Destined for Victory

Paul Sheppard: The Bible says there’s only one way to God. God so loved you that he sent his son to be the only redemption. Without Jesus, you’re lost. I don’t care what you glean. You get through gleaning without Jesus, you’re sunk. There’s no need of shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

My people will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. That’s Isaiah 61:3.

Guest (Male): And this is Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Sheppard. You know, God wants to make you stable in your faith like a great oak with deep roots, firmly grounded so you can withstand the winds and the storms that come your way. As you’ll see today, part of that spiritual strength comes as you learn to stand firm on every truth of God’s word, even when the world strongly opposes them.

Online, you’ll find us at pastorpaul.net where you can listen to Destined for Victory on demand. That’s pastorpaul.net. You can also subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, at Spotify, or wherever you enjoy your podcasts. Now, here’s today’s Destined for Victory message, "When Jesus Comes."

Paul Sheppard: If you are sowing in sin and corruption, it's coming out. A lot of folks think it's about the folk. They think, "All right, I’m by myself now. I can do this because the folk aren't around." That’s not the issue. You are never alone. God is always with you.

It has nothing to do with who sees you or who doesn't see you. It has to do with the fact that God is with you all the time. His word says whatever you do in secret is coming to light. Ecclesiastes, the wise man, as he wrote that book, when he ended it in Chapter 12, he ends it with these words: "Here’s the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, whether folk are around or not."

Why? Because God will bring everything into judgment with every secret thing. On the day of judgment, all your stuff is coming out. The stuff we know about and the stuff we didn't. It's coming out. God says, "I'm bringing it to light."

See, God is merciful. God is loving. God is kind. But God has told us in his word there is a day of reckoning. We’re living in a period of grace. Don’t you take grace for a license. Grace is not license. Grace means God’s going to help you, God’s going to be long-suffering while you try to get your act together. Isn’t that good news?

Because if it was all God's holy and God's just and the account's due right now, we’re in trouble. But the Holy Spirit comes into our life to sit as a refiner's fire. He comes to do a work that is a progressive work of cleansing and making us the people God wants us to be. In the meantime, don't take this as a time of license. It's a time of learning to submit to the will of God.

But the fact of the matter is, this principle tells you that whatever's being done in secret is coming out. So you want to be fruitful in a way that pleases and glorifies God. Now, I want you to focus on the fact that there are three aspects of fruitfulness in this text. Let me share them with you briefly and we're done.

First of all, I want you to see that it refers to us as oaks or oak trees. That gives you the first clue about what God means when he says, "I'm going to make you fruitful." He means, first of all, that he's going to make us stable. He's going to make us stable.

An oak tree is known for its stability. Oak trees are known for standing great storms. Oak trees are a symbol of strength. Oak trees are a symbol that when all else fails, you can count on it to be standing there. It has to be some kind of horrific storm to rip an oak tree from its roots.

So God says to you and me, "I'm going to make you bear fruit." One aspect of that is, "I'm going to stabilize your life." If you have a history of being shaky and flaky, let me tell you something, God's got a promise for you. God says, "I love you like that, but I love you too much to leave you like that."

So I'm going to stabilize your life. I'm at work in you, and the reason why you've got to cultivate godly fruit is so that I can bring stability to those unstable areas of your life. I can bring stability where you have a history of being shaky—sometimes up, sometimes down, sometimes level to the ground.

You hear these gospel songs and they're singing like there’s something to sing about. That's something to pray about. Pray about it. If you're living like that, you need to be praying. You need to be cultivating some godly fruit because God wants to bring stability, wants to make you an oak.

Listen to Psalm Chapter 1, where David says, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, stands in the way of sinners, or sits in the seat of the scornful. His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night."

Then he gets to a part that says, "He shall be like a tree planted by rivers of water, brings forth its fruit in its season. Leaf doesn't wither, and whatsoever he does shall prosper." That’s what God is trying to make happen in our lives, is to bring us into stability.

Even in Psalm 1, look at the fruit that has to be cultivated. Look at the decisions you have to make. He says you cannot walk in the counsel of the ungodly. If you want to be stable, quit listening to shaky folk. Quit reading shaky books. Quit watching shaky TV. If you want to be stable, you have to bring stability, cultivate stability in your life.

Quit listening to bad advice. Bad advice will get you to the wrong destination every time. He says you cannot abide by the counsel of the ungodly. Would to God the Church of Jesus Christ would quit envying folk who don't know God and taking advice from them.

Would to God that we would learn to be discerning as we go through this life. Check out everything you hear. Run it through the sifter of the word of God. Quit buying it just because somebody with a PhD said it. Some of the stupidest folk on the face of the earth have PhDs.

The problem isn't the degree. I know many godly PhDs. What makes them wonderful people is not the degree. It's the fact that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of their wisdom. There are some educated fools out here, and many of us are listening to them, buying their books and listening to their tapes and watching them on TV.

You better be discerning if you want to bear godly fruit. Check them out by the word. I tell you all the time, I don't care who it is, how popular they are, check them out by the word. When they get through giving you their philosophy, do just like the Bereans and check in here to see if what they said is so.

When you catch them in a lie, don't rationalize it. It's a lie. It's a lie. You said such and such, but the word said this. God said, "Let God be true if it makes a liar out of everybody." So check them out by the word. Radio, television, you have to check what goes in your ear gates and eye gates if you want God to bring stability into your life.

Because oaks have to grow by rivers of living water. They have to have a root system that taps into life, taps into water, taps into nutrients. They have to have a system that has a source that's good. You can't get good fruit when you're dealing with a bad root.

You've got to go down to the foundation. You've got to go underneath where people don't see and you've got to understand that that's where life takes place. So this passage tells us that God wants to bring stability. He says, "I'm going to make you an oak. I'm going to cause you to be stabilized so that when the storms blow in your life, you're rooted firmly in God and the storms don't unseat what God is doing in your life."

He wants to bring stability. He wants to make us stable. The second thing you see here is that he wants to make us spiritual, because it says we will be oaks of righteousness. Oaks of righteousness. Understand now, God is not just making you stable, he is making you spiritual.

Spiritual in the biblical sense. Spiritual in the sense of doing that which pleases God, living a life that glorifies God. Understand something, my friend, you cannot customize Christianity. You can't take a little bit of this.

I’m so sick of this generation. "Well, you know, I take a little bit of everything from all of the honorable traditions and all of the long-standing philosophies. And you know, I'm yes, I'm here in the church, but you need to understand that I'm here just to glean a couple of things along the way that I can take with me."

"You know, and I glean from the Quran and I glean from Confucius and I glean from Hinduism and I glean from New Age and I glean..." Your problem is you don't know truth when you hear it. You haven't even developed an appetite for truth. You're trying to customize your way to God.

The Bible says there's only one way to God. God so loved you that he sent his son to be the only redemption. Without Jesus, you're lost. I don't care what you glean. You get through gleaning without Jesus, you're sunk. There's no need of shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

You're sunk and you need a savior. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the father but by him. That's too narrow? Well, that's what's in here. I can't change this to suit you, make you happy. I was called to preach this word.

God said preach this word. Be instant in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine. Times coming when they won't want to hear it. They'll heap to themselves teachers having itching ears, but you be faithful, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your calling of ministry.

You know what that means? That means I'm going to preach it when you say, "Oh, Pastor Paul just the most wonderful thing," and I'm going to preach it when you say, "Now see, he tripping now." Preach it anyhow. I'm not worried about being in a popularity contest. A charge to keep I have, a God to glorify, never dying soul to save, fitted for the sky.

Folks, it's time for us to buy the truth and sell it not. You've got to make up in your mind you're going to let God make you spiritual his way. Come up with your own brand of Christianity, you can do all the junk you want, and Jesus is still grinning at you.

That's not God, that's a senile grandfather. A senile grandfather. Some of us want to believe that your God is in heaven just like that, some old senile grandfather sitting there grinning at all your junk, all your stuff, just rocking away, just enjoying, don't know what's going on.

No, no, no. God's no senile grandfather. He is the holy God of the universe and he says, "Be ye holy as I am holy." He's not putting up with your junk; he's just long-suffering. The day is coming when your junk is going to get called on the carpet.

So he's given us all a period of grace where we can say, "Lord, help me to become stable and help me to become spiritual. God, I want to be a Christian in my heart. God, I want to serve. I know I'm messing up, Jesus, but come on, give me some grace because God, I mean right. I want to get my life in order. I want to please you. I want to serve you."

Because the calling is high. The calling is holiness. He said, "I'm making you oaks of righteousness."

Guest (Male): We'll hear the rest of today's Destined for Victory message featuring Pastor Paul Sheppard coming right up. In John 8:32, Jesus said that the truth could set us free, and that's why Destined for Victory is here, to share timeless truth for a victorious life and to show as best we can that Jesus Christ is exactly who he claimed to be.

You can help keep these messages coming your way all year round by sending a generous gift today. Stop by pastorpaul.net to make a safe and secure donation online. That's pastorpaul.net, or call 855-339-5500. Joy is a gift from God, but it's up to us to cultivate it. To find out how, pay close attention to the rest of today's message, "When Jesus Comes."

Paul Sheppard: You know what righteousness means? It means living right. You can come up with a more fancy title and a definition if you want. You can delve into the Greek and the Hebrew and get all these concepts. I've been in there already. When you get through, it means living right.

Living right. Righteousness means doing the right thing, living the way God intended you to live, making decisions that please God, doing the things, having the moral value base that pleases God. He said, "I'm making you an oak of righteousness."

I'm making you an oak tree not of your own making. I'm not customizing it for you to please you, to suit you, but I know what I want out of your life and I am making you righteous. The Bible says we're called to holiness, we're called to righteous living. We're called to doing things that please God.

Thank God for forgiveness. Thank God for he's the God not only of a second chance but another chance. If that weren't the case, none of us would be in here. I'm not talking about hypocrisy. Don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about holier-than-thou, acting funny.

In fact, one of the ways you can know spirituality is being cultivated in your life is that you don't judge other people. You are busy watching for your own soul. Even when you speak truth to others, it's from a standpoint of redemptive love. You're not trying to get them straight as if you're already straight; you're just trying to be iron sharpening iron.

Because the fact of the matter is God's making all of us into the people he intended us to be. So fruitfulness means he's making us stable. It means he's making us spiritual. That's why you've got to see the fruit of the spirit. When you see the fruit of the spirit—now, a lot of times folk go to Galatians 5:22 and 23 and say that's the list of the fruit of the spirit. No, that's a sampling of the fruit of the spirit.

There are many more character traits that the Bible speaks of in many places that are all fruit of the spirit. So there's no nine fruit of the spirit as if you get those nine right and your life is perfect. No, there are many things God wants to add to your life.

So yes, you do see in Galatians 5 some of the fruit. Love. Love has to be cultivated. It means I have to knowingly, actively obey God by viewing others the way God views them and treating other people in a way that God would be pleased. That's the way I express my love. I act in your best interest in the name of the God who loved me.

He said, "I loved you and I command you to love one another." And so we cultivate the fruit of love. It doesn't happen automatically. It comes through cultivation. I get in agreement with God about the fruit he wants to develop in my life. It says the fruit of the spirit is joy. How do I become a joyful person?

I have to cultivate that by rejoicing. I have to obey the scriptures in places like Philippians 4 where it says rejoice in the Lord always. See, I have to practice that. I have to cultivate that. God can't make me a joyful person until I make the decision to rejoice no matter what I'm going through.

See, anybody can rejoice when things are going well, but in challenging times, if you want the fruit of joy to become ripe in your life, you have to make the choice to rejoice. Say, "God, I don't like my circumstances, but I'm going to rejoice in the God of my salvation."

Habakkuk Chapter 3, when he's writing about things going wrong in Israel at the time, and he says there are no herds in the stall and there's no fruit in the fields and it doesn't look like anything good is happening, but he said, "But I will rejoice in the God of my salvation."

Sometimes you can't rejoice in the salvation of your God, but you can rejoice in the God of your salvation. Sometimes you can't rejoice in what's happening to you, but you can rejoice in the God who said, "I'm with you in it and I'm going to bring you through according to my purpose."

And on and on as you go through the Bible, you see various character traits that God wants to develop in us and you understand that there is a role you play. That's why Second Peter Chapter 1, Verse 5 says, "Therefore you've got to make every effort to add to your faith" the various traits that God wants to bring into your life.

You have to work with God in the cultivation of that so that he can make you spiritual. And finally, the passage says not only is he making us stable and spiritual, but he is also making us stand out. For it says that we are to be a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.

Do you know God wants to put your life on display? That's why he's interested in the quality of the fruit. Because if you bear the right fruit, he'll set you up on the right pedestal so the world can examine the fruit he has produced in you. Now notice, it's the display of his splendor.

God doesn't put you up, God doesn't give you a platform to show yourself off. He gives you a platform when you're ripe enough and mature enough to want him to be seen. It's the display of his splendor. God has made you fruitful why? Because other people need to examine and experience the fruit he's developed in you.

Fruit is not only organic and all of that, the bottom line is fruit is to be eaten. You know why God's trying to make you right? So other folk can eat from your life. So other folk can grab bites of who you are, can take your testimony and it'll strengthen them, it'll nourish them.

They can take what God's brought you through and use it to build up the quality of their own living. God will make you go through some things that have nothing to do with you; they have to do with preparing you for a divine encounter somewhere down the line.

He's going to make somebody run into you who's dying of spiritual hunger. They'll run into you and they'll think they have no hope, but you say, "Oh, been there, done that, bought this. Here, here, eat some of this here fruit. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. I know God can bring you out of that because he brought me out."

See, that's why Peter said, First Peter Chapter 2, "You are a chosen generation, royal priesthood, holy nation, a peculiar people." Why has God done all of that? So that we might show forth the praises of him who brought us out of darkness into the marvelous light.

God is at work in you so he can show off through you, so he can glorify himself through you. God wants to cause the world to see that when he found you, you were full of death, but he put life in you. When he found you, you had no hope, you were broken-hearted, but he healed and bound up the broken-hearted and he gave you hope.

He wants the world to see here is somebody who was bound with all kinds of addictions and besetting sins, but I have set this captive free. He wants to take you and show you here is somebody no one would have given a dime for years ago, but I have come and turned their life around and given them not only hope but a future.

He wants to show the world here is somebody who had nothing to be excited about at all in life, but look at them, I've made them a person full of joy. Joy unspeakable and full of glory. And here is a person who was barren, who had nothing of substance going on inside of them, but look at them now, I've made them a person who is fruitful.

See, God wants to display his glory through us. That's why the Bible says you are the light of the world. Light of the world. But he doesn't want to put you on a pedestal when the fruit is hanging all off the vine looking all pitiful.

You know, because when you see bad fruit, you don't want it. You see little pitiful bruises all over the place and you have to cut—you ever had somebody try to get you to eat bad fruit? "Oh, that's not... I just cut this part off and... go back around here. Here, wait, I'll fix it up for you."

By the time they get through trimming the mess, there's hardly anything worth eating. And if the truth be told, that's the shape some of our lives are in right now. And that's why God says in his word, "I'm at work in you. I've got some things I want to do. But you've got to work with me. You've got to cooperate with me. You've got to let me cultivate the right thing so that I can make you stable. I can make you spiritual. And ultimately, I want you to stand out and be a testimony of my glory and my power to take someone's life and to make something beautiful out of it."

That's what Jesus comes to do for all of us. And I pray that you are allowing him to work in that way in your life and in your heart.

Guest (Male): God wants to make beauty from ashes in the lives of his children and in the lives of those who have not yet joined his family. As Second Peter 3:9 tells us, it is not God's will that anyone should perish, but that all might come to the knowledge of repentance.

Thanks so much for being here with us for today's Destined for Victory. Remember, any of our recent messages, including the one you heard today, are available on demand at our website, pastorpaul.net. While you're there, be sure to check out our online store. You'll find some great resources to help you grow in your Christian faith, including books and DVD messages from Pastor Paul Sheppard. It's all found at pastorpaul.net.

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Well, I bet you have someone in your life—a friend, a coworker, a family member—and you've just never quite had the right words to say to them about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If so, you're going to love our brand-new 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 opened 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. Or mail your gift to Destined for Victory, Post Office Box 1767, Fremont, California 94538.

Paul Sheppard: And I've come to tell you that he is there with you. Don't worry about the fact that you don't see him in the circumstances. You don't have to see God in the circumstances. God is at work, even if behind the scenes, even if you don't see him, he's there.

Guest (Male): And that's next time in our message, "God Behind the Scenes." I hope you'll join us, but until then, remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion in Christ. You are destined for victory.