Pressing On [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

You can't be rejected because you're already accepted. And this is the beautiful thing about being a Christian is that you know that you have a citizenship now in a different kingdom. And so when things in this world, when you feel like an alien, you feel like a refugee, you feel like you have no home here, it's okay.

You have a real home and it's with God. 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. I'm not perfect. The word really perfect means fully mature. You mean I haven't arrived. I'm not perfect.

I haven't arrived. There's something liberating about the power of the gospel when it comes to our fear, number one, of messing up. One of the reasons we don't press on is because we're just afraid that I might fail. And I think what the gospel's answer to that is if you say, well, I don't know if I want to press on.

I don't know why because what if I mess up? I think the gospel's answer is so what? What toddler learning to walk says I'm not going to try and I might fall down. It's a silly notion. But when you're a child of God, you have a father who just loves you infinitely. Let me tell you, God is excited to see you try to take the next step. You just say, well, but what if I'm not perfect? Well, you're not going to be.

I have not already obtained it. There's good news and admitting that I am not going to be perfect. I'm going to keep growing. That's what Paul's saying. The finished work of Jesus doesn't mean that Jesus is finished with you. It's good news when you find out that there's still a journey in front of you. See, I think so often we interpret it that we find out that we have further to go, we interpret it as bad news.

We always want to arrive. But sometimes the best news you could ever get is that there's still a journey in front of you. It may not be that everything has turned out the way that you wanted it to turn out.

You might be facing something right now. But God wants you to know He's not finished. He's not finished with you.

If He is finished with you, you'd be in heaven with Him. There's something more. There's a strange and inspiring story in 1 Kings 19 after Elijah has had this showdown with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. Maybe you remember the story and they call upon the fire to come down and see whose God will consume the altar with fire. And there's 450 prophets of Baal call out to him, Baal, Baal. And nothing happens. And Elijah mocks them. He's such a confident man of God. He says, well, call louder. Maybe he's asleep or using the bathroom or something.

That's what he says. And so oddly, the prophets of Baal call louder, Baal, Baal. And then the text says they started lashing themselves and nothing happened. And then Elijah stood up the man of God and he called upon the name of the Lord Most High and fire came down and consumed the altar. And he struck down every one of the prophets and the glory of God shown forth.

It was one of the greatest victories recorded in the Bible. But in the very next scene, 1 Kings 19, 1, Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he'd killed all the prophets with the sword. And Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, so may the gods do to me and more also if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow. And he was afraid. And he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba. He himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die saying it is enough now, oh Lord, take away my life for I'm no better than my fathers.

And he lay down and slept under a broom tree. If you've ever had a time where you're discouraged, you're not alone. Oddly, sometimes it'll come after some of your greatest victories where you feel like I reach the finish line and then you find out there's something else to do.

It's hard to press on. Somebody just added a mile to your race and you didn't know it was coming. But an angel came and touched him and said, arise and eat. And he ate and he drank. And the angel of the Lord came a second time and touched him and said, arise and eat. And listen to this, for the journey is too great for you. And he rose and ate and drank and went the strength of that food 40 days and 40 nights to Horeb, the mount of God. And God used Elijah miraculously from that time forward after he spoke to him through a still small voice.

And maybe the most important event of his life was still to happen where his mantle would be passed to Elisha, who would continue on in this ministry. Arise and eat for the journey is too great for you. If you feel like you have a great journey in front of you, it's not bad news, it's good news.

Because what it means is there's more pressing on. The second fear the gospel overcomes that I think Paul is referring to here is the fear that we can't move forward because we're too doomed by our past. And he says, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, it verse 1, straining forward to what lies ahead, it verse 13, I press on toward the goal. Forgetting what lies behind. This is a little tricky because as I've often preached and written about this, it's important to remember your God moments.

It's important to remember God in your past like David who said, when he's getting ready to fight God, he said, the Lord delivered me from the paw of the lion, delivered me from the paw of the bear, he'll deliver me from this uncircumcised Philistine as well. It's important to remember God's mighty acts in your life because it builds faith for today. So there is something that we are to remember and there is something also that is important about remembering sometimes the pain instructs us, you touch a hot stove, don't touch it again. And so yes, it's a little tricky.

There are some things you have to remember. What Paul is saying though is unclear. Is he speaking of the failures of his past or is he speaking of the success of his past?

Because for him, they're both sort of linked. He was a Pharisee of Pharisees and a persecutor of Christians. It wasn't that Paul was a dishonest person. It wasn't Paul didn't keep the law. Paul tried very meticulously to keep the law, but in so doing, he was crushing and persecuting the very spirit of Jesus himself.

And so Paul had been a persecutor overseeing the murder of Christians and all this hanging on him. And what he's saying is forgetting all that behind me, I press on. Forgetting all that, forgetting yesterday's haunting failures, as well as forgetting yesterday's accolades because today is the moment and now is the time and the racist in front of me. And there's something that's just so very important about this power of being able to let go. Beloved, I wish I could just talk to you the whole time about the power of just letting go of these things that anchor us from the past. We're a church, we believe in the healing of our souls and we believe that God can minister even amongst those memories and those events in our lives that have hurt us so much. So often what we do is we try to go through life and we just put band-aids onto problems and try to move forward. And we're always tied down until we're really healed. And we really believe that God heals. I've been healed so, so very much.

And I just believe that the announcement of the gospel that says forgetting what lies behind is an actual invitation. You can trust God in this. You can move on in your life without carrying the heavy baggage of yesteryear.

How are you going to run a race if you're dragging along a bunch of anchors of regret and shame from your life? I wonder if today you just let God cut some of that away, break it off. You can move forward with so much more speed as you allow God to enable you to forget what lies behind.

I hope I'm being clear about this. By this I'm not saying to just fall into repressing painful memories. But I'm saying that there's a way of grace you can forget. I either have one of the most unhealthy lives of repressed memory or I have one of the greatest gifts of mercy from God.

And I tend to believe it's the latter. I really tend to forget the things behind me. I mean, I always forget them. I mean, sometimes somebody will say to me, well, don't you remember what that person said that hurt you so bad a few years back or such like that? And I literally, I don't remember it.

I just don't remember. My very first church, I learned a very valuable lesson. I was such a young man, fresh out of seminary. And I went in and began to lead this little church. And there was a key young elder in that church.

I'll call him Sam. And not long, few months after I was there, he started making appointments with me to come in and sit down and visit. And at first I thought he was coming to help encourage me.

And then I realized it wasn't encouraging. And he said things like, I'm just having some problems with the leadership. Well, he is an elder.

I was a pastor and I was pretty sure he wasn't talking about himself. So, and it went on week after week. Honestly, beloved, it was just, it became, I just winced to pick up the phone and know he was calling me because I just know here it comes again. And yet he was just a young, influential, important elder. And I wanted to honor him with time. And he would come in and basically tell me everything he thought was wrong.

And it would feel like a heavy weight. But I just want to know that I just, the Lord impressed upon my heart to not form bitterness against him. And I never did. And over time as the Lord began to honor our work there and the kingdom got expanded, the church flourished, people came to Christ, he would still continue and have problems with this. And then there became an event in his life, which I'll keep anonymous, that called upon me to go and minister in his family in a very deep way and to love him. And I did love him. And slowly after this period of time, he became one of my four prayer partners that would meet at 6 a.m. on Saturday morning and come and pray and eat a biscuit every single week for the remaining years of my ministry and became one of my best friends.

And I've seen this happen actually in my life over and over. You can forgive. You can forget what lies behind.

Your life's not defined by yesterday. You're in a race. This is the moment. There's the finish line.

Press on. 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're 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'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.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. Don't let the devil keep you tied down from your destiny by the tyranny of yesterday's shame. You can forgive.

You can move on. Love is patient, Paul says, and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable.

It keeps no record of wrongs. What would life be like if you could start fresh today? Honestly, that's my biggest problem in marriage counseling is it's all the dead gum baggage that everybody brings into the... It's like because if you could just start fresh, because what people say is, see there, you said it again, you always say that.

You just added in 20 years of something. If it had just happened that day and you could encounter it for what it was at that moment, you can move on. But it's all the years of baggage, all the things behind us, all of that is being brought into this moment all the time with all these judgments that are so binding.

Let it go and press on. Much more could be said about it. But I also just want to say this, that there is something unusual, the opposite side of this is that there are sometimes that we get stuck in our present because we're so fixed on the positive things from the past. It's important to remember your God moments so they'll empower your faith for today. But there's also a sense in which what Paul is saying is, I'm forgetting... There have been some wonderful things that have happened, but I'm not going to sit here in prison and go, oh, for the day, back when I was out preaching the gospel, roaming free, and I saw people being here. He's not talking like nostalgia and sentiment about all the wonderful things that you used to do in your life. There's a fine line, isn't there, between celebrating what God's done so you'll be fueled with power to press on versus looking back and go, all the best days are over and just talk about the good old times. It's a hard thing to describe. Us in golf know that the worst thing that can happen to you in a round where you're playing great is to start realizing you got a great score going.

Because then you start thinking, I don't want to mess it up. The gospel gives you a way to live in this moment and press forward towards that goal. One more fear that I want to say the gospel addresses, and that is that we have a deep intrinsic fear that somehow in the end that we're going to be rejected. I'm just going to skip forward to verse 20, which says, our citizenship is in heaven and from it we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body. That our citizenship is in heaven and that we are moving towards it and we are guaranteed this promise of glorification of our body. Think on this, as Jesus was raised from the dead, so you will be. As Jesus has a spiritual body that can reign in eternity and can be filled with resplendent glory, so you will have a resurrected body that will be able to encounter the glories of God. And you, yourself, same you, will live and reign with Christ in a new heaven and a new earth forever and forever.

So in other words, you can't be rejected because you're already accepted. And this is the beautiful thing about being a Christian is that you know that you have a citizenship now in a different kingdom. And so when things in this world, when you feel like an alien, you feel like a refugee, you feel like you have no home here, it's okay.

You have a real home and it's with God. The Olympics this year, for the first time, has a team that has no nationality. They are a team of refugees. It's a stirring story that was initiated by the president of the Olympic committee and the Olympic committee has authorized and established a refugee team of the millions and millions of refugees around the world who have fled to their home countries because of persecution, religious persecution, or because of war and strife, and they have no place to live, and many of which, millions of which living in tents and refugee camps, and some of them were excellent athletes. And so they went and they found 10 of the best athletes that are refugees from around the world, and they authorized them to become a team. And the team refugee came marching in, not with any national flag or any song of their own, because they're just part of the Olympics, so they carried the Olympic flag in. And they got the biggest standing ovation of any nation that came in.

There are people on the team like 18-year-old Yusra Mardini. And she fled war-torn Syria with her sister Sarah in a rubber boat. The dinghy was carrying 20 asylum seekers, including these sisters on their way from Turkey to a Greek island. And the boat began to struggle and the sisters were plunged into the icy waters.

They survived only by holding onto the edge of the dinghy. And because one of them is an Olympic swimmer, she was able to swim the little rubber boat to shore and bring people to safety. So she'll be competing in the 100-meter butterfly and freestyle in the 2016 Olympics as part of team refugee. They have an entourage of coaches like the others, a support staff to assist them during the Rio Olympics. And some of them, during their training, were very glad that they were able to receive, especially the runners, a pair of shoes that fit.

The leader of this team had herself set some records in the marathon and races. And she now is campaigning and bringing attention to the plight of refugees around the world. These refugees have no home, no team, no flag, no national anthem, said President Thomas Bach of the International Olympic Committee.

But we'll offer them a home in the Olympic village together with all the athletes of the world. I don't know about you, but sometimes I just feel like an alien in this world. And sometimes in the midst of things that you just see going on around you and the division and strife and terrorism and immorality and everything else, you look and you go, what is going on? I feel like such an alien. And I just want to tell you today, you are team refugee. Your real home is greater than any nationality. You're a citizen of heaven. You're already a citizen of heaven. That's the flag you're carrying.

And it is the greatest of all citizenship you could ever have. Because what it means, you cannot be rejected. Therefore, press on. Press on.

Not that I've already obtained. None of us are going to be perfect. If you fail at something tomorrow, so what? Press on.

Not that I'm so afraid that I just can't move forward for fear of rejection. You're already a citizen of the kingdom of God, so you can press on. No matter what Paul's saying, you can be sure of this. You've been seized by God.

You've been taken a hold of, so you keep pressing hold. Pressing on to take hold of the fullness of your inheritance. That's the gospel. Alan Wright, Gospel Centered Motivation, and Alan is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and our final word in this series on speakable joy in today's teaching, Pressing On. 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 the 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 are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860. We're in the final days of this special offer being made available to you.

That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. For that person who is either stuck or worse yet, they just want to give up. And our message is don't give up. But this is not just motivation that's pie in the sky. This is a gospel centered and something you really, really can drive a stake deep into the ground to know that this is true truth. There's nothing wrong with motivation or motivational speeches and we all need it.

You know, as we're airing this series, it's actually running from a couple of years ago when the summer Olympics were around and we just recently had the winter Olympics. And we have so many pictures of this in our mind, you know, just like I've been telling in this message. But I'm watching athletes that where do they get this strength to persevere? Where and why do they keep going? Is it because they are afraid that in the end they lose?

No. It's all for the prospect and the possibility of competing at the highest level. And I think this is part of what God wants us to know is that the fear of failure can come out of our lives. And as it does, we are released into the mission that God has given for us. And so if you're in a tough place, when we say press on, we mean do so by the power of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.