Faith for Others to Flourish [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. When you have that faith vision and you speak it out in accord with your faith, there is something that changes in the cosmos.

There is a power that is released. There is an opportunity of transformation that comes about, and you therefore are literally blessed to be a blessing. 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.

Here is Alan Wright. I read a story some years ago of a valedictorian in a high school class, and he really wanted to thank God or mention God in his valedictorian address at graduation. But the officials had told him, you can't mention God at all from this platform. It's a public school. So he had a little fun though. He knew hundreds of students, and they had a little conspiracy.

They colluded ahead of time. And so he got up to the microphone to give his speech, and the first thing he did was he sneezed. And then about 200 students said in unison, God bless you.

Are you ready for some good news? There's a blessing that is at work within you and that you have to give to others that is something far greater than any cordial greeting to someone when you see them or some nice thing to say when they sneeze. You are authorized by God to be like God in this, to have a faith vision over others' lives for them to flourish. And when you have that faith vision and you speak it out in accord with your faith, there is something that changes in the cosmos.

There is a power that is released. There is an opportunity of transformation that comes about, and you therefore are literally blessed to be a blessing. Would you turn with me to Hebrews chapter 11 this morning to one of the most famous chapters really in the Bible. It's about all the heroes of faith, and we're going to see this morning just how the blessing is actually just a form of expressed faith. And so we're going to talk to you about faith and talk to you about the power of blessing as we're in the midst of a new series that is designed to thrill our hearts and to equip us in practical ways to train our tongues, to train our mentality, to speak blessing. And so here's a good place to understand the essence of why it's so powerful, and it's Hebrews chapter 11.

I'm just going to read a few little pieces of it, and then later I'll be coming back to talking about a number of places. Hebrews 11 verse 1, Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, for the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the Word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. And then begins this parade of the great heroes in the Hall of Fame who have believed God for the most miraculous things imaginable.

And just jumping through, I'll show you a few instances. Verse 7, By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen. It talks all about Noah and the ark. And then verse 8, By faith Abraham, and it talks all about Abraham and how he came up out of his homeland and just didn't know where he was going, and yet God led him. And then how he and Sarah trusted God to give him a baby in their old age. And then verse 23, here's Moses, By faith Moses. It tells about several of the miraculous things happening through Moses' life. And it goes on and mentions verse 30, By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, talking about Joshua's enormous faith.

And then at verse 32, What more shall I say? And it starts listing people like Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, David and Samuel, the prophets, even listing at verse 35 women, some women who received their dead back by resurrection, listing these incredible miracles that have taken place. And it's so interesting, don't you love it when all of a sudden you're like, Is that really in the Bible? You know how you've maybe read something a hundred times? And I've been, the revelation and the joy in my heart about the idea of the power blessing has been something reverberating in me for over 20 years.

And I've talked a lot about it over the years. And I thought I was well familiar with Hebrews 11. But there is a hero of the faith here that honestly until just very recently I didn't know he was listed here.

It's unusual. It's at verse 20, verse 21 rather, By faith Jacob when dying blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff. I didn't even know that was in there. Right there amongst the list of all the heroes of the faith is the act of blessing. Blessing is a theme that runs through the entire Bible. You know, one of the great ways to read the Scripture is through the themes of Scripture and things that you keep seeing coming back over and over and over again. I love sometimes just a look at the Bible in the sense of how is this big story being tied together by this one thread. And so here's the instance of blessing. From the very beginning you see this because God's interaction with humanity was he blessed Adam and Eve and then he said be fruitful and multiply. So right there, if God's interaction with us, his prime interaction with us is to bless us.

You start paying attention to this. So then it's no surprise that he blesses Noah who becomes the one who is used to save the world. And then he calls up Abraham. And how does he build faith in Abraham? He builds faith by blessing him repeatedly and speaking a vision over Abraham's life that this fatherless man with his old wife beyond child bearing years are going to be parents.

So what is he doing? He's calling them parents and not only are they not parents but in the natural there's no way they could be parents. And then you recognize that he teaches the Hebrew patriarchs how to bless their children every Sabbath day to speak over them. And he tells the priest through Aaron that Aaron and all the priests, when the people of God gather, every time they gather the priests are to lift their hands and say the Lord bless you, the Lord keep you, the Lord be kind and gracious to you. In other words, put a blessing on them and the Bible says and thus you'll put my name on them. So he's revealing here that when the blessing happens, something supernatural is taking place. And then we read of the patriarchs blessing their kids and the leaders like David blessing his household. And on this goes until you come to Jesus being born in Bethlehem. And he's the sinless son of God. If ever there was somebody that you would say, well, he doesn't need to be receiving blessing from others, it would be Jesus, right? But Jesus is born and very soon a man who's a prophetic figure seems to come out of nowhere named Simeon and he comes having been supernaturally really assigned to come.

And what does he do? He takes and places his hand on baby Jesus and blesses him. When Jesus is getting ready to begin his ministry, his public ministry, he's getting ready to go into the wilderness, he's going to be tempted for 40 days. What happens is he's baptized and his father in heaven publicly verbally blesses him saying, this is my son in whom I'm well pleased.

What is the father doing there? Jesus has not yet begun his public ministry. He's not yet begun healing the sick or casting out demons. He's not yet begun his great teaching ministry. He's not fed the poor.

He's not died on a cross or been raised from the dead. And the father is saying, this is my son and I'm well pleased in him. In other words, you see how the blessing goes first. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. 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. 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.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Alan Wright. And Jesus then, when he ministers, he blesses people. He began his ministry with a series of Beatitudes in which he talked about blessed are the poor in spirit and he describes how there's an inversion of the way you would normally think of blessedness. When people brought their little children to him, what he did was he laid his hands on them, the Bible says, and he blessed them. And the last thing that Jesus did is he was leaving the earth in Luke 24.

He lifted up his hands as he was ascending to heaven, literally, and he blessed the disciples. Paul and Peter both pick up on this theme and say that if you really want to understand the gospel, then what will happen is you will learn not only to bless those that treat you well, but you'll also learn the gigantic secret of blessing those who persecute you. This is a theme that runs and ties together the whole Bible.

It's absolutely magnificently important. And then we come to Hebrews chapter 11. And it's this famous chapter about faith. It's a chapter about the great, great heroes. And the people that are listed here are ones that have believed for the impossible and the impossible became possible. These are the ones who we remember for being the giants of faith vision, of seeing something.

And you think about what is mentioned here. It starts with God himself. In other words, the greatest example of faith is God himself, because God created everything that exists out of nothing.

Theologians call it kratio ex nihilo. There was nothing and God created everything. How did he do this? Well, we learn from Hebrews that what he did was he made what was visible out of what was invisible, that here's the essence of faith. It is seeing something that you can't see with the natural eyes, but this was not a surprise to God. When he said, let there be light, it wasn't something new to God because God is light and he had already a vision of what could be. And when he said, let there be light in the midst of speaking that word, then light burst forth at 186,000 miles per second and established itself as the fastest possible movement in the universe. And at the same time, bursting forth with stars in galaxy upon galaxy, it was extraordinary. And this is a little solar system that we've got here revolving around a medium sized star called the sun. We've learned that the earth is very small compared to the sun. The earth, a million of them could fit inside the sun, which is to comparative the earth where a golf ball it'd be like filling up a school bus with golf balls. That's how big our sun is, but our sun's not that big.

I mean, it's bright and you can get sunburned and you can't get very close to it, but, and you're ready for fall to arrive just because you're tired of being hot. And yet it's not even that big because they have discovered the Canis Majoris star, the big dog star, that if earth were to fit inside of it, instead of being a million earths, it'd have to be seven quadrillion earths, which means if it earth with a golf ball, you'd have to have enough to fill up Mount Everest. That's how big the big dog star is burning with light. That's the kind of thing we're talking about here in Hebrews 11. That's the level of stuff we're talking about is the kind of, there is no light and just speak out, let there be light. And that's the kind of magnitude of miracle we're talking about. And then it goes, talks about Noah. Noah is the big level miracle because Noah's got to believe that though there's not a cloud in the sky, that it's going to rain and it's going to rain so much that it's going to flood everywhere so much that you got to have this big boat. And then he's got to believe that God's specifications for this boat are going to work and that he's going to be able to build it. And that there's going to be one boat with one door and this is the one way that anybody will be saved. And that he'll get all these animals and that he's got to believe it'll happen. And then he gets on this boat and for six months he's out there floating on water. And then he's got to believe that one day it's going to be dry land again. And he's got to believe that God is going to use him to repopulate this earth and that God's goodness is going to continue on.

I mean, it's big time level miracle. And then he comes to Abraham and Sarah. And this is big because, well, Abraham's a hundred years old when they finally have Isaac.

He's a hundred. And see, they've been childless and Sarah not being able to have children. And so even if you'd come to her when she was a younger woman and said, you're going to have a baby, it'd have been hard to believe.

But then she's just so old. It's just beyond, in other words, it's beyond the time that it's possible and then natural for them to have children. And not only had to believe that they were going to have a child, but the bigger thing they were believing it made it so miraculous. Their faith so great is that they had to believe that God was going to use their son to be the birthplace of a nation. And they had something else to believe on top of that. And is it not only the birthplace of a people, a nation, but that through their family, the whole world would be blessed. Come on.

This is big, right? And then he talks about Moses is in this list and several things about Moses, but not least of which Moses had to believe when God said, if you and the people will put blood over the doorposts in the Hebrew homes, then when this destroyer comes through, you will be saved and you will be considered spotless and unharmed simply because the blood of an innocent lamb. This is hard to believe, but not only that, they get up to a point where the Egyptian army is pressing in behind them and the big red sea in front of them, and they are going to be absolutely massacred. And he has to have a word from God that says, lift up your staff and part the water of the red sea. You got to have some kind of faith to envision a red sea opening up so that you can walk through on dry land.

This is the heroes of the faith we're talking about here. And then he talks about Jericho. This is Joshua.

Joshua loved Joshua. He's got to envision walls coming down. I was researching again what those walls were like.

According to the excavations, they probably were double walls, some of the thickest in the ancient world. And he was told that you're going to walk around the city for six days in a row and walk around it. And then on the seventh day, walk around it seven times on the seventh time around. I want you to blow those trumpets and let everybody let a loud shout and the walls going to fall flat.

That was the plan. And Joshua believed it. We're talking about the heroes of faith here. We're talking about the most miraculous, unbelievably, unimaginably great miracles that you have to have some kind of eyes of faith to see. He talks about Daniel and the lion's den.

He talks about women receiving their dead back to them through resurrection. I mean, how in the world do you make a list like Hebrews chapter 11? I mean, you've got to have believed for something incredible. You've got to have had a faith that's remarkable.

You've got to have had seen something in the spirit that you were able to see beyond what any natural eye could possibly see. If you're going to make it in this list, there's some people that aren't in this list. I mean, I, you know, I mean, it's kind of like at the end of the writer Hebrews goes, you know, I, I've got, I don't got enough time to tell you about all the heroes. So, you know, it could be others included, but seems like Elijah and Elisha should be mentioned here. Come on Elijah.

That day he defeated a 450 prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel called down fire on wet wood. That was pretty good. That should have maybe made it didn't make the list. What about Elisha who could just pray for people? And they came back from the dead.

That's pretty good. That might should have made it. And I know it mentions the prophets, but come on, shouldn't it at least be mentioned by name Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Hosea at least Hosea. I mean, if you are a preacher and you can believe God that you're supposed to marry a prostitute and still have a preaching career, you ought to make it into this list. What do you got to do to make it into a list like this?

If Elijah and Elisha can't make it in there. And then you come down there at verse 21 and you're reading all these stories, you know, red seas, mouths of lions, shutting up, and you get Jacob who leaned on his staff and blessed his grandsons. That makes the list?

An old man meeting his grandsons and saying God bless you and I hope you have a nice life. That makes the list? See, in order if you're in this list, it must mean that whatever you did is so exemplary of the supernatural power of a faith vision that it has world shaking power.

That's how you make this list. And right here in the middle of it is a tired old man who spent most of his life deceiving, conniving, and striving, but near his deathbed he spoke out a blessing over his grandsons Ephraim and Manasseh. Is the blessing that powerful that it should be included in the list of the hall of fame of faith?

Yes, that's the whole point. It is an expression of faith when you have a vision over someone else's life for them to flourish. Blessing is the expression with your own lips and your own actions of a vision of faith for someone else to flourish even though there is not evidence of that flourishing yet. Alan Wright, today's good news message, faith for others to flourish. It's in our series, The Power of Blessing, and Pastor Alan is back with us in the studio sharing his parting 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. 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.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Back now in the studio with Pastor Alan. By the way, author of this brand new book, The Power to Bless.

I'm holding it in my hands. And so what a great teaching going from the pulpit teaching now into the book format of not only understanding the power of blessing but then taking that and applying it, The Power to Bless. By the way, the book is available everywhere. And as we've been hearing in this teaching, we're going to pick up with in our next broadcast all these great people. But Jacob made the list of all people, right? It's so interesting in Hebrews Chapter 11, you get all of these great Bible heroes that are mentioned there.

You know, the people that you'd think of that are that should be there. The Moses and Gideon and David and, you know, people that have crossed Red Seas and fought great giants. And then we read, By faith, Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff. That Jacob blessing these sons, these grandsons, is on par with Red Seas being parted and people being raised from the dead.

Is blessing really that powerful? And the answer is yes. That if you can speak a positive vision and faith over somebody's life, you're in God's faith Hall of Fame.

What a picture. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at Pastor Alan dot org or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. 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 Pastor Alan dot org. That's Pastor Alan dot org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.