A Palace of Grace [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. I had a child getting ready to turn 13. They said, oh no, 13, you know, you're in for it. I mean, that's going to be, and you know, sometimes you feel like this, you just got to say no to all the white noise and all the curse of the world.

It's like, no, no, no. 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 today's message in the series titled Exponential Grace as presented at Reynolda 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. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries.

As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on that later in the program. But right now, let's get started with today's teaching in the series, Praying with Power. Here is Alan Wright. The palace of grace is a palace because it's made for royalty. We are heirs with Christ Himself. And God's palace is fashioned and built upon and filled with grace. Brandon Williams, who's our new pastor for Outreach, who's been working with the college campus, and he's been to seminary, and he went and got examined by presbytery this weekend down in Anderson, South Carolina. And he came through with flying colors. Congratulations to Brandon, yes. It's not real easy, you know, you've got people asking you questions in a committee and then you go out in front of the floor of presbytery, all these ministers and elders, and you've got to preach a trial sermon.

That's the first thing they're evaluating and then they get to ask you questions too. So he's preaching this sermon. It's not easy. It's eight o'clock in the morning on a Saturday and no music or anything. Just stand up there. Tell us something good.

And he did great. But Brandon, I don't know if he's in the room now, maybe upstairs or somewhere else, but just so you could hear this, I want to initiate you into the fellowship of preachers and you're not truly in the fellowship until what is about to happen happens. And that is somebody steals one of your sermon illustrations and makes it better.

So this is from Brandon's message. I thought it was a great point. He said if you could wind the clock backwards, back before Google and Apple as they're just getting going, and you could see and you knew that these were going to be these explosions that they've become, if you knew that then for sure that it was going to be one of the most prosperous, these companies are going to be so prosperous, would you invest in it?

Yeah. Not only would you invest in it, you'd willingly realign your whole life around that probably, wouldn't you? I mean, you'd probably be willing to sell your house if need be to buy some of Apple stock if you knew back then. In other words, you would let the hope, hope is not wishful thinking, hope is certainty of future blessedness. The hope, the certainty that you have in your heart of future blessedness makes you invest in a way that might seem crazy to the world today.

That's what we did. Hope doesn't make you uninterested and lazy, hope makes you want to throw your whole life into something. And so what we want to do in our homes and what we want to do in church and what we want to do in our marriages and what we want to do in the offices where we work, instead of creating an environment that lacks grace and therefore doesn't produce the patterns that produce hope, we want to flood it with grace so that hope becomes the norm. In other words, you want your kids to have no doubt about how blessed they are. You want your spouse to have no doubt about the treasure they are.

You want your best friend to know how blessed they are because that hope that is rooted in an image of being recreated in the likeness of God and being conformed to the image of Christ, that is our motivational force in life. What I'm saying is people who think that they're going to lose don't try. People say if you tell your kids they're blessed and you show them all this grace, they're just not going to try. Not true. Let me tell you the kids that aren't trying, they're the kids that are three generations where nobody has even tried to finish high school and nobody's gone on to believe that they could have a job that they would enjoy and be productive.

You see that for about three generations. And you know what you have? No hope. And if you have no hope, what do you do? You don't invest yourself in anything. But when you begin to get a spark of hope, that's when you invest yourself.

So doesn't it make sense that if you were to abound in hope, you invest yourself even more? Do not be confused. A palace of grace is not a place of permissiveness. In fact, if you were to see it be a fly on the wall in our house, you'd be surprised how human we are in the first place. You might be surprised how often I mess up.

But you might also be surprised that these two things go hand in hand for me. Massive grace, but strict restrictions therefore on, for example, what you can watch with your eyes. Probably to a ridiculous level.

Bennett was laughing with me the other day. He said, man, I didn't even get to see some of the Disney movies, you know. I mean, until I was a teenager. I mean, it was just like, there was a bad witch or something in it. And so every now and then I go, it would go too far, but here's, do the kids, have they resented that they don't, they hadn't been able to watch stuff? Only if, only if this is the way it's presented, is you're a bad kid, and you want to watch bad things, and I'm not going to let you. But if it gets into a child, my mind is a treasure. And therefore, I, the parent, I'm not going to let you watch this, because it would hurt your mind. And your mind is a gift from God, and your soul is so precious, and it's my job to make sure that nothing comes in that's going to poison that.

If you begin to see it that way. It's kind of like, people always said to me, you know, before we had kids, oh man, you know, the pastor's kids, you know, and watch out, they're always the ones that, they, all the pastor's kids always rebel and everything. In the first place, I had to reject that.

You got to reject that. Listen, you know, and it's a good word to parents, especially if you got kids, they're growing up, they're going to go into the teenage years, and everybody says, oh no. That's like, the first thing I'd say to somebody, as soon as I, as soon as I had a child, I was getting ready to turn 13, they said, oh no, 13, you know, you're in for it. I mean, that's going to be, and you know, sometimes you feel like this, you just got to say no to all the white noise and all the curse of the world and say, no, no, no. Who said? Where in the Bible does it say your child, when they turn 13, is going to start becoming a rebel and hate your guts?

I don't see that anywhere. And I'm like, no, no, no, don't start acting like that. Well, I just the same way like being a pastor's kid. I think being a pastor is one of the highest privileges in the world. And I love being your pastor. And I love church. We drive by churches.

We're driving down a country road. I mean, even our kids are little. You could hear my little two-year-old Abigail, because we do the same thing. We ride by a church, and it's just somebody will holler out, God bless that church. I love that.

I had that little ringing in my ear, a little three-year-old Abigail just riding by with her back there, sucking her thumb. God bless that church. I love the church. The church is imperfect.

The church is, you know, I love the church. It's a privilege. So in the first place, I'm not going to teach my kids that, oh, you know, we got a rough life because we're a pastor. And listen, if you're going to be a pastor, yeah, you're going to come home from some vacations and do some funerals.

And you're going to be out at some weird times sometimes, and you're going to do some things. But even that's a privilege. What a privilege. I mean, that's a privilege to hold somebody's hand as they are escorted to heaven. That's a privilege.

So firstly, I look on it as a privilege, but I decided, you know, here's my experiment in this experiment of grace over the last 18 years. So, like, Bennett was one when we came to this church. And so, you know, I mean, he's going to be a little toddler. And if he came over to church, you know, Ann comes over and she's got Bennett, and they come in the office and something. I'd always try to make this a point and give Bennett some little thing, you know. I mean, it might just be a pencil, you know, he's going home with. And, Mickey, I'll repay the church for all these things, but that's where all the pens went. But anyway, just, you know, some little thing like that. And if you'd be walking out and I'd say, Bennett, you know why you got that?

And you'd say, why? I'd say, because you're the pastor's son. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Before God commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful, he blessed them. Before God called Abraham to father a nation, he blessed him. Before God released his son into ministry, he blessed him.

Why? Because blessing is God's secret strategy to empower you to be all he made you to be. When others affirm you, most of the time it's because you've proven your worth.

Maybe you did well on a test, accomplished a goal, or proved yourself competent. Such affirmation is nice, but it's not the way of God. God's strategy is to declare your worth before you have done anything to prove it. In the kingdom of God, blessing is the fuel for your productivity, not the reward for it. Maybe you need your heart to be healed from old wounds caused by others withholding their blessing, or maybe you're ready to shatter that invisible ceiling that keeps you from soaring. Either way, Pastor Alan writes, the power of blessing will change your life. Change how you interact with others as you discover the ancient skill of the Hebrew patriarchs as they bless their children. Learn how to tune your heart to accept blessing and reject curse.

Most of all, drink in the unquenchable blessing of God in Jesus Christ. Get motivated God's way with Alan Wright's seven message CD album, The Power of Blessing. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan 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 Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website, PastorAlan.org.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. If you look at your life as if you're blessed, you don't resent it when the trouble comes and say, oh, I'm not blessed. Instead, you have something in you that is sustaining you through that hardship and you bear up under it because of a deeper assurance of blessedness. What I'm saying, beloved, is build around you a palace of grace because what happens is a process in which a child begins to have a thought about himself or herself that I am made for a purpose. I didn't make myself. I was made for a purpose.

My life is a gift. And in the context of blessing and blessedness, in that environment, we not only grow our best, but that's where we become productive. I'm telling you, it's the kid that thinks he can score a touchdown that's going to go out and practice and get in shape. It is the child who thinks he could make a rocket ship that's going to study physics. It's the child who believes that they could reach the lost in a jungle that nobody's ever been to that goes to study and prepare and take the mission of the gospel across the world. People are motivated when they are filled with grace and when they're filled with shame, they only become orphans and slaves.

So it's a beautiful thing. The mentalities that get connected with shame are either like an orphan, I don't have any security, love may or may not be there for me, so I need to protect myself. In other words, insecurity. Insecurity causes people to act in unbecoming ways, to do sinful and selfish things, and to miss opportunities. Why would we want our kids or anybody else to be insecure?

We want the opposite of that, which is security. You're secure. My wife, she's so skilled in all these little things like, you know, okay, what do you do when, you know, your kid is so frustrating right in that moment and you know you're mad and you're getting ready to say something. But you can train yourself. Listen, you can train yourself in the way of grace.

And so that's part of it is just, you know, I'm going to train myself. What comes out of my mouth is train, because right now I want to say some things that are going to just really be a curse. I mean, that's just, you know, how could anybody be that dumb? You know, I mean, just, you know, it's something like that. But she just came with this, when you're in that moment, she just came up with this phrase, and this is what I try to use, is God gave you an excellent brain, now use it.

That's actually a blessing, see. And you want to, in grace, you see, you are, if there's something you have to restrict, it's being restricted, not because I'm putting you under a law, but because your life is a gift, therefore it's precious. So all discipline, all of it, is only about love.

And you can actually grow up in an environment where you don't despise the discipline, any more than you would despise the person trying to teach you something. And the orphan is insecure, and the slave mentality, which this image keeps coming up in Paul's writing, this is a mentality that says I must obey or else I'm punished. So I may work hard for a while, but I'm only going to work hard until the fear of punishment is gone.

And so the orphan is afraid and insecure, the slave is working, but only out of a sense of the fear of punishment. And what happens is that the love of God gets shed abroad in your heart, and in the environment of grace, that love trumps all the shame. I think this is what Paul means when he says the hope does not put us to shame. Everything else in life from the powers of darkness will seek to put you to shame. If you try to put your hope in your own career and you lose your job, there would be a mocking voice that'll be close at hand.

Look, now you have no hope. If you put your hope in any earthly thing or any accomplishment or anything or matter of life, there'll always be some voice to put you to shame when it doesn't come to pass. But what he's saying is that the hope of God is such that it never puts us to shame because our hope is in eternity. Our hope is not in temporal things. And what we experience in this life are tastes of heaven, but it's only going to get better. And what he's saying here is that the reason that we can be assured of all of this is that God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. This is why we must continually be in a posture of worship before the Lord because what we need most from him is for him to continually pour out his Holy Spirit who sheds the love of God abroad in our hearts and shapes everything else in our life.

What I'm saying essentially is this, is that love of God trumps shame. It was a few years ago we had a beautiful afternoon in which we celebrated the life of Frances Brown. She was the wife of King Brown. These were patriarch and matriarch of our church, both in heaven, and they had five sons. Now at King's earlier funeral, some years earlier than that, we set a record and it was longer than the Pope's funeral, but we limited Frances's funeral to two and a half hours. And all five sons spoke, all of them godly men, all of them loved Jesus, and they spoke of the love for their mother and their love for the Savior.

Three preachers spoke, one elder. We played videos, two solos, kind of racial hymn, but the thing that blessed me the most that day was one of the granddaughters. It was their son Joe, their daughter Christina, who grew up in Florida and she stood here at this lectern and she wept for joy and love and then she composed herself and she read what she'd written and this is a portion of it. I close with this. When I was a little girl while other children were going to Disney World, I was going to grandma's house.

We would pack up the car in Tampa, wave to Mickey Mouse on the way past Orlando, and head north. And I thought I was the luckiest kid in the world. 921 West Street in Winston-Salem was the most comforting, interesting, exciting place to be on earth. The lightning bugs were brighter there at night, the breeze cooler from the front porch swing, the cantaloupe sweeter in the refrigerator. Someone else now lives at 921 West Street and I along with all my cousins only have memories of the house where grandma lived but it's okay.

It is just fine. I can be comforted that I can use my abilities to glorify the Lord I love and his church and live out the gospel. As I sit with my son on my lap and seek to instruct and shepherd his heart using the same phrases as my grandmother, I know that the home my grandmother built will live on through the legacy of her life and her influence. What she was saying was there might be a voice that says look at you, you live in Florida but don't even get to go to Disney World.

You just get to go to Winston-Salem. Or there might be a voice that says look at you, you lost your job. Or look at you, the report was malignant. Or look at you, your best friend died. And all those things may be some of the adversities that we might face but what the love of God says is yes but Jesus's love trumps all of that. And I'll take the love of God over all the other success of the world and I'll take the love of God and never give up because the love of God never gives up on me. And that's the gospel.

Allen Wright. In today's teaching, a palace of grace. Why people grow best in an environment of grace. Before God commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful, he blessed them. Before God called Abraham to father a nation, he blessed him. Before God released his son into ministry, he blessed him.

Why? Because blessing is God's secret strategy to empower you to be all he made you to be. When others affirm you, most of the time it's because you've proven your worth.

Maybe you did well on a test, accomplished a goal, or proved yourself competent. Such affirmation is nice but it's not the way of God. God's strategy is to declare your worth before you have done anything to prove it. In the kingdom of God, blessing is the fuel for your productivity, not the reward for it. Maybe you need your heart to be healed from old wounds caused by others withholding their blessing, or maybe you're ready to shatter that invisible ceiling that keeps you from soaring. Either way, Pastor Alan writes, the power of blessing will change your life. Change how you interact with others as you discover the ancient skill of the Hebrew patriarchs as they bless their children. Learn how to tune your heart to accept blessing and reject curse.

Most of all, drink in the unquenchable blessing of God in Jesus Christ. Get motivated God's way with Allen Wright's seven message CD album, The Power of Blessing. When you make your gift to Allen Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. 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 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website, pastorallen.org. Allen, if somebody has been listening for a while and they've really started to understand the concepts of grace and forgiveness and what it really means and how good it really is for their life. And then I kind of imagine, imagine, cause this was me, I got it and I started living it and I started walking it.

And then I found myself taking a little sidestep back into the pastor's office and saying, but wait a minute, but what about this? But what about people who need to change? And really that's a big question. I think a follow-up question that I'm sure you get a lot. How do you revolutionize parenting, marriage, friendships, relationships in light of the gospel of grace?

Yeah. Well, and that's what we're, that's what this whole series is all about is, is that every relationship will be revolutionized when the emphasis becomes gospel centered and centered around the gospel of the grace of Christ. That when we have anything that's just a mixed message and it's part law and it's part gospel, what happens is a process of shame, condemnation, and fear gets into it. So what we're just looking at here is, and especially as we start out, this is celebrating the generational blessing that comes at how powerful it is to begin to focus on the love of God coming down through the generation. So in the end, all grace based relationships are focused on the love of God for you. And that transforms how you relate to other people. So it's a real switch, Daniel, and the emphasis of what am I looking at if I want my relationships to be abundant? Am I looking primarily to myself? Or am I looking primarily to what God's done for me? Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.