Raising Leaders 2 Part 2 – Lawson Perdue and Max Cornell

Raising Leaders 2 Part 2

Raising Leaders 2 Part 2 with Pastors Lawson Perdue and Max Cornell. In this episode of Grace for Today, learn how to focus on the greater truths of the Gospel and overcome the things that divide us.

Raising Leaders 2 Part 2 Transcript

Praise the Lord, friends, I’m here today with my good friend Pastor Max Cornell from Charis Church in Kansas City. Today we’re gonna be sharing on raising leaders. We’re not only talking about natural sons, we’re talking about spiritual sons, and Max is like a spiritual son in a way to me, he worked for me for three years as an assistant pastor, and then he went to Kansas city and planted a church, and he’s done a great job. We’re gonna be talking about don’t focus on the things that divide us, but focus on the greater truths of the gospel. Blessings. I’m so glad that you’re with us today, friends, we are sharing today on raising leaders, and Pastor Max Cornell is here with me, and he pastors Charis Church in Kansas City, Kansas. Great pastor, him and his wife, Molly, they have really great community at the church. Max is a great pastor, really cares for the people, and since he was gonna be here, and I’ve been teaching on this, we’ve been talking about raising leaders in the home and really, spiritual leaders also. And max, you came and worked here at Charis Christian Center for three years as an assistant pastor, and then went to Kansas City and planted Charis Church, and well, I’m so honored to have you here this week, and have you here, sharing the Word of God, we could be teaching together. But we’re in 2 Timothy 2, and Paul writes Timothy differently. Paul writes in Acts, or in Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Romans, that’s really the heart of the gospel, where he talks about grace, faith, and righteousness, but here in Timothy he talks more about the application of the gospel, right? And this is kinda the difference between the way I teach my church on most Sunday mornings, where 90% of what I teach on Sunday mornings is the heart of the gospel, grace, faith. and righteousness.

Right.

But what I teach my children, right? And I taught my children, “Listen, boys, if you don’t do this, you’re not gonna make it.” So there’s some practical application of the gospel. Now, we’re in 2 Timothy 2, where Paul tells Timothy, “You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus,” there is grace in Jesus, and he says, “I want you to be strong in grace.” We can be strong in a lot of things, but sometimes to be strong in grace is challenging. And he says, “And the things that you have heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” Max is a faithful man, Max has been serving Jesus Christ for years and years, and it’s faithful men, he came to my church and worked for me for three years. He said, “Pastor, I wouldn’t have known it was like this at all until I worked for you, it’s way different than I thought.” But he says, “You commit these things to faithful men,” and then they’ll teach others also. Now Max is in Kansas City and he’s been there for five, going on six years, and he’s communicating these same truths that we found to be true, right? With others.

Amen.

He says, “As a good soldier of Jesus Christ, endure hardness.” So sometimes there’s difficulties.

There is.

You’re believing God for the best, right? We’re always looking forward, but there’s difficulties we face. “No man who wars entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who called him to be a soldier, and if a man strived for the mastery,” or excellence, “he’s not crowned except he strive lawfully. The farmer, the hardworking farmer that labors must first be the partaker of the fruits. Consider what I say and the Lord give you understanding in all things.” So he says, “Listen, sometimes life is difficult, sometimes, when you’re serving Jesus, things can be difficult,” but he says, “I didn’t promise you it’s gonna be easy.” He said, “I want you to endure hardness as a soldier, I want you to be like an athlete.” An athlete that’s a world-class athlete trains, they discipline theirselves, they discipline their eating, their sleeping, nearly every aspect of their life is discipline for them to be able to compete at a world-class level. And you know, we’re here in Colorado Springs, they have a lot of athletes who train here-

Right.

For the Olympics, and you know what? They are very disciplined people, and it affects a lot of their life, and if you wanna make it in the gospel, you probably have to have some discipline along the way. You too. And discipline isn’t legalism, I think we get confused sometimes about that in church, and we’re grace preachers, we love grace, but discipline is just when I choose to draw on the grace of God, to be consistent, and to do things like, I read my Bible every year, just like you, and I have a Bible reading plan, and I don’t condemn myself if I fail, I don’t do that because I’m trying to earn stuff from God, I’m not trying to impress God, but I know that if I’m not in the Word consistently every day, if I’m not building myself up, and speaking truth to myself and my congregation, that I’m not gonna be ready to deal with the hard things in life, and so this is very, I think, practical application, like you’re saying, that it’s-

Amen.

Jesus loves us even if we mess things up or don’t work hard, but we’re called for a purpose.

[Lawson] Right.

And this is one of the reasons I never really had a wilderness season, or where I was running away from God, or in a lot of sin and stuff like that, and I just knew from a young age that there was a call on my life-

Yeah.

And so I can’t afford to be involved-

Right.

In a lot of stuff that a lot of other people are, because I’m on a mission.

Amen.

And I wanna see the kingdom of God come down here.

You remind me of Lester Sumrall when he said, “Burnout? What’s that?” I mean, he just got mad about, “People talking about their burnout, burnout? There’s a kingdom,” you know? But I like what you’re saying about this, and there’s a number of areas, like, we teach Acts 2:42, be in the Word, right? Be in prayer, be in fellowship, build good relationships, four areas.

Yeah.

That’s spiritual things.

Sure.

The Word, prayer, fellowship, I call that church, okay? I think every believer needs to be set in the church, in the place God set them, God set every member in the body as it pleased him, that’s 1 Corinthians 12:18, if I’m correct, and we need to build strong, positive relationships, that’s Acts 2:42, that’s the early church, but there’s also some natural things-

Yeah.

Right? There’s physical exercise.

Sure.

There’s how you eat, right? And there’s also how you sleep. So I tell a lot of people, “Okay, if you’re doing these spiritual things,” right? “If you’re in the Word, you’re in prayer, you’re in church, and you’re building good relationships, you have good, positive associations, are you eating right? Are you maintaining physical exercise?”

Yeah.

I work out seven days a week. Now, I do less on Sunday, but this morning, for instance, I got up five o’clock, I went and ran a 5k, and then I swam about 1,250 meters.

Yeah.

And I do that nearly every day, and I run two to five miles, and then I swim around 1,000 meters, plus or minus, and I take care of my temple-

Yeah.

Because I know how that affects me emotionally, and that affects how I can deal with hardship, how I can deal with difficulties, how I can deal, the hardest thing that I do, really, is manage people, I have about 24 people right now that work for me, and I’m the, overall, I don’t have a general manager for the ministry at this point in time, and so anybody that knows anything about management know that’s a pretty full-time job without all the other tasks that we take care of.

For sure.

But I have some other people that are able to do certain things. I have one person that’s over my tech and television department, I have another person that’s over all of my office staff, and then my son, Aaron, is over all my pastors, but you know what? It’s a team, but I still have to do a certain aspect of management and dealing with problems, dealing with finances, so on and so forth, but these physical things, along with being in the Word, being in prayer, being in church, and building good, positive, strong relationships, what I eat, right? My exercise and my sleep.

Yeah.

Those things can affect us. In fact, I have a friend, I think I talked about this on the broadcast last week we shared, Paul talks about bodily exercise profits a little bit, and so I may be a little bit too much of a believer in it, but it just helps me deal with people and deal with the problems of people, so on and so forth, by doing those things, but I just stay at it, but I had a minister friend, he had somebody call him. and I think it was a minister of the gospel, and they were feeling very depressed, almost suicidal.

Yeah.

So they called their doctor, their doctor said, “Go run for 30 minutes and then call me back.”

[Max] Yeah.

And they went outside and ran for 30 minutes, and called him back, and they said, “How are you?” “I’m fine.” But when you exercise it releases endorphins, in fact, somebody told me, the amount that I exercise is like taking several Prozacs a day. So, you know what? It helps me deal with life.

It does.

And so he’s talking about just some disciplines in your life, in the Word, in prayer, in church, have good, positive relationships, physical exercise, eating, eating, I’m not the healthiest eater, I eat a balanced diet, right? But I do pay a little bit of attention to those things, and then the sleep area, so that’s just some practical aspects. And he’s just saying, “These things will help you overcome.” Now, he says, “Consider what I say, the Lord give you understanding.” Verse eight, he says, “Remember that Jesus, the seed of David, was raised from the dead, according to my gospel, wherein I suffer trouble as evildoer, even in the.” Paul wouldn’t had most of the problems that he had if he didn’t follow Christ and do what God called him to do, but he says, “The Word of God is not bound,” he said, “They’ve thrown me,” we wouldn’t probably have near as much of the New Testament that we have from Paul’s perspective if he wasn’t thrown in jail so much.

Yeah. Well, and I actually believe, and I’m gonna preach this soon, I believe that his time in prison is where he gained his greatest revelation, the prison letters: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, these contain some of the most profound truths-

Oh, yeah.

In the scripture, and he discovered that in those places of hardship, and so it’s not always enjoyable to go through these difficult times, ad we know that God doesn’t bring the persecution, but in those moments when there’s suffering, and difficulty, and pain, we have an opportunity to let our roots go down deep in the Lord, and have him minister to us, and give us revelation that we wouldn’t have access to any other way.

And so, yeah, he had tremendous revelation. So he says, I endure all things for the elect’s sake, that they may obtain salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.” He says, “It’s a faithful saying, if we be dead with him, we’ll live with him, if we suffer, we will reign with him, if we deny him, he will deny us, if we believe not, yet he is faithful, he cannot deny himself.” Even when we’re unfaithful, it’s good to remember that God remains faithful. And so what’s Paul saying? “I’ve identified with him in death and I’ve identified with him in life.” And I think the scripture, it’s Romans 8:17, it says, “If we suffer with him, we’ll be glorified together,” I think that’s what he’s talking about, if I’m correct, is identification with him in death, right?

Amen.

Death to ourself.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, if we study the gospel, death and resurrection, I need to die to sin, die to self, die to the law, and die to the world.

That’s right.

And you know, and so if we suffer with him, we’ll reign with him, and he’s talking about, saying the same thing essentially, here in verse 12. “If we deny him, he’ll deny us, but if we believe not.” There’s some times we may struggle with a little bit of unbelief, but God knows where your heart is.

Yes.

He said, “He abides faithful, he cannot deny himself.” I actually had a person that was in my first church, and she had helped run the children church, so on and so forth, her dad was one of the only atheists, proclaimed atheists, in Kit Carson, Colorado, which is a very small town of about 300, and for a period of time she said, “Well, I don’t even believe God, believe in God,” but I know that she believed God, I believe actually she would’ve died, she’d went to heaven, she was just frustrated.

Sure.

And she grew beyond that time, and she’s back in love with Jesus, serving Jesus, her daughter’s actually the director, Carrie Pickett, of Charis Bible College.

Yeah.

Who grew up in my church, and so we’ve been spending all this time raising leaders for over 30 years now. But thank God, as we connect, as we identify with Jesus in death, we also identify with him in life, and we identify with him in the victory that he won. And so we’re gonna be back in just a few seconds, so stay tuned, and we’ll continue sharing on how we can live out the destiny of God for our life. Praise the Lord, friends, I am so excited to be sharing with you this great teaching I’m sharing from my series on 1 and 2 Timothy on “Raising Leaders,” part one and part two, also my wife’s series on, “Unless The Lord Builds The House,” and then we have a special edition “Faith That is Taught and Caught” by my wife, Barbara, and you know what? We are making these things available to you because we know the principles in these will help your family, just like they’ve been a blessing to us. And you know, we’re not talking about something that doesn’t work, we’re talking about something that we have proved in our own family, that we have proved in our church for years and years and years. You know what? The Word of God is true, and when you live your life and conduct your family by principles of the scriptures, you will find the blessing that God promises in his Word. So we want you to call us today and get this product. Thanks. Praise the Lord, friends, I’m so glad that you stayed tuned. We’ve been sharing on 2 Timothy 2, we’re talking about raising leaders, not only natural sons, not only our natural house, but spiritual sons, and he talks about this in 2 Timothy 2:14-15, he said, “Put the brethren in remembrance before the Lord that they don’t strive about words of no profit, but the subverting of hearers, study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman who needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of truth.” You know what? We can rightly divide it or we can wrongly divide it.

Yeah.

And I think there’s a lot of people that have wrongly divided the Word. I don’t believe in the flop-stop method of Bible study. Now, God can speak to you from the scripture anywhere-

For sure.

But you need to know the context that things were written in, and you don’t go over here and turn to one scripture and it says, “Judas went and hang himself,” and turn another one, “Go and do likewise,” that’s not Holy Spirit revelation, that’s stupid, but we can rightly divide the Word of truth, and as we study the Word of God, and I like what you said, I read through the Bible every year, this is one thing I taught my sons when they were young, I wanted them to read a chapter of the New Testament every day of the week. You read through the Bible in less than a year by reading a chapter of the New Testament, I read three to five chapters of the Bible every day. I got up this morning at 1:30 in the morning, I went and studied over our lessons today, I studied over what I’m gonna be teaching later this week, and then I read about six chapters of scripture, but just feeding myself on the Word of God, and we constantly should be feeding ourselves on the Word.

Amen, amen. And he says, “Put them in remembrance, not to strive about words to no profit,” so as we’re feeding ourselves on the Word, and we’re looking for those core doctrines, like you said, grace, faith, and righteousness, the center part of the gospel, and then we don’t wanna get involved in a bunch of sort of ancillary arguments where we’re debating with people about stuff that really isn’t essential, and we’re just finding a way to love people that may disagree with us on some of the finer points, but we’re all one in Jesus.

Sometimes some of the arguments that people have, they’re over nothing, they like split hairs, and it’s not doing. I remember I asked Dr. Sumrall about one of these questions when I was in Bible school that was a popular thing, I’m not even gonna talk about it right now because I don’t believe it bears at this time, but one of my Bible school friends that I really admired because of his relationship with the Word, disagreed with what I’d been taught on that.

Mm.

And so I, Dr. Sumrall had a time after he would teach Sunday school in the morning, and then he had a time where he answered questions live on satellite TV, and he’d never heard him yet, Delron Shirley, who now comes to my church and was the dean of the Bible school, Dr. Lester Sumrall’s Bible school, and has worked at Charis Bible College later. Dr. Delron Shirley would pick the questions and he’d give him, read ’em live, and then Dr. Sumrall answered ’em the first time he heard ’em.

Yeah.

And so I asked this question and he just blew up, he did not answer the question, he said, “Why do people fight about this? We got a whole world dying and going to hell, and you’re arguing over stuff.” It’s like splitting hairs.

Yeah.

Jesus said, “You strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, you’re picking at a splinter in somebody else’s eye and you got a log in your own.” I mean, it’s that kind of mentality, really, that we see sometimes, and people getting upset and angry about stuff that, this doesn’t even matter in eternity, and let’s quit fighting one another in the body of Christ and let’s go win the world to Jesus, we got a world that is dying, and going to hell, and needs to know Jesus. Now, about three or four years later, I was in an all-pastors meeting with Dr. Lester Sumrall, this pastor asked him the same question and he answered it.

Yeah.

And he answered it. Now, by that time I went and I studied out where this teaching come from, and I found out my friend was right and I was wrong.

Mm.

And I just had an idea because it had been taught by people that I knew.

Yeah.

But I found out when I went to the basis of it in the Word of God, it was something that Kenneth Hagin taught, but he got it from E. W. Kenyon, I went to E. W. Kenyon’s teaching and I read it, and then he taught it, said, “In the Hebrew it says this,” I went to the Hebrew Bible and studied that, didn’t say it.

Yeah.

And I said, “You know what? That is false, my friend is right.” And so Lester Sumrall then, like three years later, when a pastor asked him and it was an all-pastor’s meeting, he answered it, and answered the question, but he kinda said the same thing, “We shouldn’t be arguing and fighting about stuff like this, we ought to be winning the world to Jesus,” and that’s a really great point. Now, we need to keep studying the Word of God, he goes on, there’s some real powerful things I wanna get to, and he says, “Shun profane and vain babblings, they will increase to ungodliness, their word will eat as a canker, of whom Hymenaeus and Philetus, who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection has passed already, and they’re overthrowing the faith of some, nevertheless,” he says in verse 19, “the foundation of God stands sure, having this seal, the Lord knows those who are his, and let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” I was in a meeting two or three years back, and we had Jesse Duplantis here, and I had some young minister friends with me in the back room, and one of ’em said, “How can we make it long term in the ministry?” Jesse said, “Stay out of sin!” You know?

Amen.

And it’s like, Jesse’s preached this, “If you don’t embarrass sin, it will embarrass you,” and I’ve had some examples, not only where people have tried to draw you into something, and I violently resisted that.

Yeah.

And vocally, very vocally resisted that. And you know what? You wanna stay out of those things, but he says, “Let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from rebellion, iniquity, sin.”

Yeah.

Stay out of sin. He says, “In a great house,” the kingdom of God, “there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earth, some to honor and some to dishonor, if a man,” now, who chooses whether we’re gonna be a vessel of honor or dishonor? “If a man purge himself from these, he’ll be a vessel of honor, sanctified, sufficient for the master’s use, prepared for every good work.” So it’s our choice. Well, what do we purge ourself from? He says, “Flee youthful lusts,” right?

[Max] Yeah.

He talks about questions right before that, that you were talking about, that increase to ungodliness, vain babblings. He says, “Follow, flee youthful lusts, follow righteousness, faith, love, with those that call on the Lord out of a pure heart, foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they gender strifes.” Now, when I was a young preacher, I studied, I still study, I’ve studied the Bible more than most people probably, but not to be proud or arrogant, but when I was young I could win most arguments.

Sure.

Scripturally speaking, but as I matured, some of those questions and things that people brought, I wouldn’t even answer ’em, and I actually seek to do this, I seek to discern the spirit of the question-

Yeah. because sometimes the spirit of the question, they’re not really trying to get an answer, they don’t really want an answer, they wanna cause a problem, they wanna argue, they wanna be in one of these things that doesn’t matter, doesn’t amount to nothing, not gonna help anybody, bless anybody. And so he says, “Foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they gender strifes.” And my son, Aaron, is very good at this, and he says this, “Stay out of drama.”

Yeah.

“And some believers,” he said, “Daddy, they always run into drama, just stay out of the drama, don’t get in it.” And then he says this, and this is a lesson that I learned young, and I’ve really wanted to share on this in verse 24, “The servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle to all men, able to teach and patient, in meekness, instructing those who oppose themselves, if peradventure God will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his own will.” So he says, “We don’t strive, but we’re gentle to all men and able to teach.” About two years after I started my first church over 30 years ago in Kit Carson, Colorado, I had a man come to my church, he had been hurt in the word of faith. Now, I’m a grace and faith teacher, and so when he came to me, I went and visited him, and he was going to a nominal church, because he’d been hurt in this word of faith church, after a few weeks or a little bit of time, he started coming to my church, nearly every time that I taught on faith, healing, or prosperity, which is quite a bit of the time, you know me. And you know, that’s part of who I am.

Sure.

He would have me at the backdoor, asking me questions, asking me questions.

Yeah.

I noticed, that was about the first year, so let’s say three out of four Sundays, and I’d say, “Go read this scripture, go read this scripture, go read this scripture, go to the Strong’s Concordance, look up this.” I noticed after about a year, he quit doing that, after about another year, he became really involved in the church, he started leading mission trips, became a very fruitful member of our church.

That’s awesome.

And it was really good. He stayed the whole tenure that I was in Kit Carson, so he came about two years into my tenure there, I was there 13 years, so when we left, they had a dinner that the church did for us after Sunday service, and they had people, invited people to get up and say things, not very many people did, but he got up and this is what he said, “I first came here,” he said, “I heard pastor and I asked him questions,” he said, “nearly every Sunday.”

Yeah.

And he didn’t say he agreed with me, but this is what he said. He said, “I could never prove him wrong.” And so, you know what? I let the Word, right?

Yeah.

He might have had a different opinion.

Yeah.

A lot of times people have different opinions-

Sure.

That’s okay, we still believe in Jesus, we still believe that he’s God manifest in the flesh, we still believe he’s the Son of God, we still believe the Bible’s the inspired Word of God, we still believe in heaven, we still believe in hell, we still believe in grace, we still believe in faith, we still believe in the Holy Spirit, we still believe in the basic tenets of the faith.

Right.

But some of these things, it’s not worth arguing about.

Yeah.

But you know what? I just patiently taught him the truth, and so rather than getting in strife, just patiently teach truth and let the Word answer for itself. And you know, I believe that man recovered himself out of the snare of the devil that he was being taken in.

Yeah.

And he’s been a very fruitful member of the body of Christ.

That’s awesome, and you know what that guy was doing was he was asking questions with a good heart, he wasn’t just trying to argue, or debate you, or disprove you, he just really wanted to know.

Yeah.

And you were patient with him, and you spoke to him, and helped him, and one time I asked my church, I stood up there and I said, “How many of you will raise your hand and say that I taught something that you disagreed with?” And nearly everybody in the church raised their hand, you know? But they all still go to my church, and the deal is, is like you say, there’s things that are core things and there’s other stuff that we can have some disagreement about, and we just need to get along and love each other.

Yeah, I have some really great friends, some people that I really love and respect that there’s some aspects that I really differ with them on.

Sure.

In fact, I had one of them, I think he got a little upset because I wouldn’t, I told him, “Listen, I’m not gonna endorse this thing, I love you, I appreciate you, there’s a lot of good in it, but this one area, I really disagree with that principle-

Yeah.

And because of that I’m not gonna endorse it, but it doesn’t mean I don’t love you, doesn’t mean you’re not of God, I appreciate you,” in fact, I said, “There’s aspects of what you’re teaching, it’s in the Word, but when you have such a focus on this one area, I see what that produces in people’s lives, and because of that, I don’t wanna bless it because I want people to keep moving towards God and believing in these specific areas,” but I still love the man, I still appreciate him, he’s a great brother in the body of Christ, and you know what? We have to be mature enough to realize, just because someone doesn’t agree with us in every area, doesn’t mean that we’re not part of the same body, that they don’t love us-

That’s right.

You know? And we need to get our sense of being loved from God, our happiness is not in another person’s head, it’s in our relationship with Jesus. Well, thanks for being with me, Max.

God bless you.

Praise God, thanks for being on the program. If you need prayer, give us a call, blessings.

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