Four Keys To Faith Part 3 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue

Four Keys to Faith Part 3

Four Keys to Faith part 3 with Pastors Lawson and Aaron Perdue. On this episode of Grace For Today, explore the third key to faith, the power of your words. Death and life are in the power of your words and you can affect your destiny by what you say.

Four Keys to Faith Part 3 Transcript

Praise the Lord friends. I’m so glad that you’re with us today. We have been teaching on four keys to faith, and today I’ve got my son, Aaron with me. He’s been with me all of this week and it’s been a great week of teaching. So open your heart and receive the word of God. We’re gonna be talking about the power of your words. Death and life are in the power of your tongue, and you can affect your destiny by what you say, blessings. Friends, it’s so good to have you with us today. We are sharing on the power of the spoken word. We’re really talking about four keys to faith, and we began the week talking about making a decision. My good friend, Jesse Duplantis made a statement and it stuck with me, said most of the time in the realm of faith, I made a decision and God backed it. And so there’s just great people of faith are decisive people and they’re able to make a decision and stick with it and go with it. And that leads them ultimately into victory, I believe. The second thing we talked about yesterday in the broadcast, we talked about meditating the word of God and how we need to think the thoughts of God by meditating, by thinking on pondering, considering. We need to consider what the word of God says, we need to ponder what the word of God says. And then today, when you meditate the word, what’s gonna happen is you will begin to speak the word of God. And the Bible actually says this in Joshua 1:8, one of my favorite scriptures. I have so many, but it says, “This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate therein both day and night that you may observe to do according to all that is written therein for then you will make your way prosperous and you will have good success.” God wants you to have good success and he gives you the way to do it. Praise God, keep meditating the word of God, keep believing the word of God. Keep speaking the word of God, keep acting on the word of God. And you will make your way prosperous. You will make your way prosperous. And you will have good success. And you know what? We’ve proved it works in our family. You know, I taught you all you boys, these principles, you and your two brothers from young children and you’ve grown up believing the word of God, speaking the word of God and acting on the word of God. And you’re all serving Jesus. You’ve all made a choice to follow Christ. You all believe the promises, you all believe that God is for you. And you’re all very, very blessed. And I’m so thankful to God, amen, because the word of God works. God’s word works. But when you meditate the word of God, you were talking yesterday about our thoughts and how the average person has 60,000 thoughts a day. You got that study.

It was a study done by the Cleveland Clinic, just a medical study on how people think, the average person thinks 60,000 thoughts a day. And of those 60,000 thoughts, the vast majority of those thoughts are habitual repeated thoughts. I think it’s around 80% of those thoughts are recurring, repeated thoughts. And of those repeated thoughts, 90% of them are negative. So just every day, what people are thinking, what they’re pondering, the vast majority of it is just repeated negativity. And one way you can just rewrite your brain and just stop that just cycle of constant negativity is obviously to turn off the news, but then to speak the word of God, actively speak. When you say something out loud, there’s power behind it. I remember, I love history. I was reading about Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln would read from his King James Bible every morning that there was a young man that worked for him who was meeting him in the morning. It was around 6:00 AM and Abraham Lincoln was on his front porch, reading from the King James Bible. And one thing that he always did when he read the Bible, he actually read it out loud. Abraham Lincoln would read from the King James Bible. That’s what my dad reads every day as well, but he would read it out loud every morning. And there’s something about saying the word of God out loud, not just pondering it, but then just letting it bubble up out of you coming outta your mouth. When you say something there there’s more power to it. I remember I have my best friend that I’ve had since high school his older sister is a brainiac. She scored in the top one percentile of the SATs. She eventually went on to law school and she studied, she took the LSATs to get into law school. She went to Penn, an Ivy league law school on a full scholarship. She scored in the top one percentile on the LSATs. And I remember she had a job offer in New York City and she had to pass the New York bar and had to study like a maniac. But when she studied, I was at their home when she was studying, she would say everything she was trying to learn out loud. She wasn’t just reading it to memorize. She would say it out loud. And that’s actually one thing that people tell you when you’re studying to say it out loud, because you’re memorizing it with your eyes but also you’re hearing it with your ears. So your brain is getting it twice as much. You’re getting it coming into your brain with your eyes, but also with your ears. Isn’t that awesome?

Amen. That encourages so when you walk around and speak the word of God, you’re not only getting it, praise God in your mind, you’re getting it in your ears. So it’s like getting it double.

Yeah.

Praise God. And we’re gonna talk about the power of the spoken word and speaking the word of God. You know what, God’s word has power in your mouth. And I like something that I heard years ago and I’ve actually preached it. But the word that is spoken to you must be spoken through you. And so if you go back to this principle, Joshua 1:8, if you can remember that verse, it says, “This book of the law, this word of God shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate therein both day and night that you may observe according to all that is written there to do it. Then you will make your way prosperous and you shall have good success.” Now there’s power in the spoken word. One example’s found in Joshua 10 and Joshua was fighting a battle. Are you in a battle, what do you need to do? Speak the word of God. But in Joshua 10:8, “The Lord said unto Joshua fear them not.” He’s biting these enemies of Israel. And he says, “For, I have delivered them into your hand and there will not a man of them stand before you.” So God made known his will right there to Joshua. And so Joshua was fighting and in verse 12, “Then spoke Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel. And he said in the side of Israel, sun stand still upon Gideon and moon in the valley of Agilon. And the sun stood still and the moon stayed.” It stopped, “Until the people have avenged themselves upon their enemies is not this written in the book of Jazzer so the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down a whole day. And there was no day like it before or after it that the Lord hearkened to the voice of a man for the Lord fought for Israel.” And you know what? God will fight for you when you believe and speak his word, praise God. So Joshua was out there in a battle. He could see that, hey, the day was expiring, but God said, I want you to destroy these enemies. And so he spoke to the sun and told it to stand still. And it stood still. God hearkened the voice of a man and Joshua defeated the enemies. And then they just kept going forward. So praise God, that’s just one example. And you know what? There are many examples in the word of God, of people who believe and speak the word of God. Actually, there’s a scripture in Isaiah 45:11. And it says this, “Ask me things to come concerning my sons and concerning the works of my hands, command ye me.” Man, God said, ask me what I want and then make a command, praise God. And that’s what we see happen in Joshua, that you ask me what I want and then you make a command. You say what you want. So many people are just saying what they have instead of saying what they want saying. And if you want things to change in your life, you gotta learn to believe and speak the word of God. And don’t just say what you have. Say what you want. Say, I am healed by the stripes of Jesus. I am strong and healthy and doing the will of God. No weapon informed against me prospers. Pain, Jesus took my pain and by his stripes, I am healed. Pain leaves my body in the name of Jesus. Begin to declare the word of God and speak the word of God. See the Bible actually says this in Proverbs 18:21. It says death and life are in the power of the tongue. And those who love it will eat the fruit of it. Hey, you’re receiving it whether you believe it or not, death and life are in the power of your tongue. And if you’re speaking words of death, you’ll be receiving those unless you get a crop failure. And he says death and life. So what we meditate, so if 80 or 90% of our thoughts are negative and we’re speaking 90% negative things, we’ll receive a lot of bad harvest. I don’t wanna receive bad harvest in my life. So we need to learn to win the war of words. You know, the Bible says, teach me, Lord said watch over my mouth, over my lips. We need to guard our words. The words of the wise are health. You know, there’s health in our words, there’s blessing in our words, we need to learn. I remember you telling me this, Aaron, when you were in college, getting your doctorate, you had a Jewish doctor who was a student and they invited you to his birthday party. He was 60 years old, his 60th birthday party. He had family members came from all around the world, but you said, when you were there, you never heard them speak one negative word about anyone. Praise God, there’s power in your words. And so learn the power of words and learn–

Your words like we talked about meditation on yesterday’s show and it kind of starts there. What are you pondering in your heart? The Bible says out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. So what are you pondering? What are you feeding your heart? What are you feeding your soul? One thing I wanna mention too, is what’s the music that you’re listening to? What’s the television programs you’re watching, but music is a very powerful thing. I have a background in music. I’ve been playing at church all my life. My dad actually recruited me to play drums at church in second grade. So I’ve been playing at churches nearly every Sunday for all my life since I was probably eight years old, I’m now 35 years old, but a lot of even Christian music, isn’t really that faith filled. And sometimes I turn on the Christian radio and it can be very depressing, very negative, just Christian artists, just singing about their emotions, singing about a negative situation. When you come to church, the worship should be faith filled, man when you are speaking words, when you are singing, when those words have a melody attached to them, they should be faith-filled powerful, proclaiming the victory, proclaiming God’s promises. So be careful what you’re listening to. If it’s really whiny complainy.

Oh, it’s terrible, some of these words to these songs are terrible Christian songs. I remember one time I had the Christian radio station on and we were driving somewhere and they were singing this whatever. And you said, shut that off. I mean, that stuff is terrible and people need to realize it. And I’m that way with preachers sometimes. I’ll be driving they’ll be, oh, whatever will be will be. And you know, you have no control. No, you have control over your situation. You see, this is the challenge. A lot of people think that God’s up in heaven and controlling you, but God has given the authority to mankind. And we have a lot of power over what we receive in life. And so if we wanna change what we receive, we gotta change what we’re believing and speaking. James 3:6 says the, “The tongue is like a fire that sets on a spark that sets on fire the course of nature.” You can change the course of nature with your tongue, praise God. He says, it’s like a bit in a horse’s mouth. It’s like a, a rudder on a ship. You can turn a ship 180, 360 degrees with a little rudder. If the thing’s moving. Just a little rudder. Your tongue is like that.

I like that you said the tongue it’s like a spark that sets a big fire. In Colorado, it’s a fairly dry state. Here in Colorado Springs we’re a high desert climate. And there have been some big fires here in our past, but yesterday I had some friends over, my friend has kids, we have kids. So we decided to get the fire pit going, get the campfire going, make s’mores. And the kids really loved it, but it’s been fairly dry. So I actually got the hose out this water out and I sprayed all around the fire, anything that might be able to catch a little spark because I didn’t wanna start a fire. And I kept that hose ready to go. So you just need to always have God’s word, ready to go. Just put out any, what are you saying outta your mouth? You should just, when you’re saying things that go against the word of God, you need to just put it out right away before it just spirals outta control.

You know, so many people, like you said, they are led by their emotions rather than being led by the word of God. And by the spirit of God and we need to speak God’s word out of our mouth and let the word of God lead us into the victory that Jesus already won. Jesus already paid for our health, paid for our peace, paid for our physical and financial prosperity, paid for our forgiveness and our righteousness. And we need to speak words of righteousness, speak words of peace, speak words of blessing, speak words of prosperity, speak what God says about us.

Yeah and just have have that hose just ready to go. Ready to just put out any fiery words that go against God’s word. Just, if you catch yourself saying something that goes like rebuke it, put it out right away with God’s word, you think I’m so sore, I’m so sick. I’m so, just put it out right away, get God’s word and just gush it out like a hydrant of water.

Your son Fisher, he’s just eight years old. And once in a while he’ll say something and I’ll say, no Fisher, don’t say that, say this. And I take it very seriously. And I took it seriously when you guys were kids. And because I understand the power of the tongue, when we speak the word of God, we are following God. The Bible actually says that, “God calls those things that be not as though they were.” And so that’s in Romans 4:17. He said, it’s already that way. So we’ll be back right after this break. Friends this week we’ve been sharing on faith in God will change your world. And I am so happy to be sharing with you this faith package. I have this book from my good friends, Mark Hankins, Mark and Turner Hankins on the “Spirit Of Faith”, we have “World Changing Faith”, one of my best series. We have “Four Keys To Faith” and then finally we have, “Have Faith And Doubt Not”. These are some of my very, very best teachings on the realm of faith. And if you begin to understand faith, I believe it will literally change your life. It’s changed mine. Praise God it’s changed my financial position, it’s changed my spiritual condition. It’s changed my physical condition and it’s all good. God wants to do good things in your life. And he does it through grace and faith. So if you want to get this teaching, just give us a call today or check us out online. Thanks so much, blessings. Praise the Lord friends, I’m so glad that you stayed tuned. We’re talking about the power of the spoken word. And I know in this series of faith teachings, we have talked about this a little bit, but in 2 Corinthians 4:13, Paul was talking about how, when we faced difficulties that we need to speak to the word of God. And he says, “We then having the same spirit of faith. According as it is written, we believe, I believed and therefore, I’ve spoken, we also believe, and therefore we speak.” And he’s actually quoting David from Psalm 1:16. And when David was facing great difficulty and great problems, he spoke the word of God. You could see that example in 1 Samuel 17, I believe when he was facing Goliath and Goliath had all these negative things to say, and even his brothers had negative things to say, and Saul had a few negative things to say, but David said who is this uncircumcised Philistine? Praise God David was being motivated by a different spirit. We then having the same spirit of faith. “According as it is written, I believed and therefore, have I spoken, we also believe, and therefore we speak.” You’re gonna say what you believe. You quoted the scripture from Matthew 12:34 that says, “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” So when you meditate the word of God and put the word of God in your heart, in your mentality, then you’re gonna speak the word of God. And you can’t help say some things differently than what the world says. Why? Because the word of God is dwelling on the inside of you. And so in Psalm 116, it talks about David. And this is Psalm 116, where in verse 10, it says, “I believe therefore I’ve spoken.” And Paul is quoting that in 2 Corinthians 4:13. And he’s talking about how we face battles on the outside, but we’ve got the victory on the inside. Now, how do we get to that victory and walk out that victory. We continually believe, speak the word of God. That’s one of the things that we do. But in Psalm 1:16, beginning in verse seven, he says, “Return to thy rest on my soul for the Lord is built bountifully with you for you delivered my soul from death and my eyes from tears and my feet from falling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living I believed and therefore have I spoken and I was greatly afflicted.” So when you’re greatly afflicted, when you’re facing great challenge and difficulty, you need to keep believing and speaking the word of God. That’ll bring you in the victory.

With your, God is a faith God, Jesus operated by faith. He spoke words of faith. We have that same spirit of faith. God declared things that were not as though they were, God created with his words. So the tongue can actually be used as a destructive force or the tongue can be used as a creative force. Just like God created things with his spoken word in your own life. You can either destroy or you can create with your words.

Amen. So a destructive force or a productive force, your tongue, death and life are in the power of your tongue. Death and life are in the power of that tongue. And those who love it will eat the fruit thereof. Sometimes I’d like to walk around with people with a tape recorder and just record what they say, or they have different type of recorders now, little digital recorders, and then play it back to ’em and say now, if you want things to go good in your life, you need to reverse your words. People are actually speaking what they believe in their heart, outta the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. Now in Mark 11, we really see a plan for faith laid out in Mark 11, beginning in verse 22, Jesus was on his way to the temple. And as he was on his way to the temple, he saw a fig tree and he wanted fruit from it and he went to it. There was no fruit on it because it wasn’t the time of figs. And so he cursed the tree. So he comes by about 24 hours later. And when he comes by this tree is withered up from the roots dried up. I can see the bark falling off of it and the disciples they marveled. And they said, Lord, the fig tree which you cursed is dead dried up from the roots.

So he used his tongue as a destructive force.

Yeah. Well, if you understand, there’s a prophetic aspect behind this because he’s been to the temple right throughout the money changer, so on and so forth. And that fig tree is really prophetic about Israel. And so he is talking, he’s really mad about religion because religion is not gonna answer the problems of humanity. And there’s a lot of difference between true Christianity and religion and Christianity is life. I mean, we have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and it’s a life giving relationship and religion is man trying to get to God by his own performance. And Christianity is God coming in the form of Jesus Christ, to man and doing for us what we could not do so that we can be in a relationship with God through Christ. And so the difference is Jesus has already done the work and now we just respond to him. A good example of this religion was when I was in Nepal years ago. And I was out in the morning, early running as I often do. And there was this young man that kept running by me and very fast and then a little bit he’d run by me again. I thought, well, he’d passed me a while ago and this happened four or five times. And then I saw him ducking into these temples and he was offering sacrifices to these different gods because in Nepal, the religion Hinduism is the primary religion. There is a religion of fear and they fear all these different gods. So he was trying to offer sacrifices to as many gods as he could to appease their wrath. Well, the wrath of God has been satisfied and the blood of Jesus satisfied the wrath of God, the payment has been paid. So we don’t have to offer offerings in fear to all these different gods. That was in Capmandu the capital of Nepal, it’s a city of over a million gods. They say they have over 300 million different gods in Nepal. And so praise God we are not worshiping idols. We’re not worshiping dead gods, but we’re worshiping the one true living God who hears us. But Jesus spoke to this tree after having thrown the money changers out of the temple. And then when the disciples were marveling at the tree, Jesus said, “Have faith in God. For rarely I say unto you,” he begins to tell them how faith works. “Whosoever shall say unto this mountain be now removed and be thou cast in the sea and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he sayeth shall come to pass shall have whatsoever he says, whosoever sayeth.” I’ve got two friends now, both of ’em are in their 80s. They’re both great men of God. Great, great men, I really respect them. I honor them. They’re both fighting a major battle. And one of them is moving forward and doing well. One of them, he’s planning on going home to be with the Lord. He’s not trying to fight this, he’s ready to go he says, so what you believe a lot of times is what you receive. So those who are believing and speaking the word, I believe they’re gonna get what they say, amen. Now this one’s gonna go home and be with Jesus. They’re nothing bad about that. This other I believe is gonna win that victory, amen. And walk in that and I’ve been agreeing with them. I’ve been praying for them so on and so forth. But he says, “Whoever says to this mountain, be there removed, be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe those things which he sayeth shall come to pass shall have whatsoever he sayeth.” Nobody else controls your faith. Nobody else controls your tone. You have the power to change your life for good or evil by what you meditate on, what you believe and what you speak.

And I think one time you told me this too, there’s a scripture that talks about it. But sometimes as believers and faith filled believers, people who speak words of faith. If we hear a word spoken, that’s not a word of faith. Some people feel like they have to counter it right away or else that word will take over the situation.

Romans 3:4 I think it says their unbelief will not make the faith of God without effect. And so if you’re in a situation where maybe a family member or somebody close to you is not believing with you, you don’t have to accept that. He says, shall their unbelief make the word of God, the faith of God without effect. He says, God forbid their unbelief will not make the word of God without effect. What matters is what you believe at a heart level. And when you believe something at a heart level, you can’t help but say it. You can’t help but speak it. So I can’t help but talk different than the world, act different, think different. Why? Because God’s living in me and praise God, I’m gonna believe and speak some things. I’m gonna say some things, praise God. I’m trying to make a difference while I’m here.

Amen.

Take a few people to heaven with me. Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed the broadcast. We have so much more to say about this. And you know, you go to our website and look for our teachings and you can find all of our stuff that’s absolutely free on our broadcast on our website. So if you go to charischristiancenter.com, you get that. If you need prayer, want product or wanna become a partner, give us a call. Thanks so much and bless you.

[Narrator] What is faith? Do I need more of it? And how do I exercise what I have? In this package containing Mark Hankin’s book “The Spirit Of Faith” and CD series, “World Changing Faith” “Four Keys To Faith” and “Have Faith Doubt Not” you’ll learn the answer to these questions and more, you can get this special package for $59 when you call 719-418-4000 or visit charischristiancenter.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 at charischristiancenter.com you can get all of our materials there on the website. As you watch them, 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.

[Narrator] 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 PO box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80962. See you next time on Grace For Today.