Grace Life Part 8 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue

Grace Life Part 8 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue

The Grace Life Part 8 with Pastors Lawson and Aaron Perdue. In this episode of Grace For Today you’ll learn how you can live in abundance for every area of your life!

Grace Life Part 8 Transcript

Friends, I’m so glad that you tuned into the broadcast today. I have my son Aaron with me today and we’re gonna be talking about how you can live in abundance. I believe that when we understand the grace of giving and we administrate it well, it will lead to abundance in your life. So stay tuned and get ahold of these principles that will lead to God’s abundance in your life. Blessing. Friends, it’s so good to have you with us today. I have my son, Aaron. We’re talking today about a great subject. We’re talking about grace and we’re going to be specifically talking about the grace of giving. And you know, there’s some people that get legalistic about grace. And most of the ones that I see that get real legalistic about grace, this is a area that they can really get tripped up in, is the grace of giving. But you know what, God is a God of grace and if God lives in your heart, God is the biggest giver of them all. And I believe if you really get a Revelation Of Grace, you’re gonna be one of the greatest givers of all people. And you know, I recently had Andrew Wommack here on my broadcasting. We have a product, you know, that we’re sharing on the Revelation Of Grace. And we were talking about the Revelation Of Grace, but Andrew talked about how him and Jamie are given something like 150% of what they actually make now. And that’s because, you know, over the years they’ve been diligent with their finances, they’ve received different things, they’ve been diligent with them, so they’re able to give because of the investments, you know, and different things that they have. They’re able to give far beyond what they even make. Praise God, and your mama are somewhat like that. We give a tremendous percentage of what we make today, but it’s because in years past we have been very diligent with the finances God’s given us. And so, we have a lot of income that’s coming, you know, besides what we receive for the ministry. And so, thank God that we can give that. And you know what, God accepts your gift no matter where you’re at. God doesn’t look at.. You know what, the total amount that you gives, he looks at the percentage. And Jesus looked at the widow that gave too much and said, she gave more than anybody and she gave everything. And you know what? You can’t beat God. I bet she had good increase that came from that. And I still remember when I was a child, when I gave my first thousand dollars gift, I gave it to a missionary. And you know what? I was like 17, 16, or 17 years old. Back in those days I made about $3 an hour, so a thousand dollars was like a month and a half worked. I worked about 300 hours or 200, 200 plus hours a month then. And listen, I didn’t get paid for hours. I didn’t work like all these newfangled government systems. I got paid when I worked and when it didn’t work, I didn’t get paid. And I was thankful to get to work, praise God. I was thankful to get paid and I was thankful to give, you know, but God, you know, the scripture says, “God gives seed to the soul and he gives bread to the eater and he increases the fruit of our righteousness.” And we’ll probably talk about that in tomorrow’s broadcast. But we’re gonna talk a little bit today in 2 Corinthians 8 about the grace of God on you. And Paul talks about this in 2 Corinthians 8. In fact, Aaron, you can read just verse one and verse two and we’re gonna talk about these Macedonian churches. They had a grace on them and it was in the area of giving.

This is, “Moreover, brethren, we make known to you the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia: that in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded in the riches of their liberality.”

And so, here was a church and they were facing a lot of challenges in the natural, and yet they were still giving. And you know, that’s one thing in my life, no matter how much challenge, how much difficulty I faced, I mean, we’ve, mom and I, I mean we’ve invested, we’ve taken major risks, we’ve faced some big challenges at times, but we never quit giving, praise God. And you don’t want to cut off your giving, you giving is your lifeline. And you know, God gives seed to the sower. So become a sower and God will see that you have seed to sow. And so, Paul talks about them. He’s actually using this group of Macedonians. This church that was, even though they didn’t have a lot in the natural and face different challenges, they determined in their heart to give. And he’s encouraging the Corinthians who, you know, talked about giving but really didn’t get involved in this grace of giving. And he’s using them as an example. Like, listen, look at these guys. And he says in verse three and four, “to their power, I bear record, and beyond their power they were willing of themselves.” You know, if you get involved in the grace of giving, you know what, you got to be willing to give not only what you have but beyond where you have. And I had a person to give me a word and I’m believing that as a church, you know, we’re come to a place where we’ll be given, you know, $5 million a year away. And I believe to get where we are today, we give about $500,000 a year away. We’ve done that for several years. And, you know, we give, you know, every year that we’ve been here as a church, we’ve given between 10% and 27% of the income away. And we started with almost no people and no money. And yet, we have a magnificent facility that’s paid off. We have, you know, over a million dollars of equipment that’s paid off. God has blessed us and helped us. But there’s a, we’ve got a lot of places we want to go and things we want to do and it’s gonna take more. So, you know what, we’ve gotta keep sow and seed, and keep giving, praise God. And we give to a lot of different ministries.

Yeah.

You know, generally, we’ll give to over 60 ministries a year. We give to over 30 ministries every month. And, you know, God, just, you know what, He brings that back to us.

Yeah, giving really affects your future.

Yeah.

Sowing, when you sow seed, it’s because you’re putting faith in the future. You’re putting faith that something’s gonna happen in the future. You know, a young man recently met me ’cause he wanted to talk to me about his education and you know, he feels like he should be a pastor someday. I think he’s about 25 years old and he’s a newer believer. He came to church with his girlfriend, they’re married now, but that’s kind of the first time he’d ever been to a church like this. That was just two or three years ago and it was to a Christmas Eve service. But he really got turned on to God, turned on to the Holy Spirit and just what, you know, he never really went to church much before that. He just kind of grew up nominally Catholic. But he feels like he should go into ministry, so he just asked me for advice. He just has like one year of college left. He’s getting a degree at a secular university. So I said, “well, you need to finish that up, that can actually help you down there at a ministry.” But you know, he wants to go to Charis Bible College, which I think will be good for him to just really be immersed in the word and be around good Bible teachers. But I told him, “if you think you’re gonna do that down the road, you know, equally as important as maybe go to a Bible college is also to be a tither and to really just keep serving a lot at the church.” So I said, if you really feel like that’s… I said, “by giving of your time and your talents and giving of your finances, that’s what will pave the way.”

Yes. You know, I believe that the giving that you do is like a seed sewn into your future and it goes into your future and produces a harvest. And we’ll be talking more in tomorrow’s broadcast about this in 2 Corinthians 9. But I encourage all the people in our church who give, not to give as a death that they owe, but give as a seed that they sow. I do wanna say this, I think tithing is minimal. I mean I was trained as a child before I got ahold of grace to tithe. We went to church, we tithe. I mean, that’s what we did. And you know what? It helped me in life. I remember the first time I got paid for working on the farm in the summer and I drove the tractor just hundreds of hours and I made $1,350 and I brought… It might have been… I brought $135 and I put in the Sunday school offering. Man, they were shocked. Praise God. But you know what, if you’ll get involved in giving, it will turn around your life. And you know, I noticed that our youth have been giving and they’ve really been sowing it. I just noticed this, I got a new financial administrator and they’re showing me, you know, where the offerings are coming from. And I was really encouraged that our youth are getting involved in tithing and giving off. You know, I started tithing as a young man. My dad taught me about tithing when I was just less than five years old, my goodness. And I’ve never forgotten it. And you know what, I’ve tithes since I’ve been a young child and God has multiplied that many times. Now, I don’t tithe legalistically. And mom and I give much more than a tithe. Over our married life we’ve given probably about an average of a third of our income back to the church and we get income in many different areas besides the church. And, but you know, God has used that and he has multiplied that many times back to us. And there is no way that you can naturally explain what has happened in our life financially. And you know what? We’ve given away cars, we’ve given away vehicles, we’ve helped people buy houses, we’ve done all kinds of things. We’ve given away food, we’ve given away clothing. And you know what? We have so much we have to keep giving it away. I have this deal now if somebody gives me a shirt or a pair of pants I try to take one out of the closet and go give it away ’cause I got so much stuff. And I just, you know, can’t wear it all. And so, you know, you look, we are just blessed and there’s no way you can explain this naturally. But you know, there’s Proverbs says, “There is he who sows and has more than enough. And there’s he who, you know, withholds more than he should, and it leads to poverty.” And I’ve seen that happen. In fact, I had a person recently that was complaining about, you know, their financial condition and later I saw what they made and I thought, my God, I knew what they made financially and I saw what they were given. And I thought, well, no wonder you’re having financial problems. One of my good friends was a marriage counselor and counseled literally thousands of married people. And he said that he has never seen a Christian couple who tithes in a financial problem that they can’t get out of. And that’s a testimony to the power of it. It just works. We have some of our leaders here, two of our, Bob and Carol Hellem, and years ago they were in debt. Their financial advisor told them that they should pull bankruptcy and boy they said, “we’re not gonna do that.” He ran a gas station, they cleaned houses, you know, on the weekends they cut firewood at night and on the weekends, and he ran this whole gas station and they paid off every debt and they were supernaturally blessed. They started tithe, they tithe off everything they made. And I even know some people who teach this, and yet I know areas that they’ve slipped up, that they’ve missed it. And listen, I am not gonna make that mistake, praise God. And so, I’ve given and continued to give and continue to sow and it doesn’t make natural sense. But that’s how our lives should be. We should be so blessed that it’s supernatural and Paul got involved in this grace of giving. And if you get involved in this grace of giving, man, you’ll make a difference. And Paul talks about this Macedonian church, they prayed us, you know, they were so poor that Paul didn’t naturally want to take the offering from. You know, I had a woman that came to church and she started giving a nickel in the offering, and then a dime, and then a quarter, and then a dollar, and then $2, then $10, then $20. And she moved away, she was a single mom. And I remember her mailing a $200 check to the church and that was a major breakthrough for that woman. And I thought, here she was, praise God. And she started out with the little that she had and Paul said, they prayed us. They didn’t really wanna receive it, but he said, they prayed us that we’d receive it and then give it to other people. Take on the ministry of the saints. And this they did not as we hope, but they first gave themself to the Lord and to us by the will of God. You know what, if you give yourself to the Lord, you’re not gonna have a problem giving your money to God. Man, we get to do this, we get to give, I love to give. Man, once in a while I might get a little bit on it. Carried away with it. But you know, I don’t know. I just, it’s more blessed to give than to receive Jesus. And we get to do all this. And he says, “In as much that we desired Titus as he had begun, he would finish in you this same grace also.” So he got Titus to come and help him administrate the grace of giving. And we read later in verse 20. He says, “No man should blame us in this abundance, which is administered by us.” You know what, when you administrate finances diligently and you give like you’re supposed to give, I believe it leads to abundance. And Paul said, “Nobody can blame us for this abundance.” You know, I’ve heard this, don’t criticize my harvest until you’ve seen my seed. And one of my ministry friends, he just, he went to a meeting and he felt like, God, he just called me yesterday. Told him he had $130,000 of debt to pay off on his ministry building. And God told him it would be paid for in this ministry. It’s 135,000 and there were 200 people at the meeting. He’s actually disappointed ’cause only 9,000 came in. And then a person that was there called him and said, “How much came in?” And he said, “Well, $9,000.” And he was believe, God just moved on him that he wanted to pay this off. And the guy said, “Give me your information. I’m gonna wire you 126,000.” And he wired him $126,000 and he’s paying that ministry off. And I know the man, he obeys God in the realm of giving. And when you obey God in the realm of giving long term, it’s gonna work out good. And you know, sometimes I know him. He’s not been able to give like he wants to give. But you know, I’ve been that way before, but you know what, we just keep sowing. We keep believing in God brings things where we can give more and more. We’re gonna take a short break and we’ll be back right after this break. And I’m gonna have Aaron share some stories about the grace he giving in his life. It’s a blessing.

Friends, I’m gonna be talking about in this series about how grace has revolutionized my life. And you wanna 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 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 I’ve done. The other one is the Revelation Of Grace with Andrew Wommack. Blessing. Friends, I’m so glad that you’re back. And I said I was gonna have Aaron share some stories about the grace of giving. And you know, Paul’s talking about the grace of God on these churches of Macedonia and how they gave even though they were in straits and different problems and difficulties. And, but you know what? Then, he goes on and talks about how Jesus is the greatest example of giving. And he says, “Listen, if you abound in faith, if you abound in utterance, in knowledge and diligence,” this is 2 Corinthians 8:7. “And your loved to us,” this is just common Christianity, basic Christianity. See that you abound also in this grace also. Giving is basic Christianity.

It really is in a… Man, if you wanna learn how to hear God’s voice, learn how to hear his voice concerning giving, you know, this is kind of the least of all things. And if you can learn how to hear his voice concerning giving you’ll be able to hear his voice in other areas as well. I remember just several years ago, I’ve been here at the church now for almost seven years, but it was about this time seven years ago, I was here on break and I just closed on my house ’cause I knew I’d be moving here a few months later and I put most of the money I had at the time, you know, on the down payment for that home and didn’t have a whole lot leftover after that. But I was here on a Wednesday night and we’re taking up a special offering for some missionaries who are gonna, they do a lot of work in Central America. They, you know, feed a lot of poor, educate them, build homes there. And the person taking up the offering just said, I believe tonight we’re gonna raise enough money to build two homes for people. So-

I think we did.

Yeah, and they could build homes for $5,000 at the time. So he was playing that we would, you know, have an offering of 10,000 on a Wednesday night, which is a pretty big offering.

Yeah, for a hundred adults.

For Wednesday night. But I had already written out a check that night for a hundred dollars, but I felt God told me to tear it up and add another zero to it. And that’s kind of a lot for me too ’cause I just, you know, put all my money, you know, on this house I was gonna buy. But I did it, and just as I was leaving the church, I have a eBay app on my phone, I heard this cha-ching sound, so I knew I sold something and I actually sold a really nice watch that I had and I actually made a thousand dollars profit on it. So God kind of repaid me.

Amen.

And the Bible says that, you know, “If you give to the poor, you lend to the Lord.” So that’s kind of a one-to-one ratio. And God-

Paid you. Paid me back right away. But the next day I was kind of excited to just see what came in the offering, and I asked, you know, the secretary coming up the offering what it was, and it was just barely over $10,000. So, I knew if I hadn’t have done that, we wouldn’t have.

That night we paid to build two houses in Central America. And this ministry that we work with, it’s one that we support every month, the Ambassadors to the Nations, Darey and Karen Jolly. But we built a house for a poor, you know, widow. And, and we also built a house for a pastor. And you know what, I’ve built houses for pastors in Africa. I built houses for pastors in the Mediterranean or in the Gulf here, you know, South United States. And I’ve also built houses in Central America. I’ve helped build houses in Mexico and I’ve helped pastors buy houses here in the United States. I’ve helped other individuals buy houses in the United States. And you know what? I live in a great house and it’s worth three times what I paid for it. Jesus blessed me so much. And you know what? You just can’t beat God giving. And when you get involved in this grace of giving, it will come back and work out to your benefit. And, you know, he talks about this, this Macedonian churches they were giving, and you Corinthians ought to get involved. You abound in faith, utterance, knowledge, diligence, love. You need to get involved in his grace of giving. He strongly encouraged them. He says, prove out the sincerity of your love in verse 8. You know, put your money where your mouth is, is what he’s really saying. And he goes on and says in verse 9 and 10, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that even though He was rich”, now this word rich, it means rich, plousios, and it means abundantly supplied rich, wealthy, abounding in material resources and abounding. And so, he says, “Even though He was rich, He had everything He needed,” He was in heaven creating all things. “Yet for our sakes he became poor.” Do you know any condition on earth would be considered poor with where Jesus came from? He was creating everything. And yet he says, “Your sakes He became poor.” But this word poor means that He actually, it’s poor like a beggar. He came to nothing. So it’s talking about Christ on the cross. When He laid down everything. He had nothing but a loin cloth. I mean, He laid down everything, gave everything that you threw His poverty, His absolute poverty might be made rich. And this word made rich means richly supplied to increase in good, to be made rich or wax rich. It’s the Greek word, ploutao And, you know, it’s like in Genesis 26 where Isaac was in the foreign land in a time of famine and he was gonna leave and God told him, “No, you stay here.” And he sewed in that land and he became rich. He grew rich is what it’s talking about. In fact, I’ll read it really quickly. Genesis 26, verse 12 and through verse 14, “Isaac sewed in that land and received in the same year a hundred fold and the Lord blessed him.” You know, the Bible says the blessing of the Lord makes rich. In Proverbs 10:22, “Adds no sorrow with it.” Toiling doesn’t add to it. It’s not about your toil and your labor. Now, working does lead to blessing. You know, you need to work, but it’s not all about how hard you work. And he says, “The man waxed great and went forward and grew until he became very great.” He waxed great and for he had possession, everybody say he had possession. You know, I believe God wants the church to have possession of flocks, of herds, and a great store of servants for the Philistines. And he had multiple streams of income. Aaron, before you accepted the call to come here and you prayed about it for several months, you were thinking about how could I get a job in the professional world and come volunteer at the church for free. And literally, I don’t pay you… I pay you fairly, I feel, but I don’t pay you like a tremendous amount of money for your level of education and what you do here at the church. But I believe that you have this anointing of finances working strong, so strong in your life. Even if I didn’t give you anything you would prosper because God’s given you multiple streams of income. And you know what, God’s prospered mom and I that way, and we have finances that comes from different realms and it’s a work of diligence, but we’ve always been in this, God involved in this grace of giving. And he says, “I give my advice for this is expedient for you, who have begun before they started even a year.” But he says, “Also to be forward a year ago, he said, “I want you to get involved in this and stay at it.” And he goes on us and and he says, “We’ve been chosen to travel in this grace,” right, this grace of giving in verse 19, “Which is ministered by us.” I believe when you administrate finances well, it leads to abundance. We’ve found that at our church. We’ve found that in our own personal lives. And I believe what works for the church, work in your personal life, praise God. I don’t tell you to do something that I don’t do as a church, that I don’t do personally. Praise God, I live what I preach as much as I can. And so, he says, “Avoiding that this, that no man should blame us in this abundance which is administered by us.” So I believe when you get involved in the grace of giving, when you administrate finance as well, and there’s a lot of different areas besides giving, right? There’s believing, there’s giving, there’s stewardship, there’s work, that’s four pillars of financial success. I have a CD series, teaching series on four pillars of financial success. And you really need all of them. And they’re all biblical. They’re all in the scriptural. But I believe when you get involved in those, it will lead to abundance. Hands down, praise God. Aaron, share something with the people.

Yeah, I just, there’s a… I like when Paul’s writing about, talking about these Macedonians who gave out of their poverty, but they said, they gave with joy to, you know, there’s a joy to giving, there’s a joy to sewing into the kingdom to see, to be able to help God’s kingdom grow here in this earth. There’s a big joy to it.

Praise God. You know, your wife, Heather, she’s a hilarious giver. Man, she loves to give and she has seen God come through in her life before she met you, in big ways. And you guys continue to see God can come through in your life in many ways. And it’s really amazing the grace that’s working not only in your life but in her life, in this area of giving. And you know what, God is no respecter persons. I mean if it works for me, if it works for Aaron, it works for all of my boys. They’re all in different areas. They all go to different churches. They also in different ways, but they’re all blessed and have an abundance. And I believe that’s God’s will for every person. When you get involved in the… I’ve been to the poorest nations of the earth. I’ve been to Nepal where people migrate to India for better conditions and seen people who are involved in this grace of giving super naturally blessed. And you know what, I believe God will do it for you too. Amen.

Amen.

So thank God for the grace of giving. If you are not a partner, I want to encourage you to partner with Charis Christian Center and Grace For Today. I believe that there’s an anointing of increase in this ministry. And I believe if you get involved, it will work in your life. Blessings.

[Announcer] 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.

Praise the Lord, friends. I want to invite you to church this coming Sunday morning, whether you’re in Colorado Springs or whether you’re wherever you are at, if you’re in Colorado Springs, you can see us Sunday morning at 8:30 or 10:30 AM live. But you can also watch us with our livestream congregation at 8:30 or 10:30 AM or you can go to our website and get it anytime at CharisChristianCenter.com.

[Announcer] 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.