Here's Pastor Alan Wright with Today's Blessing: a Biblical Faith-Filled Vision. for your life. Child of God, I bless you to be led by the Spirit. It's part of your inheritance in Christ. It's who you are in Him.
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. Romans 8:14. When God is your Father, You're no orphan. You're no wanderer. You're no misfit looking for a place to belong.
You're his forever. his air, his delight, His beloved. He gave away his life so he could give you his heart, so you could be led not by fear or flesh, but by His spirit.
So may you be led by the Spirit of God today. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright. The body keeps the score. It's more like there is an imprint neurologically. What we're learning is it changes us physiologically.
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, The Untroubled Heart, as presented at Renolda 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 Wright Ministries.
So, as you listen to today's teaching, today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Just contact us at pastorallen.org. That's pastoralen.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. Here is Pastor Alan Wright. David also Just had this incredible What we call big T trauma of the former king of Israel, Saul.
Who became so jealous of David. He was repeatedly trying to kill him. David had been sent to play music for Saul because it soothed him. But then Saul turned on him. 1 Samuel 18:10, Saul raved within his house while David was playing the lyre as he did day by day.
Saul had a spear in his hand, and Saul hurled the spear, for he thought, I'll pin David to the wall. But David evaded him twice. It just it just became David's life. that he had someone that wanted to assassinate him. 1 Samuel 18, 29, Saul was even more afraid of David, so Saul was David's enemy continually.
Saul sent people over just to watch David's house to try to figure a way to kill him. And then finally, David just had to flee. And 1 Samuel 22, 1, he departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullum. I've been to the caves in Adullum. It is remote.
It is isolated. The anointed future king of Israel is. hiding in caves.
So he wouldn't be killed. Trauma. David's whole life in that sense is shaped by it. His son Absalom Rebels and wants to take the throne, and then Absalom's killed, and David. grieves in 2 Samuel 18.
And as he wept, he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom, would I had died instead of you, O Absalom. My son.
So you can't just read through David's story and think, oh, he killed Goliath, he's the great hero, everybody loves David. His life was just one traumatic thing after the other on display. And what you get in the Psalms, therefore, is just this sort of prayer. Prayer and lament and praise to God that all gets merged together. And that's part of what I want you to see.
I want you to see in his own soul, but I also want you to see how there was this rhythm of confession and lament and praise. Because I think that for the healing of trauma, there has to be both. There has to be the owning of our actual story. And the owning of what's actually happened in our mind and body. but also the joining that to a higher Story and reality about who we are in Christ and who He is for us.
And David puts this on display. I think of Psalm 31 when I think of the kind of persecution he experienced so regularly with his own family. You could imagine him saying things like this, Be gracious to me, O Lord, I'm in distress. My eyes wasted from grief, my soul and body. Also, my life is spent With sorrow, jumping forward because all my adversaries have become.
A reproach. Or this line, I've been forgotten like one who was dead. This is this is raw and visceral. Honesty with God and saying, I feel because of this, broken and forgotten, alone. David never masks his sorrow.
He never pushes it down. He never denies his trauma. He knows this is part of his story. And he brings what I'm trying to say to us over and over in this series: he brings his whole anxious self to God. You don't wait until you're not anxious and you got your act together before you come to God.
Just bring your whole anxious self. to God. And just say, this is the way I feel now, God. And that and David does that, and he does it regularly. In Psalm 59, there's a superscription at the beginning of the Psalm that says, This Psalm was written when Saul sent men.
to watch David's house in order to kill him. And he begins this way, deliver me from my enemies, O God. Protect me from those who rise up against me. Deliver me from those who work evil. And save me from bloodthirsty men.
For behold, they lie in wait for my life. Fierce men steer up strife against me. For no transgression or sin of mine, O Lord, for no fault of mine, they run and make ready. Awake. Come.
See. Or no fault. I think it's important to pause here and say so much of the trauma that we experience is kind of like me sitting in a Toyota Corolla and just getting hit. And there's something that happens in the worst kinds of trauma where there's Abuse, that there's a process of shame-based thinking that we start feeling like. We're responsible for it.
And It doesn't make sense, but the the mind goes there. And then you start feeling like I'm damaged goods and... And it becomes this part of it. And David is just, David has something in him where he's like, I can be totally honest with God, but I can also say, this is, I didn't do it, I didn't. You sent Samuel and anointed me, and now Saul wants to kill me.
This was, you know, I may have problems in my life, but I didn't bring this on myself. There's a part of healing where you got to come to that place, right?
So he's bringing his whole honest self to God and calling upon God. But watch his lament turn to praise in that same psalm later at verse 14. Each evening they come back, howling like dogs, prowling about the city. They wander about for food and growl if they do not get their fill. But I'll sing of your strength.
I'll sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning. For you've been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress. There's a way that both of these can be happening in our soul at the same time. There are people, he's saying, on the prowl that want to kill me, and it causes my soul and my body distress. But you've always been a fortress to me.
And so I'm also making a choice, a higher choice, that I'm going to praise you. And I'm going to think on your goodness, you say. These are This is David. Look at verse 7 and 8 of that psalm. My heart is steadfast, O God.
My heart is steadfast. I will sing and make melody. Awake, my glory. Awake, O harp and lyre. I will awake the dawn.
You know, there's something good in that song we're singing earlier. There's a lion in your lungs. Get up. Wake up and praise the Lord. Yeah.
We have to do some things to interrupt the cycle. A thought that trauma is making our mind repeat and play it over and over. And some Many, many different therapeutic expressions of that, but what could be better than get up, my soul? Wake up and praise the Lord. And so David does this, and he models this for us.
Hey, it's Psalm 142. I just love after he's been so honest with the Lord, he says, Verse 7, bring me out of prison. that I may give thanks to your name. And this is hope. The righteous will surround me.
So, like, even when he is surrounded by the unrighteous, he's like, the righteous will surround me, for you will deal bountifully with me. Back to Psalm 57, verse 6. They set a net for my steps. My soul was bowed down. They dug a pit in my way.
but they fallen into it themselves.
Soul is bowed down, but heart. is somehow Okay. The heart. We're going to talk more about that in a moment. In other words, He's honest in his story, but he's not merely rehashing the trauma.
There's a model in this. There are times we're in the cave, but we're not alone and we can think. when we're most fragile of God as our fortress. What happens, we're learning from brain science, is that there's not just like We have a Traumatic event, and it's like you got hit, and you can just sort of remember: oh, yeah, I remember once I got hit by that car, and so therefore I'm a little bit more anxious. It's not, it's deeper than that.
It's more like the body keeps the score, it's more like there is an. imprint neurologically. What we're learning is it changes us physiologically. That's Alan Wright. and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series.
Do you ever feel like your heart just can't rest? Like no matter how much you try, peace always seems just out of reach.
So many of us wrestle with anxious what-ifs. leaving our hearts restless and unsettled. But Jesus offers us something the world cannot give. His own peace. The calm of his very heart.
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. The gospel is shared when you give to Allen Wright Ministries. 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 Allen Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-475-0. 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.
Today's teaching now continues. Here once again. is Alan Wright. I wish I could, I wish I understood more. I'm no scientist, but I would like to say a little bit about it.
I've been reading a lot about. how the brain basically stores trauma and deals with it and and what we're learning from so much of the huge growing body of of of brain science. as it relates to therapeutic approaches in life. But I think for our purposes, just important to understand that you've got a fast part of your brain. That God made a brain stem and a limbic system that has a capacity in the first place just to regulate stuff like breathing.
I mean, aren't you glad you don't have to stop and consciously think? I should take a breath right now, right? It'd be very hard to preach or do anything if you had to do that.
So you've got, right, there's part of your brain system that has just got automated things going on, and that's great, right? Because we can just, the heart just somehow knows to beat and all that. But also, there is in this limbic system, there is, call it the lower or the faster part of your brain, that has this incredible capacity to respond. faster than your conscious or rational brain.
So you've got this, you hear about it talked about a cortex and a prefrontal cortex that has the higher, more rational thought processes. It can think things, it can think about what you're thinking. But you've got a faster lower part of your brain that it doesn't think about what it's thinking, it just is like that. Right? And it has an amazing ability just to Sit a sudden rush of adrenaline in your body, get your heart rate up in an instant, and it's good because you can.
flee or you can fight or you can freeze. You know. I was thinking about last year. I was hiking with my brother-in-law on a mountain, Lookout Mountain at Black Mountain. We do it every summer, and I've done it so many times this hike.
And every year we go back, Can we still do it? Yeah, we made it up again.
Okay. And we're coming back down, and we pause at this one overlook. It's a rocky overlook. I pause there every time. And stop, take a little water, and look out because there's a really good view on this way back down.
And this particular day, I was talking to my brother-in-law, getting a little water, and I was taking a step forward, one more step forward, towards a little bit more of the edge of this so I could get a little bit better view. But thankfully, out of my peripheral vision, I just glanced down, I was going to put my foot forward, and on my peripheral vision, I suddenly saw a huge snake that was curled up. coiled. And uh yeah, ooh, uh hate. Snake.
And, like, you don't even like me talking about it, do you? I don't even like thinking about it myself. It was a big one, and I don't know much about snakes. I just don't like snakes.
So, instantly, like adrenaline, just I didn't stop to think about it, right? There's no thought press: is that dangerous? Or snakes? You know, we shouldn't be so scared of snakes. Snakes can be our friends.
You know, I mean, I'm not. Thinking like that, right? It's just snake, you know, hits like, you know, somewhere in the amygdala or something, you know, and it's just like all of a sudden, adrenaline, heart rate goes, and what I knew I couldn't fight it or run from it, that'd be a mistake, so I'd just freeze. And I just slowly backed up, you know. Like that.
And then later, I was showing a picture of somebody who knew more about snakes. They said, Yep, that is a bad one. That is a poisonous one right there, one of the few we've got in the mountains. I'm like, okay, I'm glad I didn't even know that. Because on the I've never seen a snake on this hike.
I've never seen one before. Hopefully, I never see one again. But I've been doing it for how many years? I've been hiking on that trail for 40 years. And I just like, never, but.
On the way down. It was the slowest I've ever gone down that mountain. Every stick looked like a snake. Everyone, and all of them were poisonous. Every one of them was going to bite me and send me to the hospital.
You know, it's like, you know. I'm just hoping when I hike it again this summer, which I will, that I'll want to see another one. But I hope I don't spend all my time looking for snakes. I'm going to go see the beautiful view. Never seen one before.
Hopefully, I never see one again. That is a thought process that it precedes rational thought. You know, there's a rational thought that goes, okay, that's a stick. That's not a snake. This is it.
I probably won't see another one. Don't worry about it too much. The snake doesn't want to bother you. Snakes are friends. You know, I mean, all that.
I can think about that later. But you know, that fast part of your brain I'm talking about. When you experience a traumatic event, what we're learning more about in this growing body of knowledge is that There's a way you get imprinted by that. And what it what it means, beloved, is For those kinds of traumatic events, the way that it it hit you. You part of you is wired differently now.
And that's part of what I want to pray about today. It is that some people are thinking differently than other people. and aren't even aware. that it was a fast part of the brain. Bessel Vanderkolk in his book The Body Keeps a Score.
And he's summing up his whole life of psychiatric work, a secular book, but a huge bestseller right now that's. title tells all the body keeps the score of these traumatic events that are showing up in our body. He just said this, while we all want to move beyond trauma. The part of our brain that is devoted to ensuring our survival, deep below our rational brain. is not very good at denial.
Long after a traumatic experience is over, It may be reactivated at the slightest hint of danger. And mobilize disturbed brain circuits and secrete massive amounts. of stress hormones. Trauma imprints the body. It's why a sound or a smell or a place or a phrase.
or something that's a stick, you know. can just suddenly make us feel anxious or unsafe. And we're actually feeling it. And the problem with it is, of course, as you can imagine. is that when all that comes back and it's still kind of in the unconscious.
It's like the body is reliving the trauma. And that's what we want to get out of, right? No, well, the trauma itself was bad enough. We don't want to relive it over and over and over.
Okay. Jesus came to help with that. When I was in fourth grade, I really had a great childhood going on. You know, we played in the street with all the kids, and then all of a sudden they said we're having a family meeting, and my father came in and announced, he said, that dad's not going to be living at home anymore. I was 10 years old.
I had no idea what to do with that. I had no idea what to do with that. I mean, it's just like my world is falling apart. I didn't, how's a 10-year-old process that? And I didn't really have anybody to process with.
At the time, really, nobody in our family really knew the Lord. We didn't even have spiritual resources at that time. And so that was a big T trauma. Victory. And something hit me.
And The fast part of my brain that is like, wham. Alan Wright, today's good news message: healing post-trauma anxiety in our series, The Untroubled Heart. I encourage you to stay with us as Pastor Alan is back here in the studio with us, sharing a parting good news thought for the day in just a moment. Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Alan Wright's free daily blessing.
If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Alan Wright's daily blessing. It's free and just a click away at pastoralen.org. Do you ever feel like your heart just can't rest? Like no matter how much you try, peace always seems just out of reach?
So many of us wrestle with anxious what-ifs. leaving our hearts restless and unsettled. But Jesus offers us something the world cannot give. His own peace. The calm of his very heart.
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 Allen Wright Ministries, we'll send you the Untroubled Heart digital bundle as our thanks. The gospel is shared when you give to Allen Wright Ministries. 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 Allen Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-500. 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.
Back here in the studio with Pastor Alan, where we're continuing to place a bookmark in this teaching, and we'll have the conclusion next time: Healing Post-Trauma Anxiety. This is an important message. What's your takeaway from today's teaching? You know, David's King David's life had so much trauma, and it's really instructive to me to go and look and see. what he experienced and and kind of glimpses into his soul and some of the healthy responses that he had to trauma.
And so I hope that our listeners are identifying. And our uh Also having the grace and the courage to be able to Face some of the trauma that maybe you've experienced. And so I know that's sensitive. And I trust that God's giving you help with that. but in the end I want to offer this great hope God's a healer.
He doesn't have any intention or desire to just simply leave us. with traumatized minds. But instead he said, I want you to have peace. I don't want you to have an untroubled heart. I do think he came to offer A miracle.
And I pray that for every listener, that you can't. your trauma could be healed. and therefore your anxiety associated with it could lift. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at pastorallen.org.
Or call 877-500. five four four four four four four four four four four four four forty eight sixty. That's 877-544-4860. If you only caught part of today's teaching, not only can you listen again online, but also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox. Free.
Find out more about these and other resources at pastorallen.org. That's pastorallan.org. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.
