Thinning Out Your Crowd

You want to start a business, you can't do it alone.

Come on somebody. You want to start establishing something significant? You can do it, but you can't do it alone. So you got to find your right partners and God's going to raise them up, but you have to discern who is the right person. And one indication that you found the right partner is they know how to echo. Sometimes you need a voice.

Sometimes you need an echo. Hello and thanks for being here for today's Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd, Senior Pastor at Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California. Pastor Paul calls it the Echo Principle. He'll tell you all about it next as he points out the importance of finding the right kind of partners who will help you carry out God's will for your life. Stay with us now or visit pastorpaul.net where you can listen to any recent Destined for Victory message on demand.

That's pastorpaul.net. And here is Pastor now with today's Destined for Victory message, thinning out your crowd. Joshua one beginning with verse nine. Have I not commanded you be strong and of good courage.

Do not be afraid nor be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people saying pass through the camp command the people saying prepare provisions for yourselves for within three days you will cross over this Jordan to go in to possess the land which the Lord your God is giving you to possess. And to the Reubenites the Gadites the half tribe of Manasseh Joshua spoke saying remember the word which Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you saying the Lord your God is giving you rest and is giving you this land your wives your little ones your livestock shall remain in the land which Moses gave you on this side of the Jordan. But you will pass before your brothers armed all your mighty men of valor and help them until the Lord has given your brethren rest as he gave you. And they also have taken possession of the land which the Lord your God is giving them then you shall return to the land of your possession and enjoy it which Moses the Lord servant gave you on this side of the Jordan toward the sunrise. So they answered Joshua saying all that you command us we will do and wherever you send us we will go just as we heeded Moses in all things. So we will heed you only the Lord your God be with you as he was with Moses whoever rebels against your command and does not heed your words in all that you command him shall be put to death. Aren't you glad you live in the New Testament era only be strong and of good courage. And I want to take this time and just talk you through sort of a follow up to the last message before I look at some other fear not or do not be afraid passages.

I want to say something else about the example we looked at in the previous message. If you recall we were looking at Deuteronomy chapter one because there you had Moses who had the generation of people who had come out from Egypt, but they were in the wilderness and had not moved toward the promised land. And so they came to Moses saying we'd like to spy out the land. This wasn't necessarily something God wanted them to do but they wanted to do it. And so Moses gave them permission and they chose spies one from each tribe to go over to the promised land. And we talked about the fact that they came back and they had a mixed report two of them Joshua and Caleb were very fired up. Yes, we're ready to go. Let's take it. But the other folk were made afraid by the report they got from 10 of the spies saying we can't go over there.

They're giants. There are fortified cities and we would be massacred if we go over there and they cause the hearts of the people to melt and all of that. So I wanted you to understand that as you and I possess our promises the things God wants to do in your life that are not yet done. You're going to have to make sure that you make the right decisions.

We talked last week about those. I can't double back in the interest of time. I want to follow up though today and do it from Joshua's perspective because Joshua, as you know, was a successor to Moses since his generation Moses generation would not go in. They all died in the wilderness, but God kept Caleb alive and kept their children alive and Joshua was called to take them into the promised land. What does that tell you if you don't want what God has for you?

Don't worry about it. God's going to raise up some other folk. If I were you, I would take possession of everything that's in your heart. Do not leave this earth until you've started that business until you've started volunteered in that ministry until you have done what God puts in your heart to do until you build some significant relationships and you've raised up a generation. There's some work you're supposed to do and you better get it done because you don't have forever. If you've ever read John chapter nine, you'll hear Jesus saying you better work while it's day.

Why? Because night is coming when no one will be able to work. And let me tell you something.

Night's coming sooner for some of us than we think it's coming. Whatever you're going to do for God, whatever's in your heart, get it done now. Whatever your burden, whatever your passion, whatever your dream, if it's a God glorifying thing, if it blesses others as well as yourself. God doesn't just want to, I have a dream of being rich and sexy and wonderful. I'm waiting to hear the God part. What about that is God raising you up to do?

Because it's fine. You want to be healthy, wealthy, sexy and wise. But what are you going to do to advance the kingdom? How are you going to help other people? Some folks say, I believe God wants me to be a millionaire. That's fine.

I don't have any problem with it. Long as you know how to give to meet the needs of other people and advance the kingdom of God. I would love to pass to some millionaires.

I've done it in previous seasons. I'm looking for a fresh generation of millionaires who will be kingdom first people. Amen. Because let me tell you something, it pays the bills real well when they learn how to be kingdom focused.

And I've seen that happen. I'll never forget years ago when we were building a worship center and I just told the church, pray about what God wants you to give over and above your tithes to help us do this. We're going to need millions of dollars. One of my millionaires in the church at the time, he and his wife had bought a piece of land and they were going to build their dream home on it. And the Lord spoke to him and his wife and said, don't build your dream home on that land. Sow that into the kingdom.

Sow it into the ministry and then I'll bless you all down the road. And so they said, we're turning over the deed to this land pastor and sell it and then put that toward the building we're building. And I thought, you know, piece of land.

Okay, cool. Sound like we get 75, $80,000. So I'm like, I don't know what piece of land it is. They sold that puppy for $800,000. Just the dirt. $800,000 worth of dirt.

See, I need some more y'all. They believe God for some finances, some serious money so y'all can do something like that. Amen. And so the point is you've got to be the Joshua generation and because other folk talked about it, but you got to get it done.

If it's in your heart, you're supposed to do it. Amen. And you got to start by getting out of debt. We're going to sign y'all up soon for financial peace.

We're going to start it. We need some of y'all to get out of debt. Get your finances together. Because you know, you got all these people with pipe dreams, but they got more debt than anything else. You got to get out of that because debt is bondage. You are a slave.

Amen. So you got to become Joshua minded. You got to get into your promised land. For some of y'all, your promised land is to get out of debt and stay out of debt and then learn how to make the kind of money God's going to use you so you can be a blessing to the kingdom. Some of y'all supposed to start businesses, start ministries. All kinds of things are in your heart. God put them there. Now you got to get it worked out.

He worked it in. We said in the last message, now you got to work it out. Because a whole lot of folk been threatening to do something with their lives forever. And it's time for you to stop threatening and start executing. Amen.

So for this brief installment, I just want to call this thinning out your crowd. And I want to use three principles that are found here in Joshua 1, the latter verses of Joshua 1. Just three principles. I teach these principles a lot in pastors classes, helping pastors learn how to build more effective structure for their ministry.

But now I want to apply it to you. You're not a pastor, but you do have a ministry. Because ministry is everything we do out of love for God to win the loss, edify believers, and meet people's needs. All of us are called to the ministry.

Don't go out and print up cards. Don't go get a clergy collar. But all of us are called to ministry.

Amen. Because you do ministry out there. You don't do ministry in here. You do ministry where you work. You do ministry in your neighborhood. You do ministry on your job, at your school.

That's where the ministry needs to happen. And so I want to apply these principles I often teach in a pastor setting to you as you work out what God has worked into you. The first principle that we saw here in Joshua chapter 1 is what I want to call the echo principle.

The echo principle. Look again at verses 10 and 11. Joshua commanded the officers, saying, pass through the camp and command the people, prepare provisions for yourselves, for within three days you will cross over this Jordan, go in to possess the land which the Lord your God is giving you. Notice, Joshua said to the officers, here's what to tell them. You're talking about a couple of million people in the wilderness. You're not talking about a handful of folk.

So there's no way Joshua, back in that day, can talk to two million people. But they had officers who were assigned throughout the camp, and they sent word to the officers, here's what to tell your people. In three days, get your provisions ready, because in three days we cross them. Three days we cross them. Get your provisions ready, in three days we cross them. To the far ends of where the people are, they're going to hear the same message.

Echo principle. Pastors need that, but so do you. As you fulfill what God's put in your heart, you're going to have to surround yourself with the right partners. Nobody gets anything done unless you find the right folk to help you do it.

Joshua was nothing without those officers. Unless you have folk who walk with you through what you got to go through, you can't get it done. You want to start a business, you can't do it alone.

Come on somebody. You want to start establishing something significant, you can do it, but you can't do it alone. So you got to find your right partners, and God's going to raise them up, but you have to discern who is the right person. And one indication that you found the right partner is they know how to echo. Some people have a voice, but don't have an echo.

I let that sink in. Some folk, they can tell you what they think, what they want to do, but they don't know how to get behind what you said the Lord's telling you to do. It's not the right partner if every time you say, well here's what God's told me to do, and so would you help me do this?

Well I think what you need to do. Wait, that's not an echo, that's a voice. Come on somebody, and we got too many voices and too few echoes. If I'm going to get done what God put in my heart, I need you. If you're going to partner with me, I need you to pray with me, to stand with me, and when I need you to speak for me, you're going to say what I said. Some of y'all got to find those folk because you have people in your life and they say I'm only trying to help you, but what they're doing is trying to shape you in their image. You all have to discern the people who are trying to shape you in their image. That's not who God called you to work with. I don't need you to shape me in your image, I need you to help me conform to his image.

And so I need you to echo when I say here's what the Lord is saying. Now you say, well but what about, I do have people who are sharpening. Doesn't the Bible say iron sharpens iron? I've heard you preach this, Pastor Paul. Iron sharpens iron.

I'm ironing their life. Yes, I do preach it. And yes, there is such a principle. And if there is something a person isn't seeing that they need to see, that's what you do offline. You got to find the folk who know how to pull you aside and say have you considered this, let's talk about this. You need that, but I'm talking about once you have a clear sense of here's what God is saying, now I need you to stop inputting and begin to echo. Everybody who wants to do the will of God, you better have the sharpeners in your life. I've told you all the time, you can't just surround yourself with your fan club.

That's what's wrong with some of y'all now. Everybody around you is in the fan club. Fan club's not going to help you get anywhere. They love you to death, literally. You don't need people to love you to death, you need people to love you to life. You need people who will love you enough to tell you the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. You need those kind of friends, they're conscious, they're not going to allow to talk to you. You need the people who say, can I see you for a minute? And pull you aside. So you got to have the folk who know how to pull you aside.

That's where you do the offline, is this a word? Because every now and then we all miss it. And if they're going to help you make sure you don't miss it, that's good. I'm saying once I have clear, here's what God is saying for me to do, now I need you to come alongside and echo. And you can help communicate to people using your influence the same thing I'm doing to help find how God is going to help us pull this off. So I want you to discern the people in your life who can echo what God is saying to you. If you're believing God for healing and these people are telling you they got an uncle who died with what you have. You're not going to help me. I'm believing for healing.

I need an echo. I need somebody to say God is able. God is able. We're going to stand in faith with you.

That's what I have to do. Often as a pastor, I ask people how are you praying when they get sick or get a bad diagnosis? What are you asking the Lord to do? Because I'd rather unite my faith with yours than to pray a competing prayer. This is good.

I'm going to get this CD myself. I'm not going to compete with you. If you're believing for healing, even if I've never seen that condition healed before, I know I serve a God who can do exceeding abundantly above all that I can ask or even imagine. So why would I rain on your faith with doubt?

That's not my job. Y'all heard me tell the story. That's what I did with Moms McKean in 2014. We're getting ready to walk into this worship center and moms had given her bricks. If you were with me back in those days, you know I called her please hand me a brick.

And I said every time God gives you $1,000 over and above your tithes and offerings, sew it into the building that we're going to build and we called $1,000 a brick. And Moms McKean in her early 90s, I get the news in June 2014, Moms is in the hospital. They just gave her three to seven days to live. Meredith and I jumped in the car, drove over to Stanford Hospital, walked into the room. Moms was totally blind if you didn't know her and walked in the room. Some loved ones were there and I kissed her on her forehead. I said, Moms, it's pastor and first lady. I said, listen, I just heard that you got some news from the doctors and I said, what are you asking the Lord to do? Moms said, well I've given two bricks. Two of them. At least one of them she put in a sock.

Am I telling the truth? Had brought it in a sock. She said because she lived with her relatives and she didn't want them to know. She wanted to make sure they're not fooling with her money. She's blind. She brought that sock to church.

There's a brick. So she said, I've given two bricks. This is in June. Let's see, the date we walked in this building was June 22, 2014. So we're at the hospital probably June 12, 2014 and they've just given her three to seven days to live.

Which means she won't make it to the 22nd. When I asked her, what are you asking the Lord for? She said, I want to go in to the building with the church. The implication is she didn't want the first time she came in here to be her funeral. I want to be alive.

So Meredith and I laid our hands on her, prayed and we echoed what she was asking God. Y'all got to understand this. You better find you some echos. Y'all fooling with these people got something to say about everything whether they know what they talking about or not. How many of y'all know some folk won't stop talking even though they don't know what in the world.

Do y'all have it in your life or is it just me? For the life of you, like you don't know nothing, why don't you shut up? Oh, but some folk just cause they don't know don't mean they going to stop talking. Thank you, thank you. So we echoed and asked God to give her an extension of days so that she could come into this building alive. We had her family bring her in the Sunday before was June 15.

It wasn't ready. We were coming in. We had announced we're moving in on the 22nd.

It was still parts of it undone literally till days before we came in here. We're asking the Lord for the extension, but let's make sure she gets in here the Sunday before and after our service at the hotel. We met her up here. They willed her in. We described everything cause she's blind and said moms you're in the building. Praise God, but that wasn't what we had prayed for.

I was doing that as due diligence. I want to make sure she knew she was in this building. So should the Lord take her without giving her that extension? We asked for see we ask in prayer. We don't demand in prayer. I can't make God do anything, but I can ask for what I will. And the Bible said it shall be done for me, my father in heaven. And we asked.

It was up to him to answer, but we asked. Look for any of Pastor Paul's recent messages online on demand at pastorpaul.net. That's pastorpaul.net. And I'm pleased that Pastor Paul joins us once again. Pastor, it's been one thing that's been certain over the past many months.

It's been the uncertainty of our times. It's one of the reasons we want to encourage everyone to have this month's offer, your booklet, Trusting God in Scary Times. Tell us about this great resource and what God did in Abraham's life and how that can be an encouragement to us. It started with me thinking personally about what was it like to be Abraham, having to send your wife Hagar and your firstborn son Ishmael away from the family home. You know, that had to be awfully scary.

Then I thought about, well, what would it be like to be Hagar and to be Ishmael and suddenly you are put out of your home and you're going God knows where to do God knows what. That had to be awfully scary. Frankly, sometimes in our lives we hit scary moments. They might not be what these people experienced, but if you've ever been through some tough times and my grandmama would have said, if you haven't yet, keep on living because it's going to happen.

It's going to happen, right. And the result is you're going to wonder, Lord, how in the world am I going to get through this, whatever your this is? And so I wrote this part of the series and I wrote this booklet with the desire and the hope and the prayer that God would help people understand that he is available to us even in scary moments. His faithfulness is certain and although it doesn't feel very good, the Lord has promised that he is going to finish the good work he began in us. So I pray that those who received this booklet, which they can have at their request this month as they donate, I pray that it will be a real blessing and it will help them through the scariest moments in their lives.

All right. Thank you, pastor. You know, the word of God tells us in second Timothy one, verse seven, that the Lord has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love, power and a sound mind. Again, the booklet we're talking about is called Trusting God in Scary Times and it is our gift to you this month by request for your generous donation to Destined for Victory. Just call 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.

Again, our address is Destined for Victory, box 1767, Fremont, California 94538. See, y'all got to get rid of these fair weather friends. You can't use fair weather friends. I don't need you when the weather's fine. I can have fun all by myself when the weather's fine. I need some stormy friends.

I need some I'm going through hell backwards friends. I need some folk who will walk with me through the valley of the shadow of death. That's tomorrow when Pastor Paul Shepherd continues his message, thinning out your crowd. Until then remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.