Hope for the Unblessed Soul [Part 2]

Pastor, author and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. The ball would go through the hoop and Bennett would celebrate. And I realize we had a big problem here. Because when the ball would go through the hoop for Duke, Bennett would celebrate that too.

I said, no, time out son. We don't celebrate the other team's victory, we just celebrate Cairo. We got to get taught in this world that it's not okay to celebrate everybody's triumph. 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, The Power to Bless, taken from Pastor Alan's book of the same title and 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 or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on that later in the program, but now let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. We're going to see today some great evil in these older brothers, problem after problem, and not one bit of it is excused. The problems and dysfunction and hatred and hurt that are happening in people all around us and ourselves and in this culture, every bit of that sin, the people themselves are 100% culpable for their own sin. There is no excuse from the biblical framework for sin despite what we've been through, but I wanted you to see the source behind it. I wanted you to see that these boys unloved by their father, unblessed by the most important person in the world to them.

I want you to see the consequences of that. The bottom line is that you can drink in and need the blessing of as many godly people who know how to speak life to you in accord with God's word. Every bit of it's fantastic for you, but the blessing you need the most is from the most important person in your life, and if you don't get it, it's especially hard on your soul. I wanted just to see that blessed people bless people, but hurt people hurt people, and unblessed people end up cursing other people. This family has generational sin. Abraham and Sarah were promised a son by God, but when that promise tarried, they brought in Hagar the maidservant to be a surrogate mother for Sarah and had Ishmael, and a great conflict arose between Sarah and Ishmael, especially after God did give them the son Isaac who was the supernatural son of promise who was born, and eventually Sarah said to Abraham, cast out the slave woman Hagar and her son.

It's a big part of the drama. Paul references that in Galatians. So Isaac grew up in a dysfunctional situation with a brother that was at enmity with him. He married Rebekah who had these two twin boys, Jacob and Esau, and here's the dysfunction.

You see it plainly in verse 28 of Genesis 25. Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob. Isaac loved Esau because he was a great hunter. He'd come back from the fields with his trophies, and Jacob would come back empty-handed. It's sort of, I imagine, it's like a man who had two sons and one was a star quarterback and the other was more artistic, and he just favored his athlete son.

It was sort of like that. Can you just imagine those scenes, you know? Jacob, why can't you be more like your brother?

When are you going to learn to use a bow and arrow? Ah, Esau, look, Esau, look, you've got, you look at this amazing thing. You've come back. Esau, you are something else. Jacob, why can't you be more like your big brother? It's a generational sin that's getting passed down, and that's why when you wonder how could Jacob show favoritism to Joseph and neglect the others?

Well, he learned it properly, didn't he? It's a family, it's just a family. The story of the Bible is rooted in this dysfunctional family where some were blessed and some were not.

And the reasons, don't miss this, the reasons that some were unblessed are just random. It wasn't something intrinsic to the child or within the control of the child. Could Reuben and Simeon help it that they were born to Leah?

No. They couldn't do anything to make themselves more loved in their father's eyes. They were unblessed and unaffirmed, and they didn't have some way to talk about it, to figure it out.

There was no family systems counselor to meet with them. They were just trying to deal with their own shame and their own unaffirmed souls while they watched Joseph day after day being blessed by the dad that didn't bless them. It's the problem of humanity. It emerged with the very first sin that came into the world, and in many ways it's the definition, the root of all sin. In the garden before sin, love was perfect, meaning love was unconditional, and therefore there was no fear. But as soon as sin came in the world, love became imperfect and humanity began worrying about whether I would be loved. The blessing that was perfect was tarnished, and children everywhere have experienced the ravages in their souls.

And it grieves me beyond words. It grieves me in the deepest way to think of a nation in which the souls of children are crying out, why am I not blessed? What is wrong with me?

What is wrong with me? They are hurt. They are lonely. They are angry. And sometimes the anger turns inward and becomes depression. And sometimes the anger turns outward and hurts people violently.

Genesis 37 four. When Joseph's brother saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him. I wanted you to see this verse again and could not speak peacefully to him. The NIV says could not speak a kind word to him. I wanted you to see that because the unblessed soul just doesn't have a kind word to speak to somebody. They just couldn't, they could not celebrate one little bit with Joseph.

They could not enjoy anything good that would happen for their brother. You know one of the surest marks that you have been authentically and deeply blessed and your soul has become secure? As you do what Paul said, rejoice with those who rejoice. It is one of the great aspirations of the Christian life is that we would find ourselves so secure in the love of God that we are absolutely delighted for something good to happen to somebody else. I was riding along the car of my wife this week and she was looking at an email and all of a sudden she just squealed and tears of joy came in her eyes and I thought what good thing has happened to her?

I said what is it sweetie? She said all this just blesses me so much and I thought what big thing has happened? And a friend of hers husband had been out of work for a long time and her friend emailed her and said that he'd just gotten a good job. And my wife's joy for her friend and that couple put her into tears.

Isn't that good? Because if you can enjoy someone else's joy your joy is multiplied. When Bennett was little and we would watch basketball he was just little you know he called it hoop ball and he loved watching hoop ball. And one time we were watching first time watching Carolina play Duke and Bennett two or so and the ball would go through the hoop and Bennett would celebrate and I realized we had a big problem here. Because when the ball would go through the hoop for Duke Bennett would celebrate that too.

I said no time out son. We don't celebrate the other team's victory we just we gotta we gotta get taught in this world that it's not okay to celebrate everybody's triumph. Rejoice with those who rejoice but the unblest soul can't rejoice. The love deficit in their own empty love tank makes them ache for their own affirmation so much that they have no room for someone else's affirmation.

That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Imagine for 99 days in a row someone tells you I love you I'll never forsake you. Wouldn't you feel cherished? But what would happen if on the hundredth day that same person said I'm not sure you're good enough for me if you don't measure up I don't think I'll love you anymore.

Wouldn't that one day contaminate the meaning of the other 99 days? Wouldn't one percent of conditional love poison the other 99 percent? Well just one percent of law is enough to spoil grace. The tiniest bit of law can introduce an unlimited capacity for fear.

What if I don't measure up when might I be rejected? When the Judaizers infiltrated the Galatian church the apostle Paul was outraged and wrote a letter that describes the essence of the gospel of grace and why it must not be mixed with any form of law. Alan Wright's 12 message audio series trumpets the power of the gospel in order to set you free and empower you with pure grace. It's called Galatians and that's the gospel. Discover the purity and power of the grace of God. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. 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. Verse five, now Joseph had a dream and when he told it to his brothers they hated him even more. Joseph so richly blessed had God dreams, deep dreams, but his unaffirmed unblest brothers had no dreams of their own. I think it's a symptom of the unblest soul. Unblest soul is reactive, no real sense of personal destiny, a real hard time knowing why I exist and what my purpose is and where I'm headed. That's why unblest we can just drift along in life.

Life's too short to spend half of it drifting along, meaningless, no purpose. That's why we need to help people understand their purpose, divine purposes, glorious destinies, and beautiful paths to go down. Genesis 37 verse 18, here's where it all intensifies. They saw him, they saw Joseph from afar and before he came near to them they conspired against him to kill him. They said to one another, here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits and then we'll say that a fierce animal has devoured him and we'll see what will become of his dreams. They had so despised the fact that Joseph had this odd dream of these sheaves of wheat that bowed down to another sheaf of wheat implying that one day the brothers would bow down to Joseph because they assumed that he was just arrogantly trying to lord over them the fact that he was so special, having no idea that later that dream's going to be fulfilled for the saving of their lives. So they sought to kill the one person that actually would be in a position to save them from a famine in the future. Bereft of blessing long enough the soul will want to get rid of any reminder of how unblest that soul is.

That's what happens. Not only does the unblest soul have no capacity to rejoice with someone else who's rejoicing, but at some point the unblest soul can't stand the sight of someone who just reminds them that I'm not blessed. They didn't want to see him, wanted to get rid of him. So, verse 23, when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the robe of many colors he wore, and they took him and they threw him in a pit.

The pit was empty and there was no water in it. And he was kidnapped. He was abused. He was humiliated. He was thrown down. He was thrown down. He was trapped.

He was abandoned. There's no excuse, as I said, for the sin in anyone's life. This is a theological point of the Scripture. We are all responsible for our own sin regardless of what hardships we have faced.

But I wanted you to see all this. We have some cards. You could send a blessing to an inmate today. You could speak some Scripture over an inmate's life. I think that we have two and a half million people incarcerated in this country. We have one of the highest incarceration rates anywhere in the world. I think if you include people that are under probation, under some sort of supervision in our penal system, that that number is around seven million.

What's the answer? Do we need to crack down on crime? Do we need to lighten up?

Do we need to legalize drug use? All of these conversations. Why is no one having the real conversation? What's behind hate? What's behind crime? The unblessed soul, the unaffirmed life.

I think we should just do all we can to work on our criminal justice system, and it needs work. But what would happen if every single human being came to understand that they have been made in the image of God, a little lower than the angels, fearfully and wonderfully made? I wonder if every human being could come to understand that God had envisioned them and crafted them in His own heart of faith before they were put together in their mother's womb. I wonder if everyone knew that God had made them for very special purposes and good works had been foreordained for their lives before one of their days had ever come to be. I wonder if they knew that they were loved infinitely by the God who had created them and that that this God came in the person of Jesus Christ to not only prove their worth, but to die in their place, showing that they are infinitely, eternally valuable to God.

I wonder if everybody could know that. I want you to look at this in verse 25. When you want to understand what happens to the conscience of the unblessed soul and where it gets seared and distorted beyond all recognition, look at verse 25, just this phrase, after they've done all this to Joseph, what did they do? Then they sat down to eat. They felt more nourished and relaxed having kidnapped and abused their baby brother than before.

Verse 28, the many night traders passed by and they drew Joseph up, lifted him out of the pit, sold him to the Ishmaelites for 20 shekels of silver, and they took Joseph to Egypt. This is the ultimate objectification of a person is to turn them into a commodity, to trade them for a few pieces of silver. Carried to its greatest extent, the shamed soul, the unaffirmed, unblessed soul will objectify other human beings because looking for some way to feel secure in this world, some way to feel better than somebody else will eventually say, you exist for me. The answer to the abuse of people is that those who have had no blessing find it. Now there's the other side of the story.

It's such a contrast. Isn't this something? This is the substance of the Old Testament narrative. This is our story. Alan Wright, today's good news message, Hope for the Unblessed Soul. It's from our teaching The Power to Bless, which incidentally is from Pastor Alan's book of the same title.

And Pastor Alan is back with us here in the studio in just a moment with a parting good news thought for the day. Imagine for 99 days in a row, someone tells you, I love you. I'll never forsake you. Wouldn't you feel cherished? But what would happen if on the hundredth day that same person said, I'm not sure you're good enough for me. If you don't measure up, if you don't measure up, I don't think I'll love you anymore.

Wouldn't that one day contaminate the meaning of the other 99 days? Wouldn't 1% of conditional love poison the other 99%? Well, just 1% of law is enough to spoil grace. The tiniest bit of law can introduce an unlimited capacity for fear. What if I don't measure up?

When might I be rejected? When the Judaizers infiltrated the Galatian church, the apostle Paul was outraged and wrote a letter that describes the essence of the gospel of grace and why it must not be mixed with any form of law. Alan Wright's 12 message audio series trumpets the power of the gospel in order to set you free and empower you with pure grace. It's called Galatians and that's the gospel.

Discover the purity and power of the grace of God. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. 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 and it sounds like an unblest soul. Well, it really can be something askew in their life and maybe that's an understatement. You know, the story of Joseph and his brothers is so stark because Joseph, of all those boys, his older brothers, Joseph was the only one that was blessed by his father. Jacob loved Joseph. He showed parental favoritism and the older brothers despised Joseph for it.

And not only did they despise him, but they wanted to kill him. And the contrast between the hate and curse that was in their hearts and the incredible blessing that follows Joseph everywhere in the world until he is in a position of being able to judge his brothers, but instead he forgives them. You see this contrast here, Daniel. And I think that that's why I gravitated to this story because I want us to see, I mean, hopefully most of us never have that level of evil working in our hearts where we want to kill somebody, but it's the same seed. And so when we haven't been blessed, there's a real deficit there and we really need to receive blessing or else the soul is malnourished and you see it in Joseph's brothers and all their unkindness and you can see it in the world around you. And often we see it in our own hearts. We really need blessing.

The unblest soul. And by the way, this comes from the book by Pastor Alan, The Power to Bless, which I've made no bones about saying that there's so much practicality here. It's very much, I feel like a how-to book of learning all about blessing and the power to bless. But maybe the secret in this book or the surprise, I would say, of this book is that you will find a blessing by reading the book. Whether you are an unblest soul or a perfectly healthy blessed person, you will come away also hearing and reading a blessing from Pastor Alan to you. And that was by design in the book there, wasn't it, Alan?

Absolutely. It's meant to be really an experience of blessing. Like I've invited the reader to take a journey with me and I think that's the way it feels. You know, it's people that tell me, Daniel, they read the book.

I've talked to so many. It said that I had to stop an opening chapter because I had tears in my eyes. And I was like, they're not, are they tears of joy or are they tears of some kind? Well, I think sometimes it's a blend because when our souls haven't been nourished with blessing and then it begins to receive blessing, it's like water to parched ground and it starts, something starts springing up. And I think that's the way the book feels. I think that's what I wanted to take the reader on. And then, Daniel, it really moves towards not only these pinnacles of glorious revelation about the love of God, but it also just moves into this really practical, here's how you can do this. And anyone can learn how to bless. So it's a journey to blessing and it's a journey also to discovering how to bless others. And people are given the real tools to do that, including even a blessing worksheet. So it's something that's so simple. You could start today and it's something that's so deep and rich.

You can spend the rest of your life learning its depths. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at pastorallen.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 pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.