One of the problems we have in the church is that we use our faith. for anesthesia only. Come to church to feel better. And so you get a shot of anesthesia to deal with all the hurts in your life, all the pain in your life, all the suffering in your life. But anesthesia only works.
Ask any doctor, they'll tell you: anesthesia is only as good as you use it to deal with the core problem. Numbing the pain won't cure the disease, but Jesus can. Hello, and welcome to another great day on Destined for Victory, where we feature the preaching ministry of Pastor Paul Shepard. You know, true and lasting change only comes from the inside out. And to get this inside job done, you'll need Christ, and you'll need courage.
The courage to let your faith change you. The courage to push through pain and into purpose. The courage to use your gifts for God's glory, not your own. Pastor Paul has more coming right up, so stay with us. Online you'll find us at pastorpaul.
net, where you can listen to Destined for Victory on Demand. That's Pastor Paul. net. Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts at Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Now, here's today's Destined for Victory message: Let courage take the wheel. Before I move on, let me just make sure. If you're in the audience or listening to a radio broadcast or a CD or a podcast anywhere in the world, let me tell you: make sure that you know him for yourself. Make sure you're knowing for yourself. You can't have a second-hand relationship and have your life changed.
If mama knows him, that's good, but you gotta know him for yourself. If your grandmother was one of them praying folk, like my grandmother, I never saw her knees, them long dresses. All she did was just pray. You know, I didn't know what my grandmother's knees looked like. Just holy women, them old-fashioned holy women.
And she prayed, prayed, prayed. That's wonderful. But your grandmother can't get you into the kingdom. You're going to have to know him for yourself. And if you haven't yet met him before this service is over, before this broadcast is over, you need to say, Lord, I want you to come into my life.
You say, How do you get saved? It's as easy as ABC. A is to admit that you need to be saved. B, is to believe that he is the one and only Savior, as he declared, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.
Don't resent that. People say, I resent you, Christians. You think you have the only way. We didn't come up with that. Jesus said he was the way.
And furthermore, why resent it when you have the opportunity to be rescued? You know how I tell you all the time: if you're in a burning house and you don't see any way out, and the fire's closing in on you, and then a firefighter breaks through and says, Come with me, I have the only way out of here. You don't stand there talking about I resent you saying you had the only way. You're gonna burn your butt up. You better get with them and thank God there is a way.
So, B is to believe that He is the Savior, and C is to confess him as your Savior and your Lord. And if you do that, my brother, my sister, you'll be saved before this broadcast, before this podcast, before this service is over. You will know him for yourself.
So he says, Timothy, you got all the equipment you need. You have genuine faith in you. Secondly, he says, and I want you to stir up the gift of God. Not only, Timothy, do you have your faith, but you also have giftings that came from God. And that's true not only of Timothy, that's true of you as well.
God has given you faith, you who are saved. He has given you a genuine faith, a genuine relationship with him. And like Timothy, I'm here to declare to you, you also have gifts.
Now, in Timothy's case, Paul tells him, Look, I know that God called you to Christian leadership and to gifting because I was one of the presbyters who laid hands on you. There was a time when several men of God laid hands on Timothy. And as they did so, one of them prophesied and declared to him that he was going to be a leader in the body of Christ. And in fact, it turns out history tells us that Timothy became the bishop of the church at Ephesus. And so we know that what they spoke in his life was a genuine move of God.
And so he says, I want to remind you: you have genuine faith and you have real calling and gifting from God.
So what's the problem? The problem is that this young man has not acted on what is in him. God did some great things in him, but he has not brought it out of him. And I just want to let you know that all of us have some good stuff in us. If God is at work in your life, he puts some good things in you, but the question is: what kind of return are you giving him on his investment in you?
And that's what I want you to look at as we look at these verses. Paul says to Timothy, You've got some good stuff in you, but you're not using it. You've got faith, but your faith isn't being used for something. You know, faith is supposed to be fuel. Your faith is supposed to be fuel.
One of the problems we have in the church is that we use our faith for anesthesia only. Come to church to feel better. And so you get a shot of anesthesia to deal with all the hurts in your life, all the pain in your life, all the suffering in your life. Now, anesthesia has its purpose, and even when it comes to your worship, anesthesia is fine to doll the pains, but anesthesia only works. Ask any doctor, they'll tell you: anesthesia is only as good as you use it to deal with the core problem.
If you don't deal with the core problem, after a while you'll come out from under the influence of anesthesia, and the problem is still there. I'm preaching already, y'all, waiting for me to preach, and I'm preaching already. Let God deal with the real stuff in your heart and in your life. All you're doing is getting shot when anesthesia comes to church. And that's why I got to preach just right to make you feel a certain way.
Because you're coming for a feeling. And sometimes I just preach one of those hard messages that gets down in your business. I ain't come for all that, I need that man in my business.
Well, you should have used your faith for fuel It's supposed to fuel you into change. Fuel you into, okay, God, I'm going to surrender everything. I want to give you all the stuff in my life that's not right, so that you'll get me where you want me to go. Don't just use it for anesthesia, use it for fuel and move on down the road. And so a lot of us Are you like Timothy?
Paul said, You got faith. It's genuine, but you're not using it in the right way. He said, and also you're gifted, but nobody is taking advantage of the gifts. When God gives you giftings, they're not for you. They're for other people.
When God drops in your heart, you're supposed to start a business, that business is to bless other people. Oh, you get the residual blessing in terms of how it makes income for you. Nothing wrong with that. You don't go into business purely in an altruistic sense. You only want to be good to others.
I don't want anything. No, no, no. I want to get paid too. But the fact is, the way your business is going to be successful is you focus on how what I'm delivering is needed by other people so that as I bless them, God turns around and blesses me. And so what you need to do is realize that faith is good, but it's not good by itself if you're not using it as fuel.
And giftings are good, but what are you doing to work them out? And Paul says, Son, you got to get on the move here because you've got gifts, but you're not exercising your gifts. You're called, but you're not equipping people. You're not ministering to people. You're not helping people.
You're not teaching people. You're not improving their lives. And some of you are sitting on an idea, a concept, something you're supposed to do in the next season of your life. It might require that you go back to school and you do some work of preparation and you just have been thinking about it.
Some of you have been threatening you're going to do it, but you've never pulled the trigger. This message comes to tell you: you have got to let courage take the wheel of your life and say, I am not going to be complacent. I'm not going to stay where I've always been. I've created a comfort zone, but it's time for me to get out of the comfort zone and move on down the road because what God has for me is going to require some preparation and some courage. It's not going to be easy.
It's not. Always going to be fun, but if I'll push on through, God is going to reward me in the end. And so here, Papa Paul is telling his spiritual son Timothy: he says, Son, you got to identify what God has put in you. And then look at what he's telling them. You gotta stir it up.
That's what I came to tell you. If courage is going to take the wheel in your life, you're going to have to stir some things up. Paul, what do you mean he's got to stir up the gift? You just said that he's already called and gifted, that you were one of the presbyters who laid hands on him when the gift was imparted. Yeah, it's one thing for it to be in there, it's another thing for it to be stirred up.
While I was writing, preparing this message, I decided I wanted to bake a cake.
Now For the record. I am neither a baker Nor a cook. I mean, I can make A few little simple things I can Make my breakfast, I can. You know, I can make a couple of lunches. Stuff like that.
But I'm not. A cook.
So if you come to my house, Meta's not there. And you hungry? The Lord God bless you real good. I'm not gonna be able to hook you up. I mean, I'll hook you up with a mean bowl of fruit loops or something.
I'm playing. We don't eat. But You know, I'm not a cook, okay?
So get it, I'm not a cook. As I was preparing this message, I thought, you know what? I'm gonna go online, get a recipe. to bake a cake. Never baked a cake in my life.
But I thought I'm gonna bake a cake.
So I got myself. A pain. Bunt pan. I went online and said, What do I want to bake in my pan? I decided I saw a recipe that was intriguing.
It's a recipe for a moist whipping cream powder. cake. Listen to y'all, y'all hungry right now. Don't go away. The second half of today's Destined for Victory message, featuring Pastor Paul Shepard, is coming right up.
In John chapter 14, Jesus said, He is the way, the truth, and the life. He said, No one comes to the Father except through Me. That's why Destined for Victory is here. Our mission is to teach timeless truth for a victorious life by pointing people to Jesus Christ. To connect with what God is doing through Destined for Victory and to make a generous gift in honor of Pastor Paul's life and legacy today, please visit pastorpaul.net.
That's pastorpaul.net or call 855-339-5500. 2 Peter 1:3 tells us that God has already given us everything that pertains to life and godliness. That includes the courage to persevere.
So, with the rest of today's Destined for Victory message, let courage take the wheel. Here again is Pastor Paul.
Now. Here's what the recipe calls for. Three sticks. of unsalted butter softened All right.
So I went and got me some. Land of Lakes. Unsalted butter. There's four sticks in here, but they said just three of them.
So I'm going to use all but one. I'm going to put those sticks, softened butter, in here. See, you all already know. They say he don't know what he doing. Wait a minute.
Wait a minute. It says three cups of white sugar. I got pure cane sugar. Right here. And so.
Apparently, I'm gonna take three sticks of this butter, put it in here. I'm gonna take three cups of this white sugar, I'm gonna put it in here. Then I'm going to take six eggs, room temperature. All right.
So I got a whole dozen eggs here. Eggland's best. Large eggs. And I'm going to take half of this because there's 12 of them in here, but I'm going to take six eggs and I'm going to put crack them and put that in here too.
Now. I'm going to take three cups of cake flour. I got Soft as silk. Enriched cake flour. From Pillsbury.
All right.
So I'm planning to take three cups. of this And dump it in here.
Now, I'm supposed to take one cup. of heavy whipping cream. I got my cream. And I was surprised, that's what's actually on the curtain. Heavy whipping cream.
Like, look at that. They told me exactly what to buy. I got it, and a couple. This, I'm gonna pour in here. on top of all them eggs and Butter.
And all that stuff. And there's a little more. A table? of vanilla extract. Where is it?
Yeah.
So, I'm going to take a tablespoon of vanilla. I'm going to take a tablespoon of almond. Extract And I'm going to take a teaspoon of almond, tablespoon of vanilla, teaspoon of almond, and then a half teaspoon of lemon. I got all three of them right here. All right, they're made by McCormick.
Oh man. I'm fitting to have myself a cake. And and it tell the recipe says, and it's gonna take an hour and a half. For me. To take those things I just throw in here and come out with a cake.
They said an hour and a half.
So What I'm going to do is put all those things in here. I'm going to get one of the ushers to take this and take it into the kitchen there in the church and turn the oven on, throw this in, and in 90 minutes, my question is: how many of you all are going to want a slice of this? I just showed you I got all the ingredients. I got everything they said I need to have. Why don't you want This cake that I'm ready to bless y'all with.
How come nobody except a few greedy brothers It was men, by the way, it was only brothers. who like me do not cook. Or bake. And they said, Hey, Pastor, I'm with you. Let's just see what you come up with.
Oh.
Now I'm noticing That there wasn't just on the recipe page, there wasn't just a section of ingredients.
Now I'm noticing that below that There are instructions. I'm a priest before I'm finished.
Some of y'all got the ingredients, but you're not following any instructions. In your life. You got everything God wants you to have inside of you, but you don't. have the instructions in front of y'all. And some of y'all sitting up in the oven of your life talking about how come things ain't working out the way they supposed to work out.
I just came before I shut this series down, I came to tell somebody, it's not just the ingredients that make the cake. You gotta follow the instructions.
Now I see. There are ten things on the instruction section. Number one, in a large bowl. Wait, what? We supposed to have a bowl?
I had the pan. They said In a large bowl. Cream the butter. With the sugar Until it's well combined, the instructions even say this is going to take about five minutes.
Some of y'all in a hurry to be something. And you And you haven't Taking the time. Lord, my arm is hurting. Why don't I just go in and throw this thing in? They said no for five full minutes.
Take the bowl. Cream the Butter and the sugar, and make sure they're well combined so don't stop stirring for five minutes. When those five minutes are done, you're not ready to make a cake yet. Number two. And the eggs.
One at a time. And mix completely After each egg.
Some of y'all got an egg floating on the top. And you haven't taken the time to mix the egg in. With whatever's already in the bowl. Number three. Alternate adding the flour and heavy whipping cream.
Mixing thoroughly. After each edition. Wait a minute, all I want is cake. What's all these instructions? What's all this detail?
The difference between you And the people who are fulfilling God's purpose in their lives right now is that they took the time to not only identify the ingredients God had put in them, but they've taken the time to follow the instructions of the word so they know how their life is supposed to be coming together. And some are so busy. Wanting the cake. That we're skipping over steps. And I'm only down to three.
And that's already a lot of work. And that's already put a lot of folk out of business. Oh, forget all this. Number four, stir in. The extracts.
There were three of them. Stir all that in while you continue to stir. Pour in The tablespoon, the teaspoon, and the half teaspoon, and keep on stirring. And I'm only at four. God has given you all the ingredients you need to live a courageous life.
He's also given you the recipe. Are you willing to follow the instructions? Thanks so much for being here with us for today's message: Let Courage Take the Wheel. Hear any recent message on demand, stop by pastorpaul.net. That's pastorpaul.net.
And while you're there, be sure to check out our online store for some of the best Christian resources on the market, including books and DVD messages from Pastor Paul Shepard. Speaking of resources, we've got a brand new one to share with you today, introducing the booklet Overcoming Bitterness. Based on some of Pastor Paul's best sermons, this message will show you key strategies to removing bitterness from your heart once and for all. As you follow along, you'll gain strategic insight into ways to cultivate hope and reclaim the joy of the Lord's salvation. Again, that's Overcoming Bitterness, a helpful booklet for anyone who still struggles to let go of past wounds and press on toward his or her victory in Christ.
Request your copy today for your generous gift 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, 945385.
Yeah.
I'm preaching to a bunch of folk full of potential. And so, yes, you got potential. You got your ingredients. But my question is: are you willing to follow the instructions so you can become what God says He's made you? And that's tomorrow in our continuing message: Let Courage Take the Wheel.
But until then, remember. He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.
