We Are a Flock, Part 1

None of us can do it alone. When you read your Bible, everybody in there who was used of God is a person who found the right connectedness in their lives because we can do the will of God but we cannot do it alone. No person is an island. No person walks alone and accomplishes God's will.

We must be connected with the right people in our lives. Moses didn't do it. Neither did King David or the Apostle Paul. Hello and welcome to this Monday edition of Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd.

We're so glad you stopped by. Well, there's a common theme that runs throughout biblical history. Everyone who did great things for the Kingdom of God had help along the way. Today, Pastor Paul reminds us of the importance of connectedness, of forging healthy relationships with other believers in Christ. Stay with us now or visit pastorpaul.net to listen anytime on demand. That's pastorpaul.net.

You can also subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, at Spotify, or wherever you get yours. Now, here is Pastor Paul Shepherd with today's Destined for Victory message, We Are a Flock. We're discussing the power of we and we're noting that we are called as a collective body to fulfill God's purpose, to accomplish His will in the earth. We are not to be individualistic in our thinking about our walk with the Lord. I want to make sure that you understand you can do the will of God, as I said in the opening message in this series.

You can do the will of God, but you cannot do it alone. I had somebody tell me after service the last message where I introduced this series. He said, I wasn't even familiar with the Lone Ranger, but you made me look it up and I watched the Lone Ranger. And he got the revelation that now he wasn't alone.

He had somebody with him. And so we need to learn God can get His will done through our lives, but not if we are acting like individualistic Christianity is all that we need to practice. No, you have a personal relationship with the Lord.

That's true, but the personal relationship has to be lived out in a corporate environment. That is God's plan. None of us can do it alone. When you read your Bible, everybody in there who was used of God is a person who found the right connectedness in their lives because we can do the will of God, but we cannot do it alone.

No person is an island. No person walks alone and accomplishes God's will. We must be connected with the right people in our lives. And so I want to now move on and look at some analogies in the scripture that tell us who we are as the people of God. They describe the church of Jesus Christ in intentional language in a few different ways.

And I want to lift those up as I go through this series. So here is the first analogy I want to lift up. We are a flock. We are a flock. The Bible is clear that we, the people of God, those who are saved by grace through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, we are a flock.

Note Acts chapter 20 verse 28. Paul is talking to the elders of the church and here's what he says. Therefore, take heed to yourselves and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. We are a flock of all the things God could call us. One of the things is that we are a flock. One of the ways we who are pastors in the body of Christ are called is we're called under shepherds. We are shepherds under the great shepherd.

He is the one who has ordained us to lead the flock of God's people. And so I want you to understand this is very intentional on the part of God. I got to say this because as we go through some analogies in this series, I want you to understand God was intentional in making the church the way it is. A lot of times people think we can rethink stuff we didn't invent and I need you to understand you can't reinvent something that God invented. You can invent your own new stuff, but anything God said, I made this. You don't get to rearrange it. You don't get to re well, I don't like the way God did it, so I'm going to make it my way.

You can't do that and be in the will of God. And so we are a flock. I'm saying that because now we have a generation, not only young people, but even older people. It's more of the spirit of the times.

It's not so much your age at all. It's more the spirit of the times. We live in times where a lot of folk want to be independent in their walk with God, meaning I don't need a church. I know Jesus, I don't need the church. Well, you don't get to do that because Jesus said upon this rock I will build my church.

If the church belongs to him and he called us to be part of it by one spirit where you baptized into it according to the word of God, then you don't get to decline. No, no, I want Jesus, but none of that church stuff. Amen. Look, I got my own amen. Y'all just sit quiet and be happy.

It's all right. I don't need a bandwagon. If you want to jump on and say, amen, you're welcome to. If not, just know I'm already good. I'm already good.

I don't need chimers in. I'm going to go ahead, pastor. If that's in you, you can say it.

If not, just say, mm. Jesus created the church and one of the ways he describes us is we are a flock. That's why there are pastors. Sometimes people say, well, why are there pastors? We really don't need that hierarchy.

No, no. We didn't sit around and say, let's make some big shots. Furthermore, once you hear what a flock is, you'll know that a shepherd's not a big shot. He got a lot of work to do because every now and then people say, Oh, you must be so special. I knew God's hand was on me. I didn't even want to be a minister. At first I told him, don't call me a minister. He said, wait, but you hear preaching for the young people. I said, don't call it preaching.

I'm just, I was paranoid. I didn't want to be there. I said this, I'm just speaking. Call me a speaker. I'm the guest speaker for the youth. And they said, all right, you come, we'll make you the guest speaker for our youth revival.

I really didn't want that title preacher or pastor. And I went to one time in particular in the seventies and I spoke, I was the speaker in Kansas city for youth revival. I got there, I ministered Friday night. I ministered Saturday and Sunday. The pastor said, now I need you to speak in my Sunday morning service and I'll make sure that they know you the guest speaker.

I said, fine. By the time I got through it that weekend, all the young people in that church were saved. All of them were saved. Wasn't a heathen in the bunch.

All of them got saved. And that pastor was driving me to the airport that Sunday afternoon. And he looked over at me, shook his finger. He said, you are called of God. God's hand is heavy on you. And the sooner you acknowledge it, the better off you going to be.

And I knew he was right. So I had to come kicking and screaming into being a vocational minister, eventually vocational. First it was volunteer and what have you, but in 1981, our home church in Philly was growing. It had grown at that point to about 500 people.

And my dad said, listen, I need some help. I can't pass to this big growing church by itself. Cause see back in those days, mega church, wasn't a big thing.

There were some churches like that, but it wasn't touted like it is now. You got folk. Now I want to pass to a mega church. What's the matter with you?

You crazy. They thought that's something good. And so my dad was scared when the church hit 500 because he's thinking as a shepherd of a flock, I need to be able to be hands on with the flock. How in the world am I going to serve 500 people?

That was his concern. So he got all the leaders of the church, all the lay leaders and folk, people like me who were called to ministry, preaching leading ministry, but we weren't pastors. Didn't want to be pastors. He said, the Lord's going to put it on somebody here to be my assistant. I need an assistant to the senior pastor here.

Somebody who has a calling to help me shepherd this flock. And he said, I want all of y'all to pray, had the leaders pray and fast and identify Lord, who have you put your hand on to be the assistant pastor of this church. And we all went into prayer and fasting. And when the time came for us to come back together, they all said, even other people who were possible candidates, other ministers in the church, all came back saying, the Lord said, Paul is to be your assistant. Anytime the other folk on the list who wish they would be the pastor, they said, Oh, the Lord said, that's Paul.

And they all said that. And so it was no choice. My dad had to pull me in, pull me off of my job so I could be with him in vocational ministry at the church.

And I now know what his, the method of his madness was. He knew the Lord had raised me up, but he didn't want to name me because he was scared. Folk would say, Oh, that's just family religion. That's just him picking his son. You know how people do, not you, but everybody else but you. People just put their mouth on anything. They don't care whether they right or wrong.

I'm scared about people who can just tell any old kind of stupid idea that popped into their head like it's true. You're listening to Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd, Senior Pastor of Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California. And he'll be right back with the second half of today's message. Listen to Destined for Victory right in the palm of your hand by downloading our free mobile app. The app allows you to contact us for prayer, make a safe and secure donation, order books and CDs. You can even take notes in the daily messages and have them available the next time you tune in.

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We are a flock. And so he didn't want to hear that because he knew all he wanted was the will of God done. He saw the hand of the Lord on me. He told me later, but he was going to make them pick me. And that's what they did.

They said, the Lord said, it's Paul's job. So he pulled me off my job. I had a nice job. I was running the accounts receivable department for a car leasing company and it was a nice job, wonderful job and good money and perks. I got to drive free lease cars. It was good because that was one of the things I negotiated. I said, I'll take that job, but y'all got to give me a company car. They said, not only will you have a car, you'll have access to our fleet. Yeah. And then back in my single days, if I want to impress somebody on a, on a date, I go get a nice car, pull up in that whip.

I was about to go all the way digging in the scene in gangster lean. Y'all know nothing about that. And so those are my single days, but by 82, I was engaged cause Christmas of 81 is when I asked sister M to marry me. Now the church said, I got to be the assistant pastor and I got to leave that job and come to the church and my father, now he's still worried. So they know they I'm going to be the pastor that with him, but now he want to make sure that the people know I'm not going to get special treatment.

So when the trustees asked me how much I made and I told them and they saw, right, and then they wanted to match. They wanted to get me so that I wouldn't drop too much. My father said, Oh, don't worry about that. Just he'll, he'll be all right.

They wanted to break me off some blessings. He was like, no, start him low, start him low. I want him to learn. I want him to learn how this works.

Let him work his way up. And when I said I already worked up on the other job and so he was making sure it was real deliberate and real modest and all that kind of stuff. But the bottom line is I knew in my heart and he helped drive home. Ministry isn't about perks. It's not about what the shepherd can get.

It's about how healthy the sheep can be. And I'm concerned about a world where we're lifting up shepherds like they are the point of this whole thing. We are only people who, if we live out our calling, it's to hear the Lord say, well done.

We got to take care of the shape. And I'll never forget my first few months in pastoral ministry with my dad. I was in my office, the church office one day, and one of the Christian from another church came in to do something and he looked in my office and saw me. I said, Hey, my brother, God bless you. And he said, I said, what? He said, now you used to have a job, right? I said, yeah, yeah. I came to this job from another job.

He said, wow, this show must be nice. And later on, I would hear people say things like, do you have a job or are you in ministry? Because in their heads, what they did out in the workaday world was a job. Me at the church, that's just, I don't even know what you're doing. What they needed to do was shadow me one day, ask my wife as an assistant pastor, I worked until I could hardly see. My father said, that man is young and strong. My dad practiced reverse discrimination. He put me through stuff he'd never put the average assistant pastor through, but because I wore his last name, I had to prove myself on another level. Ask my wife, we just got married that same year, 1982. I got married, I became the assistant pastor in March of 82, got married May 1st of 82. That year was a baptism in fire. That where I'm learning how to be a husband and learning how to be a pastor at the same time.

Just ask her. I worked 12 hour days routinely and I'm a young married man just trying to get my Mac on. I could Mac when I had a few minutes.

That was about all she wrote Jack because he was working, working, working. In fact, he kind of took off. He said, Hey, he's here now. Y'all call me when it's a real emergency. I was visiting the sick. I was running around time. I'm counseling everybody. I'm doing everything that and the church was disorganized and they had 500 members and was growing.

So I had to organize the church. That was in 1980. That's when Apple first started making products that you could use. Let me show y'all how old I am. I had an Apple IIe.

Come on. I got some help. I Apple IIe. Forget hard drives. We had floppy disk.

Oh, I need somebody to walk with me. Floppy disk. And it was called a floppy disk cause it was floppy. And I thought I was into something.

When we first got it, it only had one drive and you'd have to put in the disk that turned the computer on, pull that out, then put in the other disk that had the data on it. Oh, I'm telling you where I came from. Don't say, Oh, look at him driving a nice fancy car. He think he all that. You, you should have walked with me through all my years, Jack.

I had to earn my keep every day of my life. That phone rang. They said, there's a new pastor man.

He can counsel. Let me bring my kid, let him do something with them. And they bring a little raggedy kids up to the, I got to try to help these folk out, organize the church and broke the church up into districts, 500 people. So I broke it up in the districts, according to where they live and got the deacons and put them to work.

Y'all visit these people and y'all and we, man, we will organize 12 hours a day. And he talking about, then you used to have a job. But the fact of the matter is if you are really understanding you're a shepherd, shepherds are all about sheep. God said, I have raised up my people as a flock and I've given some people the calling to tend to their needs because sheep are not good at self care alone. Come on, let's just find out why God called a sheep. He didn't say you were stupid. I know some people say, well, well, sheep aren't particularly intelligent. That's not the point of why God said we're sheep. It has nothing to do with your intelligence. You can be real smart, but still have needs.

You have to have somebody partner with you to meet. The reason why God puts us into flocks as congregations is because they are things we can get from each other and from the shepherd that we cannot get alone. So we are called to be sheep. God says that we are sheep. Let me just tell you a few things you need to know about we who are in ministry, whether it's vocational or bivocational or purely volunteer.

They are shepherds of all sorts. There are some things you need to understand about us. We are called to gather people regularly. We're called to gather people regularly. The Bible says in Hebrews, it says forsake not the assembling of yourselves together and do that all the more as you see the day of the Lord's return approaching. Let me tell you something. That day, the day of the Lord's return is fast approaching.

When you look at the signs of the times, you can't help but say Jesus is not far off. We got wars and rumors of wars. The whole state of Hawaii was alarmed by a message that went out to all of them saying there's an inbound missile.

This is not a drill. It happened to be somebody who did the wrong thing, pushed the wrong button, who used to have a job. I haven't heard about it, but I can just imagine I don't think he keeping that job. I think my man going to be at Starbucks talking about would you like whipped cream in that.

You know what I'm saying? But but the fact of the matter is everybody said we went into pure panic. I saw one man on the news.

He was putting his children down in a hole that they had developed a little silo where they were going to live out whatever raid was coming. We live in those days. You can't be certain of anything. You can't take life for granted. You can't take a single day for granted. You can go to work thinking you got planned for the rest of the day, rest of the week, rest of the month, rest of the year, and never make it back home. That's the world we live in today. That's why we got to be ready to live and ready to die at a moment's notice.

Oh, come on somebody. You got to be ready to live and ready to go if you got to go. You don't want to go yet, but you got to be ready. And that's why we need shepherds who are called of God to gather God's people for worship, for instruction, and for the utilization of all of our gifts for us to encourage each other and and admonish each other and do whatever we need. And the shepherds are called to do that. So we must gather people regularly. You know, when God tells us to gather together regularly he's not saying it because he needs a big crowd. He's saying it because we need a big crowd. It's essential that we gather together with other believers consistently and continually in order to accomplish God's will for our lives as individuals.

People who will encourage us when we hit a rough spot and admonish us when they see a blind spot. Together we are stronger than we could ever be alone. Do you need prayer today? Stop by pastorpaul.net and use the contact feature to share your request with us anytime. That's pastorpaul.net. While you're there be sure to ask for your free copy of Pastor Paul's monthly letter of encouragement, yours at no cost or obligation.

Well, our mission at Destined for Victory is to lead people to faith in Christ and to help them grow in that faith. And because we know you share that desire, Pastor Paul invites you to help by sending that generous gift today. When you do, we have a gift of our own to share with you, Pastor Paul Shepherd's booklet, Finding Strength in Tough Times. Based on his messages when destiny seems delayed and finding strength in God, this great resource will help you learn to deal with the time period between God's promise and its fulfillment.

As you follow along, you'll discover three lessons from David's years as a fugitive that will help you handle your season of waiting in a way that prepares you for the promise God has ready for you. That's Finding Strength in Tough Times, our gift to you by request for your generous gift to Destined for Victory today. Call 855-339-5500 or visit pastorpaul.net to make a safe and secure donation online. And of course you can also mail your gift to Destined for Victory, Post Office Box 1767, Fremont, California, 94538.

I'll repeat the address, it's Destined for Victory, Post Office Box 1767, Fremont, California, 94538. Now let me say this, we live in days where there are wonderful tools we can use. Many churches live stream their worship services.

Those resources are necessary, they're helpful in their proper place. That's tomorrow when Pastor Paul Shepherd shares his message, We are a flock. Until then remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ you are Destined for Victory.