Here's Pastor Alan Wright with Today's Blessing: A Biblical Faith-Filled Vision. for your life. I bless your heart's longing. to be drawn to the tree of life. Never to the tree of knowledge of good and evil the wicked Do the B tree.
That promises: if you do more, if you will grasp at the one forbidden tree, if you will perform, then your eyes will be opened and you'll be like God. Instead, I bless you to hunger for. the tree of life. The be to do tree, the grace of God tree that assures. You already are like God, made in His image.
that lives loved, lives by gift, is empowered by the very life of Christ. May you feast today. upon the tree of life and savour The grace of God. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright. That's God's will for your life.
You realize that? For you not to worry. At all. He really wants that for you. 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, No Worries, as presented at Ronalda 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 can be yours for your donation this month to Allen Reich Ministries.
As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. You can learn more about it and contact us at pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org. Or call 877-544-4860. That's 877-544.
4860. More on all of this later in the program. But now. Let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright.
Are you ready for some good news? You don't have to worry. Not because your problems are necessarily small. But because your God is so Big. We're in a new series called No Worries, emphasis on No.
That's God's will for your life. You realize that? For you not to worry. At all. He really wants that for you.
You notice our worries tend to lead us towards the thing we worry about. We look for what we worry about. uh like the husband who Bless his heart, every night his wife would wake him up in the middle of the night and she'd say, honey, I think I hear somebody downstairs. He said, I don't hear anything. No, I could be a burglar.
Please go check. I can't sleep until you go down there.
So he would get up dutifully, put on his robe, go down the stairs, look around, come back, get back in bed, and said, It's nothing. She'd say thank you. And the next night Honey, honey, I think I hear something downstairs. I'm sure it's nothing. I don't hear anything.
Put on his rope, go downstairs, look around, come back. It's nothing. And he did this. almost every night for 20 years of their marriage. And one night He went downstairs.
She woke him up. I hear something downstairs. I'm sure there's nothing. He went down, put his robe on, walked down the stairs, turned the corner, looked to the den, and sure enough, a burglar. was stepping out the back door with their TV.
And the husband said, freeze. Thinking that the homeowner was armed, the burglar dropped the TV, put his hands up in the air. And the husband said, No, no, don't worry, I'm not going to shoot you. He said, I just want you to do me a favor before you leave. Would you mind coming upstairs with me?
There's a woman up there that's been waiting 20 years to meet you. It's funny how the things that you worry about capture your attention and you start looking for it. And it obscures your ability to see. What God wants you to see. Have you ever had a time where there was something that It was in plain view, but you couldn't see it.
Our family, we like to do the jumble puzzles. It's a little word thing. You unscramble words, and then there's a certain number of letters that are circled once you've unscrambled those, and then you use those letters and unscramble those into words that answer a puzzle. And we just like to do the jumble.
Well, once uh there was a jumble that we got really stuck on not too terribly long ago, maybe a year or two ago, and we got one word, we just could not get it. Abby and I, my daughter and I, were working on it. We tried everything that we possibly could. It was the letters were B-R-E-Y-E-H. B-R-E-Y-E-H.
And. Just couldn't figure it out. And so finally, Ann Lukey, she said, Um Is Hereby a word? I said, Hereby? She said, you know, like heresy.
I said, well No, I don't think so. She said it's the only thing it can be. We've tried every other combination, and she wrote in there, she wrote in Hariby, and we just set it down. We said, well, that's just ridiculous, Hariby. And a little later, Abby came in and she looked down at the puzzle and she said, Oh, you got it.
We said, we did? She said, yeah, hereby. We said, hereby, she said, yeah, like I hereby announce you husband and wife. We're like, Oh We'd written it down, but it looked like Harrowby to us. We had heresy on the mind, and so it was Haraby, but it's actually hereby.
You ever had something like that? It's like it's in plain view. and you can't see it. Because once your mind is looking for something else, You can miss the truth. We're going to look at a story.
This story. They should turn this into a movie, this whole story. It is set in the time of Elijah and Elisha, Elisha, the successor to the great miracle-working prophet Elijah. During the time of a divided monarchy in Israel, And Syria was always wanting to invade. Israel, and this is a story about how God.
enabled his people to see. And the Syrian army to not be able to see. Because in the end, your worries will melt away Not by you saying, Well, I don't really have any problems in life. No, sometimes we really do. But they'll melt away when you see God's grace.
surrounding you supernaturally. We pick up in 2 Kings chapter 6 at verse 8. 2 Kings chapter 6 verse Eight. Once, when the king of Syria was warring against Israel, he took counsel with his servants, saying, At such and such place shall be my camp. But the man of God sent word to the king of Israel, Beware that you do not pass this place, for the Syrians are going down there.
The man of God he's talking about is Elisha. And the king of Israel sent to the place about which the man of God told him. Thus he used to warn him, so that he saved himself there more than once or twice.
So here's what's happening. is that every time the king of Syria makes a military plan to attack Israel, The Lord shows Elisha the plans. And Elisha then goes and tells the king of Israel, uh all of what he's heard from the Lord. And so they're always one step ahead of the king of Syria because of Elisha's prophetic ministry. And it will pick up verse 11.
And the mind of the king of Syria was greatly troubled because of this thing. And he called his servants and said to them, Will you not show me who of us is for the king of Israel?
So obviously, the king of Syria thinks that there's a spy in their midst, there's a double agent.
Somebody that is revealing their secrets to the enemy. How else could they always be one step ahead of them? And this is where the story starts getting pretty Uh comical. And in fact, the whole story has an edge of laughter to it, of irony and satire and laughter, even as it's raising up the incredible power and grace of God. Because look at verse 12: one of his servants said, None, my Lord, O king, but Elisha, The prophet who is in Israel tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedroom.
This is so funny because what he's not really saying that Elisha is in there going to the king of Israel and saying, Well, I heard the king of Syria talking about brushing his teeth the other night, and he needed some new toothpaste, and I heard a few things that he said to his wife. That's not really what he means. What he's just saying is that. This man is reading your mail. He knows everything going on because God's speaking.
to him. It's a story about Who can see what God sees? And whoever can see with God's eyes is the one who's actually powerful. King of Syria said, Go and see where he is, that I may send and seize him. Go and see.
where he is. He's like, we need to send out our own spies to go and try to find Elisha. figure out where he is so that then we can kidnap him. They want to kidnap him. Maybe the king of Syria is thinking I could use him to give me some insight.
But, verse 13, it was told him, behold, he is in Dothan. No espionage was needed. Elisha was not hiding. Everyone knew where he was.
So, verse 14: he sent there horses and chariots. and a great army, and they came by night. and surrounded the city. They came so they couldn't be seen. in the middle of night.
It's clearly overkill. He's coming after one man and he's sent a whole army. who fills up the city and the hillsides. And here's what happens at verse 15. When the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, Behold, an army with horses and chariots was all around the city, and the servants said, Alas, my master, what shall we do?
So what happened is the servant Gets up to go and fix coffee, go out and get the morning paper, steps out to the porch, and he looks around and goes. Oh no. I looked up the Hebrew for alas And it's actually a word that sounds like what you would say. It is, aha! Aha!
There are horses and chariots and soldiers everywhere. And he comes back to report this. He is. Completely, of course, consumed with the enemy that is at hand. This is the nature of worry.
Once it catches your attention, It's all that you can really see. Our perspectives get shaped. and distorted The things that you're interested in. The things that you expect to see, these are the things that influence what you actually see. If you expect the worst, then you'll usually look for that.
Like the husband who was so inattentive to his wife and he worked all the time. He never showed her any much attention. There was no romance. And she had a particularly horrible day. She was at home.
She had two sick kids, a broken dishwasher, a flood in the house, all this stuff going. She was just having a terrible day. She talked to him in the middle of the day and he decided he was going to change his ways.
So he just sucked her in, got himself dressed up, went by, got a dozen roses, and said arranged for a babysitter, and was going to go and just take her out for a date that night. And so he came in an unusual fashion. He just came to the front door, had his roses all dressed up, rang the front doorbell, and there he was standing. And she opened the door and she started crying. He said, What's wrong?
She said, I've had a terrible day. First, the kids are sick, and the dishwasher is broken, and nothing's going right, and on top it all off, you come home drunk. Mm-hmm. Maybe You're shaped by what you expect to see. If something is more interesting to you, then that's really what you'll likely see.
That's Alan Wright. And we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. This month's featured resource from Pastor Alan is the Untroubled Heart, a powerful digital bundle including audio messages and a digital study guide. In this series, Pastor Alan unpacks Jesus' promise from John 14, 27. I leave you peace.
My peace I give you. I do not give it to you as the world does.
So don't let your hearts be troubled or afraid. With practical insight and biblical encouragement, You'll discover how to quiet anxious thoughts and rest in Christ's peace that endures. When you give today to support Alan Wright Ministries, we'll send you the Untroubled Heart digital bundle as our thanks. Call us at 877-475-845-8525. Five four four.
4860. That's 877. Five four four four four four four four four four four four four. 4860. or come to our website.
PastorAllen.org. Uh Today's teaching now continues. Here once again. is Alan Wright. If I said, think of a double delight tea rose, the kind that has the big beautiful blooms, think of that rose bush.
And maybe this rose bush has flowers that have a mixed crimson and ivory type flower on it with fantastic aroma. Could you just take a moment and envision that rosebush?
Okay, what did you see in your mind's eye?
Well, probably what you saw was just an individual beautiful flower, right? You probably were just thinking of that beautiful rose. What you probably weren't thinking of Was the rosebush thorns and the leaves. But in actuality, the leaves and the thorns constitute more of the actual rose bush. I said, think of a rosebush, you think of a flower, because the flower is the part that catches your interest.
Whatever it is that catches your interest is what we tend to see. And psychologists have taught us that we tend to distort, therefore, not only what we see, but how we remember the events of our lives. And what this means is that if you're depressed, Your mind's eye is looking for the reasons that you're depressed. We like to make sense of the world. And so If you're depressed, your tendency is to look at your life and go, nothing good ever happens for me.
And so you look at every little bad thing. Which of course makes you even more despondent. And so what God wants to do is change our vision. It is the nature of the power of the gospel. And for us, when we get stuck in worry, what he wants to do is essentially turn our sights towards something else.
You know, it's interesting, most of the time in most sermons and most of the time we talk about worry, we'll say things like, well, don't worry because most of the things that you worry about will never come to pass. And that's absolutely true. One of the things that's so futile and diabolical about worry is that we think up all these hypothetical things, these things in our imagination that never come true. And so we spend our energy worrying and dreading them, and it's a miserable feeling, and most of it never actually happens. But it's actually not the way the Bible speaks about addressing worry.
It's not really that God comes to us in His Word and says, Don't worry, there's not really going to be any troublesome things that happen. In fact, that's not the story of the Bible at all. In fact, the story is more like. Joshua taking the people into the promised land where there's going to be battle after battle. And we looked at this text where Joshua takes his people into the promised land, and pretty soon you discover that they have to really fight in the promised land, but God's with them.
So in Joshua chapter 1, in the great motivational speech that God gives to Joshua, he says to him, Joshua 1, verse 5: No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I'll be with you.
So, by saying nobody's going to be able to stand against you, it is to say you're going to have to face some real foes. You can have some real battles, some real troubles. But he said, I'll be with you. I'll not leave you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.
So taking the promised land is a battle. God doesn't say it's going to be a piece of cake. He doesn't say, oh, there's going to be no troubles in there. He says instead, I am with you in a mighty way. That what God does in the mystery of His grace.
As he comes to you, In a thousand different ways, By the presence of the Holy Spirit. To let you know he's with you. Who can understand all the ways of God? But this is surely who he is. A God who, as long as we're in this world, allows us to experience the troubles.
common to this world. and yet never leaves us. and never forsakes us. and turns our attention toward the greatness of his grace. Anna and I were reflecting on this text this week and talking about examples.
When did God open up our eyes to something in the midst of our troubles? One of the stories that came back was one that many of you have heard before. When Ann was pregnant with little Abby. Um We were away, we were out of town at the beach, and she started having some scary symptoms. We called a gynecologist friend of ours and described what was happening.
And he said, well, she could be miscarrying. And um you know how immediately just all of the swirling fears and worries that enter your heart. And we said, well, should we go to the hospital? And he said, well, you're in an area that. Might at community hospital might not have A real quality ultrasound machine, and you might go, and they might not be able to.
see the heartbeat even if there is one, I don't know. that it'll help you to go, but um Anne and I talked about it. She said, I want to go. And Bennett was little, and we agreed it would be better for me just to stay back with Bennett. And so Ann drove herself to the community hospital.
To have be examined and see if we could figure out what was happening. And on the way, she later told me, While she was driving to the hospital, The Lord spoke to her. She said she heard it very plainly. that the LORD spoke to her heart, and said, I'm going to give you this baby twice. And she said a peace settled in on her heart that was just absolutely supernatural.
And she went and she had a visit at the hospital, and sure enough. Um They worked hard on the ultrasound to try to find a heartbeat. And they could not. And so she drove herself back, having learned only that The machine there at the hospital could not find a heartbeat. And she came back and reported this to me.
And I saw a piece on her face that I could almost not believe. And she told me what the Lord had said to her. And she said, though they didn't see the heartbeat, I know the Lord spoke to me about this baby. And he's going to give this baby. to us twice and the baby is going to be fine.
And so that was it. And um I don't remember what month we were in and the what week we're in in that pregnancy. Abby was uh born healthy little Girl. And she turns 21 this month. And we always had assumed that What the Lord meant was, I gave this baby at conception, and I'm going to give you this baby when she's born.
But a little less than a couple years after she was born, through a very hard time in our lives. and was driving down the road in a car. ran full speed a stop sign and broadsighted the station wagon. and destroyed the station wagon and turned it Flipped it over. And a giant jagged mass of metal came down in the middle of the back.
Seat. and missed little Abby in her car seat by inches. And she was hanging upside down in a car in the middle of Buena Vista Road that was leaking. fuel until finally somebody was brave enough to crawl in. and get the little baby out of the car.
And we took Abby to the hospital along with Ann. And while Ann had some injuries, Abby didn't have a scratch. And after we made it through the trauma, The Spirit spoke to Ann and said, I told you I'm going to give you this baby twice. That's peace that passes understanding. When an ultrasound sound machine doesn't show a heartbeat.
Because if God can take what you see What you hear. and change it into what the eyes of the spirit can see. then all of your worries will melt away. Alan Wright. In today's teaching, do you see what I see from the series No Worries?
Alan is back with us here in the studio in a moment, sharing a parting good news thought for your day. This month's featured resource from Pastor Alan is the Untroubled Heart, a powerful digital bundle, including audio messages and a digital study guide. In this series, however, Pastor Alan unpacks Jesus' promise from John 14, 27. I leave you peace. My peace I give you.
I do not give it to you as the world does.
So don't let your hearts be troubled or afraid. With practical insight and biblical encouragement, You'll discover how to quiet anxious thoughts and rest in Christ's peace that endures. When you give today to support Alan Wright Ministries, we'll send you the Untroubled Heart digital bundle as our thanks. Call us at 877-452-0. 544.
4860. That's 877. Five four four four four four four four four four four four four. 4860. or come to our website.
pastorallen.org Alan, as we've come through a teaching called Sanctified Imagination, now we're here putting a bookmark, Do You See What I See? And it's all about living a worry-free life. What's your closing thought for today? Our perspectives, our memories, the way we see the world can too often get distorted. We can have judgments of what we expect to see.
We can find that only our particular interests carry us into the way that we're going to see something. But what God wants to do to cure our worries. is to open up our eyes and let us see more the way he sees. And two really see our lives accurately. we would need to be able to see all of the ways that God is at work providing.
And the natural eye can't see that, Daniel, but the spiritual eye can. And the Holy Spirit's here to help.
So ask him: open up the eyes of my heart, Lord, so I can see. As you see. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production. of Alan Wright Ministries.
