In Christ Realities – Part 5 Pastors Lawson and Aaron Perdue

In Christ Realities Part 5 with Pastors Lawson and Aaron Perdue. In this episode of Grace For Today you’ll learn how God created you and how it can take place in your life.

In Christ Realities Part 5 Transcription

Welcome friends to the broadcast. I’m so glad that you’ve tuned in. We’ve been sharing all this week on new creation realities on who we are in Christ, In Christ Realities. My good friend Mark Hankins says this, he says, “When God was working in Christ, he was working on you. And God did in Christ what he wanted to do in every man.” Stay tuned and we’re gonna talk about how that began to take place in our life. Blessings. Friends, it’s so good to have you with us today. We’re gonna begin talking about the process of identity. We received a new identity the moment that we were born again, but it really takes a lifetime to walk it out and it’s a process and we received it by being born again. Now, some people have never been born again, and if you find yourself just struggling with the same things over and over and over, it’s either number one, you’ve not been born again, or number two, you’ve not renewed your mind. But if you’ve not been born again, you can try to change your mind all you want to, but you’ll still keep falling down in the mud. But when you get born again, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If any person be in Christ, the same has become a new creation. Old things are passed away, and all things have become new and all things are of God.” He’s talking about a spiritual transformation.

[Aaron] That’s awesome.

So you became a brand new creation the moment you believed on Jesus. Aaron, you believed on Jesus when you were six.

I think so, six or seven.

Praise God. I think the sooner you get born again, the better.

Amen.

Everything’s better with Jesus. So if you’re living

Praise God,

life on your own without Jesus, it’s much better with Jesus.

Man, you need to get saved.

Yeah.

It’s so good. And Jesus talked about being born again. Years ago, and we’ll talk about this in John 3, but I saw this bumper sticker, it said, “Born right the first time.” Well, you weren’t born right the first time. You were born in sin.

And some people say, “Well, I was born this way.” That’s their excuse for.

Well, you gotta get born again, spiritually speaking. If you study the scripture, you can be born once and die twice, or you can be born twice and die once. And the Bible talks about being born again and talks about the second death. And listen, you don’t want to be there at the same.

I think it’s really important to understand what it means to be born again. A lot of people who claim to be Christian don’t really understand what it means to be born again. I remember I was in college and a friend of mine asked, “Are you one of those born again Christians?” Kinda like said it in a mocking type way. And I said, “Well, there’s no other type of Christian.” Jesus said, “You have to be born again.” So if you’re not born again, I don’t think you’re a Christian. I don’t think you’re.

You’re not saved.

Yeah, you’re not.

You gotta be born again. Some people have taught in this kinda wacky grace, and I believe in grace. I’m a grace preacher. But some people have taught that everybody saved. One of my friends came back from a meeting saying, “Everybody saved.” I said, “Well then, why does the Bible say ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved?'” Paul said that. Paul’s the one that gave us all this revelation of grace. And he said, “You gotta believe on Jesus to be saved.” So if you’re already saved, why do you gotta believe on Jesus to be saved? And that doesn’t make sense. Jesus said, “Go into all the world, preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. And he that believeth not shall be damned.” Mark 16:15-16. I believe the scripture. So I love you, but don’t be crazy. It takes two things to get saved. It takes the grace of God. That’s what Jesus provided in his death and resurrection. But it takes faith in Jesus. You’ve gotta believe it to receive it. You can’t just take one portion of scripture and eliminate all the things around it. People that teach things like that, they take little portions of the scripture and they eliminate the context. And a text without a context is a pretext. You’ve gotta read the thing together. So Romans talks about grace and it talks about faith and it talks about you receive righteousness by faith in his grace. And you need both of those things to be saved. So let’s go to John 3 and talk about this. In John 3:1 it says, “There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus. He was a ruler of the Jews. The same came to Jesus by night and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that you’re a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that you do, except God be with him.” So he realizes, and he comes to Jesus by night. I think the reason Nicodemus came to Jesus by night is Jesus was pretty radical. And so Jesus answered. Now, what was his question really about? His question is about miracles. How are you seeing these miracles? How are you operating in kingdom power? And Jesus answered him and said unto him, “Verily, verily, I say to you, truly, truly, I tell you, except a man be born again. He cannot see the kingdom of God. He can’t understand or experience the kingdom of God. So if you’re gonna understand, know, and experience kingdom power, kingdom authority, you must be born again.

He’s speaking about a spiritual reality. Sometimes people have a hard time understanding when the scripture, it’s speaking of a spiritual thing. And Nicodemus does what a lot of people do, even when reading the Bible today, they just look at it in the natural realm.

And we have to know the difference between the spirit and the natural. And so Nicodemus again looks at it naturally and says to him, “How can a man be born when he’s old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb?” I’m too big to get in my mama’s belly.

This happens a lot with Jesus when he is having conversations with people, like he’ll be speaking these great spiritual realities and they’re just on another planet. They’re just only looking at things.

I think that’s why sometimes people miss a lot of New Testament reality because it’s written, I believe 90% of the epistles are written from the perspective of who we are in Christ. And so if you just approach it naturally from the physical realm, you’ll completely miss the spiritual reality of 90% of what God’s talking about.

So Nicodemus is just kinda coming at it from another dimension, just saying, “How can I enter my mom’s womb a second time?” Verse five, Jesus answered, “Most assuredly I say to you,” and I like when Jesus says, most assuredly, because he knows he’s saying something that some people are gonna struggle with. So he’s saying, “verily, verily.”

[Lawson] “Truly, truly.”

“Truly, truly,” this is really important. Don’t miss it. “I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the spirit.”

Now, I wanna talk about a couple things. In verse five, when Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I tell you, except a man’s been born of the water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” When we’re talking about entering into kingdom authority or kingdom power, entering into the kingdom of God. There’s two births to operate in kingdom authority. If you’re gonna operate an authority on the Earth, you’ve gotta have a physical body. You cannot operate in authority on the Earth without a physical body. So for instance, if a demon’s gonna do something on the earth, he has to work through a physical body. And if Christ is gonna work on the earth, he works through a physical body, a physical person. We have a physical, so that’s what I think when he says, now you could, this is my opinion, I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am. He must be born of the water. He must have a physical body and born of the Spirit. He must also have this born again relationship with God, his spirit. So another way to put this in everybody, in Christianity that knows Jesus should agree with this. You have a physical man and you have a spiritual man. You have an outward man and you have an inward man. So when you believe on Jesus, you’re born again in the realm of the Spirit. How does that happen? 1 Peter 1:23 says, “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible of the Word of God that lives and abides forever.” So I believe it’s when we hear the truth about Jesus from the Word of God, that he is the Son of God, that he came, that he lived sinless, holy, perfect, pure, that he died on the cross for our sin, that God raised him from the dead. When we hear the gospel, when we hear the word of God preach and we believe it, we are born of God. I believe this seed of the word of God, inners our spirit, enjoins with our spirit and we become a new creation.

[Aaron] Amen.

James 1:18 says this, “Of his own will begat he us or of his own word. He begat us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruit of his creation.” There are no second fruits. There’s only firstfruits. Praise God. So this is marvelous. And he says the wind blows where it wants to, he says, he goes on. So there’s a natural birth, there’s a spiritual birth. And he says in verse six, “That which is born of the flesh,” there’s a physical birth. “His flesh in that which is born of the spirit is spirit.” That would confirm these things I’m talking about. So there’s a natural birth and there’s also a spiritual rebirth. Jesus says, “Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again.” Praise God. What a marvelous statement. Born again. What happened when you got saved? You got born again. I got born again when I was eight. Amen. I didn’t get baptized in the Holy Spirit till I was 14 and received that. The spirit of Christ lived in me, but I didn’t receive the gift of my personal prayer language until I was 14 and when I was baptized in the Holy Spirit. And that’s really when I began to understand who I was in Christ. It really begin to change my life for good.

I like that Jesus in verse eight uses the wind as an example of the spirit. ‘Cause Nicodemus was seeing these miracles saying these signs that said there’s something happening here. He could see the evidence of that something was going on. So that’s why he wanted to come to Jesus. And Jesus saying, “The spirit is very similar to like the wind. You might not be able to see it, but you can see evidence of it. You can feel it.

You can hear it.

You can hear it. You might not see it or understand how it works, but it’s there. You can see when something gets blown over. Sometimes here in Colorado can get really windy. Like it’s gotten so windy where we’ve had a hundred mile power winds where it’ll blow over 50 foot trees and damage homes and power lines. And see, there’s evidence of wind, but a lot of people don’t understand it. Even when these big winds happen I hear conspiracy theories going on like that. The military around here, they’re testing things and people don’t understand what’s happening, but you see the evidence of something big going on. So Nicodemus say, “I see the evidence, I see the signs, but.

I could tell there’s a wind there.

Jesus said, “Marvel not.”

Last year we had that 107 or two years ago, 107 mile an hour wind. And I live in a beautiful neighborhood and there are a lot of 40, 50, 60 foot pine trees.

[Aaron] We’re blown over.

And we’re 50 or more late over in my neighborhood. Just none at my house, glory to God.

I don’t understand what causes that.

I had one old half dead fruit tree that blew over.

But really needed there’s the signs that wind was there.

But it didn’t hurt my good trees.

That’s good.

So happy. My neighbors blew down a big 60 foot pine. I was glad it didn’t blow down mine. God protects us. But there’s evidence, praise God. And when you get born again, there should be evidence that Jesus is living in you. Amen. We shouldn’t have to, this was years ago, but I was going to a full gospel church after Andrew Wommack left Lamar and I was about 17 years old and one of the people working in a Sunday school class put up a sign, God’s secret service saints. It made me mad. I told Pastor, “Can I tear that down?” He said, “Go ahead.” And I ripped it down. I don’t believe in secret service saints. Praise God, we need to be saints. We need to live like saints, act like saints, talk like saints. You don’t have to be a knothead, but you can be a saint. Praise God. I don’t believe God has any secret service saint.

Amen.

Praise the Lord. So thank God for the spirit of God that lives on the inside of us. And when we believe on Jesus, and believe the promise of God, believes the gospel, we’re born of God. We’re gonna talk in the second part of this broadcast about what happens when you get born again. How you are a new creation and everything in your spirit has already been made new. So many people just thinking about the past and all this and don’t really realize who they are. But when you realize who you are in Christ, it will liberate you and it will change the way that you live your life. You get revolutionary revelation. We’re gonna talk about some revolutionary revelation. It changed my life and it’ll change your life too. So stay tuned. Blessings. Friends, I’m so glad you’ve been watching. Today we’ve been teaching on the subject of redemption and who we are in Christ. This is some of my best teaching. In fact, I got a revelation of this over 40 years ago in Andrew Wommack’s meetings when I was just a child and it revolutionized my life. And I believe if you get a revelation of who you are in Christ and what happened in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, it will literally transform your life. And so we have a lot of great teaching on redemption. What Jesus did for us in his death, burial, and resurrection and who we are in Christ. I encourage you to get this teaching. I believe just like it transformed my life, it will transform your life. So get on the internet, give us a call. We’d love to hear from you. Thank you so much. And God bless you richly as you by his word first place. Praise the Lord. Friends, I’m so glad that you stayed with us. We are in 2 Corinthian 5 and we’re gonna go ahead and talk about what happened when we got born again. My good friend, Mark Hankins, he calls his ministry “In Christ” and he said, “When God was working in Christ, he was working on you. And God did in Christ what he wanted to do in every man.” Praise God. And so that is the good news. That is the gospel. And 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if any man, if any person be in Christ the same is a new creature, a new creation, a new kind of being. Old things are passed away and all things have become new.” And he goes on in verse 18 and says, “All things are of God.” So we’re a new creation. When did we become a new creation?

When we believed on Jesus.

When we believed on Jesus. So we believed on Jesus. We were born again. We became a new creation. All that is talking. We’re talking about the process of identification. And so if you’re gonna walk in this new life, you’ve got to begin to identify with who Jesus is and what he’s done. And when you identify with it, you quit identifying with sin. You quit identifying. It’s so important that we quit identifying with the old life and with the old way of being. Ephesians 5:8 says, “For you are sometimes darkness, but now you are” Who are you? Who does God say you are? It’s important who God says you are. “Now you are a light in the Lord. Walk as children of the light.” The way we walk is connected to our understanding of who we are. Praise God. You understand who you are, you understand that you’re blessed, and you live a blessed life. You understand you’re righteous and you live a good life, a righteous life. Amen. But you receive that life by faith in Jesus. We’ll talk about that a little bit later. But when you understand these things, it changes how you live your life. Praise God. And so he says, “All things have become new. So we’re either in Christ or we’re not in Christ. We’re either saved or we’re lost. Now what became new, Aaron?

Your spirit became new.

Your spirit became new. So before you were born again, before you believed on Jesus, you were spiritually what?

Dead. Dead, but now you’re spiritually alive. Spiritually you were? Sinner, but now you are a saint.

Amen. Now you were lost, but now you are saved, you’re found. Isn’t that good? And he says, “All things have become new.” So everything in your spirit became new when you believed on Jesus. And he says, “And all things are of God.” Everything’s of God. What’s of God? The things in your spirit. If you’re 10 pounds overweight and you got saved, are you still 10 pounds overweight?

[Aaron] Probably.

Yes. You don’t just lose 10 pounds like. Man, when you’re born again, it’s just like that. The wind blows. The wind blows, we talked about that first part where the spirit of God. God breathe in to you new life and you became a new creation in Christ. Hallelujah, you’re born again. It happens like, hallelujah. And so he says this, “All things are of God.” So in my spirit, I’m a new creation and I’ve got all things are of God. And he says, “who’s reconciled us.” We talked about what reconciliation means in the broadcast this week. “To himself by Jesus and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation.” This is where you talked about katallage. Amen. What’s that mean?

It’s an exchange.

An exchange. So we’ve got an exchange of life. So we’ve got a brand new spirit. We’ve got a brand new life. We’re brand new creation in Christ. This is awesome, isn’t it?

This is awesome.

This is the gospel. This is almost too good to be true. He says, now he says, “God not only reconciled us, not only restored us to right relationship, gave us a brand new life, forgave us for all of our sins.” But he says, “He’s given to us the ministry of reconciliation.” I believe this is the ministry of every believer. That we all need to be sharing the good news that God’s not mad at you, but God has already paid for your sin.

I like that we’re given this ministry of reconciliation. We don’t have a ministry of condemnation.

[Lawson] Amen.

Jesus didn’t even have a ministry of condemnation.

Reconciliation, restoration to favor.

I said just a few weeks ago, there’s a lot of snow here in Colorado on a Sunday I made a joke and said, this is is how you can tell when the wheat is being separated from the tares who comes to church.

Aaron, it was terrible.

And I made a joke. So I shouldn’t say that ’cause that’s condemning. That’s like the ministry of condemnation,

We’re a ministry of reconciliation, not condemnation.

And some people kinda minister that way. They’re very condemning in how they minister. I saw another minister in the northeast when it snowed a lot and he didn’t have many people come to church and he showed a picture of people at a football game with like two foot of snow. It was in Buffalo, New York.

Celebrating the pigskin.

And he said, “If they can do that then we should be at church.” And he was trying to condemn people and guilt people.

Condemn

Well that’s not our ultimate ministry.

I know. When you’re a pastor it’s hard sometimes because we’re very committed. I tell people, “Listen, on Sunday we’re gonna have church if I can get here. If I can see past the front of my car enough to drive, we’re gonna be in church.” If there’s any way I can make it. Man, I’m gonna live by that for the rest of my life. No matter what the crazy government does. Hallelujah. And so he say this.

But you shouldn’t guilt people into doing things.

No.

And God doesn’t want to guilt people into.

I believe we’re gonna have so many miracles at Charis Christian Center that people are gonna be, they just can’t stay away. Recently we had a lady, she’s about 80 years old, and mama gave a word, your mom, Barbara, about somebody having a problem with their sciatic nerve and she’d been to the doctor and you’re having, and if you’ll come up, God will heal you. And when she came forward, her name is Sue Baldwin, very good friend. She came up, mom told her, she said, “God healed you when you came up here.” And we got Patrick that comes here to the church and he’s on our prayer team and he has a ministry to the homeless and to the people in jail and all these people. He’s a great man of God. He came over to her and he told her, “God told me when you came up here that he healed you. You already healed when you came up.” Same word Mom told her. He told her and somebody else told her. Before she let, somebody else told her, “God told me when you went forward, he healed you before you got there.” And she told me at church that day, she said, “God, I got this three times people told.” She was just rejoicing. And she said, “My pain’s all gone.” But she came last Sunday and said, “Three people told me your, your wife told me, and this other person told me and another person told me that God healed me on the way.” And she said, “I’m healed today, 30 days later.” Man, she had been to the doctor. She’d done all this stuff. She couldn’t get over her pain. And she’s healed by the stripes of Jesus. Mom gave a word last week. We had all that snow when you gave that, you were just joking. Thank God you’re joking. I gave you a hard time. But mom said there’s somebody that’s been struggling with the loss. And I called one of our good friends, I didn’t know this. And I was talking to him to tell him happy birthday for his wife. And he said, “That was me when Barbara gave that word. I’ve really been struggling. I had lost my daughter-in-law. She had blood clots in her lungs. It was a really sad thing. Just 40 something years old. And I was really struggling from this loss.” And so mom and I prayed for him, but I called him to tell him happy birthday. He said, I was watching online and mom gave that word. She gave several words to people. She’s very accurate by the Holy Spirit. God gives words to people. We’ve had people, a lot of times they’re new people come to church and she’ll give a word. And she gave a word years ago and there was somebody, she said, “You had a problem.” They couldn’t go upstairs, with your hip, but God’s healed you. And they walked out to their car. They realized when they’re walking out their car, that they were healed. They came back in and told us. “I was here to rent an apartment but I couldn’t rent an apartment upstairs ’cause I couldn’t go up the stairs ’cause my hip. But God healed me before I left this building.” Glory to God. I’ve had people delivered from drugs just coming to church. Thank God we’re a new creation. Hallelujah. We’ve got a new ministry, the ministry of reconciliation. What is that? We’re sharing that God, it says in verse 19, “Was in Christ reconciling, restoring the world to favor with himself and not imputing their trespasses.” God’s not even remembering your sin. He’s not counting it up and totaling it. The old account has been settled, and “he is committed to us the word of reconciliation.” To go tell the world their sins are forgiven. They just gotta believe on Jesus and receive the payment that’s been made. He said, “Now then we are ambassadors.” We got a new position. You talked about that earlier this week. That that’s a high position in the government. Well, we’ve got a high position in the government of God. “We’re ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us, we beg of you, we pray you in Christ’s place, be reconciled to God.” If you’re not right with God, get right with God today. “For He made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin.” Jesus never sinned, but God made him a sin offering for us who never sinned. “That we might be made the righteousness.” It’s a gift. We’ve got brand new righteousness. It’s a gift of God.

That’s reconciliation, that’s that exchange there that Jesus “who knew no sin became sin for us.” On the cross all of our sin was placed on him. And what we received in that exchange was the righteousness of God in him.

Complete right standing with God. So we’re a new creation. We’ve got brand new life, we’ve got a brand new message, we’ve got a brand new position, and we’ve got brand new righteousness.

Amen.

Isn’t that marvelous what God’s done for us? I wanna encourage you today to check out our website at CharisChristianCenter.com. We have literally hundreds of hours of free teaching that you can receive and you can tell your friends about it. You can look at all these broadcasts that we’ve just had on this week. Tell them about it so they can come to know the saving knowledge, the saving life of Jesus. You can also download our app and it tell you about a lot of different things and get all of our messages free of charge. Blessings. Thanks so much for tuning in.

[Narrator] You have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus. The power of sin is broken and you are no longer a sinner, but a saint. Get the redemption package, which includes Redemption and In Christ Realities on either CD or digital download for $37 when you call 719-418-4000 or visit CharisChristianCenter.com.

Friends, the scripture says, “If you will continue in the Word of God, you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” If you go to our website at CharisChristianCenter.com, you can get all of our materials there on the website as you watch them, as you listen, absolutely free of charge. And we’ve done that just to be a blessing to you. And I believe that the word that has freed me will free you. Blessings.

[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 PO Box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80962. See you next time on Grace For Today.