Dealing with Frustration

Hello and welcome to another great week here on Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd.

Coming up next, Pastor Paul shares his message dealing with frustration. But first, he and I want to talk to you for a moment about the value of partnership. You know, every day here on Destined for Victory we ask people to stand with us financially. That's because we are a listener supported ministry.

And let me underscore that for just a moment. And in 2022, our prayers that you might consider if you haven't done so already, becoming a Destined for Victory partner. Partners are a special group of people that give a monthly gift of at least $20.

If you can make that commitment today, we have some special gifts that I'll tell you about in just a moment. But Pastor Paul joins me here. Pastor, take a moment and tell us why partners are so important to this ministry.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, Wayne. Partners are really the lifeline of this ministry. Without those people committed to giving regularly, we literally could not continue doing what we're doing.

I guess people hear that a lot, but it is really true. Without partners, we simply can't get the gospel out to the world. The gospel is free, but the plumbing costs an awful lot of money and we want to continue preaching. As I've said in times past, we've got generations to reach that have never heard the gospel and they misunderstand when they hear people talk about things like serving the Lord.

And we need to make it plain to them. The only way I can do it is with my partners helping us reach them through their generous gifts. I'm so grateful for every single partner. And I'm praying in 2021 that God will give us thousands more. There are many more outlets and many more opportunities we could take advantage of in our ministry, but the only thing that holds us back is lack of income. So I'm praying that God's going to touch the heart of many more people to realize that with just your gift of $20 or more, you can help us remain strong on the stations and outlets we're on and reach many more with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thank you, Pastor. That's what it's all about, reaching more people with the gospel. And if you make that commitment by pledging $20 or more per month to help us do that, we'll send you, with our thanks, a couple of great gifts, including one of Pastor Paul's most popular CDs, The Best of Let My People Smile. It's a compilation of some of Pastor's most humorous illustrations and stories, something that will be sure to make you laugh and learn at the same time. Call 855-339-5500 or mail your gift letting us know you wish to become a partner.

The address is Destined for Victory, Post Office Box 1767, Fremont, CA 94538. And you can also sign up by clicking Become a Partner right at the top of the home page at pastorpaul.net. And if you're already a partner, we want to say a heartfelt thank you and challenge you to consider becoming a legacy partner. These are special ministry friends that are able to support us with gifts of $2,500 per year or more. The details are available at our website, pastorpaul.net, or by calling 855-339-5500. And if you can't become a partner today but would like to make a generous donation, we'll be glad to send you Pastor Paul's DVD message, Influencers for Christ.

That's Influencers for Christ, our gift to you this month by request for your generous donation to Destined for Victory. If you're dealing with frustration in your life, I want you to know that it is possible and it is important that you learn to not wait till your frustrations are over before you say hallelujah anyhow. I want you to learn to praise God and to rejoice even in the midst of the frustrations. Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice. That's Philippians 4 verse 4, part of a letter the Apostle Paul wrote from a prison cell. Today on Destined for Victory, Pastor Paul reminds us not to let our circumstances determine the level of our praise for God. So with this message dealing with frustration, here's Pastor Paul Shepherd.

Recently I was thinking about some of the fun courses I've played. I'm a musician if you're new to our church and new to me, you don't know. I'm a musician, was a musician before I was a preacher. I was my daddy's organist when he was the pastor and I was one of the young folk.

A bunch of young folk had gotten saved in Philly and we wanted to do gospel music that was coming out. But our church's pianists only played by sight and didn't know how to play Oh Happy Day and all the stuff that was coming out back in the day, Andre Crouch, all that. And so I began playing.

I always had a good ear. I began playing, did some formal training but just a little bit of formal, mostly developed my ear. Long story short, I grew to the point where I was the church's organist, could play all kinds of music and have enjoyed doing that across the decades, don't get to play much anymore. But I was thinking back the other day on some of the courses I love playing at our church and others when I would go be a guest musician, some of the fun courses. And one of them came to mind, here's what it said, hallelujah anyhow, never never let your troubles get you down. When life's trials come your way, hold your head up high and say hallelujah anyhow.

And we would sing and just enjoy that chorus a lot. And as I was thinking about that, I thought, you know what, some of us, especially during days like this where there are things in your life, in your lifestyle, in our world situation that you don't like a little bit, sometimes if we're going to be the people we ought to be in this world, we've got to learn to say hallelujah anyhow. And so I thought I'd just take a moment before I jump back into some major series of preaching and just encourage you to become a hallelujah anyhow believer.

And so I want to just do a short, short series, at least at this point I think it'll be short, hallelujah anyhow, and the first part of the series I'm calling dealing with frustration. If you're dealing with frustration in your life, I want you to know that it is possible and it is important that you learn to not wait till your frustrations are over before you say hallelujah anyhow. I want you to learn to praise God and to rejoice even in the midst of the frustrations. We can't afford to wait till circumstances get better before we live a life that is filled with hope and joy and moving forward. You've got to learn to worship sometimes when you don't feel like it.

See, that's the problem. Some of us think that worship ought to be aimed only at people who are happy. I worship, I sing, you know, you remember that song, I sing because I'm happy, I sing because I'm free, his eyes on the sparrow and I know he watches me.

Well, that's good. Sing when you're happy, sing when you're free, but learn to sing when it's not going well at all. Learn to sing when you're frustrated. Learn to sing when it's not, oh, what a beautiful morning, oh, what a beautiful day, I have a wonderful feeling, everything's going my way.

Learn to sing when you wake up saying good morning, heartache. You've got to learn to worship, not out of emotions, you've got to learn to worship out of a resolve. And so that's what I want to do, just encourage you to worship God and to say hallelujah anyhow, despite sometimes the frustrations that you're currently dealing with. So let me just look at a couple of things in the scriptures that will help bring out this point and I'll be done. I want to take a look at a young woman in scripture. Her name is Hannah and she is the wife of a man named Alcanah who has two wives there in the book of 1 Samuel. Now, brothers, that was a period of time in Israel's history where there were people who were married to more than one woman.

That was never God's expressed will throughout redemptive history, never his expressed will, but he did allow it during a period of time. That period of time went away and you get one now, you got to learn to maximize what you got and so I need to just remind brothers, don't fantasize, oh man, wouldn't that be something to have too. You got your hands full with one, got your hands full with one, so don't trip, don't trip, don't think you would just, oh man, if I had two, three, five of them, you'd be crazy, you'd be all the way out your mind, that's what you'd be.

But anyway, you're messing up my message, let me get back to what I'm saying. So Hannah is one of two wives that this man named Alcanah has and let me take you to a little bit of their story just to show you what frustration can look like in the life of a child of God and you got to learn that if that happens in your life, you got to learn to say hallelujah anyhow. Go with me to 1 Samuel chapter one, 1 Samuel in the Old Testament chapter one, let's look at a couple of verses beginning with verse one. There's a certain man whose name was Alcanah, he had two wives, one was called Hannah and the other Panina. Panina had children, watch this, but Hannah had none.

Panina had children, but Hannah had none. Now, keep reading, year after year, this man went up from his town to worship and sacrifice to the Lord Almighty at Shiloh where Hophni and Phinehas, the two sons of Eli were priests of the Lord. So they go up to a place called Shiloh where the temple of God is and they worship on an annual basis, you get the picture? Now the priest's name is Eli, but he has two sons who are also serving under him in the priesthood there in Shiloh. Verse four, whenever the day came for Alcanah to sacrifice, he would give portions of the meat to his wife Panina and to all her sons and daughters, because she's having kids, she got these babies this girl can put out. So she got these children and so when they go up to sacrifice, the husband makes sure that they have portions of meat and that family is taken care of. Look at verse five, but to Hannah, he gave a double portion, why?

Because he loved her and the Lord had closed her womb. That's the first point I want to make as we talk about what it means to learn to worship God and to say hallelujah anyhow. First point, sometimes you got to say hallelujah anyhow despite your emptiness, your emptiness. Some of us are experiencing the frustration of emptiness. Now of course in her life, the emptiness was literally an empty womb.

She was unable to get pregnant. They were living together as a married couple and so they were certainly making love and all of that, but while Panina's womb was open and she has children plural, you just read it, Hannah has this emptiness and the text even went so far as to say the Lord closed her womb. Are you feeling empty or frustrated today? If so, don't go away. The rest of today's message with Pastor Paul Shepherd is coming right up. 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, including books and DVD messages from Pastor Paul. Now here is Pastor Paul Shepherd with the second half of today's Destined for Victory message, Dealing with Frustration. So she was unable despite the fact that Elkanah loved her and was making love to her as her husband, it was not resulting in any pregnancies. Emptiness, that's her emptiness. I want to ask you what's your emptiness? What in your life is unfulfilled? Do you have unmet expectations? I would have thought by this point in my life, I would be somewhere that I'm not and I feel so unfulfilled, so empty.

My life just, I don't get it. I think I've done everything I was supposed to do to this point. I got the education I needed, I matured, what have you. But for some reason, I'm not where I thought I would be and I have this nagging emptiness inside of me. Where you are, there's something where you look at your life and say, wait a minute, when I just dreamed, I thought by this age, I would have fulfilled certain dreams.

And at this point, they are still very much unfulfilled. I thought I would be in a certain place financially. I thought I'd be in a certain place relationally. I thought I'd be married by now. I thought I'd have kids by now. I thought I'd be retired by now.

I thought I would have been promoted by now. Whatever is going on in your life, what is causing emptiness to characterize some area of your life? What desires haven't you realized yet?

Oh, I've wanted for the longest time to do so and so or to be such and such a place or to have this type of career or to live in this city or whatever it might be. And it never happened for me. Emptiness. You know how nagging an emptiness can be. You know how frustrating it can be, especially when you look around and you see Peninas just having babies left and right.

And you are doing everything you're supposed to do. In fact, did you notice the Bible said he loved Hannah? Elkanah loved Hannah.

What does that suggest to you? That he was obligated and he was dutiful as it related to Penina. He was a dutiful husband, but he loved Hannah. Meaning, you know, there are different types of love. I've preached about that and you know there is, you know, there's phileo love, the brotherly kind of friendship love and there's storge and all that.

I've preached about those. But clearly this means he had him some arrows where Hannah was concerned. I mean, he just loved that girl. That was his woman. He's saying, you are my woman.

Everything I need and more. All right, I see you're messing up and taking me somewhere I'm not supposed to go. So, fact of the matter is he was doing God's will in both of their lives. He's taking care of his other wife, Penina, but he has an extra sense of connectedness with Hannah. And despite that, girl can't get pregnant to save her life.

How frustrating must that have been for both of them, but especially for Hannah. Because what woman whose husband is not only taking good obligation care of her, but just loves her passionately, what woman wouldn't want to have a baby out of that kind of relationship? But here she is dealing with emptiness. So, I ask you, look around your life. What pockets of emptiness are you grappling with? Where are you just flat out frustrated because of unmet expectations or unrealized desires or unfulfilled dreams? Where do you feel empty? Where do you feel like, wait a minute, this story should have been gone differently. Things shouldn't be the way they are right now.

And I don't understand why I got to deal with this mess. You got to learn if you're going to grow, truly grow, and go to different levels in your walk with the Lord, you got to learn to be real with where you are. See, that's why hallelujah anyhow can't be glib, can't be I'm not thinking, I'm not processing, I'm just emoting. That's not a deep hallelujah because that depends on how things are going circumstantially. So, if you're going to live a hallelujah anyhow life, you're going to have to grapple with some stuff. You're going to have to be able to say to yourself, to admit to yourself, I am frustrated. I'm saved, sanctified, love Jesus, but I'm frustrated. You got to be willing to do that. Not enough Christians are willing to just own their frustration.

How you going to get over it and you won't even acknowledge it? So, here's Hannah in a good relationship with a good man, but despite all of their efforts, she can't get pregnant. And in fact, whether they had a sense of it or not, the Lord was the one who closed her womb. That tells me sometimes you will never get the answer. You know, some Christians act like, oh, if you just walk by faith, God will give you all the answers. And if you pray fervently, God will give you the answer. Listen, I beg to differ. I have learned enough in my walk with the Lord to know God can be more silent than anybody I know.

I mean, you say, why, why? You're praying, you're fasting, trying to get a word from God. You heard me tell my stories. Hold up in a hotel, God going to speak to me.

Come out, all I am is a few pounds lighter because I just drank water for three days. But God is not obligated to tell us everything just because we want to know it. And she was empty and frustrated. Why is this other lady having all these babies with the man who, while he's committed to her too, he's not only committed to me, but he loves me.

He loves me in an Eros kind of way. And our lovemaking sessions are wonderful, but they're not fruitful. And I am frustrated.

This message comes to somebody frustrated. To let you know, you're going to have to learn to say hallelujah anyhow because God is still with you and God's plan is still in effect in your life. You're going to have to learn that Romans 8 28 really is true, that God causes all things to work together for good.

Why? Because we love him and because we're called according to his purpose. Now, don't misunderstand that. That doesn't mean everything that happens is good or will ever be good. No, God's promise is I'll take the stuff that happens, the emptiness, the frustration, the craziness, and everything else and I'll work it together. And by the time I get through stirring my purpose into all that's taking place, you will see that my plan and my purpose has always been at work in your life. And even where you have disappointments and frustrations, I am still at work in your life.

So I want to tell somebody that yes, it's okay to own the emptiness. Yes, I got some frustrations. I thought things would be very different than they are right now. By this point in my life I thought I'd be here and I'm here.

I thought I would be fill in the blank and instead I'm fill in the blank. It's okay to be honest about your frustrations because God loves you, has a plan for your life, and he's not removing your frustration at this point because perhaps there are some things you've got to learn that are more important than how you feel. So I want you to grapple with your frustrations. It's never a sin to have feelings. Just make sure you don't allow your feelings to compete with your faith. Thanks for being here for today's message, Dealing with Frustration. If you'd like more information about Destined for Victory or Pastor Paul Shepherd's brand new book, Lessons from the Vineyard, be sure to stop by our website, pastorpaul.net.

Once again, pastorpaul.net. And you got enemies perhaps? If they had their way, they would take you out. If not physically, they'd take out your reputation.

They'd take out your ability to influence others in a positive way. I want you to learn to sing Hallelujah anyhow even though you've got emptiness, even though you've got enemies. That's next time in Pastor Paul Shepherd's message, Dealing with Frustration. Until then though, remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.