Make the Choice to Rejoice (cont'd)

I'm telling you folks, when you can't rejoice about what you're going through, I'm telling you, you need to rejoice about what you're going to. Rejoice because God's promises will come to pass in your life.

If you can't get excited about where you are, you can always look forward to where you're headed. Hello and thanks for being here for today's Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Sheppard. Well, if you're a believer in Christ, your ultimate destination is to be with Him, and not just with Him, but connected to Him in a new way and in a new place where sin can't tempt you, where your relationship with God will be untainted by pain, untouched by time. But Pastor Paul wants you to remember that God has some very good plans for you here on earth.

Today's message comes your way next. Stay with us here, or listen to the podcast on demand at pastorpaul.net, at Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get yours. Right now though, let's join Pastor Paul for today's Destined for Victory message, Make the Choice to Rejoice. I believe in what God is ultimately taking us to. I believe in life hereafter.

I know some of y'all are too scientific to just believe in anything but what you see, what you can put in a test tube, and all that. I feel sorry if you don't have the ability to realize that there is a God, and He is at work, and we are His people. We are the sheep of His pasture. One day we're all coming to a judgment day, which is why you got to get to know Him now. You need to know the Lord now as your Savior before you ever meet Him as your judge. And I want to say to anybody watching me anywhere in the world, if you don't know the Lord as your personal Savior, today is the day when you got to get to know Him.

Give Him your life. I'll never forget, years ago, I prayed with a man who had spent his whole life as an atheist, but a member of his family came to the States, I believe he was in China, came to the States and worshiped with our church while she was in the States. And she was so taken by our ministry, and she stayed in touch when she went back home. And when this man, her dad was dying, she started witnessing to him, and she said, do you realize that you need to accept the Lord, and what have you? And he started asking questions. She contacted us and said, pastor, would you talk to my dad, he's just got a couple of simple questions, and what have you, and then would you help me lead him to the Lord?

And long story short, that's exactly what happened. On his deathbed, this Chinese gentleman who had spent his life not believing that there was anything beyond here, and not anyone above us, he said, I now am convinced that I need the Lord. And we prayed, and he received the Lord, he died days thereafter, and she rejoiced, knowing one day, she's going to have a great reunion with him in glory.

I'm just old-fashioned enough to believe that I have a home prepared where the saints abide. Just over in the glory land, and I long to live by my Savior's side, just over in the glory land. I'm still old enough to believe some glad morning when this life is over, I'm going to check out of here, and I'm going to an eternal home. And I want you to know that that's the ultimate destination, but here's the thing I want to say now as I wrap up this message, before we get to heaven, which is the ultimate destination, God has destinations along the way that are part of your destiny journey. So he's got to bring you through the valley of whatever you're going through, then he's going to bring you out, and the Psalmist said, and he'll take you to a table that he prepared for you right in the presence of your enemies.

I'm telling you folks, when you can't rejoice about what you're going through, I'm telling you, you need to rejoice about what you're going to. Rejoice because God's promises will come to pass in your life. All right, let me show you right here in Habakkuk chapter two. Look at Habakkuk two, verses two through four. God told the prophet this, write the vision, make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but in the end it will speak and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not tarry. Behold, the proud, his soul is not upright in him, but the just, that's us, shall live by his faith. I want to let you know, that's a word for you right now.

It was a word for God's people in Habakkuk's day, but it's a word for you and me right now. Write the vision. God has put some things in your heart that haven't come to pass yet. God put it there, and so if God gave you a vision, the vision of the Lord comes to pass.

You don't have to worry about is this from the Lord? God's vision, God's plan, God's will shall come to pass, but look at what he instructs the people. Write the vision, make it plain on tablets. These days a lot of people write out their personal mission statement, that's fine, that's wonderful, just make sure you check in with heaven, make sure that what's on that paper is something God has for you. And once you have a sense of peace from the Holy Spirit that this is of God, then you write it and you run with it. And look at this, it says, now the vision you got to know is for an appointed time.

That's really important. A lot of people don't understand there is a time element to the destiny God has for you. Remember in the Old Testament when Joseph at age 17 had two dreams that one day he was going to be prominent and his family would be bowing to him. He didn't know what that was about, he just knew it was from God. He even shared it with his brothers who hated his guts already because he was spoiled and because they were jealous of him. They hated him all the more once he gave this vision, like he, the younger brother, going to be in charge of the whole family.

And they were like, yeah right. And you know what happened, they ended up selling him as a slave to another country, they thought they had gotten rid of him permanently, but here's what I need you to see. He had the dream at 17, when did the two dreams have their fulfillment? If you keep reading his story you see that the dreams are fulfilled when he's 39.

Had both dreams at 17, they're fulfilled at 39, let me help you understand something. And the 22 years between the dream and the fulfillment were not all happy years. Some of them were lousy years. Some of them are, are you kidding, years.

Some of them are, this can't be right years. Some of them were, okay I must have missed it, I guess God got mad at me somewhere along the line and he didn't bother explaining to me why he has jacked up my life. But this cannot be the will of God. He was in the will of God, but the dream was for an appointed time. I came to tell you who are tired, who are weary, who are frustrated, I came to tell somebody who's thinking about hey, what's the point in serving the Lord?

Because my life is not getting any better, I need you to understand the vision God's put in your heart is for an appointed time. In the end it will speak and it will not lie. God is not a liar. If you say God said something and it didn't happen, God did lie, you misunderstood or you disobeyed or whatever the interference is, but it's not God. God is a God who stands by his word.

Every word of God comes to pass and so it does not lie. But look at the next sentence, though it tarries, wait for it. Came to tell somebody that's your word this morning, wait for it.

Wait for God, you're not just waiting for oh, I don't know what's going to happen. God's going to bring his will to pass in my life, but I got to wait to see the manifestation of that. And I'm not going to be like the proud whose souls are not upright. I am going to remain humble before the Lord and I am going to live by faith. He says the just live by their faith.

In other words, the just don't live by their circumstances, the just don't look at what's happening to figure out their life according to what's happening. I am motivated by what God said, not by what I see. I've learned so much about walking by faith just by flying. A couple of my covenant brothers are pilots and so every now and then I'll get in a plane with one of them and fly with them somewhere where they're preaching or whatever the case might be. And I've learned so much flying with these dudes because I learned that when it comes to pilot license, there are two different types of license. The basic one, when you have your basic pilot's license, you can fly in clear weather, you can fly where you have clear observance of what's on the ground, but you are not authorized to fly in the clouds when you just have that basic one.

To be able to fly in any kind of weather, there is another thing that you've got to get and it's an instrument rating, they call it. We'll be right back with more of today's Destined for Victory message from Pastor Paul Shepherd, Senior Pastor at Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California. Thanks for listening today. If you love this program, I know you'll enjoy seeing some of Pastor Paul's best video clips.

You can subscribe at YouTube or go to pastorpaul.net for links to all of our social media. God isn't always getting the blessing ready for you. Sometimes he's getting you ready for the blessing.

Here's Pastor Paul with the rest of today's message, Make the Choice to Rejoice. When you get your instrument rating, that means you have learned how to fly the plane even when you can't see out there what you would otherwise want to see. When I learned that and when I've flown with them and saw them put their instrument rating to use, I was impressed. Well, first time I was a little bit scared, but I was flying with Pastor Jenkins. We were flying, he was preaching somewhere down south and I had gone to the east coast to fly there with him. We're flying back into Baltimore, Washington airport where his plane is housed. We were coming down in altitude and I saw we were coming down and I could feel we were coming down, but we were flying just one of those days where you couldn't see a thing.

It was all kinds of low-hanging clouds and what have you and we're steadily descending. I'm looking on the instruments and I see the altitude is dropping and we're now at 8,000 from the ground and 6,000 from the ground and 4,000 from the ground and then he's turning because the guy we have our things on, I could hear the tower telling him, giving him the degrees to turn and he would turn the plane. He's turning and don't see and I'm looking. I said, oh Jesus, where are we? Finally, he gets down, we're 2,000 feet from the ground and then they have him line up and he told me, he said, are we lined up right with the runway? I said, we are because we couldn't see the runway. We just see nothing but this fog in front of us, but we're coming down and he said, the runway is right out there. I said, all right, praise God, but we couldn't see it.

But finally, when we got to a certain altitude, we broke out of those low hanging clouds and you could see we were very close to the runway and he just sat it down. Let me tell you something, some of y'all are worried because you're looking out the window of your life and you don't see what you want to see, but I came to tell you that when you are called according to God's purpose, he is going to bring his promises to pass in your life and though it tarries, wait for it and though you don't see it, praise God for it because it is going to come to pass. I love the gospel song, the talking saying, back when I was a young Christian, they were putting out all those love alive and different albums, what have you, and one of them was don't wait till the battle is over, shout now. That's what you got to learn to do, you got to learn to shout when your circumstances don't seem like they're shout worthy. See, some of y'all only shout when you got the money, when the kids are acting right, your spouse is behaving and everything that you just got to raise and all that, anybody can shout then and it's good to shout then.

When you get the money, when you get all that lined up, go ahead and get your boogie on. But here's what I need to tell you, when your kids are acting like the devil raised them, when your husband walked out on you with no explanation, when the bills are coming and you don't have the money to pay them, when there's more months at the end of the money, when you're going through those kinds of things, you don't stop and cry, you got to learn to shout, you got to shout right then. Why? Because God is at work in your life. You got to do what Joshua did. That song that Hawkins used to do years ago was based on Joshua 6, as far as I'm concerned, don't wait for the battle to be over, shout now. You remember Joshua 6, you remember God telling Joshua and the army, he said, behold, I have given you Jericho. Now when they looked at Jericho, they saw a city with a huge wall around it and they saw no way that they could penetrate it because when the people of Jericho heard that Joshua and the army of Israel were coming their way, they shut up the city. They closed the city gates, they shut up everything. Nobody could go out, nobody could come in and they said, these people are coming and we got to protect ourselves from them. Now when you looked at Jericho, there was nothing to get excited about, but God said, behold, look at the city, Joshua, and then he told him, I have given it to you.

I have given it to you. When you look at it, you say, okay, I see the city, but I don't see how you gave it to me because they shut up in there and they are not going to let us in. See, you got to stop thinking like that.

You got to realize the God who said it's yours knows how to get you in it. So as they approached, God said, all right, here's the plan. I want you to march around every day for several days, have your army march around the city and then go back to your camp. Now that doesn't make sense when you have a military mindset.

What do you mean, march around the city and then go back to the camp? They did that on day one, they did that on day two, they did that on day three, they did that on day four, they did that on five and six. But on the seventh day, God says, you ever had God give you a directive that just doesn't even make a little bit of sense? God said, now on the seventh day, I want you to walk around seven times. That's the number of completion in the Bible. You got to know biblical numerology. That's the number of completion and so God said, do it seven times because we're going to complete this right now.

I'm going to show you all that I'm giving you Canaan. And so without complaining, they were told to walk around seven times and then God said, now on the seventh time, I want you to shout. I want you to shout. Blow the horns, have the trumpeters blow the horns and want all the people to shout. Now, you know, in the black church culture, we call shouting dancing.

That's what you do with your feet. And let me just give you a little black church history. The reason why the saints called it shouting is because they didn't like the idea of dancing because the old saints didn't believe you were saved and dancing. That's just the way the old saints rolled. They thought dancing was worldly. That's not true, but that's what they believed. Bless their hearts.

And so we got to forgive them for that. You can dance as a child of God and it doesn't always have to be in church either. You can dance. Look, David danced and he wasn't dancing because there was music going on.

He was dancing because of what was in his soul and rejoicing in the God of his salvation. But in any event, we called it shouting. But when Joshua 6 says shout, that's not talking about what you do with your feet. It's talking about what you do with your mouth. You got to lift your voice and declare some things.

I came to tell some of y'all, you got to change what you're saying. You only open your mouth when you complain. It's time for you to open your mouth to rejoice. Some of y'all only open your mouth when you are mad at somebody. You got to learn to open your mouth when you want to bless the Lord and you want to declare your future and you want to declare your destiny and you want to say God began a good work and he's going to bring it to pass.

And so you've got to learn to shout it out. And you know what happened in Joshua 6? After they shouted, God took care of the wall. The wall fell, the people went in and God gave them the city. I came to tell you there are some things God has for you to claim in your future.

You don't see how you're going to get them. You don't see how it's going to come to pass, but it's not your job to figure that out. It is God's job to make it come to pass in your life. And while I'm on that subject of learning how to just obey God and you don't understand, don't forget 2 Chronicles 20, Jehoshaphat placed singers ahead of the army. God was giving them the victory and God said here's the unique thing.

This time, Jehoshaphat, you're not even going to have to fight. He said now I want your army to go, but all they're going to do is go collect all the spoils that I'm going to give you all. He said so put your singers out in front of the army. Now that's not a military strategy because who goes out first, who gets shot at first? In the military, they call that going out on point.

If they send you out on point, that means you are going to be the first one shot at. But no, no, God said put the singers out and then put the army behind the singers. And they worshiped and they praised on their way to where the enemy was and when they got there, they found out the enemy was already dead. They had defeated themselves. God had put them in such a panic, they killed each other in panic and they were dead. And when God's people showed up, the Lord said all right, I told you all you weren't going to have to fight this time.

All you got to do is go around and collect the spoils and they took days just collecting all the spoils that God was giving them. I came to tell somebody that you got some stuff coming and you just need to learn to do God's will to wait on him because his word is going to come to pass. Don't wait for the battle to be over. Go ahead and shout right now. Go on and praise God right now. Go on and give him glory right now because God started the good work in you and he is going to bring it to pass. Don't wait for your battle to be over.

Go ahead and shout now. Declare the goodness of the Lord and that's why you have to build a lifestyle of rejoicing. Make the choice to rejoice.

Don't wait to feel like rejoicing. Make the choice right here, right now to rejoice in the Lord. I rejoice because I belong to him. I rejoice because he's going to give me strength, agility and sure-footedness and I rejoice because all of his promises to me are going to come to pass. God is going to bring his will to pass in my life. I'm going to be the better off for it.

I'm going to have a prepared place to go to. God's already preparing it for you and that's why even here and now our destiny has some prepared tables ahead of us before we get to our ultimate destination of being home to be with the Lord. There's something beautiful about thanking God in advance for the things he will one day do.

It's a sacrifice of praise and of faith and it will prepare you for the blessing that is to come. Thanks so much for joining us for today's message, Make the Choice to Rejoice. Pastor Paul Shepherd joins me now from his studio in California. Pastor, we have a great offer that goes along with the message you shared today. Tell us about this booklet, Your Purpose is Calling, and why it can help everyone listening. I'm really excited about this booklet because it's based on this concept of being pushed into purpose. The fact of the matter is sometimes God brings us into our God-given purpose through people just inspiring us, like Paul was with Timothy or Barnabas was with John Mark. But at other times, God pushes us into purpose through trouble and trials and crises. That's what happened with Esther and it happens in a lot of our lives. So this booklet is going to help people understand all of us who are saved are called according to God's purpose.

We know that from the Bible, but people need to take it seriously. If you don't get to just skate through this life being aimless and carefree, you're going to have some things to do, some lives to touch, and some work to be done. Don't plan on leaving this earth until you get it done. So this booklet is going to help inspire you and help you understand that even your troubles are pushing you toward what God has for your life. Well, that reminds me of something you're fond of saying, Pastor Paul.

If you've got a pulse, you've got a purpose. And as you mentioned just now, sometimes God may have to get us there the hard way, but that's better than not getting there at all. So as our way of saying thanks for your generous donation this month, we'd love to send you the booklet Pastor Paul was just talking about, Your Purpose is Calling. As we begin to recover from what has been a tumultuous time in our country and in our world, the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ remains a source of hope for all who embrace it.

And now more than ever, many are searching for that hope. This is why your prayers and financial support of Destined for Victory is so critical. Request your copy of Your Purpose is Calling when you give your generous gift to Destined for Victory today. 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.

Again, our address, Destined for Victory, Box 1767, Fremont, CA 94538. The first is praise God continually, and the second is proclaim who you are in Him. When you think of the P in pray, then think about praising God continually and think about proclaiming who you are in Him. You may already know who you are, but do you know who you are in Christ? Join us next time when Pastor Paul Shepherd shares his message, Keys to Effective Prayer. Until then remember, He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are Destined for Victory.