Making the Most of What You Have, Part 4

You don't want to wait until you're already situated and in a better financial position in order to do the things God's called you to do. If the Lord tells you to do something with your finances, you do it now.

You don't wait until later, you do it now. That is Pastor Paul Shepherd, and this is Destined for Victory. Hello and thanks for tuning in. You know, Jesus spoke about money more than any subject other than the kingdom of God. He talked about money in 11 of his 39 parables, including the parable of the talents, which Pastor Paul has taken us through this month.

Here are some of the points we've covered so far. Jesus has gone away, but he is coming back. He has entrusted property to us in the meantime, and as his servants, he expects a return on his investment. Stay with us now as we move ahead in this series of messages or visit pastorpaul.net to listen on demand. That's pastorpaul.net. Now with today's Destined for Victory message, making the most of what you have, here's Pastor Paul. We are currently exploring the parable of the talents as found in Matthew chapter 25, because we're interested in learning what Jesus would have us learn in this parable that he shared with his disciples. Matthew chapter 25. In the interest of time, I'll only begin by reading verses 14 and 15, but we'll refer to some others along the way. Matthew chapter 25, beginning with verse 14, Jesus says, In recent messages, we have been exploring this passage to determine what is it that the Lord would have us learn from the parable of the talents. regarding our stewardship, regarding our management of the resources that God has given us.

And we've learned several things along the way. First of all, we learn that Jesus has gone away, but he is coming back. The parable opens with Jesus talking about a man going on a journey who is to return and he was speaking of himself for indeed Jesus has gone away but he is coming back and we are to live our lives knowing that our Lord is coming again. Secondly, we've learned that we are God's servants. The parable talks about the master calling his servants to himself before he leaves, and we indeed are the servants of the Lord and what we have learned from that is that we are called our purpose on this earth is to serve God is to please him God blesses us with many exceeding great and precious promises so that we can enjoy our lives. God wants you to enjoy your life, but never outside of his will.

There's plenty of enjoyment and enrichment and fulfillment to be found in the will of God and that is our purpose to live our lives in the will of God and to and to please him as we live. And then the third thing we are exploring in this passage is the fact that he the master has entrusted his property to us. The resources you have been given are in fact not yours we have been discovering, but they are God's and one day we will give an account to him for the way we managed his resources. Now what are the resources we are looking at three major resources that God has entrusted all of us. The first is treasure.

The second is time and the third is talent. God has entrusted all of us with those three resources and it is our job to learn how to utilize them because here in the parable, it is clear that the master was going to return and he wanted a full accounting of the way the servants handled those resources which tells you and me that God is going to want to know how did you handle my money that I entrusted to you? How did you handle the time I gave you?

How did you handle the talents or abilities that I gave you? Now in the last message, we were talking about the fact that God wants us with regard to the treasure to not only give generously, but to do two other things and I want to pick it up with those other things. He wants us to give generously. Number two, he wants us to save strategically and number three, he wants us to spend sensibly having covered giving generously in recent messages and making the case biblically that all of us are to give God a tithe as the initial indication that we are going to be generous in our support of the kingdom of God and our worship of God through our funding.

All of us are to be tithers. Beyond that, God will have you give as he so leads, but you want to honor God with the resources by recognizing, Lord, this is yours and this tithe is my first indication that I'm putting you first and trusting you that you will use my life for your glory. Now we need to talk about what does it look like to spend sensibly and say strategically and in the last message I gave a number of very practical points.

I don't have time to recount all of them, but let me just talk briefly about the bullet points. We talked in the last message about assessing the money God has given us and what we're doing with it. Too few of us really know what God has given us and even fewer of us really know what we're doing with what God has given us. So we need to assess it and I would encourage you to listen to that message carefully because that message will help you understand that God has given us a seed in order for it to bring forth the fruit that will accomplish his purpose for us. If you are in debt and most of us are, God has given you a seed already for the process of beginning to eliminate that debt and to get yourself and myself on firm financial footing. God doesn't call you to a place and then doesn't give you the wherewithal to get there.

And I'm here to give you a good news. If God wants you out of credit card debt and he does, he has given you the seed and the wherewithal to get it done. And we talked about that in the last message, assessing what God has given you and what you're doing with it. We talked about creating a financial plan that will help you live within your means, that will help you eliminate credit card debt, and that will help you save strategically.

And I want to pick it up there by talking to you about one more thing before I move on and talk about our use of time. In order for us to get God an excellent return on his financial investment in our lives, you and I are going to have to do three things. We're going to have to walk by faith, we're going to have to walk by obedience, and we're going to fasten your seatbelt, walk by discipline. Now again, the goal is to hear the Lord one day say to you, well done. Isn't that what you want to hear? That's what I want to hear. I want to hear well done. I don't want God looking at my report card shaking his head. I want to hear well done. And therefore, if we're going to hear well done, we're going to have to practice faith, obedience, and discipline.

Let me just talk about them a few moments, and then I'll get you off the hot seat and talk about time. See, as long as we talk about money, folks are nervous and anxious, and ooh, I'll be glad when we get to the next point. But I got to preach the whole counsel, and this passage tells you that you got to give an account for what God has entrusted to you, which means we got to walk by faith. That means I want to encourage you. If you aren't in the best financial shape, if you are not in the best position to do all the things that God would have you do with the resources he's entrusted to you, then you want to exercise faith. That is, you want to pray and believe God for his blessing and his favor. If you are in credit card debt, and most of us are, you're going to have to believe God to help you get out, because you're his servant. Here's the good thing about being God's servant. When you are God's servant, your bills are God's bills.

Isn't that good news? And so we want to present them to God. You don't want to separate your finances from your spiritual walk.

Big mistake. You want to bring your bills to your place of prayer and say, Lord, here it is. Now, when you get there, some of us have to repent. We're talking about being good stewards of God's resources. Some of us have to repent. And we have to say, Lord, you didn't tell me to create this particular picture I've created for myself. You did not tell me to get into all of this debt. Lord, I want to acknowledge that in some cases, I have made some ill-advised decisions.

If that doesn't apply to you, then it doesn't apply to you, but it applies to a whole lot of us. Somebody on your row for sure needs to repent and say, Lord, I got myself into a mess here, and so I am not coming to you as though you are obligated, because after all, you are the master. I am the servant. So I need to acknowledge to you that perhaps I didn't know how to be the best steward. Perhaps I didn't make some of the right choices, but I hadn't heard Pastor Paul's series yet, Jesus. And so I made some ill-advised decisions with some resources.

It results in me having consumer credit debt that on second thought I probably shouldn't have gotten into. But Lord, here I am now. That's water under the bridge, but I'm serving you, and I'm believing you, and Lord, as I am faithful, I am going to ask you to please give me favor. As I'm faithful in using the money you've already given me, I want to ask you to give me favor and bless me to be able to get out of debt so that I can be freer, because you know, you're in bondage when you're in debt. I said you're in bondage when you're in debt. See, some of us are so used to it, we didn't even know it, it doesn't even feel like bondage. Trust me, though, it is bondage. The Bible says that the borrower is slave to the lender.

You are in debt and in bondage. So you want to present it to the Lord. You want to walk in faith.

You want to believe God that he is going to bless you. Second thing you want to do is walk in obedience, which means you don't want to wait until you're already situated and in a better financial position in order to do the things God's called you to do. If the Lord tells you to do something with your finances, you do it now.

You don't wait until later, you do it now. So, of course, we saw earlier in the series that begins with becoming a tither, saying, Lord, I'm going to honor you. I am not going to let my opinion of my financial position dictate whether or not I honor you, I'm going to honor you with the tithe. And so I walk in obedience.

Then you also walk in obedience with any other thing God tells you to do. We'll be right back with more of today's Destin for Victory message from Pastor Paul Sheppard, who is Senior Pastor at Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California. To listen to any of Pastor Paul's recent broadcasts, be sure to stop by pastorpaul.net and listen on demand. That's pastorpaul.net. And stay with us after today's message when Pastor Paul joins me from his studio in California.

But right now, let's tune into the rest of this teaching, making the most of what you have. Once again, here's Pastor Paul. Remember the story of the widow of Zarephath?

We referred to it earlier in the series. Here is a woman who is broke. Her husband is dead. She's got a child and they're in a famine.

That's pretty bad. And yet the Lord tests her obedience by sending a prophet to her house and Elijah shows up and says, the Lord says, feed me. And if you do it, he'll take care of you.

Now, that is a test of your faith. You got a child. A mama has a child. We don't know how old he is, but you know mamas.

Kind of doesn't matter how old he is. That's my boy. And his daddy is dead and now here's a preacher showing up talking about I want to eat. That's a test of faith. But she knew, the Lord had spoken to her heart and she knew this was God.

So she brought him in and fed him. And indeed, the Lord fed her and her son supernaturally through the famine. Sometimes the Lord will test your obedience by giving you a test that is very uncomfortable. See, it's not that big a test if you've got extra resources and God says, give this to this family in need. Give to that project. Give that to that ministry.

Give that to that mission. And you've got a lot, then okay, you might have wanted to do something else with it, but you say, okay, Lord, I'm going to obey you. That's a little minor test.

That's like a pop quiz. But how many have ever had God give you like a major exam where you have very little and God tells you what to do with that and you figure, I didn't know how I was going to make it anyway. And now you're asking me to do something that takes this from bad to worse. Or has God ever taken you from worse to wusser? I realize that's not a word. I'm educated. I realize that's not a word.

But it feels about right. Some of us have been like, pastor, I know just what you're talking about. I've been to wusser. I've hung out there.

I've lived there for a while. And you know what that's like. But when you go there under obedience, you got God with you. And some of us are witness. If you are living in wusser but God is with you, he is going to bring you out of there and he is going to glorify himself.

So what you have to learn to do is you have to learn to trust him even when it doesn't make sense to you. Because God loves. You know the God we serve. We serve a God who loves sometimes stacking the odds. God loves that.

God loves stacking the odds sometimes. And you just got to get used to that. Walking with God, you just have to get used to that. You just got to remember what Mary and Martha went through. When they saw their brother Lazarus sick.

And that's a problem. But they say Jesus is our best friend. And Lazarus is his boy. So they sent word to Jesus, said tell him the one he loves is sick. So while they were concerned about their brother laying there, they figured the only thing you got to do is get word to Jesus. Well they got word to Jesus.

The messenger shows up, says Mary and Martha said to tell you that your friend, the one you love is sick. But Jesus is living according to divine purpose. And so Jesus knew that it was not the Father's will for him to go heal Lazarus at that moment.

So he stayed right where he was. Stayed right where he was, continued to minister, continued to do whatever he was doing. And back in Bethany, they don't know what he's doing but they know he hasn't shown up. And they sit there and watch Lazarus go from sick to dead. John chapter 11, I'm in the book.

He went from sick to dead. Imagine how they felt. Their friend Jesus, they're in his inner circle. They're not just disciples. They're not just people, you know, who have been ministered to by him once or twice. These are his friends.

He hangs out at their house sometime. And Jesus did not show up and his best friend now has died. Imagine how they felt as they prepared to bury their brother. And so the Bible tells us that he has died and Jesus still hasn't shown up even for the funeral. Now, they bury their brother. Jesus hadn't shown up for the burial.

It is now four days after his death. They are at the house. Mourners are at the house with them. They are mourning. Have you ever been in that setting?

You know what that's like. Mourners all around you. People come when you lose a loved one and they're trying to comfort you in what have your name and out the house.

And some folk are bringing food and bringing flowers and all of that. Can be very well intentioned but sometimes they get on your nerves. You never had that experience. I've been there, done that. Get on your nerves, folk coming in and out your house. Some of them you don't even know. And all the food is there and being set up and folk in the kitchen and folk coming in and they what have you. And then you see these folks standing around eating in your house and you don't even know them. And you're bereaved but you stop crying long enough to say, who is that? Y'all haven't been there.

I've been there. Anyway, all that was going on four days later. And Jesus shows up coming down the road.

Read it when you get a chance. John chapter 11. Martha runs out to meet him but the Bible says Mary stays in the house. And some of us are Mary-like when God does this kind of thing to us and makes these very difficult demands of our obedience. And Mary sat in the house with an attitude.

She sat in the house and you can sense in the text what her attitude is. Because Martha just ran out and just expressed to Jesus. She said, oh, if you had been here, he wouldn't have died. We know if we could have gotten you here on time, he wouldn't have died. But Mary, her attitude is more like, oh, no, he didn't. No, he's not just showing up now four days later.

Now, he knows we called for him days ago. But, you know, sometimes God will put you in that pickle just to show you that he's the God who can do exceeding abundantly above all that you can ask or even imagine. I'm here to tell somebody if you'll be obedient with what God tells you to do, you are going to see a resurrection in your own life.

And that's what happened there. When Mary finally did come out, she said some of the same things that Martha said, if you had been here, our brother wouldn't have died. Jesus said, but you all don't understand, you're talking about it like death is the end and you're talking to the resurrection. To everybody else, death is final. To the resurrection is no problem. I mean, in fact, to the resurrection, you can't have a resurrection unless you're dead.

Talk to me, somebody. And some of you all are worried about dead finances and dead situations and dead end jobs and dead things. And I'm here to tell you, you can't get a resurrection till you have something dead. And when you look at your dead situation, I dare somebody in obedience to say, Lord, I'm going to do what you told me to do in your word. And then I'm going to walk with you to the grave site of my situation and stand there and believe that you are going to speak life where there is death.

And that's just what happened in that literal situation. That man was dead. And Jesus said, take me to where you buried him, take me to where you laid him, take me to where you gave up. That's where some of us need to take Jesus, take him the way you gave up, where you said, this is it. I'm pitiful.

I'm broke. I'm never going to get out of this mess that I've created. And it's the end. Some of you are writing your obituary in your heart right now. And Jesus is saying, just take me there, take me there and roll the stone away.

Get everything out of my way. Some of us can't get the blessing because we're in disobedience. But if you roll that disobedience away and you're cleared away for God to do something. Thanks so much for being here for today's Destined for Victory message, making the most of what you have. We're always glad to have you join us as part of this month's celebration of Easter. We've prepared a booklet which will encourage you with the hope and power of the resurrection. It's called He's Alive.

And I'll give you the details of how you can get a copy in a moment. But right now, Pastor Paul has joined me again at the microphone. Pastor, why should the fact that Jesus is alive be so important to those who claim to follow him? The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the truth that distinguishes our faith from all other religions. When we think about it, if Jesus was only an outstanding leader and teacher while on earth, and many people, even non-Christians, realize that he was. But if that's all he was, then he is to be named among great men. But we who are Bible believers, we who are followers of Christ, we proclaim, because we believe it is absolutely true, that the historical fact is not only that he lived and died, but that he rose from the grave on the third day.

Amen. He lives now. And he still lives.

So that's a different message than you'll get from any religion anywhere in the world. He's not just a great man. He's the God-man. He is the Redeemer. He is the one who revelation says was dead, but he's alive.

See, Wayne, you got me preaching. He was dead, but he's alive and he is coming again for his church. I'm excited because Easter is something we need to all rejoice about because it is what makes our belief system different than any other in the whole world. And I praise God that that day is approaching, and once again, we're going to rejoice in the truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And what a day that will be, Pastor Paul. Again, that booklet is called He's Alive, and it's our gift to you this month for your generous donation to Destin 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 Destin for Victory, Post Office Box 1767, Fremont, California 94538. Did you get that?

Destin for Victory Box 1767, Fremont, California 94538. God has entrusted a certain amount of time to you. He knows what he expects you to get done in that time. You insult God when you say you don't have enough time. He created your life. He created your calling. He would never give you a calling and not give you time to fulfill it. That's tomorrow in Pastor Paul Shepherd's message, Making the Most of What You Have. Until then, remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.