The Favor Of God Part 10 – Lawson And Aaron Perdue

The Favor Of God Part 10 – Lawson And Aaron Perdue

The Favor Of God Part 10 from Pastors Lawson & Aaron Perdue. In this episode of Grace For Today, learn the keys to gaining favor with people from the life of Daniel, it’s life-changing.

The Favor Of God Part 10 Transcript

Welcome, friends, to our broadcast. I’m so glad that you’re tuned in today. I have my son Aaron with me, and we are sharing on the favor of God, which I believe is one of my life messages. I have favor all over me. And we’re gonna be talking today about keeping a good attitude from the life of Daniel. And we’re gonna be talking about two things that helped Daniel keep a good attitude and this promoted great favor and moved him into God’s purpose and place in life. Bless you.

Friends, it’s so good to have you with us today. We’ve been sharing all of this week on favor and specifically favor in the life of Daniel. And we have been talking about four things. In fact, I taught these four things to you boys when you were young, to you and your two brothers, Aaron, and then his brother Andrew and Peter. And they have had tremendous favor in their life, and they’re all blessed. They’re all in different walks of life, different areas. They’re all serving Jesus. They’re all in their local churches, praise God. All connected, they’re all givers and they’re all blessed. But these four things I’ve taught, number one, you gotta live with purpose. Number two, we talked about how you need supernatural revelation, a relationship with God, a relationship with the Holy Spirit. Number three, positive relationships. The people that you surround yourself with says a lot about you. You know, my grandmother told me this. She said, birds of a feather flock together. And then a few years later, a preacher told me, flocks fly the same place. And you know what? You wanna go the right places and the way to go the right places is by hanging around the right people. And if you don’t hang around the right people, it will hinder you. And then the fourth one is keeping an excellent attitude. Boy, your attitude determines your altitude. That’s a saying that we have in, you know, flying. I’m a private pilot. But if you want that plane to go up, you gotta stick the nose up. If you stick the nose down, it’s gonna go down. So if you get a bad attitude, you’re going down. So keep your, put a smile on your face and keep moving forward into the things of God.

And your attitude’s super important too. It’s really part of your soul. You know, we define the soul as your mind, your will and your emotions. But I just recently kind of shared on a topic called the divine imagination. I did a four-part series on that. And the imagination is also part of the soul where God can speak to your imagination. That’s kind of the creative part of your soul, the dreaming part of your soul. But attitude is huge. If you got a bad attitude, it’s gonna be hard to receive revelation from God. You know, if you have a bad attitude, you’re gonna probably attract people with similar types of an attitude around you. You know, negative people attract negative people.

Well, you know, we had a certain leader in the United States office of President a few years ago, and this man just promoted a victim mentality. And the nation went backwards. The average wages of people for a number of years went down in the US. It was terrible because he taught people, you’re victims and everybody owes you this, instead of teaching people how to thank God for what they have. And you know, if you wanna go forward, thank God, you know, Solomon was a great leader. And when he took over the kingdom, the number one, the first thing he did was he made this great offering and he began to thank God and praise God for his goodness. And man, if you want things to go forward, and Solomon, you know what? He made silver so abundant in Israel, they couldn’t even count it. They piled it up in the streets. What wisdom, what a great attitude that he led with. The attitude you lead with affects other people around you. And you know, I know in this series, and we’re actually gonna be teaching on that, I believe in a couple of weeks, Aaron, on the show here. And talk about the divine imagination. I thought this was a great series that you taught. You taught some things that I’ve never heard that I believe were supernatural revelation that I believe that will really help people. But one thing that you started with is you gotta be thankful. And this is a very first thing that I have here in the life of Daniel, that kept him, you know, was he was a thankful person. And when he got revelation from God, he thanked God.

Yeah, and even, you know, the leaders at the time convinced Darius to make a decree that said, no one’s allowed to pray for a period of time. And really prayer should be thanking God. Biblically prayer should start off with thanksgiving unto God, end with thanksgiving unto God. You know, you can make your requests known unto God as well. But thankfulness is part of prayer. And they couldn’t stop Daniel from thanking God. He was very blatant about thanking God. He’d even open the windows and thank God in front of everyone. He prayed to God right in front of everyone.

What he did before, he prayed, he opened his window right towards the west from where Babylon was, and looked towards Jerusalem three times a day, morning, noon, and night, and prayed to the God of heaven, just like he did before the king made the decree. And so they took Daniel and they threw him in a den of lions. But you know what? God delivered him. And God used those same lions. You know what, he sent his angel and shut their mouths and he delivered Daniel. And they said, everybody’s gonna worship the God of Daniel. And they took Daniel’s enemies and threw them in there, and they broke those people’s bones before they ever hit the bottom of the pit. And you know what? You can get set free by the power of God. Amen? And thank God Daniel was a thankful person. He thanked and praised and glorified God. And you need to be thankful in every situation. I like something you just said, your prayers ought a start with thanksgiving and end with thanksgiving. And in the middle of it, you can add some supplication. That means asking God for what you want or intercession, praying for other people. But if you’ll sandwich what you’re requesting of God in between thanksgiving, you’ll get a lot more of your prayers answered.

Really, like even praise and worship music is like prayers unto God or declarations unto God. And really the music you listen to, the Christian worship music you listen to, it should be thankful. It should overall be pretty positive and thankful.

There’s some of this, it’s just whining and crying in your beer. Sounds like some old country and western song. My dog left, my wife left, and you know, my money left, my job.

There’s some Psalms where David is supplicating. But really as a congregation at church, our song should be full of thanksgiving, full of faiths, full of joy and praise under God, and–

Well, you’ll get a lot farther.

Amen.

And so, you know, when Daniel started out, you know, as a person of influence in Babylon, you know, and he is really a slave boy, but they put him and his three friends with the wise people. And the king had a vision. Nobody could tell him the vision, he forgot it, or the interpretation. Daniel asked the king, hey, give us a little time. And they prayed to God and God showed him the vision and the interpretation. But Daniel went, after God showed him, this is what, a lot of people will receive from God, but they forget to be thankful. And he said this, he said, “I thank you and praise you, oh God of my fathers who has given me wisdom and made known to me what we desire of you, for you have now made known the king’s matters.” And he blessed, it says, the name of God. We need to continually be thanking and blessing and praising God. Praise the Lord. And you know, you began this series that you were talking on the divine imagination. And I believe in a couple of weeks we’ll be in this on the broadcast, but here in Romans chapter one talking about this, Romans chapter one, verse 20 and verse 21, you started with the scripture. And this is so powerful. It’s talking about being a thankful person. And I believe keeping a right attitude begins with thankfulness. And when you forget to be thankful, some people are so ungrateful, they just forget. Man, they can’t remember 10 minutes. And I don’t mean 10 minutes, but they just seem to forget what God’s done for ’em or who’s helped ’em and blessed them. Man, I always try to be thankful and keep good relationships. But he says in Romans chapter one, verse 20, “The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by those who are made, the created beings, even to his eternal power and godhead, so that they are without excuse.” Do you know what? We are without excuse. Every created being knows there’s a creator. And he goes on to say, “Because that when they knew God, they did not glorify him as God.” So the number one thing, we need to glorify God for being God. We need to, you know, whatever you focus on, whatever you magnify in your life, and so focus on the goodness of God, magnify the goodness of God. Neither were they thankful when they did not glorify God and did not focus on him and were not thankful, they became vain in their imaginations. You know, imagination is only used about one or two times in the Bible as a positive thing. It’s almost always negative. But you turn this around and it becomes a positive thing. And their foolish heart, their mind was darkened. And so when you turn this around and begin to glorify God for being God and being thankful, I believe you can begin to have positive imaginations, the divine imagination. You can begin to use your imagination in a positive way. And so I believe Joel Osteen, his church wasn’t that big for a long time. Not Joel, but John, his dad. But they had this church in a feed building. He said, can’t you see the parking lot full of cars? And this other lot they had, it was full of weeds. He said, see that full of cars and this place full of people? And you know what God did, what he imagined, what he dreamed, I believe that God, when you begin to thank God and glorify God and quit whining, and I’m preaching to myself right now, praise God, sometimes we just look out here at these difficult things and we forget to be thankful and glorify God. But be thankful, glorify God and your mind will begin to have positive imaginations, positive thoughts. And that will cause light, understanding and revelation to come to your heart, to your soul. Amen. So thankfulness is one huge key to keeping a good attitude. And if you want to be blessed in life, stay thankful. Amen, keep a good attitude, amen, keep smiling. Glory to God. I remember when I was just a young man, I was probably 20, 21 years old, I’d just been married not very long. And God gave me an opportunity to buy a plane. They weren’t that expensive back in those days. And I had this good friend I went to a high school with, it was his uncle that ran a grain business and had this Cessna 182 and he had this plane for sale for $20,000. And so I went over to see him and he lived, he was down the street a couple of blocks from his cousin who ran the bank. And so I went over and interest was really high then, like 20%. So it was horrible. This was in the mid 1980s. And I went and I said, well, I have $2,000 down and I’d buy that plane from you if you’d finance me at 10% interest. Which we always thought back in those days, if you could do business at 10%, it was good. And that’s tremendous now. But anyway, he said, well go down to the banker and see if the banker, you know, will loan you the money at that. If he won’t then I will. So I went down to the banker and you know, I went back, you know, and the banker turned me down of course, and I went back to him. And he’d had a shot of something there on the desk. He just said, will you pay me what you’re saying? I said, yes. And I had a, you know, I was positive, my life was positive. I was a son of God, a child of God. What would I have to be unthankful for? My Mom and I didn’t have a lot in those days. And he said, I’ll tell you what, I’m gonna loan you the money. He loaned me the money. And he called my grandfather and he was an older gentleman, and very successful businessman. But he told my grandfather, if that young man keeps that smile on his face, he’s gonna go a long ways in life. And you know what? If you keep a good attitude and are thankful, it’ll take you a long ways in life, it will help you. So number one thing about keeping a good attitude is don’t be a victim. Be a victor and be thankful to God. We’re gonna come back right after this break and we’re gonna share some other things about keeping the right attitude and how the right attitude will help you move in to God’s destiny for your life. Stay tuned. Blessings. Friends, I wanna tell you about some products that we have available that I believe will help you move into God’s plan, to God’s destiny for your life. The first one is my book, “Uncommon Favor”. This is my life story. And there are a lot of just really simple stories, things that have happened in my life for the last 30 years, and really how God has blessed us and helped us, you know, move into what He has for us. And I believe that God is no respecter of persons. What God has done for me, He will do for you. I have so many people read this book, it’s a very simple read. And they’ll tell me, pastor, I was so encouraged, that really helped me and gave me hope for my life. And so you don’t want to miss getting this book, “Uncommon Favor”. And we’ve packaged it together with my teaching on the favor of God. And this is a three CD teaching on the favor of God. You can get this by calling our office, or you can check us out on the web at charischristiancenter.com. Friends, I’m so glad that you stayed tuned with us. We’ve been talking from the life of Daniel and we’ve been sharing about divine favor and how we can walk in the favor of God about living with purpose, about supernatural revelation, about positive relationships and keeping the right people around you. And this last one is, keep the right attitude, man. We need to keep a good attitude. And we talked about how Daniel was a thankful person and how that, you know, Daniel faced some really trying situations. His friends got thrown into a fiery furnace for not bowing down and worship this idol of the king. He got thrown into a, you know, lions den for praying to God and God delivered him. And God used all these things. But you know what, he stayed thankful. He kept a good attitude. And one of these scriptures that we see is when Belshazzar, the king Nebuchadnezzar’s son, Belshazzar who became the king of Babylon became king, he started throwing this big wild party and he was mocking God and brought in the vessels from the temple, the Jewish temple that was to be used in worship and was drinking and having this big wild brawl. And a hand came and wrote on the wall, and it really was interesting. But they called Daniel, they asked, what are we gonna do? Because nobody could interpret this. And so the queen, right, remembered Daniel and she told the king, Belshazzar in verse 11, Daniel five, verse 11, “There’s a man in your kingdom in whom is the spirit of the holy gods. In the days of your father, light and understanding and wisdom like the wisdom of the gods was found in him whom the king, Nebuchadnezzar, your father, made master of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers for as much as an excellent spirit and knowledge and understanding.” I believe that with an excellent spirit, with a good attitude comes knowledge and understanding. You know, some of these people are so proud and arrogant, they got a stinking spirit and they think that they got a lot of wisdom and understanding. And you know, the Bible actually says, pride comes before a fall and haughty spirit. And you know what, the Bible says, if there’s contention, it’s because of pride. And you know what, you gotta guard your attitude and don’t get lifted up in pride. Pride will bring you down. But humility will lift you up, thanksgiving, right? And humility. And so Daniel was a person who thanked God, I believe he is also a humble person. Aaron, you’ve had some good things to say about humility recently in your teaching. I want you to share a little bit from James 4 and Peter where you shared on humility.

Yeah, well Peter kind of talks about humility and just says God gives grace to the humble. And in that same passage of scripture, the Bible talks about submitting to God and resisting the devil because the devil goes about like a roaring lion seeking those whom he may devour. And in context that’s really talking about humility and pride. And I think one way that the devil tries to devour people is through pride. And I actually see that big time, when I see very successful people, people of God just really screw up and mess up, it’s usually ’cause they got into pride. They got full of themselves. And you could see it by their attitude, their relationships with other people, you know, the relationships that God has given them, you know, friendships, pastors.

Start pushing those people away.

People in their family. It’s a pride thing. And that’s how the devil really devours people is with pride.

Yeah, this is in 1 Peter 5, verse five through verse 10. So Aaron, you can share on that. And that really fits in with James chapter four, verse six to verse 10. But you can share right here in 1 Peter chapter five, I really liked your thoughts on that. I never heard anybody quite share it the way you did.

Yeah, so it says here in 1 Peter five, we’ll start in verse five. It says, “Likewise, you younger people submit yourselves to your elders.” And a lot of people don’t like that word submit. You know, how many times have you heard a teaching on the word submit? Probably not that often, but it’s mentioned in the Bible quite a bit. So submit to your elders. The elders are people who’ve been with Christ a long time. We have elders here in our church. A pastor is an elder. Submit yourselves to your elders. “Yes, all of you be submissive to one another and be clothed with humility. For God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” If you want more of God’s grace to be flowing in your life, you need to have the right attitude, the right spirit. You need to be humble. And really, one trademark of humility is to be teachable.

Right.

Teachable, you have to be teachable. And the Holy Spirit is, first of all, he is a teacher. So if you want God to teach you, you have to be humble. If you get lifted up in pride, that’s gonna stop that grace from flowing your life that God really wants, that you need.

Oh, listen, that’s such a huge word, Aaron. And you know what, I talked about in a broadcast before, how years and years ago, I went to Andrew Wommack and I said, Andrew, anytime you want to speak to me, I’m here to listen. And he said, I know that. I said, well Andrew, I’ve never told you that. In other words, I was submitting myself to his authority, right, as a mentor, as a leader, as an elder in my life. And I said, I’ve never told you. He said, it’s the attitude in which you conduct yourself. I already know that.

Some people don’t submit to anybody. That is an extremely dangerous place to be in.

It’s terrible.

If a minister has no one he’s submitted to, if a husband has no one he’s submitted to, he’s not submitted to God, not to a pastor, not to any like that, that is a terrible place to be in. You are just–

And pastors need to have people they submit to, I’m a pastor, right? And I’ve been around a while, I’ve been in full-time ministry, pastoral ministry for over 30 years and we’ve had a lot of success. And I listen to godly authority in my life.

You have to be teachable. So it says, “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon him for he cares for you.” But I love what he continues here. Some people just kind of take these pieces of scripture apart. But really when he is talking about the devil devouring people, I believe it’s still going along with this same theme of pride. It says, “Be sober, be vigilant.” You know, one, pride will make you drunk. It will make you so you don’t think right. You’ll think really stupid thoughts if you are full of pride. You know, I’ve seen people who claim to be great experts on marriage and they get full of pride and they divorce their wives because they’re basically drunk in their hearts. “Be sober, be vigilant because your adversary, the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. But may the God of all grace who called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen and settle you. To him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever.” This really fits with Daniel as well. You know, Daniel was lifted to a, promoted to a very high position under Nebuchadnezzar. But we see when Belshazzar took over, Daniel was just pushed to the side. Belshazzar didn’t even remember Daniel, it was Belshazzar’s wife that had to remind Belshazzar, hey, you know, during your father’s reign he had this great wise person named Daniel who could solve enigmas, who could interpret dreams. And Belshazzar probably just pushed him completely out of the way. So Daniel suffered persecution for really honoring God. But God brought Daniel back into the forefront.

Yeah. You know, God will, if you stay submitted to God, you keep the right attitude towards God, you stay faithful to God, God long term is gonna take care of you. And you know, this same thing is spoken about in James chapter four, verse six through verse 10. And it said, God gives more grace. There’s more grace. You know, there’s some grace you won’t enter into unless you stay humble. “For he says, God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves to God and resist the devil and he will flee from you.” Some people are trying to resist the devil without submitting themselves to God. And you know, it just doesn’t work. But if you submit yourself to God first and resist the devil, the devil will run. He says, “Draw near to God and he’ll draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, double minded. Be afflicted, mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he will lift you up.” Man, before honor is humility. That’s another scripture. And Daniel really, he really shows this. And when you studied the book of Daniel, so he had this excellent attitude. And it actually goes on to say this in Daniel chapter six, that Daniel, you know, Darius, who was the Median king, right? And reigned over 120 nations, put three presidents over these 120 nations. And Daniel was the primary one. Man, Daniel carried out a lot of authority. And he said, then this Daniel in verse three was preferred above the presidents and princes because an excellent spirit was in him. He had an excellent attitude. And the king thought to set him above the whole realm. Man, you need to keep a good attitude. And you know what, if you’ll keep a good attitude, God will promote you. And so we’ve talked just about a couple of these things in this broadcast, but they are so powerful in your life in keeping the right attitude. Number one, be thankful. Be a thankful person. God just does good. You know, I write hundreds and hundreds of thank yous to people over and over. I am very grateful to God, first of all. But secondly, I am very grateful to the people that God has surrounded me with, right? That have helped me move into what God has for me. And I know that I can’t do it without God and without the people that he’s, you know, people who’ve invested in us, people who volunteer here at the church, people who work at Charis Christian Center. You know what? We couldn’t do what God’s called us to do without people. And that brings me to a good point. If you’re not a partner with this ministry and you’re receiving good things, we have a lot of good things to share. And I believe that this ministry is really, really good ground. I believe that we have a supernatural anointing of increase on Charis Christian Center on this ministry of the favor of God. And I believe if you’ll pray about and ask God about becoming a partner with Charis Christian Center, I believe that God, through this relationship, can lead you into supernatural blessing, favor, and increase. And I’m not asking you to do something that I don’t do. I partner with over 30 ministries a month, and some of ’em I give thousands and thousands of dollars to every month. Praise God. And you know what? God, we wouldn’t be where we’re at without sowing into these other people. And so if you wanna become a partner with us, we would love to hear from you today. We wanna send out a special gift to you. And I would encourage also those, if you don’t have my book on provision, “Releasing Supernatural Increase In Your Life”, I believe that there’s keys that will really help you move into that anointing. But if you’d like to partner with us, we would certainly appreciate it. And I believe that it will be a blessing to you in turn because you can’t reap a harvest without sowing a seed. So thanks so much. If you need prayer, if you want to become a partner, if you want product, give us a call. Blessings, we appreciate you. Friends, I’m Pastor Lawson Perdue and I love church! And I’m excited about church. You know, Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And I want to invite you to come to church, whether you’re in Colorado Springs or wherever you are in the world. You can connect with us online Sundays at 8:30 and 10:30 AM or you can just get on our website and watch us at charischristiancenter.com. Blessings.

[Narrator] The favor of the Lord has the power to change your life. In this favor package, you’ll learn how you already have more than enough favor because God loves and cares for you. Get the favor CD series along with the book entitled “Uncommon Favor” for $24 when you call 719-418-4000 or visit charischristiancenter.com. Thanks for watching “Grace for Today”. This broadcast has been made possible by our faithful partners. If you would like to become a partner, need prayer, or have a question, please call us at 719-418-4000 or to partner online, go to charischristiancenter.com/give. You can write us at PO Box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80962. See you next time on “Grace for Today”.