Loving Life – Part 8 Lawson and Aaron Perdue

  Do you love life? I believe that God wants you to love life. And in the scripture, I believe that God shows us how that we can love life. I believe that God wants you to enjoy a blessed life, but ultimately operating in that blessing and receiving the good that God has for you is your choice and you must receive it by faith, stay tuned. Friends, it’s so good to have you with us, and I’m glad Aaron’s here. We’re talking about the power of the Word of God and loving life, how we can love life. God wants us to love life. And I think sometimes, as believers, we forget to just enjoy the good things that God has given us. And the Book of Ecclesiastics talks about, you know, I’ve seen an evil that’s in the land, and that’s when God gives someone good things, but he does not give them the power to eat of it. And you know what? When you received Jesus, you received good things and you wanna learn to enjoy life and I’m learning to enjoy life more than ever before, praise God, and enjoy some of the good things that God’s given us, but a lot of enjoying life, you know, there’s people that have a lot naturally, but they’re miserable. And you know, the Bible talks about the wicked, and it says, “Even in mirth, even when they’re having a big wild party, their heart is heavy.” And our heart, our spirit is connected with God. We have a relationship with God. We have so many good things to be thankful for, and you know, we talked about the way we’re gonna love life in 1 Peter 3:10, “He who will love life and see good days.” It’s how we see life and we’ve gotta begin to see from the perspective of God and see from the perspective of good. You know, God is a good God and he has good things for us, but some people can be right in the middle of a huge blessing, and yet be terribly negative. Sometimes I just wanna tell people, “Wake up and look at what you’ve got. Look at what you’ve been given. Quit just looking and focusing on the negative.” I know sometimes life is hard. I know there’re difficulties. I know there’re problems. Man, I face some major problems. I face some major challenges. You know, I had one time years ago, that I was in the cattle business and it was in the winter 2004/2005 and I owned several thousand head of cattle. I had millions of dollars of debt and there was a major blizzard that hit. I had over 2,000 head of cattle in Lamar, Colorado, about 2,500, and when this blizzard hit, I mean, it just looked like it was gonna wipe us out. And you know what? I went through all that time and I didn’t really say a lot, I just shut my mouth. You know, one thing, we talked about the power of our words. You know, we talked about this in 1 Peter 3:10. “He who will love life and see good days.” First of all we said we’ve gotta begin to see good. We’ve gotta begin to see from a positive aspect from what God says. Secondly, we said we have to begin to speak life. He says, “Let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips that they speak no deceit.” We’ve gotta speak life. “Death and life are in the power of our tongue and those who love it will eat the fruit thereof,” Proverbs 18:21. But all this time, I was going through this terrible, in the natural, challenge because, you know, I mean, I really didn’t know where we we’re gonna be financially because I mean, this blizzard came and it snowed like over three feet and it blew 60 mile an hour. It put 15 and 16 foot drifts in the town of Lamar, Colorado. People said, “Why didn’t you get your cattle out of there?” You couldn’t get a truck there to get ’em out. I mean, it was just, there were dead cattle everywhere, and it was just, you know, after, and I was fortunate. I only had about 40 some head of those cattle die in that blizzard when I had so many and so that was really a miracle in itself, but then the cattle were standing around in ice and mud up to their belly and once they could get the feed to ’em and stuff, you couldn’t get feed to ’em at first and then they had, it was just a huge mess. And while I was going through that, you know, the Lord just showed me to look at what you have and don’t look at what you lost. And the Lord told me to focus. I focused on my family. I focused on mom and you three boys. I focused on the church. I focused on every positive thing that I had, my relationship with God. And I would go in the middle of the night and lay on the couch and just thank God and look at the good things. And as I did that, you know what? God brought me through that and I didn’t lose everything. Praise God. I only lost about a quarter of a million dollars. It was a miracle of God at that time. I had old timers that told me, “This is a miracle that you just didn’t go totally bankrupt and lose everything.” And it was a miracle. But I had people that were in Bible school where I was teaching every week, sometimes several days a week, and one man was a businessman and he heard this story years later and he said, “Lawson, that whole time I was there in Bible school and you never were angry, you never were upset, you never were,” you know, he’s like, “You were happy.” And he said, “How could that be?” And he said, “We never even knew that you were going through that difficulty.” And that’s because I chose to focus. God told me, “You look at what you have and not what you’ve lost.” I chose to see the good, and because of that, I was speaking life, and what you meditate on, you speak, but there are some people, they are just so negative they can’t see the good and you know what? It’s terrible and it will just lead you. When you start thinking negative and speaking negative, it’ll just lead your life down a place you don’t wanna go. There are places I don’t wanna go. There are things I don’t wanna receive, so you know what? I control my destiny by the words that I speak. Death and life are in the power of my tongue and I love it and I eat the fruit of it. Praise God, you have the power over your life. You know, we were talking about this yesterday and I said, “You know, we can change where we’re going.” Some people are just so negative, they just see from a negative perspective, but you can change that, and you change it by meditating the Word of God. We shared yesterday, Joshua 1:8, “This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate therein both day and night that you may…” And, actually now, I’m quoting Psalm 1 and Joshua 1 together but he says, Joshua 1:8, “This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate therein both 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 will have good success.” You know, one scripture that we didn’t talk about yesterday, in Mark 11, Jesus defined and explained how faith works. And so in Mark chapter 11:22 24, Jesus talked about the principle of faith and how faith works. Aaron read Mark 11:22 24. If you don’t believe me, believe Jesus.

 

  So it says, “Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Have faith in God. For assuredly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore, I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them and you will have them.'”

 

  Amen, so this works for whosoever. You know, the Bible says, “Whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved,” Romans 10:13. This is the same whosoever. “Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, ‘Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea,’ and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe those things which he sayeth shall come to pass, shall have whatsoever he says.” Faith will work for anybody, anywhere, praise God. And it works in every realm, praise God. Now, you can’t control other people, but you can control yourself and you can learn how to use the Word of God in a positive way. And I know one thing that we need to speak is we need to speak the Word of God. You know, we need to say what God says. The disciples were marveling because the day before, they were on their way to the temple, and as they were on their way to the temple with Jesus, Jesus saw a fig tree and he was hungry and he cursed this tree. And when he cursed this tree, they came back the next day and this tree was completely dead, dried up from the roots, because he was hungry, it didn’t have any fruit, it wasn’t even the time of figs, but Jesus cursed it and it was dried up. I bet the bark was falling off. It looked like it had been dead for 10 or 15 years. And the disciples said, “Jesus, the tree that you cursed is dead.” And Jesus began to tell them that this is how faith works. Whoever shall say to this mountain, “Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe those things which he says shall have whatsoever he says. Therefore, I say unto you, whatever you want, whatever you desire when you pray.” I like to say, “When you pray, what do you want?” When you get in the presence of God, what do you want? You believe that you receive it and you shall have it. Praise God, Aaron, you know a lot about this thing.

 

  Yeah, there’s a direct relationship. You can see Jesus preached here in Mark 11:23 and 24. He preached a message on faith and we see there’s a direct relationship between faith and the words that you speak. There’s a direct relationship between it. The Word say, “By your words you’ll be justified or by your words you’ll be condemned.” You words can take you in the right direction or in the wrong direction. God said, “I’ve set before you…” He said this in Deuteronomy when the law was given, he said, “I set before you life and death, therefore choose life, that way you and your descendants may live.” And the choice is yours.

 

  Yeah, the choice is yours, what we believe and what we speak. And God is not asking us to do anything that he hasn’t done himself. The Bible actually talks about this in 2 Corinthians 4:13. And in 2 Corinthians 4, we’ll have to come to this in the last half of the broadcast and go through some of these scriptures. Paul is talking about, even though we got the power of God on the inside, we face challenges on the outside. So how do we move from the fact that we have the victory on the inside of us and we’re facing these challenges? How do we reconcile that fact? And how do we get the victory that’s on the inside of us to the physical realm, to the outside of us? And I believe a lot of it’s by faith, praise God. And it’s by what we meditate on. You know, the area between your spirit and your flesh, your body, is your soul. And if you don’t renew your mind in the Word of God, you know what? You’ll not see the victory in your spirit manifest in your flesh, but if you renew your mind in the Word of God, the things that you have in your spirit and the things that God has promised you, you’ll begin to speak those as you think them, and you’ll begin to see that fruit in your body. So we’re gonna come back in the second half of the broadcast and we’re gonna talk about in the last part of this broadcast about how God used this himself and how we operate in faith. We’re talking about how faith works and we’re talking about loving life. If you wanna love life, if you want to see good days, you gotta guard your tongue, praise God, and we’re gonna talk about how that works and how it worked for God and how it works for us. We’re made in God’s own image, so stay tuned, we’ll be back right after this. 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 keys in His Word so that we can do that. So go to our website at Charis Christian Center and download this teaching absolutely free, blessings.

 

  Been serving really hard, serving the Lord, running my carpet cleaning business, just going above and beyond and I’m feeling a little fatigued, I’m healthy, I’m whole in the name of Jesus, but I just wanted to reach out. I’m feeling a little tired coming in today, but right now, my whole body feels tingling. I’m feeling good, I feel healing power running through my body right now and I’m healed in the name of Jesus.

 

  Friends, it’s so glad to have you with us today, and glad that you’re still with us. We’re talking about how faith works and I told you that we’d come back in this second part of the broadcast. We’ve been talking about how God, how Jesus operated in faith and how Jesus taught us about faith, but in 2 Corinthians 4, Paul, actually, this is an amazing thing. In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul’s talking about going from grace to grace, right, or going from glory to glory, the glory of grace by the Spirit of the Lord, but in 2 Corinthians 4:4, he says this, “In whom the God of this world.” This is talking about unbelievers in the world, “The God of this world has blinded the minds of those who believe not lest the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them, for we preach, not ourselves,” he says in verse five, “But Christ Jesus, the Lord, and ourselves, your servants, for Jesus’ sake.” “For God,” look at this in verse six, “Who commanded the light to shine in the darkness has shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus, but we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us.” This is a treasure, God has shined in our heart and we have the power and life and righteousness and blessing of God on the inside of us. But how do we get that to the outside? Because he goes on down. Aaron, I want you to read verse eight through verse 10, and see what, because Paul’s talking about the difference on what we have on the outside and what’s on the inside of us.

 

  It says here, “We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed. We are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed, always caring about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.”

 

  And that’s what we’re talking about. We’ve got the life of God on the inside of us. We’ve got the glory of God. We’ve got the power of God. We’ve got the light of God. We’ve got the good things of God. We’re born again by the incorruptible seed of the Word of God. But how do we get that to the outside? Because in verse eight 8 and 9 says, “We’re troubled on every side.” But he says, “On the spiritual side, we’re not distressed.” So you can face trouble and not be discouraged. He says, “We’re perplexed.” We don’t understand everything. I don’t know anybody that understands everything and anybody that says they do is a liar. Deuteronomy 29:29 says, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God.” Those things that are revealed, you know, to us, we don’t understand everything, but he says, “We’re not in despair, we still have hope.” We hope in God. We hope in the promise. He says, “We’re persecuted.” Paul faced major persecution after he began to preach the gospel. Most of the New Testament was probably written from prison where Paul was put for preaching the gospel. He says, “But we’re not forsaken. Even though we’re persecuted, we’re not forsaken. We’re cast down.” You know, I mean, sometimes we’re expecting good and it doesn’t look like that’s happening, but he said, “Even though we’ve been cast down, we’re not destroyed.” And so he says, “We’re facing these challenges on the outside.” We’re bearing about, in verse 10, in the body, the physical realm, the dying of the Lord Jesus that the life of Jesus might be manifest, might be revealed, might be released in our physical body. And he says, “For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus may be manifest in our physical body.” This is a testimony to the world, that even though the world’s facing all these challenges and difficulties and problems, we can keep operating in victory. You know what really is a testimony to the world is when the world is just going spiraling downhill and you’re just the life of God shining through you, the light of God, the blessing of God. It’s a testimony to the world. And this is also a testimony, it’s a testimony of the world that you have a smile on your face and that you’re rejoicing and that, you know, I remember when covid started and people were just taking everything. There was so much fear that was pervade through the media and different things. They were taking everything off the shelves in the grocery stores. And mom and I went to the grocery store and got a few bananas and tomatoes and cantaloupe. People weren’t worried about fresh produce. And we walked out with a couple little bags of almost nothing and some lady said, “You’re not from here, are you?” And Barbara said, “No.” She said, “Where you from?” “We’re from the farm.” Praise God, I said, we got rabbits, we got deer. If we can need to eat, there’s always something around, praise God, and you know, we never had to go to that and we never lacked, we never missed a heartbeat. In fact, all during covid, we were supernaturally blessed. Hallelujah, but he says that the life of Jesus, he says, “So death works in us, but the life in you.” But right in verse 13, and I’m gonna go through the end of this chapter. In verse 13 Paul says, “We, having the same spirit of faith, we have a major attitude of faith according as it is written.” And he’s actually, Paul is quoting David, and I believe David is quoting God who created everything by the spoken word. “We have the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed and therefore have I spoken.” Man, I’ve been in some very negative situations and yet will speak life. I know the same exact thing about you, Aaron. I know there are times that people have said very negative, terrible things over you and about you, and you’ve come out just smiling and glorifying God. And people said, “We’ve never seen this kind of reaction with this kind of news.” Hallelujah, but it’s because you ultimately believe God. You ultimately believe the promise of God more than you believe the natural report of the world. And he’s saying, “Therefore we speak.” He says, “Knowing who raised up Jesus will raise us up by Jesus.” Man, if God could raise Jesus from the dead, God can bring life to your natural situation. You know, Romans 4 talks about how God operated in faith and how Abraham operates in faith. In Romans 4 it tells us just really how to operate in faith, but in verse 17, he says, “I have made you a father of many nations.” “According,” he says, “Before him whom he believed even God.” God came when it looked like it was impossible for Abraham to have a child, and Sarah. Sarah was nearly 90 or 90, and Abraham was almost 100 and God said, amen, “You’re gonna be father of many nations.” When it looked like the only thing Abraham would father was a illegitimate child with his wife’s handmaid, and God spoke a word of life into a very negative, very deadly situation, amen, and that’s what God does. And it says, “Abraham, when God,” this is what, God will speak a word of life into your dead situation and if you’ll believe the Word of God over what the circumstance says, you can receive it. It says, “Who against hope when all natural hope was gone.” In verse 18, “Abraham believed in hope. He hoped in God that he might become what God said, the Father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, so shall thy seed be.” This was a word that God had spoken years before in Genesis 15. This is from Genesis 17 when God spoke to Abraham and said, “You’re gonna be a father of many nations.” And in Genesis 15, God took him out and Abraham said, “What are you gonna give me, seeing that I go childless?” And God showed him the stars of the sky and said, “This is how your seed’s gonna be.” God used a word picture to change the picture in his soul. We gotta change the picture in our heart and we do that by the Word of God. God will speak a word of life. You can go to the Word of God and you can speak the Word of God. “And being not weak in faith, he considered not the natural situation. He didn’t consider his physical body now dead.” It was impossible in the natural situation for Abraham to have a child. And he says, when he was about 100 years old, “Neither the deadness of Sarah’s womb, he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God and being fully persuaded that what God promised he was able to perform. There it was imputed.” He believed that God could do anything. Sometimes you just gotta believe God could do anything. And it doesn’t matter what the lawyer says, what the doctor says, what the banker says. Doesn’t matter what your best friend says. Amen, sometimes it’s one of your friends in ministry. Praise God, it matters ultimately what God says because God is the ultimate. You know, it doesn’t matter what anybody else says but God so you gotta just keep believing God.

 

  We talked about this yesterday, just about how your faith and your attitude towards life has to be anchored in God’s opinion of you, not other people’s opinion of you.

 

  Amen.

 

  You know, and some people will use that to manipulate. You know, “Well, don’t you want me to be happy?” And this is a good word for some of you that it’s not up to you to make everyone around you happy.

 

  Amen.

 

  It’s not even up to God to make people happy. Happiness is a personal choice.

 

  Amen.

 

  You know, and God reveal that to me. It’s not my job to try to make people happy. I need to do a good job, you know, with my responsibilities to my family. I need to love my wife, but ultimately she has to decide to be happy. I provide, I love her, I care for her, I do what the Bible says to do as a husband to a wife, but ultimately it’s not my job to make her happy. It’s her choice, and she knows that too.

 

  And with your children, it’s the same thing. Now, my dad and mom’s dad strongly encouraged us, said, “Listen, if you don’t get a right attitude, we’ll help you get one. We’ll give you a reason to pout.”

 

  And as a pastor too, you know, I wanna do a good job pastoring, I wanna shepherd people, I wanna teach the Word, I wanna preach the Word, but ultimately it’s up to people, you know, to decide if they’re gonna be happy or not. And some people just will find the smallest thing to not be happy about and to make a fuss about, but it’s not up to me to make people happy.

 

  I can’t control every situation. You know, in churches we have people and people make choices and I don’t make everybody’s choice for ’em. And there’s things that happen with people in the churches, sometimes I don’t 

 

  But there’s just great freedom in knowing that, you know, do your part, trust God, believe God, follow after Him, but don’t try to make everyone happy and don’t let people manipulate you either.

 

  Amen.

 

  That’s a great way to not love life, is just by trying to constantly please everyone.

 

  Amen, you know what I was told as a young man that when pastoring a church, if you’re doing good, the people do good. And you know what? Sometimes people do good, sometimes they don’t. But I realized after about seven years of pastoring that hey, it’s my responsibility to teach the Word of God and bring the truth to people, but if they make choices and what they choose to believe and what they choose to act on, I can’t control their choice, they make their choice. Even with children, this is a word for somebody. Some of you have kids and your kids aren’t living like they should, but those kids make choices. But you know what? You can love them and speak the Word of God on them and just believe God, just leave it in the hands of God. You know, I want share these last verses of 2 Corinthians 4 since we’re here, and I’m gonna to do it really fast. But he says, “All things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many down to the glory of God, for which God,” he says, “We’re looking at these challenges in the outward realm, we do not faint, but though our outward man perish, even though we face challenges physically, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.” And Paul calls his problems, and if, boy, if you look at ’em in 2 Corinthians 12, they are terrible. He says, “Which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding an eternal weight of glory.” While we look not at the things which are seen. We gotta choose not to focus on the physical realm, but the things which are not seen, the things which are, for the things he says, “Which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” We’ve gotta keep our focus on the eternal Word of God. If you need prayer, give us a call today. Praise God, Aaron, share.

 

  Awesome, just thanks so much for joining us today. We love you, God loves you. Feel free to give us a call for prayer or to become a partner and you can connect with us on our website as well. God love you, see you again soon.

 

  Blessings, thanks so much for being with us. 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. I believe that He died for my sins, and You raised Him from the dead and made Him Lord. And right now I surrender my life to Your Lordship, in Jesus’ name, amen.

 

  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 stream, 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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