We Are a Body, Part 2 (cont'd)

Do you need a spiritual breakthrough today? In just a few moments, Pastor Paul Shepherd shows you how to get from wounded to well in his message, We Are a Body.

But before he gets started, he's been kind enough to join me from his studio in California. Pastor, let's take a moment and talk. I know you're grateful for the way God has graciously supplied for our needs at Destined for Victory, and we do want to say thank you to those who have been praying and generously giving, even during the pandemic. But I know that you're concerned along with me that as people emerge from the lockdown, maybe ministries like ours could be forgotten, especially during these summer months.

Let's talk about that for a moment. Yes, sir. First of all, I cannot adequately say thank you to our partners, to the occasional donors, and to our legacy builders because they have been very consistent for the past 18 months or so. No matter what they heard, no matter what was going on in society, no matter what panic buttons people were pushing, donors seemed to get it. That if we want to hear this kind of timeless preaching, we're going to have to make sure that this ministry is supported and they've done it faithfully. If you're one of those people listening, I want you to know how grateful I am that you followed the leading of the Lord and you have been consistent in your giving. And I pray that it continues not only in your life, but that we actually pick up new donors because especially when the summer hits, all of us who do media ministry, we might sound like we're faith filled all the time. But some of us have those moments where we say, Lord, I sure hope these bills are going to be paid because the gospel is free, but the plumbing costs and those bills keep coming in every month.

We can't get this done unless partners come alongside. And I'm grateful and I'm praying that the Lord will keep them giving and supporting throughout the summer months. I love traveling and now that we can all feel like, oh, let's get back in the car or some people let's get back on planes or whatever. Great. Enjoy your summer. But please don't forget that the gospel has to be supported all year long, especially in these summer months. Thanks, Pastor.

That's what it's all about. Reaching more people with the gospel. 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 may have 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. 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, California 94538.

Once again, our address, Destined for Victory, Box 1767, Fremont, California 94538. And I want to let you know that that's the way we have to be as the people of God. We've got to be connected and we've got to get our broken places healed so we're both connected and we're healthy. And when we strike a mighty blow against the works of darkness, things are going to change. You can do that in your life.

You can do that in your individual life. The church was built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ, but you are far more than just another brick in the wall. As you'll see today on Destined for Victory, if we want to be cured, we've got to stay connected. Because each of us is vital to the health and well-being of our brothers and sisters in Christ. Stay with us here or visit pastorpaul.net to listen on demand. Pastorpaul.net. Now let's get started with Pastor Paul's message, We Are a Body.

And you know what I'm finding? I'm doing more weddings of people. They've been shacking for years, but they got saved first. Sometimes they shacked for a while long after they got saved until they came to a church like this.

And every now and then I'm going to hit it and I say, hey, you living together unmarried? You need to get married in order to conform to the will of God. God wants to bless you. Don't you want to be blessed?

Yes. Well, let's conform to his will. Don't ask him to bless you despite your disobedience. And I found that people whose hearts are right, they'll say, okay, pastor, cool. I say, all right, go get the license, be back here, and I'm married.

You don't need a wedding and all that. Some of you all can witness in this service right now. How many of you, especially in the hotel years, but also when we got this building, how many of you all saw me in the middle of a Sunday service stop and marry some people? Raise your hand.

Yes. Because all I told them to do, go get a license. You don't need a wedding.

All you need is a pronouncement. I can't tell you how many weddings I've done in the middle of service. And other people, I've married them in the lobby. I've married them in my office. Wherever they want to get married, bet. Come on.

And here's the good news. You don't have to pay for a wedding. Brought to you by your tithes and offerings. Come on, somebody. Brought to you by your tithes and offerings.

Getting married, it just cost you whatever that license cost you. Because I want to see the will of God done so that people can experience his best in their lives. Who cares about the formalities? And I found that people's hearts that are right, they're ready to do whatever they need to do. And they don't need you snooping around talking about what in their life still isn't right. You've been saved for God knows how long. When you going to deal with the stuff in your life that ain't quite right? Quit passing judgment on folk. They rise or fall to somebody else.

You're not their master. And so the church has to be ready to be receptive like we had to be when Kenny came into the household. Came in there, started making noise, disrupting things. My mother, as we saw him grow up, it was absolutely amazing. That boy could get away with stuff we would have never imagined you could get away with and wear our last name. Any of y'all can relate to that? Maybe you had a younger sibling. It's something that happens with parents. In the early years, they're vigorous. As they get older, they kind of stop caring about all the minutia. And that boy got away with stuff I looked, I said, how?

If I had tried that, they'd still be wearing me out. He got away with it. That boy, he got up at my father's funeral. In February 2008, we funeralized my dad. My older brother and I are the two pastors, the preachers in the family. My dad was our pastor growing up. And the Lord called my older brother and then later me to the ministry.

When Kenny got saved, I remember I was already here in California when Kenny got saved. And he and I were writing and what have you. And he told me he got saved, told me about the experiences, the service he was in, who was preaching, all that. And I said, man, I'm so proud of you.

Praise God. He said, now let me ask you something. You and Horace are preachers. Now, just because I'm saved, do I have to be a preacher too? And I said, no, if the Lord doesn't call you. I said, the only reason we're preachers is because the Lord specifically called us to do that. I said, if the Lord doesn't call you, you won't have to be a preacher. He said, oh, good. And when I saw he didn't want it, I said, listen, let me just shoot real straight with you.

If there's any way you can get to heaven and not be a preacher, go that route. Because some folks think this is wonderful. Some folks see you because you got a little parking space that's reserved for you and you got a little office. Some folks get impressed.

Oh, but let me tell you, if they knew what they were really asking for. There is no parking space on earth that will make you want this. There is no – you got to be out of your mind to think this is a good idea. Because you see a parking space. You see an office. Some churches, they have chairs up where pastors sit and the biggest one is here. It looks like a throne.

Some folks want to sit on the throne and have a reserved parking space and a little office. But I promise you, if you knew what you were getting yourself into, you would say, Lord, if there's any way you'd go to Gethsemane and say if there's any way I can be saved and not be a pastor, please let me go that way. So I assured Kenny that he didn't have to do it. He'd been happy ever since. He wanted to be a regular Christian. I said, man, I envy you. But back to him being spoiled and raised differently than the first four of us were raised, he got up at my dad's funeral. So my older brother and I jointly preached my dad's eulogy. We did two eulogies and Kenny just had special remarks. And so Kenny got up and he said, let me clear this up for the benefit of all of you.

A whole lot of folk at my dad's funeral. He said, let me make sure all of you understand I am the favorite shepherd child. As much as I wanted to contradict him, I could not because everybody knew he was the favorite child. Yes, he won. If there was a contest, he won it.

In fact, there was never a chance of anybody winning it. When you saw the way that boy got raised versus the way we got raised, they were too old to care. They just like, he'll be all right. I'm here to tell you in family life, it has to do with the parental decision. It has nothing to do with what the siblings think. Siblings have to learn to get on board and get with the program because when God is at work in his family, he can save who he wants to save.

And he tells us, if I send them to you, you take care of them because I'm going to hold you responsible for how you treat my kids. The other thing I want to say to you is that we have to learn then to be a functional spiritual family. We're born in. We get in through the new birth. Now we have to learn to be functional. The New Testament is full of exhortations that when it all is said and done, it's just telling you for God's sake, learn to get along as the family of God. Learn to be functional as the family of God.

Since you got in by the new birth and not by personal choice, learn to get along. Now here's the challenge. Some of you all don't know what a functional family is because you've never seen one. Come on, let's just be honest.

Let's just be honest now. No need affronting, there's no future in fronting. Some of you listening to this message do not know what a functional family is. You never saw one because God knows you were never raised in one. I'm not busting on your people.

We just need to shoot straight. How do I go from a background of dysfunction? First of all, don't feel ashamed because your Bible is full of dysfunctional families. Don't feel bad about your upbringing. Read your Bible. And you don't have to start in the middle. Go to Genesis.

Come on, somebody. Go to Genesis chapter 4. We'll be right back with more of today's Destined for Victory message from Pastor Paul Shepherd, who is Senior Pastor at Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California. Listen to the broadcast on demand at pastorpaul.net.

That's pastorpaul.net, where you'll find a host of great resources at our online store. Jesus said, greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. To learn more about the authority you have in Christ, let's join Pastor Paul again for the rest of today's Destined for Victory message.

We are a body. Four chapters into the Bible. One brother looks at another brother and says, how did God accept his offering and reject my offering? Something is wrong here.

There's some trickery going on around here somewhere, and I don't like it. And he decided to take out his frustration with God because God rejected his offering and accepted his brother's offering and the way this dude named Cain figures he going to make it right is he goes to his brother named Abel and kills him. Genesis chapter four.

So your family didn't create dysfunction. It's been here ever since. When you go from there, just keep going through Genesis. After a while, you run into Abraham's people. Abraham, Isaac. By the way, how Isaac got here?

Come on. Dysfunction after dysfunction. How did Isaac show up? Because God had promised Abraham, who was an old man who had never had any children, and Sarah, who was an old woman, never gave birth and said to you all, I'm going to use you and make you the beginning of a covenant family that I establish according to my own will and I'm going to give you a child. And those folk heard God but then they put, my daddy always called it, put their thimble full of brains in God's business. And they concluded, well, we're too old so God must not be talking about us because Sarah said I'm not the one. Sarah went to Abraham. I'm showing you dysfunction. Sarah went to Abraham and said in order for God to pull off what he promised, I'm going to give you Hagar, my young Egyptian servant, and I'm going to make her a wife for you so that you can sleep with her and perhaps that's the way God's going to do this. Dysfunction.

Pastor, how do you think that's dysfunction? What lady do you know? What lady have you ever met who would say God promised us a child and because I'm old I'm 75 so I know he can't be talking about me. So tell you what, I'm going to give you this young little cute fine Egyptian thing, make her your wife, your second wife so that the two of you all can, what woman you know? Any woman you know, if she believed, okay, God's not playing.

He's serious about this. She would say, well, then we're just going to have to have supernatural faith and we're going to have to believe God that he's going to work with this. Come on somebody. Any woman, I see some witnesses. I see some witnesses. Thank you.

Any woman you know would say whatever God won't do, I'm his girl. Hey God, you can go finish your chores. Do the stuff you're supposed to be doing around the house. I got to run to Victoria, don't tell nobody.

I got to go get something, come home, put it on and I'm going to tell my husband, here you go. Work it out. Let the Lord use you.

But dysfunction. She actually went against her own nature and said let's help God. Can you imagine Abraham? Abraham's like, this is a trick, right? The show hadn't been created yet, but Abraham said, can a camera? What is this?

Totally hidden video? She wants to give me her for my wife so I can sleep with her and we can have a baby. That's what she wants?

You all play too much. He said, now baby, are you sure this is what you want? She said, yep. He said, all right.

Guess what? They came up with a child. Abraham was old, but he wasn't that old. He and Hagar came up with a child. Dysfunction. And that child was raised in this household. After a while, the dysfunction went to another level because Hagar then started feeling herself. I'm the one with the child. She doesn't have a child. Dysfunction? I'm trying to help you understand. No need of you leaving here feeling bad about your family.

Welcome to the club. It got so bad that Hagar was acting. She started sassing her master. She forgot that her paycheck was signed by Sarah. And Sarah got to the point and said, this child crazy. I need to put her in her place. She did. The Bible says she treated her harshly.

And the unspoken word is, and Abraham better not say anything. She treated her so harshly that she fled from the house. And the Lord had to speak to her while she was running away.

The Lord said, where are you going? And she said, well, Sarah and that treated me so wrong. I didn't do anything to her. You know how folk, when they're wrong, all they can see is what's happening to them.

They never take personal responses. Not you, not you. You've never done that.

But people you know. And the Lord said, get up, go home, and watch what he told her. And submit to Sarah. Go back, eat humble pie. See, some of y'all don't know what humble pie is. And you don't like its taste.

You don't even like its smell. You say, no, I don't want any of that. If you ever want a breakthrough in your life, you're going to have to learn to go low.

You're going to have to learn to get down to floor level, ground level. And say, I've been wrong, and I want to get right. So please, I'm in your hands. Help me get myself together.

That's what she had to do. Later on, dysfunction shows up again. This time with the child. When you fail one of his tests, he going to give you the makeup.

It might not come right away. Their makeup came 13 years later. By the time the makeup came, the child Ishmael with Hagar is already a teenager. Finally, Isaac comes around and born. That's the child of promise.

When he's being weaned, which in their culture was probably somewhere one to two years when he's being weaned, by that time, this little cocky Ishmael teenager feeling himself, but now there's somebody getting new attention in the family. Now he's not the only child. Now there's this baby, and that's happened with Kenny. The baby gets more attention. So Ishmael decides he is going to mock the baby.

And Sarah, who is a mama and a grandmama all wrapped up in one, she's in her early 90s by the time of this weaning. She sees this child mocking my baby. She said, Abraham, can I see you for a minute?

Abraham walked over there. She said, that child has got to go. He said, baby, but that's my son.

His mother is your handmaiden. She said, I'm glad you brought her up because he got to go and she got to go with him. By this time, she's sick of all of them.

Hagar hadn't even done anything to her at this point. She finally got herself together. But now that she is the child's mother, you got to go. You and your son, I don't know where you're all going, but you're going to get up out of here. Thanks so much for joining us for today's message, We Are a Body. If you'd like more information about the Destined for Victory ministry or to contact us for prayer, be sure to stop by our website, pastorpaul.net.

That's pastorpaul.net. We, the people of God, are a family. God brought us together when we got saved. He brought us into a family. And all I want to do is make sure you understand the implications of God referring to us in his word as a household or a family of people. That's tomorrow when Pastor Paul Shepherd shares his message, We Are a Family. Until then, remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.