Fearless – Part 4 Lawson and Barbara Perdue

  Welcome, friends, to the broadcast today. I’m so glad that you’ve tuned in. Today we’re gonna be talking from my wife, Barbara’s, series. She’s here with me teaching on Fearless, and we’re gonna talk about how you can live in faith. You don’t have to live in fear. And we’re gonna be talking about the value of work and having a practical trade. You don’t wanna miss this broadcast. It will bless you. Friends, it’s so good to have you today with us. And I got Barbara with me, and we’ve been talking all week about Fearless and how you can raise your family and you can live today fearless, praise God. And we talked about in the first broadcast how fear and faith are total opposites and how, praise God, we can live in faith. And there have been challenges with every generation, but we don’t have to be overcome with the darkness and the death and the destruction of the world. We talked about in the second program about the value of identity and how powerful it is and we need to get our identity from who we are in Christ and who God made us to be. And then we talked about in the third broadcast the value of relationships. And one of those relationships was our relationship with work. And you know what? I wanna say this right now. Work is not a bad word. Work is not a curse. Work is a blessing. You know, we had a person at our church that was really struggling financially, and they didn’t believe in work. They thought work was a curse, and they taught this. And anyway, they told Aaron, our oldest son, that he should allow them to come and live in his house free. And this is before he got married. He was living in a house that he bought, four-bedroom, three-bath house. And he bought it with his money that he worked for, and they were telling him he should come and let them live for free. And he’s like, nope, that’d be wrong because you think work’s a curse. And so I can’t let you live in this house because I worked to get the money to buy this house. Praise God. And you need to have the proper attitude towards work. Work is not a curse. Work is a blessing. And we need to live with purpose. It’s a big deal. And so we’re gonna talk about this. We’ve talked about raising children for years. And we’ve got three sons. Every one of our sons are really very, very successful. Our oldest son got his BA, then his master’s and doctorate. Got his BA in administration, business administration and also in music. His masters and doctorate are in music. And then our middle son, Andrew, got his engineering degree at Colorado School of the Mines. And he got his BA and then his master’s. And then our younger son went to Princeton and got his in Business Finance, his degree. And Peter went to work right when he got out of Princeton. But all of our sons are really tremendously blessed. They all have good attitudes, they all have a good work ethic. They don’t see work as a curse, they see work as a blessing. Peter, when he went to work, he went into the corporate world, and he worked like 90 hours a week. And he was on salary. And they told him, he was working for the 3G Capital Corporation. And in the business he’s working for, they said, Peter, you are the number one new hire out of 50 new people last year. They said, You know what? We can tell that you have a good attitude when you work five days, and then we call you in on Saturday and you work all day. And they told him, Peter, we want you to go to church on Sunday because we can tell it’s good for you, but we call you back in Sunday afternoon, and you’ve been working and you don’t complain about it. Man, some people, they just don’t get it. And he did a lot of things that were unpleasant to begin with there. And this is what people don’t understand. You know what pastoring’s not all about being on the pulpit preaching, you know pastoring’s about dealing with people. And there’s some unpleasant things in dealing with people, but it just comes with the territory. And you know, you talked about yesterday, how I’ll go out and pick weeds, I’ll pick up trash. I’d do whatever it takes.

 

  That’s right. You know what people around here, a lot of times… When we were at Kit Carson, I was the only employee at the church, and we’d have people come in looking for a handout. I was the only pastor that lived in town. And they’d talk to me and they’d say, Is the pastor around? I’d say, Yeah. I’d sit there and talk to them for a while, I’d be at my desk or whatever, and then they’d just get this disappointed look. I remember one day a guy got a real disappointed look ’cause I’m in there with my blue jeans. You know what? ‘Cause I’m used to going to work. And he looked at me and he said, Are you the pastor? And I said, Yeah. If they wanted food or whatever, I’d say, Well, you go out here and pick these weeds and go out here and do this or do this. I had one guy mow, and I had a 24-inch push mower. And we had a three-acre church property, and I had to mow a big old area. And then I went and bought him some gas. But people, they’d want me, Well, just get me a meal. One guy came one day, he said, Just get me a meal here at the restaurant and you just give me a place to stay tonight. And it was like one o’clock in the afternoon. And he was over at this liquor store, and this Catholic woman ran it. And he told me, he said, Well, you don’t understand. And I said, What don’t I understand? I was talking to him on the phone ’cause he is calling me, asking him to, and at that time we would hardly ever eat out. We didn’t have the money to eat out that time. And you know, if he, I’ve been hitching, he said all day and I’m so tired. And I said, no, you don’t understand it. He’s like, what do you mean? I’m like, the Bible says if you don’t work, you don’t eat. And I got feeling bad about what I told him. And so I went up to see that lady there at the, and he said, the Salvation Army got me a room. Would you actually, this is what he said, would you get me a meal? I said, well you gotta work for it. And she’s a Catholic lady. And she said, no, you got it right pastor. So glory to God. And I had him go sweep this piece of pavement, you know, over by the restaurant, you know, ’cause of the older lady in our church up in her seventies that ran this restaurant and he swept that up and then I went and bought him a meal. But you know what? People want something for nothing. Life doesn’t just work, it just doesn’t work that way.

 

  I like a lot of what you’re sharing, again, just very practical things and practical things I believe that you grew up with, especially being raised in an agricultural community. There was just always things to do. Animals need to be taken care of, crops need to be taken care of. Neighbors would help one another. And your father is the one who really imparted that scripture. If a man doesn’t work, he won’t eat either. And just to bring something out that people might not understand. When we were pastoring there, we start our first church in Kit Carson. A lot of times people know the circuit, there’s people who are just trying to go from town to town.

 

  They use the system.

 

  They use the system. And so what you did was really to test their heart. And a lot of times the task you would have them to do was really nothing much. Because I do remember the one man who was trying to get from one job to another. He was a foreman for I believe a farmer ranch and was really trying to get the next job. And he needed literally needed help with gas in his car. And you just asked him to mow the small strip of grass right up by the church. And we saw, we looked out there and he’s mowing the whole acreage of the weeds.

 

  Yeah .

 

  And you know, you went out and stopped him and we talked to him. You went on to the gas station with him and said, you know, I’m, I wanna give you more, you did much more than I asked for. And this gentleman was such a person of his word. He says, no, we agreed on this and he wouldn’t even let you give him anymore.

 

  Boy one day. You know, and I had these people and a lot of them were users, but I had a woman come by and she had two, you know, children and I’d say they’re probably five and seven years old, something like that in her car. And I said, yeah, just go to the station and I’ll get you 10 gallon of gas and just go up there and just tell them and they’ll put it on my account. I’ll call them and tell them. And so, man, when she left, the Lord said, you do better. And so I called the station man guy and I said, you make sure buy, get those kids a pop, get them whatever they want to eat, fill her car completely with gas. And man, I got in my car and beat it up there. It was a mile from our church and it was actually Carrie Pickett’s daddy that run the station, Charlie Northwest. And when I got there, he said she wouldn’t take it. And it made me feel so bad because she actually needed that. And I don’t, you know, the bible said, you know, food and clothing, that’s basic and that’s not a problem to provide food and clothing. There is more than enough wealth for every person in the world. They did a study a few years back, there was $12 million for everybody. You know, that’s in the world for every person. There’s plenty of money in the world for everybody to have more than enough. But it’s just like if they don’t wanna work, if they’re just looking for a handout, that is just not the way to live.

 

  Yeah. We’re really bringing something really powerful out today. And this is practical trade, something that I believe, you know, you grew up with, we raised our children with, in other words, the Hebrew culture really taught this, that your children, they need to apprentice somewhere or get an education somewhere. We call it practical trade. It’s in the Bible, but I call it fan the flame, work should be fun. It should be where we can use our creative imagination. How can we make systems even better?

 

  Amen.

 

  I love we have the most amazing staff. They are all just awesome people, really serving with the heart. You’ve talked about, you know, doing extra projects on other days off and some of these staff have come to help you, you know, when you’ve called them. They just have such tremendous hearts for God and for the ministry here. But again, we’re talking about raising children and even as individuals, maybe you didn’t grow up in a Christian home, but I guarantee you, you have a special God-given anointing and that needs to be nurtured and you need to fan that flame,. And especially as parents, we need to discern our children’s gifts. But again, not everyone grows up in a Christian home. It’s never too late to fan that flame. So Proverbs 22, 6 says this, “Train up a child and the way he should go. And when he is old, he will not depart from it.” In other words, when he is old, he won’t be lost. There’s so many people that grow up and never really discover who they are in Christ, the amazing plans that he has from them, amazing anointings and gifts and abilities on their life. And so we want to nurture them in those gifts and anointings so they won’t be lost. They won’t not really realize who they are and live life to the fullest in joy. And again, with that creative imagination and ability, work should be fun. I mean, like you said, there’s things we all deal with that aren’t always easy, but work is a blessing. It is not a curse. Society will try and tell you that work is a curse. No, no, no.

 

  Oh yeah.

 

  Work is a blessing. And so, you know, we wanna raise our children to understand this. We wanna fan that flame. And I want you to read, if you don’t mind turning to Psalm 127, and this is in verse four, this is another thing. But again, “Train up a child the way he should go. And when he is old, he will not depart from it.” A lot of times people think this is talking spiritually, but it’s really talking about, again, those natural gifts and abilities. And I tell people this because a lot of times people may not even understand it’s their gift because it’s just so easy for them. Some people are really good at math and science. Some people are just really good, good at compassion and caring for others. Some people are really good with systems and organization.

 

  You know what those that you’re describing

 

  Are in the Bible.

 

  The last three you just de described are Romans 12, gifts. They’re motivational gifts. So administration, you know, helps all these different things. They’re giftings that come from the Lord. And if you can figure out what your God given gifts and talents are. I believe that God created every person to succeed. And so we’ll talk about this in the second half of broadcast, but okay, right here in this scripture, Psalm 127:4 it says, “As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are the children of the youth.” So you’re gonna talk about the Hebrew and the Hebrew meanings of this verse. And you know, really I believe we raised our children with this, that our children are a gift from God to us and they’re really the lords. And it’s our responsibility as parents to find out what are their God-given gifts, what are their God-given abilities, and then to nurture them so they’re able to go out into society and be a blessing and be a success in this life. So we’re gonna be back right after this break and stay tuned. We’re gonna talk, Barbara’s gonna talk more about what this scripture means at a faith level. So stay tuned, we’ll be right back. Thank you so much. Blessings. Friends I’ve really been enjoying teaching with Barbara on her message, Fearless. I know these messages have the power to help you. just like the word of God has helped us in our life. And so you can get them absolutely free of charge on our website at charischristiancenter.com and downloadable audio or video, blessings.

 

  You know what? I’ve had a lot of opportunities along the line to get discouraged, to get disappointed, to quit believing. But there’s one thing I know I’m gonna keep believing God. The fact is God said it and that settles it and you can believe it and begin to receive it or you can doubt it and do without it. But God said it and that settles it. Friends, I’m so glad that you stayed with us. We are talking today about, you know, developing a practical trade, teaching your children. This is the Hebrews taught their children three things. Number one, you value the word of God.

 

  Amen.

 

  Number two, you value family, right? You value godly relationships. And number three, they taught their children what a practical trade. And that’s the value of work. Work is valuable. And I really got this instilled in me. My dad’s favorite scripture was, if you don’t work, you don’t eat. And when I got baptized in the Holy Spirit, I said, dad, Jesus is gonna come back. What does this matter? Like we were, we planted hundreds of trees and he’d have me go out in southeast Colorado in the summer and cut these weeds around them. It would be humid, we’d be irrigating, it’d be muggy, there’d be bugs. These are little bitty saplings that we planted. and I’m like, Jesus is gonna come back. What does this even matter? And you know, if you go out there today, praise God, I’m 59. I was doing this when I was nine, 10 years old, 13, 12. I mean, go, there are beautiful windbreaks in groves of trees still where we planted them. And I had a missionary tell me years my dad died when I was 17. But tell me years later, you know, those things are gonna be here. A lot of them during the millennium when Christ rains for a thousand years on the earth. And people don’t realize this, but you know, they say in the garden of Gethsemane, you know, where Jesus was tried, there are all of trees there that some of those were over. You know, some of them that are alive today, were alive 2,000 years ago when Jesus walked in the garden of Gethsemane. So this is really amazing that how your life can affect generations to come, not only in spiritual things, but also in natural thing.

 

  Again, we’re talking about a practical trait or fanning a flame in our children and ourselves. And I was mentioning something, then you had something else to impart. But I always try to encourage people, just think what is your, What are you strong in a natural gift or talent? And then what brings you joy? Ask yourself these three things. What aspect are you strong in? What brings you joy and where do you see a need?

 

  Yeah and here’s another one that goes with this. What do other people see?

 

  Oh hat’s good.

 

  Because sometimes people think they’re strong in an area, but other people really don’t see it. And if you are really strong in an area, there will be other people who can see that. And sometimes people are just being nice to you and not really telling you the truth, so.

 

  Yeah, so tell me again the scripture I had you read in case they just jumped in.

 

  It’s Psalm chapter 127:4, “As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man. So are the children of the youth.” And you’re gonna talk about what that really means in the Hebrew.

 

  Yeah, I love that scripture. And again, I had read Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go. And when he is old, he will not depart from it nurturing those God-given gifts, annointings and talents in our children. So there’ll be directed,” you know, have short-term and long-term goals, but then I love it then when you add the arrow like hands and the, you know, a mighty warrior, like an arrow, and you think about what’s an arrow supposed to do? And I think about years ago, many, many years ago, maybe they would take sticks to make arrows and no stick is straight. It has gifts and bends and they would have to work with that stick to shape it and create it into an arrow or even if they use metal and iron. But you’re creating something. And when you think of what is the purpose of an arrow, you want it to fly as high and fast and efficiently as it can. And ultimately a target is supposed to, it’s designed to hit a target, a specific target. And so when we’re raising our children, we want them to hit their God given talent.

 

  Amen.

 

  And that’s exciting. We’re raising our children with strategy, raising them as unto the Lord, teaching them their identity. But that work is a blessing. Especially when you’re working in the aspect of that anointing. You talked about some of the managers we have for us and what a blessing they are. All of our employees are amazing because they are using their god gifts and talents and anointings to serve.

 

  Do you know what? It’s so important like that we do what we do to serve humanity. You know, I have a doctor in our neighborhood and he was the top blood doctor in Penrose health system in Colorado Springs. His name is Dr. Robert Sayer. And he would probably not see this broadcast, but that man treated me like Jesus Christ. And I had an issue with blood clots years ago. And he brought me in and found out what really the root of the issue was and stuff. And you know what, I think he charged me like I didn’t have insurance. He charged me like $35. I’m talking about the top blood doctor in the whole Penrose network,

 

  Praise God.

 

  And most people would’ve charged probably 300 to 500 dollars for those appointments. This man just took care of me. I got another doctor at my gym, his name is Jim and he’s ghost of first press. and this man, he was a, you know, grew up, he didn’t have a lot, but he went into the military because of the Korean War. And then he became a medical doctor as a result of that and served in the army. And then he became in private practice and he’s up over 80 years old and he is a great man of God. He loves God. And you can tell that he does this because he’s serving humanity. And then we have in our own church, we have Dr. Henderson and he went to Oral Roberts University and that man is a servant of humanity. He cares, you know, doctors are trying to get the same thing done we are, they’re trying to get people healed.

 

  Amen.

 

  And Jesus came preaching and teaching and healing.

 

  Hallelujah.

 

  Amen. Well, and there’s something we’ve been bringing out. We’ve been ultimately talking about Moses and his parents and being raised in a society that is affected with sin. And what do we do when the culture says really ungodly things and just the whole journey of Moses and being born and in a time where male babies are supposed to be, like you said, emphasize, you know, thrown in the river to drown. And thank you for that word. And you know, and just how he was adopted, right into the enemy’s camp, you could say. And I love how he had the best education, the best training we’ve been been talking about that that God always provides what we need for what we’re called to. But there was provision for Moses’s education. He was tutored by the best to really bring him to that place to lead God’s people, and this.

 

  I wanna talk about something really quickly because we’ve been talking about this all week because a lot of times Christians think that we just deal with the spiritual aspect of our children, but they’re spirit, soul, and body. And Moses spent the first 40 years of his life being trained in the ways of Egyptians. He had the best education, so on and so forth. So that was really 40 years in the flesh. He spent the next 40 years on the backside of the desert leading the children of Israel, right? Or actually not before he led the children of Israel. He spent 40 years in the desert. Moses knew every water hole on the backside of the desert. There was nobody that was more well qualified to lead the children of Israel through the wilderness than than Moses. And then he saw this burning bush and this bush was on fire. It was actually on fire with God, and yet it wasn’t being born burned up. And he went, it caught his attention and God said, take your shoes off because it’s holy ground. And Moses spent the last 40 years, he lived to be 120 years old of his life in the spirit doing ultimately what God called him to do. And you know, it was not only was he developed in the spirit, but he was developed in the soul and he was developed in the flesh. And we talked about our children, right? We not only want them to have a good foundation in the spirit, in the word of God, in the things of God, in the things of the spirit. We wanna have them a good soul, a good education. We taught all of our kids, we had involved in music right? And then we had them involved physically, right? And not only did we teach them to work, we taught them, you know, different areas, right. Physically we had them involved in sports. Sometimes Christians are just, they just don’t understand the practical aspects of life. And kids need all that. They’re a spirit. They possess a soul and they live in a body. And so we need to develop the whole man.

 

  Amen. I like that. That’s all really good. And I was just gonna bring out, just talking about how and what you brought out even more, how Moses, everything that he needed to fan that flame or help him with this practical trade was provided for even what was to come, what he was called to do. But we taught our children this Philippians 4:19, “My God shall supply.”

 

  “All your need according to his riches and glory.”

 

  His riches and glory. So supernatural thing, we had brought this out in the beginning of the week that Moses parents really acted in faith, not fear. And so we taught our children this. We never raised them with this attitude because of, you know, who we are and you know, you being a pastor and starting churches that we didn’t have this big huge fun. Just, we never talked about that. We just said with God, all things are possible.

 

  Amen.

 

  And we knew that they needed some training for the gifts and callings in their life. And I loved it. It was our youngest son. I loved it. It was in middle school when he already had a vision, what he was supposed to do with his life. And then it was later in high school, he said with his own mouth, I’m going to such and such college. And I remember thinking, wow, that’s a big statement. But you know, the Lord just said don’t rain on that excitement or parade and you know, he really felt called to go to Princeton University. But how I wanted to bring out talking about how the Lord provides, that was, you know, a purpose, a plan and purpose and something burning in his heart and spirit. He heard from God. And I love that it was while he was at this campus that there was a dinner for some of the students to learn about the endowments that were left years before for them. And it was, the question was asked, is there anyone here whose parents are missionaries? And our son, Peter raised his hand. He said, well, my parents aren’t missionaries, but they’re in full-time, you know, ministry as pastors and give a lot to missions. And it was amazing that this couple a hundred years previously.

 

  Over a hundred years, the grand daughter of the man who put this money aside in the 1800’s over a hundred years before our son Peter was born, was there. And Peter met the granddaughter of the man who put this money away over a hundred years before he was born and made provision for him to go to college. Well we paid some.

 

  Tell them what the request was. The request was that this endowment would go for parents of those in full-time ministry for their children. And so to me, you know, our son did not know that was by faith. But the Lord provided what he needed. And so the Lord will provide what you need as well.

 

  Amen, and you know, Peter, when he was in seventh grade, went to our youth camp and came back, said, you’re not gonna have to pay for my education. I’m gonna get in through a sports scholarship, which he got into Princeton through playing football.

 

  But he also said God is gonna provide.

 

  And then he said when he was a junior at our youth camp, God told him he was gonna go to Princeton. Now we had him apply to three different colleges, but ultimately he went to Princeton. And you know what? God spoke to him. And you know, it wasn’t till he was there attending that he found out about this endowment. And Princeton today has over a 25 billion dollar endowment. And you know a lot of times the world is smarter than the church. And praise God, we have sown seed and our son has sown seed and we have reaped the harvest off the seed that we’ve sown. If you wanna partner with us, we’d love to have you partner today. If you need prayer, give us a call. Also, we have literally hundreds of hours of teaching free on our website at charischristiancenter.com. So if you need prayer, you wanna become a partner, give us a call today. Blessings.

 

  There are practical ways for parents to raise their children by faith and not by fear. Now is the time to step out in faith and equip the next generation with everything they need to be successful. We’d like to bless you with the digital copying of “Fearless,” a $5 value free of charge. You can download it today careschristiancenter.com.

 

  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. The word of God has blessed me so much and I want to make this word that I’ve received available to you. If you go to our website careschristiancenter.com. You can get all of our materials there on the website as you watch then as you listen absolutely free of charge. And we’ve done that just to be a blessing to you. I hope you’ve enjoyed the message today. Enjoyed the word of God and I believe that the word that has freed me will free you, blessings.

 

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