Grace Life Part 3 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue

Grace Life Part 3 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue

The Grace Life Part 3 with Pastors Lawson and Aaron Perdue. Do you want to live in peace? Freedom? In this episode of Grace For Today, you are going to learn how grace makes that possible.

Grace Life Part 3 – Transcript

Friends, I’m so glad to have you with us today. We are talking about what grace produces in our life. I’m telling you, grace has released me and thank God. I’m gonna talk about number one today, that grace produces peace, but also grace produces freedom, and not only freedom from sin, but freedom from shame. So open your heart and receive the good work of God today. Blessings.

It’s great to have you with us today. We are sharing on the grace life, and we’re gonna be talking today about what grace produces in our life. One of the first things that grace produces, it produces peace. And actually, Peter says, Second Peter, chapter one, “Grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of God and our Lord Jesus Christ.” The more that you get to know God and Jesus, I believe the more that grace and peace, the more peace that you’ll walk in. You know, Isaiah 26:3 says, “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed upon you because he trusts in you.” And actually 17 of the 26 books of the New Testament start with grace and peace. All of Paul’s letters, except for the book of Romans, start with grace and peace. First and Second Peter start with grace and peace. Second John starts with grace and peace. Jude starts with grace and peace. Also the Book of Revelation. And so 17 out of 26 New Testament books start with grace and peace. So the more that you get to know God, the more peace you’re gonna have in your life. Romans chapter five, Aaron, why don’t you read Romans chapter 5:1-2. It really brings this out, that grace and peace work together.

Where in Romans?

Romans 5:1-2.

Says, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”

So having been justified, I love that translation. That’s New King James. Having been justified by faith. We’ve already been justified, thank God we’re justified. We’re just as if we never sin. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We are at peace with God. We’re not trying to get at peace with God. We are at peace with God. And since we’re at peace with God, we have access by faith into grace. Wherein we stand and we rejoice in hope. We have this marvelous hope of God’s goodness, God’s glory, God’s purposes, God’s plans, God’s presence being manifested in our life, thank God. So we have a positive expectation. We have a good hope, the Bible says, through grace. So the very first thing that grace will produce is grace will produce peace in our life. Let’s go to Galatians chapter one and begin reading today in Galatians chapter one, and right here in Galatians chapter one, Paul talks about grace and peace. Galatians chapter one, notice he says, “Paul an apostle not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus and God the Father who raised him from the dead. All the brethren which are with me, to the churches of Galatia, grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” So 17 out 26 of New Testament books start with grace and peace. Then he goes on in verse four and says, “Who gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us, that he might free us, that he might save us from this present evil world according to the will of God and our Father.” So the next thing I believe that grace really produces in our life besides peace, is freedom, and this is talking about freedom from this present evil world, freedom from sin. And thank God, when you really get to know Jesus and really get to know the grace of God, guess what happens? Sin does not have dominion over you because you’re not under the law. Paul says in Romans chapter six, but under grace. In fact, if you say that you have a revelation of grace and you’re using grace as an excuse to live a sorry life, you do not really have a revelation of grace, because grace will help you walk in victory, praise God. And people really sometimes just try to do their own thing and call it grace and it’s not grace at all. It’s stupid.

We’re living out the truth, which is some of these things are stupid and can hurt you, can hurt other people,

amen.

And can just violate.

Well and Jesus said, “You’ll know the truth and the truth will make you free.” Again, Jesus is the embodiment of grace and truth. And so he says, if you, you know, “If you continue in my word, you’ll be my disciples indeed, and you’ll know the truth and the truth will make you free.” So the more you get to know Jesus, the more you get to know the truth, the more that you get to know the word, the more you get to know the truth, and the more you begin to walk in the freedom that Jesus has given us. Now, there’s freedom, first of all, from sin. We don’t have to sin, we don’t have to let sin reign. In fact, Paul says in Roman six, I believe it’s verse 12, “Let not sin reign therefore in your mortal body that you should obey it in the lust thereof.”

Yeah.

So the the subject of that is understood. You don’t let sin reign. You’re in charge. God’s given you the power. And when you understand grace, you understand that you have the power. And sometimes people say, “Well, I got a revelation of grace.” And then they start just living like the devil. No, they never had a revelation of grace.

I like something you’re gonna bring out later, you know, here in a few weeks in this teaching about the four deaths that need to occur. You need to die to sin, die to yourself, die to the law, and die to the world.

Right.

I think it’s very powerful.

And Paul talks about that, yes, you know, first of all, death to sin. And that’s what he says in Roman 6:1, preceding, you know, all these things. He says, “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” He says, his answer is, “God forbid, how are we who are dead to sin live any longer therein?” Roman 6:1-2. So a lot of times, you know, people ask that question, when you really preach Christ, it causes people to ask the question, “What are you saying, pastor? Are you saying that we can just sin all we want to?” Well, in a way I am, because what I’m talking about the real you, right? The spiritual you, the born again person. Because if you’ve been born again, you don’t wanna sin. But I’m not saying that you can let your flesh have its way. I’m not saying, you know, you’ve gotta understand you’re.

Make no provision for the flesh.

That’s what Paul says. “Make no provision for the flesh.”

You’re gonna have a plan to live a certain way. You’re gonna have a plan to, you know.

[Lawson] Right.

Some days I don’t feel like reading the Bible but I do, because I’ve planned it, I’ve purposed it, I’ve made provision to feed my spirit.

Right, just like you feed your flesh, right? You take care of your body, you feed it once or twice.

So, you can be a person in the grace life and still be, have a discipline about you.

Sometimes people use grace as an example not to give and that’s the farthest thing from the truth. In fact, my good friend Jesse Duplantis called me the other day and he says, “You still believe in tithing?” And I said, “Absolutely, Jesse.” Because in Hebrews chapter seven, and Hebrews is really talking about the grace of God. I said, “The Bible says that here men tithe”, speaking of the Levitical priesthood that received tithes, “But there he receives them and it’s witness that he lives forever.” Speaking of Jesus, our great high priest receives our tithe. That’s reason enough for me to want to tithe. And I don’t stop at 10%. In fact, I was reading in my daily Bible reading the other day, the book of Leviticus, and when I read through the book, I just start, I’d never seen this, I’d never recognized it, but it just stood out to me, the first nine chapters of Leviticus, and it’s 27 chapters long. So the first third of Leviticus talks about tithing and giving. And I thought, man, God was concerned because what does giving do? Giving reveals your heart, and I just, you know, I don’t limit God to 10%. You know, mom and I, for years, we’ve given, you know, in the neighborhood of 30% of our income to God, and we’ve ended up super, super blessed. I had Andrew Wommack on the show the other day, and we were talking about the revelation of grace. And he was saying that him and Jamie give today about 150% of their income. And it’s because over the years they’ve invested and they’ve received inheritances and different things, and the income that’s coming off that, you know, is actually a lot more than just their personal income from the ministry. And mom and I give a lot more than our salaries to the church, every month. Praise God and praise God, we have other benefits. We have other sources of income. God has blessed us so we can do that. There’s no condemnation with wherever you’re at, but you don’t wanna be using grace as an excuse not to give. I know I used to have this person that, you know, wanted to be a pastor in the church, and he used grace as a, he said he understood grace, but man, the guy, he give $5 a year or something, it was terrible. And then he wanted to get everything free thing from his family, for everybody, use everybody, use everybody in the church. It was a terrible situation, and used grace as an excuse that is not what we’re talking about. And Jesse was talking to me about this because certain people in the body of Christ had been using grace as a license to sin, been using grace as an excuse not to give to their local church, so on and so forth. And Jesse said, “It’s really hurting a lot of churches and a lot of pastors are talking to me about it.” And I said, no. And he and Jesse said, “Listen, Lawson, I know that you understand grace, I know that you teach grace. I just want to know what you think.” And I said, “Absolutely. I believe in grace and I believe in tithing.” And I just start with 10%, I don’t limit God. I never keep it just to the penny. You know, some people tithe that, well, praise God, it’s better to tithe than not to tithe. But you know, I just, I give outta my heart, and I just like, God, what would you have me to give? And I know when we moved here, you know, we weren’t receiving any income from the church. We didn’t have what we have today, but I was given $50 a week in the offering, and sometimes on Sunday morning, we had less than $100 in the offering and I gave 50, and I had absolutely no income from the church at that time, so on and so forth. But God blessed us and a little bit the income grew and I was given $100. And then when we started a week, then when we started in our building program over on Elkton Drive, and we bought that building in the end of 2008, I started immediately giving $200 every Sunday. And when I did that, I remember the first Sunday that I put that $200 check in, and when I put that $200 check in the offering, the Spirit of God spoke to me and my income, mom and I’s income, with everything that we did with the ministry, with our investments, with our real estate, you know, our cattle, all the different things that we had, our total income was about 50,000 a year then. And the Lord spoke to me that first time that I started doing that and said, “Soon you will be given what your total income is now.” And I thought, wow, that was so amazing to me because when we started out in the ministry, we were making like $800 per month. And so now when I started giving $200 per week, that was more than we made per month when we started in the ministry and so, and really in just a little while, you know, the Lord laid it on my heart when we bought this building, right? And we bought, we moved, we bought that building in 2008. So 2017, God put it on my heart, one week you give 1000 this week, next week, give 1000 this week, next week you give 1000, and and I just kept going. I never stopped. And we’re far beyond 1000 a week now. And you know, it’s amazing how God has supplied that. God has made that amazing.

Yeah, I think you taught me as a kid just the principle of tithing and the importance of tithing. You taught me as a kid the importance of reading your Bible every day. You taught me the importance of going to church, at least on Sundays. You know, some people work on Sundays, but maybe you’re at a church that has other service times throughout the week. But I just really committed in my heart, ever, ever, throughout my entire life to to be a tither, to be an avid reader of the bible, to always be involved at a local church, and that’s just tremendous blessing. Every good thing that has happened in my life has come as a result of those three things, of being a giver.

Your relationship with God. Lester Sumrall said something before he hired an employee. I think I’m gonna start this. He asked him three questions. I want to know what you do first thing every week. In other words, do you go to church? You know, we celebrate the, you know, on Sunday, Christianity, because Jesus was raised from the dead on the first day of the week. That’s why we worship on Sunday. Paul said, “You give as God has prospered you on the first day of the week.” Right? So, that’s why we worship on Sunday. He said, “The second thing, I want to know what you do first time you get paid.” First time you get paid. What do you do? What’s the first thing you do when you get paid? What check do you write out first? And then, and you can look at my checkbook, I guarantee my checkbook shows where my heart is, and it says C,C,C,C,C,C,C,C,C,C, and then it’ll say, you know, Colorado Springs Utilities, and then it’ll say the credit card, and then it’ll say, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, because I go to church and I give a lot more than I do anything else. Praise God and God’s made it so I can do that. I’m not boasting, I’m just saying, but my checkbook reflects where my heart is. And so he said, “Number one, I want you to know, you know, what you do first thing every week, what you do first thing when you get paid.” And then he says, “I want you to know what you do first thing every day.” I got up, I’ve been so busy recently. I got up at 2:00 this morning and I read 10 chapters of the Bible because I constantly am reading the word, and feeding myself on the word of God because I’m giving out a lot and I need to do that, and so it’s important. Andrew Wommack talked about this when we taught on the revelation of grace together, because I’ve been very diligent, and I was teaching you boys to be diligent in these areas. And you all three have learned to be diligent in churchgoing, in Bible reading, and giving. And it’s worked out to great blessing in your life. And God is no respecter of persons. He’s a respecter of faith. But faith is revealed in action, praise God.

Awesome.

We’ll take a short break and we’ll be right back and we’ll come back, and we’re gonna talk about different ways that grace is being revealed in our life. 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 that I’ve done. The other one is the “Revelation of Grace” with Andrew Wommack. Blessings. Friends, I’m glad you stayed with us. We’ve been talking about what grace produces. We said grace, first of all produces peace in our life. But then the next thing that grace produces is freedom. And it produces freedom from sin. Praise God. We’re free from sin. And Paul goes on after he says, “Grace and peace be multiplied to you and grace and peace from God the Father” in Galatians 1:3 and Galatians 1:4, he says, “Jesus gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world.” And we talked about Roman six, how sin does not have dominion over us because we’re not under the law, but under grace. And that happens through identity. But not only are we free from sin, right, we’re free from shame. You know, Jesus came to set us free from shame. And there’s right, there’s guilt, right? Freedom from guilt for sins of the past. And Satan will try to hold you up. I had a man come in my office one time and he was talking about something he did over 30 years ago. And I asked him if he had been saved. He could not answer in the affirmative, he did not know. And I prayed with that man to receive Jesus Christ as his Savior, he’s probably 50 years old. And he was talking about something he did 35 years ago, was still haunting him, and he got born again that day. And he came to church for years after that. And he had this gorgeous smile on his face, just knowing, praise God. God is not holding my past against me. You know, the Bible says, “There is no condemnation, there is no judgment against those who are in Christ Jesus.” In Romans 8:1, “Who walked not in the flesh but after the Spirit.” We know that Jesus set us free. Amen. So there’s freedom from fear of the past. There’s also freedom from present tense, fear of the present. We don’t have to fear things in this present evil world. And Jesus came to set us free from that fear of present, and you know, he came to deliver us from this present evil world. It says that right there in Galatians 1:4. And not only does he set us free from that fear. Jesus sets us free from the fear of future judgment. You know, in First John, let’s go to this in First John chapter four, let’s read this, talking about that the gospel, that grace produces freedom. And when you really get to understand grace, you’re gonna walk free. Hallelujah. First John, chapter two says this, in First John, oh, actually First John 4, excuse me, First John 4:16. “We have known and believed that love that God has toward us. God is loving, whoever dwells in love, dwells in God and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, made whole, made complete, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment.” Glory to God. I heard somebody preaching on this. He said, “It could be raining hell fire and brimstone.” I said, “I didn’t do it.” You know, because this is what the devil tries to do. Anytime something goes wrong, people, the devil tries to bring up the last thing they did wrong. He tries to make it about you and your performance instead of Jesus and his grace. And so he said, “We may have boldness as in the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world.” So what is Jesus? Jesus is righteous and we’re righteous. Amen. Jesus is holy and we’re holy, you know, as he is so are we in this world. So when you begin to understand that you’ve taken a new identity in Jesus, you can have boldness in the day of judgment because you know you’re justified, you’re sanctified, you’re righteous, right? All these different things you’ve received because of the grace of God, and you’re free from fear, fear of the past, right? You don’t have to be condemned. I had a person in my family come to me and start confessing something they did 50 years ago, and they were regretting it. I said, “Listen, you haven’t lived that way for the last 49, so just forget it. That’s not who you are, get over it. You’ve lived for God.” Amen. Let it go. Amen. Let it be in the past. You know God got over your sin on the cross and you need to get over it. Amen. God, let go of your sin. He let go of your past. He, you know, you didn’t get saved by what you did. You got saved by what Jesus did. And you don’t stay saved by what you did. You stay saved by what Jesus did. So just let the grace of God minister to you that freedom. Freedom from fear. Freedom from fear, you know, of the past. Freedom from fear of the present. Freedom from fear of the future, praise God and freedom from the fear of man. This is another thing that people really struggle, with the fear of man. Let’s go back to Galatians chapter one and look at this. You know, the Bible says, “The fear of man”, Proverbs 29 says this, “That the fear of man brings a snare, but he who puts his trust in the Lord shall be saved.” So we don’t wanna be afraid of people. We wanna live for God and not in the fear of man. Look at this in Galatians 1:6, “I marvel that you’re so soon removed from him.” You’re removed away from Jesus, “who called you into the grace of God to another gospel, which is not another, but there’s some who would trouble you and pervert the gospel of Christ.” And he says, “Though we are an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel then that which we preach, let him be a cursed. As we said before, I say now again, if any man preach any other gospel”, he said, “If you’re preaching anything besides Jesus, it’s another gospel.” And he says, “Than that you’ve received, let him be cursed. For now, do I persuade men or God, or do I seek to please men for if I yet please men, I would not be the servant of Christ.” Man, what a powerful statement. And so when you really get ahold of grace, you know you’re here to please one person. You’re here to please Jesus. Amen. When I got a hold of grace, man, it made mama so happy and it made her happy because I was like living with a changed person because grace changed my life. Amen. Before I got a revelation of grace, I was so super diligent. And it’s good to be diligent. You know, diligence is really, the Bible says, “Be followers of those who threw faith and patience, inherit the promises.” And diligence is a good thing. But you have to realize it’s not you ultimately that’s doing this, it’s Jesus who does it. Praise God.

Awesome. Yeah. He is faithful. You know, he’s the one, he’s the author and the finisher of our faith. We have the faith of Jesus. It’s him working through us. It’s not us working on our own working. It’s, he’s the one who works in us and through us.

Yes, God is so good. So I thank God for his goodness. I thank God for his mercy. And I thank God that we have peace with God. Grace produces peace and since we have peace with God, we have access by faith into grace, and we stand in his peace, we stand in grace, and rejoice in the hope of God’s goodness. But it also produces freedom. Freedom from fear, hallelujah. Freedom from from sin, freedom to do the will of God. We’ll be talking about that in the broadcast tomorrow. We are free to do the will of God. Not only am I free from sin and freedom from fear of the past, fear of the present, fear of the future. But thank God I am free to be all that God wants me to be in Jesus and it takes the grace of God to do that.

Yeah, I like that you’re saying we’re free to do the will of God. I like that, Paul when he introduces himself in a lot of his letters, he often calls him, oftentimes calls himself a bond servant of Christ. So a bond servant is someone who serves out of love. They’re not obligated to do it. They aren’t, you know, an indentured servant. They don’t owe service, they do it out of love for their master. So Paul is saying, “I’m a bond servant.” I’m not.

I’m in love with Jesus. He knew how much Jesus had done for him. He knew how terrible religion was, how terrible legalism was.

And how much shame that, I love that. You know, you talked about how grace can set you free from shame. You know, think about the amount of shame that Paul could have had. You know, he was at, you know, Stephens martyrdom, he was there when Stephen was martyred, gave his life for Jesus. He was there and had everyone lay their their coats at his feet. He’s the one who took the blame. So he could have dealt with a lot of shame from that, but he let God set him free from that shame.

Amen and you know what? Some of you today need healed from shame, and some of you need healed from that shame so you can receive healing for other things in your life. And I encourage you today to call in to receive prayer, to receive ministry today from our prayer ministers, and get that thing settled so you can walk forward in your relationship with God. Thank you so much for being part of the broadcast. Tell your friends about the broadcast and you can also see it free on our website at charischristiancenter.com. Thanks so much. Blessings.

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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.” If you go to our website at charischristiancenter.com, you can get all of our materials there on the website as you watch ’em, as you listen absolutely free of charge. And we’ve done that just to be a blessing to you. And I believe that the word that has freed me will free you. Blessings.

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