Vision – Part 2 Pastors Lawson and Aaron Perdue

Vision Part 2 with Pastors Aaron and Lawson Perdue! In this session we’ll talk about vision and where vision comes from. We need find out where it comes from so you can move into the plan and the purpose that God has for you and fulfill your God-given destiny.

Vision Part 2 Transcript

Welcome friends to the broadcast. I’m so glad that you’ve tuned in to be with us today. We’re gonna be talking today about vision and where vision comes from. I believe that God has a vision for your life, but you need to find out where it comes from so you can move into the plan and the purpose that God has for you and fulfill your God-given destiny. Open your heart and receive God’s word today. Blessings. Friends, it’s so good to have you today, and I’m happy to have my son, Aaron. We’re talking about vision, and it is so important for us today as people of God, to have a vision that comes from God. You know, the world, it, a lot of people have no vision. They have no purpose. If you have no vision and purpose from God, you live like a victim and they think, I’m just stuck and I can’t go anywhere. And the Bible actually talks about this in Proverbs 29:18. It says, “Where there is no vision that people perish.” Where there’s no prophetic enlightenment or insight, where there’s no revelation or a dream that comes from God. The people are actually casting off all restraint. It’s like they go unbridled. They’re just going crazy in the world. And recently there’s been a lot of stuff happen in the world, it’s just like, man, these people have nothing that comes from God. It’s just crazy. And they’re just trying glorifying the devil and everything else but thank God we don’t have to be like that as the people of God. He that keeps the law, he that keeps the word, happy is he. So you can have a vision that comes from God that creates joy, or you can be like the world and you become a victim and just live in sorrow and sadness. So it’s our choice, and we can live on the good side of that, Amen. So we began last week in Proverbs 29:18, but then we moved to Genesis chapter 13 where the Lord spoke to Abraham and says after Lot separated from him and told him, lift up your eyes from the place where you are and look north, south, east and west. God said, listen, look around, Abram, I’ve got more for you. For all the land that you see, I will give it to you and to your seed forever. You know what we see, what we receive affects our children. I know, you know, we moved to Colorado Springs and it was one of the hardest moves that we ever made from Kit Carson, Colorado. Very small community, very rural area, town of only 300 in a county of just about 2,000, a little over 2,000 people that covers over 2,200, 2,400 square miles. And we moved there and yet, you know, we were there for 13 years and served the community, served the people but then God, you know, called us to come to Colorado Springs. And it was hard for us naturally just to break out. We had to go to six different banks before we found a banker that would loan us the money to buy a fixer upper house. And that one’s when we had 50% down. And, but for you boys, it helped you. You know, he says, I will, you know, not only all the land you see, I’ll give it to you, but I’ll give it to your seed. And so it really began to change your life. Your brother Andrew and Peter’s lives as we, you know, moved into what God had for us. And we actually got a prophetic word from Cecil Paxton who, and Lisa Paxton, they operate in the prophetic. We were at a conference of Andrew Wommacks just for ministers up in Buena Vista, Colorado in February of 2001 and God just spoke to us on January 4th, 2001, your birthday. God actually spoke to me and told me that we were to go to Colorado Springs and start a Church Cares Christian Center. And that morning when I was at the office, he just dropped it in my spirit. I went home and told mom, mom had been telling me, actually for two years, you need to move, we need to work to Colorado Springs. We need to do some stuff. And it just took us time to get real clarity about it. But then Cecil and Lisa, we started looking and a week after that, it was interesting after God spoke to us that within, you know, just a few days, we met with the pastor of the largest church in Colorado Springs. He was very welcoming. He gave us very good insight. And not only did we meet with him, but we, I spoke to Andrew Wommack, you know. And so I met with him within week, within three days I called Andrew Wommack. And he’s like, that’s God, you need to get with it. And so Andrew was one of my mentors and you know, a lot of my friends didn’t even encourage me. They said, Colorado Springs, the front range is a graveyard for people trying to start new churches, especially people like us, you know, spirit filled, word of faith, grace people, you know, but you know, we knew God called us. And so Andrew said, that’s God, you need to get with it. And then we met with this pastor. We started looking for houses one week after, on January the 11th, we came here. We had an appointment with this pastor of the largest church, actually in the state of Colorado at that time. And he met with us and he gave us very good advice. He met with us for about 25 minutes. It was a great meeting, supernatural how God put that connection together. And then, you know, we just started, and, you know, the world wasn’t very encouraging. People in the world said, there’s absolutely no way you can do this but…

Well, I remember when you first started too, you actually printed up 10,000 little flyers, just inviting people to church, just kind of explaining what our mission was gonna be and you went and handed them out personally to people. You would hand out a hundred flyers a day for a hundred days, I think. And on the first Sunday, you had.

20 people.

20 people at church after…

Six months of Bible studies.

And so-

And moving up here and, you know, having Bible studies for six months, we had 20 people at church.

So your vision can’t really be shaped by circumstances. Your vision can’t really be shaped by everyone’s opinion. I like that you you sought some people’s opinions though. You sought some people’s advice.

[Lawson] Right.

You know, so I think when you’re getting vision from God, going in a major direction, maybe it’s a career thing, a ministry thing. Maybe it’s an important relationship like a marriage. You don’t have to listen to everyone, but it’s good to have a few people that you can listen to.

So number one, right? I listen to your mother and mom and I never make a major decision in our life unless we are in total agreement, in total peace. And people ask me a lot of times, should we make this move with our family? Should we do this? And I’m like, if they’re married, I’m like, and they’re both born again and loving Jesus. I say, well, you know, number one, are you in agreement about it? And number two, are you at peace about it? And I believe if you have a married couple, they’re both born again, they both love Jesus. They’re both serving Jesus if they are in total agreement about it, not pressuring each other, but know they each individually feel good about this decision. And number two, if they have peace about it, I believe that’s over 90% correct. So, listen to the people around you. So number one, your mom, number number two, you know, other people right, spoke into our life. Andrew Wommack spoke into our life and he was my mentor. Now, not a lot of other people agreed with Andrew, but Andrew spoke into our life and I listened to him and he was a major leader and mentor in my life. And so, you know, Andrew spoke into our life, and then we met with this pastor of this largest church in Colorado Springs. He was very supportive of us. And it was, he gave us very good information and I appreciated that. And so, you know, we had the spirit of God, we had a prophetic confirmation through Cecil and Lisa Paxton. We had agreement between each other. We had mentors that spoke into our life. And God had been, it wasn’t just like we jumped out and did this. God had been, actually, we’d pastored in Kit Carson for 13 years and God had been leading us for two years, that there was a change coming up. And we’d been praying, fasting some, seeking God in different ways. And it just took us a period of time to get real clarity about it. And I think it’s better to be behind God than ahead of God when you’re making a major move. If you get ahead of God, you can’t see God out in front of you working. But it, you know, Kenneth E Hagin, you know, Papa Hagin actually said that, and he said, it’s better to be a little bit behind God, ’cause you could see God out in front of you working. But he’s like, if you get ahead of God, you don’t know where God is. And I’ve seen some people get, you know, one guy at Bible school years ago, he came and said, “Oh, God’s called me to go to North Carolina, and then next week he’s like, no, God’s called us to go to Florida. You know, they moved to Colorado Springs, they were broke, he finally had a job. He finally was doing God good, he was finally taking care of his family. And no, we’re supposed to go, you know, one week he was, you know, graduating from Bible college. Two years later, we gotta go to Carolina. And then the next week is, no, we’re supposed to go to Florida. And they had a little tiny bit of money saved up and they went to South Florida, in two weeks, they turned around and came home. And boy, that is not God. That is not and he put his family through a lot of pain, through a lot of hurt. And you know, I made a decision when we moved to Colorado Springs, like, you know, God, you know, you’ve called me to do this. You know, we had our house paid off in Kit Carson. We had our little feed lot paid off in Kit Carson. We had our church paid off in Kit Carson. You know, God had blessed us. God had helped us to that point, but when we moved here, we didn’t take any income from the church here for a period of time. The church at Kit Carson helped us for three months. They paid our salary and housing allowance. And then for another nine months beyond that, they paid our housing allowance. But it was pretty slim pickings but God took care of us and it was really supernatural. But at the same point in time, you know, we just didn’t jump out ahead of God. It was, it was a process of God speaking to us and figuring out, well, this isn’t the direction of God, so then this must be the, and then finally God spoke to me. And, and even prior to moving here, you know, I, Andrew Wommack came in 2020 to the church in Kit Carson in April and I’d given him an offering and he put the offering in his pocket. He didn’t even unseal the envelope. It was a thank you note with a personal offering. I borrowed the money to make a major offering into his ministry and he looked at me and said, I want you to come to North Carolina with me next April. And so I went with him, or this summer, it was actually April, he was in Kit Carson, and in September he was gonna be in North Carolina. And so I knew a pastor in a town 40 miles from there. So I went and preached for that pastor Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday and Sunday morning. And then I was with Andrew, Sunday night through Friday at this special meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina. And one night we were, as we were walking to the meetings, I told Andrew, I said, “Andrew, we believe that God has called us to come to Colorado Springs, but there’s so many churches there and ministries.” And I didn’t want to do go somewhere where I wasn’t needed. And Andrew really encouraged me. He said, Lawson, there’s nobody like you. There’s not a lot of people preaching the word, and I believe you’d do good. But even though Andrew Wommack spoke to me, and he was my mentor, he’s the person I was baptized in the Holy Spirit in his ministry, called to preach, even though he spoke that to me, I did not move on that until God himself spoke to me. So we need the voice of God. And then, you know, we get vision from the Word of God, and it affects our children, it affects the people around us. How did it affect you, Aaron? Us moving into what God called us to do?

Well, it affected us quite a bit. Just moving here, me and my brothers, we were able to, you know, just develop more with our giftings. You know, I was really involved in music. My brothers were very strong academically and in sports, and we’re all able to grow in those things. And it kind of helped get us to the next level, in the purposes that God had for our lives.

Yeah, I think this also, you know, it was hard for mom and I to break out, right, of a community where we sold our house for $85,000 and then bought a house for a little bit over 200,000, put 50% down, sold our little feed lot, you know, for 20,000. Took all that money put down on a house here. And so that was kind of hard for us to break into that era at that time. Especially not, I mean, I went to six banks before I found a bank that would loan me the money. And yet it was hard and it was difficult, but it was very good for you. And you know, sometimes I see people and they’re like, well, my daughter’s gonna be a senior in high school and she’s been in this and she’s a cheerleader, or she’s on the, you know, she’s in these leadership areas but we just gotta do this right now. And, you know, I, we, mom and I considered how it would affect you boys. And you were a freshman in high school. Andrew was a seventh grader. Peter was fifth grade. It was probably perfect for Andrew. You probably could have benefited if we went a little bit earlier. Peter would’ve benefited if he’d had a bit more time in Kit Carson but it was the best time for our family and it was God. And you know, people take some time if you’re making a major decision, don’t just.

Like you said, don’t get ahead of God.

I see people come to Bible and go, oh, we have to go. I mean, they haven’t been here six weeks, we gotta go and we gotta do this. And if we don’t do that, and they go and do something and they don’t last for 10 weeks. They should finish Bible school.

Yeah and I like, you know, because you were really sensitive to hearing from God. I know you’ve inspired other people as well. There’s a family here, the Skaggs family, you know, they have three children as well. They were, you know, and Aaron Skaggs, he’s one of our main worship leaders. He’s a full-time counselor, but they were very established. They lived, you know, 13 or 14 years in Montana. But, you know, they felt like they were supposed to move here and be a part of the ministry here and you know, continue raising their three children here. And I think they took about a year, praying about it and really hearing from God. It was a big shift for them too, because, you know, to buy a home here, at the time when they moved it was at the kind of peak of the housing market and you know, just a house, a lot of houses would get 20 offers the day they would go live. But God helped them get a home and helped get their children in good schools and…

And they’re doing very, very well. Now talking about vision, Aaron Skaggs is married to Rachel, and she was Rachel Mitchell, she grew up in our church in Kit Carson. And so she came up here and went to Charis Bible College, graduated in about 1998. One of the first, you know, it started in 1994, so one of the earlier graduates of Charis Bible College. And then she went to a smaller Christian college in the southeast US and got her undergrad and her masters in counseling. And then her and Aaron, who got his master’s in counseling, got married and he’s a pastors son. They moved to Montana. But when she left from graduated from Charis Bible College, she actually went to a different area for a period of time. And there was a situation that was very painful. It didn’t work out. But she came back and we were actually praying for Rachel. And Rachel was at the church and she was praying, but I actually had a vision of Rachel leading worship. And now she’s here at the church helping her husband at times leading worship. I saw that in like 1998 or 99.

Sometimes they, and I know she helped at their church in Montana too, but sometimes it takes years for some of those things to happen. I remember you had a, you know, sometimes God can give you a visual vision, you know, and I know that at one time you had a picture of you preaching in a room full of blue chairs.

Yeah, when I was like 16 or between 16 and 18 years old, I had a dream and I saw myself pastoring a church. And I saw 500 beautiful, like royal blue chairs. And actually in, we moved here and started the church in 2001, and then Andrew Wommack built a new building and invited us to come put our, and we just, you know, we, he let us come be in his ministry on Sundays and we had to set up every week we had to reset about a thousand chairs or 700 chairs and about 200 tables. It was a lot of work. So we’d come Friday after Bible school and reset everything. And then Sunday after church, we’d reset things back to how they were. But we started, when Andrew got this building on Elkton Drive, it was at 850 Elkton Drive, you know, he invited us to move in there. We actually had the very first service in that building. And Andrew Wommack preached for me, that was our third anniversary. But a few weeks after I was pastoring, I’m looking out here and I’m like, man, this is the dream that I have when I was 17 or 18 years old. I saw the exact thing. And I’m like-

God brought it to pass.

And Andrew, I was talking to Andrew about that. He said, isn’t that interesting that I paid for your vision?

That’s awesome. Well, we’re gonna take a brief break. Stay tuned, we’re gonna be back sharing about vision. Just stay tuned.

God has a vision for your life. Blessings. Friends, I want to tell you about our product that we have available with this teaching. And we have a special offer. First of all, we have the “Vision” series, and I have five messages that I taught on vision. You can get them on CD or digital download on our website. You can get them immediately. And then “My Uncommon Favor book,” this is my life story from just a few years back. It’s a lot of different stories. A lot of people tell me when they read “My Uncommon Favor Book,” it encouraged me because it gave me hope that if God did this for you, he would do it for me and he would help me. And there’s so many ways that God has blessed me and helped me, but it’s not unattainable. You see, God has no respecter of persons. He is a respecter of faith. So when you get ahold of the Word of God and begin to believe God, you can move into the vision and the plan that God has for your life through the favor and grace of God on your life. Thanks and blessings. Praise the Lord, we’ve been sharing from Genesis chapter 13, where God spoke to Abraham and said, “Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are.” He said, look north, look south, look east, and look west. Amen. Look around, I’ve got more for you. Praise God. And we went from there. He said, “For all the land that you see, will I give it to and to your seed.” But your vision will affect your children. Your vision will affect your family. And he says, “And I will make your seed,” in verse 16, Genesis 13:16, “as the dust of the earth, if a man can number the dust of the earth, so shall your seed be numbered.” Then he says this in verse 17, “Arise, walk through the land in the length of it, in the breadth of it for I will give it to you.” You know, before you buy a new house, you do a, they have in Colorado, you do an inspection like, you know, and you walk through that house like right before you close to make sure you’re getting what you paid for. An inspection proceeds possession. God said, get up and go, look, look north, south, and west, all the land you see, I’ll give it, I’ll give it to your seed. Your vision will affect those closest to you. And then he says, walk through it. Go see what, you know, I tried to go some other places. I looked at some other places and it was evident to me after a period of time, this is not where God has called me to do. You know, some people for instance, say, well, I’ve got a burden for the mission field. And there was a man years ago, and he said this, he’s a very successful missionary in Guatemala. And he said, if all you have is a burden and you don’t have a call, all you’re gonna be is a burden. And so, but you could take a 30 day trip to where you feel like God’s maybe called you to go in the mission field, and you can figure out whether you just got a burden or whether you got a call. It takes about two weeks to realize, hey, this is a different culture. There’s a lot of things are different, but if you go there for 30 days and stay, you’ll figure it out. And so we need to pray and seek God and get direction from God and don’t rush into a great big new change without getting some, you know, clarity from God. And he’s then Abraham, it says this in verse 18, “Removed his tent and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamor, which is in Hebrew and built there and alter to the Lord.” I like to say that you can’t, cannot accomplish the vision of God, you cannot accomplish the plan of God without God being part of it. And I believe that God has a vision for our lives. And you know what? It takes him to fulfill it.

Amen. Yeah, you definitely need God’s help in accomplishing the vision he has for your life. And again, if your vision, if it’s something that you can do in your own strength and in your own ability, I don’t believe that’s necessarily your, the full plan and purpose that God, you know, God’s visions, they usually are bigger than yourself. They’re gonna take the power of the Holy Spirit. They’re gonna take, God’s gonna have to help you do it.

He helps you. And you know, when I started our first church in Kit Carson, I said, I can do this. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And we were very successful and we had five families that helped us, right. Join with us to help us, you know, plant that church in Kit Carson Church of the Redeemed. And we were there 13 years. And you know, we grew to where we had about 25 to 30 families. We had our average attendance probably of about 75, you know, to 100. There were about 125 people called the church home. You know, maybe a few over that at its height. But, you know, we had a average attendance of about 75. You say, well that’s not very many people. Well Kit Carson’s only 300 people in the town. And it’s not next to a major area. It’s out in the wilderness. There’s less than one person per square mile in Cheyenne County where Kit Carson is. And you know what? But that’s where God called us. And you know what’s really amazing to me is God put me in Kit Carson and he gave me some great friends there. And this is something that we’re gonna talk about later. So vision comes from God and vision comes from the word of God, but it all also comes from people of God. But God put me in Kit Carson and he gave me three really great friends that thought big. They were big farmers and ranchers, and they operated big. And you know, it really helped me. So Jim Mitchick, you know, and Irvin Mitchick, his uncle, and Aubrey Shotton, all three of those men really helped me begin to see in a different way. And it doesn’t have to be preachers all the time that help you. You know, these guys were businessmen, they were big businessmen. And every one of them started out, you know, with just a little bit. And they started out borrowing money, but they grew big. And I remember one time I was talking to Jim and I said, I’m gonna buy 10 or 15 cows. He said, well, buy 100, buy a semi-load or something, you know, then you’ll either make money or lose money, but you’ll make a difference. I remember him speaking that to me, and it got on the inside of me. So I went out, you know, the first time and I borrowed enough money to buy 40 head of cattle. Jim told me I could put 40 head in this big pasture where he had, you know, two or 300 head of yearlings. And it was a new thing for me. And I had to borrow all the money to do that. I borrowed $20,000. I remember that almost kept me up at night. But I got to a point where I had over $3 million borrowed between the bank and the feed lot. People had over 3,000 head of cattle at once. And you know, God, but, you know, he uses people like that to bring you into places and to think in a new realm. And you say, well, what’s that have to do with the kingdom of God? Well, you know, there’s sometimes you learn from the natural world things that you can employ in the spiritual world. I had somebody tell me the other day, Lawson, you know, it says sometimes that the people in the world are wiser than the people in the church. And I found that to be true. And I see some of these people and they’re, they’ve been preaching the same thing for 70 years, Aaron. And it’s never come to pass. 60 years and it’s just a bunch of fear garbage that doesn’t come from the word. And I see people in the world sometimes growing wealthy because they don’t have, you know, and people in the church going broke because they don’t have wisdom. And so we need to have wisdom that comes from God, but also from people and people that have done things. And then wisdom that comes from the word of God and the spirit of God. So we’ll be talking more about where we get vision from. Praise God. Share something.

Well, that’s awesome. Yeah, I think, like you were saying, sometimes in the world, people, ’cause they don’t have bad teaching, they can do things in a practical way that exceeds what the, you know, what the church world is doing. I was thinking about just how a lot of universities operate. You know, they, a lot of ’em have money in the bank, you know, they have endowments, they have money invested so they aren’t just constantly in debt. And you know, when they encourage people to give, it’s to give for the future, you know? But a lot of ministries, a lot of churches are very in debt and debt driven and people won’t give unless there’s like a debt. But really we should break that kind of indebtedness mentality. It’s not-

Amen.

I’ve had people get mad at me.

For having money in the bank.

Yeah, they’re like, why do you, we couldn’t have bought this building that we’re in if we didn’t have finances. This was on a bank auction. We had to have the cash. And you know what? God will give us great opportunity in the future, but we don’t need to always operate from the world’s perspective. And many times you say like people in the world are doing this, and people in the church haven’t grabbed a hold.

Sometimes they’re using kingdom principles and they don’t even realize it. So Proverbs works.

Amen, it’ll work for saints and work for sinner. So if you need prayer, if you wanna become a partner, or if you want product, give us a call today. We’d love to hear from you, blessings.

[Announcer] Too many people live their lives without ever connecting to their God-given purpose. Learn the importance of having a vision and some practical steps for walking it out. God has a tremendous plan for your life. Start now and see it come to pass. Get the vision package, which includes the book, “Uncommon Favor and the “Vision” CD series for $24 or digital download for $15 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 ’em, 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.

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