Destined for Victory

Paul Sheppard: When God gets through working on you because you're His child, folk will admire your life just like you admire someone of physical beauty. Someone will admire your spiritual beauty. They will admire your faith. They will admire your reliance on God.

Guest (Male): Be patient with yourself. God is not finished with you yet. Hello and thanks for being here with us for today's "Destined for Victory," where we feature the preaching ministry of Pastor Paul Sheppard. Always a pleasure to have you with us.

Anytime you go through a season of pain, it's really a season of preparation because God is up to something good in your life even when things are going badly. Coming up next, the truth about your trials and a little encouragement from God's Word about the purpose of your pain.

But first, just a quick reminder that our website, pastorpaul.net, is where you can listen to any of our recent messages on demand including today's. That's pastorpaul.net. You might also want to download our free mobile app so you can listen to "Destined for Victory" wherever you go. Search "Destined for Victory" in the App Store. Now, let's get started with today's message, "When Jesus Comes."

Paul Sheppard: God said, "I'm making something beautiful out of your life." And He even takes our trouble and makes it work together so that something beautiful is happening in our lives. That's what James meant in James chapter 1 when he said, "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into all kinds of trouble and trials of many kinds." That doesn't make sense, James. Why would I count it joy? He said because God is working something out. The testing of our faith is developing perseverance and it must run its full course so that we are lacking nothing in the end of the process.

God says, "I'll even take your negative circumstances and I'll make them create a makeover in your life so that when you come out, you look better than you did when you went in." God's got some of us looking better today than we've ever looked before. And you know why we're looking that way? Because He took us through some places: some tough places, some hard places, some difficult places, and He is making something beautiful out of your life.

God lets you go through tough things so you can minister to folk who are going through tough things. And you tell them not just what the Word says, but you can tell them from a basis of experience that I know God is able to bring you out and to bring you to a place of beauty. That's why John said in 1st John chapter 3, verse 2, "Beloved, it does not yet appear what we shall be. But we know that when He shall appear, we're going to be like Him for we shall see Him as He is."

God is working out something in your life and He's making you beautiful. God is making you look good. When God gets through working on you because you're His child, folk will admire your life. Folk will admire your life just like you admire someone of physical beauty. Someone will admire your spiritual beauty. They will admire your faith. They will admire your reliance on God. They will admire the stability that God's brought into your life. They'll want to hang around you because you like having beautiful folk in your company. And God is taking all of us and making something beautiful out of our lives.

He said, "I'm going to put a crown of beauty on you." Don't worry about what you're going through now. I'll use it and I'll work it together so that you trade in those ashes for beauty. I'm not going to leave you in the mourning business. You have to mourn sometimes; that's just called life on this planet. That's all it is. Don't make it any more than that. You have to go through trouble and difficulty sometimes, but God said, "I'm going to make sure that you don't stay there," because I want My children to be a showcase of the beautiful thing I can make out of somebody's life.

And that's why I tell you who come from backgrounds where you would be ashamed, don't you do it, because God will even take your background and He'll make it a testimony to the beauty He creates in your life. And the fact of the matter is you can testify to some things and minister to some people that the rest of us cannot touch because you have a story and you have a song that will minister to the needs of those people.

He said, "I'm going to give you a crown of beauty instead of ashes." Then it says, "I'm going to give you the oil of gladness instead of mourning." The oil of gladness. God is working in the lives of His people so that we will have the oil of gladness. Now in Bible times, if you really wanted to throw a good party, you would anoint the head of your guests with oil. That is, the oil would be refreshing. It would make them look good. It would wipe not only anything that was on their face away, but it would give them a glow and it was fragrant oil, so it would make them smell good as well as look good.

And God said, "I'm going to bless My people and I'm going to oil their lives with gladness. I'm going to bless their lives. I'm going to give them a reason to flat out be happy." God said, "I want some folk who serve Me with a smile. Want some people who represent Me with a smile on their face." When the world sees them, the world sees that these folk have something that I want: the oil of gladness.

The Psalmist said in Psalm 100, he said, "Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all ye lands." And I tell you all the time that not everybody acts the same way, but the Bible says you ought to do it your own way. There ought to be some way you express the joy of the Lord in your life. And the Psalmist said, "Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all ye lands." Then he said, "Serve the Lord with gladness."

Quit hanging your head down low talking about you saved. Unbelievers looking at you say, "Well, if that's salvation, I don't want any." Serve the Lord with gladness. In order to get glad, you got to think. You have to think of the goodness of God. You have to think. And when you're going through tough times, the way to get glad is to think of the promise that He's not going to leave you in the tough time. You have to think about the things God's given you so that you can experience the gladness with which He wants you to serve Him.

Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing. That's why services are to be celebratory. I'm so sick of these theologians on these radio programs sitting around some mic trying to convince you that you have no business worshipping in a certain style and doing certain things because they like it dead and dry. Don't let that rub off on you.

And you got these people who spend all their time—I wish they had something better to do—always trying to find some reason to snatch you out of your place of joy and contentment in Christ. Let me tell you something, when you come before His presence, do so with singing. When you come to church, show up to bless the Lord with everything in you. You come to church first as a priest to offer to the Lord your sacrifice of praise.

You say, "Before I learn the Word, before I fellowship with the brothers and sisters, before all of those nice things happen, I've got some business to take care with God. I need to thank Him for all that He's done for me." And so it moves on to make that very point. It says, "Know ye that the Lord He is God. It is He that hath made us and not we ourselves. We are His people. We are the sheep of His pasture." Let the world know you're a child of God. Let the world know. Don't be a secret agent Christian, don't be a 007 saint. Don't let your Christianity, your salvation be the world's best kept secret. Let folk know I'm one of the sheep of His pasture. I walk with God. He leads me and I follow. Don't let them silence your voice. Don't let them shut you up. Don't let political correctness make you sit on the goodness of God. God's been too good for us to act like we don't know who He is.

We're His people, sheep of His pasture. Then it tells you what to do when you show up at church. Says, "Enter into His gates with thanksgiving." We want to sing songs of thanksgiving. You want to pray prayers of thanksgiving. In other words, part of our time spent with the Lord is to say, "Thank you for what You've done." Why? Because we don't want to be part of the ungrateful generation. We have a generation that Paul told Timothy in the last days people will be ungrateful as well as unholy.

And let me tell you, we're living in the last days and people are ungrateful not only to God but to you. You can go way out of your way to help them and they act like you were supposed to do it. Never seen such an ungrateful generation in my life. Little children, my Lord, if one of the saints gave us a nickel or a dime, my mother made us feel like we better just about do cartwheels down the—better let them know that we thank them because we were told they don't have to do anything for you. And if somebody thinks enough of you of doing something nice, you ought to let them know you appreciate it.

And now you can give up some serious money and folk will just take it and walk on away. Ungrateful as well as unholy generation. So we ought to be the antithesis of that. The Bible says be grateful to the Lord. So you sing songs of thanksgiving. "Thank you for what You've done. Thank you for the way You've made. Thank you for the doors You've opened. Thank you for the prayers You've answered."

Enter into His gates with thanksgiving. Think about how good God's been to you. I don't care if you had a bad week, if it hadn't been for the goodness of the Lord, it would have been worse than that. So you enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and then it shows us the motto, it gives us the analogy of the tabernacle. It says, "Then enter into His courts with praise." Thanksgiving is part of it, but praise is the other part.

Thanksgiving focuses on what He's done; praise focuses on who He is. You can praise Him for what He's done, but it takes you deeper because it focuses also on who He is because the fact is sometimes you're in between blessings. Sometimes you're waiting for a deliverance, you're waiting for a breakthrough, you're waiting for the answer to a prayer. And so you can't thank Him now for it having been done because you don't see the result yet, but you can praise Him for who He is because He does what He does because He is who He is.

And so I praise Him. I praise Him that He is Jehovah Jireh and even while I'm waiting on the provision, I praise Him that He's the God who provides for me. Sometimes you don't feel like the Lord's with you, but you praise Him because He's Jehovah Shammah. He's the God who is with you. David said, "Where can I go from His presence? How can I flee from God? If I go to the depths of the earth, He's right there. If I take the wings of the morning and ascend to the heights, He's up there. I can't get away from Him." And so when I'm going through trouble, I know He's still with me. And sometimes you don't feel Him, but you know it. You don't feel His presence.

Guest (Male): Still ahead, the second half of today's "Destined for Victory" message with Pastor Paul Sheppard. If you enjoy listening to Pastor Paul, you'll be glad to know that we've archived all of our recent messages at pastorpaul.net. That's pastorpaul.net. You can also listen and subscribe to the podcast at Spotify or wherever you enjoy your podcasts.

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Has God ever seemed distant, silent, or hard to reach? If so, you'll love what Pastor Paul Sheppard shares with us next. Let's rejoin him now for the rest of today's message, "When Jesus Comes."

Paul Sheppard: See, it gives you those seasons where you feel the presence of the Lord: those times where God feels like He's rubbing shoulders with you. I mean especially you who pray, you know those times. You who worship, you know those times where it look like if God came any closer to you, you'd pass out. You know what that's like. Moses experienced that. Moses made a mistake. Moses said, "Lord, do me a favor. I want you to let me see your glory. Let me see your glory, Lord. We're hanging out here on the mountain and what have you, having a good time, but I can't see you. You're talking to me and all that's nice, but I can't see you. Lord, let me see your glory."

God said, "Moses, I can't do that. I can't do that." "Why can't you do it, Lord?" "Because if you see me, you'll drop dead. The body you're in can't handle me. So I can't do it." But then God said, "But look here, I'm going to hook you up." That's translated into my language, excuse me. "I'm going to hook you up. Tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to place you here in the cleft of this rock." Then God said, "I'm going to hide you with my hand." Oh, look at God.

He said, "Now what I'm going to do, Moses, I'm going to pass by. You can't see me going by, it'll mess you up, it'll kill you. But I'm going to pass by and when I get way on the other side as I go, I'll lift My hand and you'll catch just the lingering effects of My afterglow." And when Moses saw the afterglow of God, not the real thing, not the face-to-face encounter, but just that residual glory of God, it was so much that it changed his countenance. When Moses came down off the mountain, the folks said, "Oh, look at him." They couldn't take it. They made him put a veil over his face. They said, "Because God is on you." And sometimes you feel like you've been so close to God, but let me tell you there comes those other seasons where you're feeling like Job: "Lord, where are you?"

Remember when Job sat there one day and said, "God, I need a hearing with You, but I can't find You." He said, "I need a hearing because I think, I know You're a perfect God, but You have some explaining to do because I'm sitting here going through the misery of a rank sinner. And so I think, God, it's not Your fault, but Your secretary has messed something up. It's not You, You're perfect God, but some assistant has messed things up. I am sitting here paying for somebody's sins and there's somebody walking around somewhere enjoying my blessings."

And Job—read the book of Job, this is what he said. He said, "So Lord, if I can just get a hearing, we can straighten this mess out. You don't even have to fire your secretary. Let's just get the matter resolved." And there come those times when you don't feel like you know where God is, but after a while Job settled in and said, "Although I don't know where God is, He knows where I am." He says, "So I tell you what, I'm going to just wait until my change comes. I'll be right here, God, when you're ready for me. I'll be sitting right here. In fact, I feel too bad to move anyway, I'll be right here."

You praise Him because He's Jehovah Shammah, the God who is there. You praise Him for who He is. When you can't thank Him for what's happening at the moment, you can praise Him because He's promised to bring you out. And so I want you to let you know that you have a right to be glad. You have a right to be excited. Children of God ought to be some of the happiest people on the face of the earth. We ought to be downright excited that we serve the God we do, downright excited that He's blessed us the way He has and that He's promised to do even more.

And so He says, "I'm going to give you the oil of gladness and I'm going to give you a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair," or King James says "heaviness". "I'm going to take the heaviness out of your life. I'll lift up your load. I'll get in the yoke with you and I'll bear the brunt of it. I did it on Calvary so that you can live a life of joy and victory in the will of God."

God said, "I'm going to give you a garment of praise and take off of you that spirit of despair." I want to challenge you, child of God, to live in the blessing of who God is, to live in the blessing of what God has done. He's done more for you than you realize. God's been better than you think He has. When you think of all the goodness of God, He's been better than that.

That's why I'll never stop thanking God for the way I was raised because I was raised around folk who knew how to praise God. I was raised around poor people who weren't praising Him for their car because that was nothing to sing about. In fact, some of them came to church on the bus, had to take two buses and a trolley to get to the church. But when they got there, they were happier than the folk who drove because they weren't focused on things; they were focused on the goodness of God.

I'm glad I was raised around folk that get up singing. When we had testimony service—some of y'all don't know about testimony service, but the saints had testimony service. And one of the options you had was you could get up singing before you shared your testimony of what God did. You can get up singing. And so that's where a lot of the courses came from; folk would get up singing a song about the goodness of God, the blessings of God.

And singing, "This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long." The folk who came from Pentecostal background would get up singing, "Living He loved me, dying He saved me, buried He carried my sins far away, rising He justified, freed me forever. One day He's coming, oh glorious day." See, some of y'all don't know about this, but I'll hook you up, I'll steer you straight.

They would get up singing about the goodness of God, and then they would go into their testimony about how God had blessed them and how God had answered prayer, how God had made a way, how He had opened doors for them. And the church would rejoice one with another as we rehearsed the goodness of God.

Let me ask you something: what are you rehearsing in your life? Because you get good at what you rehearse. You get used to what you rehearse. Some of us have carried the baggage into salvation of rehearsing all the wrong things. You're looking at everything in your life you don't like, and you'll never experience the joy of the Lord doing that. When you keep looking at all the things that are wrong, all the things that you wish would change circumstantially in your life, that's not the way God would have you focus.

You know why? Because if you focus on the goodness of God, He'll turn around and catch you from behind with some of the blessings you keep bellyaching about. I'm not telling you what I think, I'm telling you what I know. See, there's some blessings, you get them by going after them in faith. You go after them, you believe God for them, you exercise your faith and all of that. But there are other blessings that are not in front of you. There are some blessings that are behind you.

That's why David said, "Goodness and mercy are following me all the days of my life." They're behind you. Some blessings are behind you and you don't get them as a result of your pursuit of faith; you get them as a result of your life of faithfulness. You live faithful to God, true to God, you praise God, you worship Him, you thank Him with your whole heart. And you know, the Bible says He inhabits the praise of His people.

God can't take it when folk exalt Him too much. It makes Him do something. Hallelujah. Makes Him do something. Makes God say, "Oh, look, look at them folk praising Me going through all that they going through. Let Me give them a little extra blessing. Let Me throw something down there." God will bless you. God will bless you when you didn't even expect it. He'll do things you haven't even prayed for yet.

He'll meet you at the point of not only of your need; sometimes the Bible says He'll give you the desire of your heart. Why? Because you're focused on praising Him. You're focused on making Him look good. You're focused on representing Him and serving Him with gladness, coming before His presence with singing. The joy of the Lord, Nehemiah said, is our strength.

And I tell you, child of God, you have a right to be joyful. You have a right to be excited. You have a right to have a smile on your face. For you are a child of God. No, your life isn't perfect. Yes, you're going through difficulties and hard trials, but the God you serve gives you grace while you're going through it.

He giveth more grace, the songwriter said, when the burdens grow greater. To added affliction, He adds His blessing. To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace. The Lord has a way of making sure He meets the demand of your life. So that whatever you're going through, He gives you grace that's sufficient to go through it. And then He promised, remember, that your weeping is only going to last for a season, and after that I'm going to bring you into a place of joy.

So sometimes you have to practice for the time that's coming and begin to praise Him in advance because God's good for everything He said. And sometimes you say, "Lord, You said it's coming and I know You're good for Your word, so I'm going to act like it's already here and I'm going to praise You and worship You." God gives us joy. He's a giver of joy and we can experience that joy in our lives day by day. It goes deeper than happiness because happiness depends only on what happens, but joy sometimes flies in the face of what's happening and the joy of the Lord is our strength.

Guest (Male): If you are going through a test of your faith today, remember God has uniquely designed it to strengthen and perfect you so that you will be lacking in nothing. So be encouraged today. If your world is falling apart, you don't have to.

So glad you stopped by for today's "Destined for Victory" message, "When Jesus Comes." If you joined us late or to hear the full message one more time, stop by pastorpaul.net. That's pastorpaul.net.

Well, when you came to faith in Christ, you were immediately made right with God. And it's because of this new relationship that believers have access to peace, joy, hope, even during life's most difficult seasons. To learn more about the blessings you have in Christ, I hope you'll contact us today and request your copy of our latest booklet, "Access Granted." That's "Access Granted," a great resource based on Romans chapter 5 and our thank-you gift to you when you make your generous donation to "Destined for Victory."

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Paul Sheppard: Read your Bible, it'll tell you he who dies with the most toys is still dead. And after death, the judgment. And God's going to want to know, was your life fruitful? Not how much stuff did you have and where did you live and what did your portfolio look like?

Guest (Male): That's next time in our continuing "Destined for Victory" message, "When Jesus Comes." Until then, remember He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.