The Supernatural Fruit of the Holy Spirit – Part 7 Lawson and Aaron Perdue

  Friends, I’m so glad that you’ve joined us today. I have my son here, and we’re talking about the supernatural fruit of faithfulness today. And you want to hear it, praise God, because it’s actually in the Greek, “faith,” but faith is revealed in faithfulness, and when you operate in this fruit, the Bible says, “A faithful man will abound with blessings.” So I believe you’ll abound with blessings when you live this out. Friends, I’m so glad that you’re with us today, and I got Aaron here, and we’re talking about the supernatural fruit of the Holy Spirit. Praise God, God is so good, amen. And we’re talking about the fruit of faith in the King James, or faithfulness, as it says in the New King James. So we’ll talk a little bit about that.

 

  Yeah. So, you know, the fruit of the spirit is found in Galatians 5:22 and 23. It says, “But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, against such there is no law.” And we’re gonna be talking about faithfulness, or faith, today, and, you know, these last three fruit really correlate to our relationship with ourself.

 

  And I’m really excited to talk about, you know, faithfulness, or faith, as it says in the King James. And, you know, we’re gonna talk about the fruit of it. And the fruit is something that you have to practice, you have to prioritize, you have to be intentional with, and it’s, you know, faith and faithfulness is a great thing to talk about. You know, in scripture there’s different charismatic gifts. And one of those gifts mentioned in I Corinthians 12 is the gift of faith.

 

  And we’ll be talking about the fruit of faith, and, you know, or the fruit of faithfulness, and fruit is different than, like, these charismatic gifts.

 

  You know, and I kind of described the difference this way, but I said, “A gift, it’s something that is manifested or something that is given, presented on important occasions.”

 

  You know, if you think about the gift of healings or the gift of the Word of knowledge, these things present themselves when it’s really important and really necessary. You know, if someone has a sickness and they’re, you know, prayed over and healed, there’s an operation of the gift of healings. You know, it’s present during an important occasion. The fruit of faith is actually something that can be demonstrated on an ongoing basis.

 

  Right, so as we talk about this, there’s really four aspects of faith when you study the scripture. There’s natural faith, a farmer sows seed and believes he’s gonna have a harvest. He sows in hope, that’s natural faith.

 

  And whether you’re born again or not born again, if you’re sowing in the natural, a farmer, I grew up being a farmer,

 

  We’re expecting a harvest, or we wouldn’t sow.

 

  Right? Then there’s saving faith. The Bible says, “For, by grace, are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it’s a gift of God, not by works, lest any man should boast.” That is in Ephesians 2:8 and 9. And when you study that out, God actually gives you the faith to be saved. Then, when you are saved, you have the Spirit of Christ in you. Romans 8:9 says, “If you have not the Spirit of Christ, then you are none of us.” So you either have the Spirit of Christ in you, or you don’t have the Spirit of Christ in you. And if you have the Spirit of Jesus Christ in you, and every born-again believer has the Spirit of Christ in them, in Christ. So we have all of the fruit of the Spirit, in that the Spirit of Christ lives in us, and one of the fruit of the Spirit is faith. And then, finally, we have the gift of faith, which is the highest kind of faith, and it works in areas of primarily protection and provision. Okay? But it’s an amazing, it’s one of the power gifts, and it’s the highest of the power gifts when you study these out. But, at the same, this gift of faith, God will give you, if it operates, God will give you faith, the gift of faith to operate far beyond where you may be in natural faith, or where you may be in the fruit of faith as a born-again believer. He just gives you a gift of faith to believe Him. And you’ll see, you know, like, “Wow.”

 

  And you’ll realize later, maybe if you understand these gifts, that that was a operation of the gifts of the Spirit.

 

  But when we’re talking about faith, the gift of, or the fruit of faith, when you are born again, you have the exact same faith as Jesus in you.

 

  You have the love of God in you. Now, when we study, these kind of comes to me as we’re talking about the fruit of faith, or faithfulness, in faithfulness, really, New King James uses the word faithfulness, King James uses the word faith, in the Greek, it’s the Greek word, “pistis,” which is the word for faith. There are two main themes in the New Testament, which are the theme of grace and faith. And grace, really, is God, right? The grace of God was manifested at the cross when Jesus died. And that grace had enough, there’s enough grace to save everybody at the cross, but it takes our faith as a positive response to grace. So there’s this grace or love, and we said all these other fruit flow forth from love, right? And then there’s this fruit of faith. And faith, again, you’re talking about, that’s us, that’s our personal. And faith is our positive response toward love. The Bible actually says this. Before this, in Galatians 5:6, it says, “Faith works by love in Christ Jesus. Neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith works by love.” So when you understand love, the natural fruit of that is faith. Faith is our positive response towards the gospel, or towards grace, or towards love. So, again, this faith flows forth from the love of God. So when you get a revelation of the love of God, your faith starts working.

 

  Yeah, and as we talk about, you know, faith, and especially the term faithfulness, gentleness, or meekness,

 

  And self-control, or temperance. I actually like the King James, you know, wording on some of these last three fruit. These three fruit, because they deal with your relationship with yourself, I think they’re actually some of the most rare fruit to find in people. And faithfulness, because it correlates to a relationship with yourself, it means you can’t make someone be faithful.

 

  You know, so sometimes in life you get hurt by people who are unfaithful. Maybe they’re unfaithful towards you, but they’re just, that’s something within themselves. They have not chosen to walk in, you know, and I know sometimes when, you know, there have been people who’ve been hurt by unfaithfulness in a variety of circumstances, maybe it was at work, maybe it was within your family, maybe within, you know, marriage. But you can’t make someone else be faithful. That’s something that they, and I know sometimes it’s pastors, too. Pastoring is very relational.

 

  A very relational thing. And sometimes people don’t fulfill what they, you know, promised to do or what they said that they were going to do. You know, you’ve had people who’ve told you, you know, one time, “This is the best church I’ve ever been to, you’re the best pastor I’ve ever had,” and then, like, a month later, they’re gone. If you’ve pastored very long-

 

  And that happens on a somewhat consistent basis, and I know it can be hurting, and some of you may have been hurt by unfaithful people. You know, I saw a video of Ed Young,

 

  He’s a pastor who’s on a very large Baptist church in Dallas, and he said,

 

  He said this, I think he was preaching to other ministers, but he said, “The average person loses seven close relationships in a lifetime.” Said, “The average pastor loses seven close relationships every year.” And he said, “I don’t care if you pastor a church of 10,000 or 10 people, it’s the same wherever you’re at.” But I think, you know, I showed it to you, and I think it encouraged you, because it made you realize I’m not alone.

 

  Yeah, it helped me, actually.

 

  But you can’t make someone else be faithful. My wife, Heather, and I were talking about this, too, you know, people have to choose to be faithful, and they have to, you can’t lead someone into faithfulness.

 

  You can’t make them faithful.

 

  You know, I grew up in a church where, and I loved my pastor, and I went to this church for seven years. He recognized the call of God on my life. He really helped me. But he kind of, this is what I got. Now, he may not have said this, but I kind of got from him, he felt like if people were doing bad in the church, it’s because he was the pastor, but when I pastored our first church, we pastored there 13 years, and it took me about six or seven years to realize, as pastoring, that, hey, you know, I preach the truth, but I saw people come and sit in the pew every week, sit right down the row from each other, and a lot of the people heard the same messages year after year, month after month, and some people were really growing and prospering, and other people weren’t. And that is a personal thing. And this is like faith. Faith is a personal thing.

 

  Right? God is a God of grace. His goodness, His grace is available to everybody. But you know what? Faith is your choice. God’s not gonna make you believe Him. God’s not gonna make you faithful.

 

  Right? He puts that fruit in you, but you have to develop it.

 

  And He’s not gonna, you know, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. And God kinda showed me, this is six or seven years into pastoring, into full-time ministry, and I’d actually been preaching for at least, probably several years before I began pastoring. And I think about eight years before I started pastoring, I was already preaching. But, you know, in all that being said, you know, I saw pretty clearly that God told me, “Listen, Lawson, you can preach the truth to people, but it’s their choice.”

 

  And that’s why people receive from God better than, some people receive better than others, because some people choose to believe it, and some people just don’t.

 

  It’s their choice.

 

  But faithfulness, and that consistency part, you know?

 

  We talked about this before, about how, through faith and patience, they inherit the promises.

 

  You know, faith isn’t just, like, this sporadic burst of, like,

 

  It’s a daily thing. It’s a lifelong,

 

  We’re talking about this fruit, right?

 

  Uh-huh.

 

  Of faith, that, you’re exactly right. It’s a consistent thing. And that’s Hebrews 6:12, says, “Be followers of those who, through faith and patience, inherit the promises.” He’s actually talking about Abraham as an example,

 

  And you talk about consistency,

 

  Abraham, you know, I preached a message about Abraham, of 50 years of faith in God.

 

  And, you know, I actually shared, you know, yesterday, when Andrew Wommack was with us, or this past Sunday, when Andrew Wommack was with us in church, that, you know, you know, he talked about, you know, mom and I, and really, you know, I started out under him 45 years ago, when I was 14 years old I was baptized in the Holy Spirit and called to preach, and then, within two years I was preaching. And then, with another, you know, 10 years of that, or eight years of that, I started pastoring. And then, you know, and mom and I have been full-time pastors for 35 years, and I’ve been actually preaching for 43 years. And, you know, we’ve been pastoring this church at this present time for 22 years, you just don’t see a lot of people that have that kind of follow through.

 

  Andrew said, “I wish everybody that I preached to and heard this message had the same response toward the Word as we do.

 

  And we really see, you know, faithfulness, gentleness, or meekness and self-control, how they are very rare fruit. But because they’re so rare, I think the inheritance attached to them, it’s immeasurable.

 

  We’ll talk about meekness, you know, tomorrow, but, you know, faithfulness, meekness, or gentleness and self-control, they’re so rare. When you find it in people,

 

  It’s just an incredibly immeasurable inheritance. You know, Jesus said, you know, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

 

  Yeah, and we’ll talk about some of these promises attached to faithfulness.

 

  And faithfulness is a huge thing, too. And it’s such a, the promises attached to it are so huge that it doesn’t just impact you, it actually impacts your children generations after you. And I’ll share this verse before we break, but we’ll come back to it. But it says, in Proverbs 20:6 and 7, “Most men will proclaim each his own goodness, but who can find a faithful man?”

 

  This is saying faithfulness is a very rare thing. “The righteous man walks in his integrity. His children are blessed after him.”

 

  Amen, praise God.

 

  So if you choose to walk in faithfulness and just, you know, just be faithful to what God has called you to do and just not be, you know, so impacted and influenced by just, you know, what you’re seeing on the surface, but you’re gonna be a faithful person, it says your children are blessed after you. You know, this fruit, it’s so amazing that your children will be blessed after you. And I know that part of the blessing on my life, on my, you know, two brothers’ lives, that we’re all incredibly blessed, but a big part of that blessing is because my parents were faithful to what God called them to do.

 

  And, man, that’s just a super exciting thing. So when you choose to be faithful, just stick, day in, day out, with what God has called you to do, be where God has called you to be,

 

  And don’t just be tossed about so much.

 

  It actually impacts your children after you.

 

  Praise God. So we’re gonna take a short break, and then we’re gonna come back after this break. I want you to stay tuned. We’re gonna talk about some of these promises, some of these blessings that are connected to faithfulness, praise God. And God is a faithful God. And when you let His faith fullness flow through you, you’re gonna see a lot of good fruit in your life. So stay tuned. Blessings. Friends, I certainly hope that you’ve been enjoying watching this broadcast. My son, Aaron, taught this series on the supernatural fruit of the Holy Spirit here in church, live, and it is fantastic teaching. In fact, I had one of my staff say, “That’s one of the best teaching that he’s ever done.” So you can get these live teachings from the church by accessing our website, free, at www.CharisChristianCenter.com.

 

  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. We’ve been talking about the supernatural fruit of faith.

 

  Mm-hm.

 

  And thank God for faith, or faithfulness, as the new King James. I actually believe, in the Greek, it’s faith,

 

  Mm-hm.

 

  But I believe when you are a person of faith and you let faith work, you will be a faithful person.

 

  Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith, it’s impossible to please God. For He that comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”

 

  And I like it. In one translation, it says, “He must believe both that God is, and He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” So when you have faith, you believe that God is, and a result of really believing that is that you diligently seek Him. So it’s faith and faithfulness tied together.

 

  And we talked about how faithfulness, it’s one of the most rare fruits. Now that we’re getting to these last three fruits, which really deal with your relationship with yourself, faithfulness, or faith, being one of those. It’s incredibly rare, but incredibly large blessing attached to it. We said in Proverbs 20:6 and 7, “Most men will proclaim each his own goodness, but who can find a faithful man? The righteous man walks in his integrity, his children are blessed after him.” You know, when I see faithfulness in people, it’s extremely valuable.

 

  And, man, when you can operate in that, you know, it’s a very important fruit, actually.

 

  Before I really invest a lot in a certain ministry, I actually want to see faithfulness.

 

  If faithfulness isn’t there, to me, I’m gonna kinda stay away. If someone’s just very flaky, I tend, you know, and they’re trying to impact other people, influence other people, I don’t, you know, if they’re flaky themselves, the people that they impact are gonna be flaky as well.

 

  And sometimes I just see patterns of flakiness.

 

  And I tend to stay away from, just, people who spread flakiness. I wanna be around people who spread faithfulness. And the Bible says, “You will know them by their fruit.”

 

  You know, a lot of people wanna be known by their giftings.

 

  But it’s better to know people by their fruit. And faithfulness, because it’s a rare thing, it’s harder to find. It actually takes time to see if someone’s faithful.

 

  And so, you know, I love people who’ve been very faithful to the call of God on their life for decades.

 

  You know, if people just tend to hop around one place to the next, you know?.

 

  Yeah. It just shows what’s in their heart. And, you know, we live in a world that is devoid of honoring real, lasting relationships.

 

  And one thing, I think you brought this up in your teaching somewhere, in the fruit of the spirit, you know, the Bible says, “Your own friend, and your father’s friend, do not forsake,” in the Book of Proverbs. So my father died when I was just 17 years old, but I sought, and I have sought for my whole life to honor people who were friends of my father. In other words, if they were friends of my father, I was gonna be their friend.

 

  And I seek long-term relationships. You know, Andrew Wommack, for instance, I’ve been in a relationship with Andrew Wommack for 45 years.

 

  Praise God. And that relationship has produced tremendous fruit in my life.

 

  We’ve actually been here pastoring at Charis Christian Center for 22 years. We started this church. And, you know what, we have families that have been with us,

 

  You know, since we started. And we started with just Mike and Mary Peterson, and then Greg Trap, and he married Kim, and they’ve been in our church for over 22 years. And their lives abound with blessings.

 

  Praise God, when you get connected with people, and I’m not saying that every relationship that you build needs to go out into eternity, but I’m saying there’s a lot of people that they just don’t have very good long-term relationships. And I believe that is more unhealthy than healthy. And faithfulness, you know, it takes time for this fruit to really be demonstrated and to be present, but it’s a very essential fruit, you know?

 

  And it goes along with all the other fruit. You know, you don’t wanna just say, “I just,” you know, “I just, I only love on Sundays,” or, “I’m only patient on Fridays when I’m off work.” You know, faithfulness needs to be present and attached to all the other fruit of the Spirit as well. Like, you need to continually, you know-

 

  Well, you have the fruit of the Spirit in you, in Christ.

 

  Yeah.

 

  So you have the ability, it may be hard, but you have the ability to love everybody. You have the ability to forgive everybody. You have the ability to operate in joy, in peace, in patience. And patience took me a long time to develop. And I believe I’m becoming more and more patient.

 

  But, you know,

 

  And patience is really

 

  It hasn’t all been easy.

 

  Important too, you know, and we talked about long suffering, and that’s where I talked about, you know, being a person of honor for a long period of time.

 

  Honoring relationships

 

  Right.

 

  Over a long period of time, and not just cutting off people

 

  Right.

 

  When you don’t get what you want.

 

  Let’s go ahead and talk about some more of these blessings that are connected with faithfulness.

 

  Well, I wanna talk, actually, about faithfulness, and just the importance of it, because it’s one of those tests in life that you’re gonna have to keep taking until you pass it.

 

  There’s some tests in life you’re gonna keep taking until you pass it. And some people are just trying to make a name for themselves, proclaim their own goodness, but if you don’t pass the faithfulness test,

 

  The only promotion that you’re gonna have is self-promotion. And I’d rather have God be the one that promotes me than rather me proclaiming my own goodness and just promoting myself. But faithfulness, it’s super, it comes first.

 

  When you prove yourself faithful, God will give you giftings and talents and abilities after that. 2 Timothy 2, says, “And the things that you have heard from me, among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” So sometimes, in the body of Christ, we look for people who have-

 

  Talent.

 

  Talent. Or charm, personality, you know, notoriety, fame. And the moment that, you know, we get ahold of ’em, we’re looking for that. And then we’re trying to put them in a position and say, “All right, be faithful.” You know, I remember a few years ago, there’s a famous rap artist who became a believer. He might still believe, I don’t really know, but because he came out with a Christian album, everyone was trying to put him on a platform. Major, big platforms, because he had a lot of notoriety, but then a year later, his whole life has fallen apart. And, you know,

 

  Nobody wants to know him.

 

  No one wants to have,

 

  I’ve seen this happen.

 

  You know, but people are trying to take someone who had, you know, connections and fame and influence, and then,

 

  Right.

 

  You know, wish and pray and hope that they might be faithful.

 

  Right.

 

  But they don’t, they don’t follow through. But faithfulness comes first. And if you continually be a faithful person, God is actually gonna give you ability.

 

  You know, I went to Lakewood Church in Houston, when I lived in Houston for six years when I was working on my master’s and doctorate at Rice University, and, you know, a lot of people don’t realize this about Joel Osteen, but he actually worked behind the scenes for 16 years for his father in the TV side of things. So he would actually edit all of his father’s, you know, television programs, and would just do this for 16 years. And he actually never even preached, never came in front of the camera, until-

 

  Until the Sunday before his dad passed away. That was the first time he ever preached. And then, you know, his family decided to make him the senior pastor there, and he’d only preached one time, just the week before, when his dad was in the hospital.

 

  But he was very faithful. And, you know, starting out, he was very nervous. He said, “I didn’t really know what I was doing preaching,” but God gave him ability, and gave him wisdom and knowledge in how to lead that church. And it actually grew very quickly, and it was already large at the time, but it grew very quickly after. But he was faithful, and then God gave him ability to do what God had called him to do.

 

  So keep being faithful to what God has called you to do. And promotion really comes from God, don’t worry about promotion.

 

  God will take care of promotion, He’ll take care of the ability, just keep being faithful.

 

  Amen. It’s so important, you know, we’re talking about, you know, number one, you know, your character, right? So people need character and then they need capability, but they also need compatibility. And that’s how well we get along with other people. And, you know, I read something from a pastor of a very large church, years and years ago, so I read this over 20 years ago, but he said, “I’ve been working, you know, for over 20 years, building my dream team.” And that’s kinda happened here at Charis Christian Center. It’s taken us about, you know, we’re 22 years, and it’s just, you know, really about a year ago that God really secured our leadership team. And we have the best team that we’ve ever had in ministry here at Charis Christian Center. But we have all those things really working in our staff, and they are not only character, you’ve gotta have character if you’re gonna be involved in Christian ministry, but they have capability, but they also have compatibility.

 

  And this character and compatibility, two of those three things really are connected to the fruit of the Spirit.

 

  Yeah, and compatibility really flows with meekness.

 

  Right.

 

  Which we’ll talk about tomorrow, and self-control,

 

  Well, love, long suffering.

 

  Yeah.

 

  All these things. So I hope you’ve enjoyed the broadcast. I mean, I loved this teaching when Aaron shared it, but, you know, you need to, you know, if you get connected in that faithful area, you’re gonna have a lot of blessings come to you. So I wanna say a great big thank you to all of you that are here, that are watching, I wanna tell you, you can go to our website, www.CharisChristianCenter.com. We have literally hundreds of hours of teachings that are available free of charge. And you can call and ask for prayer right now. Thank you so much, and blessings.

 

  We have access to the supernatural fruit of the Spirit, as believers. When we choose to walk in the Spirit, we will receive the inheritance that God has made available to us. We’d like to bless you with a digital copy of the teaching, “The Supernatural Fruit of the Holy Spirit,” a $20 value, free of charge. Download it today at www.CharisChristianCenter.com.

 

  Save the date for our Women’s Rejoice Conference, February 8th through 10th, 2024.

 

  My house, and everywhere I walk, there is bright glory and light shining, because God is with me. This is gonna be a lot of fun. I’ve also invited you this year.

 

  We’re gonna have our very good friend, Cathy Duplantis, here with us, sharing at our Women’s Rejoice Conference.

 

  It’s time to rejoice!

 

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