Vision – Part 4 Pastors Lawson and Aaron Perdue

Vision Part 4 with Pastors Aaron and Lawson Perdue! In this session we’ll talk about how changing your picture on the inside, can change your picture on the outside.

Vision Part 4 Transcript

Friends, did you know that every person has a picture on the inside of them. And they are being drawn and they are going in the direction of that picture on the inside of them. In other words, we have dominant thoughts and that picture is directing our dominant thoughts. So if you can change the picture on the inside, you can change the picture on the outside. And we’re gonna talk about how that works. We’re gonna talk about how vision works in this broadcast. Don’t miss it. Friends, I’m so glad that you’re with us today, and we’ve been sharing all week on vision and where vision comes from. So we talked about where there’s no vision, the people are perishing, but he that keeps the law happy, is he? So we talked about what vision is. We said vision is insight, revelation. It’s talking about dream prophetic enlightenment or insight. We talked about what perishing is. You know, the world a lot of times is perishing because they have no vision that comes from God. No vision that comes from the Holy Spirit or the Word. And perish is the Hebrew word parrot means refuse, uncover, be naked, to go backwards. If you’re not going forward in your relationship with God, you’re going backwards. It means this, to let go unbridled, to reject counsel. You know, I can’t talk about that enough. You know how valuable godly counsel is. To be lawless. And I’ve seen some people that are like that. To be happy, says he that keeps the law, or he that keeps the word happy, is he? That means to be happy or blessed. So if you’re operating like the world, you’re gonna perish. But if you operate from the Word, you’re gonna be happy. The Word’s gonna bring joy and blessing. We talk about how the Word brings vision. God brings vision. The vision comes from people of vision. But we also wanna talk just a little bit today about the Holy Spirit brings vision. And I know if I wouldn’t have been baptized in the Holy Spirit, I’d never be where I’m at today doing what I’m doing. So the Holy Spirit brings us vision, and we want to talk a little bit today about how vision works. The picture on the inside determines the picture on the outside. So let’s-

Yeah, I love that you said the Holy Spirit brings us vision. You know, every now and then we have new people coming to the church who haven’t really heard much teaching about the Holy Spirit. But that’s one aspect of the Holy Spirit’s ministry, is that He leads us and guides us. You know, the Bible says that the sons of God are led by the spirit of God.

[Lawson] Yeah, Romans 8:14.

So yeah, the Holy Spirit will actually lead you. And I think one, you know, very important aspect of being filled with the Holy Spirit is often you get vision for your life, very specific vision as well. So I know you were spirit filled when you were 14 years old, but that was when you started getting very, you know, vision from God about the direction for your life that you were called to go into ministry and be a pastor.

Yeah, I knew immediately when I was baptized in the Holy Spirit that I was called to preach. And so I just knew it. I couldn’t have told you whether I was gonna be a prophet, evangelist, pastor, or teacher. I didn’t even know what those were, but I knew this is what I’m gonna spend my life doing. And-

And it’s great, you know, if you can get direction like that, even at a young age, like the age of 14. You know, like you’ve mentioned in some of the previous broadcasts that I went to, you know, secular universities for a while, but a lot of my friends at school would just didn’t really know what they were supposed to do. They would change their majors. And I think like 50% of college students actually change their majors on average. So they don’t really know what career they’re supposed to go in, what direction they’re supposed to head in, which is a shame, especially if you’re spending-

But when you surrender your life to God and you stay pliable, I think this is, we need to stay flexible. We have a rule in ministry, we call it a commandment, be flexible therefore, you will not be broken. I was just talking to a commercial realtor about a business thing. I had this come up just before the broadcast and I said, “Listen, we get the right people, we’ll be flexible. We’ll work with them.” And sometimes people are just hard fix, it has to be this way. But if you get, if you get that right, it can just really, really help you. And so we wanna be flexible to the Holy Spirit. But when I was 14, I really got direction from God. Your brother Peter, he wanted to be an engineer he thought. He first looked, but Princeton University was his first choice of schools. And you were going to Carnegie Mellon, you were actually helping raise money for Carnegie Mellon to help pay for your schooling there. And you said, “Daddy, if Peter gets into Princeton, they have like a $13 billion endowment.” Now they have like a $25 billion endowment. It’s grown over the years. You said, “Let him go because most of it with your income will be paid.” And he went there. We paid 7,000, 7,500 a year, you know, our part. Plus we paid for travel, so on and so forth. But Peter graduated from Princeton University. Now, when he went there, he went to study engineering. By the first semester he was done with engineering. He did not like it. But then he moved into business finance and Princeton’s expertise is business. That’s where God had him. It’s good that he didn’t go to his second choice, which have been Colorado School of Mines, ’cause almost all they do is engineering. But God protected Peter in that. And while he was there, you know, he got into business finance, ultimately went to work for Burger King and the-

The corporation.

3G Capital Corporation. And they’re one of the wealthiest corporations in the world. And he’s in business finance now. And he’s done very, very well. God’s prospered him and blessed him, so God can use that and direct you, but you gotta keep a heart that’s pliable, that’s soft before God.

Amen.

So, God even you were going and you were going for music, but then you begin to feel this call.

Yeah and I love that proverb that says, “A man plans his steps but the Lord ordains them.” The Lord will work it out. So it’s good to go in a direction, but be flexible to God’s-

[Lawson] Amen.

[Aaron] Direction.

I believe that’s a really good word. Go in a direction, right, where you feel like God’s leading you, but be flexible to where God may take you. Praise God.

[Aaron] Amen.

And it’s like Andrew Wommack talks about this, how they shot the, you know, space shuttle to go to the moon or whatever, but then they had to correct it every 30 seconds or something. So they just blast it off. They were going in a general direction, but they had to make course corrections all the time. And that’s how life is. We have to make course corrections. And if you’re not pliable, if you’re not softhearted, if you’re not ready to make course corrections, you’ll crash. You won’t arrive on target. So we wanna arrive on target. Let’s read these scriptures talking about how the Holy Spirit gives us direction. We talked recently in the church, I talked about the Holy Spirit’s primary ministry in the world. And that’s to convict, right, of sin, the sin of not believing on Jesus to convict us of righteousness, that Jesus is the righteousness of God. And he makes righteousness available to every believer and then to convict us that the prince of the world, Satan has already been judged. We see how defeated the devil is, how victorious Jesus is, how much God loves us, how amazing God’s plan is for us. And we’ll not wanna serve the devil one more day, but then he begins to talk about the Holy Spirit’s ministry to the church. And Jesus says this in John 16:12, “I have lots of things to say to you, but you can’t bear them. You can’t understand them.” It takes the Holy Spirit to give us revelation of what God has for us. “How be it when He, the spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all truth. He will not speak of himself. Whatever He hears, He will speak, and He will show you things to come.” Jesus says in John 14:26, when the Holy Spirit comes, he’s going to bring to your remembrance what I said to you. It’s gonna cause the word to come alive, right? So we talked about how one way God’s leads us is through his word. God will give you a scripture sometimes and directs you from that. But he says, “Whatever he hears that will he speak and he will show you things to come.” The Holy Spirit will give you revelation about the future. “He will glorify me for He will receive a mind and show it unto you. All things the Father has remind Therefore, I said He, the Holy Spirit will take of mind, show it unto you a little while, you will not see me in a little while, and you’ll see me because I go to my Father.” Now, what’s one of the first things that the Holy Spirit leads us into.

Leads us to salvation.

Amen.

Yeah.

So that’s excellent. That’s what I’m gonna be teaching on this coming Sunday in church. I’m gonna be talking about how the Holy Spirit leads us into salvation.

Yeah, the Holy Spirit’s actually the one that works on your heart. You know, the moment that you believe on Jesus and choose to make him your Lord and Savior and invite to your life and invite him in to your heart. That’s actually the Holy Spirit that was working in your heart ministering to you about the person of Jesus, who Jesus is, and your need for Jesus.

Right. So he leads us in the Word. I talked about that the truth. He said he’ll talk to me. But then Salvation John 15:26, the next thing Jesus says about the Holy Spirit, Jesus is preparing his disciples in John 14, 15, and 16 for his departure. But John 15:26, he says he’ll testify me. He’ll show you who Jesus is.

And yeah, the Holy Spirit will also minister truth to you too. That’s something that’s very different from us as believers from the world. You know, we have this spirit of truth.

[Lawson] Right. We have-

That leads us.

We have an anointing, right? I John 2 talks about this in verse 23. Verse 27 says, “You have an anointing for the holy one and you know all things.” And it’s talking about you have an anointing of truth and you have an anointing of life. And you don’t have to be deceived by the anti-Christ that’s in the world because you have the anointing of truth. The anointing of what? The anointing of Christ. Jesus is truth. Jesus has the spirit. He is life.

That’s awesome.

So praise God. So we have this anointing. We don’t have to be bewildered and wandering and wandering and you know.

[Aaron] Frustrated all the time.

No, but we can be at peace. We can walk with God. We can walk with the spirit of God guiding us. Now when I, you know, I received Jesus at eight, but wasn’t baptized in the Holy Spirit till I was 14. But when I was baptized in the Holy Spirit, I begin to get very clear direction about my life. And God wants to everybody have that.

Now the Holy Spirit will give you revelation about Jesus, but the Holy Spirit will give you revelation about your own life, about your own direction in life too. The Holy Spirit will lead you and guide you personally.

Right. And he leads us from our spirit, from our heart. I want to talk about this a little bit about how the Holy Spirit works or how does vision work? You know, and let’s actually turn to Matthew chapter six. And this really fits in with a lot of things that my good friend Jesse Duplantis says, that Andrew Wommack says. But in Matthew 6:22, Jesus said this, “The light of the body is the eye, if your eye is single, your whole body will be full of light. If your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness?” So, you know, the light of the body is the eye. That if your eye is single, if you’re single focused, right, that’s gonna bring light, that’s gonna bring revelation, bring understanding. If your eye is evil, if your eye is devil, the whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore that light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness?

Let’s kinda talk about how you see things. Your perception, your vision, just your overall outlook, your overall vision-

[Lawson] Right.

Of who God is, about life. You know, there’s a saying like, “Well, that person just sees the world through rose colored glasses.” That means like, you see everything very positive. Like everything is rosy and peachy. It’s actually is a-

[Lawson] It’s a good statement.

Yeah, isn’t a bad thing. But some people, the way they see everything, they see everything is as dark. You know, like I think it’s in Titus, like even to to the pure, all things are pure, but to the wicked and defiled, everything is-

[Lawson] Oh wow.

You know, so Titus, Paul’s kind of writing to him like people who are pure hearted, they’re gonna see purity in other situations. That’s how their eye sees things.

[Lawson] Right.

But to people who are wicked, defiled, they just look for wickedness. They find it everywhere and they’re-

Yeah. You know, Aaron, I grew up in a rural community. I grew up basically trusting everyone. And you kind of have to prove me wrong. So I kind of give everybody grace and I’ve had a few people really prove me wrong. It’s been really attracting.

‘Cause you’re purehearted so to the pure all things are-

Yeah, that’s kinda how I grew up.

Yeah.

Right. And so I have a very high trust level and I believe that’s how God, I believe God gives us grace, right? And I’ve made some mistakes with people. Sometimes I’ve given them the grace to fail and they failed kind of big. But at the same point in time, I think that it’s good to have that good pure heart. You know, you don’t want to be foolish, right? And sometimes I need people around me that have real strong discernment to help protect a little bit so we don’t go overboard. But thank God, you know, we can see from a perspective of God, see from a perspective of the Holy Spirit. And so we’re gonna be talking as we go forward in the last part of this broadcast after a short break about how we see with our heart. The light of the body is the eye. In talking about your spiritual direction, you have a picture, every person has a picture on the inside of them and they are going somewhat in that direction. So you can develop the picture on the inside of you. And you have the power to change that through the word of God. So stay tuned, we’ll be right back after this short break. God bless you. This is gonna be great. 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. Friends, we’ve been teaching and we’ve been talking about vision and how vision works. And we wanna really move into this in the rest of today’s broadcast, tomorrow’s broadcast. But vision works with our spirit. Everybody on the inside has a picture. You know, it’s been said that faith sees the invisible, hears the inaudible, does the impossible. I really believe that you see, not only with your physical eye, right, but you see with your spirit. And so I believe that we have spiritual insight. Now when we read this scripture, when it says the light of the body is the eye in Matthew 6:22, the Greek word for eye is athalamous and it means the eye, the eyes of the mind, the faculty of knowing, vision, eye, or sight. So you’ve got not only, Jesus is talking before that about where your heart is, there were your treasure. So we’re talking about the eyes of your spirit, man. We’re talking about the spiritual man. A lot of times people don’t understand the spiritual man. You know, Job said this, the oldest book in the Bible by most Bible scholars understanding in Job 32:8, there is a spirit in man, the revel, what’s it said? There is a spirit in man. There’s a spirit in the, I’ll have to just go there and read it to get the last part. I had it and then it jumped away. But Job chapter 32:8, the inspiration of the Almighty, I believe gives him understanding. I’ll read it. “There is a spirit in man,” Job 32:8, “And the inspiration of the Almighty gives Him understanding.” So you get understanding from your spiritual man, from your inward man. Now, Jesse Duplantis made this statement when he was here. And he made this years ago and it just stuck with me. It just really got, he said, “Most of the time in the realm of faith, I made a decision and God backed it.” I mean, this stuck with me for years. I’ve talked about it. I thought about it. And so I actually got Jesse in and we have the programs and you can actually go to our website and look them up and find them. And you can either watch them free on the site or you can get the product. I believe you could download it. But when it, when Jesse talked about that, I talked about to him about how does this work? And Jesse talked about how when we’re born again in our spirit, God lives in our spirit. So he said, “When I make a decision out of my spirit, not outta my soul, not outta my flesh, but outta my spirit, God backs that decision because Christ is living in there.” And Andrew Wommack talks about this, how he’s led a lot of times by the desire of his heart, by the desire of his spirit. And when you have a desire on the inside and you follow that, a lot of time that is God leading you. And God leads us by His spirit in the inward man. And so thank God we have the spirit of God in us. Aaron, what do you wanna share?

Yeah, I like that you’re saying from Job 32:8, there is a spirit in a man and the breath of the Almighty gives, or the inspiration, how does the King James say that?

Inspiration, but breath, I like that.

Yeah, so-

In the new King James.

Yeah, whenever you see inspiration, you know the root of inspiration, it’s like respiratory, you know, it means to breathe in. So God breathes into our spirit.

[Lawson] Yeah.

You know, He breathes revelation into our spirit. He breathes life into our spirit, but he wants to breathe revelation into you as well.

You have the spirit of God in the spirit of man. You have revelation that comes from God. So when you listen to the spirit of God, when you listen to the Spirit, we need to take time. And sometimes I just do things, right, because I just really, really want to do it. I made a commitment yesterday to make a very large purchase. You know, I mean fairly large. But I did that because I just, and I know I’m doing the right thing because I just really, really, and it just stayed with me. It didn’t leave. It wasn’t coming and going, coming and going. And I thought about it ’cause I think about, you know, your mom says for me it’s no problem to, you know, to spend $10,000. It’s 10 cents that bugs me or $1. Well, I had a good friend, one of my mentors say, “If you take care of the pennies, the dollars take care of themselves.” But at the same point in time, I just kept being drawn, kept being, that desire to, it didn’t go away, it just stayed there. So I felt like that’s God so we went and made a commitment.

Yeah, and when you’re making decisions too, it’s not just out of your emotions, you know. One time I was preaching on a Wednesday night here at church and I said, “Your emotions are not the voice of God.”

[Lawson] They are not.

And someone here heard that and, her name’s Kim Trout, heard it. She’s actually one of the, we kind of talked about the founding of our church. You know, the first Sunday we had church, we had 20 people, but she was one of the people who were there at the first service.

[Lawson] Right.

But she posted on Facebook that quote and one of her friends kind of argued with it. Said, “well, like I’m a very emotional person. And I’m trying to tune in.” Your emotions are not the voice of God. You need to be able to distinguish between your spirit and your soul. Your soul is just your.

So Dr. Lester Sumrall, Oral Roberts, Kenneth E. Hagin, they all, Andrew Wommack, they all define the soul. I am a spirit. I possess the soul. I live in a body. As the mind, the will, and the emotions. So we understand that we have to renew our mind because our mind doesn’t always think right. We have to train our mind to think right. We renew it with the word of God. We also have to submit our will to the will of God. Jesus said this when he walked on earth. He said, “Not my will, but your will be done.” If Jesus, God’s son said that when he walked on earth, guess what? We might need to say that once in a while.

Yeah and I think one way you can distinguish between your soul, like what your emotions are saying and what your spirit is saying is the word of God. The word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword. And it can actually divide between-

The soul and the spirit.

[Aaron] The soul and the spirit.

Hebrew 4:12 says.

If your emotions, if you’re thinking isn’t lining up with the word of God, you know that the Word of God is actually making a separation between-

[Lawson] Yeah.

Your soul and the spirit.

So you’ve got to discern between your spirit and your soul. And you do that with the word of God. Right, you can do that sometimes with God, the counsel. Right, and just take some time. Don’t rush to judgment. If you’re making a major decision, take a little bit of time. Had somebody, they texted me late at night, “We’re out making a purchase car. What do you think?” It’s too late. But anyway, yeah, I talked to ’em, I tried to talk to ’em about, they got a pretty good deal actually.

[Aaron] Okay.

I tried to talk him out of it, but I was being very direct.

Well, and yeah, and sometimes in sales, people will prey on people’s emotions-

Right.

And try to make them make, and that’s how marketing works, you know.

This person actually overheard me at the sales place and they took $600 off the car and it was already at wholesale. So they actually got a good deal.

[Aaron] Yeah.

But you know, I was being very direct. So this family asked me, so they weren’t mad at me. And one thing that really helped was the salesman overheard me talking to ’em on the phone and it was like 9 or 10 o’clock at night that night. And so the salesman said, “Hey, I’ll take 600 more dollars off if you’ll buy it.” So they went ahead and bought it. I think they got a pretty good deal, you know, but I don’t like to make rush decisions. And if I feel somebody pressuring me, listen, I will back out.

Well, you mentioned too, like, when I went to school, I got a degree in music and business and I actually took a marketing class. And you know, from a marketing expert, this professor. And I remember a lot of the techniques, they were manipulation techniques, they weren’t-

[Lawson] Oh, they are.

And it wasn’t very honest the principles that they were teaching. It was actually manipulation. So now I’m very aware of manipulation. You know, even, you know, ministers that are trying to manipulate people.

So Peter-

Emotionally.

We talked about him. He actually went to a car dealer with me when he was about 15. And it was late at night and this car dealer was trying to push me into deal. And Peter actually got mad at him. And I stood up and the guy’s like, “Sit down.” They say when you’re sitting down, you’re not as strong as you are when you’re standing up. But Peter actually got mad at him. He said, “I wanted to punch him.” You know, Peter’s a little different than you. You and your brothers, you all have different personalities, but you always wanted everything to be right with everybody. Your brother Andrew, I said you could drop him in a barrel of drain oil and he’d come out smelling like a roast ’cause he’s just happy no matter what. And then Peter’s like, “If that ain’t right, I’m gonna make it right.” So it’s kind of different gifts, different personalities. But you know, Proverbs 23:7 says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” So we gotta deal with this inward man. And then Proverbs 18:21, “Our thinking directs our speaking. Death in life are in the power of the tongue. Those who love it shall eat the fruit thereof.” So don’t say things that disagree with what God says. So one way God vision works from our spirit that you start thinking, you start meditating, you start going there, you start talking that, right. Joshua 1:8 talks about this book of the law shall not depart outta your mouth, but then you will meditate in the word day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that’s written there for then you will make your way prosperous and you will have good success. So, you know, we’ve been sharing all this week from “Vision.” Actually, this is a five message series. And we’ve been teaching all week from lesson number one. We haven’t even got done with lesson number one. So you can call us today if you need prayer, You can call us if you want to become a partner. This is a great place to partner with. It’s good ground.

Also, if you’ve never been filled with the Holy Spirit, been baptized in the Holy Spirit, I believe that will, God will breathe inspiration into you and you will get fresh revelation, fresh vision.

And we have trained prayer ministers that are here to pray for you, so if you’d like to get the product, we’re gonna do a special offer with this “Vision” series, right. And also my “Uncommon Favor Book” that talks about my early life, you know, in the ministry and different things. And so many people read that book this encourages me so much. But if you need prayer, if you want a partner, if you want product, just give us a call today. We would 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, I certainly hope that you’ve enjoyed the program today and it’s ministering to you to move into that which God has for you. And I want to say a great big thank you to all of our partners for helping us share this gospel across the United States and across the world. It’s because of our partners that we can take this message of grace and faith around the world. If you would like to join our partners and receive that blessing, give us a call today. 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.”