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

Hello and thanks for stopping by for this Friday edition of Destined for Victory.

Always glad to have you with us. In just a few moments, Pastor Paul Shepherd shares his message, We Are a Family. But before he gets started, we'd like to share this important reminder. We have a special resource for you this month titled Finding Strength in Tough Times. And before I give you the details on how you can receive this as a thank you for your generous gift during our critical summer months, Pastor Paul has joined me from his studio in California. Pastor, we've had some tough times during this past year, and here's what we know from Scripture. There will be more, won't there? Tell us about this booklet and why finding strength in tough times is so important to everyone listening.

Yes, sir. I don't know anyone who would argue against the idea that we have endured tough times over the past year and a half that none of us would have predicted. I said it last year, but I'll repeat it again. When I went into 2020, I was so geeked about the idea of going into a new decade.

Man, I couldn't wait for the 20s to get here, and I was so excited. But boy, three months later, we were scratching our heads saying, What in the world is going on? I believe that we must take the Word of God as our lamp to our feet and a light to our pathway. One of the people who helps us do that in the word is a man we're all acquainted with named David, because boy, did he go through some tough times.

The very king he was trying to serve was trying to kill him. We read about David being on the run. He's a fugitive from a man he's done nothing but love, and it's not for days, weeks or months.

He's a fugitive for years, and all he's done is try to help this guy. Talk about tough times David went through them, and he tells us how to get through them just by his very example. So this booklet I'm really excited to share this month because I want people to understand there is strength we can find in our tough times. If you donate this month, I'd love to send it to you, and I know it'll be a great blessing in your life. That booklet is called Finding Strength in Tough Times, and it's our gift to you by request for your generous donation to Destined for Victory this month.

And speaking of tough times, the summer months are always a difficult period for ministries like Destined for Victory. Your prayers and financial support are critical during this season of the year. So as God leads, please consider sending a generous gift today. Just 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.

Again as you write that down, Destined for Victory, box 1767, Fremont, California 94538. Life can be scary, life can be dangerous, but a sheep has the shepherd going for him. And if I learn to stick close, do you know that's the key to getting through your stuff is how closely tied to the shepherd you are? The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside the quiet waters. Today on Destined for Victory, Pastor Paul Shepherd reminds us that life is full of challenges and valleys and steep climbs. That's why we have to stick close to the shepherd because only then can we be led to green pastures and still waters. So stay with us here or visit pastorpaul.net to listen on demand. Pastorpaul.net. Now, here's Pastor Paul Shepherd with today's message. We are a family. Listen, we don't need to divide.

We need to be together. We need to learn to find points of agreement. There are whole groups of the body of Christ that don't believe in the signed gifts. By that I mean the gifts like word of knowledge, word of wisdom, prophecy, tongues, interpretation of tongues, miracles, gifts of healing, those sorts of things. Some folk don't believe those are present in today's church. Some of my colleagues, I'm a radio preacher, God put me on the radio and with my clowning self, I'm on the radio. You listen to certain stations and a serious dude just went off, now here come Pastor Paul.

You know? And some of his listeners stay and then so they hear, oh Lord, turn that off, I don't need that foolishness. That's fine, but there's other folk who they turn on a few minutes early and he's finishing up his austere word and all that and they put up with that so they can get to me. Now I'm going to listen to Pastor Paul. I hear all the time from folks saying, you're on when I'm taking my kids to school and they love hearing Pastor Paul. I hear that regularly. If the kids like it, I don't care that you mad.

I don't care that you mad. We're getting another generation to listen to truth. Somebody told me at the earlier service today, I got a millennial and they always run the house saying, well, you know what Pastor Paul said? And I said, oh, thank you for telling that because sometimes I don't know if I'm reaching millennials or not.

He said, oh, you sure got the one in my house. Praise God. Because somebody got to give them the word and some of these stuffy people don't stand a chance. Some people can't even, I mean, they just so uptight, look like they wear a suspenders and a belt. They want you lucid. It's not all that serious all the time. Listen, I am sure some folk don't need healing.

They don't need prayer. They just need to crack up. Some folks just need to loosen up. Just let yourself crack up.

Just stop being so uptight, pent up. You ever seen these Christians just sour looking? Jesus is nowhere near your face. You need a Jesus that gets in your face. But we have to learn not everybody in the family is going to be like you. Learn to accept people even though they have belief systems that differ from yours because what we're differing about and the reason we have all these denominations, we're differing over debatable things.

Not everything is crystal clear. The essentials are clear so we need to focus on the essentials when you're dealing with somebody whose brand of faith in certain areas is different than yours. At least let's get together on the essentials. The death, burial, and resurrection of Christ isn't essential. The virgin birth of Christ isn't essential.

Let's get together on those. Stop worrying about, and you know some folks don't, so I was talking about the gifts. Some people don't want, I don't want to deal with people and all that charismatic stuff and tongue speaking. Listen, I got a revelation for you. If you don't believe in tongues, don't speak in them.

I just solved a big problem. You don't believe in them, so I never expect to hear you speaking in tongues. I do believe in them and I don't have to pray in tongues around you because you're going to get mad.

So I just pray in tongues in my prayer language and in my closet and when I'm around folk who are okay with praying in tongues. But I'm not going to make it a knock down drag out point of contention. We got a devil to fight out here and we so busy fighting each other. I said, well, you're all doing my work for me.

Go ahead. So don't get messed up over this stuff. Accept them even when you have differences of opinion. Some folks, you ever met the kind of Christians who always focused on the top 10 sins?

They're looking for them in your life. Daltry, fornication, lying, stealing. I've seen Christians over the years hung up on certain sins and ignore other ones. If it's sin, there's some church folk I want to find out.

Okay, so y'all are really mad at everybody who has had a sexual fall or whatever or whatever. Have you ever read about gossip? You ever met these Christians who will consign you to hell if you have some kind of conspicuous fall into sin?

But oh, they will gossip all day. Well, gossip, backbiting, all that is sin. Clearly spoken of as sin in the Bible. Some folk drinking, smoking, going to hell. The Bible speaks against drunkenness, calls us away from drunkenness. But how many know if people are in that lifestyle and they're in the grips of it, getting out is not going to be quick and easy.

And they're not going to be helped by you consigning them to hell. And have you ever noticed some of the folk who can't even be around liquor, don't want it anywhere near them, that's sin. I've seen some of them same folk can't even pass the refrigerator. You ever read about gluttony? It's in the same Bible that talks about drunkenness. And you can't even pass with your holy self.

Can't even pass by without grabbing something else. You're not hungry. I'm trying to show you that there's got to be room in the family for folk. Instead of you condemning everybody, learn to love people in a way that covers.

There's some things about you that really aren't cool. But I'm not the Holy Spirit. If we walk together in covenant, my covenant brothers called me on stuff, I called them on stuff, that's walking in covenant, but we had that kind of relationship.

We said to each other at a certain point in our lives, tell me the things I need to know from somebody I can trust. 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. Listen to the broadcasts on demand at pastorpaul.net.

That's pastorpaul.net, and there you'll also find a host of great resources in our online store. Well, Satan wants you to question the truth. And the more you wonder, the more likely you are to wander.

Here's Pastor Paul with the rest of today's Destined for Victory message, We Are a Family. So we sharpen one another. The Bible says as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. See, because some of y'all, you surround yourself with your fans. Fans can't sharpen you.

Fans can't help you grow, because they're always telling you how wonderful you are. You know what flattery is? It's a lie dressed up.

That's all it is, is just dressed up with a tuxedo. But it's a lie, because you are not to be flattered all the time. Sometimes you need to be rebuked. Sometimes somebody needs to love you enough to say, you know what? You need to cut that out. You are full of yourself, or full of something else.

Come on, see, y'all go playin'. You need somebody who loves you enough to tell you what you are full of, and you believe them. Amen. Or else they're not playing the role they're supposed to play in your life. All that's in the family. Finally, let me tell you, if we will learn to be a functional family, tolerate, put up with, read Ephesians 4. You'll see the kind of language.

The first couple of verses of Ephesians 4 will tell you exactly how you get along in the family. It uses words like, you got to forbear one another in love. You know what forbear means? You got to put up with stuff you don't like. Amen. You make me sick, but I'm going to put up with it, because I need you. I don't get to throw you away just because you make me sick sometimes.

Amen. See, some of y'all throw people away as soon as they make you mad. You're done.

Get out of here. You're going to need those people that you're throwing away. So, we have to learn to put up with things we don't always like about one another. Forbear one another in love. Strive to keep the unity of the spirit, you're told in Ephesians 4, in the bond of peace.

You got to make every effort to walk in unity. So, in a family, you have to do the same thing later on when you get married. You got to do the same thing to make your marriage work. Your spouse isn't going to always make you wonderfully happy. Guaranteed they won't always make you wonderfully happy. Every married person who tells you every day is just, I can't even, I can't believe how unbelievably wonderful my life is sharing it with this person. I get to wake up and see them every day. If a married person tells you that, run, Forrest, run.

Because they are so out of touch with reality. They ought to have some days where they're really wonderfully happy with one another, but there'll be other days when you say, Jesus, keep me from catching a case. That's life. It's marriage and it's life with your siblings. But if we will be the family of God together, we can fight off any enemy.

Because the power of agreement. Let me close by telling you about a family I've talked about them off and on over the years. Some of you all are new to my ministry, plus I want to hear it again. Let me tell you about the Sutton family. The Sutton family is a family I grew up with in Germantown, section of Philadelphia. Born and raised in Germantown.

I'm the saved version of Will Smith. In Philadelphia, born and raised on a playground is where I spent most of my days. He was raised in West Philadelphia, I was raised in Germantown. Germantown, in my neighborhood, there's a family called the Sutton family. These people were known for being a fighting family in my neighborhood. All of them could fight. Mrs. Sutton could bang for real.

All of them, they're just a fighting family. One day, my first year of junior high, I went to Roosevelt Junior High School in Philadelphia, seventh grader. I thought, I think I'm something. Back in the day, I don't know if it's still this way, but back in the day, up to sixth grade, you had a single teacher all day long. Then you got to seventh grade junior high, you had periods, different subjects, and it was a different teacher for every period.

I'm now junior high, I think I'm big shot going around all these different classes. One of my friends from my street, he was a little younger than me. He was either fifth or sixth grade, and I'm in seventh grade. I came home from school one day, and he's in the driveway crying. I said, Greg, what's the matter with you? He's talking about some boy who was messing with him at school, the school I just left.

Because I'm now in junior high. He's talking about this boy at the other school. I said, no, no, no, we can't have this. I said, tell you what, tomorrow I get out early, because y'all still got to go till three o'clock, because y'all still little.

But I get out, I forget what it was, one something that day, got out early. I said, tell you what, I'm going to be up to your school at three. When y'all come out, point him out to me.

Three o'clock, bell rings, kids pouring out. Saw Greg, he saw me. I said, all right, where is he?

Pointed to a guy. I walked up to him, said, hey, man, I heard that you're messing with my boy. Did you hit him? He's short, he's about like where my nose is. And I said, did you hit him? He bumped my chest and said, yeah.

So I'm confused. Like, wait, I'm in seventh grade. He's in either fifth or sixth. And he up in the face of my year. And while I'm trying to figure out why this is happening, that same boy that hit Craig hauled off and hit me in my chest, hard.

By this time, I looked at his face and I realized why he was that bold. He was in the Sutton family. He had two brothers older than him. One was in junior high with me. He had another brother a couple of years above us.

The whole family, I told you, could fight. But I had never seen the younger Sutton. But the guy that was in junior high in my same seventh grade, I knew he could fight. I had seen him whoop some other folk. And in the one, a couple of, probably ninth grade, I had seen him beat some folk down. And it dawned on me, I saw in his face, that's a Sutton boy. I'm pretty sure I can take him.

But my mother raised no fool. Quickly, I thought, okay, if I happen to beat him in this school yard, tomorrow, I got to go to Roosevelt Junior High. His brother would be waiting for me at the gate. And I had seen what his brother could do to folk. And at the end of the day, I could hold my own with certain folks.

But his brother would have mopped up the street with me. And I realized the best way to deal with this is to do what the Bible said. Come let us reason together. So I said to him, so I act like his punch didn't mean anything. You know, I'm blinking back tears. I said, yo, man, let's forget all these hostilities.

I'm at junior high. You're one of the Sutton boys, right? He said, yeah. I said, yeah, your brother and I go to school together.

I'm up there with him. I need you to be down here looking out for my boy. He's my neighbor. If you're hitting him, I need you looking out for him.

Make sure nobody mess with him. Would you do that for me? All right. I walked away. I said, thank you, Jesus.

No, I wasn't praising the Lord, but. Because if we will be a fighting family. Have each other's back.

The devil won't be able to mess with us. Because we pray for one another. We're encouraging one another. We're helping one another. We're strengthening one another. So that all of us win together. Thanks so much for joining us for today's message.

We are a family. If you'd like more information about the Destined for Victory ministry or this month's special offer, be sure to stop by our website, pastorpaul.net. Again, that's pastorpaul.net. When you got saved, you came into a spiritual army. You came into a spiritual warfare. You might not have known that when you first got saved, but you better hurry up and find out because you have a real enemy who is arrayed against you and against everything that God has ordained for your life and for others' lives. And we have to learn how to war together. That's next time in Pastor Paul Shepherd's message, We Are an Army. Until then, remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.