Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. That same redemptive grace that has saved you can flow through you in your relationships with others and make a lasting difference.
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 a series titled The Power of Blessing 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. You ready for some good news? God has saved you and me through a redemptive grace that is characterized by this simple fact. He loved us when we didn't love Him, and He blessed us when we didn't bless Him.
And that same redemptive grace that has saved you can flow through you in your relationships with others and make a lasting difference. Luke chapter 6 verse 27, Jesus said, But I say to you who hear... Just love that phrase. Sometimes you'll hear it too. Whoever has ears, let him hear.
If you can hear this, what He's saying is getting ready to reveal a huge heavenly secret. Not that many people see it. Not many people have ears to hear it. But to you who do hear, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you.
Pray for those who abuse you. This is a text that is really important and prevalent in the New Testament. Let me give you a couple other instances because Paul says a similar thing in Romans 12. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. And Peter says the same thing in 1 Peter 3.
Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless for to this you were called that you may obtain a blessing. I stumbled upon this week a video that's one of the most viral right now of YouTube and somebody caught on film, these little preschoolers, I think they must be three years old, two little girls talking to a little boy, just cute as could be. And there was a dispute that arose in their very young sounding English. It was almost hard to understand what they were saying. But the little girl was clearly saying, it's raining outside. And the little boy said, my mommy said, it's sprinkling.
He kind of struggled with that word, sprinkling. And the little girl said, my mommy says, it's raining. And he said, well, my mommy said, it's sprinkling. She said, my mommy said, it's raining. He said, no, it's sprinkling. And they're having this three-year-old debate over whether it's raining or sprinkling. And several times you could see each of the children, they are wanting to maybe get their hands on the other one, but they are just with all their three-year-old willpower restraining from touching. One time the little boy just starts to reach towards her face and brings his hand back.
One time she brings her finger up towards his face and brings it back, but it kept going. It's raining. No, it's sprinkling. It's raining.
It's sprinkling. Finally, the little girl took her finger and just poked the boy right in the chest just like that and said, it's raining. And he suddenly just crumbled. And he said, you poked my heart. He turned away from me and said, you poked my heart. It is one of the cutest things. Today I want to talk to you about what do you do when somebody has poked your heart?
And they will do it, won't they? We're going to talk today about one of the most difficult things imaginable. It's one thing to learn, as we have been over the last number of weeks, about the power of blessing. And you think about blessing your children or your spouse or family members and the people around you that you so want it to go well for them that you could begin to incorporate into your life the power of blessing, which is to will the good of another and want what is good for them and to want it in such a way that you have faith and you invoke the grace of Christ Himself and speak it over them. It's a positive vision for another's well-being.
It's a positive future that you envision and you speak it out. And what we've been learning is that we are empowered by that blessing, that there is something that's not magic, but it is a spiritual principle and it is spiritually powerful. But it is quite another thing to begin to think about blessing those that curse you. And yet it's really important. It appears not only the lips of Jesus here in Luke, but also in Matthew.
It appears on the lips of Paul and of Peter. It is something that is absolutely powerful in the Christian's life. And it is a huge secret that most people never really understand or grasp. And so I want to talk to you about it today. I want to talk pretty plainly about this. And basically I want to talk about how difficult it is, the problem of trying to bless those that persecute you. I want to talk about why it's so problematic. And I'll try to stop myself and not use the whole sermon on the problem because we can easily identify how difficult it is. I want to talk about the power of blessing those that curse you, just how powerful it really is, and give you some testimonies of that.
And then I want to talk about what makes it possible. How could you possibly ever do this and develop a lifestyle of blessing those that curse you? So let's first just talk about the problem. And the Lord was kind enough to let me have an object lesson this morning because I've been in the ministry about 30 years.
And this is the first morning that I had a hard time turning into my own church so that a recreational event could be happening on the street in front. And I just need to let y'all in on a little thing. I'm not really doing well with the secularization of our culture. Maybe you're doing better than I am. I'm just going to be honest with you.
I'm not. I might look like I'm doing well with it, but I feel like writing a letter to the editor every day. I feel like standing up and ranting and raving every day.
And part of this is a function that I have to admit to myself, as most of us do, that we are so privileged to live in a country that values the freedom of expression of the churches and has, for most of our history, valued church. And I'm used to that. And I'm also, I'm just not used to being a minority either, right? I don't really know what that feels like. I don't know what it feels like to be in the powerless position. And so I'm just being honest with you.
I'm not used to being in a minority I'm just being honest with you. I'm not doing that well. I'm struggling with it. And somehow it just hit me this morning that I was pulling in and I was having a hard time and people, we were talking on the phone, other people having a hard time getting to church this morning. Our attendance is lighter this morning. I'm sure that we've had people that have not made it to church this morning.
And so I've been kind of hit in the face this morning with how hard this is because here was my reaction. When I pulled down to the light this morning, the police officer said, are you going to church? I said, yeah, I'm the pastor of the church. And it would have been nice if somebody had told me about this. When does this end?
He said around 10 30. And I said, okay, can I please turn now into my own church? And that was probably not a model of what I want to preach today, was it? So I think the Lord is just showing me right off the bat.
They give me a little opportunity to fail at my own sermon before I even get started. And then I came back in and one of our members said they wouldn't even let me turn down there. It's all blocked off, off Silas Creek Road, turning right onto Reynolda. And I turned around and said, I'm going back out there to talk to him again. Thankfully, I took a kind and gentle fellow with me who this time we went back and spoke to the police officer, a different one. And I said, sir, we said, there are a lot of people that want to come to church today.
And I said, they don't think they can turn from down at that intersection. And we would be so appreciative if you would help them with that. And spoke a little more kindly and it went much better. And they said, I'll do all that I can.
But I still, my blood is still boiling just a little bit. You know, I'm just, I'm grieving the whole deal where it's like one person said they were turning in and said, they said, can I turn in there? And they said, yeah, where are you going? To that big white church that's sitting right there.
That's where I'm going. So is this new for us, right? To have a culture that becomes so increasingly secular that it's a little bit of an afterthought about whether people could get to church. What I just want to talk to you about for a moment is just how difficult a proposition it is to bless those that curse you. And for a variety of reasons in Matthew chapter five, Jesus says, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. That's Matthew five 43 in a parallel passage to our text today.
He said, but I said, you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven. That's Alan Wright. And we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series.
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. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. When he says you have heard that it was said, what's interesting is Jesus is not quoting an Old Testament passage here. In fact, in the matter, there is nowhere in the Old Testament that says you should hate your enemy. There are lots of places that say you should love everyone, but never says you should hate your enemy. So he's not quoting the scripture here. What is he quoting? He is quoting either a traditional misreading of the scripture that people tended to circulate or more likely he is just quoting. This is the general prevailing ideology that you hear. And I would just suggest that the first problem for us in this is that everything that you hear and everything that goes into us says just the opposite of pray for your enemies.
It says essentially love those that do good to you and hate those that don't. I mean everything. Think of our whole media. You know, I like a good action flick as much as the next guy. And I was thinking about some of these, you know, hero movies or the, you know, what came to mind was like some, you know, Steven Seagal movie where what they do in these movies is they work you up into a frenzy by having somebody in the hero's family get murdered early on, you know, by some brutal wicked person. And then the rest of the movie, you've got to seek them out. And you imagine getting to the climactic scene and there's Steven Seagal, you know, he's got all those moves and everything. And he comes in there and he kept the person cornered. And, you know, what's going to happen then is where he's going to come up there and he's going to put his right foot up on that person's left cheek and knock them down and then just start beating them to a pulp. And you're just like, okay, this guy's got to go. Imagine that scene that he catches and he finally says, good, I finally got you cornered. I just want to bless you and pray for you.
I want you to know I've forgiven you for killing my daughter. You know, I mean, we just like, we'd be throwing stuff at the screen like, boo, no way, no, no, because, you know, we're all wrapped up in it. This whole idea just doesn't even make sense to us. In fact, it's something that almost seems like it couldn't be true and also that maybe it shouldn't be true. That's how deep it is with us. Everything you have heard, you have heard it said, all right, everything you've been taught goes like this.
It's just the way of the world. I told you a few weeks ago, our son Bennett was helping out with vacation Bible school and he had some little boys and two of them got into a scuffle and one was being kind of mean to the other. So Bennett pulled the kid aside who had been kind of victimized and he said, now, you know what the Bible says when people are mean to us? And the boy said, what?
And Bennett said, we're nice to them instead of being mean back. And the little boy just paused for a moment and said, well, that's stupid. And I just think that that, let's just start with the thing is just a problem in the first place because there's a part of it that just says that's stupid. But let me tell you a deeper part of the problem. And this is what I experienced this morning.
Okay. And that is the flesh. When the Bible talks about the flesh, it's really talking as a, as not about your actual physical skin and bone. It's talking about the sinful appetite, the appetite of our, not just our bodies, but also of our thoughts, the sinful appetite. And what many, many people don't realize that are Christians is that we realize we're in a battle against the devil and to some extent, a battle against the ways of the world. But you also have to realize the Bible teaches that we're in a battle against the flesh. You're in a battle against your own sinful appetites. And those, those sinful appetites, just because you become a Christian, they don't, they don't go away. And what happens is that the flesh, it just, it gets gratified by sinful responses.
So let me draw the analogy for you. The other night, I was watching a TV show and we had some leftover ice cream cake from Abigail's birthday. Now this particular ice cream cake, shall I describe it to you?
It had crumbled Oreo crust, waves of chocolate and vanilla, high premium ice cream with a kind of whipped cream and, and real sugary icing cover. I can feel water going down in my mouth right now while I'm saying it. And I was just watching this show and I just said, you know, I'm, I'm going to splurge. I'm going to have me a piece of that. Abby was having a piece. I said, I'm gonna have a piece of that. And it was so good.
I mean, we put some extra whipped cream on it and it was just, oh man, it was so good. And I got done. I actually, literally, my outlook on life looked better at that point after I ate that, you know what I mean? It was just like, man, I just feel okay.
I feel really good now. And I, the thought just came in. I want to eat two more pieces of that. I want to eat two more pieces of that ice cream pie. And, and yet another process took over and that was my mind kicked in. And I've learned now that one piece of ice cream pie is roughly equivalent to one pound around the waist. And so I just thought, okay, that'll be two more pounds.
And I really don't, I don't have room in my pants for that right now. And so I just decided to limit it to the one. And even though I had to grieve that a little bit, because I wanted, I wanted, I wanted more. What was going on there was that the flesh had an appetite, but there was a bigger truth that played out, right? I was talking years ago to a guy who was breaking free from a severe cocaine addiction. And he had been sober for quite some time. The Lord was intervening in his life. Things were going well. And I just asked him, I said, how are you doing it? Tell me some of the things.
So I looked to help other people as well. And he said, well, one of the things that's changed for me is that he said, I used to have like a small little tape that would play in my mind, but would only play the one piece of the picture. The one piece of this story that was the high that I would get from the drug. And it wouldn't play out any of the other part of it.
In other words, it only saw my appetite for this one thing. And all I would think about is the high. All I would think about is the momentary relief of anxiety.
All I would think about is the kind of the exhilaration moment. And I wouldn't allow myself. I wouldn't think about the rest of the story. I wouldn't think about how I've lost my wife. I wouldn't think about how I've lost my career. I wouldn't think about all the things I'm going to lose. I wouldn't think about all the dangers and all of the health problems and all the issues.
I wouldn't think about that. He said, but now I'm training my mind that when the appetite emerges, that I let that tape recording in my mind go ahead and play the whole scene. You know what he was saying there?
He said, I am learning to see the truth. In other words, there is an appetite and that appetite is placing its demand. But there is a truth and that truth trumps the appetite. And I think this is what happens in the battle against the flesh. The flesh has an appetite. My flesh is appetite this morning. I'm just being honest with you.
I'm just a human being like you are. And I mean, it's kind of like I want to say, listen, I don't ask that much of the city, but please don't block our church on the one morning that we need to be able to come. You know, my flesh is just going like this. And I mean, I'm literally, I turn around to the 360.
I'm going to go back out there and I'll talk to him. What my appetite of my flesh wants to do is not to go out there and bless him. God bless you for being out here this morning and directing traffic and keeping people scared from coming to church because they think they're getting a ticket. But God bless. No, that's not my appetite. The flesh. And so the flesh is trying to tell you this is the way you should do it.
Right. And it's really no different than saying you ought to eat three or four more pieces of ice cream pie. It's just an appetite. But the appetite is not seeing the whole picture.
The fact of the matter is there's a higher truth and that higher truth must trump the appetite. So it's difficult for us because when you're in the moment, especially if you're angry, everything within you wants to curse. Tony Campolo tells a story about teaching his sociology class one time about discipline in the household. And he was talking about the importance of parents only disciplining out of love and not out of anger and frustration. That you do so for the well-being of the child. And so you have to be cool about this and learn to discipline and love and offer instruction rather than just, you know, lashing out in anger.
Well, this is such obviously a difficult thing to think of is for any parent that one of the students went home that night and composed a little poem as a satire of how difficult this whole concept was and came back and gave it to Campolo the next day. And it read, never discipline your child in anger. Never spank him when irate.
Instead, wait until some happy time when both are feeling great. It just kind of raises the whole point of the difficulty of this, right? Is it by the time that I feel calm, cool, and collected, I don't feel like spanking you anymore. You know what I'm saying? But this is what God is saying. He wants to train us up in something that is all together higher and better. To see the thing in a whole new way. And that is what I think the Lord wants to offer many of us this morning is basically a paradigm shift in your thinking, a watershed moment where you begin to look on this completely differently than you ever have before.
But that's what the words, the weight of Jesus's words are. I think the reason this is such a problem is that, you know, maybe more so with guys than ladies, I don't know. But you know, generally, I feel competitive.
I mean, I've always been raised up that way. And most of us are competitive. It's kind of a competitive society. And it's hard to put these words of bless those who curse you and pray for your opponents.
It's kind of hard to put that into the context of also being in a competitive environment. Alan Wright, I can agree. I see that that's a tough one to process. Bless those who curse you is today's teaching in the Power of Blessing series. Stick with us. Alan's back here in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and a final word. Pastor Alan Wright's Power of Blessing will change your life. When you make a gift this month, we'll send you the Power of Blessing as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. And when you give, you'll not only be nourishing your own soul, but you'll help broadcast the good news to someone else. 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. Call us at 877-544-4860.
That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Well, Alan, today's teaching bless those who curse you.
All right. So we're rolling into a holiday, Thanksgiving, a lot of family together. There may not always be a harmony. So this could be put into practice immediately, right? This could be a very good opportunity for such a time as this. Well, it is actually all joking aside, Daniel, sometimes the people closest to us are the ones who have hurt us the most. And everything within us wants to respond in like manner. But what we're learning is we'll continue this and see more about is that there is a way in which you can respond without returning the same kind of seed that was sown towards you.
And that's really what we're talking about. It's kind of breaking a cycle of sowing and reaping. And so it's a wonderful prayer to say, Lord, I'm getting ready to be around family or other.
Maybe you're going to be around friends over the holiday. Help it to be that what comes out of my mouth is only blessing. 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.
