Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing—a biblical, faith-filled vision for your life. I bless you to be Manasseh-like, like the name that means forgotten troubles. No matter what voices of shame have hellishly plagued you, no matter how persistent the inward gnawing guilt. There is, according to Paul in Romans eight, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. In Christ, you're fully, forever forgiven.
The Lord remembers your sin no more. Jeremiah prophesied. He has removed your trespasses from you as far as the east is from the west. The psalmist said. Christ has paid for your sin in full.
So God, in His righteousness, Will never require your payment for a debt that has already been cleared. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Allen Wright. Last year we had a flood in the downstairs of our house. We make sure to stay safe and cut our water off to the house, so it wasn't so easy to ask somebody to come water my plants. I had to fill up some trash cans full of water and cut off the top of a milk jug and begged a neighbor to come over and water them.
I worried about those tomato plants while I was away, and I prayed for them. and I came home and they were progressing, but it's a battle. I realize that farming isn't for cowards. 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 "Gateways to Grace" 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, which can be yours for your donation this month to Allen Wright Ministries. 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 eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. That's eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. While at our website, please let us know how we may pray for you. Submit your prayer request to our prayer wall and be uplifted and encouraged as the community around this ministry starts praying for you and receive notifications as you're. Request is prayed for.
That's the prayer wall at Pastor Alan dot org. We're honored to stand with you in prayer. More on all of this later in the program, but right now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Allen Wright. Our scripture is Second Peter three eighteen.
Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Grow in the grace. Are you ready for some good news? You can grow spiritually. You can grow every day of your life until you breathe your last.
You can grow in grace. There's nothing like going outside in your own backyard and picking your own vine ripened. Homegrown tomato. Those were the words of my sister-in-law, Catherine, that started all my troubles. I left talking to her late May, in which she made that statement, and I came home and told my wife, "You know, it's true.
There's nothing like going in the backyard and picking your own homegrown tomato. I'm going to grow some tomatoes." She's like, but you've never grown anything, really, and that's true. But I could do it. How hard could it be? Where are you going to do it?
I said, well, I was thinking down there in the tulip bed. She said, won't it ruin where the tulips come up? I'll try not to upset them too much. It probably will, but there's nothing like growing your own homegrown tomato. And I thought about it.
I thought about the. The savor of a of a tomato that you just pluck off your vine and slice it up, put some of that buffalo mozzarella on there, and a little balsamic drizzle, make your own caprese salad, or maybe just a sumptuous BLT on a hot Saturday afternoon. There's nothing like picking your own tomato out of your own backyard.
So she gave me a couple saplings, a little Roma tomato plant, a little Better Boy, and I said, "Go out and weed this one little area where I had permission to plant," and. Chopping into some tulip bulbs, but anyway, got those two little planted. But then I said we got to go to the Lowe's Home Improvement in order for me to get some tomato cages.
So we went, and I didn't know that the tomato cages would cost that much. But the main thing was Ann saw some beautiful flower pot arrangements that we had to buy. They were expensive, and as we were walking out, I saw they had tomato plants for sale that were already a couple feet. I mean, a couple of them already had some baby green tomatoes on it. I said, "I want those." She said, "But they're twenty dollars." I said, "Who cares?
There's nothing like growing your own homegrown tomato." And she said, "Isn't that sort of cheating?" I said, "No, I'm getting them." So I got me a couple of those, got the tomato cages, got the forty dollars worth of plants, went home, and now I got about sixty dollars invested in this, but that's all right. And got home and realized that the tomato plants I'd bought were already so large that they could not put a tomato cage over top of them.
So I had to engineer a way to put the tomato cage in, replant the saplings, and then engineer a way to lower down. Down the tomato plant, and then plant it within the cage, and I got it done. And I watered them real good, and I told them a bedtime story, and I blessed them. And I went in satisfied that I was going to have some homegrown tomatoes. It's not that easy, though.
In June and early July, we had a drought in the Piedmont of North Carolina—a drought. And I had to go out there and water those things. Water them in the middle of a drought. And then we went to vacation to the mountains. And because last year we had a flood in the downstairs of our house, we make sure to stay safe and cut our water off to the house.
So it wasn't so easy to ask somebody to come water my plants. I had to fill up some trash cans full of water, and cut off the top of a milk jug, and begged a neighbor to come over and water them. I worried about those tomato plants while I was away, and I prayed for them. And I came home, and they were progressing, but it's a battle. I realize that farming isn't for cowards, and.
More on my tomato saga in a few moments, but I think sometimes God just gives His prophets.
Some things to live through, so they'll have an illustration. Like you know, Jonah sits under a plant, grows up over him, then a worm eats the plant. And Ezekiel had to lay on his side for like 390 days. Jeremiah wore a yoke around his neck, and Hosea had to marry a prostitute. Also, they could just get a prophetic image.
And mine this summer, as we launch a new series, is my tomato saga. More on that in a moment. But it leads me to this beautiful but intriguing verse in Second Peter three eighteen, where Peter exhorts, "Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Grow in grace." It's odd because grace is the word kairos, which means gift. And it's intriguing to think: How do you grow in something that is a gift?
If it's a gift, it's a gift. Any time I've ever gotten a gift, I'm like, wow! I didn't have it now I have it. I was thinking about when I was a kid. I got my first bike.
I had to look up and find a vintage picture. That's what it looked like—a Schwinn Stingray with a banana seat. It was black. I loved that bike. One day I didn't have a bike.
The next day I had a bike. It was a gift. How do you grow in bike? You either have one or you don't. And we tend to think that way about our Christian life, right?
Like if it's not attained by law but by grace, then how do you grow in a gift? You grow in grace. That's what I want to talk to you about the rest of this year. What it means. You remember, Paul is the one who was absolutely and one hundred percent insistent that everything in the Christian life comes to us by grace.
But he also said in Galatians 6:8, "The one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, and the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life." It's a farming image, and he talks about the fruit of the Spirit. Galatians 5:22, "The fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." And if we live by the Spirit, he says. Let's also keep step with the Spirit.
So the fruit, something that comes as a byproduct, not something that you make. I don't make a tomato. It's it's it's it's a tomato is a gift, like love and joy and peace. You can't just say I'm gonna have more love. It comes like a fruit.
But he says if we're going to live that way by the Spirit producing fruit. If we live by the Spirit, let's also keep in step with the Spirit.
Now he's talking about a walk, the way Jesus was on Earth, walking with his disciples, and they literally walked together. But walk means a way of life, the practices of your life, and so it is in the Spirit. It's like a walk. We're keeping step with the Spirit. We're walking with Jesus in the Spirit.
We're talking about what are Traditionally called spiritual disciplines, here are a few definitions, and then I'll give you my own. But Dallas Willard, who we'll reference often, has written a lot about this, and he says the disciplines are activities of mind and body, purposefully undertaken to bring our personality and total being into effective cooperation with the divine order. That there's a way in which you're you're just cooperating. With the kind of transformation that God wants to bring in your life, John Mark Comer, who has been one of the modern writers helping us a lot, would think about. About becoming countercultural and apprenticing with Jesus, as he calls it, he says the disciplines are the practices of Jesus.
I like that practices that are based on the lifestyle of Jesus that create a time and space for us to access the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, and in doing so, to be transformed from the inside out. I like that. They're practices that create time and space. For us to access the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, that's the way to look at it. Eugene Peterson called the spiritual disciplines the rhythms of grace.
Here's my crack at a definition of what we're talking about: the spiritual disciplines, biblical and Christ-like habits that serve as gateways to God's grace and that foster the life-giving daily friendship with Jesus that, over time. Grows us more into His joy, power, character, and likeness. That is the aim of Christian spiritual growth: is you're becoming more like Jesus. First John two six: Whoever claims to live in Him must live as Jesus did. Ephesians four twenty four: Put on the new self, created after the likeness of God and true righteousness.
In Romans eight twenty nine, those whom he foreknew, who he also predestined, what to be conformed to the image of his son. This is the path that we're on, becoming more and more like him. We were made in his image in the beginning, and it was broken by the sin of the world. But Christ came to restore us, and we're growing. Years ago, there was a you know huge movement.
Of course, people wore the wristbands and all. What would Jesus do? A noble aspiration, but there's a significant flaw in saying what would Jesus do. It assumes that Christlikeness is something that can be merely analyzed and then imitated. But we know in reality, that's not the way we change.
We can't just be in a situation and say, "Well, I feel impatient." What would Jesus do?
Well, he'd be patient.
Okay, I'll be patient. If it were that simple, we would all just do that. No, instead, there's a transformational process that's much more like like fruit emerging over time, and it's a process of getting there. When I was a kid, I loved tennis, and we would play at the Green Valley Pool. We had three courts there.
And I knew all the people that played tennis there, and I remember when I was eight or nine years old, there was a guy who was maybe seventeen. I thought he had the most beautiful tennis strokes of anybody I'd ever seen. His name was Art, and I wanted to be Art. He didn't know I wanted to be him, but I did. I wanted to stroke a backhand in the same way he did.
He seemed to float around the court. He was so graceful. I remember one day seeing him. He had on a red shirt with an alligator on it. I didn't have any of those alligator shirts, but I wanted one.
And he had these white shorts, and he wore Fred Perry tennis shoes. Eventually, I got a red shirt, some white shorts, and some Fred Perry tennis shoes, and I think the same tennis racket that Art had. But guess what? That didn't make me Art. You can't go from being an eight or nine year old.
To suddenly be in a seventeen-year-old who's been playing tennis for the last ten or twelve years of his life, you know, and practicing and taking lessons, there's a process to become art—a noble aspiration to be there. But it was going to take lots of time on the tennis court, right? I can't just say I want to be art and then I'm art. We're talking about the beauty of the opportunity of of a process of growing that does require discipline. Paul, who is the announcer of grace, right—the one who advocated for a theology of grace—but he also said, First Corinthians nine: Do you not know that in a race all runners run, but only one receives the prize?
So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.
So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating in the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control.
So there is, there is a pathway. There is a there are gateways to this grace, and we can choose to. Open those gates. We can choose to be on that path, and that requires making space and time, and that requires some some discipline. When I was in fourth grade, my mom came to know Christ in a personal way, and she introduced me and my two older brothers to to Christ, and and I accepted Him, and and I was a Christian, and I would say I loved God, even as a fourth grader.
I understood what it meant that he died for my sins. I understood that there was a way that I could talk to him, and I began to talk to him. But I didn't. I didn't really grow that much. I wasn't around other kids who talked this way.
I didn't. I didn't have that much opportunity to grow. But when I went to high school in tenth grade. I got invited into a ministry called Young Life, and I got invited into a small group of guys. It's called a campaigner group, and we would study the Bible and pray and share and spend friendship together.
And we had a wonderful leader, an older upperclassman who loved the Lord. And I began to really grow, and I am forever thankful for Young Life. And one of the things that I was so thankful that I learned is that there is a cultivation that is necessary. Like the garden is like a heart, and we have to cultivate that garden. And so, one of the things I was taught was how to have what we call a quiet time.
I'm talking about a daily devotional time with God. And it might be that it includes scripture, meditation, prayer, praise, or just quiet to learn how to, in the busy world, take time to be with with the Lord and foster friendship with Jesus. And I was so thankful to learn that in young life, and it was so helpful to me because I got started on the path of knowing that. Even though the grace of God is free, that there is there is a there is a life of discipline that comes alongside in order to foster friendship with Jesus and the fruit that comes, which brings me back to my tomatoes. There is nothing like going in your own backyard and picking your own vine-ripened tomato.
I just didn't know it was going to take so much work. Pastor Alan Wright, our good news message, the gateways to grace from the series by the same title, gateways to grace. 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.
What if growing closer to God isn't about trying harder?
So often we approach spiritual growth with a list of things we need to do. Pray more, read more, be better, but what if the secret to spiritual transformation isn't found in greater effort, but in experiencing more of God's grace? In his book *The Gateways of Grace*, Pastor Alan Wright invites you to discover a fresh perspective on spiritual growth through timeless practices like scripture, prayer, meditation, wonder, and rest. You'll discover how to create space for the Holy Spirit to work in your life. These spiritual disciplines aren't obligations that earn God's favor; they're gateways that open our hearts to experience more of God's goodness, peace, and transforming grace.
When you give to Allenwright Ministries, you help share the gospel with listeners around the world. And when you give today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's book, The Gateways of Grace, as our thanks to discover these aren't just disciplines; they're gateways. Step through them and discover the grace that's been waiting for you. The gospel is shared when you give to Allen Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support.
When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Allen Wright Ministries. Call us at eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. That's eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty, or come to our website. PastorAllen dot org.
Back here now with Pastor Alan in the studio as we kick off this new series, and the teaching today carries the entire name of the series with it: Gateways to Grace. And Pastor Alan, what was the inspiration behind this?
Well, as a lover of the gospel of grace, and as all of our listeners know, wanting to continually emphasize that life with God is not An achievement; it's not a work of any type. It is a relationship, and everything that we receive, including our ongoing sanctification, is gift from God, not work. But that said, it doesn't mean we're passive. And I thought it was time to do an in-depth look at what sometimes are called the spiritual disciplines. To look at what is our part, how are we partnering with God for our own growth, and what does this look like?
What are the rhythms of our life, and thus we call it gateways of grace, because it is like the the spiritual disciplines are opening up the pathway. They are Opening up our lives and our hearts to all of the grace of God. That's what we're talking about. We're not talking about meriting God's grace or earning a kind of growth in our life or by any sort of personal, you know, personal piety making ourselves more worthy of God's grace. But how do we open up that gate?
Yeah. What is the gateway?
Well, that's what we're going to be talking about. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at pastorallen dot org or call eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. That's eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. 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 PastorAllen.org. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.
