Lifestyle of Faith – Part 6 Lawson and Aaron Perdue

  Friends, it’s so good to have you with us today. We are sharing on the lifestyle of faith and we’re gonna be talking today about having a lifestyle of giving and receiving. Philippians 4:19 says, my God shall supply all your need according to His riches and glory by Christ Jesus. And that is a promise to giver. So stay tuned, you’ll get some good truth. Blessings. Hello friends. It’s so good to have you with us today again, and I have Aaron with me today. We’re continuing to teach this week on lifestyle of faith and we talked about a couple of things last week when we were talking about a lifestyle of faith. We talked from Hebrews 10:35 and verse 36. It says, “Cast not therefore away your confidence, which has a great repayment of reward.” Verse 36 says, “For you have need of patience that after you have done the will of God, you might receive the promise.” So we began by talking about in this lifestyle of faith, this word for competence in Hebrews 10:35 is the Greek word . And it means to have a bold confession, unapologetic, frank, open, direct confession. First of all, a bold confession of Jesus. Then a bold confession of faith. And last of all, a bold confession of the Word of God. But then we moved over to verse 36 that says, “For you have need of patience after you have done the will of God, that you might receive the will of God.” And this word for patience in the Greek is the Greek word which means perseverance, endurance or constance or consistency. And this is where we really brought this whole teaching from the lifestyle of faith, is we need to have a consistent lifestyle of faith. We talked last week about a number of people. We talked about Joseph, we talked about Abraham. And Abraham really represents 50 years of faith in God. And we talked about how Abraham received the promise when he is 75. He believed in the Lord of the promise when he was 83, he identified with the promise, this is so important when he was 99, and then he received the promise when he was a 100. This is where I feel like a lot of people struggle in receiving from God. They need to identify with that promise. Finally, when he was about 125 years old in Genesis 22, God confirmed that promise to him. It talks about that in Hebrews 10, or Hebrews 6, excuse me verse 17. And it says, God confirmed the promise by an oath in that He said, in blessing, I will bless you in multiplying I will multiply you. It goes on and talks about how that enters in beyond the veil. And so what that’s saying is that confirmation of the promise was secured by Jesus. And ultimately you say, well, I don’t have 50 years to believe God to do something. Well that’s, Jesus already secured it. The work’s already finished. I believe a lot of it is identifying with the promise for us to receive it. But today, we’re gonna go on and we’re gonna move into another area. And this is in Hebrews 10, verse 32 to verse 34. But we’re gonna talk about being consistent, not only in your confession, your bold confession of Jesus, your bold confession of faith, your bold confession in the Word of God, being consistent in your lifestyle, your actions of faith, your words of faith, all these different things, but all also being consistent in giving and receiving. And he says actually in verse 34 that “You took joyfully the spoiling of your goods.” In other words, they continued to give. And we need to be consistent in giving and receiving. And this is when they were being challenged. He said, immediately after you were illuminated, you endured a great fight of afflictions in verse 32. So we need to be consistent in giving, receiving, no matter what’s going on, on the outward realm.

 

  I like that you’ve entitled this series A Lifestyle of Faith.

 

  Thanks a lot.

 

  A lot of people just wait till there’s a crisis to get serious about their faith or get serious about their relationship with God. But really, you can grow in faith even when you’re not in a crisis. Actually, when you’re not in a crisis, that’s a great time to grow in your walk with the Lord, grow in your faith.

 

  Yeah.

 

  I’ve heard a lot of people just have kind of a twisted theology. They got close to God during a crisis. So they’re thankful for the crisis. And I think God put that crisis on them so it draw them close to Him. You don’t have to go through a crisis. You don’t have to go from wilderness to wilderness to draw close to God. You can actually draw close to God at any time.

 

  Amen.

 

  Just by putting your faith in Him, trusting in Him, spending time with Him, spending time in the Word, looking at His promises. There are thousands of promises throughout scripture. And you can look at them, pray about them, seek wisdom about them and figure out how they apply to your life. And when crises do happen, storms happen, the storms of life come to everyone. But when they come, if you’ve already built your life upon the Word, you’ll stand.

 

  Amen.

 

  I was thinking about a story that Mom tells, Pastor Barbara tells about when she was raising me and my brothers out, when you were pastoring in Kit Carson, my middle brother Andrew ran track and he had a problem with asthma, he had to have an inhaler. And he was in Plainview, Colorado running, I think it was sixth grade track meet. And I think he ran, I don’t know if it was the 400 or the 800.

 

  The 800.

 

  And he ran as fast as he could. And he crossed one first place. But as soon as he crossed, he fell over and had an asthma attack. And all of his friends ran up to Mom asking her, where’s his inhaler? He’s dying basically. And she forgot the inhaler. And she told ‘them, I forgot it. And they looked at her like she was the worst mom in the world, but she thought to herself, I’ll show them what kind of mom I am.

 

  One of them actually asked her, she said, what kind of a mom are you? And she said, I’ll show you what kind of mom I am. I’m a mom of faith. And she just commanded his lungs to open. And you know what, from that day to this, he has never had another asthma attack again. He kept that inhaler for a couple years when he played junior high football, but he never had to, he never had to use it again. And then he said, no, I don’t need it anymore. And then he was actually the number five running back in all of 4A football in the state of Colorado. And I think there were over 64 A teams. So he is one of the top running backs in the state. And he was won the four by 100 was a championship state sprinter. I mean, he just, he did phenomenal and just never had, he’s never had issues again. God healed him completely on that day. And that didn’t happen overnight. That happened a couple years before when he had a asthma attack in the middle of the night. Well, was attacked with a quick pneumonia in the middle of the night. We had to take him to the hospital in Cheyenne Wells when we lived in Kit Carson, that was 25 miles away from Kit Carson. And they put him on that inhaler, and there’s times he had to use it. But from that day when Mom laid hands on him and he actually began to have that asthma attack when he was running that last lap of that 800. But he was so strong-willed that he ran, he won the 800 meter, but he collapsed after it and was just gasping for air, couldn’t breathe. But God healed him completely that day. And so many people after Andrew had that, we’re talking about a lifestyle of faith, from the time that he had that attack a couple of years earlier than that. And it might’ve been just a year, but we had that inhaler. But we put scriptures up in our home, we put on our refrigerator, I will bless your bread and bless your water and take sickness from the midst of you. We put on his bedroom door, Isaiah 53, verse four and verse five. “Surely He has borne our sicknesses and carried our pain, yet we did esteem Him stricken smitten of God and afflicted.” And I quoted that with the meaning of those words. But He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our technicalities. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him. And with His stripes, we were healed. We are healed it says in Isaiah 53 verse five, we put 1 Peter 2 verse 24 on his bathroom mirror that says, “By His stripes, we were healed.” We put Psalm 107:20 another place. “He sent his Word and healed them.” And we believe those scriptures for well over a year before we received the total manifestation of his healing, before Andrew received it. Praise God, but he received it. And a lot of people just give up and they have, they get prayer sometimes they have an immediate manifestation. I had this happen when I first went to Andrew Womack’s Bible studies in 1978. I was 14 years old. I had terrible allergic reactions to like oat straw and different things. I would break out all over. But I went there and Andrew prayed for me. And I had no immediate physical change whatsoever, but I believed I was healed. And Andrew prayed for a friend of mine there at the same time, about my same age. At that same meeting, he received an immediate physical change, but not, he didn’t receive. And he had an immediate physical manifestation. All the symptoms left, but he didn’t keep his healing. And I kept mine because I believe the Word and Andrew Wommack talked about this a lot. But if you’ll believe the Word, you know what? You’ll get healed long term. You’ll stay healed. Praise God. So we need to believe God all the time. Never quit believing God. Amen.

 

  Amen. It’s a lifestyle.

 

  Yeah. Amen. So a couple of things struck me, Aaron, as you were talking. Number one, you talked about how faith is a walk with God. Lester Sumrall said, faith is a walk with God. The Bible talks about in Hebrews 11 that Enoch walked with God and they found him not or he was not. Faith is a relationship with God. Enoch was the seventh from Adam. I believe that he heard his great-great-great-great great granddad talking about, Amen. How many greats that is talking about his walk with God. And he desired that. And then one day he went out and just walked with God. Faith is a walk with God. The other thing you said is some people, when adversity comes, they get close to God and then they say, well, God is the one that brought the adversity. But God is not the author of adversity. He is not, we have problems. Bad things happen to good people because we’re in a world affected by sin and by Satan. But we should never blame God for the problem. We should never blame God for sickness. We should never blame God for disease, for difficulties and problems. Like you said good. And challenges come because we’re on earth affected by sin and Satan.

 

  Things always work out better when you keep trusting God and you keep.

 

  Amen.

 

  Keep living by faith. Even when things don’t work out how you were thinking they should and how you’re hoping they would or believing that they would, you’re always better off trusting God.

 

  Amen.

 

  A couple years ago there was a family that came to our church and they came to our church ’cause we preach really strongly on healing. And as a wife, this wife had a terrible diagnosis and she ended up passing away, but the husband and his two sons, teenage sons kept coming to church. And this has been a couple years, but I know he’s kept walking with God, kept drawing closer to God. And it’s really neat what God’s done in his life. He actually reached out to me. He met a woman here at church. He drives two hours from south of here to come to church.

 

  She drives an hour over an hour from Denver to come to our church. Amazing.

 

  And they met and they’re getting married. We get to marry them here in a few weeks.

 

  It’s awesome.

 

  But yeah, God, you’re always better off trusting God, walking with Him, having that lifestyle of faith.

 

  Amen.

 

  Than not.

 

  And man, these people have faith. If you drive two hours to go to church. And I made a decision when I went to Andrew Womack’s meetings when I was like 14 years old, 15 years old, that man, I am never gonna go to a dead church. And if I have to drive an hour or two hours to go to church, I’m gonna go to a good church that preaches the Word of God. And I think God has honored that. And now we have people, we have about 10 families from Southeast Colorado that drive over two hours to come to church. We have people from Southern Colorado, you’re talking about drives two hours. We have people from eastern, out east about an hour and 20 minutes 80 miles east of here. We have two families that come. We have people that come from Castle Rock, 40 minutes, 35 minutes to the north. We have two families that come. We have people that come from Denver on a regular basis because people are hungry to hear the unadulterated, pure gospel of Christ. And they come because of what we teach in the area of grace and faith. Praise God. Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this. We’re just getting started. And so we’re gonna continue to teach when we come back about being consistent in giving and receiving, sowing and reaping. It’s really grace and faith we receive from God because of grace, but our sowing is really an action of our faith. And we need both of those things. So we’re gonna come back and talk a little bit about that and how we wanna be consistent in the realm of giving and receiving. Praise God. We wanna be consistent in our faith. So stay tuned, we’ll be right back after this. You’ll get some great truth. Friends, I’ve been teaching with two of my greatest friends, Andrew Wommack and Jesse Duplantis. And we taught with Andrew on the revelation of grace. And then with Jesse on insights to faith. You don’t want to miss this great teaching. That is the heart of the gospel, grace, what Jesus has done and faith our positive response to it. Blessings.

 

  Say it with me. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. It doesn’t matter who you are, there’s probably been a day or a morning where you just thought, I can’t do it. Maybe as a parent or maybe the job you have or some neighbor you have, and you just think, I can’t do it anymore. But I love this. It says, I can do it because Christ is with me.

 

  Praise the Lord. Friends, I’m glad you stayed with us. We’ve been right here. We’re teaching about faith and being consistent in our faith. We’re talking today really about being patient in the realm of harvest and I wanna go to James 5:7 and 8. The Lord actually spoke this scripture to me about a year ago. I was driving and we’d been through a challenge on a situation here at the building. And the Lord gave this scripture to me in James 5:7 and 8 and said, “Be patient therefore brethren to the coming of the Lord, behold the for the precious fruit of the earth and has long patient for it until he received the early and the latter reign. Be also patient and establish your heart for the coming of the Lord draws near.” So, God’s been waiting over 2000 years to receive this harvest of the earth. About 2000. Jesus was crucified about 30 AD and raised from the dead. And Jesus actually is the greatest seed that was ever sowed. But it says He’s got, the Father is waiting for this early and latter rain. The early rain brought the seed up the latter rain brings the harvest, makes the harvest come in the seed. And so he says, be patient. So if God could wait 2000 years for a harvest, certainly we could wait. Amen. For a period of time. And we’ve gone through a situation last year, it was two years this year it’s about, we’re about three and a half years as we speak. But you know what, we got notification shortly after I actually released a person from debt, Aaron in a couple of months ago. You were preaching on a Wednesday night and you were preaching about release. And there’s a person that we had helped him. We’d given him a very low interest loan to help him on the mission field and it’s $150,000. And he had not been able to pay the principal back and actually hadn’t recently been able to pay the interest on the note either. And the Lord just told me, when you preach that message on release, just to release this debt, just to let it go. And initially, this is not something that I felt like I should do because I feel like in most cases, people need to honor their word and need to do it. But the Lord said, you released that debt and I released that debt. And it was within just days after that debt was released that we got confirmation that this is gonna come to an end and we’re gonna get a final word on this and I believe it’s gonna be in favor of the church and this thing that’s gonna be, it’s gonna be taken care of. And so God helps us. And we essentially releasing that debt, we sow the seed of over $150,000.

 

  Yeah. I like that you’re talking about faith concerning giving and receiving. This is a conversation my wife, Heather and I just had just a couple days ago. But it takes faith to give and most people know that. And actually we had a camp meeting here not too long ago, and the Lord put on our heart to really step out in a major way and make a major gift to the church and also a gift to Mark Hankins Ministries. It took a lot of faith to step out and give that. We gave in one night what we normally give in one year. And, but Heather made this statement too, it takes faith to receive as well. And around that same time, I have a business on the side that generates income for me. And like that business wasn’t doing anything for almost a month. And I know like some things fluctuate, but this was like starting to get me a little bit nervous. And Heather just stepped out in faith to receive and she started declaring that it would pick up and it did.

 

  I hear you.

 

  But it takes faith to give, but it takes faith to receive.

 

  Amen.

 

  As well.

 

  Amen. So when we’re talking about faith in giving and receiving, because some people will give, but they don’t give believing and they don’t believe to receive. I know my pastor years ago, he was a over a section of full gospel churches in southeastern Colorado, and they require in that denomination, it’s a full gospel denomination, their pastors to tithe. And so one pastor who’s a very good friend of mine, who I preached four years ago, he was struggling financially and my pastor just asked him a question. He said, “Are you believing for a harvest off that tithe?” He said, “No, I’ve been taught that the tithe is a debt that we owe and we don’t really sow seed till we get beyond the tithe.” And my pastor said, “I want you to change what you’re believing. And you start looking at that 10th as a seed that you’re sowing. And the tithe is not a debt that is to be paid. ” There’s only one place that the scripture says that Abraham. It says Abraham paid tithes or Levi actually says this, Hebrew 7, Levi paid ties in Abraham. So that is actually not talking about what Levi did, it’s talking about what a Abraham did. But when you read it in Genesis 14, Abraham gave to Melchizedek the priest King of Jerusalem, a type of Christ, a 10th of all to spoils. He does not say that, only one time it says, Levi paid tithes in Abraham. And Levi did not give it. It talks, Abraham gave it, it’s talk about what Abraham did. And Abraham did it as a gift. He did it as a seed that he sowed. And man, after that, the Lord said, blessing, I will bless you, multiplying. I will multiply you different things. That came a number of years later. But Aaron, you’ve got something about Genesis 14 that you need to talk about a little bit here, since we’re talking about having faith in the realm of giving and receiving.

 

  Well, in Genesis 14, when Abraham was coming back after he fought these enemy kings and got Lot back and all the people back and their possessions back, the area of Sodom had been conquered. He came and was coming back and it says that Melchizedek the priest king of Salem came out with bread and wine, really a picture of communion, a picture of Jesus and Melchizedek first blessed Abraham.

 

  Right.

 

  It’s really important to realize that you’re blessed first and you give because you’re blessed.

 

  Amen.

 

  You don’t give in order to be blessed, you’re already blessed. So Melchizedek blesses him first. That order is really important. Melchizedek blesses him and says, Abraham, you’re blessed by the most high God, the Possessor of heaven and earth. And then it says that Abram gave a 10th of all. So as New Testament, as new covenant believers, we give a 10th when you tithe, that’s not because you’re trying to get blessed, you owe something. It’s actually because you’re giving by faith. You realize that you’re already blessed in Jesus. And you’re identifying with that blessing because I’m blessed because God wants to partner with me in taking care of me and providing for me. I’m gonna step out in faith and put action to my faith that I am blessed that he’s gonna prosper me and give a 10th.

 

  Amen.

 

  And then right after that, in Genesis 14, it says, the king of Sodom showed up and he said, Abraham, you can keep all the goods, keep all these possessions for yourself.

 

  Right.

 

  But Abram said something really important. He said, I don’t want people to think that you made me rich or you say you made me rich lest just say that Abraham, lest you say that I made Abraham rich. He was saying, I don’t want people to think that you’re the one that blessed me. I want people to, when they look at my life, to realize that God

 

  Hallelujah.

 

  And he even tells the king of Salem that God most high, the Possessor of heaven and earth is the one that blesses me.

 

  Yeah.

 

  And that’s really the testimony of a tithe there. When people look at your life, they’re gonna realize that it wasn’t any individual that made you rich. It wasn’t your education. It wasn’t your boss, it wasn’t a company, it wasn’t where you lived. It wasn’t who was in political office. They’re gonna look at your life and see, only God could have done this.

 

  Yeah. And it’s so important, Aaron, for us to have a blessed mentality. What really keeps a lot of people from giving is the fact that they’re afraid and fear will paralyze you. Faith is the opposite of fear. But if you get a blessed mentality and you’re not blessed, I love this because of what you have. The Lord says this, the scripture says this in Genesis 39, I think it’s verse two that and Joseph was being sold. He was being auctioned on a slave block to Potiphar, the captain of the guard of Egypt. And it says the Lord was with Joseph and he was a prosperous man. You know what? Joseph didn’t probably have anything to his name except the loincloth, but yet the Lord was with him and he was a prosperous man. The Bible says in Ephesians 1:3 that the Lord, that we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ. And if you are born again, you’re blessed. And if you get a blessed mentality, it’s not a challenge to give because you know there’s more where that came from.

 

  And the really neat thing about a tithe too, Abraham tithe, it was probably a large tithe. He had 318 trained servants that he raised up within his own house.

 

  Well, there was like 14 kings and they’d been robbing a number of cities. So Abraham not only got back what he possessed, he got back more.

 

  So I’m sure it was a large offering that tithe. But the tithe, it’s neat ’cause it’s not based, it’s a percentage. Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, tithed. And when he first tithed and promised a tithe, he didn’t have anything. So his tithe might have just been a 10th of this bottle of oil that he had, that he anointed this rock on where he saw this vision of angels coming up and down this ladder. So his tithe would’ve been worth a lot less. I’ve had tithes that are $10, I’ve had tithes that are $10,000. And it’s still powerful because you’re trusting God to partner with you in, in your financial situation.

 

  Amen. Praise God. And there’s something, our good friend Mark Hankins talks about a tither’s blessing. There is a blessing on the tithe. I know one time I was taking him somewhere and Trina, his wife and I was saying something about the blessing, different blessing the Lord had given. He said, that’s a tither’s blessing. That’s a tither’s blessing. There is a blessing that goes with giving and receiving. Praise God. And you know what? You can’t afford not to give, praise God. And if you’re looking for a good place to sow seed, I believe that Charis Christian Center, Charis Ministries this ministry, “Grace for Today” television program. I believe this is a great place to sow seed. We are sowing seed to the nations of the world and we’re receiving harvest. And I believe that if you get involved and partner with this ministry at any level, that God will bless you and bring harvest to you if you’ll believe for it. So if you need prayer today, just give us a call. We have trained prayer ministers that are waiting to receive your calls. Thank you so much. And God bless you.

 

  Faith isn’t just a momentary thought or a burst of emotion. It’s a lifestyle of trusting in God and His unfailing Word. Take a step of faith and trust in God’s plan for your life. Faith is a journey. So enjoy the trip. We’d like to bless you with a digital copy of the Teaching Lifestyle of Faith, a $20 value free of charge. Download it today at charischristiancenter.com.

 

  Hey everyone, my good friend Jesse Duplantis is gonna be here Sunday, November 5th at 6:30 PM at Charis Christian Center in Colorado Springs. You don’t wanna miss it.

 

  You let God do what He wants and He’ll bless you beyond your wildest dreams, spiritually, physically and financially.

 

  Come be encouraged with the Word of God in brother Jesse Duplantis Sunday, November 5th at Charis Christian Center.

 

  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 charichristiancenter.com/give. You can write us at PO Box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80962. See you next time on “Grace for Today”.