Blessed to be Twice Fruitful [Part 3]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

The whole goal is to live in Christ and fill your life, be receiving from anyone who you can get to bless you in every moment that you spend in the Scriptures, realizing that God makes and forms that which is good and beautiful and then blesses. 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. Jesus came. The word became flesh. God in the flesh to live the sinless life that Adam didn't live so that he could eventually go to the cross, take the curse that was due to humanity so anyone who trusts in him could be blessed. And so in other words, God has sent Jesus in one sense to restore the blessing of fruitfulness of the spread of the image of God. This is why the very last thing Jesus did on earth in Luke 24 49 was to bless his disciples. Behold, I'm sending the promise of my father upon you, speaking of the Holy Spirit.

But stay in the city until you're clothed with power from on high. And he led them out as far as Bethany and lifting up his hands, he blessed them. And while he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried into heaven.

He had just said, You'll be my witnesses. And he blessed them. You're going to spread the image of God across the earth. The intent of God was in the beginning, is now and always will be that that which he forms, which is good, is blessed in such a way that it prospers and grows and increases. And the increase that he has in mind ultimately is the spiritual advance of the love of God that leads people to Christ.

I say all of that to just make this point. God wants us in Christ to bear much fruit. Abide in me, Jesus says, you'll bear much fruit. So the question is not are we to bear fruit and in the best sense of the word succeed in that which God gives us.

Yes, we are. He wants us to prosper. He wants us to be able to increase. He wants for the good work of your hands and what you're given to do in this world. He wants that to be blessed and to grow and prosper. But there's a big difference between feeling pressured to perform or to succeed versus being blessed in order to succeed.

Let's just turn our attention to some of the practical consideration here. The difference between pressuring and blessing, because this is really where the rubber meets the road and how we interact with one another. How do you help your kids or a friend or a co-worker? How do you help encourage someone to have that life of fruitfulness? And God's given us the power of blessing to do that. The power of blessing where you are in accord with God's word announcing a positive vision that helps shape their identity. And from that identity, then you're helping to forecast and to help them see a positive future that can come forth.

And there's something mystically powerful about that. Pressuring is the opposite. Pressuring is where essentially you are exerting some manipulative effort to try to get them to work harder. And there's a difference in pressuring and blessing.

Well, here's the first thing to say foundationally, pressuring someone, when we put pressure on someone, it's an expression of law, if you really boil it down to it. And blessing is an expression of grace. It's really law versus grace.

Some of you may have heard me years ago tell this story, and it's one I included in the book, The Power to Bless, because it's just the best example I can think of about how law doesn't in the end actually empower us to do the very thing that we are called to do. And grace does. So many years ago, our son Bennett, who's loved golf, and our good friend and elder in church, Bob Roach, said that he wanted to get Bennett a new putter. And Bennett needed a new putter, and Bennett knew exactly the putter that he wanted. He'd been wanting it for a long time. Putters are not inexpensive, and it was a big blessing for Bob.

He said, I say what we're going to do. We're going to go down to Golf Galaxy, and we're going to make sure that that putter works good for you. And if it does, then I'm going to get you that putter.

So we went all excited. Young Bennett goes down there. He gets the exact putter that he wants, exact height, same putter, everything he wants. And so he says, this is it right here. And Bob says, all right, well, let's make sure this thing will work. He said, I tell you what, just put it here and get some balls down here.

Let's see you make some six footers. He said, I tell you, if you can, you can make eight out of 10 of those, and I'll get you the putter. You know, he was kind of laughing about it. So Bennett's down there, and he puts some balls down. He starts putting this little putt.

I mean, it's on the flat ground of the store. There's no break to it. It's an easy little putt, and Bennett's a good putter, and he's making putt after putt. I think, you know, one or two of them then lipped out, and all of a sudden Bob goes, okay, that's it. I think that's nine putts, and you've made seven of them.

You got to make this last one if you're going to get that putter. And Bennett looked at him, and Bob gave him a real serious look, and we're like, oh, no. Bennett was like, I thought this was just a gift. He said, now I've realized I got to, I got to make this last putt, and so Bennett did something that was just, but this is the way we do. He'd been up there just making putts, making putts, making putts. All of a sudden he goes, I got nervous about it. You know, now the law had been laid down.

He's like, oh, no, I got to do it or else. He stepped back like he was going to line up the putt, started thinking about it a lot, got back over it, and just hit the worst putts, missed the hole totally because isn't it funny how when the pressure's on, you're at your worst, and looked up at Bob, and Bob said, you know, I don't know exactly what he said, but he just kind of chuckled. He said, well, he said, I was just joking with you, and he got him the putter, and I said, Bennett, you ought to call that putter Grace. He had a tournament that week.

He was runner up and played some of his best golf, and I think he's still using that same putter. It's a contrast, isn't it? When the pressure's on and we feel it, we get anxious and we don't do well.

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 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. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. But when a gift is being given and there's a vision of enjoying that gift and using it to the full, then we can flourish. So that's the underlying principle. Here's what happens the difference between pressuring and blessing is that when you pressure, you're basically pointing to the problem and blessing is essentially pointing towards the possibility. I think we've got to watch our language about this. This is kind of what law does.

It just points to the problem, but it doesn't do anything to fix it. Years ago, we were actually touring some colleges with Bennett when he was thinking about where to go to school and we were at Wheaton College up outside of Chicago touring that beautiful school and we were there, my wife and I and both my kids and we're standing around and there's a young tour guide that she is leading us around, a young, I think she's a student and she's leading us around, tell us about the different buildings and we were standing under the shade of a tree and she was talking about one of the buildings and she looked in my direction and without changing the tone of her voice, I mean, she's just talking like this and this building over here and she without stopping and changing, she said, and sir, there's a large spider on your collar and just looked at me. I'm like, is she looking at me? I was like, me?

And she said, yes, sir. And have you ever noticed you can't see your own collar and if somebody tells you you've got a spider on your collar and I didn't even know where it was on my collar and here was the amazing thing, nobody in my family and nobody else in the tour group did anything to try to help me with the spider. I'm like, where's the spider? Where's the spider?

Somebody help me with it. Let me tell you what the law does. The law just says there's a spider on your collar. You ought to do something about that. You don't know what to do about it. You can't do something about it. What grace does and what blessing does is it doesn't just point to the problem.

It's much more about directing your attention towards the possibility. Some years ago, I got a chance to caddy when Bennett was young and playing tournament golf, got to caddy for him a couple of times in a kind of a national tournament. It was down in the beach area and it's the only time I ever caddied for him. We were playing this course out at sea trail in the area of southern North Carolina near the coast and we got up to this hole that I remembered that the woods were especially thick on the left and if you got in there, it's really hard to get out. I just did the worst thing a caddy can ever do. I just said, as Bennett was stepping up to the ball, I said, let's stay away from the woods on the left.

They're really thick. He got up and he hit it right in the woods. I just realized, I said, no, I'm sorry Bennett. He said, dad, please don't do that. I said, no, I won't ever do it again because what you need to say to somebody is not, don't say don't hit it in the woods. You put something positive, put a positive in.

You say, let's hit a nice smooth swing here to the right side of the fairway. Well, that's the way all of life is. What blessing does is it points towards the positive possibility of where you're headed. That's not what pressure does. Pressure is essentially like you better do better or else.

That's the nature of the way law feels. Pressure says, thirdly, if you do, then you can be. But what blessing says is you are, therefore you can do.

So in other words, pressuring someone is to say if you will perform better than maybe you could be such and such in life. But what blessing does is it's always painting the identity and out of that identity, then we live our lives. John Wesley, who became a world changer, say the least, founded a methodical way of discipleship that came to be known as Methodism, preached all throughout the 18th century, rode thousands of miles on horseback, preached thousands of open air sermons and impacted the whole world and never lost his passion for that and had unbelievable energy to continue on. So his really hard work had really big work ethic.

Why? What had happened to him? And I always thought that all happened when he was a little boy in 1709, one February evening. And John Wesley's older sister went running into their parents' room to let them know that the house was on fire and burning timbers were beginning to fall around them. One of the servants in the house named Betty went to the nursery and scooped up the kids and told little Jackie, John Wesley, to follow her. She made her way out of the house and they looked around and little Jackie, John Wesley, had not followed.

He had gotten trapped in the bedroom and the burning house. The house was just an inferno and the whole family was gathered outside and little John Wesley was in the house that was burning down. The father, Mr. Wesley, got down on his knees and realized that it was hopeless and he just began lifting up his little boy to the Lord and saying, just take him unto yourself, Lord, and commending him. And while he began to pray that his son wouldn't suffer, they saw little John poke his head out of the window and two men ran over there and one got on the other's shoulders and was able to get up enough where John Wesley was able to jump out the window and able to catch him securely and they brought him down to safety. And his mother, Susanna Wesley, from that time forward, referred to a scripture that spoke of a brand that's plucked from the burning.

And she always called John my little brand that was plucked from the burning for great purposes. It got down into his very being, you see, that this is who I am, that God saved me for a reason. And it brings forth a power in your life when someone has spoken that kind of identity into your spirit. In other words, when you are blessing someone, you're helping them to see their identity.

And let me just mention one last thing. Pressuring someone leads them ultimately to self-consciousness, but blessing them leads them to God consciousness, which brings us back to John chapter 15 and the second Adam and how he's describing the fruitfulness of our life. He says, abide in me and I'll abide in you.

He says, when you abide in me, you're going to bear much fruit. And he compares it to a branch on a limb of a tree. If the tree is healthy, that branch is attached and as long as it's attached, it's going to be able to bear fruit. It's not having to struggle to bear the fruit.

It is a byproduct of being in grafted into the whole tree. And this is the promise of God. And it's my blessing for you as we think about the fruitfulness of our lives. Is it just as in the beginning, God blessed Adam and Eve and said, be fruitful and multiply. God doesn't and we are called to do in the same image that he has done the same way God's done. We are called to be like him. Instead of withholding the blessing until someone's proven that they can be fruitful, we bless them.

And fruitfulness is altogether different therefore than driven ambition towards success. So in a very real sense, the pressure's off because the whole goal is to live in Christ and fill your life, be receiving from anyone who you can get to bless you. And every moment that you spend in the scriptures, realizing that God makes and forms that which is good and beautiful and then blesses.

And what he does for anyone who is in Christ is that he makes a great exchange where he takes what is the strong right hand of blessing that should have been reserved only for the first born Jesus, crosses his arms and extends it to anyone who would accept Christ to you and to me and to anyone who is in Christ. We have become like Ephraim, twice fruitful, fruitful because he made us and fruitful because he redeemed us. May God make you like Ephraim, twice as fruitful as you ever imagined. No pressure, just blessing. And that's the gospel. Alan Wright, today's good news message, Blessed to be Twice Fruitful. It's from the series, The Power to Bless, which is also the name of Pastor Alan's book.

And Pastor Alan is back with us in the studio sharing his parting good news thought for the day in just a moment. And for 99 days in a row, someone tells you, I love you. I'll never forsake you when you feel cherished. But what would happen if on the 100th 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 back here in the studio with Pastor Alan as we come to the end of this teaching. Blessed to be twice fruitful is in the series The Power to Bless. We talk a lot in this teaching about how it's involving others.

We don't live this life in a silo or in a vacuum, but we are here with each other. And so while we are hopefully blessing others, others are speaking blessing into us. On the fruitful part of this, how do you define success? How do you define fruitfulness? If I'm not seeing fruit, Pastor Alan, is it okay to talk to somebody and say, how do you see the fruit in my life?

Exactly. You have to remember that first and foremost when you think of fruit in the Bible, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, these are the fruit of the Holy Spirit. So that's the first thing we want to say about fruit. The next thing we want to say about fruitfulness in our lives is what does God want to have happen in the earth? He wanted Adam and Eve made in his own image to fill the earth so that the earth is filled with God's image.

And I think let's not lose sight of that. Fruitfulness has to do with the fruit of the Holy Spirit and fruitfulness has to do with us representing God, right? And this is something, you know, whether your business has done well or not doesn't change whether you're representing God here. But the third part of this is the actual fruit of our lives, that what you put your hand to, what God has called you to do. I believe God wants it to bear fruit.

And it does, let me look very different for different people. I've known missionaries that have been out in the mission field for a long time and they may only have one or two or three people that begin to accept Christ. Well see, what we don't understand though is that things grow exponentially and always starts by the principle of seed. There are other times in your life, I mean, Anne and I have had times where we're like, Lord is doing so much. We just walked around and said, boy, it feels like the fruit is just falling off the tree and splatting me right in the face.

And listeners I'm sure have had times like that in your life. Well, what is different from blind ambition towards success is that this isn't about pressuring ourselves or pressuring others to perform. This is about receiving an affirmation and a vision that helps shape our identity that then fuels us really by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit to live that vision out and in a real destiny. So when we're being fruitful, we're not really thinking about ourselves. We're not going around thinking about whether we're being successful. We're just bearing the fruit. The other side, pressuring people and bringing the law to bear actually just creates anxiety and a self-absorption that, yeah, there are people out there that are quote successful in the world's eyes and yet are miserable on the inside.

That's not a fruitful life. You can use the word subtle. You can use the word simple. I think both would be accurate here in the way you're thinking about it. Even in this teaching, you talk about caddying for your son and the instruction that you gave while it was spot on, it was a nuanced difference of what could have been better. It's a true statement. Like on this golf hole, if you heard this illustration where I say, don't hit it in the woods on the left, Bennett. But by putting the focus on the negative, you lead towards the very thing. What we look at, we head towards. What we magnify, we make big. And so what we do when we bless is we put a positive vision. It's not in any way to deny the reality of the harshness that can be there in the woods on the left.

It's not that we're pointing to. And when we are able to point to what can be, we're actually released of fruitfulness in one another's lives. Daniel, when we're afraid, we're not very fruitful.

Oh, we might show the appearance of success because we're trying so hard because we're afraid. But real fruit is a much more of a natural, organic and spirit-empowered thing than that. 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.