The Path to Joy and Peace [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. All truth is God's truth. Just because somebody that doesn't know God is saying something doesn't mean it's not true. All truth is God's truth.

Somebody might have a piece of the truth. 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 Unspeakable Joy 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. Are you ready for some good news? If the scripture says to rejoice in the Lord always, then it must be possible. If the scripture says that whenever you pray, do so giving thanksgiving, it must be possible. If we are exhorted that we're to think only of those things which are true and noble and right and pure and lovely and admirable and excellent and praiseworthy, it must be possible. It must be possible that every thought of our minds can be set upon positive things that are generated from the heart and the mind of God.

Wow. Philippians chapter 4, one of the most marvelous texts in all of the New Testament and capsulizes so much of the explanation of how it is that the Apostle Paul could be filled with joy and be the encourager of the others even though he is imprisoned and possibly going to face execution. This is the explanation that goes far to help us understand how it is that some people in terrible circumstances seem to have amazing joy and they'll have a peace that passes understanding while others who seem to have everything are as miserable as can be. Philippians chapter 4 is revolutionary and for all of us today it will be a word that will radically encourage us, remind us of the pathway to peace and the mind of Christ. But for some under the sound of my voice today, I promise you if you will let these words of the Lord come into your heart, it will rock your world, change everything and you'll discover a joy and peace you never had before. Philippians chapter 4 verse 4, rejoice in the Lord always again I say rejoice.

Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

What you've learned and received and heard and seen and me, practice these things and the God of peace will be with you. A lot of people who know me now and maybe people who've even known me over the past couple decades would probably hardly believe it when I say that I must be honest and confess that I was once a negative thinker. I'm not saying that I am a perfectly positive thinker now, I'm saying that it has been the battle of my life and it still is a battle. But there was a time in my life I was just flat out negative thinker. I don't know why my wife married me, she's one of the most positive people I've ever been around in my life.

I was so drawn to her because I could come and whine like Eeyore and she would just continue to bounce like Tigger. And I just, I was a negative, I was, I was just a negative thinker. I worried a lot. I worried about the what-ifs, I worried about failing. And the way that I would try to deal with all my worries is I would just decide that I will be so good and I will be able to perform at such a high level that I'll just make sure that none of the things that I worry could go wrong will go wrong. It's the illusion of control that people have the illusion of control and are always constantly performing, have a different anxiety because you wonder whether your performance won't be enough. And so you're really just exchanging one form of worry for another. And it kept me this negative thinking from aspiring and reaching higher levels that I know for sure that God had for me.

And I know for a fact today that this would apply to almost all of us in this room in one way or another. Our negative thinking is keeping us from being able to receive or flow in the very things that God wants us to. I was a tennis player my whole life and I got to a pretty good level in tennis, but I was always restricted by negative thinking.

I'm telling you the true champions don't think negatively. But I'd get to that very important moment in the match and I'd just battle it. I'd have the thought come in, whatever you do don't double fault now. That is not what you want to be thinking when the match is on the line.

Don't double fault now. It's like when you're playing golf. If the last thought you remind is don't pull it left into the lake.

You're going to hit that ball into the lake. I had an amazing capacity to go several steps down the line into the future thinking about subsequent events how they might unfold and play it out in my mind and put myself mentally into that future negative scenario. And I remember catching myself even thinking about what I would say or do once that negative scenario happened. And it's a bad situation because God does not provide grace for hypothetical situations.

You know what I'm talking about. The mind is an amazing thing as if we can go into the future and we can figure out all the negative things that could happen and try to deal with them in our mind before they ever happen. And then they never do happen.

I was talking to praying with a group yesterday before preaching. We were talking about this and she said the bad thing about hypothetical negative situations that never happen is you waste all that energy worrying about it when a real problem comes and slaps you upside the head from some direction you never saw it. I thought that's pretty funny because in actuality the real problems that you face you probably never saw it coming.

But then when it actually came God gave you grace for it. It would actually cause me to not only play out the negative scenarios but it's trying to get trapped in it. That's the worst thing about negative thinking.

You just can get trapped in the negative thought process. It might be the little things of life. I was laughing with my wife. One of the places that manifested for me was early in our marriage we get ready to go on a vacation and first thing I do is I check the weather. And I look at that I'd come back and say, oh it looks like it might rain every day. And we'd have this battle on our hands. She said, well the weather can change.

I said, I don't know. Look right here there's a front coming through. And it's like ruining my vacation before I even started it because I've already figured out something negative could happen. Let me tell you the worst thing of all.

I hate to confess this but it's true. When I was a negative thinker I kind of despised the positive thinkers. I considered them to be simpletons. I mean if you don't understand if you smile a lot or you laugh a lot or you celebrate a lot then obviously you're too simple-minded to understand how much pain and frustration there is in the world.

You just obviously don't understand. I didn't like going to churches where they clapped. I didn't. And when I was a Christian I thought, well you know it should change all this right?

But it didn't. Instead I'd come in I'd hear the message about what miserable sinners we are. And I thought that's the point and focus of all theology. We are sinners. Yes we're saved by the grace of God but let's get back to the main point. We're sinners.

Yeah but you're blessed. Yeah yeah but you don't know how much I've sinned. Yeah. Yeah but you don't know how much I've sinned.

Yeah. So I had one problem and that was I had to admit the positive thinkers they were a lot happier than I was. I want to show you today how while a lot of what you might hear positive thinking gurus say in their motivational speeches really is true because all truth is God's truth. Just because somebody that doesn't know God is saying something doesn't mean it's not true. All truth is God's truth.

Somebody might have a piece of the truth right? But I want to show you today that there's something deeper and richer and far more powerful than just deciding to be a positive thinker. I want to speak to you today about how you can be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

How the spirit of the living God communing with you as a spiritual living being, communing with your born again spirit can become the instructor of all your thoughts and your mind can become subservient to the holy and pure things of God and everything in your life will change when your thoughts change. Because the first thing to say is that in the spiritual battle that we face day in and day out and the spiritual battle is real beloved. Heaven is real. Hell is real. Angels are real.

Dark fallen angels are real. Spiritual warfare is real. Some days it's more intense. Some seasons it's more intense.

Some seasons it's less intense. But every single day of our life we're exhorted to put on the whole armor of God. Foolish is the person who gets up in the morning and thinks that today I don't have to put on the armor. Today there's no spiritual battle. Today there's no battleground.

Foolish is such a person. There's a real spiritual battle. Where is the battleground? The battleground is in the mind.

That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Have you ever thought that joy is a delight reserved for those who have no problems? Or have you ever assumed that some people are just born with a joyful personality?

If so, get ready for some good news. Joy is a fruit of the spirit available to all in Christ no matter the circumstances of life. Though Paul was in jail when he wrote his epistle to the Philippians, he spoke of joy 16 times. No matter what you're going through, you too can discover the secret to unspeakable joy as Pastor Alan Wright leads you through a life-building exploration of Philippians. When you make a gift to Sharing the Light Ministries today, we'll send you the new CD album The Secret of Unspeakable Joy as our way of saying thank you for your partnership. Your gifts are the only way we are able to continue broadcasting the message of grace all over the nation. Happiness may rise and fall with happenstance, but joy is ever present in the spirit. So become a partner today and discover joy like never before. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. We're in the final days of this special offer being made available to you.

Call us at 877-544-4860 or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. I don't know about you, I have been mesmerized watching Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian in all of history. He has won 23 gold medals in swimming and nobody will ever have that many ever again. The next closest is nine gold medals. Some historians and sports analysts would say resolutely this makes him the best athlete that has ever lived. It's remarkable, it is beyond words what he has done. In 2012, he finished the Olympics and he was thinking of retirement and he announced such and his life became dismantled after that.

He said in an ESPN interview, quote, that it was struggling. He struggled to figure out who I was outside the pool. He said, quote, I was a train wreck.

I was like a time bomb waiting to go off. I had no self-esteem, no self-worth. There were times when I didn't want to be here. It was not good.

I felt lost. And so like very many people who are having those kinds of despairing and negative thoughts, he self-medicated. He was caught with marijuana. He was arrested twice and drunk and driving. And after he had been speeding 81 miles per hour through a Baltimore tunnel while intoxicated and arrested, he cut himself off from family and friends and he said, quote, I thought the world would just be better off without me.

I figured that was the best thing to do, just end my life. He's the most decorated Olympian in history. He had all the money he could ever want.

He had every opportunity. And he thought the world would be better without him, that he should just end his life. The mind is the battleground.

The mind is the battleground. Thankfully, former All-Pro linebacker of the Baltimore Ravens, Ray Lewis, reached out to him and urged him to get into rehab. And while Phelps was in rehab, Lewis gave him a book to read. It's the best selling nonfiction hardback book of all time. It's called The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren.

And he holed up with that book and got back to Ray Lewis soon and said, this is changing everything. And I don't know how far really Phelps has come in his spiritual journey, but I do know that he said this, that reading that book turned me into believing there's a power greater than myself and there's a purpose for me on this planet. The battleground is in the mind. Your thoughts are determining how you feel and determining what you do. Some people suggest theologically that the scriptures speak of us really as bipartite, a spiritual part of ourselves, a soul, and then our body. But throughout the years and the more I read the scriptures and I see how this plays out theologically, it helps me more to understand that we really are spirit, soul, and body. And part of the reason this is important for me is that I know that the scriptures tell us that when we accept Christ, we are a new creature in Christ. We are made new. And it's described in totality and in past tense, we are made new.

But at the same time, we are told to be renewed. So what happens is that when you are away from God and you don't know God, the Bible describes it metaphorically but in some real way also as being dead. It's like a giant gulf between us and God. And our spiritual nature, our spiritual being is dead to God.

It means the same things that you would say of a dead person. They have no sense. They have no responsiveness.

They have no capacity to interact. And that's the way we were unto God because of this giant separation that's come about because of our sin. And so in a very real sense, we say that we were dead. But God in His glory and in His grace does a miracle. God is so wonderful and His love is from everlasting to everlasting. That the reason and the manner and the mystery by which you came to faith, if you trust Him now, this is how it happened. He quickened within you a life that came about and was received by grace through faith alone. He made you alive. And that's why we say I was blind but now I see.

That's why we say I was dead but now I'm alive. And so Paul says anyone who's in Christ is a new creature. If you're a baby Christian and you accept Jesus today, if you just accept Him today and you're a baby Christian, you are a totally new creature. It applies to you. But you know you're on a journey and you're going to grow.

And so here's the thing we all know to be true. If you weren't a Christian yesterday and you became a Christian this morning, you accepted Christ, you're a new creature. And so the Bible says you're new but you look down at your hand and you've got that same freckle.

You might have that same pain in your back because your body didn't change. What was made new? Did it mean that all of a sudden all your thoughts are different and all of a sudden all you only think about are the true and noble and wonderful things?

No. You're spiritually new. Your body that right now is aging will one day be made new. One day you're going to be given a new body. Now God does wonderful miracles here and He heals and He does wonderful things and we pray for one another every week. But our bodies are aging and one day we're going to get a brand new body.

Hallelujah. So I'm new in spirit. My body will one day be made new. So what is it that is being made new?

What is it that is changing and growing and being transformed? It's the soul. What's the New Testament calls the sukkah, the psyche, the mind. It is that you are being renewed as you submit to God's Spirit and to His Word.

That's where the battleground is. In Romans 8 verse 5 Paul says those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. To set the mind to be in accord, to be submitted to, to be aligned with and tuned in with the Spirit is life and peace. But to have the mind set upon the things of the sinful nature and the carnal things of this world and all the negative things of the world is death and destruction. Paul also says in Romans chapter 12 I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God present your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship. And he says this do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. He says also in 2 Corinthians chapter 10 that this is what the gospel does. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ being ready to punish every disobedience.

It's the mind the battlegrounds in the mind. It's interesting when Jesus came he said that the message is this repent for the kingdom of God is at hand and he told his disciples go and preach this repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. And you know what repent means? It means change your mind. The word for mind is in that word. Change your way of thinking. Change your thoughts.

That's what repent means. And people often ask say well what about our feelings? Are feelings are feelings reliable?

What do we do with our feelings? Well on the one hand feelings are absolutely reliable. Feelings tell you in a reliable way exactly what you're thinking.

I guarantee if your heart starts pounding your eyes your eyes dilate and you feel like screaming or running or fighting your thinking is there's a danger nearby. And your feelings are a reliable indicator of that. Thank God for feelings. Your feelings are an instrument gauge and they tell you what you're thinking.

There's a growing body of research on the human brain and I know there are some emotional responses that seem to pass the conscious thought level but our feelings are always based on our perceptions. And God wants our thoughts to be instructed of him. To have his mind. He wants us to have it in a process of growth where increasingly everything we think is being instructed by our spirit which communes with the living God. The mind is to be subservient to the spirit.

The new part of you that communes with God's spirit. God wants to tell you how to think. I think this is why it's so important.

I don't know why this is on my mind. It must be for someone but it was on my mind several times in preparing this message and I want to say this that the Bible is so so God is so so against all occultic activity. Alan Wright today's teaching the path to joy and peace and we've got the conclusion to this on our next broadcast as we're coming down towards close to the end of the unspeakable joy series and trust has been a blessing to you stay with us though Alan is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and our final word today. See as Lewis said no soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. In other words joy isn't an elusive dream reserved for a select few who have no problems or for those who were born with a joyful disposition. Actually joy is a fruit of the spirit available to all in Christ. No matter what you're facing you can have the joy of the Lord in the midst of it.

The apostle Paul did though he wrote his epistle to the Philippians while imprisoned he spoke of joy 16 times. Alan Wright's newest CD album the secret of unspeakable joy takes you chapter by chapter through Paul's explanation of the secret of joy in Philippians. When you make a gift today to sharing a light we'll be delighted to send you the new CD album as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Become a partner today and discover the secrets of unspeakable joy. We're in the final days of this special offer being made available to you. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860 or come to our website pastoralan.org. Alan as we closed out there you did have a word that say you know there are some people say there are many paths to finding peace many paths to finding joy of course we're going to stand here and boldly proclaim there's one path through Jesus and you know and just in that comment that we're breaking there from we're have nothing to do with the occult why is this so important to God it's not the center of this message today but it's an important moment and I do believe there is a spiritual reality going all around us we're in a spiritual warfare and I think the occult of things open us to the dark forces and demonic so don't have anything to do with astrology don't have anything to do with the occult and but I think here's the more important thing and this is why the pause at this moment Daniel say it is that if you could have in the morning you look at the astrology and to to tell you what your day is going to be like or what it's going to be what what what God hates about that is you're letting something else someone else some other ideology determine your way of thinking other than God and God wants his word and his promises and his spirit he wants to be the sole dispenser of the vision of your life and the one who shapes your identity it is essential if you're going to have joy and peace in this world that you live a life that is fueled by the word of God today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries