July 4 PM - Kevin Shepherd

Kevin Shepherd brings almost 30 years of pastoral experience, including twelve years as Lead Pastor of Glad Tidings Church in Burlington, Ontario, where he led significant growth through community engagement and leadership development. He currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of Crossroads Christian Communications and YES TV, using media to inspire spiritual transformation, cultural impact, and global outreach through faith-based storytelling and values-driven entertainment. Kevin also serves in leadership within the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (PAOC) as a General Executive Member and Assistant Superintendent for the Western Ontario District, while remaining active in interdenominational initiatives across Canada. Kevin and his wife, Sherri, are proud parents of Caleb (married to Lauren) and Sadie.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Well, I've been back here three times because I love it here. It's absolutely amazing, and thanks for the honor of being here. And uh yeah, it's just such a gift. It's very clear that God is at work among us. Can I say hear an amen to that? And uh just continuing to to minister and to move, and your openness to the things of the Lord is so so real and tangible. It's just I enjoy uh getting to know you and spending time with you. This this uh this time was a little shorter than it should have been, but maybe we'll be able to get out here without a flight delay next time, if there is a next time. But I just love being here together. Okay, we've had this verse that we've been uh using as a memory verse. We're gonna try to, if we could put that up there, the first slide there. Uh no, maybe I don't have it. Do I have the okay? If we don't. Well, I gotta say that was the first. We don't have the verse up there. Oh well. Well, I guess that means we're gonna have to say it without any prompts. Psalm four, verse six. Oh, there we go. Instead of oh well, it's uh-oh, right? Yeah. All right, let's try it. There are many who say, Who will show us some good? Lift up the light of your face upon us, oh Lord. And again, we've been saying there's many people around our world that are going, Who is who will show us some good? There seems to be such difficulty and such hardship and struggle, and people are looking for good. And what David does here is he's recognizing in the midst of all the challenge and the hardship he's facing, the real good we're looking for is the light of the face of God shining upon us. Amen. And so then the other verse that we've been uh contemplating as well is 2 Corinthians 4, verse 6. Let's read this together. For God who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Amen. So I felt like the Lord wanted me to go in a little different direction tonight. And I'm gonna start by uh talking about, I think I had mentioned to you that I'm about to be a grandpa in about six weeks, first-time grandpa, and I can't describe to you how excited I am. Like I am beyond excited, and I'm gonna do my best to help you understand how excited I am to be a grandpa. So I love being a dad. Like, can hardly describe to you how much I've loved being a dad throughout my kids' whole life. I have two kids. Our oldest son, Caleb, he's 26, his wife is Lauren, and she's the youth pastor at the church that we attend, and uh they're amazing. And then I have a daughter, her name's Sadie, she's 21, she's almost 22. And it's our our son, who's been married almost four years now, that they're about to have a baby. Now, I'm gonna rewind you a little bit to when they got married. Because when they got married, all of a sudden, at one point, the penny dropped in my mind, and I was like, oh, I might get a chance to level up here and go from dad to grandpa. Now, I was trying not to pressure them, you know, but I was so excited. And then they helped me understand, Dad, you know, Lauren's still in school. We're gonna wait until Lauren finishes her education. I thought, okay, that's the responsible thing to do. You know, I got to be patient here. But then when she finished, I went, oh, okay. Like now we've got a real shot here, I could become a grandpa. And so what started to happen was I was thinking, anytime I saw them, it was gonna be the time they were gonna tell us. And anytime they called or I talked about the phone, I was like, I was listening for it, you know. I was just ready for it. Anytime the phone would ring and it was them, I'm like, okay, I'm so excited. And I'd be waiting for it, waiting for it, and it just didn't come. So we go on like this for you know over a year, year and a bit. And I come home from the office one day and I come to the house and I walk inside, and Caleb and Lauren are in the house. They surprise us. I didn't know they were coming. Now we see them all the time. The church is about five minutes away, they only live 20 minutes away. We see them all the time, but they always let us know they're coming. This time they surprised us. And I'm like, okay, here we go. So I'm so excited, but there was a problem. My wife wasn't home yet. And I wanted to share this moment with my wife. So now I'm nervous that they're actually gonna spill it before my wife gets there. And I had talked to my wife. I knew that she was on her way home. I knew she was only gonna be about 10 or 15 more minutes. She had to stop at the grocery store on the way. So I'm like, I'm like a nervous teenager on his first date. I'm talking a mile a minute. I'm not letting them say anything. I'm talking all about my day. I'm telling them stuff that they don't need to know or want to know. I'm asking them if they want a drink of water or something, and then I'm taking a really long time to get it in the kitchen. Like I'm just doing everything I can. So then I sit there, I come in, I sit down with them. I was unavoidable. I'm sitting down in the living room with them, and I could just tell there was kind of this little excited energy, you know? And so I'm like, man, this is it. Like, I just believe this is it. And so then my wife comes home. And I literally, my heart starts racing. I'm like a little bit short of breath. I'm like, the moment's coming. Here it is. She walks in the door, she walks around, my son stands up, he reaches in his pocket, and I think he's pulling out his phone with an ultrasound. He reaches in his pocket, he comes, and my wife comes around the corner and she goes, Did you get a new truck? He goes, Yep.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

I went, yay. So excited for a truck.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

So we went for the ride in the truck, and I'm faking excitement to the best of my ability for this truck. And I told my wife after, you know, and she was like laughing. We didn't tell them, I didn't want to pressure, but then not that long after, they really did surprise us, and they really are having a child, and it's going to be a boy, and I'm so unbelievably excited. Thank you. You say, Well, what does that have to do with anything? Here's something that I've been reflecting on, and I've learned since then. What you anticipate shapes you before it arrives. I'm anticipating this baby to come, and it's shaping my life. It's changing the way I think, it's changing our conversations, it's changing what I do in my spare time. I can tell you almost everything about the formation of a child. Like they've got these apps now, and they're really incredible. Like they tell you everything. And I didn't have this 26 years ago when we started this. It's incredible. And I'm just, it's shaping the way we're thinking, it's shaping the way my wife and I pray. We're praying differently now. What you anticipate shapes you before it arrives. I mean, this baby isn't even here yet. We, my wife and I, I think I told you our 30th anniversary was this week, and we had planned this big trip to Europe this summer. Like big two and a half week trip. We had it all planned out. We were really excited, but it was a little too close to the due date. Canceled. We're not going next year. We'll go next year, but I ain't missing the birth of this baby. I'll tell you that right now. I'm not missing it. And so we didn't have some of the stuff, wasn't even refundable. I don't care, cancel it. This baby's already costing me money and it's not even born yet. What you anticipate shapes you before it arrives. How you think about what is going to happen in your future, it shapes you right now. The future has a way of reaching back into the present. And it affects you right now. That's true if you're expecting a grandchild waiting for a wedding, preparing for your career. And especially true if you're walking with God in the midst of the things that you're expecting Him to do in your life. Because faith is learning to let God's promise shape your present reality before you see the promise fulfilled. So if you'll turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Samuel chapter 30. And we're moving ahead quite a bit here, I realize. But I've titled this message tonight when the process doesn't look like the promise. And I want us to think about and reflect on what we anticipate God to do in our life and the promises maybe He's given us, and then the situations we actually find ourselves in that maybe don't look like what we were hoping for. This was happening with David. We talked about how he was anointed to be the king of Israel. And then he went back serving the sheep. We talked about how this incredible victory of him slaying this enemy and thrust into the national spotlight. And after that moment, he probably felt like, okay, we're on the fast track now. We're on the fast track to see God's promise fulfilled. This anointing realized. And then he started to get victory after victory, military battle after military battle, and they were winning. He became the military commander in Saul's army. Things are going in that direction. It's looking like the promise is going to be fulfilled. But by the time we get to 1 Samuel 30, it sure doesn't feel like that anymore. People started singing songs about David. Saul killed his thousands. David his tens of thousands. We talked about comparisonitis. And Saul became very jealous of David. To the point where he started to try to kill David, take out the threat. People who are insecure try to control externally what they fear internally. Anticipation is easy when the promise seems close. It's much harder when the promise seems like it's going in the other direction. Samuel had poured the oil on David years ago, but David still isn't king. And at this point, you would even say, if you're in David's moment, in David's situation, you'd be like, I don't think the promise is going to happen. Like it looks like it failed. David and his whole life and his family are under threat. He's running. He's escaped Saul a few times at this point. But now he's realized he's too powerful. It's too close. I gotta get out of here. So he does almost the unthinkable. He goes to Philistine territory. He strikes a deal with King Akish. And he ends up going to Philistine land, this place called Ziklag. And he thinks if I'm in Ziklag, Philistine land, Saul won't attack me because then he'll be attacking the Philistines. I'll be safe here. And it works. It works. Saul knows better. And so he leaves David alone for sixteen months. He leaves David and his mighty men in Philistine territory in Ziklag. David is living under the protection of his enemy. And then David finds himself in this really strange situation. Where after he'd been living there for sixteen months, under protection of the Philistines, then all of a sudden King Acres says, Okay, I'm calling in the favor. And the Philistines started to mount a charge to attack the Israelites. And he's like, David, I know you're an excellent military commander. I know your mighty men are incredible. You got to come fight with us. So think about that. He's not only not the king of Israel yet, he's not even living in the land that he's supposed to be leading. He has left and under threat of his life. He's in enemy territory, and now he's in this dilemma. If he doesn't go and fight and stand with the armies of the Philistines, the Philistines are going to crush him because he's small compared to them. And yet, if he goes with them, he's got to fight his own people, the people that God has called him to lead. This sure doesn't look like the promise, does it? So what does he do? He takes the three-day journey to meet with the Philistines to prepare to go into battle. And as he gets there, the Philistines are like, we're not gonna fight with him. There's no way we're gonna fight with David. He'll stab us in the back in the middle of the battlefield. We're not fighting him. We're not fighting with him. And they convince Akish to send David and his men back, which was actually, again, the big picture of God. That was actually the provision and the protection of God on David so that he didn't have to fight his own people. And he protected him in that moment. But it was rejection again for David. So they take the three-day journey back to Ziklech. So again, the oil had been poured on David's head, declared he would be the king of Israel. He's not sitting on the throne, living among the Philistines. Instead of living in Israel, he's marching or was about to march with Israel's enemies. Instead of moving closer to the promise, it looks like he's moving further away from it. And then this is what happens when they get back. Three days later, when David and his men arrived at their home in the town of Zikleg, they found that the Amalekites had made a raid into the Negev and Zikleg. They had crushed Zikleg and burned it to the ground. They had carried off the women and children and everyone else, but without killing anyone. When David and his men saw the ruins and realized what had happened to their families, they wept until they could weep no more. David's two wives, Ahinawim from Jezreel and Abigail, the widow of Nabal from Carmel, they were among those captured. David was now in great danger because all his men were very bitter about losing their sons and daughters. And they began to talk of stoning him. But David found strength in the Lord his God. Can you believe that in that moment? How did David do that in that moment? But David found strength in the Lord his God. The way I memorize that verse when I was young, but David encouraged himself in the Lord. I'm like, how did David do this? I don't know about you, but I'd be more like David's men than David in that moment most of the time. Like everything's been taken away. David, it's been bad decision after bad decision after bad decision. We've left our homeland. We followed you. And here we are. Everything's been taken from us. You told us there was a promise. This sure doesn't look like the promise. When the promise, when the process doesn't look like the promise, disappointment has a way of turning into frustration, and frustration starts looking for a target. Somebody to blame, somebody to throw our anger towards and our hurt towards, the company that let you go, the spouse, the person who hurt you, the church. But here's what fascinates me about David. He had lost everything, too. He lost just as much, if not more, than these guys at this moment. His future looks uncertain. His home is gone. Things are falling apart. And David has this moment where he's like, he finds strength in his God in that moment. So here's what I want to just do. Very quickly, I want to give us three things we can think about. When the process doesn't look like the promise, when you're in that waiting period, believing for God to do something and come through in your situation, in your family, in your relationship, in your community, whatever it is. Here's three things I think we can do to encourage ourselves in the Lord. First, think about what God has done through you. Just like the future has a way of reaching into the present and shaping us, I think we can use the past and the things that God has done to affect the way we think in the present. And we can look and we can see the faithfulness of God in the past. David could look back and see the faithfulness of God with the lion and with the bear, and how God was faithful to him in Goliath, and victory after victory after victory. How many of you know of the faithfulness of God in your life? You can look back and you can see how God has delivered in times that were beyond your capacity, when God has encouraged you, when God has used you to encourage someone else, when God has protected you, when God has provided for you. If you believe that God has been faithful to you, let me hear a good amen tonight. God has been faithful. And he's been faithful through you. When we remember what God has already done, it strengthens our faith for what God is doing right now and for what we believe that He will do in the future because what you anticipate shapes you before it arrives. One of the mistakes that we sometimes make is we can look at the mistakes we've made, the failures we've made, the decisions we've made that seems to lead us to a worse place, like David had encountered. And then that can lead to shame and condemnation in our lives. That can start shaping the way we think about ourselves, the way we think about our relationship with God, the way we think about our future and who we are to God in the midst of our work and our walk. One of the things that I would do with my kids when they were younger, we always took our kids to bed. We didn't send them to bed. We took them to bed. We'd spend time with them and we'd do devotions and we'd we'd laugh and play some games and we spend a fair bit of time. But one of the things I would always do with my kids when they were young is I would ask them two questions. I would say, What did you do today to make Jesus smile? And they would go through their day and they'd have to find those good moments, those things that they did that they know made Jesus smile. That's a way to encourage yourself in the Lord. It's a practice I actually do every night as I'm going to bed. I'm like, okay, how did I bless you today, Lord? How what were you pleased with that I did today? And then I'd ask them another question. What did you do today that you should do differently tomorrow to make Jesus smile? We always want to see the corrective things. It's not that we don't talk about that, but we do that in the context of encouraging ourselves in the Lord. And so many times people get stuck in the failures and the past and the sins and the mistakes. But friends, I want to free you from that today. Romans 8 says, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. God leads us through his kindness. It's his kindness that leads us to repentance. It's his love. Philippians 4, 8 says, fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. One of the truest things in your life that you can think about is the faithfulness of God. We sang about it tonight, and I appreciated that. So we could think about what God has done through us. Secondly, we think about what God has done for you. I wish I knew exactly what songs and psalms David wrote right around this time. But I got a feeling, and if you look at the Psalms, by the way, a third of them are lament Psalms. A third of them are like, God, what is going on? It's okay to pour your heart out in the midst of these times when the process doesn't look like the promise. Open your heart to God, lament the reality. But what we always see in those lament psalms is by the end of the psalm, it's like David had poured out the dirty water and God refilled him with fresh, clean water. And at the end, he's always saying, But I do know you're faithful, and I do know that you're good, and I do know that you love me. And it renewed his heart and his soul and his spirit. That's what Jesus has done for you. How many are thankful that that's what Jesus has done for you? He not only forgives you, he cleanses you. I had this thought recently about love and about God's love for us. How many have heard the phrase true love or yeah, love is blind? Heard this phrase, love is blind? Did you know that came from Shakespeare? It was apparently one of his favorite thoughts. Love is blind. The idea is that when you love someone, you don't really see all the faults and the failures and the problems and the issues. You're just so infatuated with them and you love them so much that you actually look past all that stuff, you don't really see it. Wrong. How many of you know when you love someone, you get close to them and you see stuff that other people don't see? Love is not blind. Love sees more. God's love is not blind. God knows every single sin you've ever committed. God knows every failure, every mistake, every miss. He knows every time you thought about doing something and even didn't do it. He knows it all. This thought confronted David sometimes. You see it throughout the Psalms, where he's confronted by the fact that God knows my innermost thinking, he knows everything about me. It also comforted him sometimes because he was like, God knows everything. He knows the situation I'm in, he knows the circumstance I'm facing, he knows my difficulty. He's saying, Well, if God sees all that sinfulness, he sees all the things I've done, how could he love me? Some people have said years ago this came up, they say, Well, when you confess your sin, God throws your sin into the sea of forgetfulness. How many have ever heard that? Not in the Bible. The sea of forgetfulness, not in the Bible. I understand what they're trying to say, it ain't there. I've looked. I've looked very carefully. It ain't there. In fact, you don't want it to be true. You do not want God to forget. We don't serve an all forgetful God. We serve an all knowing God. No, no, no. What happened is a misinterpretation of a verse out of Isaiah. And God does something so much more powerful than forgetting your sin, everybody. It says this, He will choose to remember your sin no more. I know that sounds like forgetting, but it's not. It's different, it's far more powerful. See, forgetting, remembering in Hebrew, is not just a mental word, it's an action word. In Genesis 8, where it says God remembered Noah in the ark. When it talks about God remembered his covenant to his people, God didn't forget Noah. He didn't forget, then all of a sudden, oh yeah, Noah's in the ark, what should I do? No, remembering was action. It's like I'm going to take action. So get this with me. When Isaiah says he will remember your sins no more, it means God will not act towards you according to your sins. He doesn't forget, he does something far more powerful. He chooses not to remember your sin against you anymore. Why? Because of what Jesus Christ has done for you. So when God looks at you, he's not blind. He sees more. But because he sees more, he chooses to see less, not less clarity, not less reality. God sees less condemnation, less accusation, less based on the worst thing you ever did. And so as a result, he sees more. He sees more purpose, more anointing, more calling, more hope, more deliverance, more opportunity. He sees the big picture and he looks at your life regardless of what it was you've ever done. And he's like, if you could see you the way I see you, and even when the situation doesn't look like the promise you're holding on to, even when you're in the midst of the process and it looks like everything's falling apart, I'm here to tell you and remind you today that God is at work and I'm deeply suspicious that God is up to something good. So when you're in the midst of the process and it doesn't look like the promise, remind yourself of what God has done through you. Remind yourself, encourage yourself in the Lord, remind yourself what God has done for you. He saved you and redeemed you. And then thirdly, think about what God has done ahead of you. Then he said to Abiathar the priest, bring me the ephod. So Abiathar brought it. Then David asked the Lord, Should I chase after this band of raiders and will I catch them? And when I read that, I thought, wow, David is really low. He's really beaten down here. He's lost his courage. What do you mean, David? Should I go after them? What do you mean? You're a military commander, dude. They just took your wife and kids. How could you even wonder if you go? Like, I'm a very nice guy. Mess with my wife and kids. I'm coming after you. In the name of Jesus, of course. And I don't even know what I'm gonna do when my grandkid gets here, I'm telling you.

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I thought David's lost, he's so low.

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He's lost his courage. And I got praying about that. I'm like, God, how could you let him get to this point? How could you let it get so bad that he even loses his courage? This is the same David who walked in front of that Goliath and said, What are you guys afraid of? I come to him in the name of the Lord. It's the same guy. But he's just so beat down. And I was like, he's lost his courage. And then as I prayed about it, I realized something. He hasn't lost his courage. This is one of the most courageous prayers in the Bible. It's not my will, but yours be done. Of course, he wants to go after them. Of course, he wants to get his wife and kids back. But in the midst of that moment, he prays the best prayer he could ever pray. I want your will. I want your will. I don't like this. It's really hard. I don't understand. But I want your will. And I'm willing, God, to do whatever you want me to do. I'm willing to become whatever you want me to become. For your purpose to be accomplished in my life. And this is why I say that's the most courageous prayer in the Bible. Because Jesus is the true and better David. And while David stood there in front of Ziklag, seeing what was in front of him, Jesus in Gethsemane knew what was ahead of him. And he prayed. And in the midst of that moment, for the disciples, when Jesus is on the cross, he's been beaten, ridiculed, accused. And he dies on the cross. They would have thought, but what about the promise? The process didn't look like the promise. Now they were lives were under threat. They were afraid. But God had a bigger picture. God knew. And Jesus knew. For the joy set before him. He endured the cross, scorning its shame. He fixed his eyes. Why? Because he knew the purpose that was going to be accomplished through the pain in the process. And it would ultimately bring deliverance for you and for me. The rest of the story quickly is that the Lord said, Yes, go after them. David gets his men together and pursue the Amalekites. Bible says that along the way, they just found this random straggler that the Amalekites left in the desert who told them where they went. They went and they got everybody back. David got everything back, everything the Amalekites had taken. Nothing was missing, small or great, son or daughter, nor anything else that had been taken. David brought everything back. So I'm going to ask the worship team to come. And I want us to respond tonight. And there's two areas that I believe God is speaking to our hearts about. And I want to really encourage us to respond. So if you'll stand with me and we're going to sing and we're going to worship and we're going to pray. But there's two areas that I believe the Lord is speaking to our heart about, and that this requires some level of response from us. I know that in a room of this size, with this many people here, that there is many here, that you've been holding on to a promise, but you're in the midst of the process, and the process doesn't look like the promise. Maybe you have children that aren't following the Lord, and you know that God has a purpose and a call for their life. And you're struggling to have faith in the midst of that and trust in God in the midst of this season. And I want to encourage you, in the midst of all that you're experiencing, maybe for you it's a relationship, maybe it's career, maybe it's ministry calling. Maybe God put a ministry call in your life years ago. Stuff has happened, life has happened, things have gotten in the way, and you've just kind of set it to the side, almost forgotten about it. I think God is calling you back to what He's called you to. And just come and pray that prayer. God, not my will, not my will, but yours be done. Whatever that means, God, whatever you want to do in me, I'm willing. I'm ready. And the second thing, and maybe for some of you this is going to be both, but I really feel like there's a number of people that are here that God wants to plant a new dream in your heart and in your life again. To believe in advance for what God is going to do in your life and through your life. That maybe disappointment has caused you to be really safe. And you don't want to go through the pain of disappointment anymore. But I believe that God has anointed you and called you, and he wants to place in you a fresh dream and a fresh vision for what he wants to accomplish through your life. So we're going to sing, and as we do, I'm going to encourage you to just not even wait and just begin to come. If you really are that posture, God, not my will, but yours be done. I want to encourage you to come and we'll pray, we'll seek the Lord, and we'll have God have his way. I'm just going to pray as we do that and then we'll sing. Heavenly Father, we bow before you. See what you've done for us, but also see with the eyes of faith to believe you again for what you will do. You restored everything back for David. And for some people here today, it's about coming and saying, God, I believe that you are going to restore what the enemy has taken. And I am coming to stand and say, Not my will, but yours be done. So speak, Lord. Feel your truth. But empower us. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. As the worship team leads us, would you come?