Destined for Victory

Paul Sheppard: You might have a spouse acting up, but God can keep you. You might have folk persecuting you on your job, but God can keep you. You might have trouble in various areas of your life, but now that you're in Christ, you have access to grace.

Guest (Male): All the gifts in the world won't do you any good if you leave them unopened. Hello and thanks for being here with us for today's Destined for Victory, where we feature the preaching ministry of Pastor Paul Sheppard.

Because of Christ, you have access to many gifts: peace that surpasses all understanding, faith in God for salvation through Jesus Christ, and grace that can help you remain joyful even tough times in your job or in your marriage come. These gifts are yours, but as you'll see today, you have to unwrap them and God has to show you how to best use them for His glory.

When you get a chance, we hope you'll visit pastorpaul.net, where you can listen to any of our recent messages on demand, including today's. That's pastorpaul.net. And if you haven't already, don't forget to download our free mobile app. Search Destined for Victory at the App Store and listen to Destined for Victory wherever you go. Now, let's get started with today's Destined for Victory message, "Access Granted."

Paul Sheppard: Why would you go to hell when He's made heaven possible? Why would you be guilty when you can be acquitted by trusting Christ for salvation? So I want to let you know you have access. You have access first to peace with God.

You have access secondly, the text goes on to tell us, into this grace in which we now stand. Paul says, "Now I've been given peace with God because I've received Christ." He says, "Now that I've received Christ, not only do I have peace with God, but I have grace. I'm standing right now in grace."

Can I tell you that what you need more than money is grace? We'd like money, but we need grace. Can I tell you that what you need more than people acting right in your home is grace? You'd like them to act right, but you need grace.

Now here's why I say this: because sometimes we're praying for a certain level of income or certain level of financial provision, and God has not sent it our way yet. But I want to let you understand that when you have access to the blessings of God, before you get the blessing you're praying for, there's a blessing called grace.

Grace means God will help me make it before my situation changes. And I don't know if you understand how important that is, but you need a grace that until you get the money you need, God will keep you steady. God will help you to go on and believe Him that He will bring His promise to pass. And that grace, the Bible says His grace is sufficient.

Sufficient grace. Sufficient means grace has it all covered. I would lose my mind, but grace has it all covered. And I find myself being able to go on and trust God before my blessing comes. See, you might be praying for God to save your relatives, and you might be praying for God to bring peace into your home that has all kinds of confusion in it.

But until God is able to get through to those people who are persecuting you or getting on your nerves, what He'll do is give you grace to put up with them. That's valuable, man, when God gives you grace to look at folk who are working your nerves and to say, "You're not going to drive me crazy. I'm not going to lose it over you. You're not that important. I'm not going to give you that much power. I'm putting you in the hands of the Lord. I'm praying about you every day."

There's some parent here who has a teenager who is acting like God knows what, and you're saying sometimes you wonder is this one really yours. See, I was raised by old-fashioned parents and I was raised around folk in our church, that's the way they talked when they would get on those rolls when we hit those years where we were just making stupid decisions and doing crazy things.

They would just get on one of those rolls. My mama would love talking like that. She'd say, "Sometimes I don't know what's the matter with you kids. I just don't understand it to save my life. Sometimes I wonder, are you really mine?"

I come to tell somebody, if that's the way you're feeling right about now, you have access to a grace where God will hold you steady. And you said, "These kids are tap dancing on my reserve nerve, but something inside of me is holding me steady." You might have a spouse acting up, but God can keep you. You might have folk persecuting you on your job, but God can keep you. You might have trouble in various areas of your life, but now that you're in Christ, you have access to grace.

He said because of Christ, we have peace, we have grace. And look at the third thing he says. He says we have hope. He said we have hope and we rejoice, he says in the last sentence of verse two, in the hope of the glory of God.

I want to let you know, peace with God covers your past. Grace covers your present. And hope covers your future. Hope says, "I don't have everything God has for me yet, so I have some more coming." I've got peace, my past is taken care of. I've got grace to make it in my present.

But don't think for a moment I'm not going to believe God for more. He has done so much for me in Christ until there are some things I'm looking forward to. Hope looks forward to what God will do. And I come to let somebody know you have access into hope. You can trust God because of Christ, that there are more blessings He has for you, more provisions He has for you.

God's not finished showing you everything He has. Your eye hasn't seen, your ear hasn't heard, it hasn't even entered into your heart some of the things God has prepared for you. And so you have a right to have hope.

Now, now it gets a little sobering. See, we just got through shouting. Now look at verse three. "Not only so, but we also rejoice in our suffering." Uh-oh. I want to let you know that you are going to go through a process in Christ and it's unavoidable because God doesn't want to just bless you, God wants to also grow you.

See, we're the "Bless Me" generation, but we have to be the "Grow Me" generation. We have to say, "Lord, there's some things in me that aren't right yet, make them right. There are some ways in me that aren't holy yet, make them holy. There are some attitudes that are not Christlike yet, make them Christlike. I have some old actions still plaguing me, God make me like you."

And so He says, "All right, I'm going to take you through a process and here's the way it will work. I'm going to make sure that you have times in your life where you are suffering." Now, not everybody's going to tell you this because we have unfortunately in this day too many candy store preachers.

You have too many folk who will tell you, all they'll tell you is what you're going to get. All they'll tell you is how you're going to be blessed. All they'll tell you is that God's going to make you healthy, wealthy, sexy, and wise. I've come to tell you there's more to it.

I come to tell you that the Bible says no, God's not just going to bless you, He's going to grow you. And so what does He do? He makes sure that we experience some suffering in our lives. And read it in the New Testament. It is crystal clear. God lets His people suffer.

Some folk won't tell you that. Some folk will assign all of your suffering to the devil and then you need to rebuke it. Listen, some of it you can rebuke it all you want, it'll rebuke you back. You know why? Because if God let the sunshine dominate, then you wouldn't have the growth that the rain brings. And so He'll bring some rain into your life.

And listen, you don't have to assign all of it to the Lord. Sometimes the devil does bring it, but God says, "Rather than remove it, I'll use it." Sometimes your enemies will bring it, but God says, "I'll use it."

Oh, I'm in the book. Second Corinthians, Paul said, "I sought the Lord three times that He would rid me of a thorn in my flesh." And God said instead of ridding you of it, I'm going to give you grace. Why did God give him grace instead of removing the thorn? Because He said, "I can use this to grow him. I can use this to build character in him. I can use this to make sure he is humbly dependent upon Me. I've given him so many blessings and revelation, if I don't let some suffering come, he'll be conceited."

And so what I'll do is make sure that he always knows he's got to trust Me day by day. Listen, my friend, God's doing the same thing in your life. You've been praying for some things to be removed and instead God is allowing them to stay. Why? Because of this process Paul mentions here.

Look at what he said. He says we have to learn to rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance. Listen, I tell you all the time, we are a generation that must let God teach us how to persevere because there's very little in our culture to make us persevere.

We live in the technological age. We have so many conveniences at our disposal. And so we are not accustomed to having to persevere. I tell you all the time, when we say we're washing clothes, that's relative. Relatively speaking, we're washing clothes.

When your great-grandmother said she was washing clothes, she was washing clothes. But when we say we're washing clothes, somebody call you up, "Oh, girl, I can't stay on the phone. I'm washing today." And what do we mean? We mean we took a pile of clothes out of a hamper, we put them in a machine, we poured in some detergent. Then we closed the lid, pushed a button or two and walked away. "I can't talk, I'm washing."

See what I mean? We're not persevering through that process. We just dump some clothes in. And then you come back some minutes later after you hear the machine has stopped and you go take them out and you put them in another machine where you put in little fabric softener, whatever it is. And then you close the lid, push another button and walk away again. "I'm drying my clothes." No, you're not, the machine's drying your clothes.

Your great-grandmother hung them out in the wind. Come on, somebody. Even if you lived in the hood, sometimes they had a clothes co-op. You had a line and you strung it across the street and you and your friend had a co-op, you put them on and rolled them out there. It's not our fault. Let's rid ourselves of guilt. It's not our fault. Technology has spoiled us.

You know years ago, not that many years ago, when you were out in public and you needed to make a call, you had to find a payphone or find a generous soul who would let you use their phone in the store or at some business. And guess what? We survived.

Oh, but now we act like life itself stops if we have lost our cell phone, temporarily misplaced our cell phone, left the cell phone home. You know how you do, you act like you can't live. "Oh, Lord, my cell. I don't believe it."

Guest (Female): Hi everyone, this is Alicia Sheppard Greer. More of today's teaching is still to come, but first, I want to share something meaningful with you. As we continue carrying forward the ministry of my father, Pastor Paul Sheppard, our heart remains the same: helping people encounter Jesus so they can live victoriously.

One of the exciting ways we're doing that is through a ministry we've partnered with that I am honored to help lead called Kingdom Collective. Through gatherings of worship, prayer, and five-fold ministry, we're seeing people encounter God in powerful and life-changing ways.

March 20th through 22nd, we'll be hosting Kingdom Revival Weekend in the Bay Area. Three gatherings dedicated to seeking the presence of the Lord together. If you're looking for a place to worship, pray, and draw closer to God, we would love to welcome you. You can find all the details at kingdomcollective.com.

Paul Sheppard: We go to the store and all we had to do was walk up and down the aisle. See what you want, grab it off the thing, throw it into your basket. We didn't have to grow the food. We didn't have to produce the food. All we're doing is going up and down, pulling, and what do we do? "I don't believe that they're trying to charge 5.74 for this." Then we get a cart full of stuff we didn't grow or produce up to the line. God forbid that there are three people ahead of us in the line. Standing there huffing and puffing. "Makes no sense. Where are the rest of these people? Somebody look at that, got three registers with nobody on it. I don't believe it."

It's not our fault. We're just spoiled rotten. Get in an airplane. Fly 33, 35 thousand feet in the air at some 500 miles per hour zipping through the air in a way that your great-grandparents never conceived possible. And what are we up there doing? "I know y'all bringing me something besides this little pitiful sandwich that all I had to pay for my ticket." You got it on Orbit or you got it somewhere at a discount, all that money.

And God forbid you're on Southwest. Oh, y'all wear Southwest out. Now you knew why you got on Southwest because you didn't want to pay for United, American, Continental, USA. You wanted the cheapest way, so you went Southwest. You know by now that it doesn't matter where you're going, whether down the coast or across the country, Southwest is going to give you two things: they're going to give you peanuts and something to drink. That's it.

No need of fussing, no need of calling the president of the company, no need of showing parts of yourself that need to be concealed. Southwest is going to give you two things, whether you are a pauper or the president of the United States. You're going to get peanuts and you're going to get something to drink.

If you're lucky, every now and then in the basket—I fly them for just a couple of routes when I have to get down to LA real quick, I jump on there and the other day I was on there and I said, "I don't like those honey-roasted peanuts. I like either the plain ones or I don't want those peanuts." And so I saw, and I saw another bag in the thing that looked different than that. I said, "Lady, what is that?" She said, "Oh, that's pretzels." I said, "Give me that."

See, every now and then if you want to switch up from the peanuts, they might give you a bag of pretzels. But that's all you're going to get. Why you going in there tripping? Leave those people alone. You want more food? Get on another airline, pay more money. We're spoiled. Bless our hearts.

And so God says, "I'm going to let you learn how to persevere because I won't treat you like technology does. I'm going to make you wait on some things. I'm going to make you persevere, press through some things." But remember, My grace is going to allow it not to kill you. God will make you persevere, but He won't put more on you than you can bear.

And Paul said we have to learn that our suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance—watch this—produces character. See, that's what God's trying to do. God wants you to stand there in the line and quit complaining and let Him grow some patience in you. And you stand there and realize, "You know what? I'm not in all that big a hurry. I don't just have to get out of this store in the next five minutes. I wish I could walk straight into a line, but let me just stand here a while, let me look around, smile at somebody, strike up a little conversation, be nice for a change."

God wants to grow character in us. If you're there standing there, you're a child of God, standing there showing out right along with the folk who don't know Jesus, where's the difference? And if they try to strike up that, you know, that bad conversation, "It makes no sense. I don't believe it." You just say, "Yeah, well, hopefully someone's coming soon. Listen, listen, how things going with you and is that your grandbaby? Oh, what's her name?" Try to get them in a different frame of mind. Help get that devil out of there.

God's trying to grow character in us. The fruit of the spirit, what God's trying to do is love, joy, peace, patience, long-suffering. That's the ability to outway your trouble. I can hang longer than my trouble. God's trying to grow that in us. Faithfulness, the ability to make your word good. And so character comes as God exercises us in perseverance.

And Paul says and it is that character, once that character is developed in you, then your hope is mature because I'm hoping for more blessings, but I don't need them because until God brings them, He's given me a character and an ability to stand my ground and to represent Him, to worship Him, to praise Him, and to thank Him that He's given me access to everything I need for life and for godliness.

I've come to let somebody know that because of Jesus, access has been granted into everything you need. Peter put it this way in Second Peter chapter one. He said God has given us everything we need for life and for godliness. He's given us exceeding great and precious promises. That through these we might be partakers of His divine nature.

Because of Jesus, you and I have access to every blessing, every provision of God that has been ordained for our lives. But please know that God won't just bless you, He'll also grow you. He'll also make you become mature. In fact, there are some blessings He has for you, He can't afford to give them to you till you grow up a little bit. Because He knows how we are.

He knows if He blesses you and you're immature, that blessing will drive you crazy. Some folk can't afford to have God's material provisions yet. You don't have your priorities right yet. God can't put more into your hands because He hasn't taught you yet how to value what He's already given you.

The Bible says if you want more, you've got to be faithful over what you already have. And I've come to let somebody know there's more coming. You have hope in Christ, but the process is going to make sure you grow. And when you grow to the place where you can handle it, don't worry about it, there are some things coming.

We have hope for our future in this world. And let me close by telling you we have hope for a future in the next one. I'm so glad I still believe the old-fashioned Gospel. I'm so glad I don't believe that all of the heaven is on earth. I'm here to tell you that there is a real heaven.

I'm here to tell you that one of these days, God is going to bless us that we will close our eyes on this side and we'll open them on the other side. And it doesn't matter how many blessings you've enjoyed in this life, when you are absent from this body, you're going to be present with the Lord.

Don't tell me that all of my blessings are here because this is a wicked world. This is a dangerous world. This is an evil world. But there's another one coming where there's no more sickness, no more sorrow, no more pain, no more trouble, no more folk working my nerve. There's coming a time when I will rejoice in the presence of my God forevermore. And I want to let you know in Christ we have hope. We have peace with Him that takes care of our past. We have grace that secures us in our present. We have hope for our future, both in this world and in the world to come. Thank God that through Christ we have been granted access to every blessing.

Guest (Male): It's always beneficial to know where we once were so that we can have a greater understanding of where we are. I hope that's where you find yourself today. The better we understand our badness, the more fully we will appreciate His goodness.

So glad you stopped by for today's Destined for Victory message, "Access Granted." If you joined us late or if you want to hear the full message one more time, stop by pastorpaul.net. That's pastorpaul.net. And when you come to faith in Christ, you are immediately made right with God. It's because of this new relationship that believers have access to peace, joy, hope, even during life's most difficult seasons. To learn more about the access to blessing you have in Christ, I hope you'll contact us today and request your copy of our booklet, Access Granted. That's Access Granted, a great resource based on Romans chapter five and our gift to you today for your generous donation to Destined for Victory.

You can give by phone by calling 855-339-5500. That's 855-339-5500. Or visit pastorpaul.net to make a safe and secure donation online. You can also mail your gift to Destined for Victory, Post Office Box 1767, Fremont, California 94538.

Paul Sheppard: God now wants to give you life. Always understand that life is not breathing. That's physical existence. When the Bible speaks of life, it's speaking of a quality that emanates from God to us as a result of a direct connection, a direct relationship.

Guest (Male): That's next time in our Destined for Victory message, "When Jesus Comes." Until then, remember, He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.