Developing a Lifestyle of Faith, Part 4 (cont'd)

Make yourself comfortable for the past and for victory with Pastor Paul Shepard. You know, God gives us promises for life here on earth, but our ultimate promise concerns what comes later. The promise that one day we will spend eternity in the presence of God and see for the first time the full and eternal way to His glory.

It is that world, not this world, that we call home. But in the meantime, Pastor Paul wants to encourage you today to live a faith-driven life because it is the here and now that prepares us for the hereafter. Stay with us or visit Pastor Paul Shepard's website, or visit us on Twitter.

Visit PastorPaul.net anytime to listen to Destined for Victory On Demand or download the podcast at Google Podcasts or wherever you get yours. But right now, let's join Pastor Paul for today's Destined for Victory message, Developing a Lifestyle of Faith. Heaven is not going to be full of Christians. It's going to be full of the faithful people who looked either to the cross in the future or look back on the cross in their past.

All of us are going to share in God's glory. Abraham's going to be there. Sarah's going to be there. Isaac's going to be there. Jacob's going to be there. All of them are going to be in the same place. Isaac's going to be there. Jacob's going to be there.

All of them are going to be in the same kingdom. I'm not just hanging out with you AD folk. I'm going to go spend some of my eternity time with the BC folk. I'm going over Abraham's house sometime.

I'm going to hang out with him a while. And all of that, we're all going to be in the same country that God has created. And he said in the meantime, they knew their job was just to get the portion of the will of God done that pertain to their error because they knew that greater was coming. He said and they admitted that they were aliens and strangers. I need some of y'all to admit that you're aliens and strangers.

Some of y'all are a little bit too earthbound for your own good. You need to understand the only reason you're on earth is to do God's will and then go home. I said your job is to do God's will and then go home. You're not at home. This will never be home.

Buy all the houses you want. You're leaving them here because you are not at home. Make yourself comfortable for the years you're going to be here but don't make yourself so comfortable that you don't do God's will and learn how to walk and develop a lifestyle of faith because at the end of the day, it is about his will and soon we're all going home. Oh, I came to tell you like Andre Krauss, soon and very soon, we are going home. No more crying there. We are going home. No more dying there. We are going home. I feel sorry for you folk who think this is all there is.

All these shootings and killings and robins and what have you, murders and kidnappings, driving down the street and get crushed by some drunk driver, all of this crazy stuff going on. This ain't hardly my home. When this earth or this tabernacle be dissolved, I have another building. House not made with hands. Excuse me, I haven't preached in a while.

House not made with hands. Eternal in the heavens. One of these days, one glad morning, when this life is over, I'm going home. Get out of here and go home. Stay here as long as you can. Do everything right in this world. Do your finances, all that. Keep everything straight. Do everything you're supposed to do but understand the old saint said, wear this world like a loose garment.

I grew up around the same say stuff like that. Honey, I'm wearing this world like a loose garment. That mean I'm ready to slip it off any old time. See, that's the way you got to live.

I want to do as well now but should he call me home earlier than I think I'm going, I'm cool with that too. I got my my ducks in a row. I'm getting my ducks in a row. That's what y'all gotta do so that I'm ready to live and I'm also ready to go. This is not your home. That's why that's why this tabernacle, this building you live in called your body is not going to stay perfect. It's coming apart slowly but surely. And it's just to remind you this in your permanent house anyway. And you walk by faith just like I'm doing but walking by faith ain't going to keep you from getting old.

You will start aching where you never ate before. I need some middle aged folk who are with me. I need some people who are not in your 20s anymore. Yeah, I love y'all 20s and 30 sums y'all cute and fine and gorgeous and all that we used to be. We used to be all we was fine.

Just ask us we'll tell you we were fine. Used to be cute used to have figures and I used to have pets and used to run run fast and jump high and and didn't wear glasses and didn't squint and didn't forget stuff and all that stuff. Oh, keep on living. Keep on living. And after a while you'll be walking around looking for your keys and your keys are in y'all. Oh, I'm trying to tell you what I know. Keys in your head.

Where has anybody seen my keys? All it means is this in our home. Used to have an afro. I had a big old afro platter that night we call it platen y'all call it Braden. We look ghetto kids we call it platen plat up your hair. It wasn't a style back then it was what you did. But we who had them big Jackson five afros.

I had one. And you platted in that night, getting ready to go to school, pick it out in the morning, and it was all out there and then you put afro sheen or ultra sheen. Come on up in here some of y'all. Afro sheen, ultra sheen. It would give it a little glisten, little shine, and you pick it out. I'd go out and my, my fro was glistening in the sun. Oh, but I kept on living till first a hole started developing in my afro. And I tried to rebuke it in Jesus name, and the rebuke and didn't work it kept on growing, and I cut it on down. And now I go to Bobby said what you want to do I said whatever it don't really don't matter.

Just whatever you feel like doing good and not a whole lot is not like I can look at the chart and pick something I want. This is not our home. Do the best you can.

Look cute, buy nice clothes. I see some of y'all getting older like me. We fighting hard. We staying sharp as we know how to be. Y'all go and fight the good fight. You sisters losing some hair, want to buy you some more, go ahead. Go ahead, buy you some more.

They got all kind for you to choose from. All I tell you, you know, pace yourself. Don't go in bald headed and come out looking like Diana Ross in her heyday. That's all I'm asking you to do.

Just kind of situate it as you go. You go in bald head come out looking like Diana Ross and go home. Your dog won't even know who you are. You go home your dog will be double whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

It's me, it's me. This world is not our home. We all going to go together to our home. Coming up next, the rest of today's message, developing a lifestyle of faith with Pastor Paul Sheppard, Senior Pastor at Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California. If you've never stopped by our website, pastorpaul.net, I invite you to do it when you have some time. You'll find all of Pastor Paul's recent messages on demand, plus a host of great resources in our online store, including books and MP3 messages from Pastor Paul. Pastorpaul.net is a great place to learn more about the ministry and all the great things friends like you are doing through your prayers and financial support. You can also watch selected video clips by subscribing to Pastor Paul on YouTube.

For more details and links to all of his social media, be sure to visit pastorpaul.net. What does a faith-driven life look like? We'll find out next in the rest of today's message, developing a lifestyle of faith.

Once again, here's Pastor Paul Sheppard. Then the writer goes on to say verses 17 through 19. By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.

Let me just comment on that and we're done. Isaac is born when Ishmael's 13. So when the day comes for Isaac to be weaned from nursing, that was one of their rites of passage, one of their times of rejoicing as a culture, and the day came for the celebration of the weaning, meaning that Isaac is now probably in their culture, the weaning would happen somewhere between two and three years old, somewhere in there, and so that means that Ishmael is now 15, maybe 16.

He is a teenager who's full of himself, and so he looks over and sees this baby getting all this attention, and he mocks, he probably has a couple of his little teenage friends over at the party, and they mocked Isaac, and Sarah, who is now about 92, 93, with her first baby, and she looks over and sees that boy that she didn't want in her house in the first place, mocking her child that was that. She walked over to Abraham and said, put him out. But honey, I can't because you gave him and his mother to us as part of our inheritance.

See, I'm glad you brought his mother up because put her out too. Right in your Bible. And so after this, they're gone, history, because that wasn't a discussion. That was a directive, and so they're gone, and God waits now until years more until Abraham is enjoying his one and only son. That's why that comment is there, his one and only son, because by this time Ishmael and his mother had been disinherited, and you know God is so good that he even loves the Hagars and the Ishmaels that really only got involved because of our mess.

You have any residue of your own mess? God loves you so much, and God so wants to use you for his purpose that if he needs to, he'll make you a promise so that you don't have to worry about the consequences of your decision. God had said to Hagar, I'm going to bless you, and your boy is going to become a nation himself. Even though he's not the son of the promise, he's the son of my love, and I'm going to bless you anyhow. So they're gone, and God waits now until Isaac is getting up some good size. He can have great conversations with his old dad.

You know, imagine that. Abraham was not only Isaac's father. It's kind of like having a father, a grandfather, and a great-grandfather all wrapped up in one, and they're hanging out. He's enjoying this boy, and God shows up. Genesis chapter 22, read it when you get a chance. God shows up. He says, I want you to take him, take him up on the mountain, and offer him as a sacrifice. What?

You've got to be kidding. This is the one you said, through my seed, all the nations of the world will be blessed? How is the world going to be blessed through a dead boy? God creates another difficulty to see if Abraham understands that walking by faith means you don't focus on the problem. Abraham could have looked at this and said, that's an insurmountable problem.

If he's dead, how is he going to fulfill what you said would happen? Rather than focus on the problem, he looked at the promise, and this writer comments, he said to himself that God was going to, if he needed to, raise him from the dead. See, when you walk by faith, you leave all the problem to God. You just walk in the promise. Problem, that's God's. I'm doing your will, Lord, but you see they about to put me out because I don't have the money to keep doing what you told me to do.

That's not your problem. He made the promise, you're following the promise, and the problem pops up, you get to take that problem and give it straight to God. Oh, I'm learning to do this in this season of my life. Every problem, when I know I'm focused on doing his will and fulfilling his promises in my life, every problem, I say, all right, Lord, here's another problem for you.

It's sitting right over here. You can deal with it whenever you want, and I'm going back to focusing on the promise, and I dare you to develop a lifestyle of faith where everything you do, you do by faith. You walk by faith. You talk by faith. You act in obedience by faith. You give by faith.

You do everything God tells you to do in his word, and you do it by faith, and when a problem pops up, you just hand it off to God and wait to see what he's going to do. And I learned, and some of you have learned too, when you do that, God knows how to pay bills. God knows how to quiet enemies. God knows how to say yes when people are saying no. God knows how to open a door no man can shut. God knows how to shut a door that you've been trying hard to open. God knows how to do all kinds of things if you and I will just learn to stay focused on the promise. Leave the problem to God and see what he will do in your life. I just want somebody to make up in your mind that by God's grace, I am going to develop a lifestyle of faith, and among the things it teaches me, it teaches me that I have to see my problems through the lens of God's promise. So while other people, and while I used to be inclined to focus on the problem, I now grab the promise, and I look at the problem only through the lens of the promise.

When you start living like that, supernatural things will happen. When that becomes your lifestyle, you'll have experiences like Elisha had. You remember when Elisha got targeted by the king of Aram because he was making trouble? He was giving words of prophecy, and he said he's a troublemaker.

Let's go kill him. And they surrounded him and his servant. The king's army was all arrayed around him waiting for the order to move in and attack. And the servant woke up, opened the curtains, looked out and saw the problem. There's an army arrayed against us. He cried out, oh, we're in trouble. Elisha, wake up, man of God.

We're in trouble. Elisha got up and looked at the same problem, and a smile broke out on his face. And the servant said, I don't see what's funny.

We about to die. And Elisha said, Lord, open his eyes. And when the Lord opened the servant's eyes, not only did he see, yes, we are surrounded, but by looking at it through the lens of God's promise, which God gave him insight on, he saw that the king's army was surrounded by the army of the Lord.

The king's army was still there. See, your problem might still be there. You say, well, that's a great message, pastor, but I'm going home to my problem.

No, you don't understand. God didn't say that the problem wouldn't be there. He just said his promise supersedes the problem. And when the young man's eyes were opened, he saw that there was a host from heaven behind the army of the king, like an old cowboy movie, where one guy says, stick him up. Get your hands up in the air. You're stuck.

You think you're done. But then some help comes for you and gets behind your enemy and says, no, you stick him up. That's what God did to the king's army.

He got behind him with his own host. And you know the story, God blinded them and defeated them. And I'm here to tell you that supernatural things are going to happen in your life as you develop a lifestyle of faith where it doesn't matter what has happened. It doesn't matter what the doctor is saying. It doesn't matter what the bank is saying about that loan you think you absolutely need.

It doesn't matter what your enemies are saying. It doesn't matter what the statistics say. God is not the God of statistics.

I need somebody to know that. I said, well, you know how many businesses fail in the first two years? God is not the God of statistics. If he gave you the business, if that's a promise from him, if he's entrusted to you something he wants you to do for his name's sake and it's going to cost you a whole lot of money and you're going to need a whole lot of favor and you don't see where it's going to come from, that's none of your business. You focus on the promise.

You go put in the business plan. You go talk to who you think you need to talk to. And when they slam the door in your face and discourage you and say, you know, you're wasting your time, walk out with an Elisha smile on your face saying, God. See, the old saints knew what they were talking about.

Y'all smarter, but they were wiser. They didn't have your education, but they knew God. I was at a wedding. I performed a wedding yesterday and the couple decided to have their grandmothers read the scriptures, one of the Old Testament and one of the new. And the oldest of the two grandmothers, she was moving very, very slowly.

It took her a long time to get up there, but we just waited. And I told the audience, when you live this long, folk just got to wait on you. And they clapped and understood what I was saying and when she finally got up there and there was a sheet of paper with the New Testament reading, the other grandmother had written hers out and she had the paper there. And so grandma walked over and she started reading the paper and she said, no, no, that's mine, sweetie. You're to do Psalm 23. And the older grandmother said, oh, I don't need no paper for that. She said, I know that one and she stood there with her 90 something year old self and said, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want not a paper, not a Bible, not a note inside. He making me to lie down.

Why? Because she'd been walking with the shepherd. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in the path of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemy. Thou anointest my head with oil.

My cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. And while I'm dwelling there, I'm going to receive every promise that he has for me. You know, God wants to do things in your life that may surprise you, maybe even take you outside of your comfort zone. Abraham, Noah, Moses, Gideon. At one time or another, God took each of these men to uncomfortable places.

They learned to trust God's promises when everything around them told them not to. If you are struggling in your faith today, if God has you in a place that makes you feel uncomfortable or fearful, the Destined for Victory ministry team would like to pray for you. To send us your prayer request, please visit pastorpaul.net, click Contact Us, and share what's on your heart. The team here at Destined for Victory considers it a privilege to join you in prayer, so contact us today.

And when you send your request, be sure to ask for Pastor Paul's monthly letter of encouragement, yours at no cost or obligation. And here's something else for you. Here's a booklet from Pastor Paul called Lessons from the Cocoon. You know, butterflies don't start out as butterflies.

They're caterpillars, grounded, earthbound. But later on, a transformation takes place and they take flight. Your life in Christ works the same way. In Lessons from the Cocoon, Pastor Paul reminds you that God is at work in you even when you can't see it.

And in His perfect timing, you will, like the butterfly, take flight because you were born to fly. That's Lessons from the Cocoon, our gift to you today by request for your generous gift to Destined for Victory. Just call 855-339-5500 to give over the phone, or mail your gift to Destined for Victory, Post Office Box 1767, Fremont, CA 94538. You can also make a safe and secure donation from our website, pastorpaul.net.

Thanks in advance for helping keep Destined for Victory on the air. And if you want to help your children get where they're going, a good place to start is by telling them where you've been. Here's Pastor Paul. If you want to bless your kids, your grandkids, your nieces, your nephews, kids under your influence, the first thing you can learn here from Abraham is you have to be willing to share with them where God has brought you from. That's next time in Pastor Paul Shepherd's message, Developing a Lifestyle of Faith. Until then remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.