Daily Blessing Compilation #5

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Without blessing, we will have no deep security and feel no real release from past failures. Unblessed, we'll never be as fruitful as God has planned, and we won't walk fully in the favor of God.

So there's a lot at stake. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new life. I'm Daniel Britt, excited to be in the studio for today's special Friday blessing broadcast with Pastor Alan.

And this is the book, The Power to Bless, and I'm holding it in my hands now. It is finally out. It's highly anticipated. And I'm excited as we talk about a few excerpts from the book.

Have you enjoyed release week and the days that have followed, Alan? Well, I thought the cutest thing was our artist sent out, posted something that said, you'll never believe what the groundhog saw. And because it was released on Groundhog Day, and we got a cute picture of a, it looks like a groundhog holding the book.

So forget the groundhog seeing his shadow. He saw The Power to Bless out in the marketplace now. And Daniel, of course, the reason we're so excited is that this is one of the most important biblical messages for our time and for all time. And interesting, many, including many, many Christians have not had much exposure or teaching on the subject of blessing. It's so much more than we make it to be in this hashtag blessed age of ours, or when we just say, hey, God bless you, or we quote, say the blessing before the meal to really come into a deep sense of the biblical picture of Hebrew patriarchs blessing their sons and grandsons and granddaughters and the power of blessing that just is transformational, running like a beautiful golden thread all the way through God's word. That transformational power is what this book's all about.

And especially the hidden, beautiful story of the blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh. So, I'm so excited because I just think this message needs to be out there. Now, 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 is a flip-style devotional for your desk or your kitchen counter. It's a calendar devotional that you can take with you and reflect upon as you go throughout your day. And it's yours with your gift, your donation right now to Alan Wright Ministries. It's our thank you.

As you listen to our discussion today, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at pastoralan.org. That's pastoralan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But right now, let's begin our Friday broadcast with Pastor Alan. And again, we're so enjoying sitting with you, maybe just paragraph upon paragraph of this new book. Pastor Alan, thanks for your time in the studio today. Well, what a privilege, Daniel, it is to join you in the studio today and to have time to talk about some of the inspiration and some of the meat and potatoes of this book that I'm so thrilled that God's given me the chance to put out into print and that is now finally available stores and online everywhere. And we've talked a bit about the blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh.

And for a lot of us, those aren't names that roll off the tongue quite easily. But this is a, if you grew up in a Hebrew household. If you grew up in a Hebrew household, you would know it because every Sabbath for 3700 years, Hebrew dads, Jewish dads have been blessing their kids saying, God make you as Ephraim and Manasseh. God make you as Ephraim and Manasseh. Well, who are Ephraim and Manasseh?

If you wanted God to make your children like somebody in the Bible, wouldn't you want to say God make you like Elijah and Elisha or Moses and Joshua or David and Solomon. But Ephraim and Manasseh, these obscure boys. And so the book explores what the mysterious meaning is behind their names and the strange act of Jacob crossing his hands and placing his right hand on the younger son on purpose.

All of that is explained in the book. It's an absolutely fascinating picture of the gospel. But I just think, Daniel, I mean Ephraim and Manasseh, they need to be famous to all of us.

And we ought to be going around telling each other, God make you as Ephraim and Manasseh and understand why. But it's a wonderful lens through which this most important Hebrew family blessing can explain the nature of blessing itself. A positive vision spoken over your life and faith and accord with God's word that has an enduring transformational power.

So we need to learn to live blessed and we need to learn to bless others because it may be this is the thing that someone you love is missing in their life that's going to make all the difference. The book, The Power to Bless, is filled also with stories. I think there's plenty of stories from your own life or from those that you have pastored or been in contact with throughout, as we've talked about many, many years. This book is not just a one or two year project for you.

This has been a lifelong journey. And those stories, I think, make the teaching something that we can take and it puts the cookies on the lower shelf. Well, I think that Jesus taught by story because that's how we learn and that's how we grow. So it really is a book that is full of some of the best stories that I've experienced personally or watched others experience, some of which really put on display the miraculous power of blessing and many of which also will make you chuckle or bring a tear to your eye because of the tender ways of God.

So in that sense people tell me it's a very delightful thing you know to read along. And in some sense the book itself, Daniel, is one big story that reaches its own crescendo because I think that you know non-fiction books they need to have our own story flow to it too. So it's my story, it's Jacob's story, and it's all our story. As I have worded it on the opening pages, maybe we'll start there, some people try hard to succeed so they will feel blessed and other people try hard to succeed because they already feel blessed. It's the difference between striving and thriving.

It's the difference between death and life. For most of my life I was a former laboring for the blessing that I never knew. Those are opening words of the book, the words that in many ways lay out the whole reason for the book. There's a big difference, Daniel, between the kind of flourishing that takes place of a blessed life and the sort of striving that takes place when you feel unblessed.

And as I pick up reading on two pages later, here's a question I asked early in the book. Has anyone ever looked you in the eye, affirmed your infinite value, identified your unique gifts, and pointed you towards a God-given destiny? What would it mean to you for someone to speak that sort of positive vision and faith over your life?

Think about the people you love. Don't you long to help them grow and flourish? How might you impact their lives if you became skilled in the practice of blessing? Without blessing, I write, we will have no deep security and feel no real release from past failures.

Unblessed will never be as fruitful as God has planned, and we won't walk fully in the favor of God. So there's a lot at stake. Do you think that most of us might can remember a time where even if it weren't a full blessing, as you would define it, maybe it skated close to being a blessing. It was a compliment, but it was a compliment that was dripping with some life-giving words to it. And boy, we remember those moments, and maybe they only lasted six seconds.

Exactly. And I think sometimes maybe when you're receiving them, you may not even know what is taking place. I tell a story in the book about a professor who meant a lot to me in college. Daniel, as much as I talk now, I know that you might not be able to believe this, but there was a time that I came across quite shy, especially in a public setting like in a classroom. I just didn't tend to speak up. I was afraid of saying the wrong thing, you know.

I was afraid of maybe looking foolish. And when I was a freshman in college, I took a course that lots of Christians wanted to take at my secular university. It was under a man named Grant Wacker.

He was an expert in the history of Christianity in America, and he taught a course called Religion 29 at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. So I took that my freshman year, and I signed up for the honors section. Well, being in the honors section meant that we were in this big class of 300 students.

But on Friday, I would meet with a small section of about 20. And for my section, instead of it being a teaching assistant that was leading it, Professor Wacker himself would lead it. And I was quite taken by him. I thought he was a wonderful teacher. And it went on in years to come, a man who helped me in many ways and under whom I served and worked as I wrote my honors thesis.

Well, this story is moving to me because I didn't even know all the ways I needed it. But I sat there quietly not saying anything in that class. And after we wrote the second midterm exam, which was an essay that we would write and real fast and turn in my chicken scratch, and he gave it back to me in red ink that said, and he gave me a very nearly perfect score on it. And he said, Alan, he said to this, anyone who could write a paper an exam like this really ought to speak up in class.

This is nearly flawless work, and we need to hear from you. That's how I put Daniel. It didn't mean that the next week I came in and I was just a chatterbox in class, but I never forgot that. I probably saved that exam somewhere. Because you see, what that was was a blessing. He was affirming something to me and identifying with it how that could impact my own destiny. He was not just saying, hey, you're a good student. He wasn't just saying, hey, this is a good exam. He was saying, your words make a difference in this world.

You don't need to feel like you're somehow second class sitting there in this classroom. And so that empowered me, and it began a process that eventually began getting me to open up. Well, I think probably all of us have some moments like that in our lives, and it would be wonderful to maybe identify them and to drink them in more deeply. I think one of the things, of course, we need to learn to do is to, when someone does bless us, to really receive it deeply. Because in order to bless others, we need to know ourselves blessed. But I think, you know, as our listeners ponder over their own lives, as you're saying, you'll find times like that in your own life.

And sometimes, like you said, it might be six sentences, somebody writes you, or six seconds of something that they say, and it'll make a lot of difference. I remember one time going to visit in the hospital, and there was a man who'd been facing cancer, and it'd been a long road. He's doing fine now, but it had been a long road.

And his wife, she was becoming weary with all of the ups and downs of the roller coaster. And I visited and I called to check in with her the next day. And I just, as she answered the phone, I said, well, hello, woman of faith and power. And she told me later that that was a turning point for her. She said, I just need to be reminded who I am. She's, you know, she was feeling so down on the dumps and some defeated and such to have somebody call you who you actually are. It only takes one sentence sometimes.

So yeah, makes a big difference. The book is The Power to Bless. It's written by Pastor Alan Wright.

And we're in the studio today, a special Friday blessing edition of our teaching. And we're going to dive back into the book here in just a moment. It's available wherever good books are sold in stores, online. You can get it for your e-reader. There's an audiobook version, and you can get all of the details at pastoralan.org.

Pastor Alan, the subtitle to this is How to Speak Life and Empower the People You Love. And so there really is, there's a how to, there's really kind of a, I don't want to say DIY because it really involves the power of the Holy Spirit here. But there are some practical things that you can draw from this book and this material and even apply it within a day of reading it. You can go in.

You actually can. I haven't really thought of it that way, Daniel, but it's like what I wanted to be. And I think that I think by God's grace, we've succeeded with this is that this is a book that will at the same time bless you and teach you how to bless, that you will find yourself inspired and as if you've been nourished by being in the presence of God. But you'll also have some real handy tools that you could put it into practice because, you know, I know in the end, life, we're busy. And if it can't help me out pretty quick, then it's not much good to me.

So it does. I think you'll begin to immediately start applying the things you love. You learn, you'll be able to be, I think, inspired to help others, and then you'll be equipped to help others. I think that's what happens in the book. Daniel, how about a little bit from chapter two?

I was just off the phone on our way into the recording studio talking to this staff person whose story I tell at the opening of chapter two. On my first day in the seventh grade, I discovered I was poor. Those are the words of one of the smartest men I know, a longtime friend and colleague of mine, Mickey Figpen, a thin 60-something, eclectic, baseball-loving, former hippie who really liked serving Jesus. His parents had only six years of formal education each. His dad worked in the dust of the sawmill in Kinston, North Carolina for a couple of years. His mother worked second shift in the weaving line in the Kinston cotton mill for over 40 years.

Like a lot of us, Mickey said, every good thing in my story begins with a praying mother. Mickey never thought much about his low-income upbringing in East Kinston until he went to junior high, Harvey High School, junior high school. It was on the other side of town, and Mickey's people called it the rich side. Because the new school was farther away from the rich side of the town, Mickey's folks had to drive him each morning, but he felt so embarrassed by his parents' old car that he has to be dropped off down the street. Sometimes he took a father detour walking blocks out of his way so he wouldn't be seen approaching school from the poor side of town. Mickey demonstrated scholastic aptitude at Harvey, but even that made him lonely.

None of my friends from East Kinston were in the advanced section, so I never saw them. I was manifestly poor and manifestly different. But there were bright spots amidst the darkness of those junior high years.

One light stands out in particular, Mrs. Betsy Harper. She taught in North Carolina history and for some reason made Mickey her assistant in eighth grade. And Mickey moved up to Grainger High School for his freshman year.

It so happened that Ms. Harper relocated as well. Her room was across from Ms. Piaski's where Mickey took first year Latin. And early in the fall of ninth grade, the bell rang and Mickey emerged from Ms. Piaski's class with a test paper in his hand. He'd gotten a C on a Latin quiz.

Mrs. Harper was standing outside her room and as Mickey was walking by asked to see the papers carrying. This is the last C you'll ever get, Ms. Harper said confidently, because you're going to be a Morehead Scholar. Mickey didn't know what a Morehead Scholar was, so he looked it up. Modeled after the Rhodes Scholarship, the Morehead, now the Morehead King, was the first merit scholarship program established in the United States.

It's the most competitive, prestigious scholarship in the university system in North Carolina. The scholars received not only full tuition, room, board, a computer, and three enriching summer experiences, but also the enduring prestige of being a Morehead Scholar. When you consider Mickey's background, Mrs. Harper's prophetic blessings seemed preposterous, but it wasn't to the ninth grader. I believed her completely, Mickey said, and took her words to be my future. Three years later, against all odds, Mickey Thigpen was awarded the Morehead Scholarship. Well, Daniel, I have more to say in that chapter about Mickey.

Like I said, I got off the phone with him as I was driving into the driving into the studio today, as I work with him each and every day, and that's a real life story. Does it mean that every person, if you just say, hey, you'll be a Morehead Scholar, automatically going to become? No, but I do think that there is a way that God uses those sorts of visions that get spoken over our life in a mysterious way.

I'm so thankful for Mrs. Harper because I don't know that I would have ever been linked with Mickey Thigpen. He might have missed out on a whole lot of destiny in his life. And when you bless someone, you're not really adding value to them. You're pointing out value that's already there, that God's put there, and you're calling it out.

You're like a treasure hunter that is on the lookout for the real gems in someone's life. And I think that anyone can learn how to do that. Anyone can see that, and anyone can learn how to speak that. And it doesn't always have that kind of just amazing prophetic power to it like that, but it certainly helps us into the future, into the way that God has planned for us when someone is speaking that over us. And that's the way it's pictured in the Bible, just like that right there. Over and over we see God calling us who we're made to be rather than defining us by what we are at that moment. So Gideon was cowering out of terror of the Midianites and an angel came and said, hey old mighty man of valor.

Peter had many failings in front of him when Jesus said, your name is Simon, but I call you Peter the rock. So God sees who we're going to be. And he calls it and we can learn to do that.

And the book explains that. Alan Wright, today's good news message, the power to bless on our special Friday in-studio broadcast. Pastor Alan is back with us here in just a moment, sharing his part in good news thought for the day.

Stick with us. Wouldn't it be nice to set your mind on God's blessing instead of the curses of the world? This month's special offer from Alan Wright Ministries will help. Coinciding with the release of Pastor Alan's new book, The Power to Bless, we have created a flip style devotional for your desk or kitchen counter. The beautiful spiral bound devotional offers 28 days of inspiration utilizing some of the most moving excerpts from the new book. Use it day by day for four weeks so you'll keep the promises and assurance of God's blessing right in front of you.

As Paul wrote to the Philippians, whatever is true, noble, right and pure, think on these things. So make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today and we'll send you the inspirational flip style devotional as our thank you for your partnership. Each spiral bound devotional comes with a convenient easel style stand so you can keep the day's inspiration in front of you and fill your heart with God's blessing.

When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. Call us at 877-544-4860 or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. The book is The Power to Bless. It's by Pastor Alan Wright. And we're in the studio today with Pastor Alan in our special Friday blessing broadcast today. And I encourage you wherever good books are sold in your neighborhood, either in stores or online, you can order it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble. PastorAlan.org has the link there.

But there is also audiobooks available. You can get it for your e-reader and tablet and encourage you to take advantage of this new book, The Power to Bless. It's a combination of a blessing back to you but also a teaching moment where we'll be learning how to bless others. And that's my next question.

I think I know the answer but I'm going to ask it anyway. Do we have to have a relationship or one of deep trust with someone before we can impart blessing? I mean, can we just throw blessings out left and right? Yeah, I think that actually you can bless someone that you don't even know because there are things that you know that are true about them.

So, let's start with this. Every single human being has been made by God in the image of God. And God has a beautiful, wonderful plan for that person's life. And God loves that person infinitely.

Well, that tells you a whole lot about a person, doesn't it? And every person, even if you were to meet them just and had a few moments with them, every person has something that's beautiful about who they are that you can begin to recognize early on. Everybody has qualities and virtues that we can see in them more readily and clearly than they can see themselves. And so, I don't think Daniel even have to... Now, it is exceptionally powerful when you're blessing your own child or your own sibling or your own friend or you're a teacher blessing a student or a coach blessing an athlete or a grown child blessing an adult parent. These things are exceedingly powerful because we put so much of the belief of ourselves on the line when we have others around us speaking to us. We tend to believe about ourselves what the most important people in the world to us say about us.

So, it's exceedingly important, especially in our own families. But I think that you could bless anyone. You know, Jesus and Paul both said, bless your enemies. So, even the people that you don't even feel like being around, you could still learn to bless them. And I think what I want to say to our listeners, and I try to make this over and over to the readers, is that this is God's plan, and so this works.

And if you're one of those practical people and you just want to find out what is it that works, this is what works. You can't control people. And yeah, you can't just go make somebody be different. But there is a way that you can contribute to their growth, and that's the power of blessing.

You have a role to play. Somebody's life can be different because of the blessing that you speak into their life. And sometimes you see somebody one time, you get to speak a blessing to them.

And other times, you have the daily opportunity to speak that blessing into them. You know, I was in the store not long ago, and we were just checking out at the counter. And the lady that was checking us out there, she just seemed really down. And my wife just looked up and saw her name on her name tag. And she asked her, she said, how do you pronounce that? And the lady told us, and my wife said, that's a beautiful name. Then, you know, she began to smile, and she said, well, my mother named me for that because of this and that. And the next thing, you know, out of just being able to bless her for her name, having a beauty and a value to it, all of a sudden, it was like you see a little bit of life coming to her.

I think that's the way it works. Blessing is life-giving. Today's good news message is a little bit of a surprise to you. Good news message is a listener-supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.