Unless The Lord Builds The House Part 3 – Lawson & Barbara Perdue

Unless The Lord Builds The House Part 3

Unless The Lord Builds The House Part 3 with Pastors Lawson and Barbara Perdue. In today’s episode, discover the power of relationships and how the family is one of the most foundational building blocks in society. As you allow God to build your family He is able to change entire cultures!

Unless The Lord Builds The House Transcript

Praise the Lord, friends. I’m so glad that you’re connected with us today. We’re gonna be sharing today from my wife Barbara’s teaching on “Unless the Lord Builds the House.” We’re gonna be talking about the power of relationships in building the family unit, in building your community. You know, the family is the basic building block of society. And so, open your heart and receive the good Word of God. I know you’re gonna be blessed today. Friends, I’m so glad that you’re with us today. We’ve been talking about building strong families, and we’re actually teaching from Barbara’s series this week on “Unless the Lord Builds the House.” We started by talking about three things that we need to instill in our children: a love for the Word of God, a love for their family, and a practical trade. Today we’re gonna be talking about a love for our family. We need to teach our children to love their families.

Amen. So again, we just wanna welcome you. I am so excited to be sharing and being a part. We started off in Psalm 127:1: “Unless the Lord builds the house, “they that build it build it in vain, labor in vain.” It’s really important that our lives and our families’ lives, our homes, are built on godly principles. So then we began, yesterday or the last time we were together, we began, well, how do you do that? And we said there’s really three areas that parents need to really empower their children, and that is love the Word, love God. We talked about that, and today, as my husband introduced it, we’re gonna be talking about loving your family, how to have healthy relationships, how to have a healthy relationship with God, with our families, in our communities, in the church. Colossians 3:17 really brings this out so clear, and I love it. We’re gonna start in Colossians 3:17 and read through verse 24. But it says, “And whatever you do, in word or deed, “do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, “giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Then it goes on into all these relationships. It starts off in verse 18, says, “Wives, “submit to your own husbands, as is fitting to the Lord. “Husbands, love your wives, “and do not be bitter toward them. “Children, obey your parents in all things, “for this is well-pleasing to the Lord. “Fathers, do not provoke your children, “lest they become discouraged. “Bond servants,” or people in the workplace, “obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, “not with eye-service as men pleasers, “but in sincerity of heart, fearing God.” Then verse 23 and 24 wraps all this up. We went through all these relationships. It started, whatever you do, do it as unto the Lord. It went into all these relationships, you know, in the home, in the workplace, and then it says in verse 23, “And whatever you do, do it heartily “as to the Lord and not to men, “knowing that from the Lord, you will receive the reward “of the inheritance, for you serve the Lord Christ.” You know, I think it’s really important. How do we have these healthy relationships, in our home, husbands and wives and parents and children and in the workplace, and I say even serving, serving in our church families, our church communities, or serving and volunteering in your communities. How do we do this and go about it, again, having healthy relationships? And a lot of what we do, whether it’s in our homes or in the workplace, let’s all admit it: it’s very repetitious. Everything we do is very repetitious, and I think it’s so important. How do you have that energy, that drive, that passion to get up out of bed every day and start the day off anew with a smile? Well, I know ultimately, I am doing this as unto the Lord. I am serving my husband. I am serving my children. I’m serving in the church. I’m serving in my community. Ultimately, I am doing it for the glory of God.

[Lawson] Amen.

You know, some people can be hard to please. Maybe you’re in a situation right now in a job. I’ve had people say, “What do I do about a job? “This person that I have to work with is difficult.” I said, “Do it as unto the Lord.” God’s gonna give you the wisdom what to do next or bless you with another position or a raise or a promotion, but know that you have the favor of God. But you know, I was just thinking, as with were raising our children, I was either changing diapers, you know, cleaning the toilets, or we even had cattle, while we were pastoring. We had cattle for a number of years, and it just seemed like I would help with the cattle, and there was a long of dung with cattle. People would ask me on a Sunday, “Well, what did you do, Pastor Barbara, all week long?” Well, how do you glorify changing diapers, scrubbing toilets, and working with large animals? Well, I’m a CEO or I’m a manager of something very important. I felt like I was the official expert pooper scooper. I say that jokingly, but every day I get up, both my husband and I get up just excited, ready for a new day, because ultimately, we are doing it as unto the Lord, and I know that he’s watching me. You know, there’s probably a lot of people that didn’t see. I didn’t have reality TV following me around glorifying when I was nursing our children or changing their diapers, but I was doing it as unto the Lord. I knew that the Lord saw what I was doing, and he was well pleased, and he has blessed me. He has rewarded me with inheritance. And ultimately, no matter who we are or what stage of life we’re in right now, the key is, understand that you’re really serving, in the home, in our families, in the workplace, in the church, in our communities, I’m doing it as unto the Lord, and I’m gonna do it heartily. I’m gonna do it with everything I have, knowing that he is watching and he will reward me.

Now, you said something powerful. You said that the Lord has rewarded you with an inheritance, and really, you’re talking about your children and grandchildren and what God has done. But you know, God’s inheritance, the scripture talks about this in Ephesians chapter one in Paul’s prayer, is in the saints. And so, God’s inheritance is in his people.

Amen.

Proverbs 31 talks about a virtuous woman, “who can find a virtuous woman,” Proverbs 31:10, “for her price is far above rubies.” He goes on to say, “Her children rise up and call her blessed, and her own works will praise her in the gates.” And we’re experiencing that, and you’re experiencing that. Our children have done very, very well in life, and they’re serving God. They’re blessed in their work. They’re blessed in their families. But I count a lot of that as due to the investment that you made in our children when they were young. So you put a lot of value in them, and I believe God puts value in his children. God puts value in us. So you were talking about, how can we teach our children to love their family? And the first aspect you really put down in your notes was demonstration. We need to demonstrate to them our love for each other. You know, children exceed to see love between their father and their wife.

[Barbara] Father and mother.

And children need to see a husband that loves his wife, that serves his wife, that goes all out, as the scripture says, in his love for the wife, and they need to see a wife that respects and honors her husband. There’s a community thing going on there. In Ephesians chapter five, the Scripture really talks about wives, respect your husbands, but it also says, “Husbands, love your wives,” and it says three ways that we’re to do that. He says, husbands, that we’re to love our wives as Christ loved the church. So that’s spiritually speaking. So Christ loved the church when the church was making all the wrong choices and doing all the wrong things, but Christ loved us in that condition. Christ demonstrated his love toward us in that he died for us while we were sinners. And so, that’s a spiritual aspect of love. But then he says there’s a physical aspect. He goes on in Ephesians chapter five and he says, “Love your wives as your own body. “No man hates his own flesh, “but nourishes it and cherishes it. “He cares for his own body.” And that’s talking about physically. So, physically speaking, we need to care for our wife. We need to provide for our wives. I’m talking about what the scripture says. I’m not talking about society. I’m talking about the Bible. And we need to go back to the Bible. If we want the Bible’s results, we need to go with the Bible way of lifestyle.

I like what you said: we look to the Bible. Sometimes, too many times in the past, I’ve been around young women or people, and they look to TV or they look to actors and actresses as their example. Keyword: actors, actresses. They are acting.

[Lawson] Oh, you don’t wanna let Hollywood be your example.

You don’t want Hollywood to be the example in our homes, at all. We want the Bible to show us.

The Word of God.

And God’s love, the Word of God. And you were talking about something that we have here in our notes, demonstrating, obeying the Lord, doing it heartily as unto the Lord, not to man, and you were bringing up the teaching that we find in Ephesians. This is in Ephesians 5:21 through 24. We’re gonna start there and read more. But again, how do we teach children to love their family? How do we teach them to have healthy relationships? And what you brought out is, we need to have respect for one another. If you’re gonna respect somebody, you’re gonna treat them with kindness. You’re not gonna treat them like dirt. But I really like this. A lot of times, it’s not always read and brought out. But Ephesians 5:21 says, “Submitting to one another in the fear of God,” and I like this in another translation. It says it this way: “out of respect for Christ, “be courteously reverent to one another.” So in other words, you know, I can do it if I do it, again, as unto the Lord. I’m going to submit myself to my husband, and we’re gonna submit ourselves as spouses, as husband and wife, really out of a respect for our love for Christ.

Amen.

Then it goes on to say, “Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.” Again, another translation puts it this way: “Wives, understand and support your husbands “in ways that show your support for Christ. “The husband provides leadership to his wife,” we’re reading Ephesians 5:21-24, “the way Christ does “to his church, not by domineering, but by cherishing.” So I wanna bring out, this is really talking about guidelines in a Christian home. And so, just as the church submits to Christ as he exercises such leadership, wives should likewise submit to their husbands.” In other words, we don’t want anyone to take this wrong. This is talking about wives submitting to husbands as they are submitted to the Lord in Christ.

Let’s talk a little bit about submission, because I think a lot of times, people get the wrong understanding of that word.

I agree.

But it’s talking about a healthy respect. It’s not talking about blind obedience. I remember one time, I was a really young pastor, probably 24 years old, and some people in a neighboring down were having challenges. The wife had come to us some, and the husband, they were from a different church and a different background. But they asked about this pastor’s wife at the church in the neighboring town and me to counsel them. So we came into this meeting, and you know, I’m, you know, wet behind the years, 24-year-old pastor. He’s like, “You obey me!” I told him, “You’re not submitted to God or anything, “and why should she obey you?” And he got mad and stomped out of the room, and went outside, and then in about five or 10 minutes, he walked back in, and he sat down and he said, “You know what, I wanna make this marriage work.” And they were married, they were in their 50s, and they were married ’til death do us part, another 20 years after that. But we got to the heart of some issues. And sometimes, people have a wrong perspective of the Word of God. But you can obey somebody and not submit to them. You can also submit to somebody and not obey them. It says “submit as unto the Lord.” So it’s talking about a respect. In other words, I’ll give an example. When our son Aaron was two years old, I told him to take out the trash or something, and he stomped down the hall to do it, saying, “No, no, no.” And you know, what he was saying is, he was obeying me, because he knew, we used the Proverbs manner of discipline, that he would get disciplined if he didn’t obey me. But he was saying, “I’m not submitting,” ’cause he’s strong willed. They used to say you break a child’s will. Well, you don’t break their will. You bend their will. You get their will going in the right direction, and that’s a whole ‘nother teaching. But we need to have this love and respect and working between husbands and wives and give children a good example to live up to. I know I was counseling a couple recently, and you know, they were just really having some flesh fits. That’s a good way to put it.

But as I was talking to them, I talked to the husband, because he was really pushing his wife’s buttons. So he knew in a certain area that he was being difficult. And he was claiming that he wasn’t part of the problem, but I said, “Listen, when you see your wife “is in this state of mind, then that is not the time “to go there and discuss these issues. “You have to wait ’til a better time “to discuss those issues.” And they got over it, and they’re doing better. But you know what, we need to have a love, a compassion for our wives, spiritually, physically, emotionally. I didn’t bring that out, but when it says love your wife as yourself, what the scripture is actually talking about, that’s talking about the soul and the self. You used to say this when we were first married: “I just want you to be my best friend.” Now, we just celebrated 38 years of marriage, and praise God, we are best friends, praise God! And the highest authority in my life is Jesus, and the second highest is my wife, praise God. And I listen, I value you. You value me. We work together very well in building the body of Christ, in doing what God’s called us to do and managing our home, so on and so forth. But thank God for these things. But I can have a healthy love for you, physically, spiritually, emotionally. You can have a healthy respect for me, and we’re working with what God has given us. You know, a lot of times, we don’t work with God’s given us. So we need to work with God and let God be first place in our life. We’re gonna be back in just a few seconds, so stay tuned. Praise the Lord, friends, I am so excited to be sharing with you this great teaching I’m sharing from my series on I and II Timothy on “Raising Leaders,” Part I and Part II; also, my wife’s series on “Unless the Lord Builds the House.” Then we have a special edition “Faith That is Taught and Caught” by my wife Barbara. And you know what, we are making these things available to you, because we know the principles in these will help your family, just like they’ve been a blessing to us. And you know, we’re not talking about something that doesn’t work. We’re talking about something that we have proved in our own family, that we have proved in our church for years and years and years. You know what, the Word of God is true, and when you live your life and conduct your family by principles of the scriptures, you will find the blessing that God promises in his Word. So we want you to call us today and get this product. Thanks! Praise the Lord, friends, we’re back. We’ve been teaching the Word of God, talking about teaching our children really to love their families. And we said that this needs to happen in different aspects. And we’ve talked a lot about husbands and wives, but we really haven’t talked a lot about just our personal relationships with our children. I think we need to talk about that. So I’m gonna let Barbara kind of jump in here and take off.

Well, praise the Lord. Again, we’re talking about how to teach, how to have healthy relationships. So we did read out of Colossians 3:17-24, and then we began ministering and teaching in the Book of Ephesians, and what I wanna bring out, as we were talking, we had to take a break, but you know, when we got married, we were very young. All of us have a lot to learn, and our children are really watching. Children learn more about what you do than what you say. It doesn’t matter who you are. There are all times where situations need to be resolved. And the time to resolve those is not when everyone’s hungry or everyone’s tired. You need to wait for the right time. When a husband and wife has things that need resolved, wait ’til everybody’s well rested. It isn’t about a scream match or who’s right or who’s wrong. It’s like, we need to resolve this. So pick a good time to do that, praise God.

And there are tools that you can use actually to resolve issues. Dr. Doug Weiss has a great ministry, and he has a book out that’s really ministered to us and really helped us. It’s talking about 100 days to intimacy, and some very practical aspects. But he also has a tool on conflict resolution and where you get together, you have a peaceable conversation, and the wife comes up with three solutions to what she seconds as the problem, and the husband comes up with three solutions, and then you get together and discuss those and see which one can work. And I know we have some friends, and they’ve been married for year and years, but they have terrible conflict. But they got that tool, and they started using it, and they found out, it really works!

Well, praise God. There are a lot of different things out there, and I would just suggest, and what I have found out with us personally and with our friends and other people, just don’t give up. You know, sometimes there were books on marriage I liked, but it didn’t really resonate with my husband, and so, don’t give up. Even if you go somewhere or buy a book and you’re like, “There’s just no hope for us,” don’t give up. Go talk to someone else. Find another pastor or a counselor or have someone else pray for you, or check out another book, because everyone kind of has a different way of ministering, and that will help you. But there’s something in Proverbs 14:1. It says, “How the wise women builds her house, “but the foolish pulls it down with her own hands.” Again, the wise woman builds her house. Well, how do we build our homes? On the Word of God, praying for one another. Speak the Word of God over. What are we speaking over our family? And I’m just sharing this. There’s just a couple things as a very young wife, and this scripture really resonated with me, and there’s another thing that I told only God, and a prophetess came and read my mail, came to a special service. But I really like this in Proverbs. But there was something else I told God. I said, “As long as I live, I’m gonna do my husband good “and not evil, all the days of his life.” I just settled that in my mind when we got married, that I was only gonna do him good and not evil. We don’t need to be mean to each other, that we can do good. I can be the big person, or you can be the big person. Again, there’s godly wisdom, how to resolve different situations. We all come from our own homes and our own backgrounds, but it was so amazing. I wanted to bring this up, because it was after we already had children, they were in our home, and some of ’em were already teenagers at this time, but I remember having special meetings and this prophetess looking at me, and she said exactly, she said, “You haven’t raised three sons, no, but four sons.” Then she brought out what I had only told God: “that you have always said that you would only do him good “and not evil, all the days of your life, “and your reward is coming.”

Praise God. You know, that was amazing. That was Bobbie Jean Merck, and that was years ago. But people need to realize: we were married, but we were very young. I was only 19, and I didn’t get a revelation of grace until I was 30. So we had been married for just over 10 years before I got a revelation of grace.

And can I just say, everyone told us, “Oh, after you’re married 10 years, you’ll get better!” It got worse! I’m just being honest. Remember, our van broke down. Everyone said, oh, I remember our 10th anniversary. It just seemed like things got worse.

That is the year that I got a revelation of grace.

Amen!

And when I got a revelation of grace, I was so legalistic, it was terrible. And you said, “You know what, if you wouldn’t have got “a revelation of grace, I don’t believe our children “would be serving God like they’re serving God.” It really transformed how I treated you, I think, how I dealt with the children, and my whole approach to ministry and life was completely different when I got a revelation of grace. And it’s not about all what we do. It’s about what Jesus has done. And you know, these really two major themes in the New Testament: faith and grace. Grace essentially is what God has done for us in the person of God when he died and rose again, and faith is our positive response towards grace or towards the Gospel. But you know, before I got a revelation of grace, I think about 90% or my teaching and preaching was about what we need to do, and about 10% was about what Christ has done. I think since I got a revelation of grace, I’ve reversed that, and probably at least 75%, if not 90% of my preaching is about what Christ has done, and about 10% is about our response. Because if you don’t really understand grace, your faith is not going far fast. So we need to get a revelation of grace. And it changed, like I said, how I dealt with you, how I dealt with the children, how I dealt with ministry and life, and it really affected us in a positive, positive way.

You know, we had great family support. My mother was awesome. Actually, as my husband mentioned, we were only 19 and 20 when we got married, but it was the night before we got married my mother told me, “If you get in a fight with your husband, “you cannot come home.” And as we were married, she would never take sides. In other words, she always just told me to love my husband. But with that, my parents were aware that I married a Christian. No Christian’s perfect. Like you said, you were 19. You had a lot to learn. But my parents were aware I married a Christian. I was a Christian. And our families had known each other for a couple of years, so it wasn’t like we didn’t know each other. So there’s different aspects there. But my mother really encouraged me to do things, and I’m smiling, because I’m just gonna be honest. We’re talking about teaching our children to love their family, how to have healthy relationships, and we were just being honest that there were times we had to learn how to resolve things, and you even brought out your own testimony, that for quit a while, you were really more under a law. Like, I would say today, our marriage isn’t good; it’s great. Our marriage is phenomenal, ’cause the Word of God does work. But I was smiling and laughing as my husband was sharing because during that time, I felt like you always reached down at me. You took the Word of God and preached at me, and I thought, “Well, I’ve read the Bible. “If you wanna do it that way, “I can do it that way.” And I remember, you went somewhere, and I actually went to my husband’s office and wrote down all these marriage scriptures, but not about the wife, but about the husband, and I plastered. We’re being honest. We’re people. I’m letting you know, you gotta have a sense of humor. But I thought, “Well, I don’t believe the Word of God “is to be used this way to preach at one another, “but if you’re the leader, if you wanna do it that way,” and I wrote down all these scriptures on husbands, but not just the scripture.

She was gone for an hour. I thought she left me.

No, it wasn’t just that I wrote the scriptures. I wrote ’em out in every translation.

My whole desk, I had this big, nice desk in my church office, my pastor’s office, and it was plastered with scriptures. The next day, I went and found it, and I told Barbara, and this is legalism. This is a picture of legalism. I said, “What would people think?” Well, that’s what legalism. It’s so focused on what everybody else thinks. It’s not focused on, what can we do to build this relationship and make it right? How can we do that? Listen, I needed the Word. I needed a heart change, and God gave it to me, you know? And Andrew Wommack actually said this years ago, and I got a revelation of grace through his ministry. I’d known him at that point in time. You know, I was 30 years old. So for 16 years, I’d been going to his meetings, and he was actually preaching for me, but he said, “Listen, I have preached grace all around the world, “and I’m convinced, if God doesn’t give people “a revelation of grace, they’re just not gonna get it.” And you know, if you read II Corinthians chapter three, verse 17 and 18, it really talks about that. So it takes the Spirit of the Lord to give you a revelation of grace. But when you get a focus on grace, you take your focus off so much your performance and the other person’s inadequacies, and you start saying, “Hey, how can I make this up? “How can I make the difference?” That’s the difference between law and grace. Law makes a demand, but it doesn’t give you anything to help you fulfill it. But Jesus is the grace of God, and he makes up the difference. So Jesus is far more perfect than anybody that’s ever lived, but yet, he helps us in our weakness and he strengthens us so we can become the perfect mate. You know, we’re not perfect outside. Our spirit’s perfect when we’re born again, but we can adapt to one another and we can work together and we can build each other and not tear each other down ad that’s what were really talking about.

And we’re just running out of time. But you know, husbands are to love their wives, and that’s why I was gonna bring out another message that says go all out in your life for your wives, and I’d say that’s what you do today for me, is you go all out in your life, and that’s what Jesus has done for us.

Praise God.

But we teach our children how to love their family by serving one another.

Amen, keep serving Jesus, and keep serving each other. We’ve got a great product bundle, and today, we’re teaching from “Unless the Lord Builds a House,” Barbara’s teaching. If you need prayer, if I want product, if you want a partner, give us a call. Blessings.

[Announcer] What does it take to raise godly children? In this package containing “Unless the Lord Build the House” “Faith That is Taught and Caught,” and “Raising Leaders Part I and II,” you’ll learn spiritual principles and practical advice to help you raise up the next generation. You can get this special package for $49 when you call 719-418-4000, or visit charischristiancenter.com.

Friends, I’m pastor Lawson Perdue, and I love church! I’m excited about church. You know, Jesus said, “I will build my church, “and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” I wanna 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 a.m., or you can just get on our website and watch us at charischristiancenter.com. Blessings.

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