Because of Whose I Am

Hello and welcome to this Monday edition of Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd, Senior Pastor at Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California.

Thanks for making this part of your day. We're just moments away from today's message entitled, Because of Whose I Am. But right now, Pastor Paul joins me from his studio in California to give us some personal reflections about ministering these challenging times. Pastor, there's no doubt that churches have been affected by the coronavirus. Your churches have had to go online and your own church has been going online and you've been preaching to a camera.

I'm wondering what kind of experience has been for you. Wayne, let me just be real candid with you and with our audience. I dislike very passionately the fact that I don't get to preach in the sanctuary full of people. My particular preaching style kind of thrives on the face-to-face time with the people.

I need to not only see them, I need to hear them. You know I use a lot of humor and that sort of thing. And I need to know that I'm connecting, so I love the verbal responses I get at our church and all of that. The fact is I haven't been able to enjoy that since March, early March or whenever it was when I last preached in our sanctuary.

And I've been pretty miserable just talking to a camera. But what I have to remind myself of is that what makes the difference is not so much my style, although people enjoy my particular style of engaging with people live. The power is not in the style, the power is in the message. And so I'm trying to be faithful to share the good news, to preach timeless truth in timely ways that will engage people's hearts and help us understand God's will even in difficult times like this.

And I hope I'm getting through successfully. You know whether it's shared in person, online or in any other format, there is great power in the Word of God. The power to save, to transform, to comfort. God is moving mightily in Pastor Paul's church, Destiny Christian Fellowship, and also here through Destined for Victory. At a time when there's so much pain and uncertainty in the world, the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ remains a source of hope for all who embrace it.

And now more than ever, people are searching for that hope. This is why your prayers and financial support for Destined for Victory is so critical. As our way of saying thanks for your generous donation, we'd like to send you a study guide from InterVarsity Press called Fruit of the Spirit. It's a great companion to the series you heard earlier this month from Pastor Paul Shepherd, one that will encourage you to go out and be to others what Jesus has been to you. That's Fruit of the Spirit, our gift to you today by request for your generous gift to Destined for Victory. Call 855-339-5500 to give over the phone 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. Whatever the patterns are, the dysfunctional patterns in your life, if you are stuck in patterns of hateful behavior, angry, all out of sorts, you can say this does not represent my inheritance as a child of God. God wants to give me the ability to be able to deal with my problems legitimately. When it comes to your walk with Christ, it's not who you are, but whose you are that matters most. Whatever your struggles, whatever patterns of sinful behavior you can't seem to shake, Pastor Paul Shepherd has good news for you today on this Destined for Victory broadcast.

You don't have to overcome them on your own. You couldn't even if you tried. Today's message is straight ahead. So here's Pastor Paul with this message, Because of Whose I Am.

You have the right to walk in freedom. Jesus didn't die just for you to go to heaven. He died for you to enjoy freedom on your way to heaven.

And you can believe God for that. Whatever the patterns are, the dysfunctional patterns in your life, if you are stuck in patterns of hateful behavior, angry, all out of sorts and angry, you can say this does not represent my inheritance as a child of God. God wants me, God wants to give me the ability to be angry without sin. God wants to give me the ability to be able to deal with my problems legitimately. Some of you are bound by the inability to be in a relationship without that relationship controlling your life.

God says I got better plans for you than that. Some of you have never been in a functional relationship in your life. All the significant others you bring into your life are people who are just raggedy. And something in you all of your life has been attracted to raggedy folks. Oh, you know it's true.

I know I'm ringing doorbells. You don't have to say amen and let everybody know that it's you. But some of us, that's the bag we come out of when we come to Christ. Something in you goes back to your family of origin or whatever it is, but the fact is you can't handle.

I passed it for a long time. I have told single sisters in our church, have you ever considered a brother so and so? And they look over as a nice brother.

I've been discipling them or some of the other folks been discipling them. He's nice. Got his life together, loving God. And she look at him, but he looked a little too clean cut, a little too straight lace, a little too whatever. And she just look over and say, yeah. No, pastor, I appreciate you.

No, no, no. But let somebody raggedy come in. I've seen that same person. Oh, now, pastor, that's my type right there. Oh, that's what I'm talking about. And I look at him and say, what?

You're talking about what exactly? I mean, I believe God too. If he gets saved and submits to us and lets us disciple him, eventually we can believe God to get him straight. But we need a little time with that brother. No need even you putting your eyes on him.

He needs some time. But I've seen him just get smitten soon as they see somebody all messed up out of sorts. No job, no morals, no decency, no upbringing, no ability to treat women right.

No teeth, no just a whole lots of things. Oh, soon as they see that boy. Oh, I'm telling you, pastor, it's on. And some of you have been bound in that.

Here's the good news. Christ can set you free so that you can actually enjoy being with somebody who treats you right. And you won't feel like there's something wrong with being treated well. I know, pastor, I just need a roughneck.

I promise you. You don't want to hook up with somebody who doesn't know how to treat you, doesn't know how to be sensitive when it's sensitive time. Oh, sure.

You might like somebody who has a little street background and stuff like that. I understand that. But you want to see him legitimately saved, sanctified. You want to see him loving God. You want to see that they've been discipled.

It's all right that they have a background, but make sure the background is not in the foreground. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Because I've seen the sad reality of people who allow themselves to be attracted through their own brokenness to the wrong thing. And they go after what their brokenness wants, and that's what they lay claim to.

And then they get dragged through a hellish relationship. And finally they come saying, I wish I had listened. Listen, you don't have to learn all your lessons the hard way. Don't listen to these folks. Experience is the best teacher. Experience is a teacher.

But it's not the best teacher. You would do well to listen to folk who have already been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, can tell you you don't want to go there. If somebody else has burned their hand real good on the stove, you don't need to say, well, I'm not quite sure. Trust them.

You see them bandages and blisters and all that, trust them. Same thing can happen to you. So you need to understand that God has come to give us the power to walk in freedom. We can have freedom.

We don't have to be bound. The enemy doesn't have to be acting out in your life. If there's been demonic strongholds in your life, God gives us the ability to rebuke Satan and to send him on his way to not allow him to dominate some area of your thinking, not allow you to be dragged into temptation when God says, I want to give you the freedom to walk in victory.

You've got to learn to take authority. We're fighting spiritual warfare. Remember, the Bible says we're not wrestling against flesh and blood. We're wrestling against principalities and powers, against rulers of darkness, against spiritual wickedness in high places, which means that now that I'm a child of God, the enemy hates that I love the Lord and he's going to try to come against me and throw all kinds of temptation and try to find areas where he can develop some foothold in my life.

And so you have to learn to walk in your authority. That's why the Bible says, be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, is seeking whom he may devour. Then it says whom resist steadfast in the faith, meaning you have to know who you are in Christ. So when the devil comes prowling around in your life, roaring, trying to scare you, it says he's seeking whom he may devour. Because if you know who you are in Christ, he can't devour you. I know who I am in Christ.

When the enemy comes around me, I say, oh, please. Because you know who you are in Christ. It's not about who you are.

It's about whose you are. I belong to the one who defeated you on Calvary, so you need to get up out of my face. That's what you've got to learn to tell the devil, because he knows those of us who walk in the assurance and the authority as children of God. The disciples learned that in Luke chapter 10, I won't turn to it in the interest of time. In Luke chapter 10, Jesus sent them out on a training mission. He sent them to towns he was going to later minister in, but he said, I'm going to send you all ahead.

And sent them out in groups, two by two, and gave them instructions as to what to do when they got out there. And the Bible says, when you get down to Luke chapter 10, verse 17, it says they returned with joy. And here's what these folks, they were just relatively new at walking with Christ, knew very little in the way of spiritual authority, all that. But Christ had put his authority on them, and they came back and said, man, you wouldn't believe it. Even the demons submitted to us through your name. When we invoked that we knew you, the demons submitted to us.

They said, boy, you should have saw it. And Jesus said, oh, you all are bragging about the wrong thing. He said, I beheld Satan fall from heaven.

You're happy that you got some little demon on the run. I'm telling you that I have overcome by seeing Satan himself cast down. He said, and you all shouldn't be really rejoicing that demons are subject to you. That's a nice perk of walking with Christ. He said, what you ought to really rejoice about is that your name is written in heaven.

See, that's talking about who, not who I am, but whose I am. We'll be right back with more of today's Destined for Victory message from Pastor Paul Shepard. Listen to the broadcast on demand at pastorpaul.net. That's pastorpaul.net, where you'll find a host of great resources in our online store.

Or download the podcast at Google Podcasts or wherever you enjoy your podcasts. Well, how can you know if you're in Christ? Find out next in the rest of today's Destined for Victory message, Because of Whose I Am. Once again, here's Pastor Paul. I belong to Jesus. And because I'm in his family, he's given me his authority over the enemy. And just because you use the name of Jesus just because you hang around church doesn't give you authority.

Don't believe me? Ask the sons of Sceva. In Acts chapter 19, these fellows decided that they had seen some of the apostles and some others cast demons out of folk. And they thought that was thrilling, but they didn't know the difference that those people knew Jesus. And they just saw something, so they said, oh, we're going to do like that. And they went and found some demonized folk.

You can always find demonized folk. And they went and found him and said, in the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, come out. And the demons looked at him. Read it, right in Acts 19. Looked at him and said, now Jesus I know.

And Paul I know about. Two different words were used in that text. Jesus I know, that Greek word translated no means. Those demons said, Jesus we know personally. Because he dethroned us when he went to the cross. He stripped us of our power. Modern vernacular would be he kicked our behinds.

Jesus we know. Then they said, Paul we know about, different Greek word. And the demons, what they were saying is, Paul we don't know him personally, but we heard about him. We heard that you don't want to fool with him. One demon said, I had a cousin who ran into Paul. When my cousin got through telling me about Paul, I didn't want anything.

That's the kind of reputation you want. You don't want demons to know your name. Oh, you don't fool with her, she prayed. Oh no, she walked with God. No, no, you don't want fool around over there. Those people mean business.

They'll get you up out of there in a hurry. Jesus I know, Paul I know about. He said, but who are you? They weren't registering in the spiritual realm as people who really knew Jesus. And so when the demon said, who are you, he then leapt out of the man and attacked seven men. Demons in one man attacked seven men.

All seven of them ended up bleeding and wounded because they had no authority. Listen, when you're in Christ and you know that you're in Christ, the enemy knows it too. And when you take your stand and say, in Jesus' name, I will not put up with this, the enemy has to respond, not because of who you are, but because of whose you are. I am a legitimate child of God. I am a liberated child of God. And finally, in verse 6, he suggests that I am loved as a child of God.

Look at Galatians 4 in verse 6 and I'll let you go. He says here that because you are sons, God sent his spirit into your heart, the spirit who calls out Abba Father. Abba Father, now you've got to understand, that's an Aramaic word. When it says Abba, it's an Aramaic word that doesn't just mean father, it means daddy. It's the intimacy.

It's the word that you use when you have a good working relationship. When you see someone say father, it can kind of make you wonder, what kind of relationship do they have? But when you see somebody walk up and say, hey pop, hey dad, for years, I say, hey pop, because we had that kind of relationship, he was a pop, he was a daddy, there was nothing I couldn't say around him. I want that to be the reality in all of our families.

You men, the reason why we're discipling the way we are is because we want all of us men to collectively work on our stuff so that the children in our lives, whether they're your kids, your grandkids, your nieces, nephews, they ought to be able to look at you as someone who can be walked to, not has to be avoided. When you see a man and you're afraid of him, something's wrong. I love it when the kids of our church run up to me and hug me around the thigh after service and they sense that that guy up there loves me. He cares about me and my family.

There's something that senses. I pray that all of us are working on our stuff so that we will be worthy of that kind of trust and you would never betray that trust in the lives of the people who are in your life. Because God is that to us. He is our legitimate daddy. And he loves us. You know, when you are loved by a father or a father figure, there's a sense of safety and security.

And that's what the Bible is alluding to. It doesn't mean that women, we all know, they have their own brand of nurturing and you can't substitute that for anything. Nothing in the world like the love of a woman. Nothing in the world like the love of a mother.

But I submit to you that when men understand who we are in Christ, there's nothing in the world like the love of a daddy. One who loves you right. One who loves you properly. One who says, if you need anything, come and talk to me.

You can come and crawl up in my lap and tell me what's on your mind and I will hear you. It gives you security. When you know your daddy's going to handle your business, you don't have to worry about it.

You go out with confidence. You don't want to fool with me. You know who my daddy is?

You don't want to mess with me. I saw that family confidence in a funny way. I saw it once in a context of a young friend of mine who had a boy picking on him in his school. And he was a grade or two under me. So when I was in junior high school, he was still in our elementary school. He came home crying one day. We were out in the yard.

I said, what's the matter Craig? He said, oh this boy picking on me, I'm tired of him picking on me. And I was in junior high, now I'm in seventh grade. No longer in sixth grade. I'm in seventh grade, I'm in junior high. I said, oh no. Somebody at your school picking on you?

No, no, I can't have that at you, my boy. I said, I'm going to meet you at your, because we get out earlier than you all. We're in seventh grade now. We get out earlier than you all. And I'm going to come down, come down to your school.

I'll be there at three o'clock. When you all come out, I want you to point him out to me. And I'm standing out there, bell rang, kids poured out. And I saw him come, he came right over to me. I said, all right, point out the boy that's messing with you. And he pointed to a little dude. I walked over and said, yo man, you messing with my boy?

He said, yeah. I thought, that's strange. That's not what I expected. And then while I'm kind of getting over the surprise of this, he hauled off and hit me. In my chest. Hard. And I thought, where'd this boy get this boldness?

He say I'm bigger than him? And then I looked at his face. He was a Sutton. The Suttons were known in my neighborhood for being a fighting family.

All of them would kick your butt. Now he was just young, he's an up and coming Sutton. So he didn't have all his skills together yet, but he had the boldness to hit somebody bigger than him. Because he knew, and I knew in that moment, once I recognized the family resemblance, I knew I could knock him out. But if I do, when he wakes up, he gonna go home. I know both of his brothers. His brothers would mop up the street with me.

And so I said I could get him, but I don't want to pay the price. So I'm in junior high school. I'm years before I ever felt called to ministry.

And without knowing it, I went into pastoral mode right away. So instead of beating him up and then later getting beat up by his brothers, I said look, you all need to stand with one another. You all need to squash all these hostilities. We need to talk about what's going on here. I said I can't have you picking on my boy. He's down here by himself, I'm up at the other school. I need you to be looking out for him, not picking on him.

I started bringing them together and it worked. And I left and said thank you Jesus. Let me tell you something. You can have confidence because of the family you're in. You're in the family of God. God loves you. He's not going to let the enemy make a fool of you.

If you put your trust in him, give your issues to him. If you cast your cares upon him, surrender your life to him, you will discover that there's wonderful joy in life. Not so much because of who you are, but because of whose you are. There is nothing you have done, nothing you are doing that God cannot help you overcome. Embrace that grace today and let God take you out of the bondage of sin and into the promised land of the joyful, abundant life on earth. Thanks so much for joining us for today's message, Because of Whose I Am. If you'd like more information about the Destined for Victory ministry or this month's special offer, be sure to stop by our website, pastorpaul.net.

Again, that's pastorpaul.net. Be careful whose opinion you listen to. Be careful whose ideas you pay attention to. Be careful whose philosophy you buy into. Because not all of the people who come your way are sent by the Lord.

Some of them are sent by themselves. That's tomorrow when Pastor Paul Shepherd shares his message, Ishmael versus Isaac. Until then, remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.