The Power of Perseverance

And if you live by your conditions, I promise you, you will never get anywhere good because conditions are always going to militate against the good work that's in your heart. And so you've got to decide you're going to persevere. Living by our convictions, not our conditions, on today's Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd.

Hello and thanks for stopping by. Have you ever wondered how you can turn your vision into a reality? The first step is finding the right partners, people who share a common vision and who will help and encourage you along the way. Today we move ahead to step number two, perseverance. Stay with us now as Pastor Paul takes us once again to the life of the Apostle Paul, who was the very picture of perseverance during his 30 year ministry. Listen to any recent Destined for Victory message on demand at pastorpaul.net. That's pastorpaul.net.

And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, at Spotify or wherever you get yours. Now, here's Pastor Paul Shepherd with today's Destined for Victory message, The Power of Perseverance. Acts chapter 18, beginning with verse one. After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth, verse four. Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue trying to persuade Jews and Greeks. When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ. But when the Jews opposed Paul and became abusive, he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them, Your blood be on your own heads.

I am clear of my responsibility. From now on I will go to the Gentiles. Then Paul left the synagogue and went next door to the house of Titus, justice, a worshiper of God.

Crispus, the synagogue ruler, and his entire household believed in the Lord, and many of the Corinthians who heard him believed and were baptized. Now, we've established from scripture in the opening of this series that all of us are called by God to do certain good works, and we were prepared in advance, the Bible tells us, to do those, meaning that before you leave this planet, you are to get certain good works done. We saw where Jesus said the good man out of his good heart brings forth good things, and we are all called, now that we're saved by grace, we're all called to be about the business of bringing forth good things. You shouldn't be sitting on your blessed assurance, bags packed, waiting for Jesus to come take you to heaven. You ought to be busy doing good works along the way. In fact, the Bible talks about the fact that when the saints die, their good works follow them, and I'm afraid unless we really take seriously this kind of Bible teaching, too many of us will have nothing following us into the kingdom of heaven because we haven't been about the business of good works.

And so we want to be about our Father's business. Now, please understand, when the Bible talks about good works, it's not just talking about stuff you do in church. It's not even talking about stuff that is specifically purposefully aimed at the kingdom. And here's something a lot of Christians have to understand. Your whole life belongs to God, not just your church life. So you're not supposed to just be an usher or a choir singer or a children's worker, all of that's needed and necessary, or do something in the church. What you do every day ought to reflect your love for God and the fact that you are on earth to do good works in His name. So your job, although it doesn't seem spiritual, your job is to be worked on from a spiritual perspective of I'm here to do good works.

I'm here to advance something good. Do you know God will bless your secular job because you're there? The job's not even organized to do anything for the kingdom, but you are a kingdom citizen, so God will bless the environment because of you.

Don't believe me? Look at Joseph in the Old Testament. He's in the house of a pagan named Potiphar, and the Bible specifically says the Lord blessed Potiphar's house because Joseph was there. Wouldn't that be great if your job gets blessed because you're there representing the kingdom of God? Well, let's see what God will do by making sure that every aspect of your life reflects the fact that you're doing good works in His name. Don't create a divide in your life. Here's my spiritual side, and here's my secular side.

Blend it all together. When you go to work, I'm going to work for Jesus. You all write my check, but you're only my resource.

God is my source, and I'm here to reflect His glory. And so we're all to be about our Father's business and to do good work. So we've established that there are some keys to making your vision a reality, and again, your vision doesn't just have to be spiritual. Your vision can be to start a business. Your vision can be to change careers. Your vision can be to go to school and get a certain degree so you can do certain things. Your vision can be to be an entrepreneur that provides a quality service, and that can be part of the God-given vision. And you say, why would God invest in that?

Because as He brings to success what's in your heart, you will turn around and give Him the glory. See, not every singer has to sing in church. I don't mind a secular singer singing secular music, because frankly, there are times I'm in a mood I don't want to hear nearer my God to Thee.

That's just me. I know you're all spiritual. You keep your spiritual stuff on all the time, but there are times when what I'm looking for is not in the hymnbook. Do we got any honest folk up in here? Sometimes what I'm looking for is not in the hymnbook at all, but if you turn to the fourth chapter of Luther. Come on, somebody. If you don't know what that is, ask somebody after church.

They'll hook you up. Nothing wrong with that. A secular singer can sing secular songs, but they ought to know Jesus, and they ought to sing things that are not inappropriate. And then when they get up and receive their Grammy or their American Music Award, they ought to say, first of all, I want to thank my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Because without Him, I wouldn't have had His voice.

Without Him, He wouldn't have blessed me to get this far. I'd have been cut off a long time ago. I want to see somebody testify at the Grammys. That's what I'm looking for. I was lost, but Jesus came. I'm waiting to see it.

I keep watching for it. That's what you need to do. You need to honor God everywhere you go in everything you do. It doesn't have to look kingdom. You are the one in the kingdom.

You represent kingdom values everywhere you go. And so we're looking at keys for making our vision a reality, even if your vision isn't distinctly spiritual. And we covered the first two messages in the series talking about the first key, which is partners.

You can do the will of God, we established, but you cannot do it alone. You've got to have partners. And last week in particular, I made it real clear, you've got to have the right partners, the right partners.

I heard from a number of singles since that second installment in the series, and they said, oh, pastor, we needed that word. And I'm very, very grateful as I talked about how singles ought to be, those who want to be married ought to be looking for the right kind of person. So we've established the key of partners if you want to make your vision a reality. And I want to move on and establish a second key, and that key is perseverance. Perseverance. Jot that word down. Perseverance.

You know what that means. That means push through, press through, work hard, never give up, put in the sweat equity. That's perseverance. Don't be deterred because there's a little trouble, a little challenge, a little mountain, a little obstacle in your way. Perseverance says I'm going and there's nothing you can do to stop me. Perseverance. If you're going to bring your vision to reality, you have to develop perseverance. You have to develop that.

It's a must. Anybody who is going to see their vision come to pass is going to have to persevere. Look again at verse four of Acts 18. Every Sabbath Paul reasoned in the synagogue trying to persuade Jews and Greeks. Every Sabbath, every Sabbath, every seven days, every time the Jews gathered in the synagogue, every time Paul was there, his vision was to see souls saved and lives changed. And the Jesus who had met him on the Damascus road who was changing his life, he wanted to see that happen in the lives of other Jews. And so every Sabbath he's working hard. I want you to see that.

Grab that. Every Sabbath you can't fulfill a vision with hit and miss, in and out, every now and then I do something. Your vision can't be driven by how you feel. There were Sabbath days Paul woke up, had a headache, he wasn't feeling good, he's tired, been making tints, he tired. I don't feel like the synagogue today.

Yeah, we feel that way. We all have those days. But if you're going to get the vision to come to pass, you say, boy, I sure feel bad today. I sure wish I could sleep in today. And then you say, get up. You tell yourself to get up, we got to go, got work to do. I'll sleep later. I got to get up. I got to be about the business of fulfilling the good work that God has given me to do in his name.

So he got up. See, some of you all are still living by your conditions rather than your decisions. And if you live by your conditions, I promise you, you will never get anywhere good because we don't have success by living by conditions. Conditions are always going to militate against the good work that's in your heart. And so you've got to decide you're going to persevere.

Every Sabbath, he was reasoning in the synagogue, trying, look at that word, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks. See, a lot of you all just want to believe, well, you know, if God gave it to me, as soon as I start talking about Jesus, people are going to start crying and say, what must I do to be saved? That's not the way it goes. There are times people will argue back when you're telling them about Jesus. Some people say, get out of my face with that. You're going to run into all kinds of problems.

You're going to have all kinds of doors slammed in your face. What do you do when one person won't be reasoned with? You say, I'll talk to you about this again later. And thanks for giving me a few moments.

Then you go to the next person and you try. You're listening to Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd, senior pastor of Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California. He'll be right back with a second half of today's message. This message is part of a six part special series called Making Your Vision a Reality. Look for it online at pastorpaul.net. And you can listen to Destined for Victory right in the palm of your hand by downloading our free mobile app. Contact us for prayer, order books and CDs. You can even take notes on the daily messages right on your mobile device.

Search Destined for Victory in the app store and download it today absolutely free. Do you have a vision today for your marriage, your career, your spiritual life? All the desire in the world won't help if you lack determination. Here's Pastor Paul with the rest of today's message. The power of perseverance.

Now I want to make sure this is applicable to everybody. Some of you have a work to do that doesn't look distinctively kingdom. Maybe you're trying to establish a business. Maybe you're trying to get a promotion on the job and in the career you're already in. And so the first thing is besides having the right partnerships in your life to help motivate you and prepare you to go to work. Then you've got to have the law of perseverance at work. You've got to work harder than the other people if you want a promotion. You've got to put in time. You've got to put in energy.

You can't be taking two hour lunches. I've got a work to do. I've got a plan. I'm on a mission. I've got to get in here and do it.

I've got to make them notice me. And you have to persevere trying to do something significant. And I'm here to tell you that nothing good is going to come easy. That's why it requires perseverance.

Look at him here. Every Sabbath he is trying. Every time he is trying he's consistently working toward his goal of reaching people for Christ. Now the reason why you have to persevere is because sometimes it feels like you've got a whole lot of labor and very little return. You ever been in that season where I'm working real hard and it's very little to show for?

Ever been there? You know you're trying to do a good work. You know what's on your heart is worth doing. And you are putting in the time, the overtime, the extra time, the double time. You are trying, trying, trying.

You're like Paul. Trying, trying, trying, trying. And you stop every now and then and look and see if you can see any results. And sometimes there's very little result. That's why you got to persevere because stopping is not an option.

Saying well I tried, I tried, hey I'm done. No, no you got to get to the place where what you are trying to do is so in your heart you can't live without doing it. It's so in me I don't have a choice.

I got to do it. It's what is in me. And you try, try, try and you can't stop and calculate results all the time. Because sometimes you see a whole lot of labor and you see very little reward. There are whole seasons you can't look at ROI. You who are in the business world you know what that term means, return on investment. You can't look at that because sometimes the ROI is a pitiful number. Here's my investment. I've invested all of this.

And you look at the returns and my goodness. But if you know that what you are called to do is of God and it's in your heart and you can't live without doing it then you got to press on. And you got to quit piling up your sorry stories and your pitiful testimonies of everything that went wrong and who did this to you and you got to say no, no this is in my heart. This is what I'm called to do.

Come on somebody. Trying to help you. Don't always try to calculate your ROI because you got to be about what God has put in your heart to do. Not only have I been blessed to pastor, now my second pastored as a senior pastor, Destiny Christian Fellowship. But over the years God has blessed me to raise up two media ministries, radio ministries.

The first one Enduring Truth came to be very, very successful. It shut down after I resigned from my former pastor and it shut down at the end of 2009. I thought I was done on radio.

We had reached a lot of people around the country and various parts of the world. I thought okay, I had a good run at it but it's done, it's over. Then I went through a time of personal restoration and church leaders all working with me and what have you and that resulted in my denomination eventually restoring my credentials and saying pastor, go on and keep doing what God's put in your heart to do. And so when that came through and they told me to go forth and do what God's called me to do, I said okay, well I got to start another church. I can't go back to my former pastor. The leaders have made that clear that I'm not being invited back.

So what am I supposed to do? God sent me to California to pastor. He gave me a clear word that he had many people. We won thousands of people in the 20 years I pastored my former church.

Thousands came to Christ in that period of time so I could have said, well the Lord told me thousands, thousands have gotten saved. I might as well try to figure out how to retire early. Well first of all, I was too broke to think about that. That's first thing, let me just be honest. It's not all spiritual.

Some of it was money. Come on, I need some middle-aged folk. You might have no fancy ideas that you want to retire early but when you look at your bank account, you're like I believe I go to work.

Come on somebody. Any of y'all ever thought about retiring? I believe I can get up and hit myself another clock. So there I was, I'm recommissioned, denominations had gone and keep doing the work. They were grateful for the work God had done in me and all of that and so we got to say well, I'm called to pastor. This church is not available.

What am I supposed to do? I got to start another one and we did but I still thought I was off of radio. I'm going to testify about radio because I want to show you how this works not just in one area. So I'm thinking I'm done on the radio.

Enduring truth was great but those days are over. So we get back, we start Destiny Christian Fellowship, just begin preaching. I got to have somewhere to preach and started going to hotels, paying crazy money every week. I was paying 15, 16, $17,000 a week to be in a ballroom, to have a couple of children's rooms and to have audio visual for a while it was 16, $17,000 a week and we haven't even sung the first song. But the good work is in my heart to do. So the bills are oppressive.

When we walked in, we know that we got to pay these folks that kind of money. I don't know who's coming in that ballroom because they didn't all write me in advance, say pastor, I'll be there and I'm bringing my tithes with me. You all didn't write me like that. But I said if God is in it, he's going to have to figure out how to bring this to pass. My job is not to calculate, my job is to say is God in this? Every time I talk to my accountability brothers, they say God is in it, go for it. Every time I talk to spiritual leaders around the country, God is in it, go for it.

Sat down with Bishop Jakes, God is in it, go for it. So when everybody tell you God is in, none of them writing checks by the way. But they give me what they got, they got a word from God. I'm like it sure would help get a little check with that word. But all of them had a word, all right God bless you, thank you for your word, appreciate it.

Love you man, take care. And they were done. We had to come week after week not knowing who's going to show up, not knowing whether y'all bringing checks with you. And we watched God provide week after week after week after week.

We watched him do it. So I'm starting that, so at least we got somewhere, we're preaching, we're running all around the Bay Area, five different locations for 44 straight weeks. We went to five different towns to have church.

How you get folk to go all around the Bay Area? Where are we driving this week? Good Lord, I don't even know where we supposed to be. Y'all were mad, I was mad, everybody mad. Sometimes y'all would show up at the wrong hotel.

Watch this, you folk who are new, watch where I'm getting ready to show you. How many of y'all ever went on a Sunday to the wrong hotel? Look at that, look at that, look at that. All of us were frustrated, everybody frustrated. And the hotel people, they told me, pastor, we try to be as polite as possible. We smiled at them and said, no, this isn't where you are this week. Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him. That's James 1, verse 12, and this is destined for victory. Well, we say it all the time here on the program, partnership is essential for any of us to achieve the will of God in our lives. And today, Pastor Paul Shepherd invites you to become his partner, joining a growing number of people who help him share the gospel all over the world through the Destined for Victory broadcast. As our way of saying thanks for your partnership, we'll send you a few thank you gifts, including one of Pastor Paul's most popular CDs, The Best of Let My People Smile. Call 855-339-5500 to find out more about how to become a Destined for Victory partner for as little as $20 a month, or mail your gift, letting us know you wish to become our partner.

Our address is Destined for Victory, Post Office Box 1767, Fremont, California 94538. You can also become our partner from our website, pastorpaul.net. And if you can't become a Destined for Victory partner but can make a generous one-time donation to Destined for Victory, we'd like to send you a booklet from Pastor Paul based on his message, Junk Removal for the Soul.

Request it when you make a generous gift this month. Need prayer? Stop by pastorpaul.net and use the Contact Us feature to let us know how we can pray for you. That's pastorpaul.net, and while you're there, be sure to ask for your free copy of Pastor Paul's monthly letter of encouragement, yours at no cost or obligation. And he told me during that time, he said, By the way, you are never going to be on radio again. He wasn't trying to curse me, and I said, Well, we'll just see what God does. That's tomorrow when Pastor Paul Shepherd shares a story from his own life and his message, The Power of Perseverance. Until then, though, remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.