The Power to Bless [Part 3]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. What in the world? We have wound up with a pet tadpole. We're the only people in the world with a pet tadpole.

And of course, you can't. What are we going to do? You've got a little girl who's got a tadpole. That's her tadpole. And all the while, we're dechlorinating this water. We're boiling spinach.

We're feeding the tadpole and a frog. 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 be here. This week is release week of Pastor Alan's new book, The Power to Bless.

In fact, it just released yesterday. And Pastor Alan is in the studio with us as we're really unpacking key themes of this book and celebrating all that God is going to do through it. And really, that's speaking a blessing over the book, I think, to see with faith vision and faith eyes of what the Lord will do through this.

So Pastor Alan, it's good to be here with you again today. I'm just going to jump right into this concept because this is a very common theme, especially, I would say, in America. Should we not, in a sense, maybe withhold some blessing in order to spur those we love onto greatness? And I understand this is probably some backwards thinking.

Well, I think that that is the mentality that probably most people have grown up with. It's almost like blessing was withheld, dangled like a carrot, that if you'll run a little faster, jump a little higher, you'll finally get my blessing. And it's just the opposite of the way of God though. Because with God the blessing comes first. In the beginning He blessed Adam and Eve, and then He said, be fruitful and multiply. And what you see in the Scripture is blessing is this mystical release of grace that is empowering people to be who they are destined to be. The blessing, here's the way it happens, blessing comes first, which instills both hope and identity. And if you want to really understand how gospel transformation happens, it happens through hope and identity. Once you have an identity and you see who you are in Christ, then you begin to live in accord with that. So, that's why it's so important that we learn to bless and affirm who people really are in Christ.

That's what's going to change their lives. There is a story in this book, it's the Power to Bless by Pastor Alan Wright. And by the way, this is release week, it just released yesterday, so you're here at a good time to get in and devour this. And you're going to love it if for no other reason than for the tadpole story alone. The immortal tadpole. Oh, I love this story. You know, I think sometimes God just puts interesting things in my life so I'll have an illustration.

You know, I mean, he did that with some of the Old Testament prophets and they just make them go through something weird so then they could teach a person to preach about it. But our daughter, Abby, when she was five, she came home from preschool with a tadpole. And it was a learning exercise. You bring it home and you watch it become a frog and you learn about how tadpoles become frogs through the process of metamorphosis. And so she brought it home. Of course, you know, when you have these things with your kids and it's nice for a preschool teacher to just send it home with you, but you're the one that's there.

You're having to dechlorinate the water. And then it turns out tadpoles are picky eaters. The best food for them is to boil spinach, then freeze it, and put it in little Ziploc bags and sprinkle small portions into the tadpole bowl each day. So we began doing that.

No worries. You know, in a matter of a few weeks, certainly the tadpole is going to become a frog. And we were going to release the full-fledged frog into the wild. So she put her tadpole up on a shelf and the tadpole grew nicely the next few days. After two weeks, the other preschoolers' tadpoles had started sprouting legs and dropping their tails.

But Abby's didn't. Her tadpole just kept swimming happily around the bowl as a tadpole. Some two months went by and we still had a tadpole. And so Ann, my wife, she bumped into Abby's preschool teacher. Ms. Nikki said, Ms. Nikki, when in the world is the tadpole going to turn into the frog?

And she said, what are you talking about? And Ann said, well, our tadpole, when is it going to become a frog? She said, it can't still be a tadpole. I think that's a bit of frog.

This doesn't happen. We said, no, we still have a tadpole. And Daniel, the funny thing of this story is that another month went by, another, another, another, and no lie. Now, a year and a half later, we still had a tadpole. That's a world record. That's a world record.

I think we set a world record. We had an immortal tadpole. I was like, what in the world? We have wound up with a pet tadpole. We're the only people in the world with a pet tadpole.

And of course you can't, what are we going to do? You've got a little girl who's got a tadpole. That's her tadpole. And all the while we're dechlorinating this water. We're boiling spinach. We're feeding the tadpole and, and, and no frog.

Well, one day she comes home from something else at church, at camp or something. And now she's come home with an aquatic frog. So now we have an aquatic frog and a tadpole. And at first we thought, well, we'll put them in the same bowl.

I advised against it. By this time, the tadpole was so large. I thought the little frog will be in danger of the, of the, of the sizable tadpole. So we put the little frog in a bowl next to the tadpole. This is what happened.

Verifiable. My seven-year-old daughter called me at the office, daddy, daddy, daddy, you won't believe it. I said, what? She said, the tadpole's grown legs. I said, what, what are you talking about? She said, I'm telling the truth.

The tadpole has legs. And so I stopped whatever I was doing. I said, I've got to come home and see this.

This is impossible. After 18 months, you mean overnight it's grown legs. I went back and sure enough, that tadpole had begun growing legs.

The tail was dropping. And within a day or two, it became a full-fledged frog. And we have just declared that it just needed to see what a frog looked like. So when we put a frog on display next to it, it said, that's what I'm supposed to be.

And it became it. And I think the lesson learned here is that human beings are the same way. We just need to see who we are and who are made to be. Underachievers don't start excelling because someone just tells them to try harder. Depressed people don't get better because we tell them just to be happy.

Now, if you want to, you know, quit being a tadpole and grow some legs, you need a new vision of your life. You need someone to tell you who you really are. In other words, it needs to be put into a display for you to see this is who you are. And that's what happens when we bless. So it puts a vision of who you can be.

And out of that identity, I believe we begin to change. Wow. That story gets me every time, especially the fact that it wasn't even just a week, month or whatever later, it happened almost instantaneously. That was a thing. It was after 18 months to have a tadpole turn into a frog. It just couldn't happen by chance.

It just is just crazy. The Power to Bless is, by the way, where that story will be found in its full context. And it's a book that is released now. And we're in release week here celebrating this accomplishment by Pastor Alan and something that you'll want to get to not only receive a blessing in your own life, but then to be able to start to speak blessing for those around you that you love.

And we're going to be talking more about that as we go along here. A key theme, though, from Scripture, and by the way, you can get this book wherever books are sold, good bookstores, online vendors as well, Amazon, for instance. And at pastorallen.org, we'll connect you.

We'll hook you up there. But Ephraim and Manasseh, this is a key theme from Scripture. And for Jewish households, this is not a foreign concept. This is not an Ephra who? No, it's Ephraim and Manasseh.

Very, very key names of Hebrew household. So you want to bring us into why this is so important? Well, this is the heart of the book, really, the crescendo of the book.

So spoiler alert, a little preview of where this all goes. For 3700 years, Daniel, Jewish dads have been blessing their kids, saying, May God make you as Ephraim and Manasseh. Well, the reason for that is Genesis chapter 48.

In Genesis chapter 48, Joseph, who learns that his father, Jacob, is nearing death, rushes to his father's bedside and brings his own two sons, Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. And he wants his father to bless him. In fact, that's what you see in the Scripture. It'll tell you how important blessing is when you see how, amongst the Hebrew patriarchs, it was understood. This is the most important thing that could happen, is I want my children to be blessed. And he wanted his children to be blessed by their grandfather.

So here's the scene. He brings his two sons, the firstborn, the older, is named Manasseh, and the younger is named Ephraim, in Hebrew, Ephraim. And he brings them, knowing that according to the customs of primogeniture and the culture of the time, the firstborn son will receive the stronger blessing. It was customary that the firstborn son would get a double portion of the inheritance. It's customary that that firstborn would get a stronger blessing. And so the right hand would be placed on the firstborn in the left hand, the weaker on the younger.

That's the way it was done. So there are two boys, and Joseph comes into Jacob, and he brings his boys to be blessed. And he puts the older, Manasseh, under Jacob's right hand, because the older deserves the strong right hand blessing. And he puts the younger, Ephraim, under the left hand. And before he blesses them, Jacob does something very odd. He crosses his arms and takes his right hand, the symbol of the strong favored blessing, and puts it on Ephraim's head. And he takes his left hand and puts it on Manasseh's head. Well, this troubles Joseph, because he thinks, well, my dad's gotten kind of old, kind of blind, and he's not quite sure what he's doing anymore. So very respectfully, Joseph takes Jacob's hand and tries to move him and tries to move him where they should be. He says, no, dad. He said, this is Manasseh, the firstborn. Your right hand goes on his head and the left, and he tries to reposition them. But the text says that Jacob crossed his arms again and said, no, my son. He said, I know what I'm doing. And the Bible then says, thus he put Ephraim before Manasseh, and thus you shall put my name on the people of Israel, saying, may God make you as Ephraim and Manasseh. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series.

It's launch week. The power to bless is Pastor Alan Wright's latest book and releasing this week. You can get it wherever you find great books sold, including amazon.com, or we'll connect you at PastorAlan.org. Not only will you be blessed by reading this book filled with blessing, but you'll also learn step by step how to be a blessing to others by imparting your words of blessing into the lives of those around you. The power to bless releasing this week by Alan Wright Ministries. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. Alan Wright. And what's so interesting is that for 3700 years, every Sabbath, Jewish dads are telling their boys, may God make you to be like Ephraim and Manasseh, and nobody seems to know why.

I studied a lot. I read lots of rabbinical teaching about this, and the prevailing thought amongst the ancient rabbis into modern times was that these boys, Ephraim and Manasseh, might be a little different than other siblings in that there's no evidence that they had sibling rivalry, like all the other characters in the Bible. Well, it's a nice thing if your kids get along with each other, but I think that there'd be something more important than that. If this is the blessing God wants put on every single child, well, why not, if you're going to pick somebody else, say, may God make you to be like Elijah and Elisha, or may God make you like Moses and Joshua, or David and Solomon. But Ephraim and Manasseh, these obscure boys, we don't know anything about them. We don't know much of their story. They never really do much in the Bible. Why Ephraim and Manasseh? I don't think it makes sense until you see it through the gospel.

You know, the New Testament says of the old that it's full of shadows pointing to the new, and this is the story of the gospel. There was a father. He is the creator of the heavens and the earth, and he had a firstborn. Jesus is called the firstborn of all creation, and Jesus came to this earth, and he lived a sinless life.

He lived a perfect life. He lived a life that, well, he deserved nothing less and nothing other than just the right hand of blessing from his father, the strong right hand, the perfect blessing, the strong double portion blessing, the blessing that says, you are my firstborn, and you are under my favor. But Jesus went to the cross, and there as Jesus hung and cried out, Eli, Eli, lama, samatane, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

He was experiencing, the Bible says, curse on our behalf, because whoever hangs on the tree is cursed. And so in a very real sense, what I saw is it is as though God in the heavens crossed his hands. He took that right hand of blessing that should have been reserved only for the firstborn, for Jesus, and instead he crossed his hands, and he extended it to the secondborn, to the undeserving, to me, and to you, to everyone listening who, whoever would receive the good news of the gospel and accept the saving news of Christ, you become the one that gets the right hand blessing. You become the one that gets a share of the blessing that should have been reserved only for Christ. This is why Paul is able to say, we're blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ, and that we are co-heirs with Christ. It means, and this is mind-bending to me, Daniel, but it means that we have received the blessing that only Jesus should have received, because God in the heavens crossed his arms. And I believe that that's why God, for 3,700 years, has had Jewish dads saying, may God make you as Ephraim and Manasseh, because he's saying, may you be a child of the gospel, may you be like what is pictured here, the recipient of the crossed arms of God, the great exchange where he who knew no sin became our sin, and we who were so full of sin became the righteousness of Jesus.

May God make you as Ephraim and Manasseh is to say, may you live all your days under the unmerited favor of God. That is the depths of what it means to be blessed. You'll find this in The Power to Bless, a book that just released this week.

In fact, we're celebrating that release right now with Pastor Alan in the studio. And you can get your hands on this book wherever fine books are sold in stores, online, even through your e-reader right now, The Power to Bless by Pastor Alan Wright. And I would encourage you just to pick that up, to start reading it, let it bless your life, and then that outpouring into others around you.

And if you would be so kind, leave an honest review once you've read the book, and that's certainly a big help as well. So Pastor Alan, there are four essentials to the blessing that you've seen as we talk about Ephraim and Manasseh here. You want to talk about these?

Yeah. So, why Ephraim and Manasseh? And as I've shared, the pinnacle of that is these crossed arms.

But I think there's something else that's there. And interestingly, Daniel, the first thing that happened was that when Joseph brought these boys before Jacob to bless them, Jacob adopted them. He said, they'll be mine, just like Reuben and Simeon.

And when he did that, he effectively made them heirs of the promised land. And I think when you bless people, what you're doing essentially is you are saying, like someone who's adopted, I want you to be secure. Insecurity is a form of anxiety, and it causes us to not only have worry, but it leads us into all manner of error in our lives. But when we're really secure, when we're really strapped into God's love, and we know it, and we know He'll never leave us, and we know that someone's for us, that changes us so much. I think the first thing that happens, therefore, when you're blessing someone's life is that you're helping instill in them a sense of security.

And that's what is essential. But I think there's something in these names also. And the name Manasseh, the firstborn son, his name means, forgotten all my troubles, because Joseph was in a land of trouble. He had been abused in his life, hated in his life. He had been thrown in a pit, sold into slavery, falsely accused, put into a prison. And then he's promoted in Egypt to second in command of all of Egypt, and he has a son.

He has this beautiful boy, and he's aware of the providence and the grace of God, and he named him Manasseh, because he said, God's made me to forget all my troubles. That's a beautiful thing about Joseph. And I think it's a beautiful thing about blessing, is that what blessing does is instead of like curse that says, look, you've made so many mistakes, you're doomed.

What blessing says is the opposite. So we've got all things possible. And so we're helping people let go of the baggage of the past. In a sense, the blessing of today can be so strong that the troubles of yesterday are eclipsed.

And I think that's one of the things we want to do. We want people to be like Manasseh. So he adopted them, making them secure. Like Manasseh means forgotten all my troubles. And the name Ephraim, it means twice fruitful. His second-born son, he said twice fruitful.

And part of it, I think, was, you know, this is a second son. He said we're fruitful again. But I think there's more meant there, and I think it is that God wants our lives to be fruitful.

This is different than just blind ambition and our versions of success the world gives us. This is all about abiding in Christ, and he produces by the Spirit fruit in your life. And unashamedly, the Bible speaks of our lives being fruitful, and Jesus said, you know, I want you to bear much fruit.

Abide to me and you'll bear much fruit. So when we bless people, we are blessing the fruitfulness of their lives. And as we explained, in those crossed arms, the favor of God is on display. So I think that's the essence of it, and that's what the blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh is all about. You are learning from Ephraim and Manasseh how blessing in general works. It instills security. It helps people move on from the past into a bright future. It promotes and empowers their fruitfulness, and it is to speak the favor, the unmerited grace of God over their lives.

And when that happens, we're changed. That's the heart of the message of The Power to Bless. It's a new book by Pastor Alan, actually just releasing yesterday. And you can get this book right now. It's available everywhere, in stores, online, even through your e-reader.

And certainly Amazon, Barnes & Noble, those type places have it. And you can come to pastorallen.org to learn more about the author and learn more about the various resources that we have, but also we'll connect you right up to Amazon through that website, pastorallen.org. And Pastor Alan, again, so excited about this week. It's been a long time coming. I know especially for you, spending most of your life working towards this moment. And we're just anticipating some really encouraging stories of changed lives that will come from it. I want to say to our listeners who've been with us today, you are no tadpole.

God's destined you to be a frog. If you missed the earlier part of our program, that won't make sense to you. But it just is to say that sometimes you need someone to speak over you, an identity of who you really are, and you'd be surprised how much you can grow from there. And Daniel, as always, I just want to say, you know, we're sharing our excitement about this book, but our excitement is unto the glory of God. It's His message, it's not mine. It's His word, not mine.

It's His beautiful plan for the world, not mine. We just are exposing what the Scripture has always shown us and putting it hopefully into a way that makes it accessible to everyday readers. Anyone can learn how to bless others. Anyone can move from a life that's been unblessed to bless. And that's what it's all about, the power to bless.

It's launch week. The power to bless is Pastor Alan Wright's latest book and releasing this week. You can get it wherever you find great books sold, including amazon.com, or we'll connect you at pastorallen.org. Not only will you be blessed by reading this book filled with blessing, but you'll also learn step by step how to be a blessing to others by imparting your words of blessing into the lives of those around you. The power to bless releasing this week by Allen Wright Ministries. So Pastor Alan, as we've been talking about the power to bless, you actually have a parting blessing in this book, and I'd encourage you to impart a blessing on everyone right now, if you will. Well, it is, Daniel, my heart in the book, not just to teach about blessing, but to release blessing. I think by the time you read the book, you'll go, I have had an impartation.

That's what I want. And here's part of an extended blessing that I crafted at the end of the book, and I'd love to share it as we end our program today. Beloved, you belong to God. Before God's voice thundered into the unformed cosmos, sending forth light at 186,000 miles per second, before he created the Canis Majora star large enough to house seven quadrillion earths, before he set the earth on its elliptical course and started its spinning, God imagined you. His eyes saw your unformed substance and your days were written in God's book, when as yet there was none of them, according to Psalm 139.

Before the Lord formed you in the womb, he knew you, Jeremiah 1.5. The pinnacle of God's creation is not seen in the expanse of the Grand Canyon or in the towering sequoias of the redwood forest. You are the pinnacle of God's handiwork.

His greatest masterpiece is not unveiled in a multi-hued sunset over a rolling ocean or in a radiant rainbow arced across freshly emptied clouds. You are God's masterpiece. That's a blessing for the day and our appreciation to you for your partnership when you go and purchase the power to bless and tell someone else about it as well. And may God fuel your life with the very power of the blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh. 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.