We're Stronger Together (cont'd)

God wants to send people into your life to help you with your positive areas, to maximize your gifts, your potential, but there are also people you got to know.

Their job is to tell you the truth. You need some of those kind of friends that say, can I see you for a minute? If you don't have any, can I see you for a minute? People in your inner circle, you got some developing to do.

What about you? Do you have any, can I see you for a minute, people in your life? Hello and thanks for being here for today's Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd. It's always good to have friends who will encourage and lift us up. But sometimes we need someone who will admonish us, challenge us, correct us.

A godly friend who isn't afraid to bring us back down to earth from time to time. Today's message is straight ahead, so stay with us or listen to the podcast on demand at pastorpaul.net. That's pastorpaul.net. Now, let's join Pastor Paul for today's Destined for Victory message, We're Stronger Together. Y'all got to understand, if you don't know the Little Red Hen, look it up.

I'm sure it's online. Read about the Little Red Hen. It'll bless your life because she was going to bake something. Was it a cake or something like that? Bread. She going to bake some nice, hot, wonderful bread and she went on Facebook and she tried to get folk on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, I'm baking bread, I need some folk to help me prepare.

And all the social media folk were not interested in helping, I can't come, I got other things I got to do. Nobody would help her in the various stages of preparing that meal, but all once it was baked, it's nice and hot right out the oven. You know, y'all know how y'all who eat bread, I know some of y'all don't do that anymore. God bless you. You're healthier than we are who still eat bread. God bless you, keep you straight than you.

I'm not hating on you. You are wonderful. You pray for us, bread eaters.

Pray for us. Now listen, when she had it ready to go, all the folk who wouldn't show up to help prepare, all the folk who wouldn't show up to do the manual labor needed, now here they come with a plate. You got that in your life. You got platers, they're not friends, they're platers. I will help drain you of your resources. I will eat your food.

I will do stuff that doesn't help you, only helps me. I came to tell you those people are not friends, according to the Word of God, because you are a mixture. You have wonderful things about you, and we celebrate what is wonderful about you. But we also need to say friendship is built for adversity, so you have wonderful things, and your friends ought to celebrate you in those things, and you have jacked-uptedness.

You know that's one of my words, jacked-uptedness. I know there are great things about you, there are jacked-up things about you, and God wants to send people into your life to help you with your positive areas, to maximize your gifts, your potential, but there are also people you got to know. Their job is to tell you the truth. When you develop the right kind of friendship, in many cases you don't have to tell these folks, now it's your job when you see me tripping to call me on it. There are some folks you may have to tell, but I promise you there are some others who aren't asking you that. When I see you tripping, I'm going to speak up. You need some of those kind of friends that say, can I see you for a minute?

If you don't have any, can I see you for a minute? People in your inner circle, you got some developing to do. You got to find some folk you know. Pastor, I don't know, most of the people in the church, or maybe I'm not such a social person, a lot of y'all would say I'm an introvert and I'm not particularly social. So what do people like me do?

Find the people. You know what, I would love to get in touch with you sometime. We can maybe communicate by quick text or something like that. Is it okay if we exchange information and see which of those relationships begin to yield you some sense that if I nurture this, it will be a relationship that helps me and helps that person?

Let me just go a little deeper. Some of y'all are waiting to find this special someone in terms of a romantic relationship. That's not the first significant relationship you need to build. Because until you have a good platonic covenant brother or sister, till you had that, quit trying to find the love of your life because you're unprepared for love. I know I just hurt your feelings. You're not prepared for love, so quit looking for this special someone.

Because right now, if they are riding, some of you sisters still waiting for the print to ride down the road of your life with his white horse. You're looking for somebody to scoop you up off the side of the road, put you behind him so you can put your arms around his waist and y'all ride off into the sunset. I know that's what you're looking for. I know all the romantic books have led you to believe that's what you need. I came to tell you the devil is a liar. That is not what you need right now. You know why? Because all you would do is take all your dysfunction and put it on them. Oh, this is good. You just take all your junk and I've been waiting on you here.

They'd be like, what is this? I'm just looking for a little romantic companionship. I'm just looking for a partner. I'm looking for somebody who got some assets that I can tap into.

They're like, I don't have no assets for you, but I got a whole lot of liability. Oh, if you don't have anything that's challenging you, here I am. I need you to understand God wants you to develop real relationships. I don't care how introverted you are. Just find some brothers you brothers and some sisters you sisters. Just come to the meetings and just connect. In some cases, you already have their phone number.

Y'all exchanged it during some meet and greet or one of those things and actually text them, hey, how you doing? What's going on in your life? How can I be praying for you? Just start.

Can we get together for Starbucks? Whatever it is, you got to nurture it, develop it. You got the seed, now put some water on it. Put it in some good ground. Care about something besides yourself.

You got to decide that a relationship that will pay me for the rest of my life is worth nurturing now and you got to develop that. It doesn't spring up suddenly. Well, I don't know. I looked around. I had a best friend.

That's not the way it works. You have to develop that. You have to let somebody know. I need you to check in on me sometimes.

I'll be doing that with you. Let's just talk. Let's just how you're doing. What's going on? When I ask you how are you, I don't want fine.

Come on. Fine is for the acquaintances. You need to nurture a relationship to the point where when somebody says, how you doing?

Just checking on you. You say, oh, man, this is a horrible day. I'm having a crazy time or I'm fighting off depression or I'm feeling like it's not worth it or whatever.

You have to tell them where you are because people can't help you when you won't even admit where you are. And so you need to know that in your life because all of us, we have wonderful things about us and we have jacked up things about us. I know you mad that I'm calling you jacked up, but I love you enough to tell you.

Yeah, I love you. Yeah, I know you got some great things about yourself. I'm so proud of the good things about you, but I also know that you are jacked up as well. Come on. You're jacked up.

You got some stuff wrong. We all have highs and lows. We all have function and dysfunction. We also have great giftedness and we all have great jacked upness.

It dwells in the same person. All the folk you've been envying, you've been envying the good stuff about them. You don't know the bad stuff about them because they never let you see that. That's why all this social media, as much as it can have some positive things, you got to make sure you look through it and sift out the essentials. And one is you don't know somebody from their profile. Their profile is the best of them. The profile is the best of them. That's as good as it gets, what you just read. From there, it's going down. Oh, I'm trying to help somebody. When you get to reading that profile, any of y'all singles ever dated online and you read the best of them and you're going out, ooh, they got this and that going on.

I can't wait. You get out there and they start talking. And some of y'all, truth be told, I'm not going to make you admit it out in front of everybody. Some of y'all didn't even want to make it through the whole meal. You really wanted somebody, one of your real friends to say, would you do me a favor, call me and tell me that I need to leave right away. Oh, come on.

See y'all, y'all, y'all play it. You know, you've at least wanted to just say, oh wow, this is one of my close friends. They said, I got to go right now. They didn't tell me anymore.

They just said, I got to leave. We'll be right back with more of today's Destin for Victory message from Pastor Paul Shepherd, Senior Pastor at Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California. Listen to the broadcast on demand at pastorpaul.net. That's pastorpaul.net.

There you'll find a host of great resources in our online store. Now, for more on the power of godly friendship, let's rejoin Pastor Paul Shepherd for the rest of today's message, We're Stronger Together. Listen, I'm trying to help you understand before I get through this series, you got to get the right people playing the right role in your life. Because Facebook friends are not necessarily friends.

I got thousands of Twitter followers. I wouldn't tell those people the real deal. They're not there for that. They're there for the wonderful things.

Because we all are a mixture. Do you remember Elijah? One day, 1 Kings 18, he's on a mountain, Mount Carmel, the anointings dripping off of him.

This is a showdown. The false prophets of Baal, those prophets had a chance to show if they served the true and living God. And Elijah said, hey, if your God answers by fire, he's God.

And you know that story. And then it came his turn. He first of all, he said, tell you what, this is too easy for God to answer by fire and consume this sacrifice with fire.

That's too easy. He got them to take water, bales of water and just pour it until there was a little mold around the sacrifice and it was dripping wet. And then he called on God, answered by fire. God not only consumed the sacrifice, his fire licked up all the water and dried up everything. And then he had those prophets killed. They'd be glad you live in the New Testament, not the old.

And the old boy. The only way to kill sin is to kill sinners back then. When you got that kind of power, that kind of knowing, you call on God and fire comes down. The next day, Jezebel, who was the king's wife, he wore the crown, she ran everything.

Come on, read about it. Ahab was the king of record. Jezebel was the real queen in charge. And Jezebel heard that he killed her false prophets. Let me show you how bad this girl is.

Jezebel said, go find Elijah. Tell him that what he did, may God do that or worse to me if by this time tomorrow he's not dead. You know you bad when you put out a contract on somebody and you actually give them a 24-hour notice. When you're putting a contract out on somebody, you're not supposed to let them know.

You want them to be thinking they're living their life, doing their regular thing, their regular routine. This girl was so bad she said, no, no, tell him they're coming for you and they're going to kill you. Here's why I want to show you two things live in us, the good and the bad, the power, the anointing, and then the jacked upness and the dysfunction. You would have thought somebody who yesterday had God answering by fire would be so full of faith. You would have thought the next verse would say, and Elijah said, oh, please.

Isn't that what you would expect to read? And Elijah said, girl, bye. Come on, bring it up to the 21st century. And Elijah said, please. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.

If that's what you would have thought, they'll tell you after church. The fact of the matter is when he got that message, instead of all the girl, bye, oh, please, tell us you better get out of here before I burn her up right now. None of that was his response.

His response was, thanks for letting me know. He took off. He told his servant, stay here. He didn't want somebody with him. He was so depressed. He was so scared. He was so disillusioned.

The Bible says he went a day's journey away and he sat under a tree and he started saying to God, I don't believe this. All I've done is serve you. I'm the only one left. I'm all by myself.

Let me show you the dysfunction. I'm all by myself. Where's your servant? Oh, yeah, I told him to stay over there. That's where we are sometimes. Mad you by yourself and you send everybody away.

And he's sitting under a tree talking about, Lord, it's enough. Just let me die, man of God, all that power. Just let me die.

I can't do it anymore. I'm a go to sleep. Lord, don't let me wake up here.

Let me wake up in your presence. Take me out of here. That's what he wanted. He wanted out. I just I'm done.

I'm by myself. I'm the only true prophet left. I'm done.

I want out. That's where you can be with all your greatness. You can be depressed with all your greatness. You can be disillusioned with all your greatness. You can have more questions than answers with all your greatness.

You can say it's not worth it. And yet God wants to connect you with people who will make sure that you get where you're supposed to go. So I need you to understand that true relationships need to be cultivated. Identify the potential people.

Don't tell me about your temperament because God wants to connect you despite your temperament. Don't tell me I'm not a people person. Well, we're not talking about people in general. We're talking about a couple of key friends.

Key relationships. Stop running people off. Some of you all are professional runners off. You get mad at the drop of a hat because somebody disappointed you and you're done.

What you needed to do was congratulate them that they love you enough to tell you about yourself. Come on, because some of you all can only handle fans, not friends. Fans are people who flatter you. They're professional flatterers. And you need people who do that.

Can I see you for a minute? And you have decided they speak truth to you and you, if you don't like it, that's fine. If you want to go on a little strike for a while, go ahead and mind your business. When you get through, I'm going to still be telling the truth. And if you don't have that, that's why you're in the mess you're in.

I don't even have to pray by some folk. Why are they in such a bad place? Well, who's helping them out? They ran off all their help.

Don't talk about how dirty your house is and you sent the house cleaning people on a vacation. You got to let them in to do what God's called them to do. So we've got to discover the power of we-ness.

That's your key this year. I got to go from I-ness to we-ness. There are people around who need to be pulled in. God's called you out, like he's called them out, of sin, out of a life in the world. But now you've got to get called into connectedness. Thanks so much for joining us for today's message, We're Stronger Together. I'm happy to have Pastor Paul join me now from his studio in California. Pastor, we're sharing this series, The Power of We, and by the way, I love that title. Tell us about these messages and speak to the fact that God never intended for us to live life alone. Living for Christ really is not an independent exercise. We are called from day one to be interdependent with, of course, our Savior, but also with the body of Christ. In fact, the Bible says that by one spirit, we have been baptized into the body of Christ. What that tells me is the moment you got saved, whether you knew it or not, you were in a family.

And God put you in that family because just as a child doesn't grow well if they're left to their own, neither does a child of God unless he or she gets involved, committed and connected with other believers who are going to walk with them as they walk with the Lord. So it's my determination to help the body of Christ through this series understand that we are a family and we've got to live together. We've got to serve together. We're also an army. I talk about the fact that we're a flock and I talk about the fact that we are a body. All four of those analogies talk about we-ness. So I think it's going to be a great blessing to the listeners.

I can't wait for everyone to experience the entire series. And I trust that God will speak to us and remind us that we've got to stay connected one with another if we're going to be all that God has called us to be. And this is why the church is so important. This is God's vehicle for that togetherness, isn't it?

Absolutely. We are not supposed to be lone rangers. And I've said it for decades.

I won't stop saying it because it's always true. Even the lone ranger wasn't alone. He had the good sense to have tanto with him.

And when he got in trouble, there was somebody who could ride to town and get some help or whatever was needed. And we got too many Christians out here riding around with no tanto and their lives are the worst for it. So we've got to get back to biblical Christianity, which does not come in a do-it-yourself kit.

It is meant to be lived with other people involved. Thanks, Pastor. A good reminder that God never intended for us to do His work alone. Speaking of working together, Destined for Victory depends on the prayers and financial support of friends like you, especially during the busy summer months when donations do tend to decrease. For your generous donation to Destined for Victory, we'll be glad to send you by request Pastor Paul's booklet, Finding Strength in Tough Times.

This is a great companion guide to the messages you heard earlier this month. One that explores the life of David during one of the greatest challenges in his life. That's Finding Strength in Tough Times, a booklet from Pastor Paul and our gift to you by request for your gift to Destined for Victory. Just call 855-339-5500 or visit pastorpaul.net to make your safe and secure donation online. You can also mail your gift to Destined for Victory, Post Office Box 1767, Fremont, California 94538.

Again, the address is Destined for Victory, Box 1767, Fremont, California 94538. None of us can do it alone. When you read your Bible, everybody in there who was used of God is a person who found the right connectedness in their lives because we can do the will of God, but we cannot do it alone.

No person is an island. No person walks alone and accomplishes God's will. We must be connected with the right people in our lives. That's next time in Pastor Paul Sheppard's message, We Are a Flock. Until then remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory. .