So You Want to Get Married Part 1 (cont'd)

You've got to get solution oriented. Some of you have the wrong gift. You have the gift of being able to find a problem in a haystack of solutions.

And you need to ask God to bless you so that you can learn to find a solution in a haystack of problems. Hello and welcome to Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd, Senior Pastor at Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California. Well, the abundant Christian life often comes down to perspective.

Joy comes when we let go of what we have lost and celebrate what we have left. Coming your way next, a powerful reminder for single women not to dwell on the negative aspects of being single, but to accentuate the positives. To go about the business of living your life in the center of God's will, because in order to be whole and married, you must first be whole and single. Stay with us now, but remember, you can always stop by pastorpaul.net to hear any recent Destined for Victory message on demand.

That's pastorpaul.net. Now, here is Pastor Paul with today's message, So You Want to Get Married. Reason why most men need to get married, not all but most, is because men need help. And the help that they need in many cases best come from the woman to whom he is married if he will marry in the will of God. So what that means for you, Ruth, is you have to be a help suitable.

How will he know you are suitable if he doesn't see your potential and your ability coming forth while you are still single? Will you note the fact that in Ruth chapter 2, when Boaz first lays eyes on Ruth, he finds her doing her thing, living her life, being productive, polite, persistent. She is not looking at every man in the field. She's not stopping every time a man come by and check him out. Oh, I'm trying to help somebody. Every time a man come by, she can hardly pick up the stuff and they're in the field for looking.

Oh, that's what I'm talking about. She is doing her thing. Do you live your life? Maximize what God has put before you. Let the man see you doing you. When Boaz first lays eyes on her in Ruth chapter 2, she's in the field. She has taken care of her mother-in-law. She is being polite. She's being persistent. She is being proactive. She is a positive woman. It's obvious that she's not bellyaching. Here I am in Bethlehem.

I don't know nothing about no Bethlehem. I don't know what I'm doing up here to make me sick. I'm sitting down here.

I need to get on back to Moab where I come. That's not what he finds her doing. If he found her doing it, he'd have kept on going. He sees this woman focused. Here is what I have before me.

It's not ideal that I have to humiliate myself and come behind the harvesters and glean the leftovers and hope no one treats me with this favor. She is not focused on that. She is positive, and she is doing what she can. And Boaz looks up. Read it when you get a chance in Ruth 2. He looks up in his field and says, who is that woman? Who's that? He was looking at her before she was looking at him because she was living her life.

And the servants were able to give a wonderful report. They said, oh, that's Ruth. That's the Moab body. She came back with Naomi. That's her daughter-in-law.

Both of them lost their husbands, but they're back here, and she is taking care of business. She is out there. She is working hard. She is persistent. She only took a little break, but other than that, she has been out there doing it.

Man, we are impressed with that sister. And it was in that context that Boaz meets her. I'm telling you that the man you expect to hook up with is not looking for a woman on hold. He is not looking for a woman with undeveloped potential. He is not trying to get discernment, a word of knowledge, to figure out whether or not you are an asset rather than a liability.

This is tight, but it's right. She is looking for a solution-oriented woman. One of the things I love about Ruth is she is solution-oriented.

What do I mean by that? She is maximizing the potential. She is not maximizing the problem.

She has significant problems. She has no husband. They have no social security system. They've got nothing to live on. They've got nothing to fall back on because Naomi left town years and years ago and her husband died while they were out of town.

Their inheritance is in serious jeopardy. She has no son to come back and take up the family enterprise. This is not a pretty picture, but Ruth is not focusing on the problem. She's focusing on the potential. She is solution-oriented. Some of you, my sister Ruth, you've got to get solution-oriented. You've got to start living your life from the standpoint of what problems can I solve? What situations can I remedy? What are some of the things I can do for good and for God in this world? Some of you have the wrong gift.

You have the gift of being able to find a problem in a haystack of solutions. And you need to ask God to bless you so that you can learn to find a solution in a haystack of problems because the man you hope to hook up with is a man who has challenges. And he needs somebody who can come along and say, baby, we can do this. Come on, baby, let's believe God. Let's pray.

Let's get this thing done. Don't get discouraged. He needs somebody who knows how to keep him focused and keep him moving in the things of God, moving toward his destiny, somebody who can build him up, someone who finds him weak in a moment of uncertainty and build him up. The only way he'll know you have that potential is if he sees you living your life that way.

If you're not that way in your personal life, not that way on your job, not that way with your family of origin, there's no reason in the world for him to believe you'll be that way as a wife. And so we've got to learn to maximize. Single women who want to be married, maximize your life as a single woman. Be an obvious asset, not an obvious liability. He's not looking for new challenges.

He got enough of those. Men don't marry projects. Women often marry projects.

Marry men for their potential. I see somebody, he's got a bunch of problems, but I believe when I get through with him, he's not looking for a project. He's looking for somebody who can help him with his projects, help him get where God is taking him. Now again, I got a message. I feel some of y'all tightening up.

I got a message for Boaz. I feel it is hitting me. I feel it. I feel the defensiveness. I feel the arms in your spirit crossing. You're not doing it physically, but I feel you on the inside.

Just fold in your arms. Now wait a minute. What you need to be doing is talking to somebody. I got a word for him.

Chill out. I'm coming to him. You've got to be an asset.

One who obviously as he sees you live your life, it would make sense to him that he would want to hitch his wagon to your star. That he would want the two of you to be joined in forces together because it is obvious that you are a woman who would make his life better. And so you want to be positive.

You want to live your life from this standpoint of being solution oriented. Enjoy your life now. He's not looking for a pitiful, lonely woman. See, that's where these fairy tales mess you up. You know, some of y'all bought into it.

I know it wasn't all your fault. The fairy tales beat you to the planet and you grew up and folk meant well, but they're reading you all these stories where some prince on some knight in shining armor is going to come riding in on a white horse and just find you on the side of the road and scoop you up and put you behind him on the horse and you put your arms around his waist and the two of you gallop off. Baby girl, that is a fairy tale. That is a fairy tale. That's not truth. There is no knight in shining armor riding around looking for somebody on the side of the road.

Don't look like they know where they're going or what they want to do with their life. If the knight sees somebody like that, he keeps on riding by. We'll be right back with more of today's Destined for Victory message from Pastor Paul Shepard. To listen to any of Pastor Paul's recent broadcasts, be sure to stop by pastorpaul.net any time to listen on demand. That's pastorpaul.net where you can also contact us for prayer or make a safe and secure donation to the ministry online.

Pastor Paul joins me in the studio after today's message, but let's join him right now for the rest of the message. So you want to get married. You have to understand men have an instinct in us that we are programmed, we are programmed, we are conditioned internally to pursue that which seems out of reach, that which seems like it would be quite an asset, the challenge of conquering, the challenge of winning. You need to present yourself as someone winnable, someone who obviously has what he wants and needs and to evoke that instinct in him that makes him feel like, I got to have that woman. He shouldn't feel like that woman's got to have me.

You don't want him to sense that that's what you do every night, every horse that come by, you just stop and look. Don't live your life from the are you the one perspective. Single men often say that when it comes to their encounters with some single women, not all of course, but I'm just talking about some of the general things that happen and many of them say they feel sized up the moment they're meeting somebody. And you don't want that feeling, you don't want to project that, that as soon as you say hello, you're sizing him up. Are you the one?

Like John's disciples, are you the one or shall we look for another? Live your life, enjoy your life. If you're a pitiful single, you'll be a pitiful married single. If you're an unhappy single, you'll be unhappy married. Because as married folk, marriage in and of itself doesn't make pitiful people unpitiful.

The best marriages are made up of people who have decided they are not going to make each other miserable, they are going to maximize their lives and join their forces together and see what God will do in their future if they'll go hand in hand into it, trusting God, being positive and productive and fruitful and believing God that there are better things ahead of them than behind them. So enjoy your life, enjoy your life. Don't wait for some man to take you to see the world, start seeing it by yourself. Great, big, beautiful world out here. Get out there and see it so that when you all do talk, you have something to talk about when you go out and you're beginning to get to know one another and he says, yeah, and I just got back from it. And you can say, oh, that's a lovely place, I've been there. Now, what places did you enjoy? Yeah, oh, I enjoyed that too. And he'll be glad that you've been there.

He don't want to talk to somebody about where he'd been and have you ever been there? Nope. Enjoy your life. Get your life in order. This is a good time to get things in order because you need them in order whether you're single or married. Get your finances in order. Get your money in order. Nobody's looking for new debt. Nobody's walking around looking at that. Whose bills can I pay? Not what somebody's looking for. I'm not saying you just absolutely had to be debt free. That's not what I'm saying at all. A lot of folks get married and both of them have debt.

They got to believe God. But while you, whether man or female, while you're single, this is the time for you to get your financial house in order. And so this is an excellent time for you to maximize your life as a single woman. Number two, develop and sharpen your ability to show kindness and appreciation toward others including men. You missed that.

I got to say that again. Develop and sharpen your ability to show kindness and appreciation toward others including men. One of the things that strikes me about Ruth is the fact, as I said in an earlier message, that she was polite. She wasn't manipulative when she went into this field knowing it was somebody else's property seeking to glean behind the harvesters and trusting God to give her favor. When she came across the harvesters, she was polite. She said, please, may I glean here. She treated them well. Later on when she meets Boaz and has her first talk with Boaz, he compliments her for what she is doing.

Listen to what she says to him in verse 13 of Ruth 2. May I continue to find favor in your eyes, my lord. You have given me comfort and have spoken kindly to your servant though I do not have the standing of one of your servant girls.

In other words, her issues are not coming out in the form of anger or resentment toward men. Now listen to me carefully. I want to say something. I know that there are a lot of women especially challenged in today's world when it comes to being kind and showing appreciation toward respectful men because of what you have suffered in your past at the hands of men. I am familiar with the statistics.

They are startling. They are alarming of how many women in the world and how many women in the church have suffered either sexual, emotional, or physical abuse at the hands of a man. For some it was a father or a father figure. For some it was some stranger. For some it was some other relative.

For some it was a love interest or someone that you were hooked up with in your life hoping to have a romantic, meaningful, significant relationship only to find him acting out of his own issues, his own anger at your expense. I realize that that is a very real problem. I do not take it lightly. The church should come and support such women with all of our resources. We attempt to affirm the fact that you need a soft place to land, a place to heal.

Our churches ought to be places like that. We are seeking in the church I pastor to be a place where it is okay for you to come bruised because we are going to be like the good Samaritan and do all we can to get you healed and get you on your way. You deserve special treatment. You deserve affirmation. You deserve someone to applaud you and say with all you've been through by the grace of God you're still here.

And that's not a small feat because you've been through a lot. Having said that though, let me lovingly as a loving shepherd, pardon the pun, let me challenge you that some of you have an edge on you as you deal with men that has got to be dealt with if you are going to position yourself for what God has in your future. You cannot continue to act out on the men in your present based on the men in your past.

You cannot continue to penalize good godly people because of what ungodly people did to you. And so I want to encourage you, yes, what you've been through is very real, but I want to encourage you to come out of that with two results. Number one, you will learn who you are in Christ and get your identity from Christ alone so that you're not looking for a man to tell you who you are. What that will allow you to do is draw reasonable appropriate boundaries in your life so that people can't mess over you in your present and future like they have in your past. And so some of us need to get to a place where we make the decision I am going to be whole in Christ and I am going to draw boundaries. You can't mess over me anymore. If you met me 20 years ago, you could have done that junk and got away with it because I would have assumed I deserved it or I must have caused you to get angry or something like that.

But no, those days are over. I know who I am in Christ and I deserve to be treated as a daughter of the king. You can't talk to me any kind of way, can't put your hands on me, can't mess over me sexually because I am the daughter of a king. I am the apple of his eye.

He loves me with an everlasting love and he doesn't let me just hang out with any old body. And you got to get there and draw your appropriate boundaries so that you are not in a position to be a volunteer and to be victimized by some of the mistreatment that you suffered in your past. And I want to encourage you, that is a good thing.

That's a godly thing. Some of us need the anointing to kick folk out. Some of you need to learn how to kick people out of your sphere of influence. I don't care if it's a relative. I don't care if it's your father or stepfather or whoever it is.

If they don't know how to treat you, they don't deserve to be in your inner circle. Thanks so much for being here for today's Destined for Victory message, so you want to get married. Before we leave you today, I've asked Pastor Paul to join me from his studio in California. Pastor, Thanksgiving's just around the corner, a time for us to count our blessings.

But you know, if we're being honest, 2020 has been a year when it's been tough for us to see those blessings. Remind us why it's important to be thankful even in times of uncertainty and unrest. Yeah, I think being thankful is one of the fundamental values that we learn. And I learned it as a toddler, and I think most people did. You know, your parents teach you very early on, especially being a little church kid and having folks walk up to me and give me something candy or a nickel or something like that. And your parents teach you from the very beginning, make sure to say thank you. And that lesson is one of those bedrock principles that we should build our lives on.

So now that we're all grown and living our lives, we need to go back and remember, no one owes you anything. And so it's good to be thankful just as a matter of lifestyle. But especially as we think about how good God has been to us, even through our trials, even through our difficulties, God has been good. During this year of pandemic, God has been faithful and helped us get through some very challenging times.

And we owe him a lot of thanks. So I think that these are days when we need to take advantage of this built-in holiday of thanksgiving and to make sure we're grateful to the Lord. In fact, in this month's encouragement letter, I mentioned one of 10 lepers who returned to Jesus.

He healed 10 of them, but only one thought to go back and to worship him and give him thanks. I think that's the way we ought to live our lives like that one leper and make sure God knows how grateful we are. And how thankful we are that we have God and the Lord to lean on during a time of a pandemic and epidemics, right?

Absolutely true. In fact, one of my favorite three sentence scripture passages is where Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica and he said, rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing in everything, give thanks. If we'll do that, I think God will be pleased and our lives will be richer because of it. Thanks for those great words of encouragement, Pastor Paul. Just this reminder friends is our way of saying thanks for your generous donation. We'd like to send you a book called 30 Days to Taming Worry and Anxiety, written by Deborah Smith-Pagase.

This book is a great resource to help you discover how to deal with a stress life often tries to bring our way. That's 30 Days to Taming Worry and Anxiety, 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. Men may be from Mars and women may be from Venus, but they meet and marry on Earth. Here's Pastor Paul. And so that's what Naomi was telling her daughter-in-law to make sure you pay attention to this because men respond to and appreciate physical attractiveness.

Men are so wired that we are often drawn to certain things initially because of their sensory appeal to us. That's next time in Pastor Paul Shepherd's message, So You Want to Get Married. Until then remember, He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.