Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Alan Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Alan Wright's Daily Blessing. It's free and just a click away at pastorallen.org. Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing: a biblical, faith-filled vision for your life. Take the words of the old Bob Dylan Grammy winner as a blessing.
You may be an ambassador to England or France. You might like to gamble. You might like to dance. You may be the heavyweight champion of the world. You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls.
But you're going to have to serve somebody. Yes, indeed. You're going to have to serve somebody. It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you're going to have to serve somebody. Child of God.
Your master has changed. The text says, having been set free from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness, Romans 6, 18.
So I bless you today to gladly serve the one who first served you. to give yourself freely to the one who gave himself freely for you. For there is no greater freedom than belonging completely to Jesus. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright. Wouldn't it be fantastic?
If you just push. Couldn't ever lie. You don't have anything in your life. that you're having to hide and cover up all the time? 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 the series, It's All Right Now, from Romans chapters 4 through 7, as presented at Rinolda Church in North Carolina.
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More on that later in the program. But now let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. He gets his little boy another cake, sits him down in a park. at a picnic table and says, undo the wish.
Yeah. Yeah. This is terrible. I can't lie. But what the movie is trying to show, and what is the actual case is, wouldn't it be fantastic?
If you just couldn't ever lie. Like you don't have anything in your life that you're having to hide and cover up all the time? Our Uncle Stanley used to say in his counseling ministry that most people are like someone who's standing in the ocean and trying to keep about five beach balls under the water all the time so nobody can see them. And they're all trying to come up.
So much. cover up that we're exhausted with it. And the thing about it is like If you are always just putting up an image for everybody in your life according to what you think they would want from you, don't you know in the end? You're lonely because nobody knows the real you. Oh, there might be some temporary.
cost to telling the truth. But in the end It's only truth tellers. They can have any authentic peace in this world. And if you just would go through any of the catalog of the types of sins You'd recognize the same thing. Wouldn't it be, for example, fant wouldn't it be the greatest thing in the world if poof You just couldn't covet any more.
You know what would happen? Your gratitude level and your joy level would skyrocket in an instant. You just no longer have the capacity to covet. You can't be looking at somebody else's life and suddenly lose your joy because you go, I wish I had that. You can't suddenly start having this terrible feeling of I can't be happy until I have what so-and-so has.
If you took that out of your life, can you imagine how wonderful that would be? What about if you could just get rid of the sin of bitterness? Jesus says, forgive. and you are forgiven. Be set free.
Hebrews says, Do not let any bitter root spring up. lest it defile many. Could you imagine what would happen if you just couldn't be bitter? Couldn't hold anything against anybody. Kept no record of wrongs.
You try, you just can't keep a record of wrongs. Can you imagine? The joy and freedom of such a life Could you imagine Suddenly You can't worry. No matter how hard you try, you can't worry any more. Jesus said, do not be anxious about tomorrow.
What if? You just couldn't worry. I've had times in my life Back in '93, this Beautiful, powerful Holy Spirit renewal was moving, and I got so touched with joy just. Every meeting, joy, joy, joy of the Lord, joy of the Lord. I mean, joy to make your belly laugh, joy that just transforms everything in your life.
And I had so much joy come in my life. I remember one time in the middle of a big joy fest one time in the Holy Spirit, I just made a little experiment. I tried to worry. I tried to resurrect everything that could possibly go wrong. I tried to think of it, I tried to worry about something, and I literally realized I could not worry.
At least in in that moment. That's what heaven's gonna be. There's too much joy. You can't even worry. What we are being invited into here is an image of being a slave of righteousness, but what it really is, is the image of ultimate freedom.
Sins our problem. And He's offering a life. That's the most fantastic life imaginable.
So it is like saying, beloved, our appetite can change.
Some years ago, my daughter convinced Ann and I to go on the whole 30 diet. It's ridiculous. It's it's too hard. Yeah. They don't just say no ice cream, they say no sugar for thirty days.
And I did find this out, sugars and everything. And I tell you, whole thirty. I tell you another reason they call it whole 30, it's going to take your whole paycheck to do it. Because you got to go to Whole Foods and take your whole paycheck in there and get the ketchup that doesn't have sugar in it, and that costs four times as much as regular ketchup. And then it doesn't really taste like ketchup.
But No sugar and no sugar substitute. No splenda. For thirty days. I'm telling you, I will say this. By the end of that 30 days, I had lost.
a craving for sugar, I'm not saying ice cream wasn't in the back of my mind. I knew it existed still. But a grape at the end of 30 days and no sugar, a grape tastes like a piece of candy. A grape tastes like a piece of candy. Right now, grape tastes sour to me, but I mean And I made the terrible mistake.
That At the end of the whole third. We are having a kind of a meal to celebrate the end of it. And I got chicken parm. You know, that just did something to me. And then a few days later, I had some ice cream.
I hadn't been back on hole 30, but I am saying. Your appetite can Change. Let me give you a more ridiculous and gross illustration of this. Had a beagle, uh, his name was Reese. Anyone ever had a beagle knows that they they love, they got a nose and they like to hunt.
and they like to find vermin. And he would be so proud if he found a chipmunk or squirrel or mouse or something in the backyard. He's so proud of that. crouching in with that dead thing in his mouth. And I know he was confused his whole life why I did not like it.
When he would drag in, he could come and go through the sun room. It kind of became his room. He would drag an animal in there and every now and then He'd get one in there, I didn't know he did, and I'd walk in that sunroom, and the stench would just hit me. I don't need it. Conjure up the thought of the stench of a dead animal smell, but it's just Terrible.
Ugh. And I remember one time he had, I think it was a dead chipmunk. He'd been nurturing that dead thing, it smelled so rancid. Ugh. Yeah.
Tried to chase him down and get the thing and get rid of it, you know, and he was guarding it. And he was just standing over it and looking at me and looking down at it. And he just looked at it and just. Licked it. But you couldn't.
I don't think there is an amount of money you could give me. To pay me to lick. A three-day-old dead chipmunk.
Okay, you make me a millionaire on the spot. I'm not doing it. I'm not going. I'm not going to. You can't.
I can't. lick a dead chipmunk and the dog loved it. How can that be? I'll tell you how it can be. He's a dog and I'm a human being.
That's right. How different an appetite Can be. You are a new creature in Christ. And you've got A new appetite. Feed your new appetite.
Because it's a process, verse 19: just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness.
So now, present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. See? We might say, well, if I'm a slave to righteousness, then why do I still sin so much? Because. Because any slave can rebel against a master.
Paul doesn't say we don't ever sin again once we're Christians. He's saying we got a new master and it's pulling us towards a new way of being. We don't always obey our new appetite. But it is a new appetite. And the more that you feed yourself on the stuff of the new appetite, the more you develop a taste for it.
Taste and see that the Lord is good. It's wonderful. His ways are wonderful. His thoughts are wonderful. Try it out more and more.
Paul saying. You don't have to be under fear of the consequences of disobeying because you've been justified.
So yeah, I'll You're free from the fear of the punishment of God. But but you do have a new A new way of being. You you're growing up. You're growing up. My best buddy when I was a kid was Bob.
He lived across the street. We played together almost every day. And we go over We play G.I. Joe. would jump off his swing set.
till our bottoms were raw, sliding down this little hill. We hit tennis balls in the middle of the street. Whatever we can do, we'd play together. And I'd say about 50% of the time, about 50% of the time when I was little.
Somebody wouldn't be playing the other way the other day. I want them to play, and somebody gets start crying, get upset, and stomp off home. And we get bored, and 10 minutes later, we call and say, What are you doing? Nothing. Won't come back over?
Okay. I don't do that as often as I used to. I don't stomp off crying when people aren't doing the way they want them to do as often. You're growing. And sometimes you'll find there are areas where your new appetite and the obedience of the heart has come into alignment with your new master more than other things.
This thing about lying. I think I could just almost honestly say I. I would have to work extremely hard. To tell a lie. I don't know.
If it's just something God's done, especially early in me, because He appointed these lips to speak truth. But As far as I know. I never told a lie to my children. And as far as I know, I've never told a lie to you. And I the thought of that feels like licking a dead chipmunk to me.
I can't do it.
Now, I want to get all the other areas of my life that same way, but I'm just saying we're going to still sin in this world, but we are growing. We are growing. And The fruit is so sweet of this new life. Verse twenty. For when you were slaves of sin, You were free in regard to righteousness, but what fruit were you getting?
Those things you're ashamed. The end of those things is death. But now you've been set free from sin and have become slaves of God. The fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. Growing in the Lord means that part of what you get is wisdom.
that sees things for what they are. and you get more mature and you look and you realize the old appetite, while it might still come back sometimes, you're able to see it through to its end of the fruit that it brought and it loses its taste. I remember one time talking with a new parishioner and new friend who was a recovering cocaine addict. He wasn't real long into his recovery. but he had accepted Christ at one of our meetings And I loved him.
And I remember talking to him and praying with him and talking in a counseling. uh relationship with him on one occasion. and uh I was asking him about his recovery, And how his thought processes were changing. And he said, Well, one of the things that's changed, he says, I've learned now. When I start getting the thought of the temptation of cocaine, to let the mental tape play through to the end.
He said, I didn't used to let it play through to the end. He said, I would just play the first part, the first scene. And that's where I felt euphoric and invincible and all my worries were evaporated for at least a few moments while doing the drug. He said, but what I didn't do was play the tape to the end. And that's the part where I lost my wealth, lost my home, lost my marriage.
and began to lose my hope for even being alive. He said, now I'll let it play through to the end. I remember the fruit. and how bitter it is, and I think more about the fruit. of being sober.
You start seeing the fruit of. this way of living is righteous. Paul has been building for five and a half chapters to say, you are not under law. But your obedience is of the heart. And It's almost like he's, unless I had built everything up for five chapters, it's almost like Paul saying, I wouldn't even tell you this because you'd misinterpret it as legalism once again.
It is not. It is freedom. of a different sort. And thus he concludes at verse 23. For the wages of sin is death.
but the free gift of God. is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. The consequences of sin is something that is earned. but the consequences and fruit of a life of joyful allegiance to the Righteousness of Christ is not something that's earning you anything. It is the living out of the gift of the grace of God.
In the end. What he's saying, beloved.
Okay. You gotta serve somebody. Bob Dylan was right. Might be the devil, might be the Lord. But it's a myth to think that we can just live a life where we're not serving in one direction or the other.
And Jesus came. With power and grace by His blood to break the curse and the bondage to sin. and all of its consequences.
So that you could be free Unto a new master.
Something that from the obedience of the heart you find yourself wanting more and more. You yield more and more. Be the best thing in the world. If it could ever happen. And it'll happen in heaven.
where you are so, so united to Christ and his righteousness that All the old stuff has just become impossible to you. But in the meantime, He says. Just keep feeding your new appetite, and you'll be amazed how much you'll change. That's how grace works. And that's the gospel.
Alan Wright, our good news message. You gotta serve somebody. From the series, It's All Right Now. It's a teaching of Romans chapter 4 through 7. And Pastor Alan is back here in the studio in just a moment with today's parting good news thought for the day.
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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. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Alan Wright's Daily Blessing. It's free and just a click away at pastoralen.org. Back here with Pastor Alan, and our parting good news thought for the day as we've come to the conclusion of today's teaching.
You gotta serve somebody. I just think it's so important to think as I've been talking about that our appetite can change. You can be Just in the natural, you can be so. I've been there. where you're so kind of addicted to the taste of sugar, right?
That until you quit it for a long time and then you realize, oh, wait a minute. I I don't I don't have the same craving for that.
Well, it's something like that that happens for our soul in Christ. It doesn't happen by law. It happens by a real change that actually takes place in the heart. of a of a believer. And it doesn't happen everything overnight.
But it's the things that become sweet to you. can change and that's That's a big part of what Paul's saying about what the Christian life is like. Yeah, you. You Okay. You are you have a new allegiance.
Right. And so in that sense, it's like you're a slave to righteousness. but it's because you just want it so much. And that's powerful. I pray that for every listener.
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