Grace Life Part 14 – Lawson And Barbara Perdue

Grace Life Part 14 – Lawson and Barbara Perdue

The Grace Life Part 14 with Pastors Lawson and Barbara Perdue. In this episode of Grace For Today you’ll learn the difference between religion and relationship.

Grace Life Part 14 Transcription

Friends, I’m so glad that you tuned in with us today. We’re gonna be talking about the difference in religion and relationship. And my wife, Barbara’s with me today, she’s going to share some stories on today’s broadcast that she has never shared publicly. I believe that these stories really reveal the difference in religion and having a true relationship with God. So stay tuned. I believe it’ll bless you. Friends, I’m so glad that you’re with us today. And Barbara has a funny story she wants to tell you. So I’m gonna let her go.

Well, we’re so excited just to be here. Thank you for inviting us and opening up to receive the word of God. I love that we’ve been teaching on, you know, really grace, the graced life and what it does and how it changes us. You shared a little bit, I’ll share a little bit of when I was growing up. I’ve shared about when my mother took me to that spirit- filled church. It was awesome. But, you know, recently we were with a couple of women and the one woman was telling us really her story, but we got to laughing about it. And I’ll tell you why. She was just sharing, she moved here from another state and she was just saying how much she loves coming to church here at Charis Christian Center. How she’s just like so grateful that she’s loved and that, you know, we allow her to serve in the church. And of course, every time I see her, she’s told me this more than once and I said, “We love that you’re here and we love that you help. You’re the most amazing person I know.” But for many, many years, I can’t remember if it was 20 or 30 years, you know, she had been divorced and married and she was married to her second husband. And in the church that they attended all those years, they would not let her serve because they said that, you know, she had been married before and my joke was this, and you know, you were there with us as we’re talking. I said, “well,” and I said her name, “This is how the law sees it.” I said that, you know, “We can’t be part of a harem as women. You can’t be part of a harem, but it doesn’t say anything about us women not having our own harem.” You know, cause because she mentioned, you know, she mentioned how they would not let her serve because they had been married before.

Listen, some of these legalistic churches, and I want to speak to this because you know, in some places if you’ve been divorced, you, I mean, you can’t pray in a church. You can’t be an usher in a church. It is crazy. And they take a scripture in the book of Timothy out of context, and it says to be husbands of one wife. What that means is be husbands of one wife at one time.

Not having harems.

Right and these, even if you look at those things, legalistically, and they’re like goals for godly leadership. You can run anybody off if you get legalistic. And I’ve been around legalism, I grew up in legalism and in some churches, if you’ve had a divorce, you can’t do anything. Well, they’ve eliminated over half of the body of Christ. About half of the church has been divorced. And I’m not trying to say that I condone divorce, but in that situation, you cannot control another person’s will. And listen, God won’t. You know what? So you can’t. If God had his will in every person, everybody would be saved. Everyone would come to a knowledge of the truth. And you know, there’s lots of unsaved people. So if God’s not gonna control their will, you know, I mean, we can pray, right? God can move on someone’s heart, but they ultimately have to surrender their heart to the leading, to the direction of the Lord, then why would God control someone’s heart in a area of marriage and divorce? I have a question for you. If Moses in the law allowed them, right, to suffer, he suffered them, allowed them to write a bill of divorce because of the hardness of their heart, wouldn’t there be a way for that in the gospel in grace? See, sometimes people take things maybe that Jesus said and pull ’em out of context, not looking. In fact, the Bible says in the Old Testament that God divorced Israel and we know that God did not sin. So Israel’s a type of the church. So you have to, you have to be a little bit, you know, people don’t really read the whole of the scripture. They pull a little bit out from here and there. They don’t take the context of what’s really being said, the context of the gospel. I do believe it’s best, you know, the Bible says if you’re not married, don’t seek to be married. If you’re married, don’t seek to be unmarried, but you cannot control another person’s will. And in some cases, I think people have to get out of the crazy situation.

And like you said, sometimes people can’t, you know, control someone else’s behavior or actions. And I talked to you a little bit before ’cause you know, and most people that know me, I’m actually a very private person. You’re very transparent and I’ve learned not to say too much to you on Saturday night ’cause then it’ll be broadcasted on Sunday. I’m a very private person, but I just, you know, we were talking about, a couple of days ago, in the broadcast, both of us basically were at the same age around 13 when the grace message was really presented and how it changed our life. I talked about my mother taking me to a spirit-filled church. But what had happened, honey, is the grace message has always been so appealing to me because I saw what law did. I have seen what law does, especially to women. And you know, my story, and again, I’m probably gonna say this one time and probably will never share it again, but when I was 13, my parents went through a separation. It was actually my father who left. And again, I was a child, so I’m not gonna say, you know, it’s one or the other. But my parents went through a separation and even a divorce. My mother basically was left with all the kids, no money in a time that she could have really used people to come around her, pray. I mean, we went without food. And at that time, the church she was going to told my mother, “Well, if you would’ve been the kind of wife that he needed, he would not have left you.” And I just thought that was absurd because again, you know, she was left. And I don’t like, you know, I don’t mean to talk negative about people. Again, this is probably the first and last time I’ll ever share this, but I saw as a child, as a teenage girl being 13, my father leaving for another woman, leaving my mom again with all the kids and no money. And it was my mom who was thrown under the bus by the church. And then what did my mom do? My mom is the one who taught me what forgiveness is. My mother didn’t become bitter. She got in that spirit-filled church, really discovered the unconditional love of God. And prayed for my dad, forgave him and began to believe God for a restoration in their relationship. And it was a three year journey of her believing God for restoration in what looked like a dead and hopeless situation. So the amazing thing is they did remarry and in saying that, so that was amazing what God did. And again, that three year journey, how we all learned and grew. But in their reunion, in their remarriage, they had another child, my little sister Beth Marie, I was actually 16 when my little sister was born and she was born premature. She was born with a lot of very severe physical challenges. And the fact that I remember there visiting my mother and the nurse saying, “Why do you wanna keep this child? Why do you want to take this, your daughter home?” And my mother said, “It’s because it’s my daughter.” Of course I was 16 and a redhead 16. And I said, “Yeah, that’s my sister. And of course we’re taking her home.” But again, the church that they had come out of the, again, a time when, you know, you could really have used people come around you, and I’m not talking about the spirit-filled church, but her old friends said, you know, “It’s because of your sin that your daughter was born that way.” And then, so I have seen what law does to people and it really throws people under the bus.

It’s terrible.

And it is, it is terrible.

That’s terrible. It’s a terrible, terrible thing. It was a terrible thing those people telling your mother that. You know, I talked to a guy at the gym today and he knows people like us and he said, you know, “People teach that if, you know, if you had faith, you wouldn’t have died.” It’s a terrible thing. You don’t know where another person’s heart is.

Accusations or not.

You don’t know what they were believing. And again, you know, we should, you know, really think things through and many of us are so judgmental, even in the church, I’m telling you there’s so much legalism in the church and I do not want to be that way. And I wanna minister the grace of Jesus. I wanna see people’s lives change by the love of God. And the love of God transforms people’s lives.

Like can I just say like the woman at the well that Jesus had a supernatural encounter with, she had been in and out of numerous relationships and Jesus asked her, “Where is your husband? Or go get him.” And she, you know, said, “Well, he isn’t my husband.” And he’s like, “You have said truly like this is your fifth.”

Yeah. You’ve been married to five, you’ve had five husbands before now and this one isn’t your husband. Jesus ministers this woman, ministers the grace of God to her, and she becomes an evangelist and goes and wins this whole town to Christ.

Amen.

Jesus used people who were rejected by religion. Jesus used people who were caught up. It was the sinners that loved Jesus. You know why sinners love Jesus? Because Jesus loved them. And Jesus still loves sinners. And we need to minister the grace of God because it’s the grace of God that frees people. It’s the grace of God that empowers people. It’s the grace of God that helps people so that they can receive the power of God so that they can receive healing and deliverance and freedom. But we’re not to use it in a way to condemn and kill and hurt people. That those people who told your… that is terrible. And we get accused of some of this and it’s not true because they’ve not really listened to what we preach. And they’ve heard people out there that have really misrepresented the gospel. And you know, there’s two major themes in the New Testament. It’s grace and faith. In grace, God made everything available, but through faith we receive it, and if you teach all grace, it becomes sovereignty and it’s all about God. And then people blame God. And if you teach all faith and not grace, it becomes works. And that’s what’s happened where you’re talking about. These people were really talking more about works than grace. And both of those in extreme can lead you the wrong direction. But when you put ’em together, you get the perfect balance of grace and faith. And it says right here in Galatians chapter five, verse six, it says, “In Christ Jesus,” right, “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything but faith working that works by love.” And when you understand the grace of God, it causes your faith to work. It causes your faith to come alive. You know, this woman you were talking about, she’s such a great servant of the church. She lived in a terrible relationship for over 20 years. Her husband was abusive in many ways that I cannot speak about that are terrible, terrible, terrible. And he was a leader in the church and they condemned her and let him be a leader. It’s terrible. The woman caught in adultery, John, chapter eight and they didn’t care a bit about that woman. They were trying to get Jesus in a trap. And Jesus said, “Woman, where are your accusers?” After he said, “Whoever’s not sinned, throw the first stone.” And they all left from the oldest to the youngest. But where was the man in the situation? You know, again, legalism, legalism, legalism, legalism. And I’ve seen it. I hate it. And I just don’t want to be that way in any way. I don’t wanna be legalistic toward anybody. I don’t wanna have hatred towards anybody. I understand what God says is sin. I do not condone sin in any way. But at the same time, God is a God of grace. And God loves sinners. And if it wasn’t for Jesus, we were all lost. And so it’s not our performance, but it’s the love of God. We’re gonna come back right after this break. We’re gonna talk about how love fulfills God’s law and how when we have the spirit, the spirit of God in us produces fruit. Friends, I’m gonna be talking about in this series about how grace has revolutionized my life. And you want to get this because I’m telling you, it changed my home, changed my marriage, changed my children, changed my church, changed my business. Grace has changed about everything about me. And not in a negative way, in a super positive way. My wife Barbara says, “I’m not even like living with the same person and not negatively, positively.” She said, “I don’t know how it would’ve went on if you would’ve continued on the way that you were going.” But thank God grace changed me. And do you know what? God is not a respecter of persons. He’s a respecter of faith. But I believe that the grace that’s changed me will change you as you believe the gospel. And I’ve got two things that we’re making available as a package during these teachings. One is my series. It’s a 10 part series on the “Grace Life.” It’s the most in-depth teaching I’ve done. The other one is the “Revelation of Grace” with Andrew Wallman. Blessing. Praise the Lord, friends. I’m so glad that you stayed tuned with us. We’ve been talking about the grace of God and how the grace of God teaching the grace of God is fundamentally different than religion. And we’re not talking about religion, we’re talking about a relationship with God. We’re talking about the love of Jesus. And when you have the love of Jesus in your heart, it changes your life. And as we look at this in Galatians five, verse 13 through verse 15, Paul says this, “Brethren, you have been called to liberty. Only do not use your liberty for an occasion to serve the flesh, but by love serve one another.” You know what? We need to serve one another through love. And he says, “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this that you will love your neighbor even as yourself.”

You know, when you just mentioned that, when you just read the end of verse 13, “not an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” It made me think about this neat family that we had attend our church in Kit Carson. I don’t know if you remember them. They got saved, they got married. But the wife in previous things before, previous events that happened before she was saved, actually lost, I believe it wasn’t just one but two children because she was considered by, you know, social services not a good mother. So if you remember, she came to the church. They grew then together and they were saved and married and then had two more children. And their second child, their second daughter, just happened to be a very little baby. Just very small, very petite. And there’s just different things that kind of caused a red flag, you know, because she was in the social services, you know, computer, the database that they were alarmed or concerned about something. So they took the children away from her for a while and you know, so to help them, you know, you counseled with her, I was hired as a subcontractor for them to be able to get these two children back in their home. You had to do the social services. The government wanted you to do some things. It was counseling her. And then I actually had to go and be in their home for eight hours a day. This was another town away. I had three of my own small children. And it was a lot to do. But, you know, go literally be there for eight hours. And just minister God’s grace and help them in all this. And it, you know, it was over a month of me going, driving 30 miles away every day to go be with her. And really, she just said, what she learned from me is learned how to be a mom. She had never had someone mentor her or show her.

And it changed her life.

It changed their life.

You know, we heard from her last year and her daughters grew up. They went to college, they have very good lives. She saw us on television and called in and just told us, gave us a testimony of about how good she’s doing. So, you know, the gospel does change lives.

When you take the time to serve one another in love and not just say, “Well maybe you deserve to lose these two because of your past life.”

Oh, she had a terrible past life. She was a prostitute. It was awful. She was messed up in her thinking, but we ministered the grace of God to her. There were some really terrible things even that happened to her in coming out from that. But she came out of it. The grace of God changed her life. She’s got a brand new life. She’s doing very well. Her children, you know, grew up. They went to college, they have good lives. You know, the gospel, the grace of God, the love of God changes people’s lives. And that’s what we want to keep sharing is the grace of God. We want to keep sharing the love of God. And so, you know, Paul, it talks about this and he says, “Brethren, you’ve been called the freedom, but don’t use your freedom to serve your flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in this one word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

You know, when we were growing up, that’s what you were taught. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Yes. Love is the fulfilling of the law. You can’t love your neighbor, steal from ’em. Love your neighbor, lie about ’em. Love your neighbor, murder them. Love your neighbor, commit adultery with their wife. You can’t love God and do that. You can’t love yourself and do that. So you first of all have this love relationship with God. Then you begin to understand how God loves you and how he sees you. You begin to see yourself the way God sees you. And then you can love other people. He says this, “But if you bite and devour one another,” These examples you’ve used are true examples of how legalism works. Religion kills. “If you bite and devour one another, take heed that you are not consumed of one another.” You know, Paul says in Philippians 3:2, “Beware of dogs.” What do dogs do? They kill their wounded. A pack of dogs, if one gets wounded, they’ll kill it. And that’s what he says, beware of dogs.

That’s what religion does.

That’s what he’s talking about religion. So he goes on and tells us, here’s the answer, guys. Walk in the spirit. By grace we’ve received the spirit. He says, “And you shall not fulfill the rest of the flesh.” I’m telling you what this doesn’t say. It doesn’t say don’t walk in the flesh and you’ll walk in the spirit. Because a lot of people read this with spiritual dyslexia and they really think it, you know, walk in the spirit’s about not doing these things rather than doing these. When I got baptized in the Holy Spirit, I found out I get to do all these things. I got so involved loving Jesus, serving Jesus, doing what he wanted me to do, that a lot of the things that attracted me before just died to me. And they just weren’t attractive. I just didn’t go there because I was doing what God wanted me to do.

[Barbara] That’s awesome.

You know, I’m pretty busy right now serving Jesus. It’d be hard for me to get in a lot of sin unless I just get too tired. Which can happen and wear you down in other areas. And so he says, “The flesh lusts against the spirit, the spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary to one another. So that you cannot do the things you would.” You cannot let your flesh, he’s talking about your flesh. You cannot let your flesh rule you. You cannot let the old kind of mentalities rule you.

I like what it goes on to saying verse 18. “But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.”

Amen. It’s not legalism. And he goes on and says this, “now the works.” This is what happens when the flesh is in control. This is what happened when religion is in control. Legalism religion is fleshy and he talks about it. Okay, adultery, fornication and cleanliness, lasciviousness that’s talking about sexual sense primarily Just doing whatever you want to then, then you know, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, determining lasting anger. But then look at this contention. Religious people are contentious. Legalistic people are contentious. Variance. You know, that’s still talking on that same line. Emulation, striving to get ahead at the expense of another. Wrath, determine lasting anger, strife, seditions having your own little cliques. You’ve been in churches where you didn’t want to be involved in certain things because they were cliquey. Listen, I try not to be a cliquey person. We try to love everybody, right? Rich, poor, and everybody in between. Black and white and brown and yellow and red. We love everybody. Jesus loves everyone. Heresies. You know, heretic doctrines, he says envy, murders, drunkenness, revelings like having wild drunken parties. He says and such like if it’s like that. One teenager said, “I don’t see that in the scripture.” Dad said, “Right there.” Such like if it’s right in this category, “Of the, which I told you before as now I’ve told you in the past, they that do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” What’s he mean? Well there’s two ways to look at that scripture, shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Romans 14:17 says, “The kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” So you’re gonna have a hard time walking in a right relationship with God when you’re doing this, right? Having peace, having joy in the Holy Ghost. So you’re gonna really limit your joy, your peace, right? Your fellowship with God. If you’re letting your flesh or old mentalities control you, right? Another way to look at it, you’re gonna miss heaven. Now, if you’re born again, I believe you’re gonna make heaven. But if you’re not born again, you’re not gonna make heaven. And you’ve gotta reject Jesus. I don’t believe anybody just loses their faith. I believe you can reject it. But I don’t believe that’s, it’s not even very, you know, you gotta have a really tight connected relationship with Jesus, the Holy Spirit and a number of things before you’re ever a candidate for that if I’m reading the scripture correctly. If you think differently, I still love you ’cause I got some good friends that think differently too. So he says this, he says, “But the fruit of the spirit,” so works of the flesh versus fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance. This is the fruit of Christ in you, right? And I believe God is loving all these of the other, of the nine, the other eight fruit of the Spirit flow forth from the fruit of love. Let the love of God lead you. When you walk in love, you have peace. When you walk in love, you have joy. You can’t walk in strife and have a peace and joy.

[Barbara] That’s right.

It just doesn’t work. So you know, when you walk in love, right? Faith is a natural byproduct of the Spirit. You have the faith of Jesus in you. The exact same faith as Jesus. We don’t have a faith problem as believers, we have an unbelief problem. And so he says, “They that are Christ have crucified the flesh.” You need to mortify the flesh, Colossians chapter three says. “And the affections and lusts, if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the spirit.” We’ve been made alive in the Spirit Christ in you.” Paul says, the hope of glory. Colossians chapter one, verse 27, “Let Jesus who is in you live big through you. Let us not be desires of vain glory provoking one another and envying one another.” Let the love of God rule you. And when you let the love of God rule you, it will change your life. And it will also change other people’s lives. Jesus said, “By this, shall all been know that you’re my disciples because you love one another and love fulfills God’s law.”

That’s good news.

[Lawson] Amen. Share some.

As you’ve been sharing the series on the grace life, people here at Charis Christian Center, I could just tell have just really enjoyed it. So you know, we just wanna make sure you know that you too can order these things. Order this CD series.

We have a 10 series, 10 part teaching on the grace life. And it’s the most in-depth teaching I’ve ever done. We’re offering it in a package with this teaching that I did with Andrew Womack on “The Revelation of Grace.” It’s great teaching. You can get it on USB, you can get it as a digital download, or you can get it on CD. So all these ways, and if you can’t call in and get it, you can get it on our website. And you can get hundreds of hours of teaching there on the website, free of charge. Thanks so much. If you need prayer, be sure and give us a call today. Thanks so much and God bless you.

[Barbara] Did you know that you can stay connected with us?

[Lawson] We have a church app. You can get it for your phone. You can get our most recent videos, audio, stay connected with the church, all of it’s absolutely free of charge. Stay connected with the different things that are happening in different departments. We’d love to have you get our new church app. Blessings.

[Voiceover] Jesus is the embodiment of grace and truth, and he wants to reign in your life. Grace is what frees us from sin and allows us to accomplish God’s will. Get the grace life package, which includes “The Grace Life” and “Revelation of Grace” all for $39. Choose between CD, USB, or digital download when you call 719-418-4000 or visit Charischristiancenter.com. Thanks for watching “Grace for Today.” This broadcast has been made possible by our faithful partners. If you would like to become a partner, need prayer or have a question, please call us at 719-418-4000 or to partner online, go to charischristiancenter.com/give. You can write us at PO box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80962. See you next time on “Grace for Today.”