You'll See Blessing Service

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. We're blessing you that you would have the Savior's own clear vision so that you'll see yourself more beloved than broken. God's grace is all around you.

You'll see. 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, You'll See, 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.

Here is Alan Wright. Okay, are you ready for some good news? Good news. God does not withhold blessing in order to motivate you to be productive. He blesses as the fuel for your productivity. So much of the way the world is to take approval, acceptance, blessing, and dangle it like a carrot and say, if you will run harder, jump higher, then you'll be blessed.

But what we see in the scripture is exactly the opposite of that. God issued to us the greatest blessing imaginable, instant blessing of the gift of His own Son and told us that in Christ, we would be blessed with every spiritual blessing, that all we really can do is receive. And so we are fueled in our Christian life by the initiating love of God. And today we want to bless your life. The scripture from which this new year's blessing is founded is one I preached on last week. If you missed that, you might want to go back and get that from online.

It's going to be foundational to this whole series. It's John chapter one, verse 43. The next day, Jesus decided to go to Galilee and he found Philip and said to him, follow me. Now, Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. And Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, we have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Nathaniel said to him, can anything good come out of Nazareth? And Philip said to him, come and see.

And what you're going to notice in this text is it's all about seeing. And it starts with this, Philip saying to Nathaniel, come and see. And Jesus saw Nathaniel coming towards him.

There you go. He saw him coming towards him and said of him, behold an Israelite indeed in whom there's no deceit. And Nathaniel said to him, how do you know me? So Jesus had here revealed that he in the spirit knew who Nathaniel was. That Nathaniel was one of those guys who was a straight shooter.

Whatever he thought, I think he said it. He was a person in whom there was just no guile. And so when he says to him, an Israelite indeed in whom there's no deceit, as we explored last week, it's like he's saying, here's a man who's all Israel, no Jacob, because Jacob was a deceiver and his name was changed to Israel as Jacob finally came to understand the grace of God and quit all of his striving in this world and begin instead bringing his issues to God. And that's what Israel means, struggles with God or strives with God.

Behold an Israelite indeed in whom there's no deceit. And Nathaniel said to him, how do you know me? And Jesus answered him, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. So now Nathaniel realizes that something supernatural has happened that and he's somewhere far away under a fig tree. And Jesus has seen him there. And Nathaniel answered, rabbi, you're the son of God.

You're the king of Israel. And Jesus answered him, because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree. Do you believe you will see greater things than these? You will see greater things. And he said to him, truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. You're going to see like Jacob did of old, when he saw a ladder connecting heaven and earth, you're going to see something even greater. You're going to see through Christ. You're going to see your life connected to heaven in ways that you never recognized before.

You'll see greater things. I got a smartwatch for Christmas. I don't know that I would have sprung for it myself, but they got me one. And, and I like it. I like it a lot.

It's really fun. In fact, on new year's Eve, the, at midnight, all of a sudden I felt, I felt the phone vibrating and I looked down and there were fireworks going off on my phone, on my smartwatch. And it said, happy new year, right, Reverend, right? That's what, that's what she calls me, right, Reverend, right. I told her to call me that, but, and the whole day throughout new year's day, it would say, happy new year, right, Reverend, right? And all I had to do is just tap on it and I get instant fireworks.

I like that. Everywhere I go, just anytime I need an instant celebration, just tap on my watch and fireworks. And then I found out that the watch celebrates me. When I stand up at least one or two minutes every hour for 12 hours a day, it buzzes and comes up and has a celebration on the watch and says, way to go, right, Reverend, right?

You're the greatest thing in the world. You just stood up every hour for 12 hours. One week already since I've had the watch since Christmas, I stood up at least one or two minutes every hour for at least 12 hours, seven days in a row, and it gave me a medal. I've got medals in there. I even store my medals in there. I'm like an Olympic athlete.

Not really. I thought about seeing if I could change this watch, see how smart she really is, that maybe she could, you know, start complimenting me in other ways. And maybe if I'm stuck in traffic and people are trying to pull in front of me and I feel like calling them a name and I don't, I'd like to watch and come up and say, way to go, right, Reverend, right? You held your cool there. That's good because obviously we're sitting in traffic and this is really frustrating, but you're doing a good job there, right? I don't know if I can get her trained to do all that, but it's kind of nice to have an encouragement buddy that just stays with me all the time because let's face it, in this world, there's not enough of it.

In fact, it's pretty discouraging place. It doesn't just flow out of people's mouths, blessing and encouragement, does it? I was with some pastors this week at a little pastor's conference in another city, and one of the pastors went for a morning jog in the downtown area. And he came in and reported to us that he was jogging slowly past a homeless man walking in the opposite direction. And as he walked by the homeless guy looked at the pastor and just said, wow. And I thought I was ugly and just kept on walking.

That's how he got his day started. Wouldn't it be something if there were a way to be fueled with authentic encouragement? Jesus said that the Holy Spirit is a parakletos, which means literally one who is called alongside. He called the Holy Spirit the parakletos or the helper, or sometimes your translations say the encourager or comforter, the advocate.

All of those are attempts to translate this word parakletos, but it literally means one who is completely for you, who is with you alongside of you, helping you every step of the way. Remember Jesus said, I did not come to condemn, but to save. And the Holy Spirit is the spirit of Jesus abiding in the heart of every Christian. So we have an encourager with us. And what the Holy Spirit wants to do is bring that encouragement through us to one another in the body of Christ.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Well, if ever we've been ready for a new year, this is the year. As you start planning and dreaming for a great new year, we want to help. Alan Wright Ministries has produced a beautiful, inspiring wall calendar with you in mind. Each month not only depicts the month in a heart-stirring image, but also includes a specially crafted blessing for the month from Pastor Alan to you.

As Pastor Alan explains in his new book, The Power to Bless, which releases February 2nd and is available from Amazon for pre-order now, blessing is a biblically based faith vision over your life. The 2021 blessing wall calendar gives you space to write down all of your important appointments. And most importantly, each time you see the beautiful image for the month, your heart will be strengthened by the empowering blessing statement from Pastor Alan. Bless your life with the 2021 blessing calendar. It's our gift to you when you make a donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. Contact us today at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org or 877-544-4860 and start your year outright by the power of blessing. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Alan Wright. A lot of people start out the new year and they think what it's all about is setting some new year's resolutions and then trying to live up to some new standards. And I'm not opposed to resolutions and certainly not opposed. I mean, it's a good thing to set goals in your life and objectives for meeting those goals. But the reason our new year's resolutions are short-lived is the same reason we can't keep the law.

They're good ideas and it's noble, but it's not powerful. God hasn't designed you to live by your vows to God. He's designed you to live by his vows to you in Jesus Christ. That there's something that happens inside of us when we are truly deeply blessed that then we become a blessing to others. It's interesting in the beginning, the order of events in Genesis 1 27, God created man in his own name is Genesis 1 27 in the image of God, he created a male and female.

He created them and look at the order and God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish to the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing. He said, I do want you to be fruitful. I want you to multiply. I want you to have productive lives. I want you to be successful. I want you to be able to work hard. I want you to do all these good things.

And I want you to reign and rule in this earth. But the blessing that he issued was linked inextricably to their capacity to do all of that. And so the blessing comes first. Blessing is different than prayer because prayer is asking God to do something on your behalf.

But what we're going to do today is we're just going to speak directly to one another. We in that sense become partners with God to speak God's heart to one another's. And there's something that's mystically powerful about blessing in a very interesting text that we don't have time to go into. Isaac blessed the wrong son. He had twin boys, Jacob and Esau, and he was going to give this very special blessing to the firstborn son Esau. But Jacob, desperate to be blessed, tricked his father into thinking that he was Esau and he blessed the wrong son. He blessed Jacob. And I think in our culture, we'd say, well, all you got to do is just say, oh, whoops, made a mistake. I'll just speak these words of blessing to the correct son.

But that's not what happened. And this is what we read to Genesis 27, 32. His father Isaac said to him, who are you speaking to Esau? And he answered, I am your son, your firstborn Esau. And instead of like, oh, okay, well, I'll bless you too.

Look at what he says. Then Isaac trembled very violently and said, who was it then that hunted game and brought it to me? And I ate it all before you came and I've blessed him.

And look at this. And yes, he shall be blessed. Remember when I first saw that, I realized there's something so powerful about blessing that it is irrevocable.

I think it almost is like this. When we bless your life today, it's almost like planting a seed and whether there's something that feels immediately encouraging to you or not, it's like in God's eyes, there's something that goes into us and it's like a seed and it can grow and it can't be taken back. And this is so wonderful because curse can be revoked, but blessing, biblical blessing is irrevocable.

It goes on and on and on. It in some ways, blessings the whole narrative of the Bible and that God blessed Adam and Eve. And then he blessed Abraham twice. He blessed Abraham. He wanted to know that he was blessed and that his descendants would be blessed. The patriarchs bless their sons. Jacob blesses all 12 of his sons, as well as Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manasseh in a powerful, powerful story. David blesses his family. David himself is blessed. So the story just continues until we see Jesus who at the beginning of his ministry, it begins with the father's voice blessing him. He starts out his ministry with a series of Beatitudes, blessed are the poor in spirit. People bring their little children to Jesus to lay his hands on him. So he'll bless them. He taught us to bless even our enemies. And in fact, the very last thing that Jesus did is he was ascended into heaven is he was blessing his disciples.

He had his hands out. He was blessing his disciples. When I lift up my hands at the end of a service to speak the benediction, what I'm speaking is the blessing. Benediction means blessing. And the lifted hands are symbolic of the laying on of hands. It is to say, what I'd like to do is take your hand or put a hand on your shoulder and speak and impart this blessing of God.

This is in some ways, the whole narrative of the scripture. Who are blessed? How are they blessed? And will God's people believe themselves blessed?

That's what we're doing today. And this particular blessing, I'm so excited about, and I'm going to share some more about it throughout our service today, but it's all about seeing, come and see Nathaniel and Jesus saying, I saw you while you're under the fig tree. And then Jesus making this promise to Nathaniel, that you'll see greater things through Christ, through his eyes, you'll see greater things. Some many, many years ago, Ann and I had a chance to tour Europe on a budget and we were on a budget. So what it meant was we got to see a lot of places, but we never signed up and paid for the local tour guide that would take the little groups around and explain what they were seeing in the museum or what they were seeing at the archeological site. And so we were going to all these fantastic places and we didn't know what we were looking at. You know, if you're at an archeological site and you're out there and you've got no tour, you're just looking at it going, that's a nice rock.

I wonder what it is. And so what we learned over time is that there's people that had paid tour guides and we just sort of inch over towards them, nestle up, you know, so it didn't look like we're in the group, but kind of lean in and after with one ear, we're kind of listening in on what the tour guide is saying. It's like, oh, that's cool.

Did you hear that? You know, like this, because sometimes you just need expert eyes to be able to appreciate something. And part of what we were going to bless you this year is to say, may you have the eyes of Jesus, is that you're going to have the eyes of the expert in grace, the expert in glory and wonder to be able to show you things that you wouldn't be able to see otherwise.

And I think that this year, if you would just make it a practice to say, in every situation, just pause, it only takes 10 seconds. Just try it. I've been doing it for months and God honors it. Just stop and say, Jesus, how do you see this? Maybe you're in a conversation with a person and you just, Jesus, how do you see this person right now? How do you see this situation? When you get frustrated with culture itself, how do you see this Jesus? And what happens is that instead of you saying, well, what I need to do is figure out what Jesus would do and then try to conform moralistically to what he would do. Instead, you just say, if I could just see it accurately, it'll change everything about how I'm interacting and how I feel about this.

Because what happens is that your thoughts and feelings and behaviors line up with how you see it. Like the time that my brother, Mark, we were at a seafood restaurant at Calabash, North Carolina many years ago, and there's a salad bar there. And I had already gotten my food and I was seated and Mark came over to the table and his face was red with embarrassment. And he said, you won't believe what just happened.

I said, what? He said, well, I was at the salad bar and I thought you were up there on the other side of the salad bar. You know, it had that little plastic thing over the top.

I couldn't really see across the other side. And he said, so there's a fellow on the other side and he's getting his salad and I'm using my tongs, reaching across and plucking things off his plate. The whole way down the salad bar, I'm plucking things off his plate.

We're having a fight at the salad bar. And he said, I got to the end and looked up and it wasn't you. It was a man who was on an airplane one time and he'd brought a little pack of cookies and he put it down, you know, in his stuff underneath the seat. Midway through the flight, he reached down to get his cookies, brought them up, put on his tray, ate one of the cookies. To his surprise, the stranger sitting next to him reached over and got one of the cookies, smiled at him and ate the cookie without asking for one. Well, the passenger couldn't believe it.

The man just didn't say anything. He just let the man have the cookies. Now, that is rude.

That's unbelievable. So man ate another one of his own cookies. And in a few moments, the stranger next to him reached over, took another cookie out and ate it. And this went on the whole flight until all the cookies were gone. And the stranger had eaten half of his cookies.

That gets you kind of frustrated, doesn't it? At the end of the flight, the man reached down to get his bags and look, and there in his bag was his packet of unopened cookies. And he realized he had reached down and grabbed something from the other man's stuff. It was the exact same pack of cookies. And the whole time he'd been eating the stranger's cookies, not vice versa. It's funny when a truth suddenly gets unveiled and you see something in a whole new light.

What does it do? It changes how you feel. Instead of being frustrated, now it's like, oh man, this is the nicest guy in the world.

He thought he was the rudest guy in the world. We want to bless you so that you will have a new perspective through Christ. So I believe that God will give you the eyes of Jesus so you can see everything as He sees it. Through Christ's eyes, as He promised Nathaniel, you'll see greater things this year under a cloudless, open heaven. We're blessing you that you would have the Savior's own clear vision so that you'll see yourself more beloved than broken, that you'll see others' potential more than their problems, and you'll see the world's hope more than its heartaches. God's grace is all around you.

You'll see. That's the gospel. Alan Wright, today's blessing service new year good news message. Wrapping up our series, you'll see as we begin a new year. And Pastor Alan is back with us here in the studio at the conclusion of this message, which by the way is a very unique service that takes place at the beginning of each year at Pastor Alan's home church. It's a blessing service. And so it's really to counter the idea of what most would think of as a new year's resolution.

So explain the difference between the resolution. Well, you know, we always have our new year's resolutions. I mean, I forget the percentages of people that are going to resolve to have a diet and join a gym. You know, the gym memberships just skyrocket.

And I can't remember, I think, but most of it dies away within about three weeks or something. Our resolutions, it's not that it's wrong to resolve. It's just that they're not powerful. And so in that sense, we sort of make fun of our resolutions. And instead of saying, here's the key to change, instead of saying the key to change is our promise that we're going to try harder, we say the key to change is God's promise on our behalf. So this is what the gospel does. The gospel empowers us by the grace of what God's done for us, which doesn't make us lazy.

Instead, it fills us with hope, which provides energy for real transformation. So instead, we've been doing this for at least 25 years at our church. Instead of preaching about and talking about new year's resolutions, we have a blessing service. We have a time in which we start the new year by speaking a blessing, which is a positive vision statement of identity that is rooted in the scripture, that is built on faith and spoken with love and confidence.

And we speak this over every person. And so every year, I feel like the Lord gives me a sense of a blessing. And so today's broadcast is a very, very important word that we spoke as the blessing as we went into 2020.

And who could have ever known that it would be all about seeing as Jesus sees is what we really needed to be able to do when the circumstances are really, really troublesome. So that's what blessing is. And as you know, Daniel, just so near and dear to my heart, and the topic of the book that we're so excited that it's coming out in February. That's right. And so really the blessing service that takes place once a year, at the beginning of a year at the church, would you say that that has became kind of the seed for this book?

Absolutely. The seed for the Power to Bless, which comes out the first week of February, and you can pre-order it now. In fact, please, please do pre-order it. Because, Daniel, we keep reminding our listeners, if you pre-order, you also get a free audiobook, which is a valuable gift, but also you'll get to help launch this book. And this message is so important because it's become a life message for me. God did not withhold blessing from Adam and Eve until they had proven themselves worthy. He blessed them. And then he said, be fruitful and multiply.

The order matters. God affirms who we are. And out of that affirmation of our identity, it's from there. So the power of blessing is like the power of the gospel. We discover who we are, we discover our destiny, and then we live it out in the power of that blessing. And it's a mystical thing. And so we just practice it every year. And we wanted to share this one with our listeners. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.