Grace Life Part 4 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue

Grace Life Part 4 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue

The Grace Life Part 4 with Pastors Lawson and Aaron Perdue. Do you want to know God’s plan and purpose for your life? In this episode of Grace For Today you’re going to find out how to obtain it.

Grace Life Part 4 – Transcript

Friends, I’m so glad to have you with us today. We’re sharing on the “Grace Life,” and we’re talking today about how by the grace of God, we can move into our divine appointment. God has a purpose and he has a plan for your life, and it’s better than your purpose, better than your plan, any day of the week. So you want to, by faith, enter into the grace of God in your life, fulfill your divine appointments. Blessings.

What a blessing to have you with us today. We are sharing on the “Grace Life.” We’ve been teaching all this week. We talked about how, you know, it takes the balance of grace and truth really to walk in victory, and Jesus is the embodiment of grace and truth. In John 1:14 it says, “The Word was made flesh and dealt among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” And when you have grace coupled with truth, it produces the life of God. That’s who Jesus is. And we went on and talk about what grace produces. It produces peace. It produces freedom from fear, fear of the past, fear of the present, fear of the future, freedom from shame, freedom from the fear of man. Today we’re gonna talk about how we move into our God-given calling, how we walk in that through the grace of God. It takes the grace of God to accomplish what God wants us to do in life. And when we understand that, I believe that we become more effective. Sometimes people get a glimpse of what God wants them to do, but then they go out and try to do it in their own power. They try to make it happen. They try to connect with the right people. And there’s things about being connected with the right people, so on and so forth, but we aren’t the ones who make these things happen.

Yeah, God has to work through, Jesus has to work through you. You know, one thing that I kind of realized about any type of legalism, that could be a Christian form of legalism or just a legalism that’s from the world, there are certainly legalistic systems in the world. Really legalism, no matter how much you do, it’s never gonna be enough. That’s the problem with law-keeping.

That’s like, you know, legalism within the church. That’s also legalism within the world, you know. No matter how much you bow down to the world’s system, it’s not gonna be enough. They’re gonna ask for more.

No, they won’t-

‘Cause it’s legalism. Legalism, no matter how much you do, it’s never enough. No matter how much you say you’re sorry, it’s not enough.

Right, no, they’ll never… The world, we can’t, you know, we can’t make pleasing the world our goal, you know, and we’ll talk about this in a future lesson. But I talked about really one aspect when I completed the “Grace Life” was this. If you’re really gonna walk in victory as a believer, there are four deaths that have to take place. And Paul talks about death to sin, death to self, death to the law, and death to the world. And all of those have to take place. And the world can never be your goal to please the world. I kind of had this realization maybe half a year ago or something, but people were demanding, you know, very left, very woke, very progressive people were demanding that Tom Hanks make a public apology for playing Woody in “Toy Story,” because Woody is a cowboy and the cowboys are terrible because, you know. You know, even though he’s already pretty left-leaning, pretty progressive, pretty woke, it wasn’t enough. You know, he had to get on his hands and knees and beg for forgiveness, and he donated millions of dollars to American Indians, Native Americans.

What a ridiculous thing.

To repent for being the voice of Woody in “Toy Story.” That woke philosophy, it’s extremely legalistic. And no matter how much you do, it’s never gonna be enough.

They’re a bunch of nuts.

So if you try to please the world, man, you don’t wanna serve the world because no matter what you do, it’s never gonna be enough. You’re never gonna-

Well, and that’s where-

That’s what compromise is. It’s just gonna keep on going. If you compromise your calling, if you compromise the truth of the Bible, it’s never gonna be enough. And I see people, I see believers, even ministers who start compromising on important issues and it’s never enough. And they keep going further and further and further down that road of compromise.

Away from the truth because they’re trying to draw a bigger crowd or trying to get favor from government entities, so on and so forth. You know, we need to live to please the Lord. But we’re talking about how grace helps us fulfill the calling.

Our calling.

In Galatians 1:4, Paul said, you know, how Jesus gave himself for us to deliver us from this present evil world. But I’m not only delivered from sin and the effects of that, I’m free from sin so that I can serve Christ, so that I can serve God, so that I can do what God called me to do. And it’s grace that empowers me to do what God called me to do. I know Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 15:10, he said, “I am what I am by the grace of God. And his grace, which was bestowed upon me, was not in vain because I labored more abundantly than they all.” Then he caught himself and he said, “Really, it wasn’t me, but it was the grace of God that was with me.” And Satan was trying to condemn him, trying to get him to think about who he was apart from Jesus when he was talking about all the other apostles and their callings, so on and so forth. And then he caught himself and he said, “Listen, it’s not me. It’s not what I did pre-Jesus. It’s not what I’ve done post-Jesus. It’s just Jesus. It’s just the grace of God.” So Paul writes here in Timothy, and he says to Timothy, his son in the faith, in verse 5 of 2 Timothy 1, “When I call to remembrance the unfeigned, the pure, unspotted faith that is in you, which was first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, I’m persuaded that it’s in you, too. Wherefore I put you in remembrance that you stir up the gift of God, which is in you by the putting on of my hands.” So Paul had spent a lot of time with Timothy, and Timothy had received from Paul the anointing. And he says, “For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind.” So God did not give us a spirit of intimidation. Now, what had happened at this time, Paul had been in prison for preaching the gospel, and Timothy was somewhat letting the world, right, intimidate him, thinking about maybe backing away. If this is what you get by boldly preaching Jesus, maybe I don’t want to do that so much. And Paul said, “Listen, God did not give us a spirit of fear, a spirit of intimidation, but of power, love, and a sound mind, a well instructed, corrected mind in the Word of God, a mind that’s disciplined and self-controlled.” And so he says, “Do not therefore be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord nor me his prisoner, but be a partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God.” Of course, we know, I think it’s Psalm 34:19, but the book of Psalm says, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him from them all.” So just because you’re saved, just because you’re born again, serving Jesus and doing what he called you to do, doesn’t mean you’ll never face any trouble. But you know that the Lord will deliver you, the Lord will help you. Then he makes this marvelous statement and he said, “Who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before the world began.” That is an amazing, amazing Scripture that God saved us and called us in Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world.” Before the world was ever created, he had a plan, he had a purpose for our life. He saw us in Christ and he called us in Christ. That’s amazing. Amen.

That’s powerful.

Aaron, you know, you went to school for 11 years professionally and you studied to be a musician. You studied some different things there while you were in college. And then towards the end, you recognized God called you in to preach the gospel. And you took your time praying and seeking God before you made that decision to leave that professional life and come over and become a minister, right, of the gospel.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, well, the challenges, difficulties, you know, issues we deal with in church, and so on and so forth, because you were raised in this. But you know, you made a statement one time. You actually had befriended a young lady and she was a conservative Christian, but she was in the same professional pursuit that you were. And she said, “Aaron, I can’t marry you because you’re gonna be a pastor.” And he said she knew you were gonna be a pastor before you did. I think it’s amazing that, you know, you have gifts, you have callings and anointings, so they may be flowing where other people can see them, and yet you yourself are not even aware of them. Talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, I think, yeah, other people can sometimes see those gifts, those anointings on you, yeah, definitely.

So we have gifts and callings that come from God. And so Paul says, “Hey, God called us. not according to our works, but according to his purpose and grace.” And nobody knew this better than Paul because of his past. And he could have suffered with shame and guilt, so on and so forth. But he let that down to move into what God had for him. Now when we think about this, that we are called by his grace. It’s not our works, it’s not our performance. Paul said, “I am who I am, I am what I am by the grace of God.” In 1 Corinthians, he said, “I persecuted the church of God.” And he realized his own shortcomings. He realized his own failures. He realized how incapable he was in his own strength and his own ability of actually performing what God wanted to do. We can’t do this in our own strength. We can’t do this in our own power. So many times people hear different promises from the Scripture and then they go out in their own power and they try to perform it, and they fall flat on their face. It’s the grace of God. And sometimes it can be misunderstood, but we need to understand, man, this is Jesus, this is his plan. We’re going his way.

Sometimes you need to be humble, too, in just recognizing that the people that God has chosen, the people that he is using, it’s not always about their own individual talent or skill or intellect or background or charisma, but it’s just the call of God on their lives. And some people will look at the natural side of someone and and kind of think small of them, kind of look down upon them. But God can use whoever he wants to. And if he’s using someone, you need to honor who he’s using.

You know, there was a minister of the gospel years ago, had a very powerful healing ministry, but he was a little odd. His name was Ernest Angley, and he was on Dr. Lester Sumrall’s television stations network. Dr. Sumrall had about a dozen television stations and he was also on up on satellite. After a period of time, he had a satellite station. But one of the other ministers that was on Dr. Sumrall’s station actually criticized Ernest Angley. And so Dr. Sumrall called that minister in and he said, “You will apologize and you will apologize not only personally, but you will apologize publicly. And if you do not apologize, I’m taking you off of my station.” Because, you know, he realized this Ernest Angley, nearly every deaf person that he laid hands on was healed. He had a very powerful, powerful ministry, powerful gift from God. And yet he was a little bit different. But I think it’s important for us to know that God uses people, and a lot of times they may be a little different in some areas. But it is not our wisdom. It is not our ability. It is not our power. It is the grace of Jesus Christ, period. And so Paul’s talking about that. He said, “Listen, it wasn’t about me, but it’s about him.

I think people who are really humble and just comfortable in who they are and comfortable in their walk with God, they’ll allow God to use other people to speak into their life. You know, I was listening to Pastor Bill Johnson from Bethel Church, and he just said there was a lady that was at church who’s a little out there and maybe has some clinical issues.

We’re all a little out there.

But he said one time she came up and had a word for him and just approached him and he just said it was very detailed, it was spot on. He knew it was God just speaking through this person to him and he was able to receive it ’cause he could look past this person’s flaws.

He recognized it’s the grace of God.

Yeah.

Right, right.

And sometimes we have to do that. It’s kind of like in the Old Testament when this Hebrew girl, right, was serving, of Naaman the Syrian and he had leprosy.

And the slave girl from Israel.

Yeah, she said, “Hey, if there was a prophet here, there’s a prophet in Israel.

Yeah, there is a prophet in Israel, yeah.

And if you go see that prophet, God will heal you.” And so he went over. and Elisha, you know, the prophet, he wouldn’t even come out, sent his servant out, told him to go dip in the river Jordan, in the dirty, muddy river seven times. And he said, “We got nicer rivers in Egypt. Why are you making me do this?” And they said, “Hey, if they told you to do something great, wouldn’t you do that?” So he went and humbled himself, and when he got dipped the seventh time, his flesh came again, like a baby’s flesh. Praise God.

I think, like you mentioned, how other people can sometimes see the gifts and callings on someone else. I think that’s actually a very important characteristic of an apostle, someone with an apostolic mantle or anointing on them, is that they’re able to see those gifts in other people and recognize when people are called to be a pastor or called to be an evangelist.

Here’s something I’m gonna bring up since you brought that up. I see this in Andrew Wommack, who I believe is an apostle of the message of grace. I saw this in Dr. Lester Sumrall, who I believe was called to be an apostle. He really had a strong evangelistic anointing on him. But they build relationships with people based on their strengths. And I think that’s so important to do that and to see the good. And sometimes I think, you know, younger ministers sometimes will point out what’s wrong with everybody and, you know, “I’m mad.” And they get mad over it.

It’s a lot of truth and no grace.

Yeah, but we need to have some grace. And I think as we get older sometimes we see we have more grace. And I like to look and see what God’s doing in everyone and see the anointing in them. And that’s the anointing is what God uses. And I believe that we need to treasure the anointing of God. We’re gonna take a really short break. We’ll be back right after this, talking more about how we move into the divine appointment and calling on our life by the grace of God. We’ll be right back. 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 I would have 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 Wommack. Blessings. Friends, I’m glad you stayed with us. We’ve been talking about how we’re called by the grace of God. And Paul actually in 2 Timothy 1 was ministering, and he said that, “God saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ before the foundation of the world.” That’s an amazing scripture. But how do you begin to move into that? If we go back into 2 Timothy 1, in verse 10, he goes on to say, “Now this calling’s made manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus, who has abolished death and brought life in immortality of light through the gospel.” Verse 11 says, “Where unto I’m appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles.” So you know, we’ve been called by God, but we don’t want to miss our divine appointments. I believe there are divine appointments that God has for us. And Paul had some of those appointments in his life. And the day that he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, you know, was a divine appointment. And he later talked about it in Acts 26. And Jesus spoke to him and said, “Listen, I’ve appeared to show you some things now and some things in the future.”

I love that. I like what he says here in 2 Timothy 1:8. He says, “Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord.” You know, everywhere Paul went, he testified about what Jesus said to him, you know, and I know you’re gonna be doing a series soon called-

“Testimony of Jesus,”

“The Testimony of Jesus, which is the spirit of prophecy. So he’s saying, “Don’t be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord,” that spirit of prophecy, that spirit of prophecy. It is the power of God. It’s saying that same power that worked in his life, it can now work in our life.

Amen, and so we need to keep, you know, sharing Jesus. Don’t be ashamed. You know, Timothy realized Paul’s in prison for preaching the gospel while he is writing this. And Timothy’s thinking, “Huh, maybe I shouldn’t be so bold.” I’ve had that happen myself, seeing different things that happen even in my own life, and maybe I shouldn’t be so bold about something. But we need to continue to be boldly proclaiming the gospel, boldly proclaiming Jesus, boldly proclaiming the promises, boldly proclaiming freedom, boldly-

Proclaiming grace.

Yes.

Yeah.

I get flack sometimes for preaching grace, not very often, but once in a while I got some flack for preaching grace. But we need to keep preaching the grace. And Paul got flack for preaching grace. Man, they beat him. They left him to die. These religious people did not like grace. But we need the grace of God. Now, he says, “I’m appointed a preacher, apostle, a teacher.” We don’t wanna miss our divine appointment. You know, we were in Galatians 1. We’re gonna go back to Galatians 1. We talked about in verse 10, Paul said, “Do I seek to please men? If I yet please men, I would not be the servant of Christ.” But he goes on and says in verse 11 and 12, “I certify to you, brethren, the gospel, which was preached of me as not after man. Neither did I receive it of a man nor was taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.” The revelation of grace is actually the revelation of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the grace of God. And he goes on, he said, “You heard about my life, what I was doing prior to coming to Christ, right? Pre-Jesus.” But he says in verse 15, “When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen, immediately I did not confirm with flesh and blood.” In other words, “Man didn’t call me. Man didn’t teach me this gospel. God taught me this gospel.” And we need to know what God’s called us to do, what God’s called us to preach, and we need to stay at it. Praise God.

Oh, he said, “I didn’t just confer with flesh and blood.” You know, he spent time with the Lord. We need to really hear from the Lord first with big decisions in life. And also maybe if you’re going through a tough time, you need to let the Lord minister to you first. You know, I have a young man that I know that I’m somewhat friends with. I believe he’s called to be in ministry. And I know there’s a great tragedy that happened to one of his friends. He actually had a friend that killed himself. And I just reached out to him to check on him, see if he’s okay. And he just said, “I’m just really right now allowing the Holy Spirit to just minister to me and talk to me.”

Amen.

And I invited him to church, he’s gonna come, you know, so I can just chat with him and pray with him. But I told him, “I’m glad that you’re going to God first and that you’re allowing the Holy Spirit to minister to you first.”

Amen. Yes.

So, yeah.

You need to let the Lord minister and heal the hurts in your life. And, you know, how could we minister to others except we first receive from the Lord? You know, there’s a lot of difference in having a head ministry and a heart ministry, you know, something you received from man or something you received from God. And we need… You know, Paul says, “I shared that with you which I first received of the Lord.” And so when you receive things of God and God really ministers them to you, and they really become a revelation, then I believe you’re a much more effective minister of the gospel in sharing those with other people. And so we need to receive from God. We need to know what we’ve received from God. In fact, Paul talks about this in Acts 26, and we’re almost out of time, but we’ll share just a couple of scriptures here in Acts 26. He’s actually testifying later in his life before King Agrippa. And he talks about his conversion when he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. You can read about it in Acts 9. But Jesus spoke to him in verse 16 and said, “Rise and stand on your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose.” There’s a divine appointment for your life and you don’t want to miss it. He said, “To make you a minister and a witness of the things which you have seen and the things in which I will appear to you.” So there’s things that we’ve already seen. There’s also things that he’s going to reveal to us. “Delivering you from the people, from the Gentiles unto whom I now send you to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive the forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith that is in me.” So we not only want to get people saved, but we want to get people to receive their divine inheritance. You have an inheritance from God. You didn’t work for it, you didn’t earn it. God gave it to you. He made it available to you by grace. And through the grace of God, I believe we can move into that and walk in those things that God has given us.

I like the Bible often says that we’re co-heirs with Jesus. You know?

Amen.

It’s not like you’re a lesser heir. You know, sometimes here on this earth, when people receive an inheritance, some people get the lion’s share of the inheritance, and other people get the crumbs of the inheritance. But with Jesus-

I’ve been there.

We’re co-heirs with Jesus.

Amen. Oh wow, we’ve received an inheritance from the Lord that so far surpasses any earthly inheritance. It’s amazing. And it’ll just help you over, over, over and again in life. So we’re gonna continue to share more tomorrow on this subject on the broadcast. And we’re gonna be talking about how we move into our divine appointment and how we can find the calling that God has for our life. And I believe that God has divine appointments and callings for every person, and we don’t wanna miss them. Praise God.

Amen.

And so, if you like this broadcast and wanna share it with somebody, you can actually go to our website. We put up the broadcast for the whole week, every week on CharisChristianCenter.com. And we’ve got literally hundreds of hours of teaching there that you can receive free of charge. So we’d love to have you visit the website. If you need prayer, call in. We have trained prayer ministers that are here ready to pray for you. Salvation, healing, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, whatever you need, Jesus is the answer. And I want to say a great big thank you to our partners. Without you, we couldn’t continue to share around the nation and the world these messages of the grace and the love of God. And if you would like to become a partner with us, we would love to hear from you at Charis Christian Center. Thank you and God bless you.

[Narrator] 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.

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