Rock-Solid Reminders [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

When we remember, we are activating real faith. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series, God Moments, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina.

If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It's Pastor Alan's book by the same title, God Moments, and it can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you a copy of Pastor Alan's book, God Moments, our special offer today. Contact us at pastoralan.org. That's pastoralan.org, or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But right now, let's get started with today's teaching on God Moments.

Here is Alan Wright. When an Israelite had an encounter with God, he didn't have to leave the area to look for a reminder. Anyone who's traveled through the Middle East can tell you there are no shortage of rocks. And a third characteristic is rocks endure.

So when a pillar was erected, it would stand there for a long, long time. So when you begin to think about, and I want to talk to you some about practically how it is that you are able to establish connection points for these God Moments in your life through these rock-solid reminders, just keep that in mind. It can be very simple.

It doesn't have to be elaborate. You want something that's immediately accessible because you have to be able to get a hold of it, and something that's going to be able to endure. And I think all of that points us towards some of the kinds of technology that we have today. I mean, I'm quite convinced that if they'd had smartphones in their pockets, they'd been taking selfies, and God would have probably instructed them, take these photos, post them on your Facebook. Make sure that you line up back up in the cloud because you never want to forget what you just saw happen today, like rocks. That's what we're looking for, things in our life like rocks. A couple of other lessons, three other good lessons that they learned about these kind of memorials that they were erecting.

Number one, they set up the memorial immediately after or even in the midst of the God Moment. So if you've ever awakened like thinking about a vivid dream that you just had and you're like, that is so vivid, but then just a few minutes later you can't remember it unless you wrote it down, then you know exactly what I'm talking about here. Because so often this happens in life. You could have a dream, it's so vivid, if you would write it down immediately, the vivid nature of that dream will stay with you.

But it's amazing how it will just seemingly evaporate. Well, what I'm saying is that we're, I'll make it an analogy to say we're in a spiritual battle, beloved. And the enemy cannot stop God from blessing you, but there is a battle to try to keep you from remembering that blessing, either by being overwhelmed by other circumstances or just thinking, well, I'll never forget this, but you'll face every manner of temptation to put off marking a God Moment. But if you'll take action to mark a God Moment in the midst of it, you'll be glad for every God Memento that you keep. Here's the second lesson from these memorials that they set up, these stones from the River Jordan. And that is that they set up memorials that could be easily revisited.

I want to just say this practically, whatever you do that you're going to help yourself remember your God Moments is make sure it's something that you can easily revisit. If you've got, back in the old day when we had just photos after photos on print, and you just have these boxes of photographs, everybody just had boxes of photographs, and they were inaccessible to you. They're sitting in a box in an attic.

You don't look at them. And I think, again, by way of analogy, you'd be better off to have one good scrapbook of photos that you could actually pull out and look at and remember than to have a thousand in a box collecting dust. So you have to do something that's going to actually work for you, something that's going to be able to be. The third thing that I noticed about this is that these memorials of the rocks that they set up, they were quite public. They were something that was visible to everybody. And I think that not to say that we can't have very personal things to us, but there's something incredible when you begin to tell others about your story, others about your God Moments. Well, let me just get really practical with you for just a few moments, because I think this is where it's going to really make a difference in your life. We talk about, well, what are some of the ways, these concrete ways that you can remember God Moments in your life?

Let me just mention a few things for you. And I talked about earlier, Ann loving to get mementos and memorabilia, but I do think that this is really important that you think about symbols in your own life. One family I've talked to actually has a rock pile in their yard. Whenever a family member would be significantly blessed in a memorable way, they would take a big rock, go in their backyard, put it on the pile, and a family would hear a brief testimony. And so they've got a pretty big rock pile they had in their yard.

And every time they walked through it, they couldn't help but remember all their God Moments. I know another Christian couple, they were having a difficult time financially. The husband was in between jobs and their savings were depleted and they're facing a certain loss of their home when an unmarked envelope arrived with two months house payments inside. And that money, it literally made the difference between keeping and losing the house. And they felt certain it was from someone within their church, but they never ever knew for sure.

And so you know what they did? They took the envelope and they framed it and put it up on the wall just as a reminder of an unearned blessing that God brought in their life. I thought of the story one time that Kelly Barrett, an elder, a worship leader in our church, had said in the midst of a very hectic time in Kelly's life, the Lord revealed to him a really important truth. Kelly saw himself carrying a stack of wood in his arms. It's kind of a vision he had from the Lord. And as he walked along, others would approach him and say, well, you carry my wood too? And Kelly would answer in this little vision he had, sure, one more piece will be all right.

But in a short time, the load grew heavy and Kelly was exhausted and overburdened. And this little vision that he had was used by the Lord to help Kelly realize that he really wasn't responsible for all the world's problems. It helped him develop some healthy, more healthy boundaries.

It saved him from the dual trap of workaholism and people pleasing. And so Kelly said that during that time, I don't know if he still has it, but it was years ago, he told me this, he kept a little miniature wood pile on his desk to remind him about focus and priorities and the little moment that he'd had with God. You see what I'm saying is that sometimes they're just things that will just help you to remember God was in this moment.

God did something here and I don't ever, ever want to forget it. Years and years ago, our church, we really, really needed to have some discussions with our next door neighbor because his house was sort of an island in the middle of our church property and it was very difficult to envision how we could develop our property. But somewhere before I'd ever arrived, the relationship between the church and the neighbor had not gone well.

And so there were not many discussions and there wasn't any openness really that he had to selling his house. In fact, there was a wall, a big wall between, a white wall between the neighbor's house and the church. Well, after some amazing conversations and we really, whatever needed to happen, the healing of the relationship, whatever needed to happen, he became open to, the neighbors became open to selling their house and we were able to purchase it and make it part of our property. And one of the things we did was just sort of cute was we brought kids out one day and we let them kind of march around that wall like it was Jericho's walls or something. And then we took some sledgehammers to it and we just knocked down the wall.

So we had our own little wall of Jericho party and we knocked it down. Well, I kept a little piece of that wall because what does it mean to me is that I knew that God had done something special to enable us to be able to acquire that property and to bless the family that had owned it and it was something that looked like it was never going to be able to happen. So I keep it framed.

I have a little piece of the wall. These are just little God mementos. I mean, of course, another thing that you might want to think about are photographs and so much has changed with this now with all the digital cameras and certainly now with phones that we've got in our pocket is so, I think it's one of the greatest things ever is that we've got a camera in our pocket. And the thing that is so important, I would say about when you think about photographs and you take up and taking pictures and wherever you are and all the selfies and then you with your friends and all of this, here's where it becomes transforming for you is if instead of just thinking about your photographs as, oh, those are happy times. Start thinking about your photographs and pictures that you take in terms of God moments. So for example, our kids, we got two kids and now they're all growing up.

One's going to graduate from college and one will graduate from high school. But all those pictures that we took, what happens with me is what I associate with those photos in my mind. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. God's always been there. In every moment, you narrowly escaped from danger. In every moment, you were surprised by a blessing.

In every moment, you just knew the direction to take. God was there. Your life is defined by countless moments of God's grace. Perhaps they've been covered by the sands of time or have just gone unnoticed in the rush of life, but your life is full of God moments. When you make a gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's heart-stirring book, God Moments, that will lead you on a spiritual treasure hunt to uncover your God moments. It's Alan Wright's timeless book, God Moments.

Discover your God moments in the past and be filled with fresh faith today. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. Now these are the final days this offer is being made available to you this month. Call us at 877-544-4860, or come to our website, PastorAlan.org.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. We were married for 10 years before we had our first child, and then I imagine our dismay when more than a year passed before we were able to conceive a child. And one January, Anne and I were appointed real discouragement, and we prayed with some dear friends who were also ready to start a family. And it was a really passionate prayer and a prayer of faith. And we just agreed together on these requests before the Lord. And it was really, and it was just, I know for sure it's a miracle because that month both couples conceived and our babies were born within two weeks of each other after that time of prayer. So every time I'd see a picture of our little baby, I would think of that. And similarly, when we were having our desire for our second child, three-year-old Bennett just came over to us one day and said, I want to ask God for a baby.

So we said, well, go ahead. You can ask God in this childlike little way. He went over to the corner of the room, and he ordered a child, uttered a little childlike prayer to God.

And when he walked back, he just reportedly, very confidently, he reported back to us. He said, God's going to give us a baby right now. And Anne and I just looked at each other and said, oh, for such faith.

But as best we could tell, little Abigail was probably conceived that week and born nine months later. When I see pictures of my kids, I don't just say, oh, cute kids. Oh, we've had fun times. I look at them, and I think about both of them were miracles. I think about the miracle of life.

I think about the blessings that go with it. So years ago, and it's still in existence, but scrapbooking became very, very popular. And some ladies started a, originally it's a Christian origin to the business called Creative Memories. And maybe a number of you have been involved in some of this kind of creative memories and scrapbooking. Well, some other ladies had gotten hold of the God Moments book and had applied these principles and started another ministry and business called Faith Booking, where instead of just scrapbooking, you look on what you're collecting and photographs and these creative memories, and you associate them with your God moments. And I think that's the thing that we're talking about here is take your photos, but look if you scrapbook or how you organize them digitally, whatever you do with these and you work with, try to think of the ways that you're associated with what God has done. Let me just mention something else really important in terms of practical way of living this out, journaling. Writing down the details of your God moments, recording your feelings about them, the things that you think that you'd never forget, you'll forget unless you write them down.

And I'm so thankful that my wife has written down some of the stories over the years that I thought I would never forget. I have the privilege of just a discipline that's forced upon me, and that is because I'm a communicator and a writer, I'm always having to record these and sermons and books and so forth. And so between Anne's journaling and my writing, we keep so much of this written down and it's really, really, really powerful to keep a journal of some type. I really encourage you to think about journaling. Anytime that there's something that you experience of God, have some place where you're able to write it down, whether it's a journal that you're writing by hand or one you got on your computer that you just, you keep these memories by writing them down.

It's a very, very powerful thing. I remember author Madeline Engle, who said of her journaling, if I can write things out, I can see them and they're not trapped within my subjectivity. She said she'd been keeping those notebooks of thoughts since she was about nine. And I love this phrase.

She says, they are, I think, my free psychiatrist couch. There's something about writing also what you experience that it becomes outside of you. And then it continues. Just think about how important it is in a courtroom. Every single word is written down. How much more important is it that when God does something that you find a way to record it. What's the ultimate reminder that is given to us by the Lord?

Well, if you look through the scripture, all of this principle is reinforced by the ultimate reminder. And that is while they were eating, Jesus took bread. He gave thanks and he broke it. And he gave it to his disciples saying, take and eat.

This is my body. He took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to him saying, drink from it all of you. This is my blood of the covenant poured out for the forgiveness of your sins. So every time that Christians watch the bread rip, we're reminded of the nails that are tearing through the wrists and feet of our Messiah. And every time at communion when you see the wine that is poured, we see his blood spilling upon Calvary's barren ground. Every loaf reminds us that the bread of life is sufficient to sustain us. Every cup reminds us that the fruit of the vine can abide in us. Every swallow reminds us the true manna came from heaven to live in us. Every sip reminds us that our hearts are made clean through our Lord Jesus Christ. More starkly, every communion celebration reminds us that Jesus experienced hell so that we would not, all of us in Christ, we've all been rescued. And so it is that when we remember, we are activating real faith. When I was writing years ago, the book God Moments, our daughter Abigail was born in the midst of that. And I remember a time about, oh, a month after she was born, she was born at the end of September, this is sometime the end of October, in which Anne and I were in that exhaustion phase when you have a little baby.

And I think our favorite card that we had received here, and that one was a popular one at the time, it said, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. What a great little card for new parents. But she was born, and we're not getting much sleep, and I hadn't been on a date in forever. But in that October, after the September she was born, we got tickets for the Nutcracker Ballet that's put on by the North Carolina School of the Arts in our hometown of Winston-Salem. You see, Anne and I have been going to the Nutcracker Ballet every Christmas season for our whole married life, and we got the tickets and we knew the time was coming, that even though right now we're just changing diapers, there's going to be an evening where we're going to go. And we love the ballet, but I think I love as much as anything the dinner that we have beforehand. We always go to one of our favorite kind of nice restaurants, Ryan's, and we've done so many special gatherings at Ryan's, and we have, that's the place where we've celebrated, and it was the place where she gave me a little pair of booties that was her way of letting me know that she was expectant with our second born. It's a place that we've had parties, it's a place where we've had intimate dinners together over the years, and every Christmas we'll just go and eat at Ryan's and then park down the street from the Stevens Center and walk that chilly walk and go to the Nutcracker Ballet and hold hands. And when we would do that in the midst of a very busy season of being young parents in our life, something would happen in which you are reactivating all of these blessings in your life. And it's not just a journey down, you know, memory lane.

It's more than mere sentimentality. I'm saying that something like that, as simple as like a date of something that we would do year after year in December, what does that do for us? We're not only enjoying that evening, but that tradition, that familiar tradition, remind us as we would think back over all the years of our marriage and think back over all of the blessings of God. How much more so in our spiritual lives that when we are recollecting what God has done in our lives through these various kinds of God mementos and rock-solid reminders, what you're doing is you're not just remembering blessings, you are actually reactivating your faith.

You're actively engaged in a conscious awareness of the love of God for you. And what will happen is that one day when we all have grown old and maybe don't have the energy that you once did, but you have the energy enough to remember and tell the stories because this is what shapes the joy of our hearts and the faith of our lives. When you go through the Jordan River, take some stones out of the midst of it. If you heard the words fire, fire, get out of your house, what are you going to grab? You're going to grab hold of those things that are most precious because the things that are most precious are the only ones that you can grab and what's it going to be? It's going to be the reminders, the things that remind you of how blessed you are, the things that remind you of love. If that's the case in a house, how much more so is it important that you and I in life with God hold on to the rock-solid reminders. God has given you blessing after blessing after blessing, and you can hold on to them with mementos that will make you never forget, and that's the gospel.

Alan Wright. I like this teaching today. A lot of practicality. It's on rock-solid reminders in the series, God Moments. And Alan, thank you for a moment with additional insight on this for your life and the final word. God's always been there. In every moment, you narrowly escaped from danger. In every moment, you were surprised by a blessing.

In every moment, you just knew the direction to take. God was there. Your life is defined by countless moments of God's grace. Perhaps they've been covered by the sands of time or have just gone unnoticed in the rush of life, but your life is full of God moments. When you make a gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's heart-stirring book, God Moments, that will lead you on a spiritual treasure hunt to uncover your God moments. It's Alan Wright's timeless book, God Moments.

Discover your God moments in the past and be filled with fresh faith today. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. Now these are the final days this offer is being made available to you this month. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support.

When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Al, unless somebody would say, oh, this is getting a little, a little strange-sounding. Just surround yourself. It's really no different than, as you said, surrounding your home with pictures of loved ones and reminders of even, even those who have gone on, right? This is the moment where you say God has given us tools, and it's not that we're making something extra spiritual out of a tangible item or a memory. No, right, right. But it's pointing to the time when God was faithful in your life. Yeah, in fact, it's really, it's using more like, using everyday things and events and moments. It's got mementos that will help you remember God.

So I guess this question as we asked is, and here's the most practical one. When they went through the River Jordan, God instructed them to take some rocks out. They were, why? Because rocks were easy. They were there.

Stack them up. What that might be today might be a pen and paper in a journal that you keep. Might be the way that you keep your photographs. Might be a way that you have certain memorabilia that are symbolic to you. It says something about the way in which we commemorate through communion and certain things that we do in our traditions.

All of that is part of it, but here's the whole point of it. God's for you. He wants you to never forget the wonders of His grace. And so that's why He exhorts you to establish a means by which you won't forget His grace in your life. And when you develop a lifestyle of that in a very practical way, it builds faith and gratitude in your life. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.