You're in Training, Part 2 (cont'd)

If you are waiting on God to bless you, consider this. He might be waiting on you. If you find yourself in a season of waiting today, stay with us now on Destined for Victory as Pastor Paul Shepherd shares his message, You're In Training.

His message comes your way next, but first, he's been kind enough to join me from his studio in California. Pastor, many of us put some real thought into what we name our children, our businesses, even our pets. And how we got our name Destined for Victory. Let's talk about that for a moment before today's message. I want to make sure that I help people avoid pitfalls where possible, or at least learn that they don't have to be fatal. I know what it is to have failure in my life, but I also know what it is that failure doesn't have to be final if people will put their trust in God, repent when they mess up, and let the Lord restore us and make us the people He's destined us to be. The fact of the matter is, if God be for us, it doesn't matter who or what is against us, we're going to get to that place of ultimate victory in Christ. Well, as we say all the time here on the broadcast, in Christ you are destined for victory.

God said it, we believe it, and it's our mission to share that with as many as we can. Of course, we can't do that without your faithful prayer and generous financial support. So when you give that today, we'll send you a booklet from Pastor Paul that goes hand in hand with this message from earlier this month, Creating a Relational Legacy. You'll be encouraged as you discover how to forge healthy, godly relationships.

You'll even learn how to let some of those relationships go and do it in a way that honors God. That's Creating a Relational Legacy, our gift to you this month by request for your generous gift to Destined for Victory. 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, CA 94538. And I'll give that one more time.

Destined for Victory, Post Office Box 1767, Fremont, CA 94538. Some of you have been asking me to bless you, to bring you out of a certain crisis. And God says, I'm not bringing you out because you're not ready.

I will only bring you out when I've taught you everything in it that you need to learn. There is often a season of preparation between the day God makes you a promise and the day that promise is fulfilled. Today on Destined for Victory, Pastor Paul reminds you that God loves you so much that He'll never give you something for which you are not yet ready.

Instead, He'll keep you in crisis until you're ready for the blessing. Let's listen closely now as Pastor Paul Shepherd shares today's message, You're in Training. I had a fourth grade teacher at the school we were bused to. I grew up going to school in the 60s when there was busing in America.

In an attempt to bring about, you know, an end to segregation and systems that had come out of segregation, there was urban busing. And so I lived in one neighborhood in Philadelphia and went to the neighborhood school, kindergarten, first, second, third grade. By fourth grade, we would go to school only to get on buses and be shipped across town, bussed across town to a white school where we were blended with the white kids. And there, the teachers there didn't care where we were coming from. It was their job to do what they had been doing all along. And they picked up where the teachers in our school left off because our teachers didn't play. My principal in my elementary school had a drumstick in her bottom right drawer. You'd hold your hand out.

Come on, I'm trying to help somebody. They didn't play just because we were in the black neighborhood. They expected you to act like you had some sense. You couldn't be some old crazy hood rat and blame it on your environment. They got with you in the hood. Junior high, I went back to the hood for junior high.

They picked up where the busing folk left off. My junior high gym teacher had a paddle. And he said, when y'all get to acting up in my phys ed class, he said, if one of you gets wrong and you don't listen to my first correction, I'm disciplining everybody. Why, he was teaching us to check each other. Cut that out. You're going to get me paddled.

Better not get me paddled and be outside after school. He made us police one another. And I mean, he lived up to it, too. I remember one day, one of my knucklehead friends was acting up and wouldn't straighten up in time. Mr. Wood, our phys ed teacher, said, all of y'all line up. We said, oh, man, I'm serious, you better not be out there when we get out there. We all lined up. He went in the corner, got this big old wooden paddle, came down the line. I hadn't done a thing I wasn't supposed to do, but I was in that class. And he just came whacking one behind after another one.

I'm not talking about a little patty cake, either. I mean, he wound up, went on back to Mississippi, came down through Alabama. Pow! I remember that whack to this day. Our friend took off after that bell rung. He took off running home because he knew we were going to beat him down. Get me paddle, what's the matter with you? My woodshop teacher not only had a paddle, my woodshop teacher put a buzzer, a little bell buzzer on there. So just before he hit you, he said, beep, beep. I'm telling you no lie, it happened.

I didn't get his, but I saw my friends get his. But they trained you in every way conceivably. Now back to the busing. When I was being bussed over in fourth grade, fifth grade and sixth grade, bussed over to the other neighborhood, they didn't care where we came from. They expected us to act like we had since.

And we did, or we suffered consequences. My fifth grade teacher, I remember her clearly to this day. Her name was Mrs. Higgins. She was a proper white lady, dignified, short but had erect posture, proper. Sometimes she'd wear gloves to school. Oh, I mean this lady was dignified. Gloves to school. Now here she is suddenly this year, she has some white kids, some black kids, some from right around the neighborhood and some came with me from Germantown section of Philadelphia. She didn't differentiate one bit. Her job was to train, instruct, equip, mold all of us, cause us to learn.

That's the concept here in the scripture. Cause us to learn. I'll never forget some of the experiences in Mrs. Higgins class. She wanted you to sit and when she especially wanted to teach something and needed everyone's undivided attention, I remember her saying, alright now what I'm going to teach you, I need you to really focus on what I'm saying. I want everyone's eyes on me. I want you to sit up straight in your seat. You know we had the seats attached to the desk and she said, I want you to put your arms on the desk in front of you and fold your hands. We were in fifth grade.

Some of my friends just got through beating up somebody in the school yard. But when we got in Mrs. Higgins class, she said, I need your attention. I want every eye on me. I want you to sit there, put your arms on your desk and fold your hands.

That's not cool. But she didn't care. And if anybody challenged her, she'd say, Johnny come here. Johnny get up.

Try to stroll over, try to keep us cool. She'd stand right there next to her desk. I promise you, these were the words that came out of her mouth. She looked at Johnny and said, do you want to live long and happily? Johnny said, yeah. She said, excuse me? Yes. Who are you speaking to? Mrs. Higgins, try it again. Yes, Mrs. Higgins. Very well.

If you want to live long and happily, you know what to do. Go back to your seat and do it. That was it. Johnny straightened up. Because if Johnny didn't straighten up, the other thing was she knew how to, those old teachers knew how to use your friends against you.

She'd give a warning. Like if Johnny just had a day to hear the devil in him or something. At a certain point, she would say, I need you to know that Johnny is threatening to take recess away from all of you. Johnny and I are having a little failure to communicate. And you need to know that no one is going to recess if Johnny continues to act the way he's acted.

So now everybody's looking at Johnny. Like yo, recess. I know you ain't going to make me miss my recess. Recess when you get to let that energy out. Get to get out there and romp and carry on. We little fifth grade, little boys, we're trying to learn how to mack on the girls.

Go out there and ask the little girl you've been liking, can she be your girlfriend? The way we did it back when I was in elementary school, the question was, can I stand a chance? That was the question when I was a little elementary school kid. You go out there, I go out there. Today I'm going to ask Shannon, can I stand a chance? So we had to get out to recess because you wanted to find out whether you could stand a chance at recess. So by the time you got to lunch, you could tell everybody, Shannon is my girl. And Johnny's about to mess up the whole program. So now Johnny got everybody looking at him, saying, hey, hey, hey, don't make me miss recess.

Not going to go well for you on the bus going back home. We'll be right back with more of today's Destined for Victory message from Pastor Paul Shepherd, who is Senior Pastor at Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California. Remember, you can always listen to this program on demand at pastorpaul.net.

That's pastorpaul.net, and there you'll find a host of great resources at our online store. Now here's Pastor Paul with the rest of today's message, You're in Training. I remember when Mrs. Higgins taught us Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. We learned it, recited in class and all.

Part of the homework was learned various phrases of it, what have you. Then the day came when she was testing us. She tested us in groups of three or four. She called you by name. Random three or four people come up, had us stand in a line in front of our classmates. You couldn't just stand there any old kind of way. Stand straight, bring your arms about to your waist, your hands about to your waist level and clasp them.

Little kids from the hood. Your grade depended on the clasp. She said, okay, now together, don't leave one another. I don't want to hear four score, four score, four, four, four. Together.

Four score and seven years ago. Pause. I want you to say it, imagine how Lincoln spoke that day. We studied the passion of that moment, what was going on. He's making an important declaration. There was emotion in his voice when he talked about a new nation. I want you to put some inflection in that phrase.

Try it again. Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. I learned that in fifth grade standing in front of Ms. Higgins because she expected us to.

She didn't ask us if we felt like learning Lincoln's address. It's part of what you need to know before you leave this class. Do you want to live long and happily? I want you to know God has you in school. God can outdo Mrs. Higgins, correcting the minor areas of your life because it's all designed to shape you. What is God's discipline? It's not just about God whacking you.

Oh, you do get whacked if you get out of line with God. But the principle role of the father in ancient times, the principle role of one whose job it was to discipline you was not punishment. Punishment only happened when there was a specific misbehavior that had to be dealt with. Most of the discipline had nothing to do with punishment.

It had to do with instruction and training and shaping and molding. When you were hard, they broke you. Guess what? God is breaking some of you right now. Your attitude stinks and God says I can't take you into your next level with that bad attitude. Some of you have been asking me to bless you, to bring you out of a certain crisis and God says I'm not bringing you out because you're not ready.

I will only bring you out when I've taught you everything in it that you need to learn. God won't wait. See, a lot of us say I change my attitude when you bless me. See, you don't know who you're dealing with. God's not like these modern parents that just let you get away with a little bit of everything.

You all pray for me. I can't take these modern parents, Lord, I don't know what to do with this child. What? Something you had talking about you don't know what to do with it. Are you kidding me? Send them to my house for the weekend.

I'll give them back to you Monday. Don't know what to do. We never heard that growing up and God is the ultimate parent and he says I'm not going to bring you out. You can't have that funky attitude and I'll bless you anyway.

He got Israel for murmuring and complaining and he said I cannot take you into the promised land with you acting this way. So I tell you what, I'm going to teach you right here in this wilderness that you've confined yourself to. But you're going to learn, your kids are going to learn as they grow up in this wilderness so that when I bless them with the promised land, they will know how to behave. They will know how to honor me. When they get out there among nations that don't know me, they won't become assimilated.

They will stand out and serve me no matter where they are. That's what God's trying to get out of you. You want God to give you another job and God said no, you in school and I'm using the job where they're putting you through hell as training ground. No need of me blessing you with a new job when you got a bad attitude. So I'm going to teach you now.

I'm going to break you now. I'm going to teach you how to treat people right even though they're treating you wrong now. And when I see you passed all my tests, then I'll bless you to go to the next level. You're in school. You're learning disciplines. You're being instructed. Discipline means God is teaching you. The teaching concept in Hebrew is very, very interesting. When you look at the Hebrew language, when you look at Old Testament passages that talk about teaching and then you look at Old Testament passages that talk about learning. When you look at the Hebrew word, it's the same word, lamaad. That word means to learn. When you see I told Moses to teach you my statutes, when you look at teach, it'll say the Hebrew word is lamaad.

Then you go to a passage and God says I've given you these laws and decrees. Learn them. You look at the Hebrew word, it's lamaad. How can learn and teach be the same word? Because in the Hebrew language, to teach is not about the presentation, it's about the learning. The only difference then between teach and learn is a little prefix.

To teach in Hebrew is to cause to learn. It's all about the learning. The reason why you sit under this ministry or listen to these messages on a broadcast, hopefully it is not to be entertained only. I try to keep my messages interesting to keep you engaged, but I hope you understand it's not my job to merely entertain you. It is my job under God to cause you to learn, to cause to learn.

That's what it's about. I got to cause you to learn. It's my job to be able to say to the Lord one day, I told them everything you instructed me to teach them, to cause them to learn.

Don't just go somewhere where you get happy. That man sure did preach. What did he talk about?

I don't know, but it sure was good. No, no, no. Don't leave here talking about you don't know what I said. My job is to do damage to your ignorance. To cause you to learn what God wants you to know about your life, about your finances, about your relationships, about your moral character.

It is to cause us to all conform to the image that God has predestined for us because he won't take us higher until we've learned what we need to learn now. You are in school. Handle your exams well because if you don't, in old fashioned school you got left back. That's what we called it. We stand up there sixth grade and we look over in the fifth grade line and Johnny over there. And he did all of fifth grade with us last year. Now we're in the sixth grade line and Johnny's still over there. And somebody's saying the line, why Johnny over there? And then somebody said, he got left back.

Know what that means? Johnny failed his exams. He didn't listen. He didn't learn. He wasn't instructed.

He wasn't molded. And in those days they said, I'm not sending you to the next grade and you don't know how to read, you don't know how to write, you don't know how to behave in class. They wouldn't send you through because they knew what's the point sending them all the way through the system and they get and go to try to apply for college and can't read. They said, what's the point?

So they didn't do it. And I'm here to tell you God is working in your life. Look at all of the areas where you're having troubles and challenges and say, Lord, what are you teaching me in your school right now?

I want to learn all the lessons of faith and obedience so I can graduate on time. Now, as we get ready for the next message next week, got a little assignment. That was the first paradigm. Show you this concept of discipline from the paradigm of school. Next week I want to show you the concept of discipline from the paradigm of apprenticeship. The assignment is I want you to come having a working knowledge of a movie called The Karate Kid. Going to teach you some things about apprenticeship, spiritual apprenticeship from The Karate Kid. First service they said, which movie?

And my response was it doesn't matter. You can watch the original one or you can watch the modern one with Will Smithson. I'm going to talk about both of them. But it'd be helpful if you have a working knowledge. So sometime during the week, rent it or what's that thing y'all do? Netflix it?

Whatever you do, watch one of The Karate Kid movies. We're going to talk about how we're apprentices in God's system. Thanks so much for being here today for Pastor Paul Shepherd's message, You're In Training. If you'd like more information about Destined for Victory or the special resource we have for you as a thank you for your generous gift, be sure to visit pastorpaul.net.

That's pastorpaul.net or call us at 855-339-5500. You and I are apprentices. God has you as a son learning directly from him how to live your life because he's got bigger, better plans, things he wants to turn over to you. There's a whole domain that he wants you to operate in in the rest of your life. That's Monday and Pastor Paul Shepherd's message, You're In Training. Until then remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory. You're In Training.