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 like Manasseh. Like the firstborn son of Joseph. whose name means I forgot my troubles.
30 years of trauma and trouble was eclipsed when the prophetic Hebrew was promoted in Pharaoh's court. And Joseph was wed and had a son. God can bring a blessing so great today that all you missed yesterday is forgotten. Like a mother with an infant in her arms who forgets the travail of labor. I bless you to forget the trauma, to be healed of the wounds, to be set free from the regrets, to be disconnected from the disappointments.
in the light of the grace of God. Today. I bless you to be a Manasseh. one who lives here now. from this day forward.
Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright. I can't explain why some people are not healed and some are. I can't explain why you might have been praying about something and it hadn't yet happened. I can't explain, but I can say. What a heart.
to heal. 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. I say this for the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me. Mm-hmm.
Prayer of deepest Quiet confidence. Just authority and confidence. And then, in a voice that Must have really been shaking things. Because the text says it was loud. Jesus just shouts, Lazarus, come out.
And one old preacher said, It's a good thing he called Lazarus by name. Otherwise every corpse in the whole cemetery would come out. Yeah. Maybe that's what he's going to do one day. Um yeah, man.
Children of God, come out. Yes. And out comes Lazarus, his dear, dear friend. Wrapped up head to toe in burial cloths, and Jesus says, Unbind him. Because if you're alive, you don't need to be bound up in the things they bind dead people up in.
And the crowd gasps. The mourners become dancers. and the funeral becomes a family reunion. What a saying. You know, some stories are just so good, you don't even need to preach them, you just read them.
But I'm a preacher anyway. Because I just read it, I tried to read it like I'm reading it for the first time, and I just go, what a heart. I mean To say Jesus has a heart to heal is very much like saying he has a desire to heal. And the word for desire in the Greek language is the same word for will. To say the will of God is The same word as the desires of God.
So he has a desire. He has a will. He has a longing. to heal. It shouldn't come as a surprise because I was thinking this week.
How much God has always put on display He wants us to be well. I mean Why did He design our bodies this way, if not? The human immune system is one of the greatest marvels you could ever try to wrap your mind around. I tried to read a little bit about it this week. It's so.
Remarkable. It should just. Send Every one of us, and certainly every scientist, into rapturous praise at any thought of it. Did you know that your bone marrow produces 2 million new red blood cells every second? I'll say it again.
Your bone marrow. produces 2 million new red blood cells every second. 1 1000 2 million bloods up 2 1000 2 more million red blood cells. You are being made new. You are being made new.
Yeah. Wow. It's this elaborate immune system in which white blood cells, thousands are patrolling your bloodstream like guardian angels. Macrophages that are roaming your tissues, that are swallowing up bacteria, cleaning up infections, T cells and B cells, like microscopic detectives that are recognizing and remembering invaders.
so they can never surprise your body again. Natural killer cells quietly destroying cancerous cells before you would ever even know they were there. Platelets that rush to patch up a cut, fibroblasts that knit new tissue. Even a fever is working for you as a healing strategy. And all of this happening.
While you're eating, your fruit loops in the morning.
Okay. or checking your phone, or taking a nap, are watching the ball game. Your body. By God's design. is healing you.
Every second. I think God likes to heal. I don't think he likes that which he made so beautifully and so perfectly. to become all infirmed and left that way. And then you think about what God did in giving us these minds.
He made us in his own image. And part of that image Is that we have the capacity To think about that which does not yet exist but could exist. And Christians throughout history have, because of our theology, Of understanding that our minds and our intellect were given to us by God. Christians have been the pioneers and the leaders in medical science. Undisputedly.
It was in 369 that St. Basil of Caesarea built the first. large hospital for the seriously ill. A place that cared for the plague victims when other people were running from them. Early Christian groups in major cities like Alexandria and Antioch, they formed these bands of believers.
They were called the lovers of labor, and they fed and cleaned and comforted the sick. In Egypt, a group called the Parabalani, the reckless ones, risked their lives to nurse the dying. Hospitals began getting attached. To monasteries. Charlemagne decreed that every cathedral must have one.
Benedictine monks devoted themselves to the suffering by a vow to help them as Christ would. And then in the Great Awakenings, There was just this surge of Christian compassion. It always happens when there's a move of God and there's a wave of renewal in the Holy Spirit that Christian compassion comes alongside of it, like William Booth founding the Salvation Army. Or Florence Nightingale said she did all that she did because she was called by God.
Sociologist Rodney Stark has written a lot about how God used Christianity to make the world The beautiful place that it is, and why medical science has gotten so much better. And he summed it up saying, Christianity valued reason. giving rise to Western civilization as we know it, including advanced medicine.
So every microscope and every antibiotic and every hospital wing at its core is another way that God has been saying, I want you well. Hallelujah. Jesus Loves to heal, it's the very heart of God.
So, it shouldn't be a surprise when you come to this story to see this healing heart that's within Christ. After God has woven healing into our very cellular makeup. and given us minds to develop Medical science. that Jesus in his very nature is moved to heal. I just can't rush past these Scenes where when Jesus knows that He's going to heal.
Lazarus. Yeah. He doesn't just quickly. Do so and tell everybody, quit crying, everything's all right. Have a cookie.
Instead, he just enters into it. I think he wailed. Western culture, our culture, we're a little more reserved in the way that we grieve, not in the Middle East. Not then, not now. I think everyone was groaning and wailing and Jesus did.
He was so sad. He was sad for the. hurting hearts of those around him. And he was sad for the sickness and disease that had come into this world. Even though he knew he was going to raise Lazarus.
What a heart. What a heart. Just love people so much. Whenever I pray for people, I do feel love for them. It's why I like to pray for people.
Today we'll invite you to receive prayer. And the reason we do that is We love you. God loves you. We want you well, we want you whole, we want you free. Jesus does.
That's why we do it. And sometimes, I think some of you experience this. When you pray for people, you know you have a natural affection for them. Because you're a loving person. but sometimes you experience something that transcends that.
And it is a supernatural expression of God's own love for somebody. I experience this sometimes.
Some of you have experienced where you'll get awakened in the middle of the night. And it'll feel like a burden. You'll feel like something is down in here and someone is on your heart. And You could try to toss and turn and go back to sleep, but you wouldn't be able to because it just stays there. And you've discovered There's nothing to do except get up and in love.
and compassion and mercy. Just pray it through for that person. until you come to a place of peace. God stirs the compassion and the bowels and the depths of. our being Because what he's doing is he's allowing us to experience his own love for people.
I think we only get it. in these episodes, in these moments, in these moments of time. If you felt that intensity of love all the time that was his love. It'd almost just be unbearable. But he'll let you experience sometimes.
I was always fascinated by Catherine Kuhlman. Healing evangelists of the 1960s and 70s. Anybody ever see any of her videos? Catherine Kuhlman, she was a An eccentric person, to say the least. She wore these long flowing dresses with, what do you call those things hanging down from the arms that look like wings or something.
And she spoke very deliberately. And she flowed around on the stage. And so some people thought, well, that's just a kook, you know? I mean, what is that? There were so many 100% verifiably documented healings in her meetings.
That I don't know that we've ever been able to put a number on it. I wish I had known personally Dolores Winder. I didn't know her personally and I feel like I should have because she was in our denomination and she went around and started speaking to churches and leaders, but I had a number of dear friends who were very close friends with her. She had a point in her life where she had so many debilitating diseases that her body was literally in a full cast. And they they took her to Catherine Kuhlman meeting and she didn't want to go and she had no faith and she didn't want any prayer.
And she went, and in the middle of it, you just got to go look her up and hear her tell her testimony. Her whole body just started burning in the middle of the meeting, just so hot, and they had to cut the cast off of her. And by the end of the meeting, she was 100% healed and stayed that way for a long life. And this kind of thing just happened all the time in Catherine Kuhlman meetings. I can't validate this, so I don't want to say I know for sure, but there are many, many reports of people.
people that just drove past the auditoriums where She was having a meeting and people were healed. And I talked to one of our elders after this morning's service. He said his wife drug him to a Catherine Kuhlman meeting in Pennsylvania. And he said, and he was skeptical of the whole thing, and that he got somewhere near her and he fell over like a tree. He just, the power of God, this stuff was happening at Catherine Kuhlman's meetings.
And the reason I bring this up is because there was something I heard her say one time. that I'll never forget. And I think this is what God was honoring in her ministry. She said, when I pray for people, I feel so much love for them. that I know I would gladly die for them.
Now she didn't need to die for them. Jesus did. But the love in her heart, that's what she felt. This is what Jesus felt. at every moment of ministry.
What? A heart. I can't explain why some people are not healed and some are. I can't explain why you might have been praying about something and it hadn't yet happened. I can't explain, but I can say.
What a heart. to heal. And what a surprise. I never really thought so much about how surprising Jesus is until I read Phil Yancey's wonderful book, The Jesus I Never Knew. One of my Top 50 books that I love, maybe 25.
I love that book. An early chapter, he said: if you were just to observe Jesus and think about. The first thing you might think of is really surprising.
So many things about his life. But this story highlights all these surprises. Like everything he does seems to be like the opposite of what anybody expected. You first heard Lazarus was sick. Everybody assumed he'd drop everything, rush to Bethany, but instead.
He waited. Two days. And he said, the text says, because he loved him, he waited two days. That's not the way we think of things working. And they said Whatever you do, don't go back to Judea.
They're going to kill you there. He said, let's go to Judea. He got there and He said, let's take the stone away. And they said, he's been there four days. There's an aroma.
The Old King James Version says it best. He stinketh. I always like to think of. When you read a story in the Bible, where's Jesus? And where are we?
Let you think about that. We're more like Lazarus. He stinketh. Anyway. After this honest line from the Bible, then there's this other thing that happens.
You see it just throughout the story. We didn't get to it today, but The religious leaders are all like, just stop doing so many miracles. And instead he's like, I'm just going to do my best miracle in front of you. He just keeps surprising you. Pastor Alan Wright, our good news message, healing power from the series Empowered.
Please stay with us. Pastor Alan is back here in the studio sharing a parting good news closing 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. PastorAlen.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. Back here now in the studio with Pastor Alan as we place the bookmark here on healing. Empowered today's teaching in the series Empowered. Pastor Alan, what's your good news thought for today?
Look deep into the heart of Jesus, and what do you see? You see compassion. That stirs him And spurs him towards healing.
So Jesus didn't just heal as signs and wonders. Jesus healed because he was so moved So, when you first look at Jesus and you see, like in the story of the raising of Lazarus, as we're looking at. Let your heart exclaim and go, What a heart! of Jesus. What a heart he has.
And I think it's so important because sometimes when you are in an infirmity or in adversity, There's a part of you that can start wondering, where's the heart of God in this? But Jesus was moved by compassion, and he has compassion for you. That's what I want to say to every listener going through some adversity day. Jesus has compassion for you. and there's something inside of him that's moved.
And when you pray, For healing, you know that you're linking with the very heart of God who loves to heal. I know there are mysteries with this. But pray knowing that God has a heart to heal. Yeah. Thanks for listening today.
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