Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing, a biblical faith-filled vision for your life. Open your heart to receive today's blessing. May God make you as Ephraim Amanash. like the grandsons Jacob adopted as his own. making them heirs in the promised land.
Like Manasseh, Named such by Joseph because it means forgotten troubles. Yesterday's over, and today's blessing is here. like Ephraim, named such by his dad because it means twice fruitful. Doubly productive, twice as fruitful by God's grace as you could ever be by your own efforts. Like Ephraim and Manasseh, because Jacob, in a scandalous gesture, crossed his arms that day.
And he put his right hand, the symbol of higher blessing, on the younger son and left the firstborn bereft of the blessing he deserved. Is Jesus hung on the cross? God crossed his arms in the heavenly. Removing his right hand from the deserving firstborn of all creation, and extending the blessing warranted only by Jesus to all the Ephraims, the secondborns, to you. and me in christ You've become favored forever.
In Christ, you are like Ephraim and Manasseh. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright. God is all-powerful and all-sovereign. He's the creator of the ends of the earth.
So. Demons are not omnipresent, they're not omnipotent, they're supernatural. But supernatural doesn't mean superior to us who live in natural bodies. Uh just of a different kind of creature order. 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 am Daniel Britt. Excited for you to hear the teaching today in our series, Empowered, 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. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer.
Contact us at pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org. or call 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now let's get started with today's teaching.
Here is Pastor Alan Wright. Mm. Are you ready for some good news? Every believer has authority over every evil spirit. If you've ever been to our Spirit-Filled Life class, you've seen on video me share about my first encounter.
With the demonic. I was pretty new in the little church I was serving in Durham, North Carolina, fresh out of seminary. Maybe I'd been there a couple of years. when uh dear lady came walking out of church and waited for a little while until everybody left and then she approached me. And she said, I have a problem.
I said, What is it? I'll call her Maria. That wasn't her name. Maria, what's the problem? And she said, I have a demon.
And I said, oh, that is a problem. She said, And the Lord spoke to me today and said, You. are the one to cast it out. I froze like a deer in headlights and my mind started turning about all the possible responses. My first response was to think of saying, Would you go back out front and look at the sign in our front yard and note that it says Presbyterian Church?
And in fact, at the time I was in the mainline Presbyterian church. Mainline, Presbyterian. It does not say greater deliverance tabernacle out there. I started thinking about who I could refer her to. I was thinking about my Pentecostal pastor friend down the street.
And I'm buying myself time. I said, has this problem been going on long? She said yes, and now she reiterated, and you are the one to cast it out. And I tried to look around, like, you really mean me? I thought about telling her, I never had a class in seminary on how to cast out an evil spirit.
I have done Greek exegesis, and I could do some good Bible study notes for you if you would like it. But there she was, with all of her need, just looking right at me and asking me to do this. And I had to admit, I was the only pastor, and maybe the Lord had spoken to her. And so, in a moment of some kind of ministerial insanity, I said, okay. When would you like me to come over.
She said, Well, this afternoon would be good. If you're free. And I thought, well, other than going to lunch at Doris Bledsoe's house for some homegrown vegetables and the nap that I had planned on, I guess I was free. I went home and told my sweet wife, I said, honey, I need you this afternoon for a pastoral visit. She said, Oh, is somebody sick?
I said, Well, in a word. She said, is it one of our homebound? I said, no. She said, who is it? I said, it's Maria so-and-so.
She said, Oh, well, what's going on? I said, Well, She said she has a demon, and that the Lord told her that I was the one to cast it out. And Ann's eyes grow wide as saucers and she's like, Well, what do you want me for? I said, well, I can't go alone. I need you to come help me cast it out.
And my precious and beautiful wife, who has been with me by 100 and 100 gravesides and been to every covered dish luncheon imaginable, and stood with me in hospital rooms. After a while, she just said, Okay. And so we made our plan to go over. You can't make this stuff up. This is truth when I went to go get in the car.
We had a gravel driveway, no carport, no garage. And first time I'd ever seen it and never saw it happen again, there was an enormous snake blocking my way from getting into the car. I don't like snakes. I don't know snakes. I don't know the good ones from the bad ones.
And my wife caught a glimmer of it. She went back inside as if to say, until you kill that snake, we're not going anywhere.
So I went and got a hoe or something, and I went out there and I killed the snake and I flung it out of the way and I said, All right, hun, the way is clear, we need to go. And so off we went to go and minister. To this dear Parishioner, and if you'll stay with me, I'll finish up this story a little later. That was my introduction. I thought that's surely either for somebody else, or maybe it's not necessarily that real of a thing.
It is very interesting, though, if you go through the New Testament. you'll see that as we Look at the way Jesus. healed And how integral it was to his ministry that so was this. this clash between Jesus's power and the demonic. and how easily and readily He was able to expel evil spirits and set people free.
And fulfillment of the very promise of Isaiah that Jesus himself Announced over his own life at the inauguration of his ministry when he said, I came to set the captives free. And what you also notice is that people were amazed and for the people who were set free, they were gloriously, wonderfully joyous at their newfound freedom. And as we'll see today, What's really remarkable is that Jesus shared this authority and power. Not just with his closest 12 disciples, not just with those very special apostles, but as we see in today's text, with the larger band of disciples that he sent out to proclaim the kingdom and they came back rejoicing that even the demons were subject to them. in his name.
This is Luke chapter 10 at verse 1. where he is appointing them. The Lord appointed 72 others, not the 12. and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town. and to every place where he himself was to go.
He knows where he's going to be traveling, and he sends them ahead so that they are, in a sense, helping prepare the way for Jesus' own ministry. They are a sneak preview of what Jesus is going to do in more glorious ways. And there's some things that you learn when you look at this. The first is that this means that. This power over evil Is not just for some spiritually elite group, but these are new disciples, relatively new.
I mean, Jesus' ministry in the midst of it, and they are not necessarily his closest associates. Most scholars think it was men and women, and he sends them out without really that much training or anything. And when they come back at verse 17, the 72 returned with joy. saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name. What do you learn from this?
Well, the first thing you learn is that demons are real. They are probably What you would just think of as fallen angels. You could probably just think of, you believe in angels?
Well, they're. good angels and they're Fallen angels. They are creatures. Demons are creatures. They're not like gods in the sense that they've always existed.
They were made by God. There's only one creator. It's really important to remember when you think about any kind of supernatural being that stands in opposition to God. God is all-powerful and all-sovereign. He's the creator of the ends of the earth.
So Demons are not omnipresent, they're not omnipotent, they're supernatural. But supernatural doesn't mean superior to us who live in natural bodies. Just of a different kind of creature order. There are two equal opposite errors I think we can fall into, and one is to think that. There really aren't evil spirits, and that therefore we would miss even knowing that we were being influenced by such evil.
C.S. Lewis wrote a well-known book called The Screwtape Letters, in which it's really quite brilliant. He portrays a senior demon writing letters to a junior novice demon on how to interact with his, what he calls, patient, which is actually his victim. And one of the things he advises him is don't let him think that you're real. Screwtape writes, do not think that you'll have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark.
The fact that devils are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that, he therefore cannot believe in you.
So, some people say, well, there could be no devil. It's just too preposterous to think of. And so, a southerner wrote a silly poem.
Some say the devil's just a myth, a story old and small. But if the devil is not real, who's doing all this evil, y'all? The opposite error, of course, is to think that demons are everywhere, like the old Flip Wilson character.
Some of you are old enough to remember. It was this character that he'd say, the devil made me do it. And as if all of our problems are due to some demonic influence. And so the It's very important to say there's not a demon behind everything, and not everything's a spirit. We took our friends Carl and Christy, who ministered so beautifully with us last week.
We took them for a drive up the Blue Ridge Parkway and to Blowin' Rock, and there were still some beautiful leaves, and we ate some trout. And I suggested we stop by Kilwins. And I educated them that if you will get a single scoop, but tell. the scooper that you want a half and half. Like.
My favorite, half cappuccino chocolate chip and half s'mores.
Well, the way they end up scooping it, it's almost like you get two scoops. But anyway, I got my ice cream, everybody else did, and as we were leaving Kilwins, I noticed. As the Lord would have it, that the fudge was on special, three slabs for the price of two.
Well, I just took that as a word that we're supposed to get some fudge as well.
So we had ice cream in the afternoon and fudge at night, and I gained two pounds. It was not a spirit of gluttony. That was just the flesh wanting some sugar. Not everything is a spirit. You can't just feel like you want to take a nap and feel like you got to rebuke the spirit of laziness.
I heard of somebody that was having a hard time parking at a parallel place and rebuked the spirit of bad parking. And another lady that said she came to her preacher after the service and said, I'm sorry I was so late. I was at home this morning and I was having to rebuke the spirit of humidity that was causing me to have such hair problems. I know. It's not that They're not real, and it's not that everything is attributable to the demonic.
Instead, there is a complicated reality. in which we live in a world where as Christians, We have been utterly forgiven. And yet the sin nature has not been utterly and completely transformed. We're being transformed, and so we still have a sin nature.
So, a lot of our problem is just coming out of our own sin nature, or maybe out of lies that we have believed. Maybe that have been passed on from the generations. Or there's just a whole lot of what goes wrong, we're just facing temptation. And it's not because there's some direct demonic attachment or any such thing.
So we learn from this that The demons are real, and here's the second thing that we learn from this little incident. Is it When they come back, They make it abundantly clear When we went and we started proclaiming the kingdom we started encountering the demonic.
So It's interesting when you're a Christian in some ways You have not just established this beautiful new relationship with God. But you have, in a sense, a new relationship. with the evil entities because now You are a threat to the powers of hell. that before you even knew the Lord, you really weren't. And so you can expect that there is a spiritual battle.
I tell you, if I could just sum up where one of the biggest struggles I have is, I just wish that sometimes. Life would just be easy and you get moments of it. But it's just not really like the Hallmark movies. We're getting ready to come into the Christmas season, and I think last year they made 40 Hallmark movies.
Someone has, I saw online, has identified there are only 12 plots for a Hallmark movie, and there'll never be any more. They're just different variations of that. The number one fan favorite is that the girl falls in love with the cute guy who has impeccable manners and a mysteriously powerful family. And it turns out, surprise, he's a prince. There's another kind of Hallmark Christmas movie.
There'll be some this year, in which is basically a girl is scheduled to be married to a boy who is a man who is overworking and maybe he is on Wall Street, very prosperous, but he's not attentive enough to the woman. And so she meets by surprise or happenstance someone who does not have such a big job and maybe has a humble kind of vocation, but But she ends up falling in love with him instead of the businessman. And these are always hard on me as a father who has an unmarried daughter because there's a part of me that's like, no, no, marry the guy with the good job. I saw one of these films last year. The girl falls in love with the humble guy, and he is.
Actually, the the son and the rightful heir of a big f Furniture Furniture maker, and the father's ready to hand it all over to this son. But he doesn't know his son doesn't really want to do it. His son actually likes making small individual handcrafted pieces of furniture. And it comes this big scene where the son's finally going to tell his dad, I don't really want to take over the business. And his dad's there, and the Christmas decorations are all around.
And the father says, You know, son, sometimes in life, they're just those moments where everything is just perfect and all is right. And his son interrupts and says, Dad, this isn't one of those moments. I don't want to take over the family business. Life's not a Hallmark movie. And as a Christian, what happens is that you're in a spiritual battle.
You're in a fight. Alan Wright, our good news message, Power Over Evil, from the series Empowered. Please stay with us. Pastor Alan is back joining me in the studio, sharing his parting good news thought for the day in just a moment. Alan Wright Ministries is more than just a daily radio broadcast.
Here are Daniel and Pastor Alan explaining another layer. Pastor Alan, we love putting resources into the hands of believers and those who are looking for ways to improve their life through the good news of the gospel. And those resources show up in a variety of ways. One of the coolest ways I think, though, is every day a resource called the Daily Blessing pops in my email inbox. And what a way to start our day.
This is absolutely free. It's the best way to start your day or to. Pillow your head at night. Put this down into your heart, the sound of a blessing. And by that, we mean a positive biblical vision spoken in faith over your life that helps shape your identity for who you really are and with it fuels you for a positive future that God has intended.
It's a world that's real quick to curse. You don't have to go very long into your day before somebody is ready to speak negative things over you. We need the true word of God spoken over our life. And so, Daniel, I write a daily blessing every day and would love to send it. All you have to do is just give us your email at pastorallen.org and we'll get you signed up and start including you.
PastorAllen.org is your next step. Simply drop by on your phone, tablet, or computer today. That's pastorallen.org and be blessed with a fresh word from the Lord today. We're back here now in the studio with Pastor Alan. And as we place the bookmark here, we've just gotten started with this teaching: power over evil.
Pastor Alan, there really is a battle out there. And I think for some of us, we may have our head in the sand about that, but the Lord gives us that power. If we're going to discuss the power of God in the New Testament and the power of God for today's living for a modern-day disciple of Jesus, you can't have this discussion and not talk about the power of God over evil. because it was a huge part of Jesus's ministry. And I know that we live in a modern world and ideas and thoughts about demons and unseen creatures that are in a spiritual battle.
It seems like it can be almost like crazy talk. But this is the picture of scripture, and we are in an invisible battle. I think that there are some. Daniel, that become too too occupied, preoccupied with um The dark side, you don't want to be preoccupied with it, but to, on the other side, be ignorant of it is to. Be quite vulnerable.
In a lot of ways, what we've got over these few of radio days is a primer. on spiritual warfare. Add a little humor. Of my own experiences to go along with it because we need to learn to laugh at ourselves. But in the end, it's no laughing matter.
This is something every single Christian needs: the very power and authority of Christ to know that greater is He in you than He is in the world. 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.
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