comes on Him. But then not only does the Holy Spirit come on Him, and Jesus from this point operates as a man anointed by the Holy Ghost. So when Jesus works miracles, for instance, He doesn’t do this as God, He does it as a man anointed by the Holy Ghost. But He is tempted right here in the lust of the flesh. Then we’ll see, He’s tempted with the lust of the eye and the pride of life. Just like Adam and Eve were tempted in the garden. Now, Adam and Eve failed that temptation test, but Jesus didn’t fail that test. And when you read in 1 John chapter 2:15-17, Satan really doesn’t have any new tricks. He tries to use the same old bag of tricks. But Jesus overcame the devil through the truth of the Word of God and through the power of the Holy Spirit. And we can overcome the devil, just like Jesus overcame the devil as a man anointed by the Holy Ghost with the truth of the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

  Amen.

 

  So go ahead, Barbara.

 

  Yeah, now we’re gonna skip on down and read verses five through seven. Then the devil took Him up into the holy city and set Him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to Him, “If you are the son of God through yourself down for it is written, ‘He shall give His angels charge over you and in their hands, they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.'” And Jesus said to Him, “It is written, again, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.'” And I can go on and read verses eight through 10. And again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory and said to Him, “All these things I will give to you if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan, for it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, in Him only shall you serve.'”

 

  Yeah, and so Jesus overcomes again every temptation, the lust of the flesh, the lust of eye, the pride of life. Just like Adam and Eve were tempted and failed that test in the garden, but He overcomes every temptation by the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Word of God. And the way that He overcame with the Word of God, it was through this spoken Word of God. And I believe that we can overcome-

 

  Amen.

 

  every temptation just like Jesus overcame. You know, the Bible actually talks about this in the book of Corinthians that there is no temptation overtaken you, but such as common demand. And God will with that temptation make a way of escape. I believe that He’s already made the way of escape through the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so if somebody comes and says, “Well, I’m the only one that’s ever dealt with this loneliness or I’m the only one that’s ever dealt with this challenge physically or in the area of sin, in any era relationally,” you’re not the only one.

 

  That’s right.

 

  Jesus was tempted, The scripture actually says this in the book of Hebrews, in all points like we are, yet without sin. And Jesus overcame and He’s really an example for us. And if Jesus overcame the devil through the power of the Holy Spirit and through the power of the Word of God, He released that power when He spoke the Word of God. We can overcome through the power of the Holy Spirit and the spoken Word of God. Now, a lot of people think that our goal as believers is overcoming sin and Satan, but our goal really as believers is not overcoming sin and Satan. The goal as a believer is to know God through Jesus Christ. And the fact is, and we’re gonna talk about this later in the week, but the fact is, when you believe on Jesus, you become a world overcomer.

 

  Amen.

 

  The Bible actually says in 1 John 5:4-5, “Whosoever is born of God overcomes this world. And this is the victory that overcomes this world, even our faith.” Who is He that overcomes the world? That He who believes that Jesus is the son of God. So when you believe that Jesus is the son of God and make Him your Lord, you become a world overcomer. It says just before that in 1 John 4:4, “Greater is He that’s in you than he that’s in the world.” We already have the world overcoming power, life, nature of God in us as believers. And if we’ll believe the Word of God and speak the Word of God through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can overcome the devil just like Jesus.

 

  Amen. Well, you brought out some powerful things and what we saw, even here, you talked about Adam and Eve and what we see with Jesus. But again, the deceiver or the devil has no new tricks. And it’s always to make you doubt your relationship with God, who God is, and who you are, and also give you this doubt or somehow that it’s just amazing to me, the culture, the world we live in, the culture is always just promoting lack. You’re in lack, you don’t have everything you need. You’re in lack.

 

  Right.

 

  You’re in lack and it’s just really ridiculous.

 

  Yeah, and if you look at that, and we’ve been talking about the temptation in the garden, but one of the areas that Satan used to bring Adam and Eve into this temptation. Now, Eve was deceived. And Satan really doesn’t have any new tricks just like you said. In fact, the only power the devil really has over the believer is deception.

 

  Right.

 

  And that’s what he used in the garden with Eve. But he got her to believe, he got Eve to believe a lie and said, “If you’ll eat the tree of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” they could eat freely of any of the trees, of the thousands of trees, I believe, there in the garden. But he said, “If you’ll eat of this tree, God knows that you’ll become like Him.” They were already made-

 

  They were, right.

 

  in the image of God. They were already like God. But it was a lack mentality that Satan used to bring Eve and then, into this temptation. And Adam, right? Chose to do what his wife wanted him to do rather than to obey God. And when you read the book of Timothy, you find out the one that’s really responsible, right? Is Adam because he knew what he was doing.

 

  Well, and again, I like what you brought out the Word is the truth and you brought it out some, but it’s in Genesis 1:26. I always thought that was interesting too and he said, “If you eat that, God knows you’ll be like Him.” I’m like, “Well, you are like him because the Bible says in Genesis 1:26, we are made in the image of God, which means we have His intellect, His personality.” You know, I talk about how people used to tell me I was dumb. And when I read that I thought, “I’m not dumb. I am made in the image of God.”

 

  Friends, I wanna thank you so much for staying with us on this broadcast. We’re gonna be back all week. We’re gonna be sharing more on who we are in Christ, on how we can walk in the victory that Jesus already want in His death and resurrection. And if you need prayer, I want to give you the opportunity to call us today. I have prayer ministers that are waiting to receive your call. Thank you so much, and God bless you. I’ll be right back to pray for you.

 

  Download the Charis Christian Center Mobile app today. Day or night, you can send us your prayer requests where our team of anointed prayer ministers can pray over you. We also make it safe and secure for you to give or partner with this ministry so that you can give with peace of mind. You’ll also have access to all the hundreds of hours of teaching right at your fingertips. So download the Charis Christian Center mobile app wherever you get your favorite apps today. Jesus has already paved the road to victory for us. The Bible gives us clear direction on how to walk down this road and live a super victorious abundant life. Now is the time to take the steps to victory. We’d like to bless you with the digital copy of Pastor Barbara’s three-part teaching, “Steps to Victory,” and Pastor Lawson’s three-part teaching, “Complete in Christ,” a $27 value free-of-charge. Download your copy today at charischristiancenter.com.

 

  Friends, we don’t want to leave this broadcast until we give you an opportunity to pray with us. And if you’ve never received Jesus Christ as Lord or maybe you have, I wanna invite you to pray with me right now. Heavenly Father, I believe that Jesus Christ is your son. I believe that He died on the cross for my sins. I believe that you raised Him from the dead and made Him Lord. And right now, I surrender to you in Jesus’ name.

 

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