But Now I See [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. God comes in His holy presence and His wondrous love, the purity and power of that love, and the glory of God. And then I just see my sin. He's not a God of condemnation. He has no intent on coming to you and just telling you how bad you are and condemning you.

His intent is your transformation. 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 Unlimited, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I'm going 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 author. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Now, more on this later in the program. But right now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. I'll never forget driving home from getting the glasses. I had always thought trees just looked like a green blob as you're passing by. And I realized, even from a distance, you can see individual leaves in the trees. I was amazed. I thought everybody must assume that they're a brown stick with a green blob on it.

And now I realize, no, you can see individual leaves. Because until I had new spectacles through which to see, lenses that would enable me to see the reality, my reality was just what I could see. And I figured everybody else was seeing it that way, but they weren't. That's what happens when your eyes are open. What I'm saying is, you go, how could somebody change that much? Well, you change when you're able to see what you had not seen before. And when you can't see it, you can be like, well, Saul, absolutely in your own heart positive of what you think you see and be completely wrong.

But you feel positive that you're right about it. In our family, if anybody ever mentioned Spirit Lake Road, you get a big chuckle out of all of us. Because when I was a kid, my mom loaded me and my brothers up, my aunt, my cousins, we loaded up and we went to Florida. There was a family member's friend or somebody that had a house about 45 minutes from Orlando and we were staying there. We were borrowing their house.

We went down there, we got our stuff moved in, spent the night in the house and got up real early the next morning and went to Disney World. We didn't come back until it was dark. And something about it being dark and nobody seemed to have too much of a good sense of direction and no GPS. And this is back in the day where you just threw the kids in the back of the station wagon.

Everybody rumbled around back there and schlepped or whatever. We're in the back of the station wagon. All I remember is we are driving and just continuing to drive and drive. What are we doing? And next thing you know, we realized we are lost. And of course we're just little kids. We can't help the situation. And my mom, she starts stopping and finding anybody she can to ask directions to this address, to this house. And then somebody give us directions and we go right back down and go down this same road and they drive up and down and go where it's not it. It's went on for hours.

I don't think I'm exaggerating to say it got to be like 1 a.m., 2 a.m. This is not back. They did not have stores that were open all night long.

There are no people around. We're just driving around. We're just like, we're just, we're just lost.

We're just out in the middle of this thing. Finally, a deputy sheriff, they flagged down and they explained the situation and told him exactly where we're staying and whose house it was, Mr. So-and-so's house. And the deputy goes, I know Mr. So-and-so I can take you there. We said, Oh, praise God.

That's fantastic. He just led us right back down the same area we'd been riding up and down all night, led us right in, pulled into the driveway. And my mom and everybody else got out and said, this isn't it. He said, well, this is Mr. So-and-so's house. We said, well, I know, but this isn't it. He said, well, it's got to be, this is Mr. So-and-so's house. Took the key, walked up there, put the key and opened the door.

We looked and there's all our stuff. We had been driving past the house all night long. It just looked a little different at night on Spirit Lake Road.

If you know my mom said, tell me about Spirit Lake Road, you get a real laugh out of that. My point is that, have you ever had something that just looked one way to you and you just seemed positive about it. And then a revelation came, a light got turned on and that changed everything. It's why I believe anybody can change and there's no limit to how much a person can change. All it takes is something like scales to fall off the spiritual lives of the heart.

That's all it takes. He was led by the grace of God and you get the idea God had been pursuing him. I love the fact that when God convicted him of sin, he didn't actually come and list his sin for him. And this has been my experience. Now, there'll be times that the Holy Spirit will come and just point out to you and say, you're doing this wrong, this wrong, this wrong.

And there are times I'm like, but for me, it's been more like this. God comes in his holy presence and his wondrous love, the purity and power of that love and the glory of God. And then I just see my sin. He's not a God of condemnation. He has no intent on coming to you and just telling you how bad you are and condemning you. His intent is your transformation. And all God honestly needs to do most of the time is just manifest his glory to you. If you experience the holiness of God, you will, you will recognize your unholiness by comparison.

Sort of like if you had a diamond that looked clear, but you took it to a jeweler who had a brighter light and looked at it, you'd see imperfections you had not seen before. And that's the way it was. And so what happened was his transformation came through the humility that he experienced. If you think about how ironic this is, that Saul of Tarsus was one of the most feared men, most respected within Judaism and was probably some sort of agent of Rome as well, had papers in his hand, he's going to Damascus and he is going to go and do what he always does and exercise his authority and show his power and his, his ability to control the people and scare them and do it now. And instead the glory of God caused him to just lose his eyesight. And for three days, he's just being led around like a little child.

You know, if you've had impairment of sight your whole life, you learn, you learn some, some skills, but not when it happens. Suddenly he had no idea he could, he had gone to imprison people, but he couldn't even find a prison. He couldn't find a person. He's just trying to survive. He was humiliated.

He was utterly humbled. It was just heartwarming. includes a specially crafted blessing for the month from Pastor Alan. As Pastor Alan explains in his new book, The Power to Bless, which releases February 2nd and is available from Amazon for preorder. Now, blessing is a biblically based faith vision over your life. God blessed Adam and Eve and then told them to be fruitful and multiply. Blessing isn't the reward for your productivity.

It's the fuel for it. The twenty twenty one blessing wall calendar gives you space to write down all your important appointments and make plans for a wonderful new year. 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.

This year, don't just organize your life. Bless your life with the twenty twenty one blessing calendar. It is our gift to you when you make a donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries, contact us today and start your year out right by the power of blessing.

We are in our final days of offering this special product. 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, Pastor Alan dot org.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. And in the midst of that humbling, he began to pray. He began to yearn.

He began to hunger. God doesn't humble us in order to condemn us. He humbles us in order to make us hungry for him.

He doesn't humble us just because he hates our pride, but because he knows that our pride keeps us from trust in Jesus. What's ironic also about the story is that Ananias, one of the brothers there, an early follower of Jesus in Damascus, must have been a spiritual leader and certainly was a man really full of the spirit. He would have been probably one of those Christians everybody knew. He would have been probably one of the first ones on Saul's list to arrest.

He might have wanted to kill him. But instead, God appointed through a vision Ananias to be the one to go and lay hands on Saul. And when he did, his eyes, both spiritually and physically, were open.

And nothing was ever the same. Don't you wonder what Paul experienced when his eyes got opened up to Jesus? He may have had the Torah, the prophets and the Psalms virtually memorized under his studies under Gamaliel. He knew every jot and tittle of the law. He knew all of the prophecies.

And his interpretation of them all was completely wrong until he met Jesus. And in that moment, can you imagine it? I like to imagine.

I wish I could spend all day with you just imagining it. How when the scales of your eyes fall off and you see clearly through the revelation of Jesus and suddenly he saw that Jesus was not a liar and a false prophet, but was the Messiah. Is God himself? I think Saul of Tarsus' mind started going back to the scripture, which starting on the opening page that in the beginning, God created the heavens and earth and said, let there be light. And Saul of Tarsus recognized that the light that had come, the Shekinah glory of God that had descended upon him on the road to Damascus was the very light that God spoke in the very beginning that brought his glorious creation into existence.

I began to think of all of the scriptures that began exploding with revelation and joy in his heart. He started thinking about the call of Abraham. It was called up out of the Ur of the Chaldees, called, not earning his place of call, but called by God, chosen by God and given a great promise by God that the seed of Abraham would become a mighty, mighty people whose seed would become as numerous as the stars of the heaven. And Saul of Tarsus, the apostle Paul, would later write about this and say, when it said the seed of Abraham, it doesn't mean seed plural, but seed in the singular, because he was talking about the seed, the person, Jesus Christ, he is the seed of Abraham. And whoever is engrafted into Christ is therefore engrafted into the family of God and we become children of Abraham, not by natural descent or human lineage or genetics, we become children of Abraham because we are in Christ. And whoever is in Christ is a recipient of all the promises that were made to Abraham.

He's like, now I see it, now I get it. That's how his descendants are numerous as the stars of the sky, because everybody in Christ and every saint who goes to heaven is all part of the family, he began to see the discussion that took place in that family between Sarah and Abraham, where there was a dispute that arose because when they had called in Hagar, the maidservant, and Hagar had had Ishmael because they had seen that the promise of a son had tarried, but then they had the son of promise, Isaac, and Isaac and Ishmael were not getting along. And Ishmael mocked Isaac and Sarah had had it.

And she said to her husband, get rid of the slave girl and his son. And they kicked out Hagar and suddenly Saul of Tarsus saw what it all meant because he later wrote about this. And he said, ah, he said this was actually a picture of what happens when the law meets grace, when there is when there is efforts of human righteousness symbolized by Ishmael that comes up against the promise of God, which is not by our righteousness, but by the grace of God. The two cannot intersect.

The two cannot coexist. And so the law has to go. Grace has come in. He's began to see the meaning of Abraham and Abraham's seed. And he started going through the scripture.

Just in an instant, you know, the thing I find out about revelation is when you're when the light turns on, you just see it, you just see it, you just see it. He started understanding who Moses is. He started understanding all the Psalms and the prophet. He understood what Habakkuk meant when he said the righteous shall live by faith. He understood what David meant when he said in Psalm 51 against you and you only have I sinned.

Oh, Lord, God. He saw it all. He saw that instead of Jesus being a problem, Jesus is the answer.

I've just been thinking this week about we used to sing old, all kind of campfire song. Jesus is the answer. For the world today, above Him there's no other. Jesus is the way. Jesus is the answer for the world today, above Him there's no other. Jesus is the way. He is the way, the truth and the lie. We sometimes think that transformation is complicated. But this story says, no, it's actually simple.

Truth is truth. And when you see it, it sets you free. Therefore, let us not think that any religious motions, activities, rituals, or even adherence to moral code is the answer. Jesus is the answer. And let's be wise because sometimes I know I speak of myself, I can get so frustrated with people who do not know Jesus as if I'm expecting them to see what they can't see. If you can't see, you can't see.

If you're sure a tree is just a green blob, you're sure until somebody gives you different glasses. Anybody can change. So don't stop. Don't stop praying for that person that you love. That needs to see Jesus.

If you never read the old book by Jim Cymbala, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, the story of the founding of the Brooklyn Tabernacle is a good one. And if you get it and read it, you'll be glad, at least if you make it to page 63. Because on page 63, you'll hear the story about Chrissy, Jim Cymbala's daughter, who became wayward as a teenager and ran away from home. It's a hard thing.

Any parent who's ever experienced abject rebellion in one of their children knows it's probably one of the greatest pains you could ever experience in life. To be a pastor and have a child who just wanders far away is a unique pain, and they prayed for Chrissy. You know, I'm sure the pastor is just always wondering how much do I share with the church, how much do I talk about it? You know, you feel like you're in a fishbowl already. So they didn't talk about it a lot, but people knew that she was away. And they have a Tuesday night prayer meeting. I think it still happens.

It's been to it. It's one of the best prayer meetings you'll ever go to. If you're ever in the area of New York, it's worth going to the Brooklyn Tabernacle. An experience in prayer, they built the church around prayer. And at this huge prayer gathering one night, somebody sent a note up to the stage and said, Pastor, and it was from a very spiritually sensitive woman. She said, Pastor Sembola, I feel impressed that we should stop the meeting and pray for your daughter. And Sembola just bore witness to it, and so he said, OK. And so the associate got up and started leading prayer, and they just the entire throng of people just started praying for this one girl. I want to read you.

Some of it. To describe, he said, what happened in the next minutes, I can only employ a metaphor, the church turned into a labor room. There was a groaning, a sense of desperate determination as if to say, Satan, you will not have this girl.

Take your hands off her. She's coming back. I was overwhelmed.

The force of that vast throng calling on God almost literally knocked me over. And when I got home that night, Carol was waiting up for me. And we sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee and I said, it's over. What's over, she wondered. It's over with Chrissy, I said. You would have to have been at the prayer meeting tonight.

I tell you, if there's a God in heaven, the whole nightmare is finally over. Thirty two hours later, on a Thursday morning. Carol burst through the door and said, Chrissy's here. Jim Cymbala went downstairs and he found her. I saw my daughter on the kitchen floor rocking on her hands and knees sobbing.

Chrissy. She grabbed my pant leg and then pouring out her anguish. Daddy, Daddy, I've sinned against God. I've sinned against myself. I've sinned against you and mommy.

Please forgive me. And suddenly she drew back. After he had been holding her and she said, Daddy, who was praying for me? Who was praying for me?

What do you mean, Chrissy? On Tuesday night, daddy, who was praying for me? She said in the middle of the night, God woke me and showed me I was headed toward the abyss, there was no bottom to it, it scared me to death. I was so frightened. I realized how hard I've been, how wrong, how rebellious. But at the same time, it was like God wrapped his arms around me and held me tight.

He kept me from sliding any farther and he said, I still love you. Daddy, tell me the truth. Who was praying for me on Tuesday night? Jesus is the answer for the world today.

Above him, there's no other. Jesus is the way. Anyone can change by the power of grace and the presence of the Holy Spirit who takes the scales off our spiritual eyes, anyone can change and there's no limit to how much a person can change. That's a gospel. Alan Wright, today's teaching. But now I see great encouragement here and grace and hope for us all.

It's from the teaching Unlimited. And Pastor Alan is joining us back here in just a moment with today's good news parting thought for the day. Stick with us. 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 and a heart stirring image, but also includes a specially crafted blessing for the month from Pastor Alan. As Pastor Alan explains in his new book, The Power to Bless, which releases February 2nd and is available from Amazon for preorder now blessing is a biblically based faith vision over your life, God blessed Adam and Eve and then told them to be fruitful and multiply blessing isn't the reward for your productivity.

It's the fuel for it. The twenty twenty one blessing wall calendar gives you space to write down all your important appointments and make plans for a wonderful new year. 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 this year.

Don't just organize your life. Bless your life with the twenty twenty one blessing calendar. It is our gift to you when you make a donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries, contact us today and start your year out right by the power of blessing.

We are in our final days of offering this special product. 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, Pastor Alan dot org. Back here now with Pastor Alan and our parting good news thought for the day and just closing out with that that quote from Jim Cymbala, there's good news here for all who've come to Jesus. You know, Daniel, I think the thing I want to say to our listeners as we close out from this beautiful account of the of the of the the conversion of Saul of Tarsus is that the power of transformation can be as simple as something like scales falling off our eyes. I think we make it too difficult. I think we we we we think about all the hard work that we need to do in order to be able to change our ways of thinking, and I think instead we should ask God whatever scales I still have on my eyes, would you remove them? Help them to fall away. So much of life changes when you just get the accurate perspective and see it from God's point of view. So ask him, Jesus, how do you see this? Will you take away any of the blinders in the scales that I have on my own eyes so that you'll be able to look back and say with the great him, I was blind, but now I see today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.