Here's Pastor Alan Wright with Today's Blessing: A Biblical Faith-Filled Vision. For your life, you're safe in God's love. I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth. No, anything else in all creation will be able to separate you from the love of God and Christ Jesus our Lord. That's Romans 8:38 and 39.
So I bless your spirit to rejoice in the certainty, to revel in the expansiveness, to refuel in the gloriousness of such a mind-bending, too good to be true, but true proclamation. You are safe. in God's love. Child of God, You are safe. That's today's blessing.
Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright. True Christian joy. is the heart's harmonious response. to the Lord's song of love. 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 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. Are you ready for some good news?
When you're God's child, You can be assured that not only he loves you, but that he is delighted in you. It's a wonderful thing to discover the love of God. But when you know God loves you, it's wonderful. But here's something that strains the imagination further. That when God sees you He enjoys you.
So much so that he just feels like bursting into song. And I want you to see today in this continued look that we have of how do we take Jesus up on his offer. When he says, I leave you peace. My peace I give you. In this anxiety-ridden world, how do we take him up on that and experience this what I would say is like a transfer of his peace to us?
It is a giving of his very heart. To us, so that we have his heart, we see as he sees, and feels the way he feels. about things. And I want us to see today this incredible link between Really believing that He delights in us. and the extinguishing of our fears and the melting of our anxiety.
It's sort of like perfect love casts out fear at its deepest level I want to talk to you about today. David McCulloch, in his biography of Teddy Roosevelt, tells a story, a funny story, about when Teddy was little. He had a phobia. He was afraid to go into the church by himself. And his mother realized this and said, Why are you afraid to go in church by yourself?
And he said, It's because of the zeal. And she said, What's the zeal? He said, Well, I think it's probably a dragon-like creature. And she said, why? Why do you think there's a dragon-like creature called the zeal?
And she said, because the pastor read that. And Teddy's wise mother got the old King James Bible out and the Concordance and started going through every passage that mentions zeal. And when she got to John 2:17 and read it, Teddy said, That's it. She read the King James Version, which reads, And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up. Yeah.
You can see how a little boy could go and arrive at that place. The zeal of the Lord has consumed him. They remembered that prophecy about Jesus. And the zealousness of the heart of Jesus is what it's about. What is Jesus zealous.
What is his power? Passion, what is this great deep passion? And you know he's God's passionate about his own holiness and glory, and he's passionate about your salvation, and he's passionate about your holiness. But what does God feel most deeply? Maybe I put it this way: make it personal.
Be honest with yourself when God sees you, if you could give a word to it, one word to it. What? What one word would describe How you think he feels? If you walked in the room and God's there, What does he feel? towards you.
And from Zephaniah, I think we'd have to take it that maybe the word that describes how God feels about his children. when he sees you. is overjoyed. Absolutely. Delighted.
And I know that constrains our thoughts to. Believe that, but this is the very heart of God. And this is what Zephaniah prophesied.
Sometime toward the end of the 7th century BC, there would been some Moderate reforms under King Josiah, but the people had rebelled so much that they're going to experience exile in Babylon. And Zephaniah is prophesying before that. But he's looking to a day the day that we now have in Christ. In verse 16, fear not, O Zion, let not your hands grow weak.
So that's way like when you when you when you have no energy your hands like that And When we have our hands lose their energy. I just all is lost. Do not let your hands grow weak. Why? The Lord your God is in your midst.
A mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you. We're gladness. This is what I want you to dare to believe today. He'll quiet you by his love.
He will exalt over you. and loud singing. I think that day is here. Because When Jesus said, do not let your hearts be troubled. When he said, I leave you peace, my peace I give you, he wasn't talking about a future day, he was talking to those disciples.
when he told them later in that Discourse of John 14, 15, 16, 17. And when he told them that the Holy Spirit, it's better I go away, the Holy Spirit will come. He's saying, I will be in your midst always. That's already come.
So there will be a consummation, and Jesus will come back, and we'll have a new heaven and earth. But the Zephaniah. prophecies are for us today. And so A.W. Tozer, in his famous classic, The Knowledge of the Holy.
has written in Christian Experience there is a highly satisfying love that distinguishes it from all religions and elevates it to heights far beyond. The purest and noblest philosophy. This love is more than a thing, it is God Himself. in the midst of his church. singing over his people.
Listen to this true Christian joy. is the heart's harmonious response to the Lord's song of love. I want you to tune your ears to that song. C.S. Lewis in his The Magician's Nephew, one of the Chronicles stories.
has this scene where there are several people from Ordinary world, including two children, who get to witness the creation of Narnia. get to witness the creation of of God represented through Aslan the lion, who's the Christ figure. And it's so Beautiful and wondrous. It's worthy of reading you an excerpt. In the darkness, something was happening at last.
A voice had begun to sing. The most beautiful noise he'd ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it. The blackness overhead all at once was blazing with stars. They didn't come out gently one by one as they do on a summer evening.
One moment there had been nothing but darkness, and next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out. And all the time the voice went on singing. The eastern sky changed from white to pink and from pink to gold, and the voice rose and rose till all the air was shaking with it. It was a lion. Huge, shaggy, and bright, it stood facing the risen sun.
His mouth was wide open in song. And as he walked and sang, the valley grew green with grass. It spread out from the lion like a pool. It ran up the sides of the little hills like a wave, and soon there were other things beside grass. The slopes grew dark with heather.
Now the song had once more changed. It was like what we would call a tune, but was also far wilder. It made you want to run and jump and climb. Showers of birds came out of trees. Butterflies fluttered.
Bees got to work on the flowers as if they hadn't a second to lose. And now you could hardly hear the song of the Lord. There was so much calling, cooing, crowing, braying, neighing, baying, barking, lowing, bleeding, and trumpeting. Then there came a swift flash like a fire. Either from the sky or from the lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children's bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they'd ever heard was saying, Narnia, Narnia, Narnia.
Awake. Yeah. 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 877-500. Five four four 4860. That's 877.
Five four four. 4860. Or come to our website. PastorAllen.org. Today's teaching now continues.
Here once again is Alan Wright. What if God made the world by singing? Maybe you were born from A song. Sam Storms has written a whole book based on this Zephaniah verse. He called it The Singing God.
Sam speculates. that the reason that the cosmos is so vast That there's so much Space. is that God needed a place for the grandeur of his song. He needed room to Belt out his booming voice. Zephaniah says He sings with loud rejoicing.
but also with quiet. What do you think God's singing voice is like? John Piper answered the question for himself. Writing, I hear the booming of Niagara Falls mingled with the trickle of a mossy mountain stream. I hear the blast of Mount St.
Helens mingled with a kitten's purr. I hear the power of an east coast hurricane and the barely audible puff. of a night snow in the woods. And I hear the unimaginable roar of the sun, 865,000 miles thick, 1,000 degrees centigrade. But I hear this.
Unimaginable roar mingled with the tender, warm crackling of logs in the living room. on a cozy winter's night. His voice, Zephaniah, prophesied. is like quiet. But it is also like A praise song.
that he's singing over you. I had read before we had our first child that children. Are able to hear while they're in utero. And so it was a song popular at the time. I decided that the song I would sing for Bennett before he was born was as the deer.
And so every day I'd go over to Ann's Belly and I'd sing As the Deer. Are you listening in there, little one? And it was so interesting because after he was born, that if he was agitated in his crib, I could try singing any number of songs that didn't do anything, but as soon as I'd sing as the deer, He requires now. What if Maybe the love that we have for music and for great songs and beautiful songs and lullabies and love songs is that. We're just composing music that's a faint reflection of what he's been singing over us for eons.
His song is. is comforting, but a song in its healing. We saw last week This contrast between Israel's first two kings, King Saul. who lived by the flesh, and David who lived by the spirit, King Saul, who tried to control everything, David, who was a worshiper. And we saw how when Saul became embittered and jealous, That it was as if it invited a demonic spirit into his life, and he began to be demonized and afflicted.
And so they brought in David, who was the best. The best musician and worshipper to come in and play the lyre and sing. And the anointed music would drive out the evil because. The song can be healing. It's one of the things we've found in the process of praying for people to be healed is as good if we could have music.
just immersing their environment, especially scripture-laden.
Songs. It was so amazing. In the prayer room this morning, and Karen did I, one of our elders was, Coming in and joining in our prayer, not even knowing who our text was today. And they have been through a beautiful and wonderful and harrowing and delightful journey with the birth of Kaelin's baby girl Raleigh. And she came into the world and then they discovered something wasn't working right in the digestive tract, so she had to have surgery.
It was a rough thing to spend about seven of your first hours of your life in surgery. and everything's reconnected and it's working. But I loved what Karen, you said in the prayer room. It's like, we're holding her and singing to her, and the singing is healing her. And I believe it.
We're healed by the songs of God. I got a call to the ministry when I was a junior in college. Then when I was a senior, I began having some intellectual struggles with my faith. And it was scary to me because I knew I had had this call from God and I was going to be in the ministry, but I needed some things to go from my head down into my heart. I was a really intellectual kind of student, you know, and I thought about it, but I needed it in my heart.
And that senior year, I was going through this struggle. I was having sleeplessness, and I was having. headaches and I was just, I guess, just thinking about this existential problem of being called to the ministry and yet not having some of the kind of inward sense of the felt affections of God in my life. About that time I met this beautiful student named Ann and she We had a weird courtship because um I would plague her with troubling questions of the faith. This is not a great way to court somebody.
I felt like looking back, you know, Ernest T. Bass on Andy Griffin? He tried to court the darling's daughter. I can't remember her name, the darling's daughter, you know. And the way he'd do it, he'd throw a rock through her window with some nose sometimes.
Other lives throw a zinger or two.
Well, how could you? Worship a God who you say is so good, and yet there's so much evil in the world. I've come to all these questions like that all the time.
Well, how can it be possible that the Bible says we're predestined, but also says that we have free will? And I mean, that seems inconsistent. What do you do with that? And looking back on it, of course, I realize I I wasn't really looking for her to answer, finally, the unanswerable questions of all the centuries. I wasn't looking for her facts.
I was looking for her song. That song that I saw living inside of her. Ah, you can get facts and information. But a song will change your life. Pastor Alan Wright.
Today's good news message when God sings, and it's from our series, The Untroubled Heart. Pastor Alan is back with us in the studio as he shares his 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 to 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 877-500-0. 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.
Back now with Pastor Alan in the studio and a bookmark placed here in this teaching when God sings. This has me intrigued as a music lover. And Pastor Alan, what's your takeaway from today's teaching? It is maybe a whole new level to think about the love of God and the affection of God to think of this. from Zephaniah that he'll quiet you by his love, He'll exult over you with loud singing.
It's one thing to think I've been forgiven because Jesus died for me. Then it's another thing, a growth in the faith to say, and he loves me, and he loves me deeply. And it's that that knowledge of that love calms me. I think it's even another level of growth to go here. He delights in me.
Yeah. Yeah. He really delights in me. I think it's almost like the difference between saying he loves me versus also he likes me and God has affection for you. But there's something so calming.
if you can begin to see God, is this kind of affectionate father. Ink. Quiet you. with his own singing. Like a lullaby.
Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at pastorallen.org or call 877-557-1. 544-4860. 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 Wright Ministries.
