Here's Pastor Alan Wright with Today's Blessing: A Biblical Faith-Filled Vision. for your life. Bless you, heir of God, to see yourself through Jesus' eyes. What does he see when he looks at you? An unworthy sinner?
An unholy failure? An unfixable problem? Yeah. Beloved of God, Jesus doesn't see you through a lens of shame. He sees you through eyes of love and faith and mercy.
He's not blind to your imperfections. But he's wide-eyed to your possibilities. All things were made through him, including you. the masterpiece of divine creativity. What does Jesus see when he looks at you?
infinite worth. Holy position. Endless potential. That's what Jesus sees. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright.
You don't have to look very far, do you, for the world to give you some shame. It's like it's in the atmosphere. But when I show you today, that doesn't mean you have to breathe it in. 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 Wright 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 877-544-444. 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?
Though the whole world, the whole atmosphere seems full of shame, and people say, Shame on you. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Well, I'd be ashamed. The gospel of Jesus Christ has something altogether different to say. Shame off you. In Jesus Christ, you can have the shame. taken off of you.
We're in a series called No Worries, and we come today to one of the deepest sources of angst. in the cosmos. may be the greatest source of our anxiety. This idea of shame. And we pick up today reading from The earliest account of a man and a woman, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, in the second chapter of your Bible, Genesis chapter 2.
Beginning at verse 25. The last verse of Genesis chapter 2, we read, And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Now, the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, Did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden. But God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that's in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But their servant said to the woman, You'll not surely die.
For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you'll be like God. Knowing good and evil.
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened. And they knew they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden.
But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked. and I hid myself. I was afraid. Because I was naked.
So I Hid myself. Shame's all around us. I don't know where I came upon this years ago. I pull it out every so often. A lady wrote: The other day, I went up to the local Christian bookstore where.
I saw a Honk If You Love Jesus bumper sticker. I was feeling particularly sassy that day because I'd come from a thrilling choir performance at church.
So I bought that bumper sticker and put it on the back bumper of my car. And I'm really glad that I did too. What an uplifting experience followed. I was stopped at the light of a busy intersection, just lost in thought about the Lord, and didn't notice that the light had changed. It's a good thing someone else loved Jesus, or I may have never noticed that the light had changed.
But then I found that lots of people love Jesus. Why, the guy behind me started to honk like crazy, and then he leaned out of his window and screamed, for the love of God, go, go, Jesus Christ, go. Everyone was honking, so I leaned out my window and waved and smiled at all those loving people. I even honked my horn a few times to share in the love. There must have been a man from Florida back there because I could hear him yelling something about a sunny beach.
I saw, you'll get it later. I saw another guy waving in a funny way with just his middle finger. I asked my teenage son what this meant, and he said it was probably a Hawaiian good luck sign or something.
Well, I've never even met a person from Hawaii, so I leaned out the window and gave him the good luck sign back. My son burst into laughter. Why, even he was enjoying this religious experience. A couple of people were so caught up in the joy of the moment that they got out of their cars and started walking towards me. I bet they wanted to pray or ask what church I attended.
But that's when I noted that the light had changed. And I waved one more time to my brothers and sisters in the Lord and drove through the intersection. I was the only car that got through the intersection before the light changed again. Felt kind of bad that I had to leave them like that and all the love that we'd shared.
So I slowed down, leaned out the car, and gave them the Hawaiian good luck sign for one more time. Yeah. You don't have to look very far, do you, for the world to give you some shame? It's like it's in the atmosphere. But I want to show you today, that doesn't mean you have to breathe it in.
Uh shame is essentially a Diabolical lie. That says, as you are now. You are not acceptable. You don't measure up. And until you can measure up You can't be perfectly loved or accepted.
So you better start trying to Measure up. And the problem is Who amongst us could ever measure up to any standard? And so what happens? Is it between The idea of what we're supposed to be, what it ought to be. and what I am.
There's a gap. And in that gap between what I ought to be and where I am now. And how I feel like I need to measure up, but you're in that gap. I think is where Hell works. to create Maybe the greatest source of anxiety in the whole cosmos.
Because you're always wondering If I have to measure up in order to be accepted, What happens if I can't measure up? And that's the way shame works. And what we see in today's primal story of the first man and woman. is that as soon as sin came in the world, shame came into the world. And that shame immediately produced within them Anxiety.
If you could heal the shame, The anxiety We'll go away. We often spend time trying to manage our worries and our angst. But I think what God's inviting us into again today is an experience of his grace so rich that anxiety melts away on its own. Years ago before I really began learning much about shame. a subject which would become a life message for me and be a source of a book and untold number of conferences around the nation.
I remember I was actually away for a weekend with my wife and I was after a nice breakfast just reading the newspaper at this nice hotel. And It was during a time that Saddam Hussein had been ousted And was Finally, though not captured, It was finally believed by the Iraqi people that he was never going to be in leadership again, that he was truly gone. And so people began to speak out. And this particular article I was reading was about soccer players on the Iraqi national soccer team. It was stunning to me.
Because they said That Before every game, Saddam's nephew, I guess it was, Uday Hussein, would contact the team and threaten them. with punishment if they should lose. The star of the team, a national hero, said, I love to play soccer. But I hated playing for Ude Hussein. After important matches, if they lost, They were taken to something that was like a prison camp.
almost like you'd think of a concentration camp. And they were variously punished, including at times beaten severely. The star of the team said, I think. thought many times about quitting. But the Husseins had threatened my family's well-being if I ever quit.
And I was sitting there just reading about this story on the other side of the world about how. How grievous it was, and it made me sad to think of people playing soccer, not for the fun of the game, but because they were under such pressure. But something in me began to really grip me. I mean, you ever had something like that? Like, this is moving me more than what I would expect.
And I've learned over the years that sometimes that's the Holy Spirit teaching me something. And so I paused and I said, Lord, why? Am I so gripped by this? I felt a deep grief about this. And the Lord, I believe, showed me in that moment.
Because Alan, you've lived a lot of your life like that. And that was when I began to realize that shame was like a hidden tyrant somewhere down deep in my soul. It came maybe from The brokenness I experienced in my family from the time I was in fourth grade, the alcohol abuse that was in our family. the shame that I experienced about that. Nobody ever said, Alan, unless you perform well, you're not going to be loved.
Nobody ever said that. And by most measures, I received a lot of love. But there was something inside of me that was driving me. And I stopped and I said, Am I living my life? Am I am I Am I striving hard?
Am I working hard? Am I serving the Lord even because of the love of the game, or because there's some other pressure that's there? And that's when I realized that. It was something that was driving me and it wasn't healthy and I began to learn about Shane. 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. 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. Today is the final day we're offering this special product.
Call us at 877-577-777-777-7777. Five four four. 4860 or come to our website. pastorallen.org Uh Today's teaching now continues. Here once again.
is Alan Wright. One of the things that I think is important for all of us to do, I did. Many, many years ago I'm talking about now, and I took an honest self-inventory. To think, well, what is it that's producing some of the things I don't like about myself? Here were a few.
I took a self-inventory, and I realized that. I was overly sensitive. If somebody said something critical to me, it bothered me too much. I might think about it for a long time. And even like if even when I was serving in the ministry, and it could be hundreds of people walk out and say something about how the Lord used that message for them, and then somebody sent me one critical note, and I find myself brooding over it.
I'm like, why am I? Why am I paying so much attention and feeling so sensitive? What is that inside of me? I di I didn't like that. It wasn't just that, but I would sometimes mistake remarks as a criticism.
I laugh with my wife about it now, but it's like it was rough on our marriage because she might say, Alan, the garbage needs to go out, which was my job. But she said trash needs to go out, and something inside my mind filtered it into... And if you were a better husband, you'd have already taken it out by now. I interpreted it through the filter of shame, and so it came across as a criticism when it really was just her saying track needs to go out. It is a hard way to live.
if you're always filtering things in such a way that you're either sensitive to it or it pushes some button inside of you. I didn't like that. I found in my self-inventory, I was too driven to do more. We look back and laugh about it now, but our first church, when we got there, they had 117 on the roll. We couldn't find them all.
There were only about 50 of them. And I get in there and I'm working 60 hours a week. My wife's looking at me, what are you doing?
So they said, you got a small little church here, and I never even see you.
Well, I was just, I was so driven. I was going to be the perfect pastor. I was going to make sure I was absolutely driven, perfect to do everything. Why did I always have to do more? And I had a really hard time ever really resting.
I found out in this self-inventory that I had to admit to myself I had a hard time saying no. What was it about? I didn't understand at that time anything about boundaries or why I knew this. It was real hard for me to ever say no to something. And listen, beloved.
If you can't say no to the things that God hasn't called you to do, how can you say yes to the things He has called you to do? I didn't understand about that. And even When God was blessing and using me, there was a little part of me. It just felt like an imposter. Where are those impostor feelings?
Come from It was like there was this hidden dictator. in my unconscious being that was dictating A lot of things in my life. There's so much under the surface in our souls. that is determining how we think. and how we live.
And I did not want to go through my whole life just trying to manage all of that. I wanted to get at the root. It's worth it. If you identify with any of those things, it's worth it. I wanted to change.
And so I started learning about this and how the grace of God Could set us free. When I first began studying, I was so taken by this. There's only one thing that we know about a relationship in paradise. Only one thing that the Lord in all the scripture chose to tell us about Adam and Eve before sin had ever entered the world. Only one sentence, Genesis 2, verse 25.
And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. There was zero shame in paradise. That's what paradise is: the place where there is no shame. Zero pressure to perform. It just is almost hard to imagine.
We don't know what Adam and Eve did all day long. We don't know all their conversation. We wish that we did. But what this means is that when there's no shame, that when Eve would say, Adam, how do I look? And he said, bone are my bones and flesh are my flesh.
She didn't take that to mean you're bony or maybe a little too fleshy. She just took it as the compliment that it was. It means that when Adam said, How do you like my row of carrots that I've been sowing in the ground and how they're growing? And she said, Nice. It meant that he didn't walk away from it and say, Well, why did she say nice?
Why didn't she say great? Why didn't she say spectacular? Why did she just say nice? Maybe she doesn't think I'm that good after all. There was none of that.
There were no billboards or commercials that were postering pictures of women for Adam to compare Eve to. She never felt any pressure. Adam never had Eve bring up to her some flaw of his that made him feel like he was less of a man. It was just... a place of paradise because there was no shama.
If you've ever tasted a moment Where there is no shame, you know it is heavenly. Ann and I, at the end of the sabbatical we were given so graciously this summer, I took two weeks off from writing, about ten days of travel. And Ann and I just traveled up into Vermont and drove all the way up into Canada. And we never said to each other, hey, listen, we got 10 days together. Let's just make sure we don't do anything to shame each other.
Let's just enjoy it. We just both went and go, you know, this is a gift from God. Let's just enjoy this. And so it was really a wonderful, wonderful tip. It almost felt like another honeymoon.
And it was just sort of a... Unwritten rule that right now we're not working on trying to correct anything in the other.
So even when I drove into Canada and had not prepared adequately to know the GPS, how it was supposed to work, and it didn't work, and instead it pointed us in some back roads and we got lost on the way to Quebec. And we're in French-speaking area and rural areas and with no map. Uh even then Ann didn't say, Well, why didn't you figure this out better? That's your job. We just finally figured out a way to look on the phone and see a map and found our way.
Even. When we were outside eating in Old Quebec City at a fondue restaurant on that beautiful evening. And I ate all the chocolate fondue myself. She didn't say Are you sure you're going to eat that entire pot of fondue? We just let it go, you know.
Just It's just so sweet. If you could just be in an environment where nobody's judging you, condemning you, pressuring you. or shaming you in any way. We get little fleeting moments of it. I wish it could last.
It made me think back to our honeymoon. Honeymoon. as much as any time in life. Is a time where there's no pressure on you. Nobody calls you up on your honeymoon and says, Have you been doing any work this week?
Have you gotten that project done? Nobody will ever bother you on your honeymoon. And you have just said, I do, and she said, I do. And you're just fresh in this covenant of love and the honeymoon. Oh, it was just wonderful.
We, courtesy of the price is right, that's another story, flew out to New Orleans. And for the first time in my life, we stayed in a nice hotel. I'd stayed in a lot of Motel Sixes in my life and camped, but this was the Sheraton in the French quarter of New Orleans. And we rented a car. I think it was the first time I'd ever rented a car, pulled up to the fancy hotel.
Never had I had valet parking before. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know who to tip. I didn't know how to act. And it was obvious.
And I looked like a kid. And I remember the valet attendant just looking down at the two of us and with this little smile saying, Honeymoons? Honeymooners? And I'm like, yes. And I felt ashamed that I was so naive.
We went up to the room, and it was the first time they had just recently come out with these magnetic keys that you now see even in the cheapest hotels. But it was only the fancy ones. And I didn't know how to work it. I wanted to just carry her across the threshold, but I was just struggling to get into the room. We came back to the room after a lovely dinner one night, and there was some sounds, music or something, voices playing in the room.
And I thought, Ann said, There's somebody in the room. And so I was nervous as could be. And I said, I bravely went on in to see who was in the room. Nobody was there, but obviously the room had been disturbed.
Something had happened to the bed. The TV was playing. And she said, Call downstairs, tell them. I picked up the phone. I called.
I said, Someone has been in our room. And as I was talking to the front desk clerk, I looked on the pillows and saw chocolate mints and thought. Why would a thief put chocolate mints on our pillows? Alan Wright. No shame, no worries.
It's part of today's teaching today in that series, No Worries. Alan is back with us here in the studio, sharing a parting good news thought for the day in just a moment. 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. Today is the final day we're offering this special product. Call us at 877-577-775-757-7.
Five four four. 4860 or come to our website. pastorallen.org Back here in the studio with Alan Wright, and no shame, no worries. Alan, you go first. It sounds like you are sharing personal experiences today.
That was a funny time. You know, it's so interesting how close shame lies at hand, even in the moments that should be the most shame-free and the most blissful. Oh, shame is crouching at the door. Where sin came in the world, shame was immediately there. This is, of course, Daniel, something that we speak about often and have many, many resources.
The free yourself, be yourself resources, the books and C Ds and videos and workbook. That explained that shame is essentially a lie that says you don't measure up as you are now. And You need to figure out what's wrong. And improve it if you're going to be ultimately accepted. And I have contended.
and still believe. That gap between what I feel like I am and what I feel like I ought to be in that gap is probably the greatest source of anxiety in the universe. To heal anxiety, we need to heal the shame. And we can, by the grace of God. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production.
of Alan Wright Ministries.
