Lessons from the Pasture, Part 4 (cont'd)

I don't know what we're doing. Why do you hang around failures trying to be a success? Why take swimming lessons from drowning people? Find somebody who knows what they're doing.

Find someone who can teach you some things. If you want to be a good leader, first be a good follower. You're listening to Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd, Senior Pastor Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California. We're always glad to have you with us. Today we return to the life of David, a young man who proved himself willing to learn.

Knowing he was Israel's future king, he chose to serve in the court of Israel's present king. His story continues next. Stay right here or stop by pastorpaul.net to listen on demand. That's pastorpaul.net.

Now here is Pastor Paul with today's Destined for Victory message, Lessons from the Pasture. You who are students, I have a word for you. If you are a student, your job is not to pass.

Your job is to learn. We got to get out of the business of thinking school is about passing. School is about learning. School is about you becoming proficient. School is about you attaining knowledge that you can add wisdom to and integrity to and character to and become a person who is head and shoulders above your peers.

I want to challenge you. There will be some areas where you are just sort of a jack of all trades, but there ought to be something where you are a master of one. In fact, we have misquoted that for years. People say, jack of all trades, master of none.

That was not the original quote. You're not supposed to be a jack of all trades and master nothing at all. God has created in you the ability to master some things. So the original quote was master, a jack of all trades, master of one. The idea being, I'm pretty good at a lot of things, but there's some area that God has enabled me to excel in.

And I'm here to tell you, I'm looking for you as a child of God to take on this task of letting God bring you into excellence. You students, you're not there just to pass. You know, folks, you might not graduate about all of your subject matter. You might not be magna cum laude, summa cum laude, cum laude. There might be some areas where you just thank you, Lord. You know what I'm saying? When I was in college, there were definitely some thank you, Lord classes.

I got out of there by the skin of my teeth and the grace of God said, I will never be back again. Don't you ask me? But there ought to be some areas where you excel. You go to school to learn. You know why? Because God wants to use you. And God doesn't want to use a bunch of folk who don't know what they're doing. You're an attorney, God wants you to master the law so that you marry that with integrity and diligence and character and you represent righteousness when you go to court and you work and work as unto the Lord and God will use you in that.

He wants you to master it. I don't want an attorney. However, Christian, we got to get out of this business. Well, let me find a Christian. How many know not every Christian in business is who you want to hire? I've run into some folk that when they get through with me, I'm like, next time, give me a heathen.

Because these folk don't know what they're doing and want to bring Jesus and try to make it all better. How many know Jesus won't bless your mess? You have to give him a return on his investment. You're an attorney, you ought to know your stuff. You got my life, my business hanging in the balance. I need you to represent me. I need you to get me justice when I've been wronged or whatever the case might be and I come to you with my problem.

I don't need you somewhere to hand hemming and hawing. Well, you know, we give it a shot. No, no, I'm not paying you a hefty retainer and good fees for you to give something a shot. You go to a physician, you want a physician who knows your body. Who knows how to work this thing, who knows how to be used of God, who knows how to pray and marry their diligence and their knowledge to their discipline. When are you sitting up on a doctor's table, your life in their hand and they over in the corner flipping through books.

Because they rushed through med school and graduated. Thank you, Lordy. And now you're sitting up on the table and they over there, let me see, I don't know.

How much insurance you got? No, you're not my doc. You need to marry diligence to your destiny. You need to give God a good return on his investment. You've got to develop your strongest gifts. David took the time and learned what he needed to learn. Now, what does that mean? That means not only are you going to practice, not only are you going to work on it, but you are going to expose yourself to greatness.

A lot of us have got to understand this exposure principle. You get great in part by dedicating yourself to God, praying and then you dedicate yourself to learning and you must learn often by those who already know. There's no magic to this thing. If you want to get better at something, find folks who are good at it. A lot of us, I don't know what we're doing. Why do you hang around failures trying to be a success?

Why take swimming lessons from drowning people? Find somebody who knows what they're doing. Find someone who can teach you some things and ask God to give you the insight and the ability to master it. Long before I was preaching on a national platform and teaching, I was learning, praying, fasting, reading the word, studying this book and then learning how to communicate it clearly as I sat under the tutelage of people who knew how to communicate the word of God with the power of God. And I exposed myself to people who made me feel, and I still do it to this day, I expose myself to people who make me feel awfully inferior. I went to dinner a few weeks ago with a very prominent preacher.

Just about everybody in the room would know his name if I called his name and sat at dinner. And by the time I finished gleaning from his wisdom, I left there, I told one of my associate pastors, I said, when I left that room, I felt so stupid because I had been in the presence of someone who had a level of brilliance that if I would allow myself, it would intimidate me. But I said, Lord, rather than be intimidated, I'm just gonna get up close. My daddy taught me, when you find somebody and God's hand is on them, instead of being jealous, get close to them. He said, because when their cup overflows, the drops will fall on you. And some of us are so busy throwing off on folk that you don't appreciate what God will teach you through others. So you gotta learn how to do this. You gotta learn how to work it. I don't get intimidated.

It's all right. Sometimes I feel like a mule at the Kentucky Derby. But you know that old story, don't you? The farmer entered his farm mule into the Kentucky Derby. His friend said, you must be out of your mind. Don't you know that that working mule doesn't have a prayer against their branch?

The farmer said, I didn't enter him because I thought he could win. I just figured the exposure would do him a world of good. Let me tell you, you need to expose yourself to persons who know what you don't know, so that God can then take the discipline married to the prayer and the integrity and the character development and the Lord can bless you and cause you to prosper. The scripture is very plain that the Lord will give you gifts and if you will exercise those gifts, there's a proverb that says your gifts will make room for you and bring you before great men. You gotta exercise your gifts.

You gotta develop your gifts because God will open doors in your life through your gifting. Don't say, I need a job. Well, what are you good at?

Well, I'm trying to figure it out. Well, that's why nobody's offering you a job. You gotta decide what is God placed in me that I need to maximize because folk aren't looking to just develop somebody. When we go to hire somebody, even in a church setting, a lot of folk come to church and say, I know I can get a job at the church. You know, because they love God and they love people and they're compassionate.

All that's true. We love God. We love people. We are compassionate.

If you don't know what you're doing, I'm not hiring you. You can be as saved as you want to be. We'll be right back with more of today's Destined for Victory message from Pastor Paul Shepherd. To listen to any of Pastor Paul's recent broadcasts, be sure to stop by pastorpaul.net anytime to listen on demand.

That's pastorpaul.net. Pastor Paul joins me in the studio after today's message, but first, let's rejoin him for the second half of today's message teaching Lessons from the Pasture. I'm telling my whole staff, tighten up your hiring process as we go to the new level of reaching the people God's called us to reach. We can't have folk who don't know what they're doing because it is time God gives us the time to develop our gifts and our abilities. And I'm here to tell you, you want to write the best song. You want to write the best book. You want to be the best in your discipline so that God can use your gift to open doors for you and to bring you into the presence of those people that he will have you minister to. So develop your strongest gifts. One more lesson from the life of David.

I'll let you go. The early life of David and it is get good at meeting other people's needs. Now notice what David did here. The Bible says in verse 21 of 1 Samuel 16, David came to Saul and entered his service.

Saul liked him very much. Pause right there. Some of us need to leave this message saying, Lord, make me more likable. Help me to be more likable. And remember, when you pray that God will say, OK, I will if you'll work with me. Let me help you take that edge off.

Let me help you develop your people skills better. Some of you simply need to ask God to anoint you to smile. Walking around looking like you were baptized in lemon juice. Got that little edge on your speech. You ever talk to folk and just about everything they say has that edge on it? A little roughness.

You know, they need to learn how to turn it around. The Bible says David was well spoken, not just in terms of his grammar being correct, but his speech was pleasant. There are Proverbs that talk about your speech being pleasant. You've got to learn how to speak in a way that makes people feel good, even when you have to say something that isn't so great. There's a right way.

There's a better way to say it. And we need to work on being more likable. You know, we who are believers in Jesus Christ, the Bible says we are to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world. We are not to be the scourge of the earth. We are not to have people see us coming and say, oh, no.

Oh, no. You see a Christian coming, you shouldn't want to run for cover. Or here they come with their holy, mean self.

That doesn't represent Jesus. The Bible says he was a friend of publicans and sinners. Jesus was a friend of people who didn't live holy. And some of us don't know how to be nice to people who don't live holy because we're not even nice to people who live holy.

Just mean. Just inconsiderate. Some of us are too selfish and self-centered. We haven't learned the attitude of a servant.

We haven't learned the after you mentality. And some of us have to just learn to be nice. You got to discover it's just nice to be nice. It's just nice to be nice. It's nice to be pleasant.

It's nice to make somebody else's day. It's not get in the elevator and actually speak to the folks. You say, well, that's weird. People don't do that. They just all stand there and look at the numbers. I know that's the way of our world.

So we need to turn it around. I practice. I get in there and say, hi, how are you? And, yes, sometimes they look at you like, who are you? You're speaking to me for. I've seen folk grab for their wallet when I speak to them.

Hi, how you doing? You know, they read somewhere where a pickpocket would be nice to you. You know, I don't want anything from you but the chance to show you the love of Christ. The chance to show you that it takes as much energy to be nice as it does to be mean. And so you might as well just go on and speak to folks. Be pleasant to people. Be pleasant on the freeway.

Stop riding around with a fish. Flipping people off. What in the world are you doing? Let them in.

It's not going to end your day. They want to get in. I know they're doing that California exit. Start all the way in the left lane. You're one tenth of a mile from the exit and they go clear from the left lane all the way over.

I never saw the magnitude. When I moved out here 18 years ago I said, what is the matter with these people? I thought there was a rule in California that when you're about to exit the freeway you get in the left lane.

I had never seen such in my life. Back east where I come from they drive crazy in the city. Out here it is these freeways. And these folks get all the way to the left lane and just zoom over. And here come the Christians. You're not getting in front of me.

Why not let them go with that crazy self in Jesus name? Come on over. God bless you.

Saul liked him very much. How well liked are you on your job? How well liked are you in your community? How well liked are you on your block? I'm telling you it takes practice because these days some of us live in communities where people, you know a lot of us grew up in the days you knew all your neighbors. You all hung out at one another's houses, stood out in front of the house and talked.

These days it's a happy coincidence when you find a block like that. Because these people, I mean folks will live right next door to you, right two, three stories down from you. Like they see you driving at least and you wave at them and they look at you.

I got neighbors. They look like they said if you think I'm going to ever lift my hand and wave at you, you got to be kidding. But my wife and I decided that's not going to stop us from waving. We just be the crazy people in the community. Hey!

We just made up our mind one day. I'm speaking to everybody. If for no other reason, just to get on your nerves, I'm speaking. Hey, how you doing? Just be nice. Do people like you on your job? Do you invest time in their happiness? Making their day? Let me tell you something, this is the kind of thing that opens doors.

Saul liked David very much. That's what you want. You want people to say, oh, I like that woman. Something about that man, oh, isn't he just one of the nicest people you ever met?

That's what they want to say. You don't want them, somebody bring up your name and they say, hmm. David liked him very much and he became one of his armor bearers. Some of you are in a position where you can help other people and I'm here to tell you, God wants you to get good at helping and meeting the needs of other people. Before God blesses you and takes you to your place of prominence that you're envisioning, make sure that you're in the business of helping someone else.

Make sure you're in the business of meeting their needs well. He became his armor bearer. You know what that means? That means that he walked around and he did nothing spectacular. He literally bore the arms of the king. He literally served the needs of the king. He literally opened doors for the king.

He did whatever was required. And I'm here to tell you, there's a blessing in servanthood that our generation is missing because we're busy reading books about swimming with sharks and being movers and shakers and we don't understand that in God's economy, God loves the servant heart. God loves people who don't mind taking care of other people's needs. God loves people who will help you just because you need help. There's no angle in it for them.

There's no bonus in it for them. There's nothing they're going to get out of it except the joy of meeting your need. And some of us are at a place where we'll help you if it doesn't inconvenience us. But I'm telling you, God wants to take you to a place where you can say, I'll help you even if it does inconvenience me. I'll go out of my way to serve the needs of somebody in the name of the Lord.

And you got to understand that there are promises attached to that. If you will humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, the Bible says in due season, the Lord will see that and he will exalt you. The promotion is coming from the Lord.

It's ultimately not going to come from people. When God sees you have taken care of his business, God will say, now I'm ready to let you graduate to your next level. And I want to let you know that God has called you to develop your strongest gifts. I believe I'm speaking to people who are the world changers. I'm speaking to people that God has called to make a difference in your discipline, in your business, in government, in entertainment. God has called you to make a righteous difference for him.

But you have got to marry some diligence and integrity and the development of character to expertise and then give God a good return on his investment in your life. Thanks so much for being here for today's Destined for Victory message, Lessons from the Pasture. Pastor Paul joins me now from his studio in California.

This is a very critical time in the life of most ministries, Pastor. It's always the case when we get to summertime. But this time, I think people are ready to break out. You know, the vaccine is more widely distributed.

Vacation rentals are booked at record pace. The world is ready to get out of this quarantine. But there's a concern that ministries like ours don't end up forgotten. Would you speak to that for just a moment?

Yes, sir. Every summer I have that concern and I say, okay, Lord, please help the people to remember that the bills don't stop in the summertime. The gospel is definitely free. I'm glad and I'm able to say to all of our donors, you don't have to even think twice about it. When you give to us, you're helping us reach others. Pastor Paul doesn't take a single dime of compensation from Destined for Victory resources. My church takes really good care of me and I'm so glad that they do. And so I'm able to serve the audience through Destined for Victory without any charge to them.

But while the gospel is free, the plumbing costs a lot of money. So even in the summer, I pray that our listeners will be faithful in their giving because the bills continue to come and I want to preach all the way through the summer and let people know while they're enjoying vacations, the word of God stands forever. Well, to find out how you can partner with Pastor Paul Shepherd, please visit pastorpaul.net.

And if you're unable to make that monthly commitment as a Destined for Victory partner, keep in mind we have some special gifts for you as you make your most generous single gift this month. So call 855-339-5500 or visit pastorpaul.net for more details on that. You can also mail your gift to Destined for Victory, Post Office Box 1767, Fremont, CA 94538.

Again, the address is Destined for Victory, Box 1767, Fremont, CA 94538. When you are in the will of God, when you are seeking to love God, to please God, to serve God, to minister to others in the name of God, as sure as you decide you're going to live a life that brings God glory, you can count on it, the enemy is going to show up. That's tomorrow in Pastor Paul Shepherd's message, Lessons from the Battlefield. Until then remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are Destined for Victory. .