Destined for Victory

Paul Sheppard: In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your path straight. What does that mean? In all your ways, acknowledge him. That means if I'm really going to live this life of trusting God, I've got to learn to walk with God actively day by day.

Guest (Male): Hello and welcome to Destined for Victory, where we feature the teaching ministry of Pastor Paul Sheppard. Wherever you are and however you may be listening, thanks for making us part of your day. Trusting someone else is never easy, even if that someone else is God. But let's face it: that's an us-problem.

If we will learn to trust God, our path will be made straight, which means he will align our decisions with his good and perfect will. That's what today's message is all about: learning to trust the Lord, not just with our toughest decisions or biggest problems, but in all things at all times.

Remember to visit pastorpaul.net where you can hear any recent Destined for Victory message on demand, including today's. That's pastorpaul.net. Now, let's listen closely to Pastor Paul's Destined for Victory message, Trust Him.

Paul Sheppard: Two years ago, she married her Prince Charming. They lived together; in fact, the last time I talked to her, I said, "You know what? Since you got married, you dropped me off. Now, all while you were single and believing God and going through, you called up, 'Pray for me,' and 'Talk to me,' and 'Keep me posted.' I said, 'You got a man and you left all of us.'"

And she knew it was true. She said, "I'm sorry." I said, "Well, you go and be blessed." The next thing I heard is that she took suddenly ill, went into the hospital, and with that immune system disease, it doesn't take much. She went down rapidly and went on into the presence of the Lord.

A few days ago, I went down to pay my respects, and I stood at the casket looking at this young woman in her thirties, and I said, "Lord, she believed you for healing, and you've healed her. Because she's in your presence now—no HIV, no trouble, no sickness."

I tell you what, folks, when you walk with God, you can't lose. He'll give you many blessings on this side, but you don't trust him just because of his promises; you trust him because of his presence. Now, that leads me into the second point. Here's what I want you to understand: verse six tells you how to walk out verse five.

Verse five is, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding," but verse six tells you the how-to. It says, "In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your path straight." What does that mean? In all your ways, acknowledge him.

That means if I'm really going to live this life of trusting God, I've got to learn to walk with God actively day by day. Now, many Christians have a weekly walk. "I go to church, and that's when I focus on God. I'll sing the songs, I'll give my tithes and offering, I'll listen to the preacher preach, and then I'll go back to my life."

If you are a weekend warrior, spiritually speaking—not in the army, just kind of on the weekend, in God's reserves—you have another job, you have another life, but you're in God's reserves. If you're in God's reserves, you cannot live Proverbs 3:5. The only people who can trust him are the people who learn to acknowledge him in all of our ways.

What that means is you have to go from being a weekly Christian to a daily Christian. You have to go from being a daily Christian to a moment-by-moment Christian. You've got to learn that God is with me all the time, and I've got to learn to talk and walk with him all of the time.

I don't drop God off when I go to work. Don't you all know you can't afford to drop God off when you go to work? These crazy jobs, crazy supervisors, crazy work environments—you can't afford that. Dealing with the public—some of you deal with the public—that takes prayer and fasting.

You can't drop God off. You need him on the job. You need him in your family, dealing with your family. Don't you dare try to have holiday dinners without God, dealing with your crazy relatives and dropping God off somewhere. You know you've got people in your life who take stupid to another level.

You can't afford to drop God off. "God, I need you to go to this holiday dinner with me." In all your ways—the Hebrew word there for ways means journey. As you are on your journey, at every point in the journey, acknowledge God. There's a verse of Scripture in the Psalms—it's Psalm 103, verse 7, I believe.

It says, "God made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the children of Israel." God made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the children of Israel. The words are two different concepts altogether. Ways to Moses, deeds to the children of Israel. Ways in Psalm 103:7 is the same ways in Proverbs 3:6.

It's a word that means journey. God showed Moses the intimacies that you only learn when you stick with somebody. Israel saw his deeds. All Israel saw was what God did. Moses heard why God did it. Israel saw God on the mountain, Mount Sinai.

When God came down on the mountain, there was smoke and fire and earthquakes. And they looked up and saw what God did. "Ooh, look at that! Oh man, you all better get away from that mountain." They saw what he did. Moses got to go on the mountain and hang out with God—same mountain.

Now, God said, "Moses, you can come on up. You and I have some things to talk about. Tell everybody else stay away." See, deeds versus ways. Some of us only know God's deeds. "The Lord saved me one day." That's a deed. Good. Thank God for that. But you've got to know more than that you're saved.

You've got to learn God's ways. So the way to learn his ways is to acknowledge him in all your ways. As I give God all of my ways, as I say, "God, I want you on my journey," then God will say, "All right, well, I'll then begin to open myself up and reveal myself to you the way I revealed myself to Moses."

In fact, the Bible would suggest that you can have a more intimate relationship with God than did Moses. Because he operated under an old covenant, and there was a veil under the old covenant, and in Christ, the veil has been ripped, and we can hang out with God face-to-face.

I want to let you know, some of us, that's where we are now. We desperately need to take our walk with God to another place. We can't afford—some of us are in a place now you don't have the luxury of not acknowledging God in all of your ways. You've got to get to know him.

Years ago, I heard Pat Ashley telling a story. She was teaching in the context of a women's conference, and she was teaching on principles of marriage. She was giving her testimony of how dead her marriage was and how God quickened it as a result of fervent prayer.

It quickened it, and then they began to learn how to deal with one another better. She said, "Once I was in a place where I really wanted to grow my marriage, then I needed to learn how to do it. So I would pray and search the Word and all of that." She said, "But some of the lessons I learned, I didn't learn directly out of the pages from Scripture."

"I learned them from my daughter." She said, "I knew that my daughter had my husband's heart. And once I made up in my mind I wanted his heart, I learned from her." And she said, "Then I thought back." At the time she was teaching, her daughter was 20. She said, "But I thought back to when she was five."

"And I remember those days when my daughter was five years old and she'd be sitting at the table. And," she said, "I remember noting that all she had to do was point to what she wanted, and my husband would go get it." She said, "I thought back to those days and thought how he was just so anxious to take care of her and please her and wondered why that was."

She said, "Then I thought about the dynamics of their relationship. It didn't take me long to realize what my daughter was doing." She said, "When he would be out in the garage working on the car or in the driveway working on the car, my daughter would rather go hang out with him than play with her stuff."

"My husband would be under the car, and," she said, "my daughter would either be under the car or sitting next to the car, talking to her daddy. And he just talking, and they just laughing and gigling and talking. And sometimes she'd go under there and he'd show her something."

"Then I realized what was happening, that they had a dynamic that was developed as a result of this constancy." Are you seeing what she was saying? She said, "I realized that that characterized their relationship." She said, "And so what I started doing was when he'd be under the car, I went outside."

"And I either went under the car so he could show me something, or I sat, pulled up a chair and sat there. And I start doing what my daughter was doing." She said, "At first, I thought to myself, 'I'm competing with my own daughter.'" She said, "But I realized that she knew something I needed to know."

"No need of getting jealous; there's no future in that. You better go on and get this revelation." She said, "No, his heart has enough room for both of us." She said, "I went out there and I started laying under the car or sitting there talking to him about just whatever."

"Everything I would see my daughter do, I started imitating it." She said, "When he would come home, my daughter would run to the door and hug him, so glad to see him. Back when our marriage was bad, I didn't care whether he came or went. Didn't matter to me whether he was home, not home—didn't matter."

"But once I decided I want a better relationship, and this girl has what I want," she said, "I start meeting him at the door. Giving him a hug, saying, 'I'm glad to see you.'" She said, "At first, he thought I had an angle. At first, he was obviously suspicious like, 'What is the matter with this woman?'"

She said, "I scared him." She said, "But I was a woman on a mission. I had a goal of developing a relationship with him. I knew that it took that constancy, it took that dailiness, it took not allowing anything to grow except those things that would nurture a better relationship."

You know what? When I thought back to hearing that message years ago, as I was preparing this message, I said, "That's exactly what we've got to do with God." If we want to really live Proverbs 3:5, we have to learn to bring God into the everydayness of our lives.

And that's where you'll learn that prayer isn't to be some religious ritualistic exercise. Prayer is to be the running conversation between you and God. So you don't just pray—you need a prayer time where you acknowledge him in the morning and thank him for a new day and begin to get yourself set.

I call it praying your day. Begin to pray and say, "Lord, I'm trusting you, go ahead of me, give me sensitivity, give me insight," and all of that. You do that, but you don't end the conversation there. You talk to him on your way to work. Some of you all going to think you're crazy for a while, but it'll take you to another level.

You've got to learn to pray in your car. You've got to learn to talk to God while you're driving. Oh, sometimes you're so full you can't even keep it in your mind. You try to pray in your mind where nothing's coming out of your mouth, but sometimes you just got to go on and let it out.

Now, I'm telling you in advance, some folk are going to look over at you at a red light every now and then and see you talking. And realize nobody else is in the car. Oh, but how wrong they are! Somebody else is in the car. And the fact that you don't see him, that's your issue.

He's here. He's riding to work with me. On my way to the mall, showing me what I can buy, what I can't buy. God will get into the everydayness of your life. God will get into the details of your life. God will tell you when to hold your peace—that's fancy language for when to shut up.

You get on the job and they say something and you get ready to defend yourself. God says, "Uh-uh." And because you all have been talking regularly, you know his—he doesn't have to say a whole lot. When you know somebody real good, you can tell what their look means.

You ever had a relationship where you look at the look on somebody's face and you know the whole paragraph that that look means? Some of us had that growing up in church, which is how in the old days children could be in church. There was no children's church; there was Sunday school before church.

But at 11 o'clock, everything was in the sanctuary. And some of us know how our parents in those days wouldn't even allow us to sit somewhere else in the church, because they had grounded us, taught us, what have you, and then they had the look.

Oh, I can remember many a Sunday, I'm in the section monkeying around with my friends, we're playing and acting simple, and sometimes you would feel the look. She's on the other side of the church. Sometimes you'd feel it; at other times, your friends would give you the heads up.

"Your mama looking at you." And you shoot your eyes over there, and she's looking, and you know the whole paragraph that that look means. You know that that look means, "Boy, if you make me get up out of this seat and come across that church, you are not going to want to be there when I get there."

"You better straighten up in a hurry, and I mean right now." All that was in one look. And let me tell you something: you hang out with God enough, you get to know what his looks mean. You get to know the sense of walking with God. You feel his presence.

You feel the sunshine of his approval; you feel the cloudiness of his disapproval. Now, it's not condemnation. If you're feeling condemnation, that's not God. He convicts, but he doesn't condemn. What's the difference? Conviction means, "I'm showing you you're wrong so you can straighten up."

And God will convict you; God will say you're wrong, and, "I don't like it, and I want you to repent and straighten up now." He'll take your Bible reading and spank you with it. Let me tell you something: you've got to learn to walk with God every day. Can't afford to just hang out with him when you're in trouble.

911 will not get you Proverbs 3:5. If you're still in that phase of dealing with God where you only really cry out to him when you've made some big mess, you don't know the joy of Proverbs 3:5. Proverbs 3:5 is reserved for folk who talk to him when there's nothing in particular to talk about.

We were saying something this week with our kids and saying, "You know, it's just like in those years when we were dating." And you're on the phone at night, and you're really not talking. Some of you all remember that, those years, those teenage years, your loves and what have you.

Those teenage years, you would just be on the phone. Just on the phone, I mean, especially on the weekend—no homework and all—just on the phone. To this day, I can't imagine how our parents let us get away with that, because these are the days before cell phones.

So when you're on the phone, you're tying up the one line in the house. And I'm really surprised as I think back that they let us get away with that. Well, they would jump on the phone when they had to use it. You know, back in those days, they didn't come up to the room and say, "I need to use the phone."

They'd get on the other extension. Get on the other extension and say, "Get off the phone! I need to use it." But you know, it's back in those days where you just late at night, just holding the phone. Radio playing in the background. Come on, some of you all going back, going back.

I know you're old, got kids and a busy life, but going back to when life was simple. Just laying in the bed, and the radio was "Always and Forever." I'm sorry, that's what I had on my radio. I don't know what you all had on yours. You can tell me later.

And sometimes you drift off to sleep holding the phone because the conversation kind of wanes, you've talked about everything, now you're just holding it. You say, "You sleep?" She says, "Uh-uh, you? You sleep?" "No, I didn't hear you say anything, I thought you were sleep."

Let me tell you something: it's time to drift off to sleep with Jesus. It's time to acknowledge him in all of our ways. "Lord, I don't know what's going down on this job, but I need you to hold me now. Hold me steady. I need to trust you. I don't know what's going on with my kids."

"God, I've done everything I know; now I need to trust you. I need you to help me deal with them because if I get on the phone wrong, it's going to be a problem." You've got to learn to acknowledge him in all of your ways. And here's the promise: if we'll do it, he will make our paths straight.

He will make sure you don't drive off the road. He'll make sure you get where he's taking you. He'll make sure your enemies don't have the last laugh. He'll make sure that your frustrations don't overwhelm you. He'll make sure that your tomorrows are filled with the grace to do his will.

He'll make sure your failures don't hinder your future progress. He'll make sure your tests turn into testimonies. He will make your paths straight. He'll plant your feet on a rock and establish your goings. Sometimes he'll let the storms rage, but you'll be anchored.

And so the storm can do its best, but it will not overwhelm you because you walk with him every day, and he makes your paths straight. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not lean on your own understanding. In all of your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your path straight.

Guest (Male): We all cry out for the Lord when we're in trouble, but we need to make him the Lord of every aspect of our lives. Your relationship with God will begin to change dramatically when you learn to make him your ruler as well as your rescuer.

Well, I'm sure there's someone in your life—a friend, a co-worker, 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.

You know, the secret to a joyful life is not the absence of challenges but rather, with God's help, overcoming them. Here's Pastor Paul.

Paul Sheppard: The law of the harvest is you sow, and then you wait for the Lord of the harvest to give you the results of your sowing. And in the meantime, in that place between sowing and reaping, it requires that you press through challenges, that you press through the things you don't understand.

Guest (Male): That's next time in our message, Outlasting Your Challenges. But until then, remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.