Destined for Victory

Guest (Male): Hello and welcome to Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Sheppard. Before we get things started today, here is a special word from Destined for Victory’s executive director, Alicia Sheppard Greer.

Alicia Sheppard Greer: Pastor Paul’s media ministry is at a crossroads. As executive director and as his daughter, I am sincerely asking for your help. When my father went to be with the Lord earlier this year, you all showed such tremendous support, and we are so grateful for each and every one of you.

But recently, we experienced a change in one of our significant sources of funding, and that change has led to a deficit. We need your help to keep Pastor Paul’s teachings on the air. We are asking you to prayerfully consider giving a gift over and above your normal amount to help us keep this teaching legacy alive. You can make a donation by visiting pastorpaul.net. Thank you so much for standing with us and keeping this mighty man of God’s teaching legacy alive. God bless you.

Guest (Male): Thank you, Alicia. We really are so grateful for all who have already responded to this urgent need, and thank you in advance for what you can do to help Destined for Victory continue to share the gospel all over the world on multiple platforms. As you give today, we have a great thank-you gift to share with you, one that will challenge you to persevere through life's challenges or unwanted changes.

Introducing our booklet, Keep Moving Forward. Drawing from Israel's transition from Moses to Joshua, this booklet will remind you that God has promised to go before you as your leader and your protector, even when you're facing new challenges. It is a great resource for anyone who wants to be more fully equipped to move confidently into the future God has prepared.

Again, that is Keep Moving Forward, our thank-you gift for your generous donation to Destined for Victory today. You can give by phone by calling 855-339-5500. That is 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: Paul says if we want to please God, put on the new self. The new self learns the habit of telling the truth, and the new self learns how to manage its anger. So he says, don't sin. Don't let it go past the point where it focuses on an issue that needs to be addressed and it goes past that and begins to get personal, ugly, and hateful.

Guest (Male): If someone upsets you, do you roll with the punches or throw a few of your own? Anger mismanagement. Well, that is what Pastor Paul calls it—anger management or anger non-management. We have all been guilty of it from time to time, but today we will talk about a better way to deal with our anger, one that comes when we put off the old self and put on the new. Now let's listen to Pastor Paul's Destined for Victory message, The Process of Becoming New.

Paul Sheppard: Y'all quit acting like you have never been so mad that you didn't care what flew out of your mouth. Come on, we got to be real now. You ever been so mad you didn't even know what you were going to say yourself? Come on, I need some honest people with the masks on. I need some honest people. I scared myself how angry I got. I waited to hear what I was going to say.

Then you are way over the line because that is anger mismanagement. That is anger non-management. Your anger has hold of you and let the chips fall where they may. Paul says if we want to please God, put on the new self. The new self learns the habit of telling the truth, and the new self learns how to manage its anger.

So he says don't sin. Don't let it go past the point where it focuses on an issue that needs to be addressed and it goes past that and begins to get personal, ugly, and hateful. So Jesus is a good example. Do you remember in the Gospels he went to the temple courts one day and saw them merchandising the things of God?

Some of y'all try to make it nice. Jesus went in and he said, "Now, now." That is not in your Bible. Do you know what he did in the temple courts? Jesus went off on the issue, not talking about the personal lives of the families of the people who were selling the merchandise, but the issue of merchandising holy things. They were selling doves for sacrifices. They had just merchandised the whole thing.

Jesus went in there and he was tossing tables. He didn't say, "Would you kindly clear this off?" "Let's clear this off. This isn't appropriate." He wasn't asking people what they thought. He grabbed the table and flipped it. The Bible says he put people out. In our day, we would call it he laid hands on people. Come on, I just need y'all to quit being pious. Jesus was tossing folk.

He grabbed them. He didn't ask them kindly, "Follow me." Put them out of the temple courts. You are on holy ground, and you are acting like you don't know anything about a God of righteousness. And he tossed tables and laid hands on people and he said, "God's house is a house of prayer. You have turned it into a den of thieves."

He was angry, but he was angry at the issue. It was a righteous cause that he was advocating for. When your anger is appropriate, what you are advocating for is proper, whether it is in a relationship. You treated me wrong, you spoke deceptively about me, or whatever. Whatever it is, I don't like it a little bit. You have every right to tell people the truth, even when it makes them look bad. All you are doing is marrying truth-telling with anger management.

It is exactly what the Bible tells you in Matthew 18. Jesus said when your brother or sister trespasses against you, what do you do? Go to him alone and tell him the fault. That is going to keep you in appropriate space so that you are angry, but you are not sinning. I resent what you said. I resent how you are treating me. I resent—whatever it is, tell them.

I don't like seeing Christians who don't know how to tell people stuff. You have got to tell them. Sometimes you can't grin while you are doing it. Y'all quit having this false Christianity, sloppy agape, always smiling. I don't trust people who smile all the time. I honestly don't. If I have never seen you in anything but a smile, I can't trust you but so much. I need to know you know what to do when it is time to confront.

You need to be able to tell people in no uncertain terms that you don't like what they did or said. And you are still on the right side of anger. You are focused on issues. Jesus said go and show between the two of you. That is management. In other words, you make me mad, I go tell all my friends. Jesus said no, that is out of order.

I have got to go and show you because you did the prompt. When your friends know more of an offense than the person who offended you, you are out of order and you have got to pull yourself into order. Say you are the one that got on my nerves; you are the one I am going to talk to. Your other friends know about it, but they shouldn't know because you haven't even told the offender. He said go and show.

The other thing Christians have to learn to do is actually rebuke. Jesus said in Luke 17:3, when your brother sins against you, rebuke him. I mean flat-out rebuke him. Speak sharply about it. "How dare you do that, say that," whatever it is. "I resent that." And it is all right. See, you can sound like you can have that bass in your voice.

Some of y'all got to practice your bass. It's all about that bass, about that bass. No trouble. Sometimes you don't need no trouble. Look, Meghan says that wasn't in my song, was it? Yeah, you got to tell folk what they need to know because you owe them the truth so that they can understand. I have been an offense. That is a barrier between my brother or sister and me, and we need to clear it up.

God doesn't like folk walking around with chasms in relationships that need to be closed. The only chasm relationship that is acceptable is one you have made every possible effort to close it and they refuse. Everybody in your life that you are not dealing with ought to be somebody you can honestly say before God, "I have done and said everything I know to do. I have humbled myself."

Y'all have heard my mountain goat story. I got it from Pastor Jenkins years ago. He was teaching in a pastor's conference, and I was sitting through that session. It was about managing or resolving conflict, I think it was. He said sometimes people get to a place where it is like an impasse, and we don't know what to do.

He said, "Let me give you an illustration." And then he said, "One mountain goat is on a very narrow path right on the edge of the mountain, very narrow path. And one mountain goat is trying to come down the mountain. Another mountain goat is trying to ascend the mountain. And they get to that place where they are face to face on a narrow strip. The edge of the mountain is right over here."

He said, "How do they resolve it?" And he said to us, speaking to a bunch of pastors, he said, "So I need y'all to answer the question. How do we resolve that?" So one pastor spoke up and said, "Well, one of them got to throw the other one off the mountain." We all laughed. We knew he was messing around. We hoped he was messing around.

And we got a good laugh and then we said, "Okay, tell us." He said, "One has to be concerned enough about where they want to go that they are willing to lay down flat. Let the other one step over them, including stepping on them to get to the other side. Then he gets up and continues in his direction."

Now that story sounds nice when you aren't dealing with a mountain goat situation. But when you are dealing with people and you are at an impasse and you would swear on a stack of Bibles you are right and they are wrong and they would on that same stack swear that they are right and you are wrong, impasse. How do you deal with that?

One of you believers, one of you folk who want to walk in newness of life, have to be willing to go so low as to say, "Tell you what. I believe what I believe, you believe what you believe. I will say I am wrong for your sake. Please forgive me." And now if they, hopefully, they won't be so stubborn. "No, I need you to believe that you are wrong."

You are going to have to accept that I am willing to take the loss, whatever it is, in order for us to not have this impasse. And you have got to be willing to do whatever it is you have to do so that you can fulfill the goal of pleasing God and getting where God is trying to take you. So there are ways we have to manage these relational challenges. Married people, it is not all knock-down drag-out.

Some stuff you just got to let it go. I know your spouse made you real mad, but you got to let it go. I know people who say, "Oh, my spouse knows when I am mad because I don't speak for a week." You proud of that when we just read don't let the sun—you working on seven suns. You read it just like I read it. Don't let the sun go down.

At a certain point that day, you need to say, "Hey." Even if you can't resolve it that day, look at what he said: "Don't let the sun go down while you are still angry." You have got to say, "I am quite upset. We are going to have to deal with this. Frankly, I am so upset right now, if I try to resolve it, it is probably not going to go well. And I don't want to say something to you I am going to have to repent for later. So if it is okay with you, let's table it for now. We will resolve it. And as soon as I get my temperature down..."

You know your emotional temperature is real. Then we will do it. We will take care of this matter. That is what you got to do. But don't ignore them and ignore it for days on days, whether it is a spouse, whether it is a best friend, a roommate, a coworker, whatever it is. Manage your anger and manage your issues in a way that glorifies God.

And then one more habit and I will let you go: making money honorably. Making money honorably. Look at verse 28: "Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer." Isn't that something? Paul talking to Christians. He not writing unsaved folk. That is why I love the Apostle Paul. That is why I am glad that God made him an apostle because he had great religious training, but he himself was not a holy guy until the Lord got a hold of him. He was very religious, but Paul could get with you.

And so look, when they—remember before he got saved, he was the people egging folk on to kill the Christians. The first martyr, Stephen, was killed because he was an instigator of it. And the Bible says all those that stoned Stephen came and laid their coats at Paul's feet. That shows you he was the ringleader. See, when you are a good ringleader, you don't kill anybody, you make everybody else kill them. Some of y'all got that same gift.

Your hands seem to be clean, but your heart is the filthiest of them all. And so Paul just shoots straight. And look at what he said: "Anyone who has been stealing—I know you saved," he said, "but you have been stealing. I know you say you sanctified, but you have been stealing. I know you go to church, but you have been stealing. I know you got a big Bible big enough to choke a mule, but you have been stealing."

Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer. Stop it. Stop making money dishonorably, however you are doing it. So you might not be taking that which belongs to somebody else, but if you are stealing time. If you are stealing resources that weren't purchased for you. It is just stuff at the job. The job didn't buy it for you. Your name was not on the inventory sheet.

And see, back in the old days it was pencils and pens and stuff like that. Now we got total sophistication on these jobs. And there's all kinds of hardware and all kinds of smart devices and all kind of—oh yeah, they bought this for this system and it never worked out, and it just been sitting there. I know some of y'all so mad you tuned in today.

Just because it was sitting there doesn't mean you can take it home. Paul said if it is not yours, don't take it. Or if you think it is okay for you to take it, why don't you go find out first? "This been sitting in there. I could really use this computer at home." I would never think of that. That ought to tell you. If you would never think of asking for it, that ought to tell you you have no business taking it, hoping nobody finds out.

So you just got to figure some stuff out. Y'all ever saw that movie, old movie, probably '90s somewhere, Office Space? And they had that little squirrely man and they were just dogging him. They would always put him, they just moved him finally. They moved him down to the basement. And they took his stapler, and he was so sick. They took—they changed his stapler. He had a certain type of stapler that he loved, and they switched it out with something else. And they just made him madder and madder and madder and madder.

Finally he said, "Okay, that is the last straw." He found a check from some people who had done wrong and they got convicted and were bringing back the money. He found that check, burned the building down. And the last scene of the movie is him on an island somewhere. Let me tell you something. You have got to understand what you do matters. And you got to honor God.

So you can't do it without honesty. You have got to do it properly. Manage and make your money honorably. He says do things that are useful with your own hands. In these days, we work more with our minds than we do with our hands. So just update it. Working honorably with your mind. I know you got side hustles; make sure they are legal. I know we all side hustling. I get it. Folk got a side—some of y'all got three, four sides. Just make sure it is legal so that you can answer to God.

"But I pay my tithes." Okay, good. But you still got to answer to God. Somebody tried to front me off one time. "Well, Pastor, what if I hit big on the lottery? I know you would rather people not do that because it is kind of a form of gambling and that could lead to all kinds of debauchery, and I get that. But what if I hit big? What am I supposed to do?"

And I said, "Well, what do you mean what you supposed to do? You already gambled and hit big. What are you asking for?" "Well, should I tithe?" I said, "That is up to you." "Would you accept it?" "Yeah, I would accept it. Are you kidding me? You already did it."

So if you violated your conscience playing the lotto and hit big, you got to deal with your conscience. The tithe of it has nothing to do with it. Bring ye all the tithes. Just don't think you are paying me off in some way. I am still going to tell you I would rather you not play the lotto. Make your money differently. But if that is your call, it is between you and God. But yes, if you hit and you want to bring the tithe, it will be cashed.

Guest (Male): There is a common theme among those who have chosen to put off the old self and put on the new: humility. When we lower ourselves, our relationship with God and with others will soar higher than ever before. 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 is pastorpaul.net, or you can give by phone at 855-339-5500.

Paul Sheppard: You have got to put off the old man. You have got to be renewed in the attitude of your mind. And now we are ending by saying then you put on the new man. And this is the fourth habit of putting on the new man that he mentions here: clean up your language filter, filter what you say.

Guest (Male): That is next time in our message, The Process of Becoming New. But until then, remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion in Christ. You are destined for victory.