Destined for Victory

Paul Sheppard: I know you think you're really wonderful, but a whole world full of you? A whole world full of you, everybody's like you, have your taste in everything? It would be a boring world. And it wouldn't work—a dysfunctional world, because all of us have strengths and we have weaknesses. Well, if everybody's like you, then they all have your same weaknesses.

Guest (Male): God loves diversity and it's a good thing he does. Where would we be without it? Hello and welcome to Destined for Victory, featuring Pastor Paul Sheppard. Well, "If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?" The apostle Paul posed that question in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, and it's every bit as relevant now as it was 2,000 years ago.

Today, we'll share an important message about the beauty of diversity, a message that includes the touching story of a conversation between two strangers on a plane flight. I hope you'll stay tuned. But if you aren't able to do so today, remember, you can always visit pastorpaul.net to listen to any recent message on demand. Again, our web address: pastorpaul.net. Now, let's listen closely to Pastor Paul's Destined for Victory message, "Can't We All Just Get Along?"

Paul Sheppard: Our marriages will be better when we introduce harmony to them, when we quit trying to make the spouse like ourselves. It's not going to happen. Men will always be men; women will always be women, thank God. Thank God. You might think you want your spouse to be exactly like you in every way, but that's not why God gave us the concept of marriage and the privilege to marry in the Lord.

Because the idea is for you to have someone who is different but who can harmonize and bring to your life and you to theirs some things that they cannot have alone. And so you don't want sameness and, thank God, because it'll never happen in a marriage relationship. A man and woman will never want the same temperature in the same room at the same time. Not going to happen. Quit trying to make it happen, quit praying that it'll happen. It's not going to—get over it. It's not going to happen.

What you've got to do is find a place of harmony. You can reach harmony a number of ways. You can reach it through understanding, through compromise, through negotiation. You can find a place of agreement, which means harmony, which means we don't have to want the same temperature in the same room. Let's just figure out how to live in the same house and create an atmosphere of unity, of agreement, of harmony.

Difference is going to serve you well if you allow it. God loves difference. Look at the way God created us. He loves difference. He loves the fact that everything isn't the same. Even in nature, look at the wonderful diversity in nature. Snowflakes aren't even the same. And we don't stop and study them, but if you do, they've discovered none of them are the same. Our fingerprints aren't the same. God loves diversity.

He loves "both and," not "either or." God doesn't say pick red or blue, which one you want. God made some things red, made some things blue. He says it can all work together in my plan. People groups can work together in God's plan. One group isn't superior to another group. We are all God's children. We are different by design, but we can all serve the same Christ and glorify God together.

And we have to learn to do that. Learn to do that. Sometimes Christians try to belittle difference in an attempt to achieve unity. I've heard folks say, "Well, I don't even see color when I see the body of Christ. I don't even see color." Well, why not? There's color there. I know what you mean. You're trying to say that it doesn't create any feeling of prejudice or superiority or anything in you. Okay, to that extent, fine. I know what you're getting at. But don't put down difference because God created it.

Don't tell me, "When I see you, Pastor Paul, I don't even see a black man." I don't know why not. Help me now, help me now. Why don't you see what I am? You're probably trying to say that you don't see me in the way that many folks viewed us in days gone by, decades gone by in this country. Some folks still view us according to some old outdated unbiblical mindset and understanding, and you might be trying to assure me that you don't see me as lower than you or beneath you or anything like that. I appreciate your heart, but don't throw away my difference trying to achieve it.

If you're Caucasian or Asian or Hispanic or from some other cultural group, sure, let's recognize the difference, but let's recognize the difference through the light of the Gospel and the glory of Christ, who takes our difference and makes it to glorify him. I told you years ago, the late Bishop Benjamin Reid, one of my dearest mentors, told the story of how we can so easily just get trapped into presumptuous thinking.

He says he boarded a flight one day. Bishop Reid was a man about 350 or so pounds, just a huge fellow. And so he flew first class to get the comfort of that larger seat. He pulled into his seat and sat down. And then before long, a big, tall—now Bishop was a big black man—a big, tall white gentleman got on board with a big Texan hat. He came in and he slid into the seat next to me. We just kind of looked at each other and that was it.

So they sat there, didn't really speak to each other, and before long they buckled in and they took off. It was one of those rough take-offs. There was a lot of turbulence in the air in the lower altitudes and what have you. It just took them a while to get into smooth air. They were just being tossed around in the air all while they ascended to cruising altitude. It was just unusually rough.

But finally they settled in. When they hit smooth air, he said he just sighed, "Thank you, Jesus." When he said that, the man whipped his head around and said, "What'd you say?" And then he got an attitude. In just a split second, he got an attitude. He said, "I said, Thank you, Jesus!" Because in that moment he thought, how dare he try to throw off on the fact that I love the Lord and that I thank God for the blessing of smooth air.

In his mind, he was building a case against this guy. He hasn't spoken to me—now Bishop didn't realize he hadn't spoken to him either. But you see how you can be when you're trapped in your own thoughts? He's thinking he hasn't spoken to me, so he's probably prejudiced. He's probably wondering why I'm up here in first class with him. All this can go on in your mind. He's probably wondering why I'm up here, and now not only is he prejudiced, but he's a prejudiced atheist.

"So I was going to set him straight. So I told him, 'I said, Thank you, Jesus!'" When he said that, the man said, "Well, hallelujah!" He stuck out his hand and said, "I'm Pastor so-and-so, I pastor such-and-such." And Bishop said, "You don't say! Well, I'm Bishop Benjamin Reid, I pastor First Church of God in Inglewood, California." They just sat there and started fellowshipping and talking about the Lord and what he was doing in their churches and what have you.

The fellowship got so good that they started crying. Both of them, tears just streaming. "Oh, isn't God good? Yes, he is. Hallelujah." The flight attendant came by and said, "Is everything all right?" The man spoke up and said, "Oh yeah, lady, everything's just fine. This here is a long-lost brother of mine." The flight attendant looked at Bishop and looked at the man and tried to figure this out. Long-lost brother? One vanilla, one chocolate? Trying to figure out what's going on here.

Then the man figured that he had her going, so he might as well make it worse. He said, "Yeah, yeah, he's my long-lost brother. And you know what? We both have the same daddy!" I want to let you know something. In Christ, we have the same spiritual standing, same spiritual roots. But God takes our differences culturally and philosophically and in any other way we have difference in the kingdom of God, and he makes it blend together if we will make the commitment to walk in unity and agreement. He'll blend it together for his own divine purposes.

That's Paul's goal here in Romans 14, to help us understand that difference does not have to create division. Difference doesn't necessarily lead to division. Difference can and should lead to harmony, not to division. Here's how we get into division: we take things that we are passionate about and we take things we have preferences for. But we take our passion and our preferences and out of them we create prejudices.

We decide that the things I feel strongly about or the things I prefer are right not only for me, but they're right for everybody. And so you end up taking what could have just been a preference and turning it into a polarizing prejudice. And you decide unless you are in my camp on every issue, something is wrong with you. And that's where we take difference and create division. But God's will is for us to take difference and to create harmony.

God loves diversity. He loves the fact that he has created us, given us differing backgrounds and all of that, because we can do so much more through harmony than we can do if everyone is alike. In fact, the world would just be boring if we were all alike. You might as well admit it now. I know you think you're really wonderful, but a whole world full of you? A whole world full of you?

Guest (Male): Don't go away. We have more of today's Destined for Victory message coming up next. But we want to thank all of you who support Destined for Victory with your prayers and financial support, gifts that help us keep this media ministry going. And if you'd like to join us in our mission to preach the timeless truth for a victorious life, please consider making a safe and secure donation at our website, pastorpaul.net, or give us a call at 855-339-5500. Once again, 855-339-5500. Well, it's a good thing we're not all alike. If we were, what a boring world it would be. Now let's enjoy the rest of today's Destined for Victory message, "Can't We All Just Get Along?"

Paul Sheppard: A whole world full of you, everybody's like you, have your taste in everything? It would be a boring world. And it wouldn't work—a dysfunctional world, because all of us have strengths and we have weaknesses. Well, if everybody's like you, then they all have your same weaknesses. Where are we going to get the strength? And so you've got to learn at some point to thank God for difference.

Temperaments are different by choice. I've told you many times before, notice the way people choose their spouses. Rarely do two sanguines, two extreme extroverts, hook up. It happens every now and then, but that's very rare because most people, even if they haven't really studied the issue, most people know innately, "I don't want to spend the rest of my life with somebody who's exactly like me. I am subconsciously looking for complements to myself."

And so if I'm loud and rowdy, then I tend not to want to hook up with somebody else who's loud and rowdy. Because if the sanguine's on stage of life all the time—sanguines enter a room mouth-first. You hear them if they're coming to your party or your barbecue; you hear them on the porch before they ever get inside. "Isn't that something? We could hardly find somewhere to park. I tell you the truth, this is something else. I hope they all in here, I hope the food is ready because I sure am already hungry."

And you know your sanguine friend has arrived. You open the door, let them on in. They're the life of the party. Every party needs a couple of sanguines. Couple of folks you don't know what they're going to say—they're the life of the party. But they tend not to hook up with each other because if the sanguine's on stage, someone's got to be in the audience.

So they tend to hook up with someone who is more quiet and soft-spoken and who just looks at them a lot, just smiles and sometimes shakes their head. My dad, high-powered sanguine. My mom, melancholy-phlegmatic—one of those introverts, just chilled out, laying low. "What's the fuss?" It was amusing to watch them as we grew up. But you needed her gear to help offset his gear. See what I'm saying?

But you've got to understand the difference. Now all the loud, rowdy, extroverted, always-got-to-have-something-happening people would look at somebody like my mother and say, "What's the matter with her?" And the answer is nothing's the matter with her. People would come over to the house and we'd have a barbecue or something, and my dad's running around and carrying on, talking to everybody and hugging babies and just carrying on. And my mom's sitting in a chair somewhere just watching. She'd see the kids run around or something, tell them, "Y'all get out of there. Come on over here." Other than that, she didn't have a whole lot to say.

And you'd look and say, "Is anything wrong? Is Sister Peggy all right?" And we'd say, "Oh, she's fine. In fact, she's having a good day today." We could tell by the look on her face and what have you, and that little playful fussing with the kids and keeping them in line. Oh, she's having a good old time. You have to learn the difference.

You have the choleric people—the no-nonsense, strong natural leader, mover, shaker, get things done. "Let's come on, let's go." They'll chair the committee; they will head up the project; they'll get it done on the job and what have you. They are the go-getters. Now they don't have a whole lot of patience with folks who can't move with their pace. And you need cholerics to get some things done. God made them that way. But they have strengths and they also have weaknesses.

And so God complements that. Often cholerics, you'll find them hook up with melancholy-type people who are more touchy-feely, more in touch with the non-logical but still very real issues. They'll help bring in the other side. Because not everything is logical. And so you talk to a choleric, and if it doesn't make sense, they'll dismiss you. Doesn't make sense. Next.

But the melancholy will come in and say, "No, honey, see, I don't understand." Melancholy come in male and female. But if you have a strong male choleric and he's married to a female melancholy, then she can come along and say, "No, honey, there really are some other things we need to consider." She can paint another picture. What he has to learn to do is to see some things from a different perspective because they're still real. Just because you can't put it in a test tube or you can't prove the case on paper doesn't mean it's not so, especially when you're dealing with people issues. People aren't just about logic; they're emotions and they're things that you've got to work through.

Just like look at it in Scripture. In Acts 15, you have Paul—very choleric. "I'm ready to go on the second missionary journey. All right, Barnabas, let's meet at four o'clock." Barnabas said, "All right, cool. Let me go get John Mark and I'll meet you back here at four o'clock." Paul says, "Stop the presses. No, no, John Mark's not going with us this time. He went with us the last time and he left us in the middle of the journey. I don't fool with people who can't handle the road."

"I don't know where he thought he was going in the first place. Nobody told him we were going to be staying at the Holiday Inn and Best Western and what have you. I don't know what his problem was. He went running home to mama as soon as things got a little bit thick. And if he can't handle the heat, he needs to stay out the kitchen, and we are not taking John Mark." Well, Barnabas, who is melancholy, who is the son of encouragement, says, "No, Paul, he needs to go because he's learned some things since then, and we need to give him a chance to prove himself. I'm sure he doesn't feel good about the fact that he deserted us, and he's ready to take another crack at it, and we need to give him a chance to do that."

Paul said, "Read my lips. He is not going." Right in your Bible, Acts 15, the Bible says the contention was sharp between the two of them. Some Christians think that you have to be real pleasant and sweet. That's the only way to prove that you know Jesus and you just sit there, "Now brother, Brother Barnabas, you need to..." No, no, I don't know where you got that from. The Bible doesn't say anything like that. The contention was sharp. You can disagree vehemently and still be in the will of God. Isn't that good news? We're doing it anyway; we might as well know there's a way to do it and be in the will of God.

And it was sharp. Thank God Barnabas stood his ground. In terms of temperament, he probably couldn't argue as masterfully as Paul could, but he had a point and he was standing on it. And he did it respectfully. He said, "No, we need to let him prove himself. I feel sure he needs to go." Paul said, "Well, he's not going with me." And Barnabas said, "Well, okay, if that's the way we need to do it, then why don't you find another travel companion and I will take John Mark because he needs the opportunity to prove himself."

They took two different versions of the second missionary journey. Paul took a new companion named Silas and headed in one direction strengthening the churches and raising up new ones. And Barnabas took John Mark and went in another direction because he was sure that that needed to happen. Difference can be a blessing. Later on, you can tell that they didn't break fellowship because later on, Paul references Barnabas as his companion in the Gospel.

In fact, Paul grew and matured, and later in his ministry, you find him complimenting John Mark. When he writes his final letter, 2 Timothy chapter 4, he says in his closing remarks, "Oh yeah, and when you come, Timothy, bring John Mark with you, because he's been helpful to me in the ministry." Sooner or later, Paul got the message: you can't throw everybody away. You've got to give them a chance to learn and to grow. And God took the difference of Barnabas and helped to raise up John Mark, who was a strong leader.

I want to tell you folks, we've got a pledge, we've got a purpose in our hearts that we are going to walk in agreement. And that means harmony. That means we don't throw difference away, but we acknowledge that we need people who are unlike us in some ways. Even if we never agree on certain things—and we'll talk about that as we begin to explore now in practical terms what things did Paul teach us that we might learn to walk in this kind of harmony—you're going to find that it doesn't require that you agree about many non-important issues. You can keep your disagreement, but it is the way you disagree and it is the way you find points of unity that makes the difference.

We've got to make up in our minds that we are going to be people who honor God, and in honoring God, we honor the fact that God sovereignly chose to create a world of people and to save a world of people, many of whom are very different than we are in some ways. But they have the same standing in Christ, they have an important contribution to the Great Commission and to the health and welfare of the body of Christ. And we must learn to honor one another enough to say, "Lord, help us to walk in unity."

Guest (Male): God created us to need one another—different temperaments, different experiences, different strengths. We need those things from others in order to carry out the will of God for our lives and for the world in general. What's true for us as individuals is true for ministries like Destined for Victory. Our media ministry cannot exist without the faithful prayers and financial support of listening friends and partners like you. It's only because of you that we can share the hope we have in Christ with people all over the world.

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Paul Sheppard: We often use difference to create division, but difference can actually create harmony. In fact, it takes difference to create harmony. You shouldn't want everybody to be like you because God didn't make them all like you. In fact, we ought to grow up and learn to thank God that the world isn't all like us.

Guest (Male): And that's next time in our continuing message, "Can't We All Just Get Along?" Until then, remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.