Nevertheless, At Your Word – Part 1 Lawson and Aaron Perdue

  Praise the Lord, friends, and welcome to the broadcast. I’m so glad that you’ve tuned in today. we’re gonna be sharing about the power and the life of the word of God. I believe that the word of God has the power to change your life. So open your heart today and receive the good word of God and let it begin to change your life so you can move into what God has for you. Blessings. Friends, it’s great to have you with us today. We’re sharing today on the power of the word of God, and it’s been a great week teaching in the word of God. So, Aaron, I want you to go ahead.

 

  Awesome. Yeah, we, we’ve been talking about how to build your life off the word of God. Your relationship with the word, with His promises, with all scripture, it’s a lifelong journey, it’s a life lifelong process. And I love that something the Bible says in Romans 10:17, it says, “So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God, by the rhema of God, that active living now word of God. So we need to be hearing from God all the time, every day. And that’s really how you keep building your life on the word of God. Keep building a life. Keep living by faith. You have to hear the word of God. One question I get asked fairly frequently is, well, how do you hear the word of God? And I think that’s a good… Some of you might have that question right now. How do you hear the word of God? We’ve talked about it some throughout this week about how you need to spend time. My dad said he reads His Bible three to five chapters every day. He reads through scripture. And he is not just doing it as a discipline, but he’s doing it ’cause he wants to hear from God. And as you’re reading scripture, which is the logos, it’s the written what God has spoken in times past. When you read that logos, He’ll speak to you a rhema word.

 

  Amen.

 

  Something that applies to your life right now.

 

  Amen.

 

  At one time, you were trying to figure out what to do concerning your cattle business at the time.

 

  I was actually just thinking about that.

 

  And God, you were reading a scripture just came to life to you. God breathed His life. It became a now word. But what did God shared to you?

 

  We were in a time and we were pastoring in Kit Carson. And while we pastored there, I had bought a small growing lot. And I would actually put calves in it starting in the fall, like in September and grow them all through the winter into the spring, and then turn them out in April or May to grass. And then other people would take care of them. And they would go in the feedlot and then be finished like the next spring. But anyway, we were in a drought and the dirt was blowing and it was like February. And I was praying about what do I do? And God woke me up one morning at three or four in the morning and He told me to go read your Bible. And I happened to be in Isaiah. And when I was reading that morning in Isaiah, it said, “Your cattle will feed in large pastures.” And I just took it as a rhema of word that God wanted me to buy all the cattle that I could. And I had $100,000 note then. And I went and bought all the cattle that I could buy with that $100,000 over the next few weeks. And the dirt kept blowing, and it kept getting worse and worse. In fact, the last bunch of cattle that I bought, I went over my note like by $100,000. It was a line of credit. And the bank that I banked with at that time was about 35 miles down the road. And I called the banker and asked him if he could cover it, and he said no. So I made a little bit as a pastor, so I took a check down there out of my personal account and went and covered that. And I just thought, when this note comes up for renewal, I’m gonna trade banks. And so the note was coming up for renewal in May and the dirt had just kept blowing. And basically, before that had started, I had $40,000 of equity, I had $100,000 line of credit. And because the wind kept blowing, the dirt kept blowing, it hadn’t been raining, I lost all my equity. So I had $100,000 of cattle now with $100,000 note. But I went down to our other banker in Kit Carson where we lived where the church was. And I told this banker, I said, “Listen, I’ve got $100,000 of cattle and I got $100,000 note, but I believe it’s gonna rain and I believe that corn is gonna go down. Corn was high and I believe cattle are gonna go up. Cattle were low because of the dirt and the drought.” And I said, “I believe I’m gonna make more money than I ever made in my life.” And that Baptist banker looked across that desk and he said, “I believe so too.” And he loaned me $100,000 on $100,000 of cattle, basically, with no equity. And I went down and just paid off the Methodist banker where I grew up. And did you know what, May 28th it started raining and it rained all summer? Praise God. And the prairie, the desert blossomed like a rose. I mean, cactus will blossom when they get a lot of rain. And my cattle went up, corn went down. And I made more money than I ever made in my life. And by that fall, I had $80,000 of equity. So I turned from 40,000 equity down to zero, but turned it around to 80. God doubled what I had. But it’s through the word of God. But many times it’s like this, when God gives you a word, it doesn’t look like maybe immediately that that was God. But when you keep believing, you don’t want to give up and you don’t want to get in fear, but when you keep believing that, if you’ll be consistent in your faith and keep believing what God said, and God spoke some other things to me from Psalm 1:12. He spoke to me. And He basically said to the righteous, there arises a light in the darkness. And God just told me, “This is just like a time you’re going through, but the sun’s gonna shine again, things are gonna get better.” And God turned that whole situation around. And it was a testimony this Baptist banker ended up coming to my church later. His first wife had divorced him, but he remarried and the woman he remarried was hungry for God. And they got baptized in the Holy Spirit and they became great friends. And they actually came to you and both of your brother’s weddings and we’re still friends today. And it can be like that. People need to see God working in our life.

 

  And one thing I’ve kind of observed too, just throughout my life and as a pastor, is if you get filled with the Holy Spirit, maybe you’re watching right now, and you’ve never asked Jesus to just fill you with the Holy Spirit, be baptized in the Holy Spirit, like what happened in Acts 2. But when that happens, the word of God, that logos word, it’s just like shooting out rhema to you. It becomes alive.

 

  Amen.

 

  When I was in college in Pittsburgh doing a bachelor’s degree, I had a friend from another country, and she really loved God. She loved the word. She had spent hours reading the Bible every day. And I tried to tell her about being filled with the Holy Spirit, but she was very hesitant to it just from her background, her denominational background. But I took her to some healing meetings at the time in downtown Pittsburgh that… What’s his name?

 

  Billy Burke.

 

  Billy Burke was doing. So Billy Burke, many of you might know of him, I know he does a lot of ministry with Kenneth Copeland now, but Billy Burke has a powerful healing evangelist ministry. And when he was a child, he grew up in Pittsburgh, he was actually healed of terminal brain cancer at a Kathryn Kuhlman meeting in downtown Pittsburgh at the First Presbyterian Church.

 

  Hallelujah.

 

  So this was 20 years ago when I was in college. But he was having meetings at the First Presbyterian Church in downtown Pittsburgh, where he was healed of terminal cancer. And just me and my friend were just seeing really awesome miracles. And I told her, “Hey, you had to get filled with the Holy Spirit.” And she told her mother about the miracles she had seen, her mother said, “Well, even the devil can do. The anti-Christ can do miracles.” And I just said… I was only like 19 or 20 at the time. I wasn’t this great theologian like I’m now, but I just said people are getting saved, healed. The devil doesn’t want that to happen. This is Jesus.

 

  Amen.

 

  And just by faith, I showed all the scripture about being filled the Holy Spirit, but I just said, “Hey, you just need this. And if you want it, just ask for it and God will give it to you.” It was after one of these meetings, I was dropping her off at her dorm. It was around like midnight ’cause the meeting went so long. But I said, “You know what, let’s just pray.” And she just sat down and I just prayed a simple prayer for her to receive the Holy Spirit. Just, God, I just think this is a free gift and You want my friend to receive it and just fill her right now. And as I prayed that, her hand just started shaking and then she like fell off her chair and was rolling on the floor. And I was kind of like shocked myself. And I grew up in a holy roller church. This wasn’t a courtesy fall, like God was really rocking her world. And then her atheist roommate came walking in during all this, I just picked her up and carried her up the stairs to the lounge area. And just for three or four hours, she was just rolling around praying in tongues. And when this is happening, I just told her, “Hey, ask God for something.” And she had been dealing with a really bad tendonitis in her hands. She played flute like me. The tendonitis was so bad she couldn’t play at all. She couldn’t even open a doorknob. The pain was so bad. She was getting therapy and getting steroid shots in her arms. And I was hoping she’d just ask God to heal her arms because she had this mindset from her denominational background that God gave this to her to teach her something. But I was just hoping she’d ask for that. But she asked God to heal her heart. And when she did that, her hand is like something grabbed her hand and it came over her heart and was shaking over her heart, but just all this shame, guilt, condemnation just lifted off of her. And she was never the same after that. And then I told her, “Hey, ask God to heal your hands.” And she said, “God, heal my hands.” And just her hands started shaking even more. But her arms, her wrists, they were just instantly healed. She didn’t have any more pain she could play against. She didn’t have to get any more steroid shots, any more therapy. This instantly healed. Man, if you never received the Holy Spirit, one thing I was getting at with this is for the next few weeks, whenever she read the Bible, she said her hands would shake whenever she read the Bible. There’s this residual effect of what was going on. But she’d just read the Bible, just read the logos, and just her hands would shake as she was reading the word of God. Man, if you want the word of God to come alive to you, receive the Holy Spirit, be baptized in the Holy Spirit, just ask for it.

 

  Amen.

 

  Man, you can call our ministry right now too. All of our prayer ministers are filled with the Holy Spirit. If you’ve never asked for that, believe for that, prayed in tongues, give us a call here and one of our prayer ministers will pray for you. And I think right now, we’re probably getting too many calls to answer all at once. So just leave a message and we’ll call you back and pray with you. It’s available for any believer, but I encourage you to receive that today. Man, it’ll make the word of God come alive to you. So if you’ve been struggling, just wondering, how can I hear? Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God, how do I hear? And if you’ve been struggling just hearing and struggling with your faith, man, be filled with the Holy Spirit, it’ll change your world.

 

  Amen. In John 14:26, the very first thing that Jesus said about when we receive the Holy Spirit, He said, “The comforter, who is the Holy Ghost, who the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance whatever I have said to you.” And it takes the Holy Spirit to make the word of God come alive to you and make the word of God. The very first thing that happened to me when I was baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues is that the word of God came alive to me. Amen. So we want you to call in, we want you to receive our material, and we want you to receive the Holy Spirit. We’ll be back right after this break. Blessings. Friends, we’ve been sharing on Nevertheless at Your Word. And we have this teaching from my son Aaron in one teaching available, free of charge, downloadable audio, downloadable video on our website. Also, you can get my book, “The Power and Life of the Word.” Use these resources. God bless you.

 

  I came kicking and screaming because I thought if I came to a word of faith church, I’d find people puffed up with pride, saying, “Look at me, I’m full of faith.” And when I got here, I found humility, real people that were going deeper. They knew the word. They loved Jesus. And it was an amazing experience for me. I just feel like I’m in family.

 

  Friends, I’m so glad that you stayed with us and we are here, and we’re talking about how we can receive the word of God today. And so, Aaron, go ahead and jump into the word.

 

  Yeah. And I wanna talk about too just how to hear God’s voice. And that’s a question I get a lot as a pastor. How do I hear God’s voice for myself? How do I hear him speaking to me for myself? And Jesus said, “I am the shepherd. I speak to the sheep and they hear my voice.” So Jesus is speaking today. And I think one issue too is maybe just some people haven’t reached that point where they’re gonna prioritize the word of God above all else. To really hear from God, you have to prioritize His word and have that attitude that nevertheless at your word or that’s what Simon Peter said, nevertheless at your word. It doesn’t matter what I feel, what I think, what my expertise says, nevertheless at your word. And also like what Mary in the Christmas story, she just said, “So be it unto me according to Your word.” We know at first she was troubled. She knew how this is gonna happen, but she just said, “I’m your maid, servant. I’m the servant of the Lord. Just be it unto me according to Your word.” And I think when you prioritize the word of God, you’ll hear more clearly, but also there’s just a lot. Just especially in the world today with technology, with social media, there’s just so many voices that are just shouting and screaming.

 

  There are.

 

  And you’re gonna have to tune some things out from time to time.

 

  I was gonna say there’s a lot of distractions and there’s a lot of things, if you will allow them, they will try to take your attention away from the word of God. But we need to fix our focus on God. We need to fix our focus on Christ and fix our focus on God’s word. Aaron, you had a scripture about that in Proverbs 4. And I think we ought to just go ahead and share that.

 

  Let’s go to Proverbs 4. This is one of my favorite passages of scripture. I’m gonna go here in Proverbs 4. Years ago when I was working on my master’s and doctorate at Rice University, I could take classes outside of the School of Music, so I took a biblical Hebrew for a year. And I remember for the first semester for a final exam, we had to take a passage of 10 verses from the Hebrew, Old Testament and write it out from memory. But I picked 10 verses right here from Proverbs 4 and wrote it out from memory in Hebrew. Man, the word of God is just so powerful. But we can read here, starting in Proverbs 4:20. Do you wanna start reading there?

 

  Yeah. My son, attend to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not depart from your eyes; keep them in the midst of your heart; for they are life to those who find them and health to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life.

 

  And I love that it says, “My son, pay attention, give attention to my words.”

 

  Amen.

 

  And as I was really just thinking about this recently, I was thinking about a rancher, just someone who tends livestock. I grew up, we had some cattle and a horse. And whenever there’d be like a blizzard, we’d have to go chop the ice with an ax so they could drink out of the water tank. But as a rancher, some of you might have pets at home, but you have to tend to your animals every day. You have to feed them every day. You have to water them every day. And that’s how it is with the word of God. You have to tend to it every day. It has to be a priority. You can’t just put it on a shelf and forget about it. too many people have just-

 

  I’ve seen people that I know and they love God and they’re born again, but they don’t really make the word of God a priority. And they’ll read, for instance, cowboy novels or they’ll read science fiction. And there’s nothing wrong with reading science fiction or novels.

 

  You need to read the word of God, though.

 

  But more than anything, you need to read the word of God. And I actually spend so much time reading the word of God that I have very little time to read anything else. And once in a while I’ll read a book. And generally, when I read a book, it’s a good Christian author with a good focus on the word of God, so on and so forth. And I’m very careful about what I put into my mind. But I constantly read the word of God. And we talked about before the break, the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I got baptized in the Holy Spirit when I was 14 years old in Andrew Wommack’s bible study in 1978 when almost nobody knew Andrew Wommack. And did you know I was raised in a traditional church and I had been saved six years prior to that when I was eight years old. But the word, I had some relationship with the word. But when I got baptized in the Holy Spirit, it’s like the word came alive to me and I devoured the word of God. I mean, there were days that I would nearly read the entire New Testament, and I just fed on the word of God. And the word of God became life to me. The word of God became real to me. And the word of God changed my life. And I just thank God for the Word of God. And I thank God for the Holy Spirit that makes it real. So we need to give attention to the word.

 

  And I have just something I wanna say too. Some of you really love Jesus, but you just, for whatever reason, have been kind of scared or just hesitant to receive the Holy Spirit. But if you love Jesus, you’re gonna really love the Holy Spirit.

 

  Amen.

 

  And the Holy Spirit will actually just make that relationship just really freshen it. Man, just your love for Jesus will just explode with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. This is for someone who loves Jesus, what you’ve been very hesitant about receiving the Holy Spirit and praying in tongues. But I just encourage you to just go for it, step out in faith and just go for it. You can give us a call here, and we’re going to have someone who is spirit-filled pray with you just to receive that. But I believe that your relationship with Jesus is just gonna explode.

 

  Amen. And we’ve seen many, many people baptized in the Holy Spirit. And we see this often in our church services many times, even on like on a Wednesday night when we have just a maybe 25% of the people that we would have on a Sunday morning. But we’ve had multiple people baptized in the Holy Spirit. We see people healed and set free by the power of God. And you know what, the word of God works, and if you’ll believe it, it’ll change your life and the Holy Spirit will make it real. So He says, “Give attention to my word.” He says, “Incline your ear to my sayings.” We need to listen to what God is saying. You brought this up earlier, but there are so many voices in the world. First Corinthians says, “There are many voices in the world and none of them are without significance.” There’s a reason people are saying what they’re saying, but not all of them are God. And we need to decipher between what God is saying and what the world is saying. And the way that we decipher between what God is saying and what the world is saying is by the Word of God. Hebrews 4:12 talks about this. And in Hebrews 4, I want to turn over there really quickly and read this scripture actually in verse 12. It says, “For the word of God is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, and of the joints and the marrow, and it’s a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart.” The word of God will separate what’s coming out of your spirit from what’s coming out of your soul and just what’s coming out of the natural mind or what’s coming from the world. And so you know what, you need to get a relationship with the word of God, but it’s the Holy Spirit who will make the word of God come alive to you. And so He says, “Attend to my word, inline your ear to my sayings.” Proverbs 4:20 again. Then he says in verse 21, “Let them not depart from your eyes. Keep them in the midst of your heart.” The way you keep the word of God in your heart is you keep it before your eyes. I love what Smith Wigglesworth said. He said, “This is my Bible.” And he says about the word of God, he said, “Read it through, write it down, pray it in and work it out.” And Smith had all kinds of miracles. In fact, Dr. Lester Sumrall went to visit him in England. When he got there, Dr. Sumrall was a young man. He had the newspaper stuck under his arm. And Smith said, “That newspaper stays outside you. You can come in here, but I only allow the word of God in my house.” And a lot of people feed on all this news and all this worldly information and this stuff that doesn’t have life to it, and they wonder why they struggle. And if you want to let you know the word of God really take effect in your life, you need to guard your mind. And He says, “Keep the word of God.” It’s not wrong to know what’s happening in the world. It’s not wrong to read some of these other things, but at the same point in time, you need to keep the word of God. The Word of God needs to be, again, the priority, like Aaron said, in your life. And He says, “For they are life,” in verse 22, “to all those who find them and health to all their flesh.” This Hebrew word for health is the word marpe. And it’s talking about the word of God is medicine to your flesh. Psalm 107:20 says that He sent His word and healed them and delivered them from their destruction. And when you talk about the word of God being like health or medicine to your flesh, it’s like if you go to the doctor and he gives you a prescription, if you want that to work in your body, you gotta take it. And if you want the word of God to work in your life, you gotta receive the word of God. You’ve gotta take the word of God into you and let the Word of God begin to work. The word has the power to heal you. The word has the power to free you. The word has the power to save you. The word has the power in every area. The word has the power to give you peace. Isaiah 26:3 says, “You will keep Him in perfect peace whose mind has stayed upon you because He trusts in you.” And so if you’re struggling, just go to the word of God and let the word of God become medicine. Let the Word of God become healing. Let the word of God become life to you and minister life to you. And the power of the word will literally change your life. He says you keep your heart with all diligent or out of it are the issues of life. Friends, if you’ve been watching this broadcast, amen, and you have not received the baptism of Holy Spirit, we want to encourage you to receive the baptism of Holy Spirit, we want to encourage you to give us a call. If you have not received Jesus as your personal savior, we want to encourage you to receive Jesus as your personal Savior. And just like I’m saying, just like the word of God has literally changed my life and changed my experience with God, it’s changed. I mean, it is fantastic what God has done in my life. But you know what, this shouldn’t just be for me or my family. This is for anybody who will believe it. So I encourage you to call in and to receive prayer today. We would love to hear from you. I want to just give you the opportunity before we leave today to pray and to surrender your life to God. So just pray with me. Heavenly Father, I believe that Jesus Christ is Your son. I believe that Jesus died for my sins. I believe that you raised Him from the dead and made Him Lord. And right now, I surrender to you in Jesus’ name. Amen. Friends, our broadcast can now be seen by over 2/3 of the world’s population, and it’s our partners that have made this available. I wanna invite you today to become part of this blessing by becoming a partner of Charis Christian Center and Grace for Today. So we would love to hear from you. And thank you so much for prayerfully considering this today. Blessings.

 

  God has breathed His life into our spirit and He has breathed His life into scripture. When the promises of His word become alive in your heart, everything changes. Keep building your life upon the sure foundation of the word of God. We’d like to bless you with a digital copy of the teaching Nevertheless at Your Word, a $5 value, free of charge. Download it today at charischristiancenter.com.

 

  Praise the Lord, friends. I want to invite you to church this coming Sunday morning, whether you’re in Colorado Springs or wherever you are at, if you’re in Colorado Springs, you can see us Sunday morning at 8:30 or 10:30 AM live. But you can also watch us with our livestream congregation at 8:30 or 10:30 AM or you can go to our website and get it anytime at charischristiancenter.com.

 

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