Imparting Success To The Next Generation – Part 10 Lawson and Barbara Perdue

  Hey friends, don’t you know God is good all the time! And God is good to me, Lawson Perdue all the time, but He’s no respect of persons! You gotta learn how to stand up and believe God. The Bible says, “If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.” Stay tuned and we’ll teach you how to walk in the victory God gave you in Christ! Friends, I’m so glad that you’re with us and it’s great to have Barbara here. And you know, we’ve been teaching all last week and all this week really on imparting success to the next generation. And really it’s how to be successful yourself. And we shared yesterday from Joshua 1: 8, “This book of the law shall not depart outta your mouth, but you shall meditate therein day and night that you may observe to do according to all that’s written therein. For then you will make your way prosperous and you shall have good success.” And today we’re continuing and we’re continuing on really how we walk in victory. I love your next point so you can go ahead and share it.

 

  Praise God. Again, how to have victory. And this is for everyone. This book is for people with a family. It’s a book for you. It’s about people called to ministry, and who’s called to ministry? The Bible says, we are all called to be ministers. So this book is for everyone, but this is something I really wanted to bring out. It’s very practical and this is where I feel like a lot of times Christians really miss it. I think people in the world get it. But my next point is thrive on adversity. Why is that important? We need to learn how to thrive on adversity. It will cause you to rise to the next level. And just to give you an example of what I’m talking about, when you think of long distance runners, weightlifters, all use resistance to make them stronger.

 

  I love this verse in James Chapter 1. It says, “Count it all joy brethren, when you fall into diverse temptation, into different kind of problems, count it all joy. Well, usually we don’t get excited when you fall into different kind of trouble or temptation, difficulties. But you know what, if you knew what was behind your mountain, you’d move it.

 

  Again, a lot of times in our culture or today, people take adversity as a negative. I love adversity. I believe God has put you, and you’ve had a prophet speak that over you, that you have that tenacious bull dog type spirit that you’re gonna hang on no matter what. But again, excuse me, adversity is what will cause you to rise to the next level. We have pioneered and started two churches. There’s nothing easy. We didn’t do this because we just had a ton of money, or we were bored, God called us to do it. And whether you’re starting a ministry or starting your own, you’re an entrepreneur and starting your own business, there’s adversity and you need to learn how to rise to the next level. Use that resistance to make you stronger. And we were talking earlier about an example when we moved here, it was very difficult. I know if we have time to go into all the things that we dealt with being told. We didn’t even have money to buy a lot, let alone a house. And so we didn’t have a big budget. And I remember you took flyers and it was just plain old white paper. You took flyers and didn’t You go to a hundred homes a day? And it was just really talking about our church, starting our church. And a lot of times people with other businesses would put a flyer on our door. You would just knock or you would just leave it. You wouldn’t interrupt people. But people were doing that, that had other businesses. But we did that as one way, that’s what do we have in our hand? Well, this is what we can afford. A little flyer on just plain old white paper. And did you wanna share something? Then I wanna share a story.

 

  Well, I put some of ’em on cream paper, but back then I could print ’em at Office Depot for three and a half cents a piece. And I put out like 10,000 flyers before we started the church. And we had almost no people and no money. But we made this simple just black ink flyer. And I printed it on this cream paper. Some of ’em were on white paper before that, but it is cheaper to print ’em at Office Depot than we could pay for to print ’em at ourselves. And we had a little copy and printer at the house. But I took ’em out and God used that simple thing to help us get started. And we started the church. Our first Sunday service was September 10th, 2001, the day before 9-11. And we had been doing six months of Bible studies prior to that. I’d put out 10,000 flyers and we had a total of 20 people show up. Five of ’em were from our family and two couples that helped to start the church. We weren’t getting started very fast. It didn’t look very encouraging.

 

  What you said just reminded me, I have a couple of stories I wanna share, but when you’re talking about flyers, and we didn’t have cell phones. The, our church office was in our home. We only had one of those phones with the cord in the kitchen. And so we had one phone number and it was our own personal home phone number that you were putting on these flyers. And so when I would pick there was no caller id, I didn’t know who was on the other line. And it’d usually always be when I was feeding our children breakfast or lunch. And I had this silly phone with a cord and you could only go so far. And a lot of these people would get the flyer and it would just make them mad. And I know one person, like you said, 9-11 happened, after this

 

  9-11

 

  9-11 happened. And anyway, I remember this person calling and they were so mad at us and mad at Christians and they were just going on and on and on. And then after 20 minutes of just listening to them vent, they wanna know if we would baptize their baby in water.

 

  ‘Cause they said they were an atheist. But you see the Bible says in Romans Chapter 1, if you read it closely about verse 20, 21, every creation knows its creator. Everybody knows there’s a God. There are no atheists in the foxholes. So this person knew there was God. And even though they were going to hell and claimed to be an atheist, they didn’t want their baby to go to hell. And we don’t baptize babies, we baptize people that have made a conscious decision of receiving Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved,” the scripture says in Mark 16: 17, or it might be verse 15. But anyway, it’s right there in the word of God. But this person, even though they were not making a decision to believe, they knew there was a God and they didn’t want their baby to go the wrong direction.

 

  So again, we’re talking about adversity and don’t give up just because the heat gets turned up or things are hard. We’ve experienced this and practiced in our own lives and this is what we taught our children. You can’t give up when things get hard. And so another story, remember regarding these flyers, it was so interesting how these little flyers just telling people how God loved him and how we’re starting this church. It was just such a friendly little flyer. But you went to a trailer park and put ’em out all throughout this trailer park.

 

  One of the worst places in this city.

 

  And the Trailer Park Manager again called the number, which was our home personal number. So I had no idea who’s on the other side of the phone line. And this trailer park manager is just red hot mad and saying “How he’s gonna have you, my husband, thrown in jail, yeah for putting a flyer out, telling people that God loves Him. And the wheels were spin. And like I say, we didn’t really have much finances or much backing for this church plant. And we really needed something miraculous to happen. We could really use some free publicity. And so as this trailer park manager was just ranting and raving and going on and on. I could have fallen apart. Think, “Gosh we’re here and everybody hates us. There’s not one friendly person that’s called from these flyer. But this person was going on and on how they were gonna call the police and have my husband thrown in jail. And I thought, this is great. This is is just the advertisement we need, You know, “Pastor telling people God loves them is thrown in prison.” I just saw this picture of him behind bars and I thought, “This is the free publicity we really need.” And I told this gentleman, I said, “I think you should do it. Yes, let me give you the number 911! Call the police and have him thrown in jail. I think he thought I was crazier than him. It startled him and he hung up on me. But I just thought, “This is some free publicity we could really use to see you thrown in jail for telling people that God loves them.”

 

  Amen, and you know what? God’s given us some free publicity. We had our Jesus is Lord bus benches a number of years after that. And we just got kicked off one of the largest Christian television stations. They broke their contract with us because I’m not young enough and hip enough. They don’t like who we are. But you know what, God, we got kicked off that station because somebody else was trying to buy it. They actually failed. And now it’s back in the hands of the first people that owned it. But God opened the door right after that for me to go on Daystar with Marcus and Joni Lamb at that time. And it cost three times as much money was as what I was paying to be on this other station to be on Daystar. And we really needed some increase to do that. And this bus bench deal blew up. And when it blew up, did you know what that thing went around the world overnight? Because we told the city, “Listen, we’ve been using the name of Jesus.” They told us we couldn’t use Jesus is Lord in our advertisements on our bus benches. And I said, “Listen, I’ve been using that for three years, the name of Jesus. They said, “That’s hate language.” I said, “I’m gonna continue to use it.” That thing exploded and went all around the world in one weekend. And you know what, our income at the church increased over 25% a quarter for the next four quarters. And it paid for us to be on Daystar television and we are on Daystar Television for five years. And then God said, go off. And so right before the pandemic we went off, but I might go on again. Praise God. So God’s good.

 

  I have a scripture, I believe, that’s really gonna help someone watching here today. And this is Proverbs 24: 10. It says, “If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.” Another translation says, “If you faint in the day of adversity, there really wasn’t much to you in the first place.” But it says your strength is small.

 

  We have a woman in our church and she was diagnosed, now it’s been almost a year ago, with stage four cancer. They said that her body was full of cancer. They said, it’s all throughout. They said, really, there’s nothing we could do, but we could try to do surgery and we could give you chemo. And you know what she had Joe Osteen’s mom’s, what’s her name? Jody Osteen’s book on healing. Praise God. And I went to visit her at the hospital. And she said, listen, I’m not gonna take chemo, I’m not gonna get surgery. I’m just gonna believe God. And listen, she went down, she was kinda gray, she got very thin, but she’s recently she’s turned back pink. She’s gaining weight, she looks good. She’s been in church almost every Sunday since. Last Sunday, she was running around here like a little light bulb, greeting all the people. I believe that she’s healed by the stripes of Jesus. Her son was here visiting and his wife and he said, “Listen, we love this church, we love you. I said, “Man, your mom is like a little light bulb. I believe she’s healed.” He said “She is.” Praise God. So you know what the word of God has the power to heal you if you’ll believe it. Judy, this woman’s name is Judy. Judy could have just laid down, played dead, let the devil run over her, just believed all the words of the doctor but she believed the word of God. She believed the testimony of the Lord. And she already had that. And she started seeing herself well. And praise God, she’s well today.

 

  Amen.

 

  Thank God the word works.

 

  Amen, I love Hebrews 10: 35   36, exactly what you’re talking about. “Therefore, do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you, have need of endurance so that after you’ve done the will of God, you may receive the promise, but don’t cast away your confidence. Again, this is another scripture my mom quoted a lot, I remember being a teenager. Just don’t cast away your confidence in the Lord.

 

  Amen, we’re gonna take a break in just a few seconds and we’re gonna come back because there’s so much in these scriptures that we have to talk about. And we’re gonna talk a little bit about Hebrews 10: 35 and verse 36. The next verse after it says, “Cast not away your confidence, which has a great repayment of reward. Says you have need of patience. That after you’ve done the will of God, you might receive the promise. But this word in the Greek for patience is different than any other word. And it means something else. And we’re gonna come back after the break and talk about how you can have victory in your faith. And you don’t want to miss this, praise God. So stay tuned, we’ll be right back after this break. Hey everyone, I’ve just finished reading the final script for my wife, Barbara’s book, on “Imparting Success to the Next Generation.” It’s a fantastic tried and proven thing that Barbara has proved in our lives on how we can teach our children to succeed. Andrew Wommack wrote the forward, you don’t wanna miss it, you’ll be blessed. Thanks so much.

 

  I’ve been dealing with sciatic nerve pain in my right leg for multiple years. We’re actually about to walk outta service, hen my wife redirected me to the front. She told me that you were talking about nerve damage. Yourself Aaron and your dad were in back of me, and you guys were praying over me. I just felt this movement in my hips and in my back that I haven’t felt like a freedom. The next morning I tried to move in the ways that I didn’t in the past and it felt completely healed.

 

  Friends, I’m so glad that you stayed with us. We said we would come back and talk about Hebrews 10:35 and verse 36. First of all, it says, and Barbara just quoted this in Hebrews 10: 35, “Cast not away your confidence, which has great repayment of reward.” That word confidence in the Greek is the Greek word parrésia, and it means boldness, it means open plain freedom. In speaking, it means frankly, free fearless speech with competence or outspokenness. And you know what? I’ve been very bold and outspoken and the Lord’s met me and the lord’s helped me. But in the next verse, he says, for you to have need of patience. And the word here for patience is different than most of the words for patience in the New Testament in the Greek, this word for patience actually is the Greek word, hupomone. And it means steadfast is constancy, consistency, endurance, perseverance, patience, and just not falling down to the circumstances. And really, I had a minister in our church. He travels all around the world and he told me, “Lawson,” I told him, we’ve been through all these challenges and difficulty. He said, but you and Barbara are two of the most consistent, constant people that I’ve ever seen. And he said, “This word for patient actually means patience or consistency in adverse circumstances. Like you’re just talking about.

 

  “If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.” So you gotta learn to be strong and be patient and consistently believe and speak God’s word.

 

  I love it, it’s really good news. We brought out that resistance, it’s what makes you strong. We talked about long distance runners, we talked about weightlifters. People who work out and exercise are always looking for something to give them resistance, to make them healthier and and stronger. And so it’s good as you do things, as we’re moving and obeying the Lord, when adversity comes, use it as this, “You know what, I am only gonna get stronger.”

 

  A stepping stool.

 

  I am not gonna fall. I am going to get stronger.

 

  To move forward. You know, I want to talk about something. Some of you’re looking at it, say, “Well, you’re preachers you don’t have problems like us.” Listen, we’re not only preachers, we’re business people. I’m an investor and I’ve had lots of opportunities to go broke. I’ve had opportunities to die. We’ve had opportunities to have all kinds of problems but we have believed God and we consistently believe God. And you know what? When you consistently believe God and consistently elevate the word of God and consistently praise God and worship God and magnify God, good things keep happening in your life.

 

  I love to worship God. I love to get up and start my day.

 

  Amen, you do it.

 

  Walking and just talking to God and just glorifying Him, praising Him. It just to me, it’s just marvelous what God does. Every time a bird or the geese fly over my head. I always say, “Thank you Lord, you did that just for me so I could see them and hear their wings flap. I get a kick out of everything that I am aware that God made all this for us. The mountains, the trees, the flowers. Just all the wildlife. I thank God every day and I just praise Him and say, “You did this for me.”

 

  You get up every day and you read the Bible, you worship God before sunup. And then early a lot of times before the sun gets up, you start your walk and you’ll be out, there’s a pond in our neighborhood and you’re walking around that. You often take pictures of the geese and the ducks. The other day you and I were driving and we saw this mother turkey with three little babies. But you’d taken a picture the day before of hen turkey with five babies. And we see the deer, we see the bear, we see the coyotes. We see all the different creation that God’s made. The bobcats are beautiful. It’s just amazing how God has made creation. It’s so beautiful. But you worship and praise God for the good things.

 

  And no matter what, no matter what’s going on, it isn’t about, “I feel like it.” It’s, “We are created in the image of God. He created us to have a relationship to fellowship with Him.” Ultimately, the best thing, if you don’t know what else to do today, get up and just praise Him and thank Him because He is God and we are His children and He loves us. I wanna just read another scripture in Hebrews. This is Hebrews 10: 23 and it says, “Let us hold fast, hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering. For He who promised is faithful.” So hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, I am going to thank God and praise Him no matter what.

 

  You know, faith is a substance of things hoped for In the King James it says, “Hold fast to the confession or the profession of our faith. That word profession confession means the same thing in the Greek. So if you don’t hold on to hope. If you lose your hope, what is hope? Hope is positive, positive expectation. And the scripture, David said “In thy word have I hoped.” The promises of God give you hope.

 

  But if you don’t hold fast to your hope, if you don’t hold fast the promises of God, you will lose a lot of the good things that God’s given you. And God doesn’t want you to lose, He wants you to win.

 

  Amen, did you wanna read Ephesians 6: 13?

 

  Yeah.

 

  It’s really sick.

 

  It’s says, “Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, having done all to stand.”

 

  Amen.   Praise God.

 

  So that’s what it says.

 

  So having done all, again, when you don’t know what else to do, just keep standing on His word. But I really wanted to bring out another thing. , I know you didn’t know if we’d have time today, and I wanna talk about stamina because when you’re starting ministries or starting your own business or working and serving again in your homes and in your communities, stamina.

 

  In the family.

 

  Stamina.

 

  Husband and wife relationship. Listen I’ll tell you, it was what, I got a revelation of grace in 1994. We got married in 1984. Before I got a revelation of grace, I was like living with a tyrant. And if you didn’t have some stamina and fortitude, our marriage wouldn’t have made it through the first 10 years. And you know what? I’m probably not the easiest person to live with today, but praise God, thank God for the grace in your life and we’re able to work it out.

 

  Amen, you know, there’s a scripture in the Bible and it really ministered to me, and I believe it’s gonna really minister all of you who are watching today. And this is in Zachariah 4: 6. And I love this again, like you mentioned in relationships, in the marriage, in the home, being a busy parent of little children, or even like I said, in the ministry or whatever God’s called you to do, I love this Zachariah 4: 6. So he answered and said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel, “Not by might nor by power, but by my spirit says the Lord of hosts.” And when you study this out, it’s talking about the governor of Judah, Zerubbabel, is ultimately responsible for rebuilding the temple, but is forbidden to trust in the resources of man to accomplish the task. In other words, how do you keep that? Now God can use people, it’s nice to have mentors, it’s nice to have friends or people in the family who come along and support us and encourage us. But what he’s saying in the message, it says, you can’t force these things. In other words, when we started our church, you can’t force it.

 

  Yeah, well this Zerubbabel, they had been given a commandment by the king to stop the work. They had been accused of things that were untrue. And you know what this prophet of God came and said, “It’s not by power, but it’s by my Spirit, says the Lord.” And then he said, that same hands that laid the foundation of this temple, this was the rebuilding of the temple, of the children of Israel, are gonna put the capstone on it. And it’s gonna be done by saying grace, grace to it. It’s not by our might, it’s not by power, but it’s by the power of the grace of God. And maybe you’ve been told no, maybe you started out in a journey of faith You know, I was just told no, I talked about this early in the week on a major deal in our church. But you know what I didn’t quit. It took me one day, it took me just one night. The Bible says weeping may endure for a night, you can weep for a night, but joy comes in the morning. But even that night after I just received that word, that was very contrary to what I believed, to what I’d been given by God, I believed through different people. I was on the way home and my son Aaron gave me a word and said, “Dad, you can get this job done for this much money.” The next morning you told me to call this person.

 

  I called that person. They said, “Lawson, it’s not over yet.” That’s exactly what I felt in my spirit. You called one of my friends, Pastor Bobby Crow from Victoria in Mexico, and he called me up and gave me a word. He said, “Lawson, you gotta remember who’s in the boat with you. Jesus is still in the boat with you. You may be in a storm, but you’re gonna get through it and God’s with you. He’s gonna help you.” So many confirmations. By Monday, I had a bid to do it for exactly what Aaron’s word was. You know what? By Monday I had already called back these people and said, “Listen, this deal is not over yet. You’re not done yet.” And by Friday I had got clear direction on what to do, and I went ahead by the next Wednesday, see, 10 days later, just 10 or 12 days later, by the next Wednesday, I heard from the people, they said, “It’s not over yet. We’re gonna come through and this is what’s gonna happen. I’m guaranteeing you, it’s gonna be handled good.” We’re gonna win God’s with us. We always win. We just play ’til we win. Vince Lombardi was a great coach. I believe he was a coach at Notre Dame University and he was one of the winningest coaches of all time. And he said, “We play ’til we win.” In other words, you never quit, you never give up, you never let down, praise God. And so many people, if you quit before you win, if you quit before you have your harvest, you’re gonna lose. But you don’t wanna lose. God wants you to win. God wants you to have victory and you can have victory when you keep believing.

 

  We’ve been talking about victory and we have time just to end with one more scripture that I know is really gonna bless everyone. And we just talked about this earlier too, but I love what Ephesians 3: 20 tells us.

 

  It says, “He is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above all that we can ask or think according to the power that works in us!”

 

  The power that works in us. Again, Jesus is in the boat with us. We’re not alone.

 

  Praise God.

 

  It’s not by might, praise God, it’s not by power.

 

  What power do we have? We have the power of the Spirit of Christ in us. We have the power of the Word of God. We have the power of the Holy Spirit. We’re baptized in the Holy Spirit. But in this context, in Ephesians 3: 20, we’ve got the power of the unconditional love of God. The love of God has been shed abroad in our heart by the Holy Ghost and that’s what gives us victory in Jesus.

 

  Amen.

 

  Amen, praise God. Share a word before we go off real briefly, Barbara.

 

  Well, I’m just so excited again to share this teaching with you. God wants us to live in victory and it’s our choice. And I just wanna tell you another thing we always told our children, nothing is impossible with God.

 

  Amen, we’ve been teaching again from Barbara’s newest book, her brand new book, it’s a great book, “Imparting Success to the Next Generation.” I hope you’ll get this. You can go to charischristiancenter.com, you can come here to church, you can go to Amazon and get it. And praise God. You know what? Tell your friends about the broadcast and if you can’t be in Colorado Springs and attend services with us. Attend online at karachristiancenter.com this Sunday. Blessings.

 

  It is important to keep God first, family second, and our ministry third. In a busy world, it is essential that we understand and act upon these priorities. Raising kids to love the word, value family, and live with purpose will bring them great success. Get your copy of Barbara’s new book, “Imparting Success to the Next Generation” for 15.99. Go to CharisChristianCenter.com and order yours today.

 

  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.

 

  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 PO Box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80962. See you next time on “Grace for Today”.