Here's Pastor Alan Wright with Today's Blessing: a Biblical Faith-Filled Vision. for your life. In your losses, big and small, I bless your soul. To feel the compassion of the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort. Those words from 2 Corinthians 1.3.
I wish I could bless you with a promise of no affliction, no pain, no loss. No grief. But God offers no pledge of pain-free living. He offers something. better.
He offers his comfort. He comforts us in all our afflictions so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the same comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 2 Corinthians 1, 4 through 5. His comfort is greater than your sorrow. His grace is greater than your disappointment.
His presence is greater than your grief. Be comforted, child of God. The Lord is near. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright. And let this gospel be applied to the very foundational lies that might be wreaking havoc and stirring the troubles of my heart.
So Lord, I don't deny And try to just hide these anxieties. I acknowledge it, but now I'm bringing it to you, and I'm bringing it to you. the gospel I don't want. To make it hush, I don't want to just handle it. I don't want to harness it, I want it to be healed.
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 pastoralen.org. That's pastorallen.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. to British history one and two.
I just, the teachers weren't, it just wasn't exciting. And I just, I memorized every single monarch in the history of Britain, along with their spouses, and made the highest grade in the class. And all I can tell you today is. Henry VIII had a lot of wives, and that's all I can remember. But I got really good at letting that adrenaline-based, kind of anxiety-driven.
Thing, make me be a better student. And there's a little part of me that's like, if I didn't have that, would I even study at all? But do you see what I'm saying here? Could this actually be God's way for us to live? Is it in a sense we harness our fear and use it so that we could be more successful?
That's not God's plan. And it's ultimately very destructive. It's destructive to our bodies, and it's destructive to our relationships. It's not God's plan at all.
So I think all of those first four are kind of levels of trying to deal with fear, but the fifth that I would call healing our fear, this is what really in the end God offers. I think this is what Jesus is offering when he offered his own peace to us. My peace I give you. My peace I leave with you. This is what the offer is of saying the truth.
will set you free. This is not just living somewhat better while still in captivity. This is actually about freedom, and we're talking now about getting to the deepest root. of fear.
So back to my silliest fear anybody ever had. And I'm telling you, it was real to me. I thought when I was in second grade, I thought I'm not going to have a place to live when I grow up. That's a really sad thought, isn't it? But it was real to me.
I didn't talk to anybody about it. I assumed everybody else had the same fear because of the coming population bomb. that Paul Ehrlich wrote about in 1968.
So the way out of that fear is not going to be by denying that I had the fear. That is, you know, just trying to... Get rid of it in some form of denial, and it's not going to be in some way just trying simply to learn to cope with that fear. What we all could say of it is that no, that would be ridiculous. That's a fear that just needs to be healed.
and it's going to get healed. by the truth. And it's going to be a truth that's kind of part of you. This is the way I think of this. In Romans 10, 17, when Paul says faith comes from hearing, in hearing through the word of Christ, What is the word of Christ?
The word of Christ is truth. Jesus said in John 14, 6, I'm the way and the truth and the life. That Jesus himself is the truth. And the Holy Spirit, Jesus said, is the Spirit of truth. And Jesus called himself the light of the world.
And he said, whoever follows me will not stumble about in the darkness. Jesus says that He is a kind of light, therefore, that is dispelling darkness, which is a metaphor for all that is deception.
So Christ is truth. and therefore all that is not truth is antichrist. Fear is a perversion of faith. Have you ever thought about this, that fear is not exactly what you'd say, the opposite of faith? It's just an inversion or a perversion.
It is a twisting around of faith. Because fear and faith are very similar in this sense. that they are both expressions of deep belief. Faith is an inward confidence. of a positive future, right?
And fear is an inward confidence of a negative future. Fear and faith are the same in that way. And they're the same in this way, both fear and faith. which are both expressions of belief, tend to lead Toward the fulfillment of the thing believed, don't they? Yeah.
That's why The free throw shooter. who's on the line with the game on the line. We're not thinking about Carolina's big man Lubin with Four seconds left and two free throws to win the game against Duke. We're not going to think about that. But the free throw that you could make easily while you're in practice and not even thinking about it, because you're just confident you're going to make it.
But now when people are screaming at you and the game's on the line and you get a little tense and you think, oh no, what if I don't make it? That tension will make it less likely for you to make the free throw, right? It applies to everything in life. Both fear and faith, they lead toward the thing believed.
So fear and faith actually have a lot of similarities. But fear is the turning around of faith in the wrong direction. That's why I think that if it's true that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. Then we could also say fear comes by hearing and hearing the word of that which is anti-Christ. that which anti-truth.
that which is anti-gospel. Faith comes By receiving truth. Fear comes by receiving lies. Live no lies. And you live no fear.
I'm praying. for us today. For The image God gave me like a Bath. in light. For your brain.
For your site. I think every time we come under the sound of the gospel, there's something like this that's happening. It's like a baptism into truth. And you start feeling more free, and you wonder why am I feeling more free? It's because maybe there are a thousand little lies that are competing for our attention that begin to get lost and scatter.
When the light of Jesus comes, John Mark Comer says, the problem is less that we tell lies and the more that we live them. We let false narratives about reality into our bodies and they wreak havoc in our souls. Therefore, when the gospel comes, it's exceedingly powerful. for our freedom. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 10, For though we walk in the flesh, we're not waging war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds.
We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God. You see what he's saying? The gospel dismantles strongholds by destroying the arguments and the false opinions and ideologies that compete against the gospel of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And a stronghold is what Francis Frangiopain calls a house of thoughts, built on a foundation, and then one thought on the other, on the other, on the other. until it becomes like a fortress.
And when it's built on a lie, when it's built on a faulty foundation, it's a fortress the enemy hides behind. And that's where so many of our fears are. germinating. But truth comes and sets us free So, the deepest and most essential way to deal with fear is not by hiding from it, not by trying to hush it, not by trying to simply handle it, and certainly not to harness it, but to let God's truth come and actually heal. The fear.
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, has 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 877-500. Five four four. 4860.
That's 877. Five four four four four four four four four four four four four four. 4860. Or come to our website. PastorAllen.org.
Day's teaching now continues. Here once again. is Alan Wright.
So what I suggest therefore, and I want to offer that we will pray with you about this today, and we'll pray that God will just do this even as we're in his presence right now. But we'd love to pray with you after the service to help you in this because this is something you don't have to do alone. Is that whatever the fear is, if this logic makes sense to you, that Faith comes by hearing, hearing the word of the truth of Christ. And therefore fear comes by hearing, but hearing the word of the lie. That the real project then for us, the adventure, is to discover the lie that's underneath our fear.
I think under every one of our fears, there's a lie. And often it takes a little digging to get to what that really is. And it's worth doing the digging. When I first began having some of this insight about how lies fuel our fears many years ago. I was trying it out on a group of young people at a Saturday night gathering we called Verge, where in an informal gathering in our chapel, we had coffee and an informal service.
And so it was informal, and we had a small enough crowd. I said, listen, why don't we do this? I'll pass around a piece of paper. Write down one or two of your fears, put them on a piece of paper, drop it in this basket, and we're going to talk about some of these and see if we can't uncover what the lie is underneath the fear. And so I got them back, opened them up, and looked at all of the fears that had been written down by these young adults, mostly in their 20s.
And there were some themes that were there. A number of fears about the future and not knowing what to do with their lives. There were some things like that. But there also was in there, not surprisingly, one of the fears that crops up often, the fear of speaking in public. And so I said, let's take that one.
It's a common fear. And I said, what is the lie that's underneath this? And someone raised their hand and said, well, that y you'll mess up and people will laugh at you. And I said, Well, you know, you're right for pointing that out because honestly, it doesn't happen. The people in most of the places that you might ever speak publicly, the people aren't eager to laugh at you, and you probably won't mess up, and they probably won't laugh at you.
And I said, But It could happen. Couldn't it? And we're like, yeah. It could. You could mess up.
then people would laugh. I said, maybe that's not the actual lie then. And I said, anybody else got an idea? And somebody said, That you You just won't ever be able to be any good at it. But the truth is that you could get training and you could get better and better at public speaking until you could be pretty assured you're not going to mess up.
And I said, well, that is true. Most things in life that we're afraid of, we can get better at it and we could learn more about it. And I think that part is accurate. I said, but is everybody going to be a good public speaker? No.
Are there some people, no matter how much they get training, they still might mess up and stumble around in front of others when they're speaking? Yeah. I said, so maybe that's not really the actual lie, is it? And we kept doing this, and about five people shared, and it was the same thing. It was like, it was a little piece of truth, but it wasn't, but you couldn't say in the end that's the lie underneath it.
Until finally, I'll never forget it. One young man just blurted out. He said, the lie is. That if I mess up and people laugh at me and even reject me, that I can't still be okay because of who I am in Christ. And the fact of the matter is that I'm so accepted in the beloved that even if the whole world were to reject me, I could still be okay because of what God's done for me in Jesus Christ.
And I was like, yes. And you can almost feel it. Like when you get right down to the bedrock lie underneath it, that's the point where you need the truth to come in, right? What if, for all of your anxieties and fears, you could get to what that lie is and then bring the very power of the gospel and the grace and the truth of Jesus Christ to bear upon that? That's where healing comes.
It's foundational then. It is Powerful. And I think that's what God has for us.
So I'm a kid and I'm in first and second grade and I haven't, you'd think that I would have gone to mom or dad or somebody and said, I'm afraid I'm not going to have a place to even live in the future because they said there's going to be a population crisis, you know. But I don't know. I just assumed everybody else had the same fear. And like, we're just all afraid of this. You know, I mean, the book, the authoritative book, says I saw a film or something about it.
You know, it's like it's going to happen. And I'm not going to have a place to. I'm not talking about I'm worried about a place to romp around the woods or play golf. I'm just I wanted a place, one little place where I could live and lay my head. And I was actually really afraid of that.
And you know where it began to change? It changed. I remember a moment. They call this cognitive dissonance. where two things are now in your mind and they they conflict and so it doesn't make sense.
And we were riding to the beach. You know, when I was a kid, the ride to the beach. Which is now a short three and a half hour journey down 74, and you're mostly interstate, whatever. But back in the day, it was all back roads, and it took forever to get there. As a kid, I thought that's all day.
You know, we got to stop in Ellerby and have a tomato sandwich, and then we got to stop in Fairbluff and, you know, get, I mean, it was just like, and somewhere between Roland and Tabor City. We are riding along in that station wagon with no air conditioning, the windows rolled down, and are we there yet? And, you know, squabbling my brothers and everything. And I remember this moment, I'm just looking out of the window, riding along. I'm like, you know, fourth grade, third, fourth grade.
I'm riding along, I'm just seeing nothing. For hours, except just Farmland and forests. And just woods. And just eastern North Carolina is just like hours and hours of nothing. And I remember having this thought.
I really had this thought, like.
Well, maybe there'd be enough room there. For me to have a little house. and I had some cognitive dissonance. I was like, what if maybe... Maybe I'm wrong about this.
What if maybe there will be a place to live in the future? and it began to start dismantling. And sometimes, beloved, that's the way it happens. There's just a little cognitive dissonance where you go Wait a minute. That might not be true.
And then you begin to open yourself up. Holy Spirit of the living God. Show me the true. Show me the gospel. Show me Jesus.
Show me the fullness of what it means that Jesus came and took my place on the cross. Fullness of the gift that has been given wherein he who knew no sin became My sin. and that I would become the righteousness of God and Christ unto the Lord, and his eyes reckoned as if I had never sinned. and credited with the very righteousness of Jesus.
So that now I have been blessed with every spiritual blessing. In Christ himself and seated in the heavenlies, with him show me. the depths of what this means, and let this gospel be applied to the people of the world. through the very foundational lies. that might be wreaking havoc and stirring the troubles of my heart.
So Lord, I don't deny... Um Try to just hide these anxieties. I acknowledge it, but now I'm bringing it to you, and I'm bringing it. the gospel. I don't want To make it hush, I don't want to just handle it.
I don't want to harness it, I want it to be healed. The truth will set you free. Free. And that's the gospel. Alan Wright, and today's good news message: the five levels of facing fear.
It's from our series, The Untroubled Heart, and Pastor Alan is back with us here in just a few moments with a closing thought. Stick with us. 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 877-575. Five four four. 4860.
That's 877. Five four four. The majority of the 1980s. or come to our website. PastorAllen.org Back here now with Pastor Alan Wright in the studio, and our conclusions to the five levels of facing fear.
And the big reminder Racha's here to hush it. This is complete. We're not trying to just cover it up. or merely just cope with our fears. I think that God really wants us to have healing for our fears, and as we've been learning, The key to all of this is truth.
That If it's true. That What the scripture has taught us that. there is a way in which Just understanding what is reality can bring freedom to us. If we can believe that, then we can understand the power. of exposing even the simplest lie.
If faith comes by hearing, in hearing by the word of God. Then It makes sense that fear comes by hearing and hearing that which is anti-Word of God.
So if we can get. Those lies exposed, I think Bring the truth of God's word. This is the way we deal with our fears in the deepest way. What's the lie that's underneath your fear? Discover that.
and bring God's word. and replace it with the truth, you'd be surprised how much healing can come. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at pastorallen.org or call 877-544-454-4. The 2008.
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 pastorallen.org. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Alan White Ministries.
