Unless The Lord Builds The House Part 4
Unless The Lord Builds The House Part 4 with Pastors Lawson and Barbara Perdue. In today’s episode of Grace for Today, discover a key principal from scripture for raising you children; teaching them a practical trade. Be empowered to care for every part of your child: spirit, soul, and body.
Destined to Win
When Jesus saved you, your destiny changed completely! He radically transformed us and brought us from death to life, from sin to righteousness, and from defeat to victory. Pastor Lawson goes through the book of Ephesians in detail and shows us exactly why we are destined to win. We are no longer fighting to be overcomers, we are made victorious through Jesus and any weapon formed against us will not prosper! Jesus came to give us life and have that life more abundantly! Because of God and his great love, we are destined to win!
Unless The Lord Builds The House Transcript
Praise the Lord friends. I’m so glad that you tuned in with us today. We’re teaching on the family today. We’re actually teaching from Barbara’s series, “Unless The Lord Builds The House.” And we’re gonna be talking today about the value of training your children in a practical trade and what a good work ethic is worth it is. It’s amazing what that will do for you in life. So open your heart and receive God’s good work. Blessed. Thank God friends. I’m so glad that you’re here today and Barbara’s here. We’re sharing from her teaching on, “Unless The Lord Builds The House” and we’ve been talking really about three things that we need to teach our children. We need to teach them to love the Word, to love their family and a practical trade. And today we’re gonna talk about a practical trade. Before Barbara gets started, I just wanna share this. You know a lot of Christians are very focused on the spiritual side, so they’re very focused on the word of God. They’re very focused on church and on, you know that aspect of raising our children, which is good, but a lot of Christians do not focus on the natural side. So they don’t focus on education, sports, different things like that. Well, did you know what your children are not 100% spirit. Your children are spirit, soul, and body. And so if you want them to do well in life, you not only have to focus on the spiritual side and teach them the word of God. They need to get the practical aspect and of just understanding, you know their physical aspects and understanding their emotional and mental aspects. So we need to teach our children spirit, soul, and body. And so we’re gonna share a little bit about that. Barbara you can go ahead.
Yes. I’m really excited. I’m gonna start in Proverbs 22:6, and we have a lot of different points we wanna bring out today. Again, I’m very excited about the Word of God, but Proverbs 22:6, we’re talking about teaching our children a practical trade. It says, “Train up a child in the way he should go. And when he’s old, he will not depart from it.” And when you study this out, a lot of times people think this is talking about a spiritual part of our children, but it’s not in the amplified. It says, train up a child in the way he should go in keeping with his individual gift or bent. And when he is old, he will not depart from it. The message says, point your kids in the right direction when they’re old they won’t be lost. We to know that we are created for a special purpose, divine destinies. And I like how it says, again, train them up, keeping with their individual gift or bent. We raised three sons and they all had different gifts and all those gifts and annointings needed to be nurtured. and so praise that.
And our three sons grew up in the church. We were pastors from the time Aaron was just a little boy. Andrew was born. We were already pastored when Andrew was born and Peter was born. So they spent their whole child hood life in the church. And teenage years till they graduated from high school. And we’ve been in the ministry the whole time. And you know what? Our children are serving God, they’re loving Jesus. They’re not going to hell. They’re going to heaven. They have good families. They’re well connected into church. They go to all of them to different churches. Aaron our oldest son attends our church because he works for us. And he’s our administrator and associate pastor. But you know Andrew our middle son works in engineering. He’s a part owner of the business that he works for. He’s been tremendously blessed. He goes to a very good church. He’s helped the pastor build two, not one physical building, but two churches. And you know what? He’s on the worship team. He played for a long time. He played nearly every Sunday and now I think he plays every other Sunday, two services. And so he’s connected Peter and his wife, Kendra. They go to a good church. They’re leaders in their church, their givers, praise God. So all of our children have grown up in the church, but you know what? We taught them and we invested in them, not only in the spiritual realm, but also in the natural realm. And so we taught our kids this when they were young, as as many areas of excellence, as you can develop in your life, then that will create doors of opportunity. You know a lot of parents wait till their children or children wait till they’re junior in high school. And they think, oh, my I’ve gotta get good grades. Or I’m not gonna be able to go to college kind of late you know. But you taught our kids. You told him, you told Aaron. I think before he went to kindergarten, listen, your dad is a pastor. He doesn’t make a lot of money. If you wanna do well in life, you need to do good in school. And so we started right there when they were five. And we had a focus on not only the scriptures and teaching them the word of God, but we had a focus on academics, education, sports, they got involved playing baseball when they were little. And we took them to their games and different things. Now we didn’t sacrifice the church for that. In fact, when we were in Southeast Colorado, they made a rule that they didn’t start any baseball games till after one o’clock because our kids were good and they wanna be on the team. And so it changed the whole league and it made a difference. Praise God and even here, when we moved to Colorado Springs, Peter continued to play baseball. God made provision for that and you know Peter a lot of times we had two services by then. And so he would go to the early service and then go to show up at the ball game. Maybe he’d be a little bit later, whatever, but you know what we had them involved in sports. We had them involved in academics. They all got good educations. God blessed them, gave them scholarships and different ways that they could go. It was really amazing God’s provision for our children. In fact, Aaron talks about it sometimes. And I literally weep to, to, to, you know with joy, to think about how God has taken care of our children. And when we first started this church, Paul Stewart took Aaron and went to Carnegie Mellon University with him in Pennsylvania, went up to Boston with him and saw a conservatory there, music conservatory. And you know Paul was our youth leader. And you know we didn’t have a very big youth group, part of the time it was only our three boys, but they’ve grown up well, rounded and blessed. And they’re serving in the church. And you know sometimes people have all these ideas about the church has to do this and this and this. And you know what? If you’re in the right place doing the right thing, God is gonna take care of your children. I know when Aaron went to Rice University to get his master’s in his doctorate, one of the very first Sundays he went to Joel Osteen’s church and you know a church of 40,000 people that meet there every weekend. And this man called him out and had seen him playing his flute with Jamie Womack on a stage before years before and said, is this who you are? And he said, listen, I’m gonna save a seat for you every Sunday. And you know, art, God has blessed our children and took taken care of them. And God took care of Aaron so wonderfully when he was in Pittsburgh. And we’ve just seen this through the years that God has provided for our children in every way. He provided for them in music, provided for them in sports. I know when Aaron started playing the flute, we took him what he was in sixth grade. You took him to a master’s class at University of Colorado with Alexis still one of the top flute players in the world. And she was teaching there at University of Colorado. Now she’s originally from Australia and she told you, you need to buy him a good flute and it’s gonna cost you six to $10,000. And so we did that and you know one of our people in the church and they still come here on occasion and their children come to this church in Colorado Springs, gave us a $1,000 towards that. I remember one time, you know I was over at the church on a Saturday and I was praying and Aaron was over there playing his flute in the sanctuary. And these ladies came and they stopped at the church. They didn’t stop at the gas station or the restaurant to go to the bathroom. They stopped at the church. I was parked on the side of the building away. And they said, “Could we use the restroom?” I said, “Yes.” And they came in and heard him play it. And they’re like, “Listen, we wanna play for him.” I let him play for them. They gave him a $1,000. God has provided for our children. God, and you know what? God has no respect of persons. If He’ll do it for us, He’ll do it for whoever will believe it. I better let you share, praise God.
Well, I like what you brought out. What we really taught our children is you know God your heaven Father can take care of all your needs. We were pastored in a very small agriculture area, as we were raising our family. And I wanted our children to know that nothing was gonna stop them from doing what they were called to do, regardless of who their parents were, how much money we made or didn’t make. But that God in His unlimited resources would help them get where they need to be. So we read Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child the way he should go and when he is old, he won’t depart from it.” Talking about nurturing those gifts and annointings in their life. And if you remember when we started this teaching, we started in Psalm 127 and in verse four, this is Psalm 127:4. It said, “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior. So are the children of one’s youth.” And I bring this out in my teaching is when you think about an arrow and years ago, whether they were hunting or went to war and they would take a stick. There’s no such thing as a straight stick, but these sticks would have bins in them. And they would have to shape this arrow to fly through the air, understanding those bins. And so we don’t break people into what they’re supposed to do, but we wanna nurture those gifts and bins. And so again, when you think about an arrow, what is the purpose of an arrow? What is it that we want an arrow to do? You want an arrow to hit the target? So as we were raising our children, and as we are part of our church community, we wanna see people of all ages, maybe you’re in a home and you didn’t have parents who are Christians or raise you with this. It’s never too late to apply or take the word of God into your life. But we wanted our children to hit their God given targets. And so I tell people this, so maybe you didn’t have this training when you’re young and maybe you’re an adult now, but you know you can ask yourself, what am I good at? What are my strengths? And you may not realize that that’s a blessing. You may think everyone can do that. You need to ask yourself, what are your strengths? What brings you joy? And where do you see the need? And that will really help guide you to what you’re supposed to do.
Not only that, but what do other people recognize? Because sometimes people don’t recognize their own strength, but if it’s really a gift from God, then you know other people will recognize it also. It might take a period of time, but they will recognize that ability too.
Amen.
And so.
Praise God. So I hope that helps somebody out there. Again, we’re talking about practical trade, training up a child, and the way he should go, understanding like it said in Psalm 127:4, like arrows in the hand of a warrior well, hallelujah, an arrow is supposed to hit its target. And we just have a couple of things to bring out that children need boundaries and discipline. So we had that happening in our home. We wanted our children to be extraordinary, not ordinary. We taught them how to have a work ethic. It’s amazing again, how our culture right now is just like sit at home and wait for the government check. But you know we taught our children to have a good work ethic. And so just real briefly I’m gonna go over discipline. And then we’re gonna talk about some other things that I really wanna get done today, but children need boundaries and discipline did you know they have actually done studies on children. I’m talking like little kids, small children. They actually feel loved when there’s boundaries and discipline. There’s security in that understanding the definite boundaries, again and disciplining. And so Proverbs 29:15 says, “The rod and review give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.” There is a godly way to discipline our children and to raise them. You know I think about and Proverbs 29:17 says, “Correct your son and he will give you rest.” I know when we were raising our children, these are very strong scriptures, but this is in the Bible. Again, I remember when we were raising our children, there was a book that was out and it talked about quiet time that when children need a discipline, you just send them to the corner for quiet time. And there is definitely times again where we need to bring the energy level down. And I would always have a rest time, a nap time. They would have to go to their beds with their favorite book and stay there for 30 minutes. Lemme tell you what quiet time and who quiet time and rest time is for, moms. Children need godly discipline because they did something wrong. It’s not cause I’m angry or I’m mad, but they did something wrong and there’s consequences. They need immediate discipline. Moms need sent to the corner. Moms need quiet time. Moms need rest time. And so again, children need discipline, moms and dads need quiet time and sent to the corner. And so I would try to have time where they would play with their toys. We’d go outside. You know it’s great when children have energy, but go outside, let them run, let them play. And then we would have a time where everyone would have to go to their room. And for 30 minutes read their favorite books and they just knew that boundary. That’s what we did. We had quiet time in our home and it was really cause mom, me, I needed quiet time.
So praise the Lord and you know what? Solomon was the wisest man that ever lived until Jesus and Solomon gave us really good instruction in the Book of Proverbs on child training. And we use the Solomon method of child discipline. We believe in it. And you may think that you’re smarter than God, but you’re not smarter than God. And you’re not smarter than Solomon. Now you have the mind of Christ, but we need to go to the scriptures and we need to use the scriptures. And there’s a right and a wrong way to discipline. But again, you don’t do it because you’re anger, but you’ve gotta get your kids going in the right direction. And you know the Bible says that you spare their soul from hell. And you know if you can get a two year old going in the right direction, they’re not gonna be such trouble when they’re teenager. But if they’ve got you wrapped around their finger when they’re two, you’re probably gonna have some problems when they’re teenagers. And so it’s better to get them going the right direction when they’re little. And you know our youth pastor asked me, “Did you give Aaron a lot of spankings when he was little?” “And I did, he’s my only son.” He was very strong willed and I’m very idealistic. And so he probably got a little bit more than he needed, but he’s going a really healthy direction and it helped him. And so, you know we’re gonna be back in just a few seconds, but we’re gonna be talking when we come back about teaching our children to be extraordinary, not ordinary. So we’ll be back in just a few seconds. Praise the Lord friends. I am so excited to be sharing with you this great teaching I’m sharing from my series on 1 and 2 Timothy on “Raising Leaders, Part One and Part Two.” Also my wife’s series on “Unless The Lord Builds The House.” And then we have a special addition, “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 work. So we want you to call us today and get this product. Thanks. Praise the Lord. We’ve been sharing on training up our children in the way that they should go. And we’ve been teaching today about teaching them a practical trade. You know our oldest son studied music and he got his undergrad and he also not only got his undergrad in music, he also studied business administration, but then our middle son got his engineering degree in chemical engineering and now works in the gas and oil industry. And then our youngest son went to Princeton where he started out as an engineer and then moved over into business finance, which is what he ultimately does. And he’s works in a very high level at corporate finance, but we need to teach our children and you’ve got some great examples. So share some of those examples that you have.
Well, there’s a couple of things I really wanna make sure we get talked about here, a minister to before we end today, but we need to teach our children to be extraordinary, not ordinary, like dare to be different. How much effort does it take to be ordinary like zero effort? And the Bible has some neat examples. It says in Numbers 14:24, it was said about Caleb, how he had a different spirit. It was notable. There was something different about him. And it’s really talking about his love for God and obeying God but he had a different spirit. Daniel 5:12, the Bible says how Daniel had an excellent spirit. We know that everything Daniel did, he did with excellence.
Amen. Here’s something that I teach from the Book of Daniel and I taught it to our children. If you wanna be a success in life, you need to number one, live with purpose. Number two, rely on the Holy Spirit. Number three, you need to keep a great attitude. When it says that Daniel had an excellent spirit, it’s talking about, he had a great attitude and number four, you need to surround yourself with great people. And those four things. You know what? That is a recipe for success for your children. So live with purpose, rely on the Holy Spirit, keep a great attitude and surround yourself with great people. And that will help you get to where God wants you to go.
Well, you know the Bible tells us evil communications creeps good manners. So it’s really important who we’re around, what we’re listening to, what we’re watching, because that really helps point you in a direction too. And you know Proverbs 18:16 tells us this, “A man’s gift makes room for him and brings him before great men.” You know living with purpose and divine destiny. Raising our children to understand that they are created for a special purpose and a divine destiny.
You know what? God has a purpose for every person who’s was born.
That’s right. That is right.
He did not create anyone to be a flop. He did not create anyone to be a failure. God has given every person gifts, talents, abilities, and He’s given them the ability to succeed. Praise God. And if children can find that at a young age and follow that, I believe that’s one key to really operate in the blessing is being who God made you to be and doing what God made you to do. Another thing we wanna talk about is work ethic. You know having a good work ethic. I know a number a few years ago, I was doing a teaching at church on family and on raising children. And so I asked our three sons, “What did mom and I teach you?” You know I want you to write down 10 things that we taught you that helped you succeed in life. And our sons are very successful. They’re all in their 30s right now. They’re all millionaires. God has blessed them and helped them amazingly. But the number one thing that they all said is they had a good work ethic that we taught them the value of work. And the Bible actually says in 2 Thessalonians 3:10, that if a man doesn’t work he will not eat. And you know that was my dad’s favorite scripture. And he drilled that into me. And I said, “Dad, why are we doing all this? Jesus is gonna come.” And he said, “The Bible says occupy till I come. Get to work.” And so my dad drilled that into me. My dad left life early. He checked out, went to heaven when he was 40. I was only 17, but because my dad taught me how to work, it really has helped me. And you know you look at a lot of these really successful people in life. They know how to work, Andrew Wommack, Jesse Duplantis. Jesse’s been working since he’s just a little kid, praise God. And you know not only this, we learned this from our son Andrew, and he’s got this, but they’re teaching their children how to give, save, invest.
That’s our next point. Yeah, that’s our next point.
And good financial management. And a lot of people just aren’t trained good financial management. The first thing that we do, we taught our children to tithe, Aaron got up and shared this recently at a service how, you know when they were little, we lived in Kit Carson and we pastored there and there wasn’t much for them to do, so after the football games I had them go gather up cans. And then they smashed these aluminum cans down and then we sold them and they got about $5 each. And he said, we went and we started, you know first of all we gave, we tithed, you know to the church. And he said, you know what? 50 cents didn’t make any difference to the church that they all gave. But he said, and then we took our $4 and 50 cents roughly. And I had them all start savings account. And he said, “When we started savings account, the teller at the bank laughed at us.” But he said, “I bet they’re not laughing now.” And together, I bet our kids have given over a million dollars to the church, not just to, they give to this church, but they give to other churches and Andrew and Peter tithe to the churches where they go. And I know Andrew, he’s given several hundred thousand dollars to his church. Praise God, hallelujah. So we raised our kids to be productive and they’re very blessed and you know what? It’s not costing them to give. They’re blessed. They sow first and God brings it back to them. And I know Peter bought a stirpes. It stretched my imaginations. It’s in one of the two most expensive communities in the nation in Coral Gables, Florida. And I prayed. And you know there were several liens on this house and I prayed and prayed and God protect him. And you know what? He bought it. It’s like a fixer up here and it’s in a little bit is worth a few hundred thousand more than he paid for, but it costs a lot of money, but praise God, you know God has blessed our children and you know what? He’ll do it for anybody that will believe Him.
Praise God. We did as you’re mentioning, we did really teach our children to have a work ethic and then even financial management. So when they were littler, we did have some land and we had cattle and they had bottle fed calves. So they had those types of things. But even when we moved to the city, I had the home broke up into zones. And every once a week, every week, you know during the week everyone had a zone that they had to clean. Everyone had to help vacuum. And we were really trying to teach our children to be good stewards, again, whether it was when we farmed and ranched helping us with the animals or when we moved to the city, understanding how to be good stewards of what God gave you. And then even financial management. Again, when we lived in the country, there was things they did to help us. But when we moved to the city as teenagers, they got jobs and local businesses. And we taught them financial management. In other words, even though they were working, we taught them how to save. Like my husband said to tithe, to give and to invest, but we didn’t teach them, okay, it’s your money. Do whatever you want. Just go spend it all. We taught them how to again, have a work ethic, but then financial management. Do you understand that why your children are living with you? I know honey as a teenager you bought your first rental property, but why aren’t more children taking that money when they leave the home. And if you teach them how to manage their money, that they would have a down payment for their home.
Praise God. You know and they believed God, they also understand faith. I know Andrew he was still in college when he bought or just right outta college when he bought his first home. And I had given him a down payment and I didn’t quite agree with it. He said, “Listen, I’m giving you your money back.” And he gave my money back and he said, “I’m get my own loan.” And he went and got a first time home buyer loan and bought that home anyway. And you know what? God blessed him. And you know I had one of my friends say children are to leave their father and brother and cleave to their wife. You need to get outta their business. And praise God when he said that, you know what I did, I repented. And if you’re going against the scripture, you need to repent. Praise God.
I have another scripture. Proverbs 13:11 says, “Wealth gained by dishonesty will be diminished, but he who gathers by labor will increase.” Everyone’s always hoping to winning lottery ticket. But you know God has given us the vigor, the strength, the energy, it says, whatever our hands touch will be blessed. We can believe God for blessing on what He’s called us to do and live with divine purpose and destiny and understand what our practical trade is.
Amen. And you know the reason God blesses us is so that we can be a blessing. And we want our children to be a blessing. And you know what? When you live to be a blessing and to bless others, you will be blessed yourself. And I certainly hope that you’ve enjoyed these teachings. I’m gonna be teaching more on the family and on raising leaders from 1 and 2 Timothy in the next couple of weeks. So tell your friends about the broadcast and we appreciate you. God bless you. I wanna say a great big thank you today to our partners. It’s because of our partners that we can take this message around the world. And if you would like to be a partner with us, I believe that this is good ground and you’ll be blessed in doing that. If you need prayer, if you want partner, if you want product, give us a call today. God bless you.
[Announcer] What does it take to raise godly children? In this package containing, “Unless The Lord Builds The House, Faith That Is Taught and Caught and Raising Leaders Parts One and Two,” 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 the scripture says, if you will continue in the Word of God, you will know the truth and the truth will make you free. If you go to our website at charischristiancenter.com, you can get all of our materials there on the website, as you watch them, as you listen, absolutely free of charge. And we’ve done that just to be a blessing to you. And I believe that the word that has freed me will free you blessings.
[Announcer] 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.