Four Keys To Faith Part 4 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue

Four Keys to Faith Part 4

Four Keys to Faith part 4 with Pastors Lawson and Aaron Perdue. On this episode of Grace For Today we unpack the final key to faith! Many people over complicate faith, but faith is easy and can be applied to any situation. Learn how as you watch.

Four Keys to Faith Part 4 Transcript

Welcome to Grace for Today. I’m Pastor Aaron Perdue here at Charis Christian Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I’m with my dad, Pastor Lawson Perdue. Today is gonna be a great show. I’m so glad you’re watching. We’re talking about the four keys of faith. We’re talking about the fourth key today, which is the act of faith. A lot of people try to overcomplicate faith. They try to make it a very mysterious thing. Today’s show is gonna really help you a lot. It’s gonna really simplify faith and show you how to apply it to any situation you’re believing for.

Praise the Lord, friends. I am so glad that you are with us today. And we are sharing about four keys to faith. And this is our last broadcast this week about this specific subject. But I want to share with you. We started with the first one was make a decision. My good friend, Jesse Duplantis. I heard him make this statement and it just stuck in my mind. He said most of the time in the realm of faith, I’ve made a decision and God backed it. So you make a decision to surrender your life to Jesus Christ as Lord. You make a decision to believe the promises of God, to believe what the word of God says about you. Then you make a decision to follow the plan of God for your life. And things will begin to move in a good direction. So number one, make a decision. Number two, we talked about what we meditate, what we think on. As you meditate the word of God and you begin to think the word of God, it changes then what you say. And we talked about the power of our words, that our words are directing our life. Death in the life are in the power of our tongue. And those who love that, eat the fruit thereof. That’s Proverbs chapter 18, verse 21. The Bible says a lot about our words, but today we’re gonna talk about what we do. Faith without corresponding action, faith without works the Bible says is dead, being alone. It says that in James chapter two, verse 17, verse 20, and then verse 26, it says it several times. Faith without works is dead. And so, great example, Aaron is you. When I dropped you off at the airport, DIA in Denver to fly back to Houston, to get your doctorate. Now, you already had your undergrad. You already had your master’s, but I told you, if you didn’t get your dream job to apply for a doctorate, so you did, and you got in the doctorate program. I texted you when I got back to Colorado Springs, I texted you a real brief text. I said, “Aaron, if you’ll believe it, by the time that you graduate from college, you will have $100,000 net worth.” And you texted me back. I mean, it didn’t take you 15 seconds. And you said, “I believe it and I’ll have it.” Praise God. And you receive that. You not only had $100,000 net worth, you had over a $200,000 net worth by the time that you graduated from college with your doctorate degree. Most people have nearly, you have over a half a million dollars education. Most people have several hundred thousand dollars of debt by then to pay off. You’d paid off all your college debt and you have a half a million dollar education paid for, and you got what you believed.

Now, faith is active. Faith is not inactive. I think a lot of people think, well, faith just means I’m inactive, but faith is a very active thing. And I remember, you know, that I had a year off between my master’s and my doctorate, and I knew how I could survive. I was barely surviving living in a very cheap apartment in Houston, but as I was reading the word of God, God spoke to me through his words. So, everyone needs to spend time in the word of God, spend time in the Bible. That’s how God speaks to us primarily as believers. So, I was just reading through Genesis 14 when Abraham, went out and tried to take back Lot, had been taken captive and his family. So a Abraham saddled up all of his servants and went and fought these enemies and conquered them, brought Lot and his family, all the goods back to these Kings. And as he’s bringing them back, Melchizedek is mentioned in Genesis 14. Melchizedek was the priest king of Salem. Melchizedek spoke a blessing over Abraham and said, “Abraham, you are blessed by the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth.” And God just spoke to me and said, “Aaron, you are blessed by me, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth.” And that word that God spoke to me, it just really took root in my heart. And I knew that I was blessed even though on the surface, I was kind of struggling. I was at a very low point in life, you know, low point in my career, financially, relationally. I was sleeping on an air mattress, just barely surviving, but God said, “Aaron, you are blessed. Even though you’re in this situation.” The blessing of the Lord is not dependent upon your circumstance. The blessing of the Lord is dependent upon your relationship with God. And God just spoke to me. And I just knew in that moment that I was blessed. And because I knew that I was blessed, I knew all the promises of God about the blessing. That the blessing of the Lord makes one rich. He adds no sorrow to, I know that, because I’m blessed, whatever you set your hand to will prosper. So I started setting my hand to some things. There wasn’t a lot I could set my hand to, but what I did, I actually got on Craigslist there in Houston, and I just found free things. There was a section of Craigslist called Free. So I just looked for free things. At the time, I didn’t have any furniture. So I was looking for just some free furniture, so I could have a bed to sleep on, maybe a couch to sit on. So I got some free things and I started realizing I could pick up things for free and maybe sell ’em for 25-50 bucks. So I started setting my hand to something. I remember I found a free TV that was broken. And this was before TVs were light and flat screened. You know, it was a big hunker of a TV. I went and got, and I thought, well, I’m gonna lay my hands on this thing, I’m gonna pray over it and fix it, and sell it and make some money. I got this TV, I lugged it up to my second floor apartment. It probably weighed 100 pounds, lugged it up there. I tried to fix it. I couldn’t fix it, but, you know, whatever your hand touches will prosper. So I just thought, well, I’ll try to find a repair person to fix this thing. And I found a repair person and he ended up buying it for $50 from me just for parts. So I made 50 bucks. So I was just setting my hand to whatever I could. And at the time it was just junk. And eventually God kind of led me to buying a nice watch. And I was gonna try to buy a nice watch. And this person had sold it to someone else who told me, “I don’t have it anymore, I sold it.” And so I got on eBay and thought, well, I’ll try to buy the same watch, but you know, maybe get a good deal on it. And I saw this kind of watch I was looking for, like new at the store they were $500, but I saw they usually sell around 200, 250 on eBay, but every now and then you could get one for $100. So I bought one for $100, won in auction. And after I paid for it and was getting shipped to me, I thought, well, maybe I’ll just wear it and sell it, put it up for sell for $200 and make some money on it. And that first package I got actually got stolen out of my mailbox. I lived kind of in a ghetto apartment. A lot of thieves going on around there, but it got stolen. So I got mad because I knew that I was blessed and I wasn’t cursed, and if the thief be found, he shall restore sevenfold. So I actually ended up buying two more watches, it was all the money I had for $100 each. And I remember that one of these watches, I got the first one I got that I actually put on my wrist, I went to church at Houston during praise and worship. I lifted up my arm in praise and worship and I just thanked God that whatever my hand touches, whatever my wrist touches would be blessed. And that week I sold that watch for $250. I doubled my money and eventually sold the other one. And just within a year, that business just kind of took off. I was able to double my money on a lot of things. And I was making close to $10,000 a month profit. I got out of debt, got some furniture and what I was believing and what I was speaking came to pass, but I took action. I didn’t just sit around and do nothing and just sing the blues.

Yeah, I like something that you said. When your watch got stolen, you got mad and this is a plague among believers. A lot of times they say, well, whatever will be.

God’s in control of everything.

Yeah. And so maybe God just doesn’t want me to be in the watch business. I remember a preacher told one me one time, we had a blizzard and it was a bad blizzard. And I lost a lot of cattle. And I had quite a bit of debt. I lost about $100,000. And he said, “Well maybe God just doesn’t want you in the cattle business.” And you know what? I’d been in the cattle business. I’d made a lot of money prior to that. And I got mad and I started believing, it took me a year to get my 100,000 back. But then, you know, a few years later, I mean, I increased a lot. We got in a major blizzard and I had over 3000 cattle, and a lot of debt, over $3 million of debt between the cattle and the feed. And you know what, I lost a quarter million dollars in a major blizzard. And it’s a miracle. One of my old time friends told me, he said, “Listen, it’s a miracle you didn’t go broke, Lawson.” But you know what? I got mad because I know who the thief is. And the Bible says that the thief be found, he’s gotta repay seven times. And so, I started believing to get my quarter million back seven times. And it took me several years, but I got it back seven times over. And that’s the problem with too many people when they have any type of problem, any type of physical circumstance say they’re believing God for healing doesn’t go their way. Well, maybe the Lord just doesn’t want to heal me. No, God wants to heal you. He is the Lord our healer. By Jesus stripes’ you were already healed, but you can’t just accept some circumstance as the will of God. You’ve gotta believe what the Bible says. You’ve gotta believe what the promise says. And so, you know what? Some of you need to get mad at the devil and exercise your faith and start doing what we’re saying, what we’re talking about. Make a decision that I believe Jesus, I believe the promise of God, I believe the word of God. And then begin to meditate the word of God, begin to speak the word of God and begin to act like it’s true. And you know, the Bible is literally full of people who acted in faith. You know what, when you’re living by faith, faith and action are inseparable. And you could tell in Hebrews 11, these people were people of faith by what they said and by what they did. Faith is a substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So you can have substance, the substance of the things you hope for is what you believe and what you, and you can tell what you believe by what you speak and what you do. The evidence of a God that you cannot see is people of faith who are acting on, who believe and are acting on and speaking the word of God. And so the command of faith calls for response. Jesus spoke words of faith and when people acted on the word they received. Jesus told a man with a withered hand, “Stretch forth your hand.” He told the lepers, the 10 lepers that came to him, “Go show yourselves to the priest.” One of them came back and thanked him because that’s what the law, Moses and the law said, if you’re a leper and you’re healed, you go show yourself to the priest and the priest declares that you’re healed and you can reenter society. So he said, this is what the word of God says, if you’re healed, show yourself to the priest. So Jesus said, “Go show yourself to the priest.” And as they went, they were healed.

I think a lot of people overcomplicate faith and they think they have to do some grand thing to make faith work, but really faith, it’s a very simple thing. It’s believing God’s word, it’s speaking it, and it’s acting upon it. But acting, some people again, they get way off in terms of making faith an active thing. Faith is just taking a step towards Jesus.

Yeah.

You know, for the woman with the issue of blood, she just said within herself, “If I may touch the hem of his garment.” She didn’t travel all around the world and do this great big pill. Like she just, for her to actively take action upon her faith, it was to find Jesus and just touch the hem of his garment.

[Lawson] Yeah.

For me, concerning finances, it was what can I do? And it was just finding something for free on Craigslist and listing it for more money. It was that simple.

[Lawson] Praise God.

Being active with your faith it’s not a complicated thing. It can be very simple.

I remember when you were home that summer, you didn’t have, you needed something. And we went down to the trash behind Starbucks and they had thrown out a coffee bar. You sold it for 200 bucks or $300.

Yeah, there was a Starbucks that was remodeling their store and I think my brother, my youngest brother and I, Peter, had lunch at Chipotle after working out. And I just saw this big dumpster by the Starbucks next to there, and there was a really nice coffee bar, like where you get your sugar and cream and you know, there’s a little hole cut out in the middle. And I told my brother, Peter, “Hey, let’s go get a pickup and load that thing. I think I can pick that up and make some money on it.” He didn’t wanna do it, but I told him I’d pay him $20 to do it, so he did. And I listed the thing on Craigslist and sold it within a week to actually a pastor, a church in Canyon City. It’s actually a really nice thing for a church to have, ’cause coffee’s an important part of church today.

We have coffee at our church free, we serve it.

Yeah, I think he bought it for $200, but yeah, just do something.

I’ve tried to find those things and they are hard to find.

Yeah.

And they’re expensive.

Yeah.

So he got a good deal. And you made some money.

This is just like a month ago, my wife and I preached on a Wednesday night here at church about how to make friends at church and a woman came up afterward and just said, “It’s impossible to make friends. I just can’t do it.” And I just said, “Well, what’s something that you can do to say, I wanna make friends. My husband and I will make friends.” And I just said, “You know what you ought do. This is just a simple way you can be active upon faith is to go every Sunday, show up to church and just invite someone to lunch.” I said, if you don’t make any friends, don’t make any relationships, don’t make any connection then come and talk to me. But this is what I want you to do. This is something simple, a simple direction. A simple thing you can actively do is just find someone and invite them to lunch each Sunday for a month.

[Lawson] Yeah.

Faith is not a complicated thing. It’s very simple.

It’s not so hard, amen. You know, Jesus told the layman, get up, take up your bed and go to your house. And he got up and took up his bed and went to his house. You know, the word has to become active in your life. And so, it’s not only meditating the word and believing the word and speaking the word, but it’s acting on the word of God. We’re gonna be back right after this break, so stay tuned. 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 Trina 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 and blessings. Praise the Lord, friends. I’m so glad that you stayed tuned. We’re talking about acting on the word of God and you know what, a change of identity will bring a change of destiny. And I wanna go to an example in Mark chapter 10, there was a blind man came to Jesus for healing. And when he came, it says, it was in verse 46. They came to Jericho. As he went outta Jericho, His disciples and a great number of people, Blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me,” and many charged him that he should hold his peace. But he cried the more, a great deal. “Son of David, have mercy on me,” and Jesus stood still and commanded him to be called. And they called the blind man saying, “Be of good comfort.” And he rose and calls you. And he casting away his garment. Now this garment identified him as a legal beggar, identified him that if you saw him, you were free to give money to him because he was in a situation where he needed help. And so it was really his source of support. But he, when he heard of Jesus, cast away his garment, rose up and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered and said unto him, “What do you want me to do to you?” You know, what do you want? See, a lot of times God works with what you want. And he puts his desires in your heart. And the blind man said unto him, “Lord, that I might receive my sight.” And Jesus said unto him, “Go your way. Your faith has made you well.” And immediately, he received his sight and followed Jesus in the way. So he acted on the word of God. Jesus told him what to do and he did it. Praise God. He came to Jesus. He cast off that beggar’s garment, praise God. He believed the word of God and he received what he was believing for. So action is required to advance. If you’re gonna advance, you gotta have faith, it has to have corresponding action. You can’t just say that you believe something. You’ve gotta act on the word of God. Second Kings, there’s a story in Second King, chapter seven, about four lepers that were sitting outside of the gate of Samaria and things were bad in Samaria. And they evaluated their situation. They said, “Why do we sit here till we die?” And they said, listen, if we go back to the city, people are dying in there. But the worst thing that happens, we could go out here where our enemies are and maybe they would have mercy on us. Right? And give us some food. So, they begin to move toward their problem. So they got up and moved. So something began to happen, when they got up and began to move toward their enemy, God magnified the sound of their feet and made it sound like an army. And their enemies ran off and left all the goods in their tent. And so they went and they began to pick up goods in these tents, silver and gold and clothing and food. And they went from one tent to the other tent, and finally they said, listen, we’ve gotta go share the good news. So they went back to the city and they told the people in the city, hey, the enemies have ran off and left everything. It’s already done. Now, the people went out there and they were three days in picking up the goods. You know what I believe Jesus conquered the devil. I believe he was victorious. And I believe he was three days in picking up the goods. And you know what? We ought to just be picking up the goods, praise God, Jesus has already conquered the enemy, He’s already won the victory, and we just need to be picking up the goods. Praise God. He’s already provided for our forgiveness, our healing, our peace and our prosperity. He provided it in the atonement. If you don’t believe me, read Second Corinthians chapter eight, verse nine, read Isaiah chapter 53, verse four through verse five and First Peter 2:24. And basically, it says that Jesus took our sin. He took our anxiety. He took our sickness and he took our poverty. That’s Second Corinthians eight, nine, Isaiah 53, verse four and five, and First Peter 2:24. And when you understand that Jesus already gave you health. He already gave you peace. He already made provision for you. Already gave you righteousness. So you’ve gotta believe it to receive it.

I love the book of James and James chapter two. And James is talking about faith without works is dead. James was actually the pastor of the church in Jerusalem. So as a pastor, he wants to give good illustrations for what he is trying to say. So, he picks two interesting accounts from the Bible to use as illustrations, talking about faith without works is dead, talking about being active, how faith is active. He actually picks Abraham, which a lot of people would love Abraham. Abraham, you know, father Abraham, he is a faith giant, but he also picks a Rahab as an example of someone who has active faith. And I think James was trying to tell the people he was writing to, he probably preached on this a lot at his church in Jerusalem, but he’s trying to tell people that faith, it’s not really about who you are or where you’re from. You know, Rahab is an interesting character. She was not an Israelite. You know, she was a woman. She had a bad past. She’s very different than Abraham. But he’s saying that faith is not dependent upon your background. It’s dependent upon you trusting God and acting upon that. In the realm of faith, God sees faith. He doesn’t see anything else. God is actually blind to many things. He sees faith in the realm of the spirit. It’s like a blind audition. Can I tell this story about a blind audition? So I have a classical music background and in classical music, there are a lot of orchestras that actually do auditions for big positions behind a curtain. The judges don’t wanna see who’s playing that instrument. So I have a friend who actually, he’s in the top paying orchestra in the country, it’s the Met Opera Orchestra in New York City, it’s the highest paying orchestra in the United States. He actually, at a very young age, won a principal position in that orchestra. And they did not know anything about him until they chose him as the winner, so he now teaches at Juilliard, teaches at great conservatories and he’s still very young, younger than me. But at this audition, the judges don’t see you, all the people auditioning are behind a curtain. The only thing that cuts through is the sound of your instrument. The same thing is true in the realm of the spirit. God doesn’t see if you’re a man or a woman, if you’re old or if you’re young, if you’ve gone to church every day for 80 years or if you haven’t, if you’re rich or you’re poor. The only thing that God sees in the realm of the spirit is faith. And I love that James uses both Abraham and Rahab as examples of faith. God honored Rahab. Rahab was delivered. It wasn’t because, you know, she didn’t really have a lot of qualifications. She was a prostitute. She was not an Israelite. She was a woman from Jericho, the enemies of Israel. But she put her faith in the one, true God, she acted upon it. She did so by protecting the spies of Israel. She took action upon it. And she did that because she believed in the one, true God.

Amen. You know what? As you were speaking, the anointing was all over me. I could just feel the power of God. And you know what? There is power in your voice. There is power in your voice when you speak words of faith, when you agree with what God says about you. And some of you right now are facing dire situations financially and physically, and what you need to do is you need to find what the Bible says. And you hear these things. You can see ’em, you know what? We have some confession cards. You can get ’em. We have one that’s on who you are in Christ. We have one that’s on physical and financial prosperity. And we have one that’s on healing. And you can get these, you can call our office and we will make these confession cards available to you absolutely free of charge. We would like you to at least sign up for our email newsletters and our emails that go out. We share things that we’re doing. But if you’ll call our office, we can get those. But you need to begin to believe and speak the word of God. You need to begin to say what God says about you, because there is power in your words, praise God. And when you were saying, the only thing that cuts through that curtain is the sound, the sound of your voice. God doesn’t care whether you’re a man, a woman, a boy, or a girl. God doesn’t care whether you’re black or white or brown or yellow or red, amen. What God cares about is faith. Faith pleases God. It takes faith to please God. And the word of God has power in your mouth. So if you’ll begin to believe and speak what God says about you, I believe that you can see those situations turned around. And before we go off of this broadcast, I’m gonna begin to speak the word of God over you. Why don’t you reach out your hand at a point of faith, maybe touch the screen that you’re watching, that you’re listening to and begin to believe God, or join hands with somebody there with you and begin to agree with God, what God says about you. Say, “I am the blessed of the Lord. I am blessed by the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth. I’m blessed coming in. I’m blessed going out. I’m blessed in the city. I’m blessed in the field. Everything that I touch prospers. I’m blessed in my body. I’m blessed in my mind. I’m blessed in my spirit. And I am the healed of the Lord. By the stripes of Jesus, I am healed. Christ has redeemed me from every curse. I believe that I receive in Jesus name.” Now, if you need prayer, give us a call. We would love to hear from you. Blessings.

[Narrator] What is faith? Do I need more of it? And how do I exercise what I have? In this package, containing Mark Hankins’ 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, I certainly hope that you’ve enjoyed the program today and it’s ministering to you to move into that which God has for you. And I want to say a great big thank you to all of our partners for helping us share this gospel across the United States and across the world. It’s because of our partners that we can take this message of grace and faith around the world. If you would like to join our partners and receive that blessing, give us a call today. 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.