Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing, a biblical faith-filled vision for your life. Feeling sapped, worn down, worn out.
Well, get ready for some good news. God isn't bleary-eyed. He isn't overtaxed. He's never zonked or zapped. The Lord.
is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary, Isaiah said. Think of it, child of God. The fuel that created the cosmos lives in you. you have life, Christ himself, abiding.
in you.
So I bless your spirit today. to sense the pulsating energy of an endlessly energized creator within you. No need to give up now. because God's love and life will never give out. And that's the gospel.
Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright. If you knew how Much God has been advocating for you. If you knew How many times he has intervened. If you knew all he's done, To set you up for blessedness, if you'd known all the ways He's wooed you towards that which is holy and wonderful, if you had been able to know. And the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, and He will be.
Glad to reveal to you more of that every day of your life. 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 Abide, taken from John 14 through 17, as presented at Renolda Church in North Carolina.
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More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here. is Alan Wright. You'll know that at the beginning, if you've been with us, John 14, it started with this longing of Jesus.
He knew this was a troubling time. For the disciples, and the first thing on Jesus' heart was: do not let your hearts be troubled. You know, they're going to go through something that's troubling, but do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house, there are many rooms.
If it were not so, what I've told you, I go to prepare a place for you. And if I do go to prepare a place for you, I'll take you to myself. that you may be where I am. This is what he wants. Later in that chapter, he says at verse 26: The helper of the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will bring remembrance to all I've said.
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.
So this begins with Jesus saying, I want you to have. The worry lifts from your heart. He's not saying you're not going to have trouble. He's just saying, I want the worry to lift from your heart. And then in chapter 15, I'm just giving you the flow of this.
this discourse that he has on that night before his crucifixion. And then from that, he begins to talk about abiding. He talks about abide in me and I in you, as a branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine. And you realize at verse 9 of chapter 15 that it's really about abiding in a specific way. It is by a connection of love.
As the Fathers loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love. I want you to see the heart of Jesus here. I don't want you to have a troubled heart, but instead I want you to have a deep sense of abiding connection with God, attachment with God. That is love.
And then, and only then, does he begin to talk about joy. And in our text today, in chapter 16, just look at all these references to joy, verse 20. You'll be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn and to joy. Verse 21. Like a woman giving birth has sorrow, but when she's delivered to the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish for joy.
That a human being has been born. Verse 22, your hearts will rejoice. And no one will take your joy from you. Verse 24: Until now you've asked nothing in my name. Ask, you receive that your joy may be full.
And this joy Just like that moment I've invited you to think of in your life, it has with it... the conveying of the Holy Spirit. Truth that leads into this is what I would call part of the revelatory work of the Holy Spirit or the Holy Spirit leading you into truth. Look at verse 13. When the Spirit of truth comes, He'll guide you into all the truth.
He'll not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he'll speak, and he'll declare to you the things that are to come.
So the sweet work of the Holy Spirit includes this. That He'll guide you into truth because He is truth. He is the Spirit of Jesus. Lies bind us. Deception enslaves us.
Truth liberates us. When we are in bondage, we cannot have joy. It is when we're in freedom that we can have joy. You can think of this just in simple things in life: how when a revelation comes, there's joy with it, right? I mean, maybe it's a puzzle you've been working on and then you find the solution and you feel joy.
I get a little bit of this every morning, I do the jumble. I'm very skilled at the jumbo. And I find the answer to the jumble, and I get a little joy. And if I can't find it, I'm frustrated. And I feel like cheating, but I don't.
And I go and I get my wife. I say, what is this word? I can't figure it out, you know. And it bothers me until I figure it out. And then.
The jumble, there it is, it appears in front of me, and I'm happy. It can be when there's a creative solution that comes where you've had only a problem, and it's like a light. You know that feeling? When a light turns on inside of your mind and you feel a creative answer to something, that's joy. Anytime that you're led into truth, there's something liberating about it.
How much more so? When the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, leads you into the very truth of God. There's joy. in discovering Truth. All of this text in chapter 16 hinges on this idea of seeing.
Like at verse 16, a little while and you'll see me no longer. And again, a little while and you'll see me. Verse 17, what is this that he says this? A little while, you'll not see me. And again, in a little while, you'll see me because I'm going to the Father.
It's about seeing. I think it's the same reason that this image of childbirth is here. It's like a woman who is doing the work of childbirth, she may not be able to see it right then because the pain sometimes in life can blind us. But as soon as you realize, oh, it's a baby boy, it's a baby girl, oh, you realize this is what this has really been all about. I'm saying that there is in joy, there's a kind of clarifying revelation that comes from the Spirit of truth.
And if you can have the Holy Spirit correct your vision and you can begin to see as Jesus sees, there'll be joy in it. Because when you see your life accurately, you will see your life as blessed. I promise you this. If you struggle to see your life is blessed, one day you're going to go to heaven and it's all going to open up in front of you and you're going to go, oh, wow. I had no idea you did that for me, Jesus.
I had no idea. Oh, wow. You mean there was an angel there then? Oh, I didn't. And so, what we want to do is invite the Holy Spirit to guide us into the truth of the reality about who we really are.
The most miserable people in the world are those who cannot see themselves as blessed. But the happiest people in the world are those, regardless of their troubles, that somehow see them blessed. And what's the real truth about your life? You're blessed more than you know. Paul said, You've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
You can't get more blessed than that. Hallelujah. I was thinking back to many years ago. I wrote this book on. on uh how you remember your past.
Because it so shapes how you feel today and how you think about your tomorrow. Because if you remember God's faithfulness from yesterday, it builds your faith for tomorrow. And so it's a book about remembering accurately and discovering your God moments. While I was in the middle of that, and I think Bennett was three years old, we went out one night for an ordinary dinner with some friends. You know, somebody else had some toddlers, putting them in the high chair.
You're managing dinner, you're trying to just deal with it and all like that. And I got home and I kind of chuckled. I realized, you know, an ordinary night without even thinking about it. all the things I'd done to intervene for my three-year-old. He had pushed his feet up against the table.
and wanted to push back so the high chair would fall back over.
So I stopped him. corrected that and I saved him from a concussion.
some lacerations and an emergency room visit. A little bit later, he got hold of one of the big steak knives that was on the table, grabbed it, was wielding it near his own throat. I grabbed it, got it away from him, saved his life again. He didn't want to eat anything, but when the ice cream came for the little dessert, he wanted to eat it all and he wanted to keep eating. But I regulated how much ice cream he could have, and I saved him.
from something of a bellyache or worse. And then we got out of the restaurant and we got ready to go to the car and he wanted to dash out to the car and I grabbed him by the arm and saved him before he ran in front of a car and I saved his life again. And I got home and I put him to bed that night and knelt down beside him and prayed for him and realized I'm intervening in the spirit for him. And so I'm advocating that way as well. And I chuckled later as I went back to write a little bit more in this book about how you remember your life.
And I thought, God, I saved my toddler's life five times tonight at one dinner. And he has no idea. Does this mean you've been saving me all this time and I don't know? And he's like, yep. If you knew.
If you knew how Much God has been advocating for you. If you knew How many times he has intervened. If you knew all he's done. To set you up for blessedness, if you'd known all the ways He's wooed you towards that which is holy and wonderful, if you had been able to know. And the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, and he will be glad to reveal to you more of that every day of your life.
And in it is gratitude. And in the gratitude, there is joy. In a little while, you'll not see me, then you'll see me. It's not going to make sense and then it's going to make sense. I'm talking about the The road map, the pathway to how joy happens in our lives.
There's a part of it that is the freedom that comes from the revelation of the Holy Spirit. But he leads on from this that there is a kind of actual conveying. Yeah. who God is to us by the Holy Spirit. This is priceless for the believer.
This is, if you don't yet know Jesus and have given your life to him, this should make you want to run into his arms immediately. This promise of John 16, 15, all that the Father has is mine. And therefore I said that he'll take what's mine and declare it to you. He is talking here about an actual transfer of the spiritual riches that the father and the son share. that will then be conveyed to the believer.
What this means for us is that joy Is Transferable. We already know that joy is contagious. Like, I was talking to somebody recently that went to the Nate Brigatzi comedy night. And if you never heard Nate Brigatzi, he's the best clean comedian in the world, probably right now. I think he's just hilarious.
And he's funny, you watch him on TV. But if you go get in a room with 10,000 other people that are laughing, it's even funnier. Because isn't that true? It's like someone else's laughter is just contagious. I mean, you can't get around somebody's giggling, and before you know it, you're giggling and you don't even know why.
I mean, I'm just saying God made it this way, right? And so there's something already contagious about laughter and joy. But here we're seeing that there's something that is transferable. Another's joy can be your joy. Another's joy can be your joy.
It really can be. I realize, came to mind, I was thinking back to when I had about a COVID during the COVID years. And I thought I'd escaped without catching the thing, and I was at home with it, and I had the sore throat, the cough, the flu-like symptoms, and the banishment that came with that. And so I was, my wife had banished me to the lower level of our house. And she said, I love you, but I'm not going to catch this.
And so she would throw food down the stairs every night. I couldn't even come out. I could go outside or stay downstairs. I couldn't come up and breathe on anything or touch anything. And I didn't, I felt too sick to even work.
I couldn't even, I didn't even want to open my computer or do any work. And so the only thing I felt like I had energy to do. I did it for like two days in a row. I watched Wheel of Fortune reruns. Add a I don't have any, I don't even watch Wheel of Fortune, but I just, I don't know.
For some reason, I had them all recorded on my TV, and I said, I'm just gonna watch.
So I watched one of them, I thought. You know, and later I look back and say, why I like this? It's because everybody on Wheel of Fortune's happy. Nobody sat on Wheel of Fortune. Pat Sajak's always happy.
Everybody, what's her name? Vanna White, she's always happy. Everybody's happy. Even when they lose, they're happy. One poor lady, a contestant, she not only didn't solve a puzzle, she didn't even get a letter.
She had no money. And so she was at the end of the show. Pat Sajak came over to her and said, Well, tonight wasn't exactly your night. He said, But we're going to send you home with $1,000, and I hope you had fun. And she smiled and she said, I had fun.
Like everybody's happy on Wheel of Fortune. I'm just going to keep watching him until I'm well again. And I started cheering for these people. I mean, I just like, and there's some amazing things that happen on Wheel of Fortune also. Y'all.
You got to Google this. I mean, there's somebody, they got into the final prize where you win the big money. And when you do that, you get a certain number of R-S-T-L-N-E are given to you. And then you get to select your own letters. And so you get a bunch of letters, and they put all the ones you got, and then you try to solve the puzzle.
And this was a thing. And they get all the letters up there, and all that the poor guy got was N and E. He had three words up there, and the first two letters of the first word were NE. That's all he had. And Pat Sage, everybody's happy on Wheel of Fortune.
He said, well. You never know.
Sound it out. You might, I mean, what's in there?
Sound out. He just like, you know, it's kind of like, you know, Ross or Ruck here. I mean, what are you going to do? And I'm not saying you got to be looking up. The guy looks at him, does new.
Baby Buggy. What? We don't even call them buggies here, do we? I don't think so. That was it.
New baby buggy. I saw a woman that she, all she had was an L. She got an L. It was like seven words or something, and she liked L? And said, Yep, there's one L, and like the fourth word or something like that.
And she goes, I'd like to solve. Pass Ajax like Okay. Like, do you know how to play this game? Like, you should spin and get more letters, you know? But she said, I'll just solve.
Okay. And she said, I've got a good feeling about this. And that was it. Based on an L. I mean, you can't make this stuff up.
And he goes over to her and he's like, What? And she said, I had a good feeling about it. What? Everybody's happy on Wheel of Fortune.
So I watched two days of Wheel of Fortune. You know what I found out? It's like, I'm really happy because these people that are winning, like, you know, I mean, just they win. And it's like, I feel like I won. I'm sitting there.
I got a sore throat. I'm under a blanket. I'm like, ha, we won. You can share.
someone else's joy. Please learn this in life. You can share someone else's well-being. There's something transferable about joy.
So, what might happen if I could be a little happier watching Wheel of Fortune because somebody's winning money that I'm not getting? How much more so Could the Holy Spirit Take from what is Jesus' and give it to us. That's what he's saying. I'm in the Father, the Father's in me, the Father has given to me, and now the Holy Spirit's going to take what's mine and give it to you. Wow.
So I'm talking about the pathway to joy, and it is revelatory. Truth leads to freedom, leads to joy. And there is joy in the sharing with Jesus Himself, and then there's something even richer. Pastor Alan Wright. It's our good news message from the teaching, Joy, and the Holy Spirit.
And it comes from the series, Abide. Stay with us. Pastor Alan is back here in the studio sharing 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.
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Or come to our website, pastorallen. org. Back here now with Pastor Alan, and Joy and the Holy Spirit are teaching today.
So, when Jesus ascended, He left, and He left His Holy Spirit.
So, you got a lot of, I'm sure, a great deal of emotions happening. You're fearful. This is all new. This is all different. I'm not so sure Joy would have been right there at the front of the line of what I was feeling in that moment, except for.
It is the Holy Spirit we're talking about. Yeah, you will experience something Jesus says it's almost like a woman's childbirth. Like there's. There's there's a sense, there's sorrow in the travail of laboring. But there's so much joy in the birth of the child, it's like you forget the labor.
Jesus is saying, Yeah, you're going to see me, and then you won't see me. He's talking about his crucifixion. He said, But then I'm going to come to you, and there's going to be great joy. And then they It's so important to understand, especially if anybody's listening right now and you're new to Christianity or you're trying to just explore this, the nature of God is joy. Yeah.
And the Bible says the kingdom of God consists of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. And heaven itself is compared to a great wedding banquet, which in the ancient Middle East. was as it is today, the greatest celebration that goes on and on and on. And so let there be no confusion. Our God is not dwelling in eternity in some severe and somber tone.
No, joy is from God, just as much as love and peace are from God. And so to be a child of God is to have this as part of your inheritance. My joy in you. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at pastorallen.org or call 877-544-4860.
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 pastoralan.org. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.
