What Did You Expect? (cont'd)

You can aspire to more, but where you are now is no excuse for you to not let God be glorified in your life then, and it's no excuse for you to not help and bless other people. You can't be so mad at your circumstances that you refuse to glorify God. You can't be angry at God and expect Him to bless you at the same time. Hello and welcome to Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd, Senior Pastor of Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California.

Wherever you are and however you may be listening, thanks for making this part of your day. Jesus said, He who is faithful in little will be faithful in much, and part of being faithful is glorifying God even when things aren't going your way. So coming your way next, Pastor Paul encourages you to be a blessing to those around you even when you're broken to be helpful even when you're hurting. That's what a life of faith is all about. Stay with us now or visit pastorpaul.net to hear any recent Destined for Victory message on demand. That's pastorpaul.net. Now with this message, what did you expect?

Here's Pastor Paul. But listen, let me tell you something. We got to rethink a whole lot. We got to rethink the way we treat God like He's supposed to do what we want.

We got to learn to follow Him because He's the Sovereign. And now this is showing you, you got to take the station you're in in life even if you don't like it. Even if you want to eventually be out of it. Nothing wrong with wanting to be in a better place in the world, in life, in your finances, in your career.

Nothing wrong with having aspirations for more, for better, for higher. I'm not suggesting if you're really saved, then you won't even worry about it. No, when you're saved and broke, it's okay to say, Lord, I'm going to be faithful while I'm broke, but I want to be out of this. Come on, I told the Lord for years when I was in my struggling years in ministry, I told you I used to have the second worst car in the church.

So glad I had one sister that's car was more jacked up than mine. I know what it is to go putting down the road. Folks had to say, oh, that's a man of God. You know that's a man of God.

He don't even have a decent car. Just look at it. Some folks love that. Somebody applauded me back then. I said, I'm so glad.

Yeah, one person came to me and said, I'm so glad. Saw me pull up in a car. He expected that I was a preacher. He said, oh, woo, it's been a long time since I seen a preacher who wasn't driving a luxury car. And I said, well, okay, but don't watch me too long because I plan to get out of this. Enjoy this while you can. And if he watched me, he enjoyed it for several more years.

It did take a minute. But eventually I was rolling like I wanted to roll. But here's what I need you to say. You can aspire to more, but where you are now is no excuse for you to not let God be glorified in your life then. And it's no excuse for you to not help and bless other people. You can't be so mad at your circumstances that you refuse to glorify God. Now you're displeasing the one who wants to get you to the place you want to go. How you think you're going to get there with an attitude with God? At a certain point you got to figure out, wait, where is my blessing that I hope to have?

Where's that going to come from? If that's going to come from him, why am I going to cop an attitude with the one? One of my preacher friends had a daughter who at a certain point when she was out of his house and kind of on her own got a little too sassy because he's a very generous parent and she wasn't married and all that and got a little sassy with him, copped an attitude with him at some point. And he said, I told her, you are too broke to be mad at me. If you're going to have this kind of attitude with me, you better have some ducats in your pocket.

You literally can't afford this attitude. You need to rethink this and I'm going to give you about two seconds to do it. Fortunately, she's smart.

She's straightened up instantly, apologized immediately. He said, I've never seen that from her again. And some of us need to know that. All the blessings we try to name and claim and blab and grab and decree and declare is the new thing now.

Oh, that's got to come from him. So your job is to glorify him and to let him use you to be a blessing to other people. This little girl could have been self-focused, but she knew that wouldn't get her anywhere. If I'm going to get delivered from being oppressed by these people in Syria, God's going to have to do it.

So why would I sit and pout and act up and I'm a slave? Instead, she refused to be disengaged and self-focused and she decides to be helpful. So look again at what she says. She says, if my master, if he would see the prophet who's in Samaria, talking about Elisha, he would heal him of his leprosy. She didn't know it, but God was speaking through her to do something. You got to understand something about the sovereign God.

He plays chess, not checkers. When God makes a move, it's not just about that move. See, you who want to understand why, if Israel's doing your will, why do you give a blessing to a guy who hates him? And why do you let a little innocent child get kidnapped and brought over to another country to serve the commanding officer of an army that hates your people, God?

Doesn't make sense. And God says, because you don't play chess like I play chess. I know what I'm doing. You better be glad God doesn't tell you the three things I told you all recently. Aren't you so glad God doesn't run that one on you?

There are three places you can stay free of charge. That has blown up all over the country, folks talking to me. I said, oh, I started something. But you need to understand something. God was working through her to accomplish something nobody ever knew was on his mind. God's doing stuff you'll never figure out till it happens. So you got to learn to go with his flow.

That's this point. Stop trying to figure stuff out. Go with the flow. After all, we say we're faith-walking people. Faith-walking people follow him whether they understand him or not. Instead of telling us, based on your theology, here's where God is supposed to be, why don't you try saying, where are you, Lord? You see where he is and get over there.

Get over there even if you think you were supposed to be over there. Remember? Talk about Peter. Remember the time when God taught him that lesson too? When he was on a rooftop fasting and God gave him a vision of a blanket coming down from heaven, all manner of livestock on it. And the Lord said to him, rise Peter, slay and eat. And Peter thought it was a question of his orthodoxy.

He said, I'm going to pass this test of my orthodoxy. I will never eat anything unclean. And God said, if I call it clean, you change your definition of clean. That's what we all have to learn to do in our lives. I used to think this was it, but God, and you make the shift because God's not changing. He is the same and we got to learn to go with him. One more point and I'm done with this passage. Here's point number four. Some blessings require humility.

This is what this whole thing was about. God was setting up, playing chess. Start at verse eight. When Naaman got the request from the king of Aram, I skipped that part because that would take me too long to develop.

The bottom line is Naaman got the request that the king of Aram wanted him to heal his commanding officer of leprosy. Elisha said, have him come to me. And he'll know there's a prophet in Israel. Now, verse nine. So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha's house.

He's there now to get his healing. He stops at the door of Elisha's house. Look at what Elisha does. He sent a messenger to say to him, go wash yourselves seven times in the Jordan and your flesh will be restored.

You will be cleansed. But Naaman went away angry and said, I thought, some of y'all, I could stop the message right there. And you already saw yourself. I thought, there's your problem. I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot, cure me of my leprosy. Are not the rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel?

Could not wash in them and be cleansed? So he turned and went off in a rage. Oh, somebody just saw theirself. You ever cop their attitude, even with God? And still ahead, the second half of today's Destined for Victory message with Pastor Paul Shepherd. As always, you can hear any recent Pastor Paul message on demand at pastorpaul.net. That's pastorpaul.net.

And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast at Spotify, at Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your programs. Well, we'd like to thank all of you who sustained Destined for Victory with your prayers and financial support, gifts that help Pastor Paul share the gospel all over the world. Destined for Victory is a listener's supportive ministry. So as God leads, please perfectly consider making a gift to Destined for Victory today. You can give your gift now at pastorpaul.net or by calling 855-339-5500. Some of life's greatest blessings come just after we take the next small step of faith. Here's Pastor Paul with the rest of today's message. What did you expect? Naaman's servant went to him.

I love that. He went off in a rage, and Naaman's servant, his slave, now we saw he got the word about who Elisha was from his wife's slave. Now Naaman's slave sees his boss go off in a rage, and any time your subordinate has to come to you, and I love this. He said, my father, very respectful, just a term of, they're not related, but it's just a term of honor. He said, my father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it?

How much more then when he tells you, wash and be cleansed? And you know, Naaman said, you know, this boy got a point. That's what some of y'all need to realize. What you've been assuming clearly didn't happen. That's why I asked you, what did you expect?

If what you expected hasn't happened, guess what that means? God wants something else. And you got to find out what does God want. And you got to go that way. His servant says, if he had given you something great to do, you would have loved it.

Said, how much more? He just gave you a simple directive. Why don't you go and get your healing? I love verse 14, so he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times like the man of God told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.

Seven times, and he didn't have an attitude. Go down, come back up, make me sick. Go down, come back. He could have done something better than this. Go down, come back.

This water's so dirty. Go down, come. None of that. He just counting.

My back bad, so I'm going to leave it alone, but you all know what he was doing, counting. Do you understand? Just trust him and obey what he said. I grew up in a hymn singing church.

We sang trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey. But you know what that requires? That requires that you are willing to humble yourself. See, he humbled himself by obeying. That's where some of you all miss it because you don't know how to humble yourself. You don't know how to just go low. You are full of yourself, and that's your problem.

You need to be full of reverence for him, full of worship, full of honor to him. This is no time to be full of you. This is no time to be wrapped up, self-focused on you. If you're wrapped up in yourself, you're an awfully small package.

You've got to learn this is no time for you to be full of yourself. It's time for you to serve God and do his will. Peter said, Humble yourself, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may exalt, lift you up in due time.

That's 1 Peter 5, 6, if you're taking notes. Humble yourself, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. And the verse before that said God opposes the proud and shows favor to the humble. If you're like me, you need God too much to be proud.

I actually don't have the luxury of being full of myself. I need him desperately. Does anybody else realize that you need him way too much to be proud, especially knowing that he doesn't, he resists, King James says, he resists the proud. And here we are told he opposes the proud at NIV. Resisting or opposing. Either one, I don't need God doing. I don't need God seeing me and say, oh, no, not him. Come on, that's resisting. Oh, no, keep him away from me. I can't be kept away from God.

So what do I do? I humble myself. By the way, the Bible always tells you to humble yourself. It never tells you to ask God to humble you. It doesn't say, God, please humble me.

Oh, no, no, no, no. Again, I reference my daddy on that point too. My daddy used to say, if you're so proud that God has to humble you, he said he going to have to put you in a casket to do that.

So humble yourself is what the Bible says. I'll never forget in January of 1985, right after the American Music Awards, most of the people didn't know it, but several singers were invited to a recording session that January night after an evening award show. They showed up at the studio, ended up being 45 of them, famous singers, many of whom had just gotten awards at the show. And they had been invited there to be part of a recording project that was called USA for Africa. And the song, which was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, was entitled We Are the World. I remember that year.

I remember seeing the video for the first time. But what I bring this up to say is, if you ever heard about what happened that night, Quincy Jones, who was the producer, had a sign on the door that all these big-shot singers had to walk through. And the sign said, Check your egos at the door.

That's how We Are the World came to be what it came to be, because you got all these folk who think they are it. When you look up it in the dictionary, they think it's their picture grinning. 45 of them. I mean a who's who. Come on, the older people.

Young people might not know about it. Older folk, don't y'all try to act like you never saw We Are the World? It was a who's who.

All genres of music. And it blended beautifully. But what made it work was he said, Don't walk up in here acting like it's you and you only. Mad cause you didn't get this part of the song. Mad cause Bob Dylan got this part. And you think he can't even sing. Oh, come on, I'm trying to help somebody. Wonder where he give him that part, he sound like he choking to death.

You know how ego-driven people will be. He might sound strange to you, but guess what? He was Bob Dylan. And for that part of the song, by the recording right now, put it in your music library. And you'll hear him singing his part, and Dion singing her part, and Michael singing his part. Everybody, you got country folks, everybody. Cindy Lauper doing her part.

Hair all various colors. It didn't matter what you thought about anybody in that studio. It was the blending that made it. And to this day, it is one of the top 10 all-time hard copy selling singles. By that I mean non-streaming, cause these days it's all about streaming. Y'all do know, young folk, that in 1985 there was no internet?

Come on, old people, don't leave me by myself. There was no internet. When you heard we are the world, if you wanted to hear it again, you took your happy self to the mall or to a record shop. That's what we called them back in the day, a record shop. Cause even before CDs, there were cassettes. Even before there were cassettes, there was vinyl. The singles were 45.

Don't y'all fool with me, I can tell you about some singles. You had to get the disc, put it in the middle. So you could put it on the turntable. And when we got fancy, we could put several discs up there. And they would drop one at a time.

The arm would come over. I'm out of time, let's stand. Humble yourself. Check your ego at the door of your heart. And especially when you're dealing with kingdom stuff. It's his kingdom, not yours. So we've got to live a life of saying, Lord, what would you have me do?

And govern ourselves according to that. I hope you've been encouraged by Pastor Paul Shepherd's message. Remember, humility almost always precedes blessing. Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, and he will exalt you in due time.

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Request your copy today for your generous donation. You've got to understand, you are literally in spiritual warfare. It's not a figment of somebody's imagination. The day you got saved, there was already warfare going on because the enemy didn't want you to come into the kingdom of God. And you were already in a fight. That's tomorrow when Pastor Paul Shepherd shares his message, This is how I fight my battles. Until then, remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.