The Commanded Blessing – Part 2 Lawson and Aaron Perdue

  Praise the Lord. Friends, I’m so glad that you tuned into the broadcast. We’re gonna be sharing today on the commanded blessing, and we’re gonna be talking specifically that the commanded blessing is part of God’s covenant of blessing. And when you come into Christ, you are blessed by the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth. So open your heart today and receive God’s good word and begin to walk in what he has for you. Friends, it’s so good to have you with us. We are talking this week about the commanded blessing of God. And when you understand the commanded blessing, when you get that revelation that you are blessed by the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, it will revolutionize your life. So, open your heart. Receive the good word of God today. We’re gonna be sharing about that.

 

  Amen. Really, a lot of people go around and say, I’m blessed. You know, it’s kind of like a famous saying, you know. You see like shirts that say, you know, blessed and, you know, signs in people’s houses that say blessed. But really, as a believer, you’re more than blessed. The commanded blessing is on you. That means the creator of the heavens and the entire universe, god almighty, has commanded his blessing on you. You know, he spoke light into existence. He spoke life into existence. And he’s actually not just spoken, but he’s commanded the blessing on your life.

 

  Amen.

 

  So, we’re gonna share about the commanded blessing and what that means. So let’s go to Deuteronomy 28.

 

  Amen.

 

  Where we see the blessings listed out here in scripture. So in Deuteronomy 28, starting in verse one, it says, “Now it shall come to pass if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all his commandments, which I command you today, that the Lord your God, will set you high above all nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you because you obey the voice of the Lord your God.” So I love that He’s saying the blessings will come on you and overtake you.

 

  Amen.

 

  Now, when you look closely at verse one, it’s talking about you need to do all these things, but that’s Old Testament. When you begin to understand the gospel, and we talked about this in another program, the fact is Jesus is the condition of the covenant. And we’re blessed not because we perform well, but we’re blessed, because we believe well, and when you believe the gospel, it will literally change what you begin to receive from God.

 

  And really, you know, obeying God is by believing on Jesus.

 

  Amen.

 

  You know that that’s true. Obedience is by believing, by putting your faith in Jesus, by understanding your, how important your relationship with Jesus is.

 

  Yeah.

 

  You know, by being in that love relationship with Jesus. That’s true obedience.

 

  Amen, you know, Isaiah said this, looking at the cross, Who has believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? And he’s prophesying about what Jesus is gonna do on the cross. That’s Isaiah 53 in verse one. But Paul quotes that in Romans chapter 10, when he’s talking about receiving right. Standing with God by faith in Jesus. And he said, Isaiah said, “Who has believed our report, but not all have obeyed the gospel.” So believe in the gospel is obeying the gospel. And when you believe on Jesus, you’re blessed in your spirit. Now, when you begin to understand that, and these blessings are conditional, Jesus is the condition of the covenant. The commanded blessing is part of this covenant that we have with God. And it’s Jesus. It’s because of Jesus that we receive it.

 

  Yeah, and if you really understand and have that revelation that you’re blessed, a lot of this is gonna make sense to you. So he’s saying, the blessings are gonna come upon you and overtake you. That means you’re not chasing after the blessing. A lot of people are trying to chase after a blessing, chase after, you know, just, they’re just always, they’re never really settled. They’re never really content. They’re always just running around chasing something that just seems to elude them all the time. But God here is saying that actually the blessing is gonna come after you and overtake you. Verse three in Deuteronomy 28 says, “Blessed shall you be in the city and bless shall you be in the country.” That means this commanded blessing, the blessing of the Lord, the blessing that comes from believing on Jesus. It’s not based upon your location. It’s not based upon what state you live in, what city you live in. If you live in the country, what school district you live in. A lot of people are trying to, you know, move to the right kind of state. You know, if I can get out of a blue state and move to a red state, or if I can, you know, get out of this country and move to that country, then I’ll be blessed. But really, the blessing isn’t based upon your location.

 

  No, the blessing is based on your spiritual condition. And when you believe on Jesus, you’re blessed in the realm of the spirit. Now, if you’re gonna experience that, you’ve gotta begin to renew your mind and understand what God says about you. You know, when you’re talking about the blessing of the Lord coming on you and overtaking you, it reminds me of a story years ago when we started this church. JD Link was a student at Cares Bible College with his wife, Krista. They had three students. They came here. They were actually living in their Suburban with three children. But he began to believe this. And praise God, JD within two years, by the time he graduated from Bible school, gave the church $5,000. God supernaturally blessed him. He didn’t have any job at first, but God gave him two when he began to believe. And I would let him take up my offerings back then. And JD one day came to take up an offering, and he said, “This blessing, come on you and overtaken you is like a linebacker overtaking a quarterback.” And man, if you can just get that picture of the blessing just overtaken you, man, it’ll change your life when you begin to see what God really wants to do for you in Christ.

 

  I love that. Blessed shall you be in the city. Blessed shall you be in the country. You know, before we moved here to Colorado Springs, to plant this church, to plant this ministry, about 23 years ago now, before we moved here to Colorado Springs, which is about, you know, the population’s close to half a million. We came from a town Kit Carson, two hours east of here, that was just 300 people.

 

  Yeah.

 

  And you know, it’s a lot different being in a town of 300 versus a town of half a million people. But the blessing of the Lord was upon, you know, this ministry, it was upon my parents, it was upon our, you know, the family, me and my brothers. It was very different living in the country, living in a small town, living in a very rural area versus living the city. But we were blessed.

 

  Amen, praise God.

 

  You know, that’s what it’s saying here. The blessing isn’t based upon your location. It based upon who you believe in. Verse four, blessed shall be the fruit of your body, that’s talking about really your children.

 

  Amen.

 

  And having children, raising children. Just recently we had a big women’s conference here and we do it once a year. Cathy Duplantis comes in, ministers.

 

  Yeah.

 

  But we always have amazing testimonies. But a year ago at the last conference, they asked for people to come for prayer who had struggles conceiving children, had troubles, you know, bearing children. They prayed over them. And this year, a year later, this woman came up and testified. She said her and her husband had a hard time, you know, having children. They had two miscarriages. They were really, you know, just struggling in that area. But she had a little baby on her shoulder.

 

  Three months old.

 

  And she said just a few weeks after she was prayed over, she got pregnant. And, you know, the child went to full term and it was just awesome. She was just in tears, just beaming with joy. “Blessed shall you be in the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground, and the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle, and the offspring of your flocks.” You know, I like to garden. And in Colorado it’s kind of hard to garden. It’s a high desert climate here. It’s very cold in the winter, in the summers, you know, there’s not much moisture. But I have, you know, beautiful lush gardens. I have a lot of awesome flowers. I have some of these really tall flowers, early life. They’re called gladiolas. And here in Colorado, I’ve been told you have to take the bulbs out in the fall, so they don’t freeze and die over the winter. But I’ve never taken ’em out. And they keep coming back year after year. They’re on four years now coming back.

 

  Amen, now, Aaron, I wanna stop a minute. You were talking about the blessing on our children and this woman that, you know, was able to receive a child supernaturally, I think she conceived two weeks after this conference when she was prayed for. But another thing happened during the conference. They called, you know, young ladies forward that were 12 and under, and they asked me to pray for ’em. And I prayed, and actually I have a man that used to be over the children’s ministry at a very, very large church of over 10,000 people. And he was over all the children’s ministry, and he was watching online and he said, pastor Lawson, you need to take that and make a product. And so we’ve done that, and we have it available now on the internet, and it’s, you can download it free of charge or if you want to get it mailed to you if you’re in the United States. We mail these out and we have this and other confession cards, but we have this one and mom has one on scriptures that I prayed over my children. Right? But we’ve made this, we make this available free of charge. And you can either call here at the church and have that mailed out to you, or you can get on the internet and download it free. And we have two of those to have to do with children. We have one about healing, or have one about provision, and one about who we are in Christ. But I wanna let you know they’re available and you can get ’em on our website or you can call the ministry.

 

  So here in Deuteronomy 28, we’re talking about the blessing. And we talked about verse four, the fruit of your body’s blessed. But notice also here in verse four, it’s talking about the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle, increases part of this blessing that’s on our life as believers.

 

  Amen.

 

  You can believe for increase.

 

  You know, this is one scripture when God really liberated me in this realm, in the area of finances, is I begin to pray Deuteronomy 28, the blessings every day. And I did this like for six weeks to three months, and I would take like a half hour day, and I would speak Deuteronomy 28:1-14. I would personalize it also, Psalm 112, the first four verses, and then Psalm 115:9-16. And it just changed. It’s like washed my mind. And people even in church would come and say these really negative things that came from the world and not from God. And it just like, it just go, you know, right over my head because I I wasn’t gonna receive that.

 

  I like that you spoke the blessing too.

 

  Amen.

 

  It’s really important to speak these blessings, to personalize it and to not just read it, not just try to comprehend it, but to actually speak it over yourself. There is power in the spoken blessing.

 

  Amen.

 

  You know, when Isaac, you know, is Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, that’s the lineage of the blessing. Isaac, when he was, you know, older in age, he wanted to speak a blessing over his two sons, Jacob and Esau. And you know, Jacob and his mother kind of wanted to trick Isaac. And Isaac spoke this blessing, the greater blessing over Jacob who is younger. And Esau came in and he was upset and said, you know, can you take it back? And he said, no, I’ve already spoken it. When you speak the blessing, there’s power in this spoken blessing and it can’t be reversed. So speak this, over yourself, speak it over your children, speak it over your spouse, speak it over your family, over your loved ones. Man, there there is power in the spoken blessing.

 

  You know, we’re going to come in the last half of this broadcast and teach more on these blessings in Deuteronomy 28. But one thing we’ll be teaching on later this week is the commanded blessing of God is irreversible. And a lot of people just don’t realize how powerful it is, but the devil literally cannot stop the commanded blessing of God. And we’ll teach this from the scripture. So tell your friends about the broadcast. Encourage ’em to tune in. We’ll be sharing on this later in the week during the broadcast. But thank God for the word of God today. Bless us. Friends, we’ve been teaching from my series, the Blessing of the Lord and my son, Aaron’s teaching on the commanded blessing. You can get these and hundreds of hours more absolutely free of charge, downloadable in audio and video on the website at charischristiancenter.com. Get ahold of this truth. Blessings.

 

  I began to pray, Lord, I’d really love to meet other people. And God just started opening the door. It wasn’t very long after that prayer, we got into a community, being with some other women.

 

  One thing I really liked about Flourish, to me, that community is really important. That’s why I liked a small church. Before I was a little worried about a big church. But to have that opportunity to sit together then and reconnect, yeah, it’s been really powerful.

 

  We’ve been sharing on the commanded blessing, but the commanded blessing is part of the covenant of blessing. And we had a program earlier, and when we talked about in that program is that when you are in Christ, you have this covenant of blessing with God. And you can see that in Galatians chapter three verses, about verse eight on down through verse 14. But when you really get an understanding of that, it’s part of this covenant of blessing that you’re blessed by the most high God and get a revelation of it, it’ll literally change your life. And we’re in Deuteronomy 28. All these blessings really are ours in Christ. So we went through in the first half of the broadcast verse one through four. But we’re gonna continue going on down verse five through verse eight.

 

  Awesome. So here in verse five, it says, “Blessed shall it be your basket and your needing bowl.” So this blessing is over your food. You know, there’s a lot of, I just see stuff all the time about how different things, you know, people say it’s bad to eat this, bad to eat that. And really it’s almost just bad to eat everything if you really get into to all these studies that people do. But whenever I sit down with my family, we pray and we bless our food, you know? And this is saying, your food is blessed. That means it brings nourishment to your body. It brings health and strength to your body. It doesn’t bring disease into your body. It doesn’t bring, you know, weakness into your body. Man, pray this blessing over your food, that your basket, your needing bowl is blessed. That you have more than enough food to sustain yourself, to sustain your family. I love verse six, “Blessed shall you be when you come in and blessed shall you be when you go out.” I used to pray this actually out loud when I was a grad student at Rice University. I’d be walking from the parking lot walking into class, and I would just pray. I think I’d say, God, I think that I am blessed going in today. I’m blessed going out, but I’m blessed going into this building where I go, the blessing goes where I go, Jesus goes, the power of God is with me. I’m a witness for Jesus. I was oftentimes the only believer in a lot of my classes. And you know, there’s a lot of strong, you know, animosity towards believers in a lot of academic institutions today. But I just prayed and believed the blessing that no matter where I went, the blessing Lord was with me. I had supernatural favor. And these professors who weren’t even believers, they just couldn’t help but gimme scholarships, gimme promotion, gimme favor, man. You’re blessed, you know, with God, you have favor with God. You have favor with man. You have a good understanding.

 

  Amen. When you understand that it transforms your life.

 

  Verse seven is powerful. The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.

 

  Amen.

 

  When you understand that, man, even your adversaries, even your enemies, even people that just the enemy just stirs up and works through in your life. You don’t need to be afraid of them. Romans 8:31 says, “If God before me, who can be against me?”

 

  Amen, and how do we know that God’s for us, verse 32 says, “He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all. How shall he the Father, not with him, the Son freely give us all things.” The cross proves that God is for us. And at the cross, Jesus took our sin. He took our anxiety, he took our sickness, and he took our poverty. Jesus was cursed in our place. That’s what Galatians 3:13 says. Verse 14 says, “So that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ.” We receive these blessings because we believe on Jesus. And if you’re born again, if you’re a believer in Jesus, you’re blessed.

 

  I love something else that Romans eight says. It says, “We are more than conquerors through Him who loves us.” When you understand that God loves you, you know, not that He’s just even okay with you, but that he actually loves you. He delights in you.

 

  Amen. You know, Joshua and Caleb, when they went to spout the land, the 10 other spies were very negative. They said, we need to pack it up and go back to Egypt. But Joshua and Caleb said, if the Lord delights us, they knew that God just wasn’t okay with them. But that God actually delighted in them, God loved them. They said, we are more than able. Let’s go right now.

 

  Amen.

 

  And defeat these giants. Let’s do it.

 

  Amen.

 

  And you know, it was 40 years later when they finally got to go in, but Joshua and Caleb got to go in and Caleb said, Hey, “I’m in my eighties now, but I’m stronger than ever. Give me the biggest mountain with the biggest giants and I’m gonna go conquer them all.”

 

  Amen.

 

  “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Having a revelation of God’s love for you, having a revelation of his blessing in your life, it’s gonna make you feel invincible.

 

  Amen, praise God. You know the next verse in Deuteronomy 28 where we’re at says, “The Lord will command the blessing on you, in your storehouses and in all you set your hand unto. And he will bless you in the land which the Lord your God gives you.” He’s gonna command his blessing on you. Praise God.

 

  He’s gonna command. So this is where we see that commanded blessing. You don’t have to chase it after the blessing. You don’t have to chase it. You don’t have to go looking for it. You don’t have to try to open various doors to find it. It’s gonna come after you.

 

  Amen.

 

  Just keep trusting in God. Keep just ravishing in his love for you. And that commanded blessing. It’s on your storehouses. That means you need to start having some storehouses of some sort. Get investment accounts. Get a savings account.

 

  Amen.

 

  Don’t just use up everything that you’re given, but start saving.

 

  Right. Get a good and profitable business. Not some scam. There’s lots of scams. But get a good and profitable business. You know, own a house. If you’re in a growing community.

 

  Well, I mean, he talks about, yeah, he’s gonna bless you in the land which the Lord is giving you. That’s talking about possessing the land.

 

  Right, and you know, we need to possess things. You know, the Bible talks about this in Genesis chapter 26 with Isaac, that Isaac, you know, he sowed in the land in a time of famine and reaped a hundred fold. And it says he had possessions of flocks and possessions of herds and a great store of servants. And it says, “And the Philistines envied him.” I believe God wants to bless the church so much that the world envies us. God wants to bless us so much that he makes us an advertisement of this is how I treat my children. So he says, the Lord will command his blessings on you in your storehouses. You know, Andrew Womack told me a long time ago, he said, “Lawson, you need to read this book, “The Storehouse Principle.” And he said, “This reminds me of you.” And I went and read it and it’s just exactly like I operate and I got some truth from it. And you know what? I operate in that. And you don’t have to live on the bottom of the barrel. You know, I heard this long time ago from John Osteen, Joel Osteen’s dad, and he said, “You know what? We believe you can live off the top of the barrel.” So many people are just going from paycheck to paycheck and they’re just scraping the bottom of the barrel all the time. But you can begin to live in this principle, right? Where you’re living off the increase, praise God. And I believe that is God’s highest and best will for his church, for his people. But you’ve gotta believe it to receive it. So he says, “The Lord will command your blessing on you and your storehouses and in everything you set your hand to.”

 

  That’s awesome man. A lot of people just, they won’t work ’cause they’re just waiting for the ideal job to open up. And you just need to do something. If you understand that whatever your hand touches is blessed, you realize that just, I’m gonna go do something. I’m gonna set my hand. I’m gonna go to work. I’m gonna be, I’m gonna do something and God will eventually open the right doors. He’ll lead you to the right places. His favor will be on you. But you need to set your hand to something.

 

  Aaron, if I didn’t have a job, you know, and I’ve never had a problem getting a job. I’ve always had plenty opportunities. But if I didn’t, you know, I’d go help somebody, I’d go do something, I’d set my hand aside. I would not lay around and be lazy and people are just waiting for the ideal thing. I have to have this. No, just get out of bed and go to work. Praise God. You know, when I came to Colorado Springs and started this church, I didn’t have hardly any people. I hardly had any money. And you know what? I remember sometimes that, you know, we had less than a hundred dollars in a Sunday morning offering. And I put 50 in and I wasn’t receiving anything from it. And I remember I was out handing out flyers and this guy came and they were about the church and they cost me three and a half cents to print at Office Depot. I didn’t even have my own printer then. And this guy stopped me when I was handing out flyers and he said, “Would you like to go to work for me?” I said, “Well that depends.” And he said, “On what?” I said, “Well, whether I make it or not.” He said, “Well, what are you doing? ” I said, “I’m starting a church.” And he just looked at me and said, “You’re gonna make it,” just drove off. But I remember going by a dog food store, you know, a dog store, a pet store. They had a minimum wage was about, you know, five, $6 an hour then. But they had a job. You could come work from midnight, you know, at night to like eight in the morning probably carrying dog food for $9 an hour. And I thought, you know, before I let my family go hungry, I’m gonna carry dog food. I’ll do whatever it takes. And you know, if you get a do whatever it takes attitude. I’m telling you, you’re gonna be blessed. But you gotta set your hand to something. That’s just what the scripture is saying.

 

  You know, a lot of people think paradise is just laying around and getting a tan and not do anything. But, you know, in the Garden of Eden, God put Adam there to work. That was part of his purpose in the Garden of Eden was to work. Genesis 2:15 says, “Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and to keep it.” So tend means to work, in the Hebrews, talking about laboring, talking about working and to keep, it means to have responsibility, to watch over things,

 

  To guard it.

 

  To guard it. To have a sense of stewardship, a sense of ownership.

 

  You need to realize this, work is not a curse. It’s a curse for you to work and be unproductive and bring forth toiling and bring forth thorns and thistles, so on and so forth. In fact, Jesus took a crown of thorns. He took that curse of poverty on the cross. And we don’t have to take the curse of poverty because Jesus took it for us. But you know what? Work is not a curse. Work is a blessing and people need to see that.

 

  Yeah, some of you might be retired right now or looking forward to retirement, but I have news for you, when you go into heaven, into eternity, you’re probably gonna have a job there. So you’re not gonna be taught retired for very long.

 

  Hallelujah.

 

  We’re gonna have a sense of purpose to send, you know, just like Adam in the Garden of Eden who I sent to tend things and to keep things.

 

  I get up in years at Jesus Terry’s. I plan on changing things that I do and and whatever, but I never plan on retiring.

 

  You should always live with purpose, have a sense of purpose.

 

  Yeah, I’m gonna help young ministers, I’m gonna do other things. I’m gonna help manage finances for ministries and things but you know what? I am not planning on quitting. Praise God. I think most people quit too early. Praise God. And so, you know what? This covenant, this is just part of the covenant of blessing that we’re talking about and the commanded blessing right here in God’s covenant of blessing in Deuteronomy 28, the first 14 verses, we see this in verse eight, that he said he would command his blessing on you. And you know what? If you need prayer today, I wanna encourage you to call in and to agree with my team. I have trained prayer ministers that are ready to receive your calls and also go to our website and we have these teachings and many other teachings, and we’re making this stuff available free of charge. And if you can get a revelation of this, it will change your life, just like it’s changed mine. Just like it’s changed Aaron’s.

 

  Awesome.

 

  Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I believe that the commanded blessing is on your life. If you have Jesus, you are blessed. You don’t have to chase after it. The blessings are chasing after you.

 

  Friends, the scripture says, if you will continue in the word of God, you will know the truth and the truth will make you free. If you go to our website at www.charischristiancenter.com, you can get all of our materials there on the website as you watch ’em, as you listen absolutely free of charge. And we’ve done that just to be a blessing to you. And I believe that the word that has freed me will free you, blessings.

 

  There are only two types of believers, those who are blessed and know it, and those who are blessed and don’t know it. God has commanded his supernatural blessing on you. And as you seek him first, all these things will be added to you. We’d like to bless you with a digital copy of Pastor Aaron’s teaching, the commanded blessing, and Pastor Lawson’s teaching the blessing of the Lord, a $20 value free of charge. Download your copy today at charischristiancenter.com.

 

  Friend, I don’t wanna leave this broadcast without giving you the opportunity to receive Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior. 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 my life to you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

 

  Thanks for watching Grace for today. This broadcast has been made possible by our faithful partners. If you would like to become a partner, need prayer, or have a question, please call us at 719-418-4000, or to partner online, go to charichristiancenter.com/give. You can write us at PO Box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80962. See you next time on Grace for Today.