Grace Life Part 9 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue

Grace Life Part 9 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue

The Grace Life Part 9 with Pastors Lawson and Aaron Perdue. In this episode of Grace For Today you’ll learn how you are empowered by God to increase financially.

Grace Life Part 9 Transcription

Friends, I’m so glad that you are tuned in today, that you are with us. I wanna ask you a question, how many of you want to increase? I believe that God wants you to increase, I believe that God has given you the power, the ability, in your hand, to increase, and if you will listen to this broadcast, I believe that you will find the way, scripturally, to increase. Friends, I am so glad that you are here with us today. I have Aaron, we’re talking about the grace of giving. We talked in yesterday’s broadcast about the grace of God that was on the Macedonian churches and how Paul used them, a group of churches that were going through very difficult times, but yet purposed in their heart to be givers and really showed the grace of God, and he said, listen, he was telling the Corinthians, “You abound in faith, in utterance, in knowledge, in love, but you also need to abound in this grace, the grace of giving,” and then he went on to use Jesus as the greatest example of grace, and he said, “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” in 2 Corinthians 8:9, “Even though he was rich,” and that rich means he had abundant supply, he was wealthy, “Yet for your sakes, he became poor,” the word there for poor is to become as a beggar, he laid down everything, he was talking about Christ on the cross, “that you, through his poverty,” through his laying down everything, “Might become rich,” and that means to grow wealthy or to grow rich. And you know, I believe that when we administrate the grace of God in the area of giving well, it leads to abundance, and Paul later says in 2 Corinthians 8, “Don’t blame us for this abundance.” So that was the grace of God on them, but now we’re gonna go and begin to talk about grace working through you in 2 Corinthians 9, and Paul begins here in 2 Corinthians 9, he says, “As touching ministering to the saints, it’s necessary for me to write to you,” if you think that you’re gonna do ministry in a big way without money, you’re just a little crazy, it takes money. I mean, you call, get an airline ticket to fly somewhere and preach the gospel, it takes money, even if you support a missionary where things are cheaper in another country, we’ve been building churches in India and we partner with the churches through another ministry, and for a few thousand dollars we can build a church, and it’s really an amazing thing. Some of these are the only gospel church in a whole town, whole village, and city, and so, you know what? We like to see those dollars be able to be used in a great way, and you know, we give to ministries that have, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, and we give to ministries that don’t have a lot of money. We give to all kinds of ministries because, but it takes money, that’s what I’m trying to say, doesn’t matter whether they’re doing it a small way or a big way, it takes money, and when I came to Colorado Springs, Andrew Wommack told me, “Lawson, you’ll have to talk more about money ’cause number one,” he said, “You want your people to prosper in the church,” and number two, he said, “If you’re gonna do anything significant in Colorado Springs, it’s gonna take some money,” and you know, people used to make fun of me and call me tight, you know, my church in Kit Carson, one of the elders, now, I still love him, he’s a great friend of mine. He said, “Lawson, you not only got Lincoln’s face off the front, you got the memorial off the back of the penny,” they called me a penny pincher, and they really kinda gave me a hard time there but after I left about a year, the pastor, he called me one day and he said, they said, he was at a board meeting, they said, “I wonder what Pastor Lawson,” and I thought, “Well, they figured it out,” when we were in that church we never lacked, we gave about $50,000 a year away to missions and other ministries, they’re a great church, I love those people, still have a great love for those people, and the believers in that area, I was recently there, preaching a funeral for one of the families, it was very close to me, and you know, we saw different people in the community, Catholics and you know, different people from different churches, but we made a great influence, and part of it is what, you know what? We live what we preach, praise God. The gospel works, praise God, and so keep believing the gospel. Now, so it takes money to minister, and he talks about this and he’s telling these Corinthians, he said, you know, “I know that you wanted to do this in your mind, but you’ve gotta have some follow through.” You know, faith without works, James says it’s dead, being alone, it’s just a corpse, it’s going nowhere and doing nothing. You can talk about it all you want to, and I know some people, they got a lot of talk, but they not living it, and it’ll come back to bite ya.

I remember, this is maybe a year ago or something, but my wife, Heather, and I were partnering with the ministry, we give a lot to this church, but sometimes we give to other ministries as well, but we’re partnering with another ministry, and we found out that that ministry itself didn’t tithe, we had heard the financial advisor for that ministry say, “Well, tithing is after you pay all the staff costs, and all the rent, and after you pay everything, then that’s what you tithe off of,” and I just told Heather I don’t wanna partner with them anymore if they’re not gonna be a giving ministry, then I don’t wanna-

And they’re very generous ministry in other areas. And so I know the person, I was the one who talked to ’em, but I knew because of their background in business, what they began to do is they begin to take, you know, away all of the expenses and their other different things before they were tithing off their ministry, and you know, I’ve never done that, and you know what? I’ve seen churches who do not tithe, and we’ve always given, when we started our church in Kit Carson, we tithed off every dime that came into that church to missions and other ministries. You know, I’m on a board of a church in the Dallas area, they have seven different locations, I believe they have over 15,000 members, and one of my good friends got on the board a year before me and they were not tithing, and he told them, “if you don’t start tithing, I’m gonna get off your board,” so they decided to start tithing and they talked to their financial administrator who actually administrates finances for several churches, he said, “Well, the churches that do it prosper and the churches that don’t, generally don’t,” so the next year was one of the first years in a good period of time that they were able to be in the black.

Mm.

And then this year, and I gave them some instruction, right? And told them, “This is what I believe and speak,” this year they were in the black again, and I love what they’re doing, it is amazing, but I believe with the number of people coming to that church, their income could be five times what it is, and so I was at their board meeting this year and when I was there, they asked me to pray at the end and share anything, And I told ’em, “I feel like next year is gonna be a great year of favor for the church,” and actually their pastor was sharing this, and it really ministered to me, ’cause God had already told me that this next year is gonna be a year of great favor, and we’re gonna have great favor, God’s gonna do amazing things for Charis Christian Center. And so, as I was telling them that, I told ’em, “This is what I want you to believe for.” See, a lot of times people don’t, I told ’em, “This is what you’re doing now,” I said, “I want you to believe for double,” it was about double the figure God gave me, it’s actually the exact same figure that I’m believing for in our church, and even though our church actually, numerically, we are, you know, much more, and we have a phenomenal outreach and we reach a lot of people, and you know, last month we had over 10,000 people, 10,000 sessions on our website, over 7,000 different users, we had over 9,000 views on one social media venue that does our broadcast, in one month, which is tremendous. So there’s a, we’re reaching a lot of people beyond just the people that are right here in the physical location, and a lot of the people, you know, that are here, there’s a lot more people that really call this church home, you know? But at the same point in time, we have a tremendous income, and I believe it’s connected to our giving and in our believing. So, you know, God showed me years ago, you know, I was at a place, I read some Christian books on budgeting and done some different things, and I was really still challenged in the realm of finances, and really when I would read these things and they were Christian books about, I would go through and I wouldn’t have enough money to fill in all the blanks in the budget, and Jesus would tell me, now, I’m not sure this with Jesus, but might be my understanding of Jesus ’cause my father was very direct, he’d tell me, “You just shut up, quit crying, I’m taking care of you,” and I’d get over it, not whine, praise God, believe God. But then after a period of years, mom and I’ve been married for 10 years, and people told me, “Things will be better when you’re 10 years,” we were pastoring, again, in a small rural area, and on our actual 10th anniversary we drove here to Colorado Springs, and we had a van, and we went home and we went to the dollar theater, probably went to Walmart, Sam’s, first cafeteria, the dollar theater, and then drove home, had you boys with us, went to the post office, they didn’t deliver mail if you lived in town there, you had to go to the post office to get your mail, so went to the post office to get the mail, went to back the van out, and the transmission went outta my van, and I got mad because I already owed Carrie Pickett’s daddy, who grew up in our church, she’s now one of the main directors of Charis Bible College, we owed her, owed him $400 for tires, and we owed $300 at the grocery store for our groceries, we had a three-aisle grocery store, little bitty place, about as, not even maybe quite as big as this studio is, the whole grocery store for the town, and then we owed $300 for that, and then we owed, you know, and now had, we bought a used transmission, we owed $800, so it’s $1,500, so I got mad because people told me, “It’s gonna be better when you’ve been married for 10 years,” and I thought, “Here I am, I got $1,500 of excess bills,” and I kept all my other bills paid up, but I got a different, got some different information, some of you need some different information, and I got this handbook by John Avanzini and Patrick Andre, and I went through it the next day and it was all the same things, but he added one thing, you know, in budgeting, he talked about the same things, but he said, “You can believe God for increase and you can believe God for specific amounts of money. So that day, that was March 20th, 1994, I started believing for $1,500 to pay those, immediately, bills up, and $700-a-month increase so that I could, you know, fill in the blanks in the budget, and within, by my birthday, June 6th, I had the $1,500, and I didn’t ask anybody, I didn’t tell anybody, I prayed to God. And on my birthday, I was in Shine Wells and a man who didn’t even come to my church came over where they were having a birthday celebration for me, at one of our family’s houses, and he put in my chair, of my car, an envelope with a $500 check, I had a pastor drive 62 miles and come visit me, he never came before, he never came after, and he gave me $100, and he told me, “God told me to give this to you,” but within just about a two-week period of time, just maybe a little over two weeks, I had the $1,500, and within one year’s time, I had the increase of $700. So I find out that you can believe God for money just like you can believe for your health, or just like you can believe for deliverance, or any other thing from God, any other promise, you can believe for specific amounts of money, and I started doing that as a church. So when our church income, when I came here some weeks, we did not have $100 in the offering, Barbara and I were receiving no compensation from this church at that time, and I would put in $50 a week. Now, the church in Kit Carson helped us for the first 12 months, and they gave us full salary what we were receiving there and housing allowance for three months, and then they gave us housing allowance for nine months, but it was slim pickings, but I started believing for 5,000 a month, when we had almost no income, then I believed for 10,000 a month, then I believed, once I got to 10,000 a month, for a quarter million a year, when I got to quarter million a year, I started believing God for half a million a year, when I got to half million, started believing for a million, when I got to a million, started believing for 2 million, when I got to 2 million, started believing for 3 million, then 5 million, then 7 million, and we’ve, you know, surpassed 3 million, I’m believing right now for the same thing I told this other church I believed for, $7 million, and I’ll have it, it’ll come to me, and long term I’m believing for much more than that. In fact, the first time I brought Jesse Duplantis, it was on our 10th anniversary, we were, at that point, about a million a year in income, and I was believing for 2 million, and I told Jesse in the long term I was believing for 10 million. Now, long term I’m believing for far more than 10 million a year, because I know how big the world is, and it takes money to reach out with the gospel. So when Jesse preached for me, then the next day preached at the Bible school, I took him back to the jet, and he had me get up in the jet with him and I told him, “Jesse, right now I’m at a million, I’m believing for 2 million a year, long term I’m believing for 10 million,” he looked at me and he said, “When you get to 10 million, don’t stop there,” and it was just like that. When we paid off our last church, Andrew Wommack and Jesse Duplantis told me, within a week of each other, when I paid that church off and told them, “Don’t sit on your laurels, don’t stop here,” in other words, faith keeps expanding, faith keeps growing. I believe God is a God of faith, I believe that universe keeps expanding, it keeps growing, because God is a creator and he’s a God of faith, and when we’re operating in the realm of faith, Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 1:3, “I give thanks that your faith grows exceedingly and your love abounds.” So in the realm of grace, you need faith, and faith is really, in 2 Corinthians 8:9 he’s talking about the grace of giving, he continues to talk about it in 2 Corinthians 9, “The grace through you, grace to you,” grace on them in 2 Corinthians, grace to you and working through you in 2 Corinthians 9, but when he’s talking about sowing, sowing is an act of faith, and you need both things to receive from God. You need grace, where God makes it available, but you need faith so you can receive it. So we’re gonna come back and I’m gonna have Aaron share some more about this thing called sowing and reaping, so stay tuned. Listen, you wanna listen to what Aaron has to say, he’s supernaturally blessed, he has a great anointing of increase on his life. So stay tuned with us, we’ll be right back, blessings. 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 feature I’ve done, the other one is “The Revelation of Grace” with Andrew Wommack. Blessings. Praise the Lord, we’re back, and we’re talking about the grace of giving today, and we’re talking about in 2 Corinthians 9, sowing and reaping, we haven’t got to that scripture yet. But Aaron, I told you I’d have you share some, I want you to share some testimonies about the grace of giving in your life.

Yeah, I love this subject that we’re talking about called the grace life, and really the grace life, giving is part of that grace life, making giving a big priority in your life, a big goal in your life. You know, one of my heroes growing up was a historical figure, Winston Churchill, and he said, “You make a living out of what you get, but you make a life out of what you give.” And I think that really goes along with what kinda Paul is sharing here about the grace for giving, and just making giving be a priority in your life, and if that’s a priority in your life, God is always gonna take care of you, and he’s gonna really enrich your life, not only financially, but I believe he’ll enrich your life relationally, emotionally, just your entire life will be very blessed because you made giving a priority, and the way the world looks at finances, the way the world looks at relationships, it’s not about giving, it’s about what you can get. You know, what can you get outta this job? What can you get out of this relationship? You know, what’s the benefit to you? And that’s not grace, that’s a very worldly way of thinking. And man, God wants to really bless you in so many areas, and if you just make, “How can I be a blessing to others?” God’s always gonna take care of you. You know, Kenneth Hagin and his wife would pray this every day, they would join hands and pray and just say, “God, we just pray that you help us be a blessing to others today,” that was something they prayed every single day.

Amen. You know, Billy Joe Daugherty already talked about this, and Billy Joe was a great leader in the body of Christ, but people would say, “What’s your vision? What’s your vision? What’s your vision?” He said, “Help people, help people, that’s my vision, I wanna help people,” and you know, Aaron, over the years, we’ve helped a lot of people, I’ve helped a lot of ministries, praise God. I’ve helped build buildings, I’ve helped, you know, build churches, build pastor’s homes, build feeding centers, I’ve helped, you know, establish ministries, but you know, that comes back to me. And your mama says, she’s praying the scripture for me, “He that waters others himself will be watered,” and sometimes people get mad at me for being generous, but you know what? It just keeps get coming back to me, “Good measure,” the Bible says, “Give and it will be given back to you.” Jesus said this in Luke 6, “Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will men give to your bosom, and with the same measure that you give it out,” when you give it out generously, it will come back to you generously, and praise God. You know, we’re having a celebration here at the church today, and I’m giving a bunch of stuff away and I, you know, I love to give, you know, I believe God loves to give, he is the greatest giver. But Paul talks about this, you know, and people say, “Well, what does giving have to do with grace?” 2 Corinthians 8-9 talk as much about grace as anywhere in the Bible, the only place that compares is Romans 5 and 6, where Paul talks about, you know, coming into the realm of, you know, leaving the reign of sin and death, coming into the realm of grace and righteousness by faith in Jesus, and this is as much as any place, so I thought when we’re talking about the grace life, we should talk about giving. And he goes on and he’s talking here, and he says in verse six, “This I say, he who sows sparingly shall reap sparingly, but he who sows bountifully shall reap bountifully.” You know the Bible says that he that has a bountiful eye, a generous eye, will be blessed? And you know what? I grew up on the farm, and you sow a little bit, you reap a little bit, you sow a lot, you reap more, and you’ve gotta keep sowing if you wanna reap a harvest, and you know, there’s one thing we do in the farm, when it’s sowing season, we sow because, you know what? We’re not just looking at our seed going in the ground, we’re looking for a harvest. And I tell people in this church, “I don’t want anybody,” you know, thinking, ‘I’m paying my tithes,’ I want you to think about it like this,” I believe in the principle of tithing, I am a tither, I am a giver, you know? And Kenneth Hagin would also say this, you mentioned him, he’d say, “I do not lack ability, I do not lack opportunity, I’m a tither, and I’m a giver, and money comes to me,” praise God, and money came to him, praise God. And so I think you oughta get involved in that, I’ve tithed from the time I’ve received my first paycheck, and I’ve been a giver and God’s brought it back to me, good measure, pressed down, shaken together. But I want everybody, the only time the Bible talks about paying tithe is in Hebrews 7, where it says “Here men die receive tithes, but there it’s witnessed that he receives them that lives forever,” Jesus is the great high priest of the new covenant, and he receives our tithe, that ought to get you cranked about tithing, glory to God. Amen. But when you think about this, in Hebrews 7 he says Levi paid tithes in Abraham. Levi came over 400 years after Abraham, what he saying? And when it says Abraham tithed to Melchizedek, it says he gave a 10th to them all. It’s not talking about what Levi did, it’s talking about what Abraham did, and Abraham’s gift settled the debt of many generations, but Jesus’ gift settled the debt of every generation. Praise God. So I don’t give as a sense of debt or obligation, I give because it’s the desire of my heart, because God lives in me, because he’s the greatest giver, and I gotta start with 10%, hallelujah, hallelujah.

Well, grace, this is really the empowering side of grace.

Yes.

You know, grace gives you power, grace gives you purpose, grace just injects you with the fuel to live beyond yourself, and-

Yes.

A lot of people are just limited by their self, just thinking about themself, that’s not grace.

Few years ago I was sitting in church right after we bought this building won it, you know, in an auction, and the Lord spoke to me, “Give $1,000 personally,” next week he said, “Give $1,000 personally,” next week he said, “Give $1,000 personally,” I said, “Oh my God, what am I doing?” I’ve given $1,000 every week since that, in fact I’ve given $1,350 a week in my regular giving, that’s my regular, hallelujah, and I give offerings above and beyond that, I don’t know how it’s even possible, that’s more than my salary, much more than my salary, but you know what? God keeps bringing wealth to me, he keeps bringing increase, you can’t beat God giving, and that’s what he says in verse seven, “Every man, according as he purposes in his heart, let him give, not grudgingly, or of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver.” You determined to be a giver, you addict yourself to giving and God will support your habit, amen? God’ll see that you have seed to sow. He says, “God is able to make all grace,” there is some grace that will not abound to you, that you may not work in, unless you get involved in the grace of giving. 2 Corinthians 9:8, “God is able to make all grace abound towards you, that you always, having all sufficiency.” I have no lack, I have all sufficiency, “In all things may abound to every good work, as it is written, ‘He has dispersed abroad, he’s given to the poor, his righteousness remains forever.’ Now he who ministers seed to the sower,” that’s God who’s giving seed. I tell you what, you determine to be a sower and God will see that you have seed to sow. You determine to be a giver, God will see that you have money to give. He says, “He will minister seed to the sower, bread for your food, multiply your seed sown and increase in the fruit of righteousness,” glory to God, we got fruit of righteousness. More than the finances I’ve received. I’ve got three boys that love Jesus, three boys that are all involved in the local church, three boys that are all blessed, that they’re all givers, three boys that have good wives, and good families, and good health, glory to God, that’s more than money can buy. Glory to God. I thank God for this grace that’s coming back to me. He says, “Being rich in everything to all bountifulness, which causes to us,” we are thanking God for this, this is the fruit of this grace. Finally, he says this, he says, “Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift.” Man, you get involved in the grace of giving and you can’t, you just can’t beat God giving, and Jesus is unspeakable, praise the Lord. Aaron, share something to people who need to become partners.

Yeah. You know, several years ago, actually it was probably three or four years before I moved back to become a pastor here, God just put it on my heart to tithe to the church here, to the ministry here, and it’s because this is really where I was being fed. You know, I was living in Houston, going to a church there, but this always felt like home to me, you know, whenever I came back here, and I’d always livestream all the services I could, this felt like home and it felt like where I was growing spiritually, so I wanted to sow into that, and when I started tithing here, it wasn’t much at the time, but God multiplied it, you know, God is a, there’s a blessing of multiplication, and you know, I just put on my heart that what I was earning, 10% I give here just ’cause this was where I was being fed, this was home, and God multiplied it very quickly. I think within a year, my tithe went from a $100 a month, to $1,000 a month.

And-

And we’ve had that happen with lots of people, lots of people have had that happen.

Yeah.

I believe that if you will partner with this ministry, if God lays it on your heart, I want you to pray about it. I believe that your increase will far exceed the seed that you’ve sown, and if you wanna become a partner, I encourage you to give us a call today, we would love to hear you, hear from you. Thanks so much and blessings on you today.

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Friends, I certainly hope that you’ve enjoyed the program today and it’s ministering to you to move into that which God has for you. And I wanna say a great big thank you to all of our partners for helping us share this gospel across the United States and across the world. It’s because of our partners that we can take this message of grace and faith around the world. If you would like to join our partners and receive that blessing, give us a call today. Blessings.

[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.”