Destined for Victory

Paul Sheppard: God has called us to live an authentic life. That life is really too short to be lived inauthentically or to be lived unwisely. Life is not a dress rehearsal, it's the real thing. You don't get to come back and do it again. And therefore, we must let the Word of God teach us how to live wisely.

Guest (Male): What does it mean to live an authentic Christian life? Find out next on today’s Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Sheppard. Well, for the past few days, we’ve been examining the life of Christ in order that we might learn what an authentic Christian life looks like.

If you’ve missed any message along the way, don’t worry, Pastor Paul gives a recap early in today’s message. You’ll also find those earlier messages archived at our website, pastorpaul.net. Again, that’s pastorpaul.net. You can also subscribe to the podcast at Spotify or wherever you enjoy your podcasts. Now, with today’s Destined for Victory message, Being Holy, Being Human, here is Pastor Paul.

Paul Sheppard: Luke chapter 2, verse 52. In the interest of time, we’ll only read that single verse as we learn an important lesson from the example of our Savior while he was here on earth. And you’ll find these words: "And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men."

We’ve been talking about the fact that God has called us to live an authentic life. That life is really too short to be lived inauthentically or to be lived unwisely. Life is not a dress rehearsal, it's the real thing. You don't get to come back and do it again. And therefore, we must let the Word of God teach us how to live wisely.

Moses said in Psalm 90, "Lord, teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom." Now, the premise of this series has been that a lot of us as believers focus on spiritual development, and indeed we should. But I want you to understand that the Word of God would have us develop a number of areas in our lives, not just the spiritual area.

Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature. He did increase in favor with God, but also with men. What that means is he modeled for us a life that was balanced, a life that wasn’t so heavenly minded until he was no earthly good. And I don’t know if you’ve run into them, but there are some Christians who are so heavenly minded until they’re no earthly good.

Now, if indeed you only could develop one area of life, then the spiritual area is it, because it's more important. Because by developing a relationship with God, you prepare yourself not only for time, but for eternity. But the reality is we ought to develop more than our spiritual life. Now, you don’t want to be a person who is so earthly minded you’re no heavenly good, but you want to bring about the balance. That’s been our premise.

And so, we’re attempting to learn how to live a Christ-like balanced life. Now, we’ve covered a lot of ground, and I cannot do any real review in the interest of time. Let me just mention the points already covered. Number one, one of the keys to Christ-like balance is to cultivate a support system. We studied the life of Christ in some moments to see that he had a very clear support system for his earthly life.

And we talked about the need to make sure you have fillers, people and activities that are fillers in your life so that you can deal with the drainers in your life. And Jesus cultivated a support system to help him do that. Secondly, we talked about the importance of reconciling your relationships. You can’t love God whom you can’t see, John said in his first epistle, without loving people that you see all the time.

In other words, don’t be one of these people who says, "I want to love God and develop my relationship with him, but I don’t want to deal with these people." You can’t love God without dealing with people because God loves people. And when he saves you, he saves you so that you can minister to people in his name, so that you can love people in his name, so that you can treat people right in his name.

And you need to tap into God’s love so that you can properly love others. We talked about the importance of getting right with people, stopping these spats and these feuds. Life is too short for that. Reconcile your relationships, get them in order. Even if people won’t reconcile with you, we talked about the importance of releasing their offenses to the Lord so that you can get on with your life.

Then the third point we’ve covered is to establish appropriate boundaries. If you want to have a balanced life in the way that Christ did, you want to establish appropriate boundaries. What that means is that you want to learn that Jesus didn’t always allow people constant access to him. He knew when was enough. He knew when it was time to withdraw from the people. He knew when it was chill time.

And we looked at some examples from his ministry where Jesus withdrew to a solitary place in order to commune with God, in order to rejuvenate his spirit as well as his mind and body. Jesus wasn’t trying to prove that he was the Son of God by being available to people 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and 366 in leap year. Jesus knew he could love people best by having appropriate boundaries.

Jesus knew when to say no. We looked at an example of Jesus saying no. You can love folk and tell them no at the same time. That’s a revelation for some of you, but let me give it to you. You can be loved and turned down at the same time. And some of us have to learn to do it because if you don’t have appropriate boundaries, people will write the script of your life for you.

Have you figured that out? That there are people in your life who are professional scriptwriters? They don’t do it for a living, but they do it in your life. They will tell you what I need you to do by a certain time, how much money you need to give me, how much of your time you need to invest in me. Here are the hours I need you. And they will write the script of your life.

And Jesus taught us by his example to follow the leading of the Spirit, but don’t let people dictate what you do. Learn when to say no. Learn when you have fulfilled your purpose in someone’s life. I gave a word in that last message to parents, that your job is to work yourself out of a job. Please know that. To work yourself out of a job.

Don’t feel like you’re not being a real parent if you’re not playing the same role in their life all of their life. No, your job is to train them in the instruction of the Lord and to help them become mature, hopefully spiritually, but whether or not they receive Christ, if you put the Word in them, then pray that God will get through to them at some point in their life. And meanwhile, you send them off in Jesus' name.

If they’re still in your house all up there 30 years old, 35—now they can still be there, but let it be at your request and at your convenience because they’re now being a blessing to you. They’re helping you do what God’s called you to do. Don’t have them in there because they need you at 30 the way they needed you at 12. Something is wrong. You have something grown walking around your house with a plate saying, "Mama." Something is wrong. You didn’t know what your job description was.

I finished that message talking about the importance of boundaries with your time. Thank God for technology. It can be a blessing if you work it right. Thank God for answering machines. I finished the last message talking about the need for you to take advantage of that. Don’t give people constant access to your life. There comes a time when you’re available live, but there come other times when I’m only available for emergencies, and I determine what the emergency is. If Jesus did it, then you can do it.

And if you have those people in your life who say, "I don’t talk to machines when I call. You better answer me." Well, you won’t be talking to me then. Because if it's not live time, if it's chill-out time, if it's family time, if it's "I can’t talk to everybody" time, then you put that machine on and let it dictate. Let me tell you, don’t lie on your answering machine. That doesn’t honor Christ.

I’ve called some of the folk and the thing says, "Hi, I’m not home. Leave a message." And then I start leaving the message, "Hi, this is Pastor Paul," and then you pick up the phone, "Oh, Pastor! Lord, Pastor’s on the phone. Honey, Pastor’s on the phone." Well, no, the machine just said you weren’t home. Now, how am I talking to you and you’re not home? You don’t have to lie. Call my house, you’ll hear, "This is the Sheppard residence. Please leave your name, phone number, and a message. Thank you. Beep." I don’t have to tell you what I’m doing. None of your business.

So we have to understand that Christ, who was God personified, all God and all man, if he had to create boundaries, so do we. Let me give you two more points and I’ll wrap this up. If you want to develop Christ-like balance, another thing you want to do is to learn how and when to exhale. We are people who have a need to express some things. God made us not only spirit beings—we are spirit—but we have souls. Often the soul realm is described as the combination of your intellect, your will, and your emotions. The soulish realm is part of who you are.

Every now and then, I run into Christians who try to be all spirit and no soul. None of you, but people I know, who try to be super spiritual and they just act like everything soulish, everything that is of mind, of a psychological nature and what have you, is somehow inappropriate. It's unimportant. All you need to do is just commune with God, just be in the spirit, just stay in the spirit all the time. I’m here to keep you from being a spiritual crackpot. You can’t just live in the spirit realm all the time.

You’ll get weird. You’ll get strange. You’ll get crazy. I know people who are like that. I’m not telling you what I think. I know folk who are so saved they’re strange. Just weird. Just don’t even make sense. You don’t even want to be around them. You can’t. Jesus didn’t live that way. You can’t get better than him. Now, if Jesus didn’t walk around strange and spooky, what are you doing acting like that? You have a soul. Intellect, will, emotions. Real parts of who God made you. Don’t ignore them.

You’ve got to learn that you have emotions. Don’t be afraid of emotions. Emotions are good if you can let them come under the control of the Word of God and the Spirit of God. Then they are good. You don’t have to be afraid of your emotional makeup. God made you that way. We have the need to exhale. In other words, don’t suffer in silence when there’s some things you need to express.

Now, I’ll harken back to the first part of the series. I referred to a passage in Matthew 26 when I was making the point that Jesus cultivated a support system in his life and that he had some special friends, people who were closer to him than others. In Matthew 26, you see Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. And the point I made then to establish that Peter, James, and John were unusually close to him is that he told the eight disciples, "Stay here while I go a little further," and he took Peter, James, and John, who were three of his closest colleagues.

And he began to exhale with them. I want you to see what he said in verse 38 of Matthew 26. Jesus said to them, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful unto death." He said to them, not to everyone. Not everybody could handle hearing the Savior say, "I feel like I’m about to die. I feel like I can’t take it. I feel like I’m about to break." Not everybody can handle that. Do you know there are people in your life who can’t handle what's really going on with you?

And so that’s why you’ve got to develop the right system, because you can’t just exhale to any old body. There are some folk who cannot handle that. Don’t even try to let them handle it. They will mishandle it. But God will bring into your life persons who can handle who you are, what you’re going through. They don’t need you to have a big S on your chest for spiritual. Come on, somebody. They don’t need that. They don’t need you to always be on top of it. Now, you do have people in your life who, if you’re not on top, don’t deal with them. They can only take you on top.

Because when you see them, that’s a need coming, and they need you to be on it. "I need to talk to you. I need to deal with you. I need to do lunch with you." And it's about them, it's not about you. So they want you to be on the top of your game so you can give them the best that you’ve got. But you need people in your life, and God will see to it that they’re there, who can handle you when you’re not on top of it, it is on top of you. And Jesus had those persons. And he exhaled to them.

That’s the point I want you to see here, that he said to them, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful unto death. I feel like I can’t handle this moment." As he was facing torture and facing crucifixion, everything inside of him cried out to rescue himself from this fate. And he had the ability to do it, but he knew it was the will of the Father for him to go through it. So he had to wrestle with his emotions.

And one of the ways he did that is he exhaled. He told somebody how he felt. Don’t walk around as a pent-up Christian. Don’t walk around having things in you that somebody needs to hear so they know where you are, so they know how to pray for you, so they know how to give you a word of encouragement. Don’t force people to be super spiritual or connected. Don’t force people to have to get a word of knowledge every time they see you. Tell them what's on your mind. Tell them where you are.

Every now and then I have folk walk up to me: "You have a word from God for me?" And I feel like saying, "I don’t even know you." But I don’t. I say, "No, at the moment I’m not hearing God say anything to me about you. But I love you, though. Love you. You all right with me. Hey, come on, let me give you a hug or something. But I don’t have a word for you at the moment." But the fact of the matter is, don’t make people have to get a word from God. Why should I get a word from God when you can tell me what's going on?

Here is where I am. Get with your growth group. Get with some folk who love you, who are committed to you and say, "Here is where I am." I’ve given the analogy many times before. If you want to get to a destination and you are lost, you’re not sure how to get there from where you are, the best thing to do is to pick up the phone and call somebody and say, "I’m trying to arrive," or if you’re expected at a party or something, "I’m trying to get there, but I’m lost." What's the first thing they’re going to ask you?

They’re going to ask you, "Where are you?" They can’t start giving you generic directions to their house. It depends on where you are, so they can know, "Okay, based on where you are, you need to go another mile down that same road. You’re on the right road. Go a mile and you’ll get to such-and-such street, and then make a left. And then you’ll go down about three blocks, you’ll see a gas station on the right. Go one block after that and make a right. And halfway in that block, we’re right there." See, they can tell you because you’ve helped them locate where you are.

Now, every now and then you’re so lost that the folk you talk to don’t know how to get you to where you want to go. Come on, let's be honest here. I’ve had folk tell me where they are and I just look at them. You can tell a person where you are in your life and they don’t have a frame of reference for where you are. They love you and they’ll pray for you. But I learned years ago as a pastor it wasn’t my job to have everybody’s answer.

And it relieved me. It relieved me of a lot of stress. It let me get a lot of sleep when I figured out I didn’t have to be the solution to everybody’s problem. If I got a word for you, if I got counsel for you, I’ll give it to you. Many times God will bless a pastor or spiritual leader to be able to get some insight and to be able to give you some practical help. But that’s not a guaranteed thing. Sometimes the best thing I can do is say, "Let's pray. Let's pray. Let's call on God. Let's unite our faith."

Bible says if any two of us would agree as touching anything on earth. And let's pray together. And I say, "God, you know where she is. You know where he is, Lord. You’re looking down on him right now. Be with him where he is. Give us your mind, give us your direction. Give him the grace he needs." And you can pray when you can’t do anything else. But the fact of the matter is, you begin that process by exhaling. Finding the right way, learning how and when to exhale.

Do not suffer in silence. If Jesus had to tell somebody, "I can’t take it," then certainly you’re going to hit times in your life where you feel the same way. And it's not necessarily because you’re not spiritual enough. It's because you have real emotional needs. You have some emotions, you have a soul that needs to be nurtured. Don’t suffer in silence. Don’t bottle up anger. Anger is not necessarily sin. Some Christians still don’t have that.

There is sinful anger. The Bible clearly talks about that. Some anger is sin. But it is because of the nature of the anger, the refusal to deal with it properly. There is such a thing as sinless anger. So when you get over to Ephesians 4 and you find the apostle saying, "Be angry, but don’t sin." He says, "Don’t let the sun go down while you’re angry and don’t give Satan a foothold." He’s telling you, not all anger is sin.

You can be angry and stop short of sin. So if you are angry, but you haven’t committed sin, you’re angry, sometimes that anger needs to be expressed. And again, we learn from the example of our Savior. When you get over to Matthew 21, verses 12 and 13, you find Jesus going into the temple courts, discovering how they have turned it into what he describes as a den of robbers.

And this was a place where people were to get help from God, and they had turned it into a place of merchandising where you couldn’t even sacrifice to the Lord unless you bought some things from them. And Jesus walked in, didn’t like it a little bit. See, some of you all are uncomfortable with the biblical Jesus. Some of you all like that little dude that walks around with the white robe and looking a little effeminate and a little scared of everybody and just kind of just all just mealy-mouth, just walking around, and y'all think he was nice and polite about everything. That’s not the Jesus of the Bible. Read this story. Jesus walked in there. The best paraphrase for it would be he went off.

Guest (Male): Thanks so much for being here for today’s Destined for Victory message, Being Holy, Being Human. It's always a pleasure to study the Word of God with you. Remember, stop by pastorpaul.net to listen to a recent message online on demand. And while you’re there, be sure to check out ways in which you can listen to Destined for Victory on your own favorite digital platform, including our free app. That’s pastorpaul.net.

Have you ever set out to be a blessing to the people around you but then felt like you had gone unnoticed or even under-appreciated? We find just that kind of story in the Gospel of Luke. Martha is busy making preparations, but her sister Mary chooses not to help because she’s chosen to spend time with Jesus. In our latest booklet, When Humans Attack, Pastor Paul Sheppard takes an honest look at this story to show us how unchecked frustration and unspoken expectations can turn even our best intentions toxic. He also paints a beautiful picture of the difference between distraction and devotion.

That’s When Humans Attack, a gift we’d love to share with you this month as our thank you for your generous donation to the Destined for Victory media ministry. 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: And he himself, he modeled for us that you can be angry without being in sin at that moment. Don’t bottle up your anger. Very often anger is our hurt demanding justice. Well, you can’t demand justice unless you speak up. And so if you are angry because you’re hurt and you want justice for your hurt, then you’ve got to let that out.

Guest (Male): And that’s next time in our continuing message, Being Holy, Being Human. Until then, remember, He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion in Christ. You are destined for victory.