Overcoming Fear [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. There are negative things. There are positive things. And the answer to this is not a bumper sticker.

It's more complicated than that. 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. You ready for some good news?

You can take heart in whatever circumstances you're in because though in this world you'll have trouble, Jesus has overcome the world. One of my favorite stories that mocks our fears. I know I've bound to have told it a number of times. A man every single night of his married life is awakened by his wife in the middle of the night because she hears a bump downstairs and says, honey, I heard something downstairs. It might be a burglar.

Please go check. It started the first week of their marriage. It continued for 20 years every night. Honey, I heard a bump. And he would get up, pull on his robe, walk down the stairs, come back up. There's nothing there. Night after night, there's nothing there, honey.

And she would have this going. Well, 20 years later, one night, honey, I heard a bump downstairs. I think it might be a burglar. He puts on his robe. He walks downstairs. And lo and behold, there was the burglar in the house.

As soon as the thief saw him, he started running out the front door. And the man said, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, please. Would you just stay for just a moment?

There's a woman upstairs waiting 20 years to meet you. Sometimes in life, you know, I know people like this. It's like, it's almost relieved when you finally have your worst fear come true because, you know, at least it's come true.

Now you don't have to worry about it anymore because, you know, I knew this was going to happen and now it's come to pass. We're going to look at a passage today in Philippians in which for many a preacher this would have been worst fear come true and that is to become incarcerated because of preaching the gospel. For a Christian to think you might be persecuted or someone might not think as highly of you because you're sharing Jesus, but a worse case would be you actually are imprisoned with the possibility of being executed. And this has come to pass for Paul. We think that he's probably in Rome in house arrest awaiting final trial.

He had made an appeal to go to Rome when he had been in prison in Caesarea. And Paul in our text today, we're going to see in the midst of prison and what we're going to see everywhere in Philippians is that it's absolutely mind-bending the attitude that he has, but attitude is not the right word. That's something you feel like you can just kind of trump up your attitude better, but this is something down deep in the depths of his inmost being that I want to show you today how amazing it is when the gospel is alive within you and by the power of the Holy Spirit that you really can see Jesus at work even in the midst of the circumstances which you might have feared the most. So we're going to talk today about some issues of facing suffering as Christians, some theological framework for this, and then kind of the second half of the message dig into what was actually going on with Paul here. So some of both kind of a broad view of the theological framework for how to Christians, and what does the Bible really say about suffering, and how do we move through that, and then specifically this amazing word from Paul. Okay, we're in Philippians.

It's chapter 1, and we're at verse 12. I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I'm put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of rivalry, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.

What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. Two things Paul is saying. First he's saying, I really deeply see that the gospel is advanced in ways it would not have advanced if I had not been in prison, and for that I rejoice. And even though there are some Christian brothers that are preaching out of selfish ambition, and they're doing so in a way that is afflicting and hurting me personally, if Christ is being proclaimed in that, I rejoice. Amazing.

It's amazing. I want to just begin today with kind of the bigger picture of all of this, and as it relates to some circumstance. And one of the things amazing, difficult circumstances, it's amazing when you read Paul, is that most of us, almost everybody that I would ever speak to, would never have in his or her entire life the amount of suffering that Paul has been through. So it's always important to remember that.

It doesn't minimize our suffering. In recent times, there have been some little problems that I've been going through, but they're real problems. They're little problems, but they're real problems. It's good to keep them in perspective. And with Paul, you have to remember this person has been beaten, flogged, shipwrecked, poisoned, persecuted, imprisoned, and according to tradition, eventually executed.

It's a hard life. And he's amazingly, for lack of a deeper word, positive, right? And we're going to see this throughout Philippians, and especially as we build up to Philippians 4a, where he talks about his practice of thinking only on that which is true and noble and right and pure, and how difficult it is in our own lives to corral those negative thoughts. In fact, negative thoughts can just become like a tape recorder, can't they?

And it's actually a painful thing, and it becomes something very hard to break. And yet what Paul demonstrates here is that it's possible to be utterly and completely positive in one's attitude and yet not in denial about the difficulty of the situation. And I think that's the challenge, and I think that's the invitation of the gospel to be positive but not be in denial about real suffering.

Zig Ziglar, the famous motivational speaker, said that when he woke up each day, he'd read his Bible and then the newspaper because he wanted to see what both sides are up to. It's important, I think, that it's not a law or rule, but what you set your thoughts on first thing in the morning and last thing at night, pretty important. And I find that, I mean, when I get into a time in which my mind is getting more negative, I'll find it's a challenge. I'll wake up, might be a negative thought, if there's something that really you're struggling with. And at night, before you go to bed, you don't watch it, you just be a negative thought.

And I think that there's something that's absolutely important about building a sense of attuning your heart to God's Word early and late. And in the midst of it, though, we know that we have negative things in the world. So some people become super optimists, some people become super pessimists. Did you ever hear about the man who had two five-year-old twin boys and one was the total optimist and one was the total pessimist? And he got so concerned because it seemed like the optimist couldn't think anything but positive, the pessimist couldn't think anything but negative, so he took him to the psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist had a plan. He took the pessimistic child and he took him into a room that was just full of toys, just to see how he would react. And this pessimistic five-year-old went in the room and he immediately began crying.

What is it? said the psychiatrist. And the little boy said, Oh, I want to play with all these toys, but I'll probably break them and get in trouble if I do. So the other little boy who was totally optimistic, they took him into another room and there wasn't anything in there except a big pile of manure. And all of a sudden, the boy let out a yelp of delight, grabbed the shovel and started shoveling the psychiatrist and said, What are you doing? And the boy said, With all this here, there must be a pony in here somewhere. Now, if I had to, I'd rather be the one with the shovel in life, right? There's got to be a pony here somewhere.

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'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 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. There is, the pessimists would say, a potential downside to being only optimistic, and that is that you could find yourself just shuffling the filth all the time and never owning up to the fact that it really does stink in there. And so what is this? Are we to just be optimistic and kind of ignore life's problems?

No. In fact of the matter, I have to admit that I am so for being positive that there can be a way in which you can go a little too far if you ignore reality. So I don't want to ignore reality. And my wife and our 17-year-old daughter have been in Oklahoma this week at a speech tournament. And in order to facilitate this very, very busy schedule, it's best to stay on the campus at the university where this term is being hosted. And so instead of being in a hotel, my wife and Abby are in a dormitory room. Imagine my wife's dismay, and you have to know my wife to understand the level of dismay, when she got there and realized it was only bunk beds. I don't mean you could be in a lower bunk, I mean it was just the upper bunk and underneath a desk and that was all that was in there.

And so, and there was no rail either, you know, like to keep you from falling off. So I talked to her the next day, I said, how did you sleep? She said, not much. She said, I was just hugging the wall the whole night.

So I said, well, I tell you, go to the Walmart and get the very best blow up air mattress you can get, put it on the floor, and I'm going to pray you get a better night's sleep. The next day I talked to her, I said, how would you sleep? She said, it's a funny story.

I said, what? She said, well, I didn't feel like we slept very well. Both Abby and I, we kind of tossed and turned. She said, I felt like in the middle of the night that she said, I thought I heard somebody's alarm going off and there was some rummaging around next door. She said, I was tossing, I didn't sleep very well. I didn't sleep very well, Abby didn't sleep very well, and she said, but then we got up the next morning and everybody, everybody at the tournament looked real tired. And as soon as we saw it and the people came and said, where were you last night? She said, what do you mean?

We were in our room trying to get some sleep. They said, what are you talking about? She said, we didn't see you.

She said, see you where? During the evacuation, the fire Marshall had come and banged on every door. There was smoke or something going on in the dormitory. And my wife and daughter just slept through the whole thing. It turned out they had a better night's sleep than anybody.

Everybody else was out in their pajamas at 3 AM standing outside the dorm. I want to be that positive person, you know, and I want to be like Paul, but there is a part of us that has to say, if there's a fire, you need to wake up and get out of the building. It doesn't do to say, I'm sure that's not a fire. I'm sure whoever's banging on my door at 3 AM is not really needing me to do anything. I don't know if any other men like this, but call it being positive, but actually it's being lazy.

If I'm sleepy in the middle of the night, I will rationalize anything. And my wife said, I think the house is burning down. I'd be like, it'll be all right, honey.

We almost had our second child at home because she said, I think I'm having contractions. I've said, I'm sure you're not. Let's get some sleep.

Okay. Oh, let's be positive and let's have the mindset of Paul, the mindset of Christ. And yet also, can we be honest? There are negative things in this world.

What do you do with that? Some people have their brains unfortunately just wired towards the negative. Why is it that bad news sells? And why is it that it's so easy to think up negative things and so hard to think up positive things? Why is that?

Why is that? I tell you, if I sit with a group of 10 people and I say, we got any prayer requests? They start popping out the needs. And I say, we got any praise reports?

It's a nice day outside. There's something about the brain. It just, we are very prone to be able to just get wired for that negative thinking. Some people are just pessimists and tragedy sell.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said, show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy. Some famous pessimists. I don't know why this... Joan Rivers. Is she still alive? No, she's not. She lived a long time though and she was a pessimist. She was funny. She said, trust your husband.

Adore your husband and get as much as you can in your own name. I mean, I'm just, you know, it's pessimistic. Here's the bottom line. There are negative things. There are positive things.

And the answer to this is not a bumper sticker. Years ago at Verge, our Saturday evening ministry, it was a coffee house and I would preach casually around coffee tables and trying to reach, as we did, primarily young people in their 20s, married and single. And one night I was going to be speaking about the healing ministry of Jesus and why I believe that the healing ministry of Jesus continues to this very day. I also needed to address issues about the sovereignty of God. It becomes very complicated, right? When people start asking, well, why if Jesus still heals are some people not healed when we pray for them?

And some people are. And what about the sovereignty of God? If He's good and He's powerful, why doesn't He just do what He's going to do?

And why doesn't He heal everybody? And so I was talking about some of the complexity of these issues and I wanted to make a very persuasive case for why I believe so much that Jesus heals today. On this particular night, I just thought, you know, I'm going to try something I never tried before. I'm going to just pause towards the end of this message and just say, now, I know that normally when you get a sermon, it's a one-way thing, you know, and I kind of present and then we all go home. I said, but really this, I've raised some questions and so we might as well make it a dialogue and I want to see if you have any questions. Now, I thought that, A, it'd be a likelihood nobody would ask a question and be off the hook. And B, I thought if they do ask a question, how hard could it be?

So as soon as I had any questions about these matters, immediately, a hand went up in the back and I said, yes. And this individual said, well, what about a precious Joni Eareckson-Tada, wonderful lady, has a beautiful, powerful ministry. She's paralyzed many years in a wheelchair from a diving accident and she's written, she speaks, and she's prayed for so much to be healed. She never was and physically healed, but she just speaks about knowing the love of God in the midst of her affliction. So what about her?

I mean, she's not been healed and she seems to be glorifying God and I'm like, okay. So I mumbled a few words of answer to that one. Then the next person raised a hand and this was a guy I had never met before and he had multiple degenerative diseases in his body. And he said, even though I've been going through this and he'd had five surgeries and he said, but I don't feel unblessed. It almost sounds like you're saying I'm not blessed if I hadn't been healed. What about me? And I was like, okay. I mumbled a few more words and then I took one more question and it was about double predestination.

And I said, we're out of time tonight and have you noticed that ever since then, I don't take questions at the end. My point being, if you're really willing to dig into these things, it's a little more complicated than the bumper stickers, isn't it? And you can get some understanding of how people who have suffered a lot can start asking deep questions. I got a letter this week from a very dear Christian counselor who attends our church and a very, very deep and wise thinker. After I had spoken from Philippians about experiencing the affections of Christ, even in our afflictions, she wrote me and she said that that night, after hearing that message, she woke up a couple hours later and kind of a startled response with a thought, I'm reading now her letter with her permission, by the way, pushing out of my mind all day, staring me in the face, that it makes me dread going to work in the morning because I know I'll be trying to answer the question all day long of, if God loves me so much, why am I going through this?

And why hasn't He done anything to help me? Most of the people I see every day have been walking the walk and talking the talk for decades and horrible things are happening. And I don't always have a satisfactory answer, even for things in my own life. And as I was listening to your sermon today, which of course was great, she said, but I had to ask myself, how can you separate the love of God and the affections of Christ from His willingness or unwillingness to use His mighty power on our behalf? How does one not go there? All right.

And a good question. And we're going to have the answer to that in our conclusion of this particular teaching, overcoming your worst fears. Unspeakable Joy is the series. And Alan Wright, our teacher, is back here in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and a final word.

C.S. 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 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.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. So Alan, as we're talking in this series about joy, I would imagine that would be one of the blocks to joy is living out of fear. When you have fear and you think about the negative things in life and you think about it over and over, all of us has at least tasted of how crippling that can be.

And some of our listeners live with a lot of daily fear and a lot of angst. And this message is one that is straight from the heart of the scripture and from my heart to those who do suffer in that way. I do think it is important, just as we were coming out of that segment there, Daniel, that we need to say it's okay to wrestle with some of these deepest questions about suffering, Elijah.

It's okay to wrestle with that. And there are some things that are important in today's message about the biblical perspective on suffering. And I hope that some of that comes across with some real, real clarity. But what we're going to learn from Paul is something powerful about the sovereign care of God for his children in the midst of their confusing and difficult circumstances. And that's where the joy comes from. And that's the power of the gospel. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.