Destined for Victory

Guest (Male): Hello and welcome to Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Sheppard. Before we get things started today, here's a special word from Meredith Sheppard.

Meredith Sheppard: Hello Destined for Victory family. This is Meredith Sheppard, Pastor Paul's wife. This is the first time you're hearing from me since my beloved husband went home to be with the Lord, and I want you to know your prayers have carried me. Your letters, your messages, cards, books, the ways you've reached out during these months, they've strengthened me through the shock and the grief in ways I can't fully express. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

You often said that he wanted to be the black J. Vernon McGee. He'd say it with that grin of his, but behind the humor was something deeply serious—a vision to create a teaching library that would outlive him, that would keep speaking biblical truth long after he was gone. And that's what he did. For decades, Paul poured himself into building Destined for Victory, not just as a radio program but as a legacy. He wanted to make sure that timeless truth would be available to help people live victorious lives, no matter what generation they're in.

That's why I'm talking to you today, because what Paul worked so hard to build needs your help to continue. Recently, we experienced a change in one of our major funding sources, and for the first time in this ministry's history, we're at risk of losing radio stations, of having to pull back from communities where people depend on this teaching. I don't want my husband's voice silenced. I don't want the work he dedicated his life to build to disappear because of funding. We need to preserve what Pastor Paul poured himself into creating.

So I'm coming to you, this family that's already been so supportive, and I'm asking: will you help us? If Destined for Victory has encouraged you, challenged you, or helped you grow in your walk with God, would you consider giving today? A monthly gift would especially help us stabilize our funding and keep Paul's teaching on the air in every community that needs it. You can give at pastorpaul.net. Thank you for your prayers. Thank you for standing with us, and thank you for your generosity in helping to preserve this legacy. God bless you.

Guest (Male): Well, thank you, Meredith, and we do want to say a special thank you to those that have already responded to this need. To those that haven't, we want to make sure you know how much you are needed now.

When you make your generous gift today, we'll gladly send you a brand-new booklet that will help you persevere through life's challenges or maybe through a past you can't quite forget. It's called *Keep Moving Forward*, and it seems rather appropriate in this moment. Drawing from Israel's transition from Moses to Joshua, this booklet will help you understand that God will go before you as your leader and your protector, even when you're facing new challenges.

Again, that's *Keep Moving Forward*, our gift to you for your generous donation to Destined for Victory today. 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: Some of you all listening to this message have a victim mentality that you've got to get rid of if you're going to walk with Jesus. You've got to stop blaming the world for your troubles, and you've got to realize that you have a Savior who not only wants to give you eternal life but wants to give you abundant life, life to the full.

A new way of thinking means getting rid of excuses. Where do you get that from, Pastor? John chapter 5. I won't turn there in the interest of time. Let me just walk you through it. Read it when you get a chance. There's a man who laid by a pool called Bethesda in Jesus' day. Bethesda was sort of a makeshift hospice. It wasn't even a facility, a hospice place outdoors where people who couldn't be cared for properly in their homes were laid, and people would come and attend to them.

And this man, you're told in John 5, had been there for 38 years. Can you imagine? 38 years. He is laid up, incapable of getting up and walking and moving and living his life. 38 years. Why is he there 38 years? I want to submit to you because he doesn't have a renewed mind.

Where do you get that? Because when Jesus went to Bethesda this particular day, the text tells you that he saw the man, and he learned that he had been there 38 years, meaning Jesus asked somebody, "What about that gentleman? What can you tell me about him?" "Oh, he's been there—he got pool seniority. He's been here longer than anybody else. 38 years." Jesus got that information when he walked up to the man.

What does Jesus say when he walks up to him? "Do you want to get well?" One question. The Son of God walked up to him and said, "Do you want to get well?" Some of you would say, "What in the world stupid question. What you mean, 'Do you want to get well?' He's been there for 38 years." No, Jesus knew what he was doing. He's checking out where his head is.

"Do you want to—I know you're sick. I found out you've been sick for 38 years. The question is, do you want to get well?" And the answer shows you why you can't jump from old to new. The answer was, "Well, you see..." That's where some of you are right now in your life, full of excuses. "Well, you see," you're ready to tell the world why you are not better off than you are. You got your excuses down pat.

"Well, you see, there's nobody to help me. Some of these people have folk coming and helping them. I don't have anybody to help me." First of all, that's not true. You can't lay there for 38 years without somebody bringing you food, bringing you water, turning you over so that you don't get bedsores on the mat you're laying on.

But in his mind, nobody's helping me. Some of you all listening to this message have a victim mentality that you've got to get rid of if you're going to walk with Jesus. You've got to stop blaming the world for your troubles, and you've got to realize that you have a Savior who not only wants to give you eternal life but wants to give you abundant life, life to the full.

But you've got to change your mind to embrace it. "I've been here and ain't nobody helping me." And when the angel comes down and stirs up the water—the myth that they had bought into, some of the people in his day, was the pool there at Bethesda would be stirred every now and then by an angelic being. And if you got in the pool when the angel was stirring it, if you got in first, you would get healed.

And so he told Jesus, "Not only isn't anybody helping me, but nobody is putting me in the pool. And so every time the water gets troubled, they jump in ahead of me." If your mind is right and you believe—whether it was true or not, they believed it—that if you see the water stirred, that means an angel is there, and if you get in... If your mind is right, you will lay at the edge of the pool. Lay at the edge of the pool and you just be sitting there looking.

You got pool seniority. You've been there longer than everybody else. You tell them, "Nobody better not try to get in here before me." You lay right on the edge, and as soon as a good breeze come by, you just roll right on in. But you've got to have your head right. If your head is messed up, you could be laying right there on the edge of a miracle and you don't see it. Right there with the opportunity and you don't see it.

And so we've got to decide to get rid of our excuses. I know we live in a messed-up world. I get it. But at a certain point, you've got to quit focusing on how messed up things are, and you've got to start focusing on what God can or will do about the mess. If I'm His child and He said He's going to take care of me, yes, it might be an economic crazy time, but my God shall supply all of my needs.

And all I've got to do is believe Him for it. Get rid of my excuses. We've got to stop thinking, "Oh, poor pitiful me." Whether it's gender—"Oh, they don't—you know, I'm a woman and the glass ceiling." You serve a God who doesn't worry about a ceiling. He can give you an opportunity that doesn't even make sense, that's not even on anybody else's radar.

And we who are ethnically minorities, we've got to quit bellyaching about the man. Certainly, there are prejudices and all that that abound all around us. They don't control my destiny. I belong to God. Yes, I've experienced racism, but I belong to God. I know racism coming and going. I've had Anglo staffers. I was the senior pastor in one season of my ministry. Don't worry about when it was. I'm not telling you.

I had an Anglo pastor on staff I had hired on my staff. And when he thought it was safe, talking to another Anglo person, used the n-word. I never saw that of him, but the other man had integrity. He said, "My pastor's got to hear this," and told me. I called the man in. I said, "I'm going to give you a chance to respond to something I just heard." Told him, and he admitted, "Yeah, I didn't mean it with any venom or anything, but yeah, I got too casual and I was talking to a guy and I'm so sorry."

Do you know I had enough grace not to fire him on the spot? Why? Because I said, "Let me give him an opportunity to learn. And if he doesn't learn, then he can learn in the unemployment line." You've got to stop acting like the victim and take charge of some things in your life. And it starts with your head. And so I need to let you know, whatever your excuses are, they've got to go.

You're a child of the Most High. You've got to get rid of that stuff that won't serve you moving forward. "Yeah, but I've got a mess on my hands." Miracles are made of messes. You don't need a miracle but that there's a mess. So whenever you have misery, whenever you have a mess, chances are God is ready to wrap a miracle around it.

So you've got to stop focusing on, "Oh, it's—it's worse than it's ever been." Could be, but God. That's where you've got to be. But God. One more thing and I'll let you be done with this. A new way of thinking not only means getting rid of excuses, but number two, it means dealing correctly with past offenses.

Some of you are carrying too much of a chip, and some of you haven't dealt with the chips you sent out. See, it's one thing when you're carrying something. It's another thing when you sent it to other people. Who am I thinking about? I'm thinking about a guy in your Old Testament named Jacob. This dude was a professional trickster. Professional supplanter, deceiver, con artist. Professional.

Jacob—his name meant trickster. He came out of the womb—he was a twin—came out of the womb holding his brother's foot. As an infant coming out of the mama's womb. And you know the story. Tricked his brother first out of his birthright, later out of his blessing. Then he's a fugitive because his brother said, "I'm going to kill him."

Esau wasn't trying to pull the punch, he wasn't trying to sound spiritual. Esau said, "I'm going to kill him. I know he's my twin brother, but I'm going to be a single brother because he's going to be dead." He meant that. And Jacob wasn't tricky by himself; his mama was tricky. He come from tricky. His mama helped plot his escape. She sent him down to Uncle Laban's house.

Problem is trickiness runs throughout the family. He get down to Laban's house, he sees Laban has this daughter that he sees—he loves her. "Ooh, that Rachel. Man, I can—ooh." He asks for her hand. Uncle Laban said, "Well, you got to pay seven years of labor for me to give her to you." He works seven years. Watch what the Bible says. It says, "And it seemed to him like a few days."

Seven years seemed like a few days because of how much he loved that girl. Now he's sprung for real. You all ain't never been sprung like that boy was sprung. A few days, seven years. After seven years he said, "All right, I did it. All right, well we going to start the wedding, get the wedding..." They introduce the groom into a dark wedding chamber.

He laid all night with who he thought was Rachel. The sunlight came into the tent in the morning. And it wasn't Rachel. It was her sister, Leah. And he ran out of there to Laban. "What did you do? You know I worked seven years for Rachel." Here's the trickiness: "Oh, I didn't tell you? You can't have my younger daughter till you marry my older daughter. Those seven years, that was for Leah. Now, if you want Rachel, you're going to have to make a commitment for another seven. I will give her to you now, but you're going to have to promise me another seven years."

So that's been his life, trickiness and being tricked. But he's a man God has called. He's in the line of destiny. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. He's tricky, he's jacked up, but he's called. You know why I'm preaching this? Because I'm preaching to a whole bunch of tricky, jacked up, called people. Oh, I need somebody to thank God that you're called.

Yeah, I got some problems, but I'm called. Yeah, I got some issues, but I'm called. Yeah, I don't have my act together yet, but I'm called. Don't judge me, but I'm called. So you can't change your mind until you deal with that stuff. And so 20 years later—he lived down there for 20 years—now he realizes, "God's got his hand on me. I have destiny in my life. I was given the blessing from Isaac. I am supposed to take this into the next generation toward the Messiah coming to earth. I'm a man who's called. I can't keep this up."

And so he realizes the only way God's going to take you from this point... He spared you 20 years of grace. He could have been killed. Esau could have found out where he lived, went down there to Uncle Laban's house, you know, and popped him. Esau never found out. God protected him. Now he's got wives and children. He's ready to move on.

But God puts it in his heart, "First you've got to go clean up your mess. I'm not going to bless you over your mess." So God convicts him. You ever been convicted? See, I need you all to be honest. I know you got your church clothes on. Be honest. You ever been convicted where God just said, "Now you know you're wrong and you've got to straighten this out right now. Don't ask Me to bless you over this mess. Go handle your business."

And so he said, "All right, I've got to go back and meet Esau." And he starts back. Well, first he had to finish off things with Laban. I don't have time to talk to you about that. He got that straight because Laban said, "Why you trying to leave in the middle of the night, taking my family from my house? Do you know I would cut you?" No, he didn't say that part. Got that straight.

Now he's on his way back to meet his twin brother that he tricked twice. And he's, "I'm going back, Lord, you've got to go with me. I need You—I just need You to work this out." But he was determined: "I can't be blessed over this." That's the renewed mind. Some of you all got to, right now, you hear the Lord saying, and you need to respond, "You're right, Lord. I've got to deal with my mess that I tried to just sweep under the rug, tried to put it—you know, statute of limitations."

No, that doesn't work. Doesn't matter how long ago it was. Get it straight. And so he's on his way, only to find out Esau is on his way to him. And he got word, "Your brother coming." And he said, "Oh, Lord." And when he sees him—read it when you get a chance—bows down to the ground. "I'm your servant. I know I tricked you twice. You can stab me right now, and I'm not getting up from here if you decide to take my life. I'm here, I'm your servant."

But when you have the right attitude, sometimes God will bless you in unexpected ways. What was Esau's response? "Man, get up. Let's hug, you're my brother. I know you did me wrong, but God has been good to me. I'm not coming to kill you, I'm coming to let you know it's all good. I'm blessed, you're blessed. So let's go on and live our blessed lives and put this stuff behind us."

Some of you need to experience some real breakthroughs. But it will only happen, you'll only become new once you renew your mind.

Guest (Male): Thanks so much for being here with us for today's Destined for Victory. We'll pick it up right here next time in our continuing message, *The Process of Becoming New*. Don't forget about the special gift reserved for you as you give generously to Destined for Victory today. More details are available at pastorpaul.net. That's pastorpaul.net. Or you can give by phone at 855-339-5500.

Sometimes we followers of Christ are guilty of just wanting to be zapped into newness. You know what I mean? Sometimes people just want abracadabra, new. You know, and we mean well, but that's not practical. And Paul writes a very practical letter here. And that's tomorrow in our continuing message, *The Process of Becoming New*. Until then, remember: He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.