Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. God's at His desk. He's very busy, you know.
He's got a world to run. People are coming at Him with all kinds of demands and requests. You knock on the door. He says, Come in.
You poke your head in, and He looks at you. How do you think God views you? 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. My niece Courtney has a five-week-old baby Wesley. Some of you have met Courtney and Matt who leads worship here. And so this is the first grandchild, my oldest brother's first grandchild, first grandchild in the family. So we got Wesley, and Wesley lives here now in Winston-Salem. So I got to hold Wesley for the first real time on Friday when they came over and just got to rock a baby. It's been a while.
Been a while. A little out of practice on rocking a baby. But it comes back to you. So I'm going into practicing for grandparent mode here at some point in time. But I've got somebody to practice on.
And so I just got to hold Wesley. And I'm one of those kind of dads. I mean, I do. I mean, when my boy, when he got old enough to put a golf club in his hand, I mean, it's like let the fun begin.
But I always was one. I like the little babies too. I just kind of, I just like that. I like holding them.
I like. And it's the strangest thing. I can only imagine what a mother feels to actually hold a baby, feed a baby. But just rocking and holding little Wesley, just a holding a five-week-old baby. And it's the oddest thing, isn't it? It's like that baby doesn't do one thing for you, but that baby doing so much for you.
What is that? That in just showing affection to a little baby who can't give you anything, there's something in your heart that takes real delight in that. I just want you to know this about God. Believe this about God.
If a parent or a grandparent could take delight in just holding a baby that doesn't know how to do anything except just fuss and mess up diapers and and sleep and yet you just find your heart is overjoyed to be able to just show that love. Do you understand we're made in the image of God? This is the nature of God. And He loves you like that. His love for you is not merely an intellectual love.
Yes, we talk about it every week how essential it is to understand the finished work of Jesus and what has been accomplished for us so that we are adopted as His children and guaranteed that we'll live with Him forever. Yes, this is rich and it is deep and it is beautiful, but here in Paul's words to the Philippians, you see that he's yearning for them from the depths of his inner being a visceral inward longing of affection for this people he loves. That's the nature of the affection of God. Let me give you three ways that affection impacts us when you experience the affections of God. And the first I think you'll see in Paul here is that it engenders a deep connection between Paul and God and Paul and the Philippians.
That experiencing the affections of Christ and the affections of Christ unto one another, it makes us have this deep, deep connection. And you've got to remember Paul is an apostle, he's an evangelist, but he's also a pastor. And this is a pastor who just loves his church.
I know what that feels like. Preaching professor Fred Craddock said doctors and lawyers have clients and they have friends. Only ministers have congregations. It's a different kind of thing. And the kind of connection that Paul had with them, he says we are partakers together of grace.
They are in a koinonia, a fellowship, a co-sharing of grace. What he's saying is that we have together experienced the exact same thing. We have very different lives just like all of us. We have very different lives.
And we've got some people in this room who your past was so hard and so difficult and maybe you were quite rebellious and far, far away from God. And then the glorious gospel came in your life and you were wonderfully saved and everything was changed. And you know that moment when that grace came in your life. Others of us, like my wife, she doesn't remember a time where she didn't love Jesus. But the same grace that shaped her life is the same grace that saved the person who was the farthest from God.
It doesn't matter. We are the same. We are the same. And everywhere I go and no matter who I talk to, I don't care what age, what shape, what color, what background, we are the same. If I go into prison and speak with brothers and sisters in prison and they have had every disadvantage in life and wound up with terrible mistakes that have put them into this place, we are the same. If you are poor, if you are rich in this world, but you have the grace of God, we are all the same. What do we have in common?
We've experienced the grace of God. So Paul is saying, I feel so connected. He's in prison and isolated and far away from this flock, but he's saying, but I'm not lonely here because you are co-sharers. You are partakers together. I've sensed your partnership in grace. It just does something that connects people. And when there is a love like that, it just brings people together. There's a love about church. See, when church is being church, I mean church, the church of Jesus Christ, there is affection of Christ Jesus for one another. And Paul, you can just see this in his heart. It's his heart towards his people. That's the way I feel.
It's the way I feel about you. I've told you before that so dear in my life, and Uncle Stanley was a pastor in so many different contexts all throughout his life and he's in heaven now. But Joella, his wife, she says, I knew I'd married a pastor when early on their first church when they had some people in some rural settings and stuff. And she said, one night he got a phone call and he got off the phone and he said, I need to go and sit with brother so-and-so. I'll call him Mr. Wilson.
I don't remember his name. And Joella said, well, what's going on? I said, well, he said, his horse is real sick, might be dying. And she said, you're going out in the middle of the night to sit with a man whose horse might be dying? And Stanley said, yeah, I just think I ought to be there. Stanley went out and stayed up all night with the man as his horse was dying and came home and Joella said, well, I realize now what I'm in for. I have, there's been a death in the congregation, but it was a death of a horse and Stanley was all that. What is that?
Right? And see, it's not about the horse. It's that the horse means a lot to you and therefore I want to be with you. You're going through something difficult and I want to be a co-sharer of grace with you in this. We are connected by the affections of Christ. Also to say this, that what affection does when you experience the affection of Christ is it warms both the heart of the giver and the receiver. It's very hard to describe what affection is because it's not enough to say this, but it's partly this. It is to say God not only loves you, but He likes you. That's one of the things my wife says to me regularly, thankfully. It worries me that she has to say it, but she says, I love you and I like you. And there is a separation between those two things.
Sometimes you love somebody, you don't like them, but I just think that God wants you to know that He loves you and He likes you, likes being with you. Years ago, many, many years ago, when I first meeting what is my now dear friend and mentor Dudley Hall, and we were making some staff hires around that time many years ago. And I said, Dudley, I said, how do you know if you were to boil it down, how do you know who to hire? He said, that's a great question. He said, and I asked that question sometime back of a friend, Jack Hayford, wonderful pastor. And Jack said, that's a great question.
He said, I asked that question of Bill Hybels, the pastor of the well-known Willow Creek Church, so a large church up in Chicago. And he said, and Bill Hybels had the answer. He said, you know, you're sitting at your desk on a really busy day, and you got too much on your plate, you're kind of stressed out, and there's a knock at your door, and you say, come in, and one of your staff opens the door and pokes their head in. He said, how do you feel? He said, do you feel, oh, Joe, hey, good to see you, come on in, what's up? Or do you go, oh no, what's he want this time?
He said, get the first guy. He said, life's too short, work with people you like. It's a real insight, because as some of you run out, you know what that's like to be in a context, maybe a work context or something where there's people, you just don't have affection for them. But if you are working in an environment and you're being around people that you have affection for, it changes everything, doesn't it?
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. 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. God's at his desk. He's got a world to run. People are coming at him with all kinds of demands and requests. You knock. He says, come in. You poke your head in and he looks at you. How do you think God views you? And I want you to know every single person in this room, he made you. And for anyone in Christ, he adopted you. And when he looks at you, he's like, Alan, I'm so glad you knocked.
Come in. So good to be with you. Affection connects us with God and one another. Affection engenders that warmth of our inward being that is transforming to us. There's one other way to describe what I'm talking about is why, at least for most people, you want to go and pet a cute dog. Abby, our 17-year-old, was babysitting for somebody the other day. They have a little girl and they took a walk to the park. And as they're walking to the park, Abby saw there was somebody over there. They had a big fluffy dog. And Abby's like, we're not going to go over there and get involved with that dog right now. It just wasn't... A, you're babysitting. I don't know if that dog bites or not.
We're not going to take a chance. You know, that kind of thing. So she's trying to divert their attention away, but the little girl sees the dog. And she said, Abby, there's a dog. Abby said, yes, I see the dog. And she said, it's a big dog. Yeah, it's a big dog. And then she said, it's really fluffy.
What is it with it? I want to go and show that affection. There's something that is transformational about that. Okay, thirdly, what Paul's saying here is that this affection of Christ is something that will lead us.
It guides us into right living. This is an amazing thing about the love of Jesus. What Paul says here, and we don't have time to go into it in great detail, but at verse 9 he says, it's my prayer your love may abound more and more. This is language. Abound means to reach the top and be spilling over.
Okay, superabundance, right? This boundless, abounding love of Jesus and that you'll experience it more and more. He just piles on these words that are just saying abundant, more, more, more, just overflowing, right?
It's just a huge, generous picture of the love of God. And it says at verse 10, so that... Oh, first he says, with knowledge and all discernment. What he's saying about the love of Jesus is that the love of Jesus and the affections of Jesus do not therefore preclude or need to remove us from discernment, right? But that join together with truth. So this is not what some have dubbed sloppy agape, you know? This isn't, oh, I just love you, I love everybody, and that truth doesn't matter.
And this isn't, oh, I just love you, come walk all over me like a doormat. That's not what he's talking about here. There's discernment, right? That goes with love. But he says, but as you have this, it's verse 10, so that you may approve what is excellent and be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.
What's he saying? That when you have this overflowing affection of Christ in your life, the love of God leads you and instructs you. The love of God helps you know what is excellent. The love of God helps you know what is right.
It helps you know what is the right thing to do in any situation. This is why Jesus was able to say all the law, it's all summed up in love God and love your neighbor. If you had the perfect love of God flowing towards God and towards your neighbor, you wouldn't need any other instructions, what he's saying.
Because this instructs you on what to do. The word for pure really should be sincere. And it doesn't mean blameless like your efforts to be blameless so that you won't be judged at judgment day. What he's saying is all the way until Christ comes back, if you have love that is abounding in your heart, then this love will guide you through life into what is sincere and what is right and what is excellent. It is transformational. What I'm saying is experiencing the affections of Christ connects us and warms us but also leads us. It is a beautiful and powerful thing to experience the love of God. You know sometimes in telling tender stories on the human level about love or especially about the love of a father, I know and I've seen it over the years that sometimes you know it just takes us to a place of where we had a painful memory or a love we didn't receive or maybe even were mistreated when we should have been shown affection, we were shown some perversion of that or we were not shown it at all and it can bring up. And so sometimes I wonder do I even even share these kinds of stories because I know that it can open up those wounds but I do so from time to time because it's okay to be in touch with the longing that we have because the longing we have is going to put us in touch with our yearning for the love of God.
And that's a wonderful thing and we're a church that believes in healing and we're a church that prays for one another and we'll pray for you today. But I want to close with some words from a man who was a dear friend. He came and visited our church a couple of times years ago and made an impact on many of us. His name interestingly is Jack Frost. He's in heaven now and he was a wonderful man who had discovered the love of God and wrote a book called Experiencing the Father's Embrace and in there he tells his testimony about how perfectionistic he was.
He was a top hook. He was a fisherman and he was so driven he would risk his life and the lives of his crew to just bring in more fish than anybody else on the coast and always be listed on the board top fisherman of the day. And he was a Christian and he was legalistic and even he went in the ministry he remained harsh and legalistic until one day he was at a conference and he said he heard someone from the platform begin to pray and the world words just startled him. The words were Father God take all the men in this room who were never held by their fathers and hold them close right now and give them the love that their fathers did not know how to give. And Jack Frost said that he experienced the love of God almost in a physical way that day. He said it was as if hot liquid love was just pouring into his soul and he said he began to cry and he was never an emotional person but he began to weep and he said that for weeks and weeks after that he couldn't even think of it except for just weeping for the love of God. And he realized that over a period of five months God was just healing him by pouring in this love that he had caused so much pain in his home with his wife and his children and he began to relate to them completely differently and he said he would come and he would kneel at their feet weeping and pleading for forgiveness for the times that he had misrepresenting a father's love to them.
And his daughter Sarah during this period of time saw the transformation in her father and she was writing an essay for a school English class and this is part of what she wrote. The greatest influence in my life is my daddy. Through him I've seen the eyes of Jesus and felt his unending love. At one point not very long ago my daddy was a man to fear.
He was Captain Bligh off the HMS Bounty but now he's gentle as a lamb not to mention just as loving. Through watching my daddy change from being a hard man to being tender he's influenced me to change. His new patience has helped bring me through a very difficult year. Seeing my father love and cherish God like never before has done miracles for me.
Instead of referring to God like a holy being he refers to him as daddy. Now instead of fearing my dad I crawl up in his lap. Now I find a very cherished peace and what I cherish most about my father is his smile. I also love the way he sits with me and helps me with my faults in a loving way. Whenever I do something good he notices that too. My dad's changing in so many areas I'm so proud of him.
Every time he looks at me and smiles I explode inside with joy. My daddy's been my greatest influence in my life. He'll change you. The love of God will change everything and you can experience on an ongoing basis the affections of Christ Jesus. That's the gospel.
Allen Wright. Our series is unspeakable joy in today's teaching experiencing the affection of Christ as we wrap this up. Allen is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and today's final word. Stay with us.
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. Allen 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 Allen Wright Ministries.
Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website pastorallen.org. Allen I think it's true there is joy in serving Christ.
There's joy from that kind of service but it's not and we've talked about this it's not an earning thing. It's not something that we do to earn the affection, the love, the approval of Jesus. Well just as that tender story we were just hearing from Jack Frost and the experiencing of the father's embrace. It is to say that the Christian walk is like a child that's really loved by a father and that's that's the beauty of and power of the Christian life is that God is our father and he loves us and and in a very real way in a metaphorical way you crawl up into his lap and you cherish his smile and you love the way that he speaks with you, guides you. All of that is the affection that Paul had experienced and the affections that he had for the Philippians.
Such powerful stuff. 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.
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