Vision – Part 7 Lawson and Aaron Perdue
Vision Part 7 with Pastors Aaron and Lawson Perdue! In this session we’ll talk about seven different aspects of the grace of God that works in our life as believers.
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Vision Part 7 Transcript
Friends, I’m so glad that you tuned in to the broadcast today. Do you know what? There is grace for you. The Bible talks about there is more grace. In fact, today we’re gonna be talking about seven different aspects of the grace of God that works in our life as believers. So you don’t want to miss the broadcast. Stay tuned. Tell your friends we’d love to have them tune in and be with us. God bless you. Friends, I’m so glad that you’re with us today. We’re sharing about our church vision. And we’ve got it right on the wall here at the church, but it’s know Jesus, experience grace, build relationships, and live with purpose. So we begin yesterday talking about experiencing grace. And we want people to experience the grace of God. And we talked about three different aspects of grace. We talked about salvation, right? “For by grace were you saved through, faith that not of yourself.” So we’re saved by unmerited favor, divine favor. We talked about transformation. Strong’s defines the Greek word, charis, as the divine influence on the heart and its reflection in the life. And so Titus chapter 2, verse 11 through 14 says, “The grace of God, which brings salvation, has appeared to all men,” talking about Jesus appeared to us. He is the embodiment of grace. And he has taught us to deny ungodliness and live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present evil world. So we don’t have to live like the rest of the world because grace is transformed us. The grace of God has influenced our heart and it’s being reflected in our life. We talked also about divine ability. Paul says, “I am what I am by the grace of God” in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 10. So grace changes us. How’s grace changes?
It changes everything about us.
Yeah. So we can’t do what we do without the grace of God. We begin to talk about different aspects of grace in our life. And we talked about grace for salvation, grace for growth, and then grace for ministry. And Paul asked this question in Galatians chapter 3, verse 2. He said, “How did you get saved, by the hearing of faith or by the works of the law?”
By the hearing of faith.
And then he asked another question and says, “How then do you minister?”
Same way.
By the hearing of faith. In other words, and this is where churches miss it. I’ll tell you, they say, “God loves you, God accepts you like you are. You just come like you are, everything’s good.” But then they begin to put the law on people. In fact, I have a lady in my church. She went to another full gospel church for 35 years with her husband. She said she was condemned every week. And now she’s been in our church. Her husband died and she moved here to be with some of her family. She’s very involved in the church. She said, “I’ve never felt that in this church.” She said, “I don’t know why anybody would leave this church.” She said, “I’ve never felt it was condemnation.” And it was legalistic Pentecostal churches. And you know, we joke about this in Pentecostal, said, “You can’t divorce your wife. You might kill her.” But that’s… I know Pentecostal churches. They won’t let anybody hold the door. They won’t let them be an usher. They won’t let them pray a prayer if they’ve had a divorce. It’s really a sad thing. And to think about it, the divorce rate in the church is almost the same as the world, if not the same. I think it’s because we don’t understand this thing called grace very well.
And when you understand grace, have a revelation of it, experience it yourself, it’s actually gonna help empower you to build divine relationships and those divine connections and build relationships that have a kingdom purpose to them.
Right.
And God’s grace is gonna be upon those relationships. It might be a relationship… God needs to be at the center of all your relationships. If it’s a divine connection, He wants to be there himself. So he wants to be a part of your marriage. He wants to be a part of your family, your relationships with your kids. He wants to be a part of your relationships at work. There should be a kingdom purpose behind your relationships.
Yes. And so when we think about grace, grace is an amazing thing. So we talked about we’re saved by grace, we minister by grace, but also as in we grow by grace. We’re saved by grace, grow in grace, and we minister by grace. In ministering by grace, we didn’t get to the scripture, but in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 5, it says, “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God.” In other words, I’m not relying on myself, I’m relying on Jesus. And he goes on and says, “Who also has made us,” in 2 Corinthians 3, verse 6, “Made us able ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter, not of the law, but of the spirit.” For he says, “The letter kills, but the spirit gives life.” Legalism kills.
It’s a ministry of condemnation.
Ministry of condemnation, ministry of death. So we don’t wanna have a legalistic ministry. We don’t wanna have a ministry of condemnation. I recently had a person who I felt like for a long time was a good friend. And then he left the church, and ultimately, there was a divorce involved, different things. But he called me to talk to me about this. And I said, “Listen, I’m not the judge. That’s not for me to judge. I’m not even gonna try to, that’s before God. You live before God.” But there is so much condemnation that’s ministered. I recognized early in the ministry in this area of divorce and remarriage there’s so much hurt and so much pain affiliated with it, that I’m very careful about how I approach that in the ministry. Because even when, say, I had two people in Kit Carson and this one woman who was ultimately raised Pentecostal and was married to a man and they went to a Baptist church, she ultimately left him and ran off. And then there was a woman who was in the Lutheran church or something, and her husband ran off with another woman. And then eventually, I mean it took these two singles a while to get healed because they didn’t want the divorce. Neither one of them wanted the divorce. They didn’t do anything to get the divorce, but their mates divorced them and break it off. Very sinful, painful, hurtful situations. But then they got married right, as God was healing them, and they married each other. And then they came to my church. I realized almost anything I said about divorce was painful for them. So I learned from that experience, and they’re very good friends. They actually ended up coming to our church. They ended up taking care of you boys a lot. They came to all of your weddings. They drove from different states to come to your weddings when you guys were getting married. And so they’re very nice people. But I just realized how painful that was. And so I didn’t want to inflict more pain by being legalistic. And I think we just have to be careful about legalism, however it comes. But he says the letter kills. The letter… Legalism is a ministry of condemnation. And with this thing of divorce and remarriage in the Old Testament, Moses allowed them under the law to write a bill of divorce. So I ask people, “Don’t you think the New Testament would at least allow for that?” And I don’t know… See, I’m not the judge. I don’t live in that situation.
Well, people take things kind of out of context without understanding God’s grace and minister things in a very hurtful way. Like I’ve even seen seen people take the sermon on the mount and statements that Jesus makes and minister condemnation from that. But Jesus wasn’t making these statements about–
He wasn’t trying to alter the law.
He was showing that the law can’t make you righteous. Even if you follow the law, the Old Testament law concerning divorce, that’s not gonna make you a righteous person.
Right.
True righteousness can only come through faith in Jesus. And he was showing that the law can’t make you righteous. Just because… Just an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. You can be a very kind of hurtful person and it’s not gonna make you righteous.
The law says you should not commit adultery. But I tell you, if you look at a woman to lust after in your heart, you’ve committed adultery already. He wasn’t trying to add to the law.
And he wasn’t telling people to go pluck out their eyes and literally to do that.
What he was telling people is there’s no way you can do this on your own. The law says you should not kill, but I tell you that if call your brother a fool, you’re in danger of the hell fire.
And just God’s level of perfection and his level of holiness, his level of beauty is just far more than you can achieve on your own. That’s what Jesus was trying to communicate. So even concerning divorce, there are people who’ve been divorced, like Jesus still ministered and got them saved and empowered them to witness to other people.
Jesus said, she’s like, “I wanna drink this water, this water that you’re telling me that gives me eternal life where I never thirst again.” And Jesus said, “Go home and tell your husband.” “Well, I don’t have one.” He said, “Well, that’s right. You’ve had five before now. The marriage thing hasn’t worked out very well with you, and the man you’re living with is not your husband.” And so she’s so overwhelmed by his kindness and goodness. She goes and brings the whole city.
The enemy wants to condemn people however he can, because when there’s that ministry of condemnation going on, then he can isolate people. There’s a woman who called the church a few weeks ago, who who was going through a divorce and she was having a hard time with it and kind of wanting to isolate and separate. And I said, “You need to keep showing up.” She thought she couldn’t even volunteer here ’cause she felt unworthy to volunteer and help out. And I just said, “You actually need to keep being involved, keep serving. We love you and God has good plans for you.” And and that just meant a lot to her. And she actually got more involved, and I believe that God has great plans for her.
I serve here more than ever.
But I know that there’s that pull that condemnation has on people to just really cause people to isolate. And that’s one of the worst things you can do. And even sometimes it can be… Like maybe someone was believing God for a healing and someone passed away, they might feel condemned over that and wanna isolate.
All kinds of… The devil wants to be–
Well, condemn people however he can.
So we’re talking about grace and how grace works. So grace for salvation, grace for growth, grace for ministry, we have grace for the promises. If it wasn’t for the grace of God, we couldn’t receive the promises. See, a lot of times people think, “I get saved by grace, but then I’ve gotta earn my healing, I’ve gotta earn my blessing, or I’ve gotta earn…” No, you don’t earn anything. You don’t deserve anything. What does Lawson Perdue deserve? I deserve hell. What do I get? Heaven. Why? Because of Jesus. That’s the gospel. And you all get it because of Jesus. Not only me. So for the promises, Romans chapter 5 verse 1 and 2, Paul says, “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” And he says, “We have access by faith into the grace wherein we stand,” in verse 2, “and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” Then we access grace. If you just think about grace as this giant storehouse that has everything that you would ever need or ever imagine or ever dream, but you have access, faith is the key.
And faith is much more simple than people realize too.
No, they make it hard. Jesus said, “You gotta become like a little child.” Little children just believe.
Faith is much more simple than people realize. I think a lot of people try to overcomplicate faith. What I’ve kind of learned about people who… I love faith. I love people who teach on it who understand it very well. We actually have great faith teachers who come here frequently, like Jesse Duplantis, Mark Hankins. And what I’ve observed about people who really understand faith, understand how to teach it, they really have a revelation of grace as well. I know great faith preachers, they really know that God loves them.
If you listen to Mark and you listen to Jesse, you understand that Jesse really understands the love of God from which he’s talking about grace. You understand that Mark Hankins really understands righteousness and it’s grace ultimately. At the bottom of it is grace. Because without grace, you don’t get righteousness. And so not only we have grace for salvation, grace for growth, grace for ministry, but we got grace for the promises. And we have access by faith into grace wherein we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, of God’s promise. Paul says this in Acts 20, verse 32. He says, “Now, brother, I commend you to God and the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among those who are sanctified, glory to God.” The word of God’s grace will build you up. We’re not in a condemnation ministry, we’re not in a beat down ministry. I was at this church for a while. One of the people that was helping me start the church at Kit Carson actually went to the church that I left for a while, and he said, “And I just had this before I went into Bible school of this vision of the pastor up there with a bull whip just beating the people.” And if we get personally frustrated, we don’t wanna take that out on the people. And I understand it’s easy to get personally frustrated. Sometimes things aren’t going the way we like, but we don’t want to take it out on the people.
I love hearing Acts 20, verse 32. He talks about the word of his grace. I like that Paul mentions the word of faith, which we preach, but I love that there’s the word of faith, but there’s also the word of His grace.
Amen. So thank God for the grace of God. We’re gonna come back right after this break, a very short break, and we’re gonna continue to teach on three more things that the grace of God releases in your life, so stay tuned. Friends, I want to tell you about our product that we have available with this teaching. And we have a special offer. First of all, we have the Vision series and I have five messages that I taught on vision. You can get them on CD or digital download on our website. You can get them immediately. And then my “Uncommon Favor” book, this is my life story from just a few years back. It’s a lot of different stories. A lot of people tell me when they read my “Uncommon Favor” book, “It encouraged me because it gave me hope that if God did this for you, he would do it for me and he would help me.” And there’s so many ways that God has blessed me and helped me, but it’s not unattainable. You see, God is no respecter of persons, He is a respecter of faith. So when you get ahold of the word of God and begin to believe God, you can move into the vision and the plan that God has for your life through the favor and grace of God on your life. Thanks and blessings. Friends, I’m so glad that you stayed with us. We are right here. And we’ve talked about different aspects of grace. There’s grace for salvation, grace for growth, grace for ministry, grace for the promises. There is also grace for overcoming. How do we overcome sin? By the grace of God. Paul says in Romans 6, verse 14, “Sin shall not have dominion over you because you’re not under the law, but under grace.” Praise God. If you study the book of Romans, you find out that when we believe on Jesus, we go from the law of sin and death to the law of grace and righteousness, or from the kingdom of sin and death to the kingdom of grace and righteousness by faith in Jesus, right? Or from the law of sin to the law of grace and righteous by faith in Jesus. That’s Romans 5. But Romans 6, 7, 8 tell us how we live that out. In Romans 6 it says, “We’re dead to sin and we don’t want to stay in sin because, number one, we’re dead to it. Number two, we’re free from it. Number three, we have authority over it. Sin shall not have dominion over you because you’re not under the law, but under grace.” If you know someone, they’re saying they have a revelation of grace, but they’re using grace as an excuse to sin, they don’t have a revelation of grace. Because an understanding, a revelation of grace will not make you sin more, it’ll make you sin less because you’re free from it, you’re dead to it, you have authority over it. And last of all, sin will kill you. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus. So Roman 6 says we’re dead to sin, we’re free from sin, we have authority over sin, and sin is just stupid. But Roman 7 says just like sin will kill you, you legalism will kill you. So he says, “We’re dead to the law and delivered from the law though, so that we can live to him who was raised from the dead.” And Romans 8 says, “Now we have life in the spirit.” So thank God for the grace of God. And we have grace for overcoming sin. We also have grace for overcoming obstacles to the plan of God. The devil will try to put obstacles in between the plan of God. And the example that I like to use is Zachariah chapter 4, verse 6. And it says, “It’s not by might, it’s not by power, but it’s by my Spirit, says the Lord.” This mountain will be removed. How’s it gonna be removed? By shouting grace to it. So the rubble, they had started building the temple, but the worldly leaders came and caused them to stop, right, but then the prophet came and prophesy. “It’s not by might, not by power.” The same hands that laid the foundation are gonna lay the capstone. “You’re gonna finish. But the way you finish is by grace.” I mean, so some of us start out in grace, but then if we’re not careful, we get into works. But we gotta stay strong in grace to finish strong. Amen?
Amen.
So obstacles to the plan of God, also demonic attacks. Now, not everything’s a demon, but once in a while there are demonic attacks. So let’s go and read in 2 Corinthians chapter 12. Aaron, why don’t you read verse 7, 2 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 7 through verse 10.
2 Corinthians 12, starting in verse 7, it says, “Unless I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, most gladly, I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities and reproaches, in needs and persecutions and distresses for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
So Paul’s saying that there was a demonic attack. “Unless I would be exalted about measure there was a messenger,” he says, “a thorn in my flesh.” And he defines, he says exactly what it was, a messenger of Satan to buffet me.
And so the thorn in the flesh was not from God.
No. It was a messenger of Satan.
Yeah. So I like that he specifies that it’s–
See, the devil doesn’t want you to be promoted. Because if you get promoted, like see, God wants to make you the head, not the tail. God wants to make you above and not beneath. Because when God magnifies a person of faith, right, the person is trusted… God gets glory in the earth. So, ut the devil is the one who doesn’t want you to fulfill and be lifted up, right, and make a difference in the world. So the devil actually fights believers. And he says it was a messenger of Satan. He said, “Three times I asked Jesus for this thing to leave me, but it didn’t.” And so he said, “Jesus.” But Jesus told him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” Again, the scriptural reference to this, I want you to see this in the scripture. 2 Corinthians 12, verse 7 through 10. Jesus was not saying Paul suffered with it. Jesus was saying, “My grace is sufficient for you. So learn how to rely on my grace, learn how to trust my grace.” Sometimes we pray it, something doesn’t immediately manifest, it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t mean that that’s not the Lord’s will. But you can learn to rely on the grace of God and overcome these difficulties, these challenges.
And when you deal with grace, I think this kind of ties into what James was saying, like, “Count it all joy.” This is in James 1. James says, “Count it all joy when you fall into various trials.” And he specifies that these trials are not from God. These difficulties that you encounter, they aren’t from God. And he says that like, “Do not be deceived, brother. God does not put evil, he does not test you with evil. He does… He tends completely.” Yeah. He’s completely, completely good. Every good, every perfect gift is from above from the Father of Lights. No variation. No shadow of turning.
James 1:17, verse 17 says, “Do not err. Don’t change from this, God is good.” He does good. He’s always good. That’s all he has to give. So God is not the author of sin, sickness, death. God is not the one sin and the devil to fight you.
And when you understand, when you have that revelation of God’s grace, of his goodness, you can be like Paul or like James, and you can be joyful even when you’re dealing with.
And listen to what Paul goes on to say. And this is bearing out exactly what you’re saying. It says, “Most gladly, therefore, I glory in my infirmities, in my weaknesses.” How do we glory in weakness? When we know the grace of God is there. When we know that, he says, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. He says, “Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities and weaknesses, reproaches, necessities, and persecutions, in distresses for Christ sake. For when I’m weak, then I’m made strong.” It’s through this weakness, through this challenge, through this test, I get a testimony. I get to see the grace of God in my life. I overcome the sickness, I overcome the weakness, I overcome the attack.
It’s like David when he was facing Goliath. He had a revelation of God’s grace. He wrote plenty of Psalms that say, “Surely goodness and mercy,” , that’s the grace of God in Hebrew. He had a revelation of God’s grace. And when he’s facing Goliath, I believe he got excited.
Amen. So there’s grace for salvation, grace for growth, grace for ministry, grace for the promises, grace for overcoming, there’s grace for eternity. Thank God it’s not just… I talked about eternity past. Jesus was the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Revelation chapter 13, verse 8, eternity future. God saved us and raised us up and seated us in heaven places. He says this in Ephesians 2:7, that in the ages to come He might show us the exceeding riches of his grace. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 7. But there’s grace for right now. There’s grace for today. And we can be what God want us to be through the grace of God. So we begin to think about this. Peter talks about this in, I believe it’s actually 1 Peter chapter 1. But he talks about the grace that’s gonna be revealed to us at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, at the revelation of Jesus. So there’s grace for our salvation, right? We were saved, our spirit’s been saved, our soul’s being saved. But we trust that our body will be saved when Jesus comes again. And there’s grace that’s gonna be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. That’s amazing. When Jesus comes again. When he’s revealed to the world. So grace for eternity. In fact, the very last verse in the Bible says, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.” Revelation chapter 22, verse 21. Finally, and this is our last aspect, seven aspects of grace. We want you to know Jesus. We want you to experience grace. But he says there’s grace for calling. Paul says, “When it pleased God to reveal his grace in me, who called me from my mother’s womb” in Galatians chapter 1, verse 15. In Romans chapter 1, verse 11, he says, “I long to see you that I might impart some spiritual gift, some gift of God’s grace to you, to the end that you may be established.” So we bear fruit through the grace of God, the grace of God for us, the grace of God in us, and the grace of God working through us. And so we not only want people to know Jesus, but we want people to experience grace. And listen, I wouldn’t be today where I’m at without the grace of God. But thank God for the grace of God. Grace saved us and grace changes.
Everything that we receive from God, all the promises that we receive from God, everything that we receive from him, it’s through grace. Even Jesus when he told his disciples, “I need to go, it’s expedient that I go, that I can send the Holy Spirit.” And this is the promise from the Father. We received the Holy Spirit by grace.
Yes.
You can’t earn it. Even there are people who try to pay the early apostles, try to earn the ability to pour out the Holy Spirit on people, to have Holy Spirit power. And they were upset because you don’t operate in this power. You can’t receive the–
You can’t buy it.
The gifts of the Holy Spirit through… You can’t earn it.
I’d love for you to get this. We’ve just been teaching a little bit. I’ve got five CDs. We taught all last week on just the first message on vision. And we’re talking about our church vision, and I’d love you to get that and our ministry’s vision. If you need prayer, if you’d like to become a partner, if you want product, give us a call. We have people ready to pray and minister to you today. God bless you, we love you. Hi, friends, I’m Pastor Lawson Perdue from Charis Christian Center in Colorado Springs. We want to invite you to Family Camp meeting. We’re gonna have special speakers, Mark and Trina Hankins, Congresswoman Lauren Bobert full of the Holy Ghost and fire, Phillip Renner with special music, special teaching, Max Cornell, Ashley Terradez, myself, Aaron Perdue. We’re gonna have a great time. If you can’t come in person, check us out online at CharisChristianCenter.com.
[Announcer] Too many people live their lives without ever connecting to their God-given purpose. Learn the importance of having a vision and some practical steps for walking it out. God has a tremendous plan for your life. Start now and see it come to pass. Get the vision package, which includes the book “Uncommon Favor” and the Vision CD series for $24. Or digital download for $15, when you call 719-418-4000 or visit CharisChristianCenter.com. 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 CharisChristianCenter.com/Give. You can write us at P.O. Box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80962. See you next time on “Grace for Today.”
