We Are an Army, Part 2

But I'm telling you there's some value in just teaching people the principle of faithfulness, stick-to-itiveness, fidelity.

You do it because you're committed to it, not because you feel like it. And I'm telling you there is something to be said for teaching people how to push past how they feel and what they think. And it came to pass when the time was come that Jesus should be received up, he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem. Hello and welcome to Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd.

Jesus knew he would be tortured and crucified in Jerusalem, but he was committed to doing what God had called him to do, so he set aside his feelings and submitted faithfully to the will of his Father. Today we'll be encouraged to follow in his steps. Stay with us here or visit pastorpaul.net to listen to Destined for Victory on demand.

You can also subscribe to our podcast at Google Podcasts at iHeart or wherever you enjoy your podcasts. But right now, here's Pastor Paul with today's Destined for Victory message, We Are an Army. Go back to the way some of you were raised or if you're too young, your parents were raised. You've heard their stories enough, you heard them enough where you're sick of them by now. But I'm telling you there's some value in just teaching people the principle of faithfulness, stick-to-it-iveness, fidelity. You do it because you're committed to it, not because you feel like it. And I'm telling you there is something to be said for teaching people how to push past how they feel and what they think. A lot of us, we're bogged down by those two elements. Well, here's how I feel.

Well, here's what I think. That's why, and throughout my pastoral career, people say, how have you had such wonderful successes at different times in your pastoral career? I learned early not to have business meetings. Not to have business meetings because I found out that if you take a vision God gave you and you subject it to a business meeting, now you've got to deal with what everybody thinks and how everybody feels. And the fact of the matter, if you're going to get something done for God, he's given you a plan, he's given you a strategy, you can't submit that to, well, see, pastor, here's what I think. And I've just learned that over the years. Now, we've always had informational meetings when I've had to build buildings and stuff like that. You got to raise millions of dollars. Folk got to join you in that, so you can't just expect them to do that sight unseen. So we have business meetings for informational purposes.

You can get all the info you want. What you can't do is come and tie up the microphone with what you think and how you feel. Because we can't move forward on feelings and thoughts, we have to move forward on discipline, on faithfulness, on fidelity, on, okay, let's get that done. Parents, I want to challenge you, I know you're going to be eyeballs in today's world, but teach your children that there's some stuff you do and you don't have to feel it, you just do it. Y'all remember some of your old heads, y'all remember back when there was chores? You were a child in that home, therefore you did chores. You did chores not because you felt like doing chores. You did chores because chores needed doing and you needed to learn the principle of faithfulness, of discipline.

They used to tie it to stuff. I remember Saturday mornings where my brother and I would want to go out with our friends and we want to go to a game or we want to play a game at the playground or whatever and we got plans. We want to get up and my mother would hear us talking about what we going to do on Saturday. She said, all right, that mean you better get up early, get your chores done. And I remember Saturday mornings and my father liked to buy big houses. And I remember early Saturday morning, I'm up, my chore that particular Saturday is to clean the living room and I got to clean it. And when they say clean the living room, they didn't mean pick up a few papers off of things and put them together in a nice little neat stack. Okay, I'm done.

Uh-uh, that wasn't the way it went. How many of y'all remember if you were going to clean the living room, that meant you had a rag. That meant you had some, one of those products, some pledge.

Come on somebody. You had a product and you went in there with the spray can and you had, then you had a broom or you had, if it was a carpeted room, you came in there with the vacuum cleaner and you had to check, make sure the bag was nice and clean and fresh. Dump all the old stuff cause we going to put some fresh stuff in there and you had to get it.

You had to be organized. And they said, you got to do those baseboards. Oh, come on baseboard people. You got to clean the baseboard. You can't just clean up top ridges.

Okay, do this. Oh, you down on your knees scrubbing. And that was that one cause we felt like it's cause we in the family.

It's just what we had to do. Nobody asked her. Mom didn't wake up Saturday morning. How you feel? Who cared how I felt? You want to go out, don't you? Y'all want to go play football.

Y'all want to go play baseball today. You better get that thing done. And I'm inspected it before you go.

And I'm in there and I'm talking about back in the day. That's why you had to list some help. I'm going to talk through this message about the importance of help.

That's why we're an army. You can't fight alone. You need folk to help you. And I would have help Saturday morning. Michael Jackson would help me. My God here today. Let me tell you something Saturday morning. Michael will get you some Mike. You know Michael.

Oh yeah. It was a 45. He was on a 45. Y'all don't know about 45.

Look it up online and see pictures. There used to be a 45, a little disc, and we had a stereo sitting in the living room. It was a console. They call it.

Come on y'all old heads. Don't you act like you never saw a console back in the day. A console. It has speakers on either side. A lid you lift up in the middle.

And what have you. And I was had the turntable was right in the middle. They had built different configurations. Ours was right in the middle was the turntable. And that's where I would go get my stack of 45s back in those days.

You would get 45s. You had to get that center disc to put in there. Center disc to keep it even. And the stereo we had you were all you do is sit it on on the needle to top and they would hold it in. You bring the arm over and it would hold it in place. You push the button and it would drop the record on off.

And then the arm would come on around. Drop on down on the disc. And I'm in there early Saturday morning and Michael start helping me out ABC. It's easy.

One, two, three. Don't rape me ABC. That's how easy love can be. Stop the love you say may be on.

Darling, take it slow or someday you'll be all alone. Oh, he helped me out. I'm just scrubbing and he's helping me learn because I got to learn how to Mack on girls and what have you. So he, he helped me out while I'm down there cleaning. Fact of the matter is we were being taught faithfulness.

We were being taught all kinds of principles that would bless us later in life. You do it cause you got to do it. You're in the family.

Everybody in the family has something to do. So you do it. Don't feel like it. Oh well, do it.

Not feeling like it. That's all it is, but keep doing it. And if you want it to go out, that's what you did first. In fact, a lot of our parents, old heads helped me out. A lot of our parents allowance was tied to you successfully doing your chores.

Any of y'all can relate to that. If you didn't do your chores, you didn't get allowance. I heard somebody, I heard one of the modern experts saying, Oh, that's not a good idea because you're teaching the children that they have to have a works orientation and you need to show them love. I said, I love them. What love got to do with it? It's not about love.

What you talking about? It's love. If you're going to love them, give them the allowance. No, no. My love is unconditional.

My money is conditional. Come on somebody. Two different things. Oh, love.

You can get that for free. You get that. I love you. Love you when you're right. Love you when you're wrong. That's unconditional. The money is conditional. You know why?

Because they were teaching us later on, you're going to need a job and they're not giving you a check when you didn't feel like coming to work. Coming up next, the rest of today's message. We are an army with pastor Paul Shepard, senior pastor at destiny Christian fellowship in Fremont, California. If you've never stopped by our website, pastorpaul.net, I invite you to do so today. You'll find all of pastor Paul's recent messages on demand, plus a host of great resources at our online store, including books and audio and video messages from pastor Paul.

Learn more about the ministry and about the great things friends like you are doing through your prayers and financial support. It's all at pastorpaul.net. And if you love this program, we know you'll enjoy pastor Paul's best video clips. Subscribe by searching for pastor Paul on YouTube.

For more details and links to all of his social media, be sure to visit pastorpaul.net. Now for more on what it means to choose faithfulness over feelings. Let's join pastor Paul for the rest of today's destined for victory message. We are an army. I'm trying to help somebody with this principle of faithfulness. We got to learn to do it because you do it.

And if that's true in regular life for many of us being developed and grow as we were growing up, how much more is that true when you hit the military? That faithfulness is required. Okay. I got two soldiers going to help me out. Come on up, bro. And, um, you're going to help me.

I'm just going to ask you a couple of questions and then my sister over here is going to come, uh, help me out as well. Why don't you move there so we can get to you quicker. Come on up, come on up.

You got to be all the way up here for this here. All right. All right. Give everybody your first name please, sir. Felton. My first name is Felton.

All right, Felton. What branch of the armed services were you in? The U S army. U S army.

Any reason why you chose? Let's give him a hand for his service. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

Any particular reason why you chose that branch? Well, I chose it because I was drafted. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. I'm glad that came up because in the first service I interviewed two other soldiers in the church and I was hoping I'd find somebody who was drafted, both of them enlisted, but thank you. I needed a draft T up in here and God knew I needed one.

You know why? Cause you don't have to pick the army. You got chosen in some cases in war time.

Let me just give y'all some history. At various war times, they didn't ask you whether you felt like being a soldier. You are the right age. You have the right physical capability.

Therefore you are in. And so they chose army for you. What was that experience like as you went to boot camp? Well, I learned discipline. I learned one of the principles you just talked about that wasn't about my feelings. I had to do what I had to do. Yes. I had to learn to survive.

Yes, sir. And so as you developed that discipline, what was it like as you trained together and as you were strengthened together, what were some of the things that you all were physically required to do that had nothing to do with your feelings? We had to make certain that we did what we were instructed to do. And then we helped out our fellow soldiers. So we worked as a team. We had to learn teamwork. You helped out your fellows.

Everybody needed help and everyone helped one another. How strong were you by the end of boot camp versus when you first began that process? Were you able to run farther than you could when you first started? I had more endurance. You had more endurance. I gained a little weight because I was skinny. I was very skinny. All right.

So they put some meat on the bones for you. Absolutely. Okay.

Very good. We see some of these movies sometimes. We who were never in the armed forces, we see some of the movies sometimes and folks are singing while they're doing these runs.

Did you have to do anything like that? Yeah, there were chances. We had to learn in order to keep in tune with the pace of the running.

Wow. It had to do with the pace of the run. And so those chance had to do with your pace. And you chanted as you ran at the right pace. Do you remember any of them?

I'm just curious. You remember any of the language? I was young. Yeah. Okay. I can't sing. Okay.

So that's why I'm not doing the run. All right. Do your thing. Okay.

We had to chant in time with a chant that a drill sergeant was chanting and we had to repeat what he said. Okay. And it was often a call and response. Okay. And he would call and we would respond in tune with the step.

Yes, sir. One, two, sound off. And we'd have to sound off.

I don't remember any other words. But we get it. The chance had to do with the pace and you had to keep pace in order. But you learned together. You got strong together. And you helped each other out.

You couldn't just do your part and then sit around and chill out, huh? Absolutely. Whether or not our unit passed or our platoon passed, depending on whether or not we did it together as a unit. Wow. You passed together or you failed together.

Absolutely. There was no, well, he passed. Well, she didn't. None of that stuff. The whole platoon.

None of that stuff mattered. That's helpful. That's helpful. Thank you so much, sir. All right. Give everyone your first name. Jessica. Jessica.

Okay. What part of the armed services? I was in the Navy. In the Navy. In the Navy.

How did that come about? Yeah. Let's give her a hand for our service. Thank you for your service. Thank you.

All right. How was that? Well, it was a great experience. I was actually at UCLA as a midshipman right after high school. And I actually followed my father's footsteps.

He was in the Korean war. And one day we were on the quad at UCLA and the gunnery sergeant was there. I joined the color guard because I wasn't passing one of my classes. So I needed to stay in something to protect me from failing. So I was at attention and I was holding a California flag.

I locked my knees and I passed out. And I remember the gunnery sergeant looking over at me and said Macklemore, that's my maiden name, so why is it that you are here? I said I just want to join the Navy.

I just want to join the Navy. I don't want to be in this particular situation. I was scared of my dad.

He had a goal for me. So he says you have to be courageous. Tell your dad what it is you want. So in the elevator at 19 years old, I told my dad I wanted to leave college and join the Navy.

And so he wasn't surprised. I've always wanted to be in the Navy. I think I was 14 years old when I knew I wanted to be in the military. So tell me what boot camp was like. I love boot camp because I was a midshipman in college which was a lot harder. So I was already mentally prepared because I grew up in a family of old heads where we woke up every Saturday morning, chores, accountability.

So I was already prepped. So I enjoyed the flock. I enjoyed the leadership.

I enjoyed working as one unit. And out of 84 women, you're absolutely right. One fails, we all fail. So we're always pushing each other to be better, sharper.

Wow. When one fail, we all fail. Now what about those mornings you all didn't feel like waking up early? Well, see, I wanted to wake up early. So there were folks who, ladies who didn't want to, they were sad, they were missing home. And they were crying. And we knew that before our petty officer, our chief would show up that morning, we all had to stand at attention.

And we couldn't have attitude. So we would just do our very best to kind of get through it. Wow.

Agree to disagree. So how'd you get the ones who were hurting and they're missing home and stuff, how'd you get them to dry up and have a good attitude? Well, you know, I can't remember how we did it, but we just, we just kind of came together and supported one another, encouraged each other. Wow.

Fantastic. Final question. I've heard of AWOL. I've heard of that, that, tell me a little bit about, I know what it stands for.

Let's tell them what it stands for. And did you see anybody who would not be where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be there? No, but AWOL is where you don't report to the area which you should be.

You run away. Okay. And no, I have never witnessed that myself.

There was a bit of fear factor and accountability is also you are a unit and you know that if you leave or you desert that unit, it's like you take a chain away. Wow. Wow. That's very helpful. That's going to help me finish preaching this message.

Give her a hand one more time. Now let me make sure you know what AWOL means. It stands for absent without leave. I'm absent. I'm supposed to be somewhere I am not.

And I wasn't given leave. I just didn't show up. Sound like church folk. I'm here to tell you if we are God's army, we have to learn that faithfulness is part of the calling.

There should be no ministry teams in any church that are understaffed or they got people signed up but don't show up. Suppose the greet today but nobody's greeting cause I didn't show up. Nobody's ershen today because I'm on the ersher board. Some folks call it ersher. They act like there's an R in it.

Ursher's and and then not enough ersher's on the flow. Quiet little fin today. Somebody woke up, didn't feel like going to church so they can't sing. They are AWOL. Ministry teams understaff cause folk are AWOL. Churches all over the world curse with this. We've got to realize we're an army and if you're called to service, you got to serve. We don't care how you feel.

Deal with your feelings better. Right now you got to be faithful. I pastored since 1982 as an associate pastor of my dad in 1982. Been a senior pastor since 1989. I have seen far too many people just they come in properly, come into the church. I want to be a member and we have them.

Give us the information about who you are and so glad to have you. Welcome. And then they stay for a while, whatever, but especially when things aren't the way they like it or whatever. I disagree with this.

I don't like that this works. And I've had folk over the decades as a pastor just stop coming on a ministry team. Next thing I know, they're gone. We're so and so.

They're on a trip. No, no. You had another church. Just up and I'm done.

Some men formally leave out the back door. I don't care. I'm done. Brethren, sistering, that is not God's plan. We got to be faithful and accountable. Jesus was fully God, but also fully human. As he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, he did not feel like being rejected, beaten and crucified, but thanks be to God. He chose faithfulness over feelings and by the power of the Holy Spirit, you can do the same. In Psalm 107, King David writes, then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble and he delivered them from their distress. With that in mind, if you need prayer today, the Destined for Victory ministry team would like to join you in prayer. From the homepage at pastorpaul.net, use the contact feature to let us know how we can pray for you. While you're there, be sure to ask for Pastor Paul's monthly letter of encouragement.

It comes at no cost or obligation. And we have a great resource to share with you today as our thank you for your generous support of Destined for Victory. It's Pastor Paul's booklet, You're in God's Army Now.

When you come to faith in Christ, you immediately come up against spiritual forces of darkness who want to steal, kill and destroy. Ultimate victory has been won at the cross of Calvary, but your battle against the enemy will continue for as long as you're here on earth. In this booklet, you'll discover how to be a faithful and victorious soldier in the army of God. That's You're in God's Army Now, our gift to you by request for your generous 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 so we have to understand there is an accountability that we must call ourselves to. It's easy to be independent in your thinking in today's world, but in the kingdom, you are not an independent thinker or person who lives your life alone. You are part of a team. And teamwork is what makes the dream work. That's next time when Pastor Paul Shepherd shares his 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.