Grace Life Part 6 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue

Grace Life Part 6 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue

The Grace Life Part 6 with Pastors Lawson and Aaron Perdue. In this episode of Grace For Today you’ll learn how Grace frees us from the fear of man.

The Grace Life Package

The Grace Life Package includes some of our favorite teachings from Pastor Lawson and Andrew Wommack, about living a life full of the Grace of God. This bundle consists of Grace Life and Revelation of Grace in your choice of CD, USB, or as a Digital Download:

Grace Life Part 6 Transcript

Praise the Lord, friends, and welcome to Grace for Today. I’m Pastor Lawson Perdue. I’m so glad that you’re here. I have my son Aaron here, and we’re gonna be talking today about how grace frees us from the fear of man. And when you get a revelation of the grace of God, you will begin to understand the goodness of God so that you can receive from God in a brand new way. Open your heart and receive God’s word today. Blessings. Friends. I’m so glad that you’re with us again today. We’re teaching on the grace life, and we’ll be talking today about how grace frees you from fear, specifically the fear of man. And Paul makes a statement in Galatians chapter one, verse six, and he says, “I’m marveled that you are so soon removed from him who called you into the grace of Christ to another gospel.” You know, to move away from grace, Aaron is to move away from Jesus. And you know, we have some people out there that have claimed that they have a revelation of grace, but then they go back into their legalism and it seems like their end is worse than their beginning. And so thank God for grace. We don’t wanna move away from Jesus. We don’t wanna move away from grace. And so Paul talks about that, and really, I believe a lot of the reason that people were moving away from grace in Paul’s day and people move away from grace in our day, is because of the fear of man. And sometimes people see others who claim to have a revelation of grace, but don’t really live the gospel and that might be some of the reason. But you know what? Grace frees you. It doesn’t empower you to sin, it empowers you to live for Jesus.

Yeah. Only grace can free you. Legalism cannot free you. You know, just trying to follow a certain set of rules to attain right-standing before God, that doesn’t bring freedom. Only Jesus can really bring freedom. Only grace can bring freedom.

Yes. And so thank God for the grace of God. Thank God for the freedom that we find through grace. And right here in Galatians chapter one, verse seven, Paul goes on to say, “This is not another gospel, but there will be some who trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ.” And when he’s talking about a perversion of the gospel, he’s not talking about using grace as a license to sin. He’s actually talking about legalism. He’s talking about adding law to grace. And recently I had someone tell me, “Hey, I wish you’d preached the other side.” Well, there is no other side of the gospel. I mean, if it’s by grace, it’s by grace. If it’s by works, it’s by works. But it’s not by grace and by works, that’s what Paul says very plainly in Romans chapter 11, verse six and grace is still the heartbeat of the gospel. But if you understand grace, it’s not gonna cause you to sin more. It’s gonna cause you to sin less. He goes on and says this in verse 10, “For, do I now persuade men or God, do I seek to please men, or if I yet please men, I would not be the servant of Christ.” So these legalistic people, these judaizers, these people that were wanting, encouraging people to go back into the law, to be circumcised, to keep the law, to do these things in addition to Jesus, you know, a lot of times they were really doing it because religion had such a stronghold in their mind. And you know, a lot of times people think of a stronghold as a demonic thing, but really a stronghold, if you study that out in second Corinthians, chapter 10, where the scripture talks about, it’s talking about a fortified place in your mind. And you know, really the only power that the devil has against us as believers is in our mind. When you’re born of the spirit of God, you’ve got the spirit of God working on the inside of you. So we have to renew our mind in the word of God and see what God says about the subject.

You really have to humble yourself in order for God to teach you too, for His grace to really teach you and instruct you. Now, I know I’ve encountered some people who’ve been under a ministry like ours, a strong grace and faith ministry, but just that their background is very into works or their background is very much into like that God controls everything. And even though they’ve been coming to a church like this that preaches real strong grace message, something will happen and they’ll blame God. I knew an older couple who were very,,,, I know they considered themselves to be very spiritually mature. They’ve been in church a long time, they’re their son’s a famous worship leader and the husband had an eye condition and the wife made a comment, well, like God is doing this to teach us something, to teach us patience.

And that is not God. Sickness and disease is not the work of God. Jesus became a curse for us. He was cursed in our place, and God would be playing double jeopardy if he cursed us and he’s not doing that. Jesus plainly took the curse, that’s a lie.

It’s just the way people, if they don’t renew their mind, they’re gonna be stuck in that same system of thinking, And legalism is a system of thinking, it’s a system of approaching God.

Yeah. You don’t wanna blame God for your problems. God is not the problem. He is the answer and that is very, very detrimental. I actually believe a lot of people who claim to be atheist is because really they, everybody knows there’s a God, that’s what Romans 1 20 and 21 says, everyone knows there’s a God, but they’re really angry at God because they’re blaming God in most cases for something that God did not do and it’s real tragedy. And.

Yeah, one of the most famous atheists of kind of the modern era around the middle 1800, his name is Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher, but he’s very famous with his quote, “God is dead.” And he’s kind of the father of modern atheism but when he was 10 years old, his father passed away. His father was a Lutheran pastor, and his father passed away from brain cancer when Friedrich Nietzsche was just 10 years old. But he was told that God did this to his father. He had some higher meaning for this tragedy that happened to his father, so I think in his young heart, he blamed God and he just made it his life’s mission to try to prove that God wasn’t real or prove that God is dead and at the end of Friedrich Nietzsche’s life, he’s a brilliant thinker, brilliant writer, brilliant philosopher, but just really going in the wrong direction. At the end of his life, he lost his own sanity. Nietzsche ended up dying in a mental asylum.

Right. It’s terrible. And you know, the Bible says, “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.” And everyone knows there’s a God, every created being knows their creation and I just don’t wanna blame God. In fact, my dad died when I was really young, when I was 17 years old. But I had heard enough of the full gospel that I knew where my dad was, and I knew that God did not kill my dad. In fact, the Bible says very plainly, Jesus said this in John chapter 10, verse 10, he said, “The thief comes to steal, to kill and destroy, but I’ve come to give you life and that life more abundantly.” And so I have a really simple theology. God is good and the devil is evil, and God does good and the devil does evil and I never turn from that. And James chapter one, verse 17 says, “Every good and every perfect gift comes down from above from the father of lights with whom there is no variableness and no shadow of turning.” And it says just before that, “Do not err, my beloved brethren, do not turn from this.” You know, God is good and he only does good and he proved that in the life of Jesus and Jesus came to show us the Father. In fact, he told Philip, have you been so long with me, Philip, and you say, show us the Father in John chapter 14. And when you look at the life of Jesus, Jesus, I mean 14 times, it says in the New Testament that he healed every kind of sickness, he healed every kind of disease among the people. That he healed them all, that they brought under him all the sick people who were sick with every kind of disease, and that he healed them all 14 times. And did you know what? I never see one instance in the New Testament in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John in the gospel where Jesus put sickness on anyone. I don’t see it in the New Testament anywhere.

Well, I think this kind of fortified thinking that people have a hard time breaking out of it. I think these two ways of thinking are actually kind of related. This thinking that God controls everything and also the thinking that you have to add something to Jesus, And really, it comes down to is God’s goodness enough? Is Jesus enough? Is his grace sufficient? And really it comes down to if you really understand how good God really is, if you really understand his grace, and when you fall out of grace, those are the two ways of thinking that people go into. It’s a legalistic type of thinking and also a God controls everything kind of thinking.

Right. And you know, some of these people that have proclaimed to have a revelation of grace that have gone back, they’re these people preaching, they act like God’s a schizophrenic and God is not schizophrenic. He is good. He’s good all the time. He only does good to his children. And some of you I can hear you saying right now, well, you think God is just a big sugar daddy. Well, he only has good things. You know, Jesus said it this way. He said, “If you, being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” And I asked, a man asked me to pray for him years and years ago, this is over 30 years ago and to be healed. And I said, will you believe when I pray for you that you’ll be healed? You know, the Bible says, those who believe will lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. And he said, well, I don’t know, but God may be putting this on me to teach me something. And this teaching used to be so prevalent in the church, and it is just terrible. It is antichrist.

It cripples you. You know in James, James also writes, “A double minded man is unstable in all of his ways. Let him not think that he’ll receive anything.”

Yeah. James chapter one. And so I asked this man, he had at that point in time, three beautiful daughters. I said, would you take a vial of AIDS and shoot it into your daughter’s veins to try to teach her something? And he said, absolutely not. How could you accuse me? Why would you think I would do that? And I said, why would you accuse God of putting this disease on you? You know, I mean, it’s terrible. And so he agreed to agree with me, so, but it’s just terrible when people just get ahold of this legalistic train of thought and thinking this, and they think it’s all about our performance or they think God’s controlling everything. And you know, God, you know, you say, well, Pastor Lawson, what about chastisement? You know, the Bible says in Hebrews 12 that God chastises every, you know, a father chastises a son that he loves, and God chastises those who he loves. Well, let’s understand what chastisement is really about, because when you read like Psalm 94, verse 12, it says “Blessed as the man who you chastise, who you teach after your love, teach from the word of God.” So we need to be taught and instructed by the word of God. And I believe as we’re taught and instructed by the word of God we can know what’s coming from God, what’s good, we can know what’s coming from the devil, what’s evil and we can stand against that as evil and believe God for that which is good. And it’s gonna be hard, like you say, if you’re double minded, to really move into the grace of God, to move into the blessing of God. And Paul had such a legalistic mentality before he got born again. And he goes on here in Galatians chapter one and begins to talk about what happened when he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. And 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 confer with flesh and blood.” And so Paul actually, he began to share right there in the city of Zin and the Jews heard about it, and they were gonna go get him, and they let him down over the wall in a basket and he escaped out of there and went into the desert, hid himself for three years. And then after three years, he came to see Peter and these different ones. But he began to get a revelation of the gospel of revelation of the goodness of God. And you know what, we need to continually be reminded and remind people of the goodness of God. And if you don’t have a revelation of the grace of God, of the goodness of God, it’s gonna be hard for you to really receive good things from God.

Well, I like that Paul, Paul has, you know, communicates this awesome revelation of grace, because he, for the majority of his life, until he met Jesus, he really was into works. He was really into keeping the law. He was really into approaching God through his own actions. And you know, he talks about it, I believe it’s in Philippians. He said, “I was of the tribe of Benjamin, I was circumcised on the perfect day.

[Lawson] The eighth day The eighth day, I was a pharisee of Pharisees. Concerning the law, he said, I kept the law blameless. And he said, but really this doesn’t even equate to receiving righteousness through grace in God. That’s righteousness through faith in Jesus.

He said at the end of that statement, Philippian chapter three, verse 10, he says, “That I may know him and the power of his resurrection being made conformable to his death.” And you know, I believe if you identify with Christ’s death, you can also identify with his resurrection. You can also identify with his life and the good things that he has for you. We’re gonna take a very short break and we’re gonna come back and talk more about this revelation of grace that Paul had. So stay tuned, we’ll be back in just a few seconds.

Friends, I’m gonna be talking about in this series about how grace has revolutionized my life. And you want to get this cuz 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’ve went on if you were to continue 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 you I’ve done. The other one is The Revelation of Grace with Andrew Wommack. Blessings. Friends, I’m so glad that you stayed with us and we’re here talking about the revelation of grace. And Paul says, “To move away from Jesus is to move away from grace. And when it pleased God, he says, who called me from my mother’s womb to reveal his son in me.” He met Jesus on the road to Damascus and his life was so changed. And he goes on and says in verse 23 and verse 24, “They heard only that he who persecuted us in time passed now preaches the faith which he wants destroyed and they glorified God in me.” That’s what should happen when we get a revelation of the gospel, is it should cause people to glorify God in us. Man, when I got baptized in the Holy Spirit and called to preach, begin to understand that God was a good God and he had good things for me, that there’s a Bible full of promises that I could believe, it turned my life right side up. People, you know, I was raised in religion and a traditional church and not everything there was bad. I got saved there. Your mother too. But praise God, at a young age, you know me at 14, your mom, 13 to 14 years old, about the same time, you know what? we got involved in different ministries in different places, but we really began to get a revelation of the goodness of God. And you know, your mother was somewhat like me. You couldn’t keep her away. I mean, she went to meetings, she’d drive 20, 30 40 miles to go to gospel meetings with her best friend. Her best friend ended up being a Foursquare church pastor’s wife. He had a revelation of grace way before I did. And praise God, it’s amazing. You know, mom and I got married then we ended up pastoring and we pastored for six years before I got a revelation of grace. But I knew that God was good. I knew that he had good things for me. I knew that there…. I could believe these promises. So I did have a pretty good understanding of faith before I got a revelation of grace. But when you get an understanding of grace, it really makes faith come alive. It makes faith work. Paul talks about that in Galatians five, verse six. He says, “In Jesus Christ, neither circumcision or uncircumcision avails anything but faith that works by love.” I like to say, faith comes alive in the presence of God. God has great things for you. Now he goes on and begins to talk about some of these problems of religion. “And he says 14 years after he came to Christ, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas and took Titus with me also, and I went up by revelation and communicated the gospel, which I preach among the Gentiles. But privately he says, I talked to those who have reputation.” In other words, he talked to the leaders in private first to make sure he was on the right track. And he says, “Lest, by any means I had run in vain, but neither Titus who was with me being a Greek was compelled to be circumcised. And because of false brethren, unaware were brought in, they came privately to spy out our liberty.” You know, religion will make you crazy. And here these guys were like peeking around the tree to see if Titus was circumcised. And I think you talked about this one time, Aaron, that Paul probably brought Titus just to challenge their religion. He was this Greek and he is never circumcised as a child and never compelled to be so.

This is after 14 years of ministering in Gentile places and Titus is probably just a great example of someone who is Greek, who received Jesus and who was doing a lot for the kingdom.

[Lawson] Amen.

Paul writes to Titus of course, there’s a letter to Titus, but I think he took Titus intentionally to maybe just stir up their religion.

So anyway, he may have. But anyway, Paul just was boldly, he boldly defended the gospel and he talks about how the gospel of… Paul went to the Gentiles, this is in verse seven, in Galatians chapter two and they received the gospel. And you know, Peter went to the Jews and they received the gospel. And so, we need to go where we’re called, we need to minister where we have fruit, that’s kind of figuring out where God’s called you, who he’s called you to minister to. “But he said he that wrought effectively in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles.” Praise God. And so he just talks about, you know, not only did I receive grace and this revelation of grace, but there was not only a grace working in me and through me, there was grace on me to minister to people. We need to understand the gifting of God, the grace of God that’s on us. You know, we recently got a person who helps us with the finances here and does these different things. And he told me before he came to work, the only gift, spiritual gift that I know that I have is administration. And I know when I stepped into it, and I know he worked for years for Andrew Wommack Ministry and he did a fantastic job. He ran a whole department, was one of the most stable departments in that ministry, the finance department and we are so blessed to have him be able to come to work here. And he had taken sabbatical really, taken five years or so away from that to just do some things with his family, so on and so forth. But really, I felt compelled to call him and to have him come help me. And so we’ve got all these different people with different gifts, doing different things. Getting the right people with the right gifts in the right place really helps the ministry go forward.

Amen.

And it’s important that we realize the gifts that God’s given us. Now, he goes on, it says in verse 11, “But when Peter came to Antioch, I withstood him,” this is in verse 11, “to the face, because he was to be blamed for before certain Jews came from James he ate with the Gentiles, but when these Jews were come from the church where James was the pastor in Jerusalem, he withdrew himself and separated himself.” Now here we see the full blown results of religion, and we’re talking about how fear of man causes people to move away from Jesus, to move away from the gospel. And it’s, we see hypocrisy, withdrawal, separation, and fear of man. It says he withdraw himself, he separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision. And I don’t know if you’ve ever met any of these legalistic people, but they are mean. And you know, they try to put fear into you and boy, you just don’t want to give in.

Kind of the interesting thing about Peter is Peter actually had supernatural revelation of God’s grace towards the Gentiles. You know, he was the first person, he had this vision from God that he should go to Cornelius, this Italian soldier and pray for him, and he went and ministered to Cornelius. Cornelius and his whole house was saved and filled with the Holy Ghost. So Peter experienced this firsthand how God wanted to bring revival to gentile people. And he had this revelation that it’s not about what you think is clean or unclean. If I’ve called something clean, it’s clean.

That’s God called it clean. It means it’s clean.

So, he had this revelation of God’s grace, that it’s not about keeping the law but he slipped back into it because of a fear of man.

Yeah. You know, I had a missionary I supported years ago. He’s went home to be Jesus, great man of God, and did a lot of work behind the Iron Curtain and different things before that opened up. And I went with him one time into the Ukraine. But you know, and we went from Europe across Germany, then across Poland into the Ukraine, taking supplies and things to churches and Christians, and he was such a powerful man of God, but when he was in the United States, he wouldn’t eat bacon or ham or pork of any kind. But when we were in Poland before we went in the Ukraine and he made big deal out, he’s kind of legalistic. But when we went through Poland, he ate all the schnitzel he could eat. It’s of course white pork. And I don’t know if he knew it or maybe he thought justified it because we were going into the Ukraine and there wasn’t a lot of real great food at that point in time for the average person. But you know, people get hung up on the craziest things. And Paul’s talking about how Peter got hung up on this and he was eating with the Gentiles, and then when certain leaders came from Jerusalem from the church, Jewish leaders, he became a hypocrite and he went through himself and separated himself because he feared that. Again, fear of man will hinder the gospel. And if you really wanna move into what God has for you, you need to let go of the fear of man. You need to move into these things that God has for you. You know, Jesus is amazing, praise God. And he has great things for us. And so he goes on, and really he says, he goes on, he said, “Barnabas got carried away,” this was Paul’s associate, “with this dissension.” That’s another result of religion and fear of men. And he said, “When I saw that they walk not uprightly” this is Galatians 2, verse 14, “according to the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all, if you are a Jew, live after the manner of the Gentiles and not as the Gentiles, why do you compare compel the Gentiles to live as the Jews who are Jews by nature and not sinners of the Gentiles.” In other words, we are saved by grace and not by works. We are saved by faith in Jesus and not by keeping the law. Praise God. And we need to keep it that way and keep it simple. Paul says, I’m concerned that you’ve corrupted the simplicity of the gospel that’s in Christ. Well, if you need prayer today, I want to encourage you to call in. We have trained prayer ministers here. We see lots and lots of people healed and set free by the power of God and if you need prayer, call in. If you would like to partner with us and help us share this message of God’s grace, this actually costs us hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in staff and television costs. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks so much and blessings.

[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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[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 P.O. BOX 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80962. See you next time on Grace for Today.

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