Destined for Victory

Paul Sheppard: Just say I was wrong. I blew that. I'm sorry. Get it out. And you'll discover that your failures are written in pencil. You'll discover that your failures aren't in permanent ink. The devil wanted to write them in permanent ink, but God didn't let him touch the paper.

Guest (Male): In the Christian life, failure is not an option. It's a guarantee. Hello and thanks for being here with us for today's Destined for Victory where we feature the preaching ministry of Pastor Paul Sheppard. Well, if we're being honest, we fail all the time in one way or another, and when we do, the next move we should make is to admit it.

Today you'll be encouraged to make friends with confession, and you'll be reminded that in Christ there is no condemnation. We'll get to this important message in just a moment, but we want to remind you that you can always visit our website, PastorPaul.net, where you can listen to any of our recent messages on demand, including today's. That's PastorPaul.net. Now here is Pastor Paul Sheppard with the message, Trust Him.

Paul Sheppard: Your kids can be sick relatively. They can be sick enough not to go to school. Y'all see where I am. Sick enough not to go to school. I don't think I can make it. I remember trying to pull that one on my mother. I just didn't feel like school, the teachers and all that that day. So I'm sick. She says to take something and I got to stay home. My problem was I had a stay-at-home mom. So it's not like she was going to be out at work when school was out and my friends got back home.

So she's still there. School ending time comes and I hear my friends coming back up the street. I knew what was going to happen. They're going to run in, change their clothes, and most of our parents would allow us to do our schoolwork a little later so they'd let us play until dinner time. So I'm waiting and I hear them. Before too long, they’re outside. I said, "Mom, I believe I'm feeling better. That stuff you gave me worked. It kicked in. I'm feeling better and I think I hear Jimmy and them outside. I want to go out and play." She said, "No, you were too sick to go to school. I just believe you're too sick to play."

Children can have relative trouble. Relatively, I'm having a bad day, but not so bad that it's going to rock my whole world. It's child-like, trusting. That's why we have to teach children how to deal with strangers, for instance, because their tendency is to be trusting to a fault. Until someone has let them down, burned them, abused them, disrespected them, mistreated them, they don't know anything except to take you at your word.

So you have to teach children. A stranger comes to you and offers you candy and says, "I'm taking you to where your parent is. They told me to come get you." We all remember having to teach our children so that they can have a sense of understanding that goes along with a heart that tends to just trust. But it's that heart that Jesus commends. It's that heart to trust everything's going to be okay. Kids can have a big fight with their friends and how quickly they can get that thing resolved. Meanwhile, their parents have a fight and haven't spoken in two and a half years.

But the kids are back wanting to play. Trust is part of that quality Jesus commended in Matthew 18 when he said you need to become like a little child. I want to ask somebody to go back to being confident and careless and unsuspecting of the God you serve. I want you to be foolish enough to believe that he knows where you are. He knows the way you take. He knows what you're going through.

We pray and we pour it out, but you got to understand when you pray that informational kind of praying where you're telling God how you feel and what's going on, please understand he invites you to come with all of that, but you're not giving God information. You're not informing God when you pray. You think you're explaining the situation. I want you to know God knew not only what happened to you, not only did he see what happened to you, I want you to know God saw it before you did.

Because he is omniscient, so not only does he know everything present, he knows everything past and future. So God knew it was going to happen; you didn't know it. And so you're all worked up and you go to him. Thank God he lets us come to him and exhale and pour out what's troubling us. God says, "That's right. Go on. Let it out." But when you get through, there come those times when you don't have a word. There come those times when you don't have something that your faith can lock in on because you talked and God said nothing.

What do you do when you don't have a specific word to lock in on, to train your faith on? What do you do when here you are just kind of living in a difficult time? The Bible says you trust in the Lord with all of your heart. You have confidence. You have an assurance. You have a careless reliance on God. You're unsuspecting of God. You don't distrust God. You just are naive enough to say God's got it covered. God will take care of me.

Trust him. To wrap up the explanation of the difference between trust and faith, in computer terms, faith would be the software that gets you the results you want. If you need word documents, then faith would be like your Microsoft Word or your WordPerfect or whatever you use for your word processing needs. I'm not endorsing any particular one, by the way. I don't want manufacturers calling me. It would be the software. If you need to make a presentation, there's certain software you buy so that you can make a computer presentation. If you need to do spreadsheets, there's software for that. If you need to do business databases, there's software for that.

Faith is like your software in that it trains itself on meeting specific needs. Trust is like your operating system. Trust is your Windows or your Mac. This can cover it all. You bring the software whatever you need, that's fine, but it better be compatible with this operating system. Because if you take software that's made for Mac and you try to introduce it without having the right qualifiers into Windows, it won't automatically go unless there's been a specific design to make that happen. Or else it will be seen as incompatible; it won't be readable.

I want to encourage you that your life of faith has got to be based on a lifestyle of trust. Because I got to trust God when I don't have a word. I have to trust him when I don't understand what's going on. Trust him. There're several things I want to mention about what we need to trust God with. The first is trust him with your failures. Trust him with your failures. I got a word for somebody who is preoccupied with the fact that you haven't come through the way you wanted to come through.

I want to talk to some Peters who promised God you'd do one thing and miserably failed at it. You remember Peter in Luke 22? Jesus, if everybody else forsakes you, I'm with you. I don't know why you picked some of these folk. I mean, you got a strange crew here. But you did one thing right, Jesus; you picked me. And I know it's about to get thick. I know it's about to go down. I can feel something stirring in the wind. I just want to let you know whatever happens, I am with you to the end. I will die with you. I will fight side by side, back to back with you. You and I will just fight them all off. I'm with you, Jesus. Got your back. These all these other folk going to run from you. I want to tell you now, don't be surprised, but know that I've got you covered.

Jesus looked at him and said, "Simon, Simon." I often say he had to call him twice because Peter was probably still bragging. "Simon..." "Simon!" And then he went on to tell him, "Before the rooster crows," meaning before the dawn of tomorrow morning, you will have denied me three times. I don't know if you've ever had a Peter experience where you had big dreams, big plans, made big promises to yourself and others, and then had a massive power failure. Ever been there? Oh, I know you don't want to admit it now. You got your big Bible. Bible big enough to choke a mule. I know you don't want to admit to being in that state. You're looking good and all of that stuff. You don't want to admit that. But I wish a few folk would be honest enough to say I've been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.

Guest (Male): Well, it's true, we've all had power failures before. Up next, the second half of today's Destined for Victory message with Pastor Paul Sheppard, so don't go away. Well, some things go without saying, but this is not one of them. The ministry team here at Destined for Victory wants you to know that the only reason we're able to bring you these messages is because of you, our listening friends and partners. You provide all of our financial support and we're so grateful to you, not only for your generosity, but for the positive eternal impact it's having around the world.

To give generously today, please visit PastorPaul.net or call 855-339-5500. Well, if you have a power failure, the best thing you can do is admit the lights went out. Now let's listen closely to the rest of today's message, Trust Him.

Paul Sheppard: I have failed at what I said I wanted to happen. I have failed. I want a Peter here to know that you serve a God you can trust with your failures. I want to let you know you serve a God who knew you were going to fail before you failed. In fact, if he had been inclined, he'd have told you like he told Peter, "You're going to fail because you're relying on something you can't rely on." Remember verse 6 of Proverbs 3? It says acknowledge him in all of your ways. Why? Because the end of verse 5 says lean not to your own understanding.

Peter failed because he's leaning to his own understanding. He thought he could pull it off. Peter thought he had the power to stand with Jesus the whole time. And some of us, our biggest problem is how much faith we have in ourselves. Some people, your problem is you haven't learned yourself yet. You've lived with yourself a long time, but you haven't learned who you are yet. And you'll get to grow, and as soon as you figure out who you are, that you're not all that. Some people think they're all that and a bag of chips.

And you've got to discover you're not all that. You're some of that, but you're some other things also. You have a limit to your ability, especially when it comes to spiritual things, because we're in spiritual warfare. And if you want to fight spiritual warfare, you can't do it in the power of yourself. That's why when Paul taught on spiritual warfare in Ephesians 6, what's the first thing he said? He said be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Then he went on to tell you that God gives you armor to put on so that you can having done all to stand, you can stand.

Some of you need to get in touch with the fact that you can't pull off some of this in the power of the flesh. You are bound to disappoint yourself, you're bound to disappoint others, you're bound to fall short of your goals and expectations until you learn to trust in the Lord with all of your heart. Trust him with your failures. You can trust him with your failures because he knew you would fail. He has a provision for your forgiveness. If we confess our sins, First John 1 tells us, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.

I want to tell somebody who's beating yourself up morning, noon and night, if God loved you enough to forgive you, why don't you love yourself enough to forgive yourself? Why insult the forgiveness you receive from God by holding yourself in bondage? Do you know you're making yourself more important than God? You don't forgive yourself because you deserve it, no more than God forgives you because you deserve it. He forgives you because he's so wonderful. God forgives you because he got it like that.

What you do is respond and say, "Lord, since you love me that much, the least I can do is release myself. You released me, I'll release myself, and I'll walk on thanking you and then learning to trust you." Trust him with your failures. Trust him with those things that happen in your life that there's no two ways about it, you missed it. Some of us need to become comfortable with the fact that we miss it sometimes. Have you ever run into these people who just don't like to acknowledge that they missed it? It pains them, kills them.

But listen, there's a joy in just speaking the truth. Try it sometime; you'll love it. Just there's a joy in just letting it come out of your mouth, "I was wrong." Let it out. Your pride says don't say that. Your pride has you saying, "Maybe I could have done a few things a little different." No, that's too much pride. Try this, it'll make you feel better. It'll release some of that stuff. Just say, "I was wrong. I blew that. I'm sorry." Get it out. And you'll discover that your failures are written in pencil.

You'll discover that your failures aren't in permanent ink. The devil wanted to write them in permanent ink, but God didn't let him touch the paper. The devil had out his permanent marker. "Oh, you see that? I guess that disqualifies them from everything you want to do in their life, huh God? Let me just go on and write this. Is that alright?" You all got to understand the devil works for God. Don't give him too much power. You're giving the devil too much power. This is not Star Wars.

Get your theology straight. I love Star Wars. I was all but praying that the original trilogy would come out in DVD. I never prayed; I didn't go that far. I'm not that bad off. But I was all but praying because they were releasing these new episode ones and all this stuff and I said, "No, that's not it." I didn't even go see it in protest. I cut my teeth on Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and the Return of the Jedi. Those are some movies. Y'all can do all this new stuff if you want to, but that old stuff was good enough for me. That's when we first learned about the Jedi mind trick.

And let me tell you something, when they finally came out in DVD, I was a happy camper. But you got to get your theology straight because in Star Wars you had the Force. And there's the good side of the Force and the dark side of the Force. And they are in epic battle with each other. So on the good side you had Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker, all the folk who are trying to do right and righteousness. Then over here on the other side you got the Emperor and you got Darth Vader.

Let me tell you something, that's good Star Wars but that's bad Bible. This is no epic struggle between God and Satan, between evil and good. Greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world. This is no epic struggle. Oh, I'm trying to hold on. No, this battle's been fought, this victory's been won. Jesus won it on Calvary's cross. Because of what Jesus did, the devil's got nothing to do with your life that you don't allow him to. That's why you got to walk in who you are.

So when the devil comes trying to find an inroad into your heart, into your psyche, in your lifestyle, tries to bring hatred and bitterness and all the junk he wants to introduce, make you feel bad about your life, he’s got his permanent marker trying to erase all what God has started in your life. You got to tell him, "No, get that out of here. There's no condemnation to me because I'm in Christ Jesus." And what you'll find is that when you truly repent... See, you're not confessing just to go back in. You're confessing as a result of repentance.

You say, "Lord, I blew that," and you turn to him. And then you will discover that the Holy Spirit, instead of taking out a permanent marker, he's got a pencil. And your failure was written, but it was written in pencil. And when you truly repent with all your heart and say, "Lord, I want to get my life back on track," the Holy Spirit will turn that pencil over and begin to erase. Peter found that out because Jesus, after he rose, remember what he said to those that met him near the tomb? He said, "Go tell my disciples and Peter."

The reason why he said that was because he knew that either Peter would think he was disqualified or some of the other folk. Do you know there's some people in your life who have permanent markers? And you don't have but one chance with them. But thank God they're not writing the story of your life. You can write me off if you want from your life, but you can't cancel what God's up to. God began a good work and God is going to bring it to completion. Trust him with your failures.

Guest (Male): Be encouraged today, the Lord knew your mistakes long before you made them. He loved and blessed you before them and he will not forsake you now. So glad you stopped by for today's Destined for Victory message, Trust Him. If you joined us late or if you'd like to hear the full message one more time, stop by PastorPaul.net. Well, I'm sure there's someone in your life, a friend, a coworker, a family member with whom you want to share the gospel but you've never quite had the right words to say.

If so, you're going to love this month's Destined for Victory resource, You Are So Loved. This booklet is a short, readable gospel presentation that doesn't feel like a tract and it just might open a door you've been praying to have open for years. That's You Are So Loved, our thank-you gift 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: You can't disappoint God. Do you know that God being omniscient knew who you were before you knew who you were? Knew what you would do before you knew what you would do? And so you can't disappoint God because God knows you too well.

Guest (Male): And that's next time in our Destined for Victory message, Trust Him. Until then, remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.