Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing: a biblical faith-filled vision for your life. I bless your strength in the waiting, waiting for spring, waiting for sunshine. And while you wait, God works. Even youth shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted, but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. Isaiah 40, 30, 31.
What if your waiting isn't wasted time? What if your waiting is actually waiting W-E-I-G-H-T-I-N-G, strength conditioning in God's weight training program? Bless your days in the weight room. You're getting stronger in Christ as you wait on the Lord, and that's the gospel. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright.
Prayer is not a formula. It is talking to God. It is a relationship. Jesus the Son is talking to God the Father. He didn't turn his eyes inward, though he is the Son of God and God in the flesh.
He turned his eyes towards the heaven, it said, because Prayer is relational. 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. When you trust in Jesus, what you're trusting in, therefore, is that though you could never be good enough to save yourself, you're trusting that Jesus was absolutely good.
And you're trusting that God has the capacity to Mystically take your sin and put it on Jesus.
so that then you're left in the eyes of God. As a Christian, you're left in his eyes as if you hadn't sinned. And the word for that is justified. And someone has said, you could remember it this way, it's just as if I'd never sent. That's what it means to be a Christian.
It doesn't mean you stop sinning, but it means in the eyes of God it's just as if I'd never sinned. Which means that now you are invited into a relationship with God.
now and forever as his child. And because sin is no longer in the way of that relationship, and there's no longer any punishment that is due to you. then God can do what he's always wanted to do, and that is pour out blessing upon you as your Father. and you as his child. And that's what it means to be a Christian.
If you've never said yes to that saving mystery, you can do so today. We'll be praying after the service. And you say yes to that, and the Bible says you're. You're born anew.
So Jesus has this finished work. of justification. It's what he accomplished. It's what he did. But it's a beautiful thing to think about what Jesus is now doing.
And this is principal to what he's now doing. He is interceding for you. He is bringing the total effect. of his justifying work. as if in the heavenly courtroom before the Father.
On your behalf, advocating and saying essentially, I died for him, I died for her. She is justified, and therefore. It is proper to pour out blessing upon them. This is the heart of Jesus. The same heart that you see in John 17.
to pray for his disciples and to pray for you. Is the heart of Jesus still? Dane Ortlin and his Beautiful book, Gentle and Lowly. has written, it isn't as if Jesus' heart throbbed for his people when he was on earth, but is dissipated now that he's in heaven. It's not that his heart was flowing forth in a burst of mercy that took him all the way to the cross, but has now cooled down, settling back once more into kindly indifference.
His heart. Is as drawn to his people now as ever it was in his incarnate state. And the present manifestation of his heart for his people is his constant interceding on their behalf. It is, Ortland says, as if Jesus' intercession is the constant hitting of refresh of our justification in the court of heaven. Just continually bringing up your justification, continually bringing up that you've been forgiven, continually bringing up that the debt has been paid, continually bringing it up in the heavenly courtroom, that you're free.
And he's interceding and advocating for you. to really really Let your soul be nourished by John 17. Let your soul be reminded that Jesus continues to pray like this for you. Orland says, if you really want to get an idea of this, imagine one morning you get up and you're having prayer time in your kitchen at the beginning of a day and you hear a voice in the next room. And you peer around the corner to see what the voice is and discover that it's Jesus in the other room praying for you.
So it is.
So I'm I'm first Enamored, that Jesus prayed. Jesus is a Intercessor. And he prayed. It didn't have to pray. But he did.
God values prayer like that. And then After you're amazed that he prayed, let your soul be amazed and encouraged by how he prayed.
So starting with this, he prayed, Father. When Jesus had spoken these words, verse 1, he lifted his eyes to heaven and said, Father, The hours come. Glorify your son. What this means is that Prayer is not a formula. It is talking to God.
It is a relationship. Jesus the Son is talking to God the Father. He didn't turn his eyes inward, though he is the Son of God and God of the flesh. He turned his eyes towards the heaven, it said, because Prayer is relational. It's not just something that you're looking at some...
Inner guide within you, you're actually talking to a transcendent God. And this is mysterious and wonderful. He didn't plead. As if his father was reluctant to hear his request. Take on the tone of Jesus.
See how he prays. He didn't presume. But he didn't plead. He didn't Have to beg. But he also was not being presumptuous, he was asking.
This is the nature of prayer. Because The fulfillment of the prayer. is Brought To pass. Not just by the faith in which it's prayed. and not by any formula by which it's prayed, but the relationship that is there.
The Son is talking to the Father. on your behalf. D.L. Moody told the story of a Tattered man. shabby and spent.
who came wandering into the offices of a preeminent town leader. lawyer, judge, and financier in that town. and stumbled in and got an audience with the esteemed town leader. And when This Judge saw the man and he had so much to do that day. He just said, have a seat in the waiting area.
Try to get to you when I can. The judge was thinking of all the busy things in front of him, but the man said, I have a letter. Then he handed it to Judge Took and opened it. And he began reading. It said, Dear Father, Okay.
His name is William. He fought alongside of me on the battlefield and has returned home and has many needs. Would you do all you can for him for my sake? Signed, your son. And of course the wealthy town leader stopped everything.
Now interacting on this man's behalf Hmm. for his son's sake. the son's relationship with the father. the advocacy of the Son with the Father. makes all the difference because it's the Son.
Jesus is praying for you. And he is the only begotten Son of God. Father. Do this for my people. For my name's sake.
For all that I have accomplished through the cross and the resurrection. for all that I have done to make and fulfill a new covenant. that they are now in me and I am in them. Bless them. And when you pray, therefore, You As a Christian, have become a child of God, and the Bible says a co-heir with Christ.
and you are now somehow, in a mysterious way, joined up with Christ. When I think about how he prayed and he prayed to the Father, I also just notice in this chapter. Just how much love, just the... that kind of deep throbbing yearning for your best that's in the heart of Jesus. Like, here's a sampling, verse 11.
I'm no longer in the world. But they're in the world, and I'm coming to you, Holy Father. Keep them in your name. which you've given me. that they may be one like we're one.
Verse 15, I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. Verse 16, they're not of the world, just as I'm not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth. Set them apart in all that is real and true and right. Verse 18, You sent me in the world, so I've sent them into the world, and for their sake I consecrate myself that they may be.
Sanctified in truth. I'm talking about Looking at the heart of the way Jesus prayed for you, how he prayed for you. Verse 23: I in them, you and me, that they may become perfectly one, so the world may know that you sent me and love me. Even as you love me. Verse 24: I desire that they also whom you've given me may be with me where I am to see my glory.
So much love, so much Longing so So much. compassion so so much boldness for what he wants for you. for all his disciples. He prays with love. He wants us to experience In a phrase, he wants us to experience what he experiences in the Father.
Yeah. And notice this, I notice this also. It's not just with this. this compassion and love that's spilling over. But it's with so much faith and vision.
He prays with this vision for your life. Like verse 6: I've manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. I read that verse 6, I go, really? Who's kept his word?
Peter's going to deny him three times before the rooster crows. What is he talking about? Or verse 7, now they know that everything that you've given me is from you.
Now they know? Really? In most of the Gospels, these disciples act like they don't really know what's going on. Or verse 10, all mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. It almost seems like the opposite of that.
Like, he's not being glorified in them. They're going to scatter and hide. What's Jesus doing? Jesus is praying. With vision for their lives of seeing not just what they are now or what they used to be, but what they can be.
And there's a word for that, and it's faith. It is to say that Jesus does not look at you for who you are today or who you were, but who you were designed to be, and He prays that. He's praying that over you. He's believing that over you. If you wake up in the morning and you can't believe all these things of John 17 for your life, know this: He believes it.
Hallelujah.
So I'm amazed that he prayed. I'm encouraged by how he prayed, but then, of course, it's what he prayed. It's what he prayed. Jesus prayed the highest and the best for you. Whatever, whatever, you could say this, whatever was most on the Son of God's heart.
on the night before he would be ruthlessly killed. Whatever was in his heart to pray for you must be very near the essence of what he continues to pray for you. And what you could count on is in some way, by his own divine knowledge, the absolute highest and best for you. It's what he wants for you. And the word for that, what he wills for you.
It is the will of God. And nothing can make your prayer life more powerful than to just know that what you're praying is lined up with the absolute will of God for your life. And that's what's in John 17. He knows How to pray for you. much better than you know how to pray for yourself.
I'm still just glowing with the afterglows of being on the mission field in Jamaica where finally you've heard me tell I got to go and see this mission that many of you and our church has been helping to provide medical care for 35 years and to minister to these orphans who live there. Many of them live there throughout most of their growing up. And it was just a beautiful time and I'm just still glowing with it. And when we first morning, I got some of the team members to show me around and I wanted to go see the medical clinic that I've been hearing so much about. And so Dr.
Montgomery, Dr. Conley, others took me over there. Pastor Brandon, who was leading us, went to show me around. I went to see the medical clinic and all the medicines that everybody had brought that we're going to be helping to care for people. It's wonderful.
And then they explained to me that what would happen is the next morning that people would line up and we'd open up the clinic at 8.30, but people would get there earlier than that. Which indeed they did, sometimes early as six o'clock in the morning, began to come and wait, and that they would be taken in order. And we would do our very best to get to all of the patients. But there will be a number of them that will be sitting here just outside the clinic, thankfully in a shaded area that one of our mission building teams had built sometime before. And there they would wait, and sometimes they'd have to wait for hours.
And so they took me over and they said, and over just to the side of that clinic there was a little place that was pretty shady, and there were two chairs sitting there. And Pastor Brandon said, and that chair there is where Pastor Hank Keating would sit and he would pray. If anybody's waiting to receive medical care, then they could come out here and pray with the Pastor Hank. If you don't know Pastor Hank Keating, he's in heaven now. Be one of the first people you get to know in heaven because he's just one of my favorite people of all time.
And he has prayed with people all around the world. Literally, he's gone around the world praying with people. They're saying, and that's where Pastor Hank would pray with these patients. And I thought, I can't sit in Pastor Hank Keating's chair. You know, how am I going to do that?
But I said, okay, I'll be here, you know, off and on to pray. And everybody knew if the chair was open, you could come over and get prayer. And so after the clinic opened on that first morning with a prayer and a song, and then medical care began, I went and took a place in the chair. And pretty soon, lovely Jamaican woman, middle-aged Jamaican woman, came over, sat down in the chair for me to pray with her. And I said, I'm so honored to be able to pray with you.
How is it that I could pray for you? And she began to tell me her whole story. She was going to tell me about relationships and her family and tell me about her story and tell me what had led up to this and what she was going to get treatment for that day and what her other needs were that were going on. And I knew that these are the things she was telling me, but that's about all that I knew. Because guess what?
Especially in the more rural places of Jamaica, the dialect, the accent gets thicker and thicker. And we're both speaking English, but I'm not understanding. And I mean, it's just beautiful. I love the Jamaicans' way they talk. I love the kind of rhythm, and I like the flow of the Jamaican sound.
I just love it. I spent five weeks in Jamaica when I was training in seminary. And I just, ever since, I've loved the Jamaican people. But it's just, you know, in kind of the rural dialect, which sometimes called potwat. It's like if you've ever been to New Orleans and you've been.
Been around somebody speaking Creole, or they're speaking some Creole, some English, and it's just all mixed together. And you realize you just can't really understand it. And so a Jamaican might, instead of saying, I run, The Jamaican might say, me, a go run. You know, or something like that.
Well, you're putting a whole bunch of that together real fast. And y'all, I just didn't understand what she was saying. And I finally just realized, Lord, I just really don't even know what her prayer request is. And I'm trying. You know, I'm trying.
And I'm trying to listen. I'm pretty sure she pointed to her knee at some point and said something about her knee. And I thought, maybe we're going to pray for her knee. And I was thinking about our doctors in the clinic. Like, you know, I mean, I could fake it out here, but I mean, we don't want somebody treating an arm when it's really a knee, you know, and there.
Pastor Alan Wright, our good news message, the real Lord's Prayer from the series Abide. Please 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 in the studio and placing a bookmark here: The Real Lord's Prayer. And, you know, I suppose if there was ever a time where you'd say, okay, you can have a selfish prayer, Lord, this is the night before. and yet we're on his mind.
We're on his mind and he is Revealing to us What is deepest on his heart. and it points to the ongoing ministry of Jesus. that we are told in Romans 8 34 that He is now interceding for us, And in Hebrews 7, 25, that he always lives to make intercession for us.
So justification is about what Jesus did then. He died for us. But what's he doing now? He's interceding for us. And this glimpse into the The prayer of Jesus in John 17 gives you a deep look into His heart.
and it's extraordinary and it's beautiful. Let yourself be amazed that he had prayed at all. and let yourself be encouraged that he's praying for you and then be strengthened by how he prayed. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at pastorallen.org or call 877-544-4860.
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