Loving Life – Part 6 Lawson and Aaron Perdue

  Praise the Lord everyone. It’s so good to have you with us. We’re glad to have you on the broadcast. We’re gonna be talking today about how we can love life. We talked about the foundation of it last week, but today we’re gonna be getting into the perspective that we see from ultimately determines whether or not we love life. Stay tuned and tell your friends about the broadcast. Friends, it’s so good to have you with us today. We’re sharing again this week on Loving Life. And the Bible talks about this in 1 Peter 3:10. It says, “For he who will love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips that they speak no deceit.” So we began last week, and we really talked most of last week about the foundation for loving life and the foundation for loving life, and I believe this is foundation for healthy Christianity, is number one, understanding that God is always good and He never changes. So we talked about God is always good. We talked about secondly that the word of God is always true. I have a Bible full of promises that I can believe God keeps his word. He never changes. Every promises of God in Christ is yes and amen to the glory of God by us. The third thing we talked about is Jesus is Lord. You know, a lot of times we get distraught when we look around the world and we see different things in the world that don’t seem to be going a very positive way, a way we think it should go. Maybe it’s economically or politically different things, or we see different things in the church and we get frustrated, but we need to remember that Jesus is still Lord and He’s still on the throne. He’s our personal Lord. He’s the Lord of eternity. He created all things. He was Lord when He came to Earth over sin. Lord, over sickness, Lord over death, Lord over demons, Lord over disease, Lord over lack. Praise God, Jesus was Lord in every realm and then when He rose from the dead, God made Him Lord of the grave. So Jesus is Lord in Heaven, creating all things. Lord of the Earth when He lived here on the Earth and Lord of the grave and Jesus the Lord lives in us. But not only that, Jesus is still the coming King. And last of all, we talked about this, not only is God good, the word of God is true, the promise of God is true, but Jesus’ Lord and finally, that we are blessed. And it, so many people today do not see life from the perspective of the blessing and we need to see life from a perspective of blessing. And if you’re born again, if you know Jesus as savior, you’re blessed. And I think it’s so sad when people just start from a negative perspective. I was talking actually with my mother recently, and she was talking about some different people she knows and she said, “They have too many ants.” And I said, “What are ants?” She said, “Automatic negative thinking.” They just start from a negative position and we don’t wanna start from a negative position. So that really kind of fits in with what we’re gonna be teaching today and we’re gonna be talking about how can we love life? And we’re gonna be sharing on this, this week. But the first thing it says here in 1 Peter 3:10 it says, “He that will love life and see good.” We’ve got to see good. We’ve got to begin to see from a positive perspective. So how do we see life? How do you see life?

 

  Well, God is the author of life and He only has good things to give. You know, I’ve seen just, you know, throughout life and pastoring, some people get kind of a jaded attitude towards life. They’re just pessimistic. You know, people just walk around just looking for the bad in everything just really their faith is towards the negative. That’s kind of a pessimistic attitude. But really, as believers, we should have a great hope, a great faith, a great expectation, a very optimistic outlook on life. And I think sometimes people develop a jaded, you know, just kind of

 

  Negative

 

  Negative attitude towards life. And really it goes, a lot of it stems from the relationship with God. Maybe something bad happen in their life and they, you know, really deep down in their heart, they might have blamed God for what had happened. Maybe it’s a loss of a loved one or an illness or a, you know, financial setback. Some people will blame God, but God is not the author of evil. He only has good things to give us. There is a devil and you know, he’s out to steal, to kill and to destroy. And, you know, we have authority over the devil. We’re blessed, but we still live in a negative world that’s affected by, you know, sin.

 

  And Satan.

 

  Satan is still the God of this world.

 

  But we have Jesus, we have, you know, the ultimate victory inside of us.

 

  Amen.

 

  So we have a reason to be optimistic, to be looking for good.

 

  Amen.

 

  You know, the psalmist said, I would’ve fainted unless I believed that I would see, you know, God’s goodness in the land of the living, you have to, you know, be looking for God’s goodness here in the land of the living.

 

  Yeah and expectation, a positive hope and expectation. You know, faith is a substance of things hope for and hope is really positive expectation and hope comes from the word of God. David talks about this in the Psalms over and over again. I hoped in thy word, and we need to keep our hope in God and our hope in his promise, our hope in his word. And you know, Paul writes about that, Aaron, what you’re talking about in Philippians 4: 4 8. And inevitably, Paul’s writing this from prison where he’s been put in prison for preaching the gospel. And he says in Philippians 4: 4 “Rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say, rejoice.” You know, we have to continue to rejoice. It’s kind of like filling your car up with fuel. You gotta continue to refuel it. And if you don’t, you’re not gonna, you gotta keep your tank of joy full. And there’s different things that give us joy. You know, the Bible says in, I think Acts 13: 52, “The disciples were filled with joy and filled with the Holy Ghost.” So we can keep praying in the spirit, right? We can stay filled with the Holy Ghost, we can. And then he tells us some things that will help us rejoice, right here in Philippians 4, he says, “Let your moderation be known to all men.” In verse 5, “The Lord is at hand.” In other words, remember Jesus is coming and Jesus is still Lord, like we were talking about. But then he says in verse 6, “Be careful or don’t worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.” It amazes me how many people, even believers, will get so negative and they don’t keep their eyes on God. They don’t keep their faith in God. I was recently with a pastor and he had been going through a very difficult time, and really, he had been falsely accused and some people in his church. And there was a very difficult situation. And so he brought me to be with some leaders, and two of them actually were very positive. They were very good, they had very good information for him, but the other person, I could tell was just very jaded and very negative. And he was saying all this stuff, and it had no foundation, first of all, in the truth whatsoever. And he was saying all these things against the pastor, saying all these things about his church, and they just weren’t true. He was saying, “Oh, you’re gonna have to put a sprinkling system in your church” and all this. Well, the fact is that church that they’re in was built as a church and they were grandfathered in. And so they do not have to put a sprinkling system in, which would cost a few $100,000, or, you know, probably in that church, maybe a $100,000. But the guy was just being super, super negative, beyond compare. And I just spoke up after a while after he was just sitting there, and I could tell that this man had been just jaded by listening to people who were just very negative. And they weren’t focused on anything that had any basis in the truth. And a lot of times people do that. They just get negative. And I said, “Well, there’s just one thing you left out.” And he said, “What?” I said, “Well, God.” You know, the Bible says with God all things are possible. And he was just being very negative because he was coming at it from a completely natural perspective. And it wasn’t even an honest, natural perspective. And this is what happens when you get negative, is you, negative thoughts will take over and emotions will take over, and you’ll go and you’ll begin to even think and imagine negative things that aren’t even true. And that’s what happened. And it says, so “don’t worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.” At the same time that we’re praying and we’re asking God. You know, Jesus said, “Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened.” You know, we need to keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. And he says, “When you’re praying, when you’re asking God about it, thank him too.” I think one way to get a lot more of your prayers answers is to thank God. So if we’re gonna operate in joy, we need to remember Jesus’ Lord, we need to remember not to worry. Some people are just born worriers. My grandmother was a born warrior. I spent a lot of time with her as a young man. And you know, she just always talked about the negative, thought about the negative, imagine the negative. And you know what? You don’t want to go there. She imagined things that weren’t even true. And the things that she imagined that weren’t true actually came true in her life. And so, you just don’t want to use your imagination. And inevitably we’ll be talking later this week about how the imagination works, but we can turn a negative imagination into a positive imagination by focusing on the promise of God, by focusing on the word of God, by praying in the spirit, like we talked about earlier. And he says this, “And the peace of God, which passes all understanding. If you’ll not worry about it, if you’ll begin to pray about it, ask God to intervene and thank God for the answer.” He says, “A peace of God will keep your heart. That’s your soul, your mind, your emotions through Christ Jesus.” But then he says this, and this is where I really wanted to get with this whole thing about keeping your focus positive. “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are honest, whatever things are just, whatever things are of good rapport, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, if there’s any virtue, if there’s any praise, think on these things.” And when you look at what Paul says in verse 8, he says, “We need to focus on positive things.” Now, Aaron, you brought up a study that was done by a university a few years ago, and in this study you said the average person thought 60,000 thoughts a day and over 80% of them are negative. This is the average, and 95% of them are repeated thoughts. So we’ve gotta change. If we wanna move into the positive, and you can’t just overcome negative thinking, you have to replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts. You have to replace thoughts of I can’t do this with I can. You have to replace thoughts of sickness with thoughts of health and healing. You’ve gotta replace thoughts of poverty with thoughts of wealth and abundance and provision and you have to train your mind and I believe that we can train our mind. We can renew our mind and begin to move into the positive.

 

  Yeah and one way I think is a great way to train your mind is to say things out loud. Maybe it’s to confess certain scriptures, confess certain promises, to actually say it out loud. When you say things out loud, it’s like extra powerful, you know? And a lot of thoughts, you know, that you’re thinking eventually surface come out through the words you speak. So I think a great way to be thankful and to, you know, think positive thoughts, think thoughts that really come from God is to speak those things out loud.

 

  Amen.

 

  And to make that your habit. You know, a lot of people, I think it’s actually great to read scripture out loud.

 

  Right.

 

  You know, a lot of us just read silently, but 

 

  Amen.

 

  I was reading a biography about Abraham Lincoln, and every morning he would read his Bible and he would read out loud.

 

  Right.

 

  He would always read out loud. He was a very avid reader. But he’d read from the Bible, from the King James version every morning, 6:00 AM every morning, and people, you know, who helped him and where his aides could hear him reading scripture and sometimes ask him questions about it. But it’s good to say things out loud.

 

  You know, the Bible says actually this in Ephesians 5, it says, “Speak to yourself in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs making melody in your heart to the Lord.” But you know, that’s talking about singing, worship, different aspects of that. But at the same point in time, I believe in the same way we can speak to ourself, and you’re talking about we need to speak the word of God to ourselves. And I know one thing that helps me is just sometimes you kind of get a funk. The devil’s trying to take advantage of you. You’re looking at some negative situations and it’s not like we don’t face negative things. It’s not like we don’t face challenges, but if we want to turn those tests into testimony, we’re gonna have to take the word of God and believe it. And I like what you’re saying, speak the word of God, which actually we’ll be talking about this week as part of this. You know thing, to see good, we’ve gotta begin to speak life and we’ll talk about that in another broadcast. But you know, one thing, as you’re talking about, you know, speaking the word of God, I thought about God. The Bible actually says this in Romans 4:17, and it’s talking about how Abraham believed God. But he says, “God.” in Romans 4: 17, “gives life to the dead and calls those things that be not as though they were.” So God by his word, right? He spoke a word into existence. He, where there was a dead situation. And the Bible says later that Abraham did not consider the deadness of Sarah’s womb or his own body, but he only considered what God said. And God said, “You will be a father of many nations.” God spoke a word of life into a dead situation. And if you wanna see dead situations turn around, you’re gonna have to change and begin to focus on the positive. Think thoughts that come from God, train the way you think, and move into what God has for you. We’re gonna take a short break. We’ll be back right after this break, and we’re gonna share more on how you can overcome negative thinking with positive thoughts from God’s word. Blessings. Hey friend, I have a question for you. Do you love life? I believe that God wants you as a believer to love life, to enjoy living. And I believe that God has given us the peace in his work so that we can do that. So go to our website at Charis Christian Center and download this teaching absolutely free. Blessings.

 

  We set up the prayer team. This felt weird, I said, “Dennis, pray for me.”

 

  One of the ladies had taken his pulse when he first fell over, but there was no pulse.

 

  Pastor was listening to the Holy Spirit and he spoke with authority.

 

  Then he starts kind of browsing up. He’s been to his heart doctor, he’s been to several other doctors. Nobody can find anything.

 

  Praise the Lord, friends. I’m so glad that you stayed with us. You know, we’re talking about, you know, our words really come from how we see things. And so how do we see things? It’s, I believe it’s a personal choice, whether we want to see from the perspective of a victor or the perspective of a victim. And there are a lot of people really that have kind of a victim mentality. And if you wanna move forward in faith, you’ve gotta get a victor’s mentality. You know, the Bible actually says this in 1 John 5: 4, it says, “Whosoever is born of God, overcomes the world.” And this is the victory that overcomes the world. Even our faith. Praise God, whoever’s born of God, whatever’s born of God overcomes the world. But if you’re gonna operate, you’ve been born to win in the spiritual realm. “You’ve been born again by the incorruptible seed of the word of God that lives and abides forever,” according to 1 Peter 1: 23. So you’ve got the positive word of God in you that produces fruit like itself. But if you’re gonna operate in the victory that’s already been placed in you in Christ, you’re gonna have to begin to think on what the word says. You know, one thing I love that Dr. Lester Sumrall said, who was one of my mentors, he said, “Another person’s head is the wrong place to have your happiness.” So you, if you’re gonna overcome negative thinking and get, move into positive thoughts, you can’t worry so much about what everybody else in the world thinks about you. You know, the world a lot of times have very negative opinions, you know, of us as believers. You know, when you just look at a worldly perspective, sometimes from an unbeliever’s perspective, but I don’t really care what the world thinks, but here’s something that’s been more difficult for me to overcome. What about, you know, what other believers, what other Christians, what about what other people are saying about you maybe in your church? Or maybe go beyond that and what if one of your mentors or one of your friends says something negative about you? I remember years ago I heard Andrew Wommack talking another mentor, Andrew Wommack and Lester Summerall are really are probably the two most powerful mentors that I have in my life. But when you think about Andrew, he was with another minister who actually had been pretty successful and done a lot. And another person who was a minister of the gospel had said some very negative things, had a very large church, a large ministry about Andrew and about this minister. And this minister was asking Andrew, they were on a hike. And he was saying, Andrew, you know, “I told you that. Why doesn’t that affect you?” And Andrew’s like, “What? It doesn’t really matter what he thinks about me. It’s not really his opinion that matters.” And I’ve even had people that I really look up to and admire at times who’ve said negative things. And I thought, you know what? My mind has changed and I’ve renewed my mind in that area. Maybe though they don’t see the results of that in the natural realm, but they will see, because I know in my heart, I’ve renewed my mind in that area. And years later, those same people who said things about me in that area was in the area of finances at those same people have completely changed their confession about me. They’ve completely changed what they think about me and what they say about me in that area because I just had to renew my mind and come over to a different way of thinking. And you know, sometimes we just think wrong. We gotta change and think right. You know, a good example, this is found in Numbers 13. And in Number 13, the God was getting ready to bring the children of Israel into the Promised land. And he spoke to Moses and said, “Choose 12 men, one from each tribe,” right? “And choose leaders. And I want them to go into land and I want ’em to come back and tell you about the fields and the trees and the,” you know, “landscape and,” you know, “the cities and the walls and the people.” And so, and Moses told them, “Only be of good courage, God is with us.” Because I believe Moses is this leader of the children of Israel. Over 2 million people knew that people tend to vacillate and move towards the negative. And so he told ’em, only be of courage. And when they good courage, when they came back, 10 of them said, “Oh, the land is good. It’s beautiful fields, beautiful fruit. The cities are beautiful, but there are giants in the land.” And they discouraged the people, Joshua and Caleb, and we don’t remember the names of the other 10, because they did not believe God, but get this, they, Moses chose 12 of the best people that he had out of 2 million. And only two really came back, Joshua and Caleb. And God had to let a whole generation die off in the wilderness because they refused to believe Him. And Joshua and Caleb so faith will make you like one in a million. And when, in Numbers 13: 33, it says, these 10 said, “There we saw the giants, the son of Anec, which come of the giants. And he says, and we were as grasshoppers in our own sight. And so were we in their sight.” You know, the way that you see yourself changes how other people see you. And you’ve gotta begin to see yourself doing what God wants you to do, accomplishing what God wants you to accomplish. You know, the Bible actually talks about this in Matthew 6: 22 23. It says, “The light of the body is the eye. And if your eye is single, your whole body is full of light. But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness.” And the word eye, in the Greek there, is the word ophthalmos. Like we go to a optometrist, right? Study the eye. What you see and I’m talking about seeing from a spiritual perspective. So we gotta begin to see from the perspective of the promise and from the perspective that God is a good God. You know, he that comes to God must believe that He is and He’s a rewarder. Aaron, what do you want to say?

 

  Yeah and Titus, you know, Titus talks about, you know, Paul to Titus talks about unto the pure, all things are pure, but to, you know, the wicked and defiled, everything is messed up. You know,

 

  Yeah.

 

  So it’s talking about how you see things. If you see things 

 

  Oh that is a great word.

 

  You know, if you’re very pure hearted and look for the good, you’re gonna find the good. But if you, if you’re just, you know, full of darkness and just looking for darkness, that’s how you’re gonna see everything. You’re just gonna see everything is, you’re only gonna see the problems and you’re gonna just throw out all the good.

 

  Yeah. So we’ve got it. We’re gonna either see from a perspective of the promise or the problem. And you know, for instance, Joshua and Caleb, they saw from the perspective of the promise, the other 10 spys saw from the perspective of the problem. David, when he faced Goliath, saw from a perspective of victory, all of the other, the children of Israel that were out there fighting, saw how big the giant was. David saw how big God was. What do you get your eyes on? So do you see from the perspective of defeat or victory? Do you see from the perspective of the problem or the promise? Do you see from the perspective, you know, of the cross or the cure, you know, the cross or the curse? You know, when you look at the cross, what do you see? I see Jesus on the cross, taking the curse, taking our sin, taking our sickness, taking our anxiety, taking our poverty. And we have to keep our eyes on that and not look at just physical circumstances that are contrary with what God promises. And ultimately, if we’re gonna love life, just like it says in 1 Peter 3:10, we’ve got to begin to see from the perspective of the promise rather than problem. And what we’ll have to do is renew our mind. And to renew your mind is more than just going to the scripture, renewing your mind is when you begin to see from the perspective of this is who God says that He is and this is who God says that I am and this is what God says about the situation. And if you don’t, you’re gonna be constantly overwhelmed. So we need to choose, amen? Life and choose to see God is good, choose to see the promise of God as greater than the problems that we face, and choose to see ourselves the way that God sees us. And if we do that, I believe that we can move ultimately into the victory that God has for us.

 

  And even just going back to what you were saying about Joshua and Caleb, you know, Joshua spoke up in that instance and he said, if God is on our side, if He really, if His promises are true, and if 

 

  Amen.

 

  If he loves us. And he was focused on his relationship with God. He said, God promised this, He’s on our side.

 

  Amen.

 

  And it’s gonna come to pass. Why is everyone falling apart here? But he, what gave him faith was he was just anchored in his relationship with God. He knew that God had promised this land, that God was on their side, that even though there was difficulty, that God was gonna help him overcome.

 

  Amen.

 

  So a lot of these things come down to your relationship with God. And when you’re just rock solid in your knowledge of who God is and his love for you, that’s gonna help you just really succeed in life and have that love for life like we’ve been talking about.

 

  Amen. Praise God. You know, if you need prayer today, I wanna encourage you to call in. And if you’ve never received Jesus as your personal Lord, or you don’t know if you died today, if you would spend eternity in Heaven with God and Christ, I want you to give our prayer ministers a call and receive Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior. And I wanna remind everyone watching today that we have literally hundreds of hours of teaching that are downloadable in audio, in video, that are on our website at Charis Christian Center.com. We also have a brand new children’s curriculum that we’re making available free of charge on our website. And you can get that all by just getting on our website at CharisChristianCenter.com. It’s a great big thank you to our partners today for helping us accomplish all these things. Blessings. Friends, we don’t want to leave this broadcast without giving you the opportunity to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord. Pray with me right now. Heavenly Father, I believe that Jesus Christ is your son, that He died for my sins, and that you raised Him from the dead and made Him Lord. And I surrender to you now in Jesus’ name.

 

  Hi everyone. I am so excited to invite you to join us for our Rejoice Women’s Conference, February 8th through the 10th.

 

  It’s gonna be a great time. It’s gonna be live streamed. So if you can’t physically come to Colorado Springs and be here, you can attend online at our website CharisChristianCenter.com or YouTube or Facebook. Also men, you can sit in the back with me. Blessings.

 

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