Here's Pastor Alan Wright with Today's Blessing: a Biblical Faith-Filled Vision. for your life. Though you might mourn. Sackcloth isn't your everyday wear. Though you might grieve, lament isn't your life's song.
God knows you look best in the garments of His joy, and He intends to dress you up with His finest. In the words of Isaiah, may you be adorned with a beautiful headdress instead of ashes? with a garment of praise instead of a spirit of heaviness. with the oil of gladness instead of mourning. in Christ.
You've already come into the year of the Lord's favor. Everlasting joy is your destiny. God bless you. to start Today. And that's the gospel.
Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright. If we have fear, It is directly related to a love deficit. 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.
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More on this later in the program. But right now. Let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Pastor Alan Wright.
Okay, precious saints, are you ready for some good news? Perfect love casts out fear. Say it with me. Perfect love casts out fear. So if you want to have less fear, Let God love you.
Well, to all the couples, I hope you had a good Valentine's. Amen. I hope you didn't blow it. Yeah, years ago, I think I've told you before, my my spiritual father, Dudley Hall, He and his wife Betsy were getting ready for a nice night out. And Betsy was finishing dolling up and getting dressed and getting her makeup on.
She turned to Dudley and she said, how do I look? And what he wanted to say was, Darling, you just couldn't look any better. But instead what came out is You look as good as you can. And that just... That'll ruin the evening right there.
There's certain things the woman doesn't want to hear, men, if it's on Valentine's Day and she says, Why do you love me? She doesn't want to hear that is because They're as good as I could get. You know, I mean, it just doesn't. It doesn't, it doesn't, and she doesn't want to hear because you're... you know, you're quite functional.
And I like the way that you support me. And, you know, I just wouldn't be half the man I am. If you weren't here, you know, help and take care of me and list the things that she does around the house or whatever, you know. It's not what she wants to hear. When we want to know if we're loved, what we want to know is.
Do you love me just because You love me. Yeah. be adored and some sort of full and permanent way. That's that's the kind of of love that that changes us. I've often put it this way, Can't think of a better illustration, so I keep repeating.
If I told my wife 99 days in a row. Honey, I love you. I adore you. I have been giving you By God and I I'm in a covenant with you and I'll never leave you. I am going to grow old with you and always and then on the hundredth day I got in a bad mood and said I don't know.
Maybe you're not good enough. I don't know if I'm going to stay around with you or not. You might not, unless you improve, I'll be better. What? What would that one first place?
You know my wife. I don't live very long after that.
So that would not be wise. But in the second place, in the second place, what would that one day of conditional love do to the other 99? It just wipes them out, doesn't it? It just It would taint every single other day. And even if for the next 99 days, I were to say, I love you, I'm never going to leave you.
She'd still be thinking about that one other day. Right? that one percent of of imperfect love. can taint the rest of it. It means that 1% of law-based thinking One percent of shame-based thinking.
Like I will only be loved. if I measure up. 1% like that. It might seem like it's not that much. But it can introduce an unlimited Opportunity for fear, can't it?
Because you never know when the other shoe is going to drop. You never know. This all goes far to explain how beautiful and vital And important. 1 John 4.18 is. There is no fear in love.
But perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment. Fear only makes sense if there is some sort of law-based. Moralistic Shame-based thinking of I need to measure up in order to be loved. And if not, then I'll suffer the consequences. If that's not even the system.
you say. If there's some whole other way of being in a relationship, then there would be no fear, because fear only has to do with punishment. And so therefore, whoever fears has not been perfected in love. Do you see what John is saying very plainly here? is that if we have Fear.
It is directly related. to a love deficit. In a deep sense, biblically. The opposite of Love is not hate, but fear. Isn't that interesting?
At least the way God thinks about it. And I want us to just go deep in this text. And I want to invite you to open your heart to the love of God. in ways that maybe you always have And it goes deeper, and maybe for some to open your heart to the love of God and new ways. Today.
And I want to pray for you. I want to pray for you that you'll have the strength in your inner being, as Paul says, to know how wide and long and high and deep is the love of God. Because my understanding of the text tells me that... If our aim is to live with an untroubled heart, get rid of our anxiety. that the surest pathway to the unburdening of our fear is Perfect love.
And therefore, the focus really is on how do we How do we receive that love? and know that love. What John says at verse 16 is we've come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. That's Alan Wright. And we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series.
God's love. You've heard about it with your ears. You've believed it in your mind.
Now experience it in your heart with Alan Wright's beloved book, Lover of My Soul. The Bible is a love story from beginning to end. You are the spiritual bride of Christ, the perfect bridegroom. The Bible tells about a God who has gone to unimaginable lengths to woo you, to win you, and to walk with you hand in hand. For any man who has fallen in love with a woman, you've tasted the sweetness of what God's love for you is like.
For any woman who has searched for true love, What you long for can only be found fully in God. Gary Chapman, renowned author of The Five Love Languages, says, the incredible reality that God pursues us in love comes to life in Lover of My Soul. Ancient biblical accounts explode in the heart. Accept Christ's proposal, enjoy his embrace, revel in his love. After all, it's a match made in heaven.
It's Lover of My Soul by Alan Wright. 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. Today is the final day we're offering this special product.
We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Allen Wright Ministries. Call us at eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. That's eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. Or come to our website, pastorallen.org. Today's teaching now continues.
Here once again. is Alan Wright. They're two different words in the Greek to know. is to Know that that is the nature of God. But to believe is more like the word trust.
It is to put your life in the full weight of your life into the arms of that loving Father. And so I want us to to be able to recognize what God's love really is. And I want to help you to want that love, to relish it. and to receive it, to recognize, to relish and receive The love of God. To recognize the love of God starts with this, to know that it is a perfect love and therefore it is different than any sort of earthly love.
This is the nature of God. It will be the nature of heaven. And anyone who experiences God experiences this otherworldly love. It is a perfect love. If you were to go back through the text, that's a good way to study your Bible, and you could take a passage, and the first thing you do is let, what are the words that keep Keep being repeated or jumping out at me.
And if you go back to the text we read, look at all of the mention of either the word love or the word perfect or perfected. Back at verse 17, just looking at this. Let us love one another. Verse 7, for love is from God. Whoever loves has been born of God.
Verse 8, who does not love does not know God because God is love. Verse 16, to know and believe the love that God has for us. God is love. Whoever abides in love abides in God. God abides in him.
This is love perfected. There's that word perfected with us that we may have confidence. Verse 18, there's no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. Whoever fears has not been perfected in love. And verse 19, we love.
So over and over, these words, these two words, love and perfect or perfected. And the word, as we've spoken of often, for God's kind of covenant love is agape. There are four words in the Greek language for love. We only have one word, love.
So we're always having to figure out what you mean by the context of when you say, I love it. I love a Gear Delhi Hot Fudge Sunday. I love Carolina basketball, not so much this year. I love, you know, that means something different than when I say, I love my wife or I love God. But we have to understand the context.
But in Greek, these words have nuances. Storge is, I'm just oversimplifying, it's like affection. Philos is like the kind of love between friends, eros romantic love, and agape is the word that John keeps repeating here. And it is often translated just love, or sometimes its counterpart in the Old Testament, Chesed, is steadfast love. I don't know, it's covenantal love.
C.S. Lewis says that the meaning of this is understood when you think of gift love. There's a kind of love that is a gift. It is like what a parent would feel. to work and plan and save for the future well-being of his family.
And that well-being that would happen even after, say, a father's death. There's a kind of love like that, C.S. Lewis says, a gift love. This is the nature of God's love. Interestingly, in the Greek world, Eros was highly elevated as the concept of love.
And it wasn't just because it was such a sex-soaked culture, which it was. But it was because of the philosophy behind it that Eros is a kind of love that's seen more about impulse than it is the will. And so agape stands in complete contrast to that because agape. is about choice. It's about connection.
It's about covenant. And so God's love is seated in a kind of adopting. Choice for you. It is, in some scholars' mind, a concept that was new to the Bible. Agape love, although it has been found in ancient times.
But it is something that uniquely describes the nature of God's kind of love for you. It is not just to say it's unconditional. is to say that the love of God is forming you. Martin Luther, the great reformer, said, the love of God does not find, but creates that which is pleasing to it. Rather than seeking its own good, the love of God flows forth and bestows good.
Therefore, I love this. Sinners are attractive because they're loved. They're not loved because they are attractive. This is the nature of covenantal love. This is the nature of agape love.
You don't love your kids. Because They are better or more attractive than everybody. You love them because they're yours. And therefore they're very attractive to you. He begins our section of scripture we read today by verse 7 saying, Beloved, Let's love one another.
For love is from God. one part of one verse But look at look at that beloved Let us have agape for one another, for agape is from God. And do you see what he calls them? And it's what Paul loves to call the saints, and John calls the saints over and over, beloved. ones who are loved.
It's a beautiful word in Greek, it's agape toi. Agapitos in the singular. a recipient of agape love. That's who you are. That's your identity.
You're the Agapitoy. You're the ones who have received The Pure Permanent. Agape love. of God. There's no greater definition of who you are.
To be a Christian, therefore, is to be defined not by Really, your love for God, but to be defined by the love of God for you. And the word for perfected is so important to understand. Teleo, teleo. It is. A verb that means to finish entirely.
Or Talios means Complete. utterly whole. Totally Mature. It's hard to describe. this uh kind of love.
because we tend to think of how much we love someone. as if it is a quantity. or how much we love something. We were with the grandbaby Mia in the Disney store and she tried on this adorable little Minnie Mouse raincoat. And I never believed how much my cheap Frugal heart would change by having a granddaughter.
And you just buy her everything. These things, I look at them, I go, I can't even believe how much they're asking for this tiny raincoat. But it was cute as could be. And she put it on and looked in the mirror and we said, Mia, do you love it? And she said, I like it.
But I don't love it. And we whipped that thing off of her. And She put on these mini mouse crocs. Just rubber shoes. I didn't know crocs cost that much.
I see people wearing them. They're glorified. Flip-flops, I mean. They were mini-mouse crocs. The price was staggering.
And when it was, we were goners, when she put them on and stepped, and they lit up when you walk. All children's shoes light up, I think, now. And she saw them lighting up, and we said, Do you love them? She said, I love them. And so she loves them.
She loves her Minnie Mouse Crocs, you know. How much do you love something? When Abby was little, we had a game One night as I was putting her to bed, as was our custom, if at all possible, I always put the kids to bed. And it had been Christmas, Christmas, a wonderful Christmas. I can't remember how old she was.
She was little. We were remembering the day. the big, beautiful Christmas breakfast and the wonderful presents and time with family and all of the day and going to bed. I said, Abby, I love you. It's been a wonderful day.
I love Christmas, don't you? Yes, I do. And I said, but I love you way more than Christmas. I said, in fact, I love you more than a million Christmas mornings. And it became a custom that every kind of special occasion might come along, I would just randomly announce, you're going to get a new I love you tonight.
And it might be that it was, you know, something really special had happened, and I'd give her a new I love you. And they included things like, I love you more than a million rounds of golf. And I love you more than a million Ghirardelli Hot Fudge Sundays. It was all stuff that she knew I loved a lot. And I'd say I love you more than a million of that.
And what happened was we got about 40 of them. And her job was to remember to fill in the blank.
So I would say, I love you more than a million Christmas, and she'd say, mornings. I love you more than a million, Gira Delly, and she's a hot fudge Sundays. And we had this memorized, about 40 of them. Because they're trying to find a way to say, I love you a lot. We don't really have a good way to say, I love you.
Perfectly. But that's what this word Kalios means. It means Completely. Pastor Alan Wright, and today's good news message. Perfect love casts out fear.
It's in our greater series called The Untroubled Heart, and I encourage you to stay around. Pastor Alan is back with us here in the studio, sharing a parting good news thought for the day. Just for you. 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. God's love. You've heard about it with your ears. You've believed it in your mind.
Now experience it in your heart with Alan Wright's beloved book, Lover of My Soul. The Bible is a love story from beginning to end. You are the spiritual bride of Christ, the perfect bridegroom. The Bible tells about a God who has gone to unimaginable lengths to woo you, to win you and to walk with you hand in hand. For any man who has fallen in love with a woman, you've tasted the sweetness of what God's love for you is like.
For any woman who has searched for true love, What you long for can only be found fully in God. Gary Chapman, renowned author of The Five Love Languages, says, The incredible reality that God pursues us in love comes to life in Lover of My Soul. Ancient biblical accounts explode in the heart. Accept Christ's proposal, enjoy His embrace, revel in His love. After all, it's a match made in heaven.
It's Lover of My Soul by Alan Wright. 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. Today is the final day we're offering this special product.
We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Allen Wright Ministries. Call us at eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. That's eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. Or come to our website, pastorallen.org. Back here now with Pastor Alan, and today's good news message: Perfect Love, Cast Out Fear.
And in this greater series, it really has a theme of overcoming anxiety. Anxiety. and fear. They they often dance together, don't they? Anxiety, fear, insecurity, and angst are just different expressions of the same root.
of a troubled heart. That's why I love what Jesus. I mean, he's in the final discourse, the upper room discourse, the most intimate conversation that he would have with the disciples on the very eve of his own crucifixion. And he starts and he says, This is what I want you to understand. I want you to have my peace.
And I just want to say to all of our listeners: if you, you know, to the extent that you've tasted of it, you know it is sweet and you want to savor it and have more. such peace. And to others you may be listening going, I just I long for that. I don't even know if I know what that is. And here is the key, if there's any key, and this is this.
God loves you perfectly. Perfect love, if we could know it, casts out fear. Daniel, it's all of the imperfections of our earthly love that causes our insecurity. And so many of us, we we've been loved, but we also know that Sometimes we mess up, and it seems like the people that love us, maybe the love diminishes a little bit. We don't have perfect love in this world.
Right. But. Heaven's love, God's love. is perfect. And the more that we're able to apprehend, understand, receive, and walk in it.
the last fear we're going to have. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at pastorallen.org or call 877-477. 544-44. The 2008.
That's 877-544-400. 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.
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