Foolproof Discernment [Part 1]

Allen Wright, pastor, Bible teacher, and author of his latest book, The Power to Bless.

And what I realize now that I've walked with God longer is that part of the reason I wanted to know all of the clarity was in fact so I wouldn't have to trust 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, Foolproof, 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 Allen Wright Ministries. So as you listen to today's message, go deeper if we're happy to send you today's special offer. Just contact us at pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. We'll have more on this special offer later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Allen Wright. Okay, you ready for some good news?

Listen to this. God is more committed to leading you on the right path than you could ever be committed to it yourself. He wants for you to be led in the right way more than you could even know how to ask Him. He's your Father, and He has the very best in mind for you always so you can trust Him. We are today in Proverbs chapter 3 as we have begun in a series on the Proverbs.

We call it foolproof because it is the very wisdom of Christ. And we're going to be here for several months in this ongoing wisdom, so I'm excited about this journey. My wife and I celebrated 33 years of marriage. Our actual anniversary was a little while ago. We didn't have time to celebrate it.

But last weekend, we were at the beach alone, no kids, nobody there. We had two nights, so we just had nice dinners and just celebrated, and what a blessing. I was remembering that when we were engaged, we each settled on a scripture that we wanted to have inscribed in the other's wedding band. And my wedding, I've jammed that finger so many times that my wedding band cannot come off. So yeah, I'm married no matter what.

I mean, I had to be cut off of there. And so Anne had inscribed in mine the reference to John 17, one of her favorite chapters. But inside of my wife's little wedding band is inscribed Proverbs 3, 5, and 6.

I begin reading at verse 1. My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments. For a length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you. Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you.

Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart, so you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil.

It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones. In all your ways acknowledge Him. A friend of a friend years ago was working amongst the poor with Mother Teresa in that world-famous, world-changing ministry. And like so many young people that went to intern there, he longed to get a few moments at least with Mother Teresa to talk to her, to glean some of her wisdom, have her pray for him.

And after a long time there, he finally had some moments to be with Mother Teresa. And as you might expect, the little saint, she said, how can I pray for you? And the young man said, well, I think clarity. What I would like is clarity. He was thinking about what to do with his life. He was thinking about a straight path in front of him. He said, so that's what I'd like you to pray for. And he said that when he made that prayer request, the little Mother Teresa threw her head back and started laughing. And she said, clarity? Clarity? She said, oh, young man, I've had very little clarity in my life, but I do trust God a lot.

I will pray you trust God. It's interesting because as I look back over walking with God for a long time, I recognize that earlier in my life what I craved was clarity, like wanting the idea of a straight path to be more like a blueprint that was just falling from heaven, that was going to tell me everything that was going to happen, everything that needed to happen. And what I realize now that I've walked with God longer is that part of the reason I wanted to know all of the clarity was in fact so I wouldn't have to trust God. And so there is a sort of tension, isn't there, between God promising that He's going to make the path straight, and yet the invitation is that we would cultivate a walk with God that is a profound walk of trust. I want a straight path, and I want a straight path for you and all that I love.

The closest point, the closest distance between two points is a straight line. And we don't need to needlessly wander in a wilderness in a meaningless way. And the word in Hebrew for a straight path can also just mean smooth.

We don't need needless potholes and twisting our ankles on roots and uneven terrain. So I want a straight and a smooth path, but what we're going to see today is that that kind of discernment about how you spend your life in God's eyes is much more about your trust in Him. It's much more about the fullness of that trust and discovering what it means to acknowledge Him, what the Hebrew word literally means to know Him in all dimensions of your life. So that what I've come to believe is that the matter of hearing God's voice, the matter of discernment in the Holy Spirit about direction, that all of this is more a function of trust in God than it is any sort of other spiritual process or technique. In other words, God is speaking and God loves you and God has made huge promises about directing you. He has assured us that He's a good shepherd and that His sheep know His voice. So what I have honestly come to realize in my life is that my capacity to really hear God is much more related to my capacity to trust God than it is some other kind of technique or spiritual process. And so in the end, the invitation here is one of trusting God with all your heart and not leaning on your own understanding and I want to talk to you about what that means today. That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Ever feel like something's holding you back, as if you lack an important key that could change everything?

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That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Alan Wright. God loves you, and God has made huge promises about directing you. He has assured us that He's a good shepherd and that His sheep know His voice. So what I have honestly come to realize in my life is that my capacity to really hear God is much more related to my capacity to trust God than it is some other kind of technique or spiritual process. And so in the end, the invitation here is one of trusting God with all your heart and not leaning on your own understanding. And I want to talk to you about what that means today.

It flies in the face of our culture to say, lean not on your own understanding, because the spirit of the age is exactly the opposite. One of the TV shows that I love watching, especially with my daughter Abby, we're big fans of The Voice. This is a contest to see, narrow down who America will vote as the best vocalist. And so it starts out with all these singers, and we have four coaches who are themselves superstars in the music industry. And the coaches select their team, and then they begin to coach that team, hoping that one of their contestants will make it all the way to being the champion of the season in The Voice.

And what's interesting is to listen as the host of the program will from time to time interview the contestants and say, what would you like to say to your coach, or how has your coach helped you? And almost every time the contestant reports back something like this, thank you so much, because I didn't really believe in myself, but you have taught me to believe in myself. You have taught me to trust myself, and I know what they're saying. They're saying, I didn't have much confidence, and you've helped me become more confident, and that's a good thing. But think about the irony of them saying the key to my getting better is believing in myself, but it took a coach in order to help me believe in myself.

In other words, I had to believe in someone else before I could believe in myself. Have you noticed that so many of the movies, especially those that are targeted towards the kids, have a recurring theme that is essentially, you need to trust yourself and follow your own path. We watched, not long ago, one of the most recent Pixar films, another animated film from the geniuses at Pixar with incredible animation, so it's called Coco, and it tells the story of a Mexican boy who was growing up in a family that had banned all playing of musical instruments and all musical performances. And the reason for this was that there had been a previous patriarch in the family, this little boy's great-great-grandfather, who had evidently, it looked like, left his wife to go pursue his music career and become famous in his music career, but never came back home, and because of it, music was banned in the family. But little Miguel loved playing the guitar, loved singing, and he wanted to be in a big talent show.

And the movie is the story of him having to sort of run away from home and follow his dream to play music. You see what the message is in that, is you can't trust others for the direction of your life. You can only trust yourself.

And if you have other people that are cursing you and are trying to hold you back, then obviously there has to be some liberating force that comes in your life and so forth. But the message that just keeps getting drilled in over and over in a thousand different ways in our culture is don't trust someone else, believe in yourself. And then we come to Proverbs 3, which is this enormous truth and this huge promise to our lives, which is essentially saying, lean not on your own understanding. Be not wise in your own eyes. I'll tell you one of the greatest marks of spiritual growth is to discover how little you know of God. The more I know Him, the more that I know that I don't know.

I'll tell you, the smartest people in the world are the ones that know how little we know. You know, our perspective is so limited, and this is the thing that messes us up. You can only see it from one little point of view, and it really can mess you up. I had this happen to me driving on the interstate home from the beach. I was driving by myself. What is it about driving that just changes even the finest Christian into a judgmental?

I don't know what it is, but it got to me. I was driving home, and I'm on the interstate, and I'm going down the left-hand lane not speeding too much, and a tractor trailer in the right just pulled right in front of me into the left-hand lane, and the thing that irked to me was it was for no good reason. I mean, I thought if he was being held up by somebody, sure, he might pull over. If there had been a police officer or somebody on the shoulder, he needed to come over, but I didn't see anybody in front of him at all, and he just pulled over.

I mean, he didn't hit me. It wasn't that close or anything, but it was going to slow me down, and so I just kind of threw my hand up in disgust, like, what's this, you know? And I saw in his big mirror that he saw my left hand go up, and then his left hand went up. I was pretty sure that he had returned my exasperated left hand with an obscene gesture on his left hand.

I was pretty sure, and then he went past. He was moving on, and all of a sudden to my dismay, I realized there was a slow car in front of him. I just hadn't seen it, so at least he did have a reason why he had pulled over, and then he dutifully got back in the right-hand lane, and now I'm sitting there behind him, and I thought, well, I feel a little bad now, because I'm pretty sure that the reason he gave me the obscene gesture was he thought that I had given him an obscene gesture, which I had not.

I'm bad, but I'm not that bad. And I'm thinking about all of this, and it put me into a quandary, because I knew that if I passed him now on the left, that he would not only see me, but he would see my license plate, which is personalized to say, grace to you. And I didn't feel like it was a good representation of grace at that moment, but, you know, the show must go on, so I went on past him and drove on my way, a little worried he might run me off the road.

Well, a few miles down the road, the interstate comes into a little town and actually comes to a slowdown and then comes to a stoplight. And I'm sitting at the stoplight in the right-hand lane, and now I'm behind another tractor-trailer that's behind several other people, and I'm like, and I'm going to get stuck in this right-hand lane, and it's going to be so slow, and I thought about scooting over in the left-hand lane so I could get out of that stoplight quick and get past all these people. And I looked up after I'd been sitting for a while, and lo and behold, here comes my tractor-trailer friend that I had passed earlier, and I just kind of looked straight ahead like this, and I notice he lags behind a little bit.

And, of course, he recognized me because, you know, grace to you. And he lagged behind a little bit, and all of a sudden I hear the horn blowing. You know, he's blowing his horn. And I'm like, oh, he is going to, he's coming up here to just smush me. And then he honked, I didn't do anything, he honked again, and I look over, and he waves me in front of him. And I'm like, he wants to just run me over, that's what it is. Finally, he lags back so much that I have to get over in the left-hand lane, and he sort of waves at me, and I realize that he was being nice to me. He wanted me to not get stuck behind all the traffic on the right, and all of a sudden I realized what had really happened. What had really happened was when he pulled in front of me and I threw my left hand up in his aspiration, he thought I was waving him into my lane. So he had waved back at me. He thought I'd been nice to him, and he was now returning the favor.

So, you know, grace to you, it worked after all. You see what happens in about a ten-minute spell on a portion of Highway 74, and I have no idea what's going on. I think that I'm so sure that I know what's going on that I'm throwing my hands up in exasperation, and then I'm quite sure that he's going to run me off the road, and I didn't have a clue what was actually going on. I couldn't even see that there was a car in front of him when he first pulled over, much less that I have any idea what was going on in his mind, and yet I'm trying to read the signs of this situation as if I have some real understanding about it.

My question is this. If I could get that confused and start doing stupid things in a ten-minute period of just driving down the road, how much more so on the weightier, more important matters of life in all of your interpersonal relationships and in the way that you perceive things that are going on in the world? Be not wise in your own eyes. You just have too little of a perspective, and we just have too little experience. This is part of the reason that God's plan is that as we grow older, with more experience comes more wisdom, and it's God's plan that way. You know, we're young. We have tons of energy, maybe not as much wisdom. We get older, we may not have as much energy, but we got wisdom, and so it kind of balances itself out.

So if you're a young person, the best thing you do is get wisdom, and if you're an old person, hopefully you're wise and get some passion, because we want to have both energy and wisdom, but as you get older, you get some more experience, and you see things that you wouldn't have seen earlier. So when we were on our honeymoon, I think I may have told you this before, but the first night after we'd had a nice dinner, we went back to our room, and my wife said, what's that sound? I said, well, listen. She said, there's sounds in our room.

It's like people talking or the radio or something on. And I said, I don't know. And I said, well, I'm just going to boldly go on in here, honey. You know, I was a new husband.

I was just going to lead the charge right on in there. Alan Wright, and I can't wait to hear the conclusion of that story. It's coming up on our next edition.

Today's teaching is foolproof discernment in the new series, Foolproof. I encourage you to stay with us. Alan is back in the studio as he shares his parting good news thought for the day in just a moment.

We'll be right back. And discover the power to bless. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Back here in the studio, Alan, your parting good news thought for the day as we kick off a new series called Foolproof. The Proverbs are just obviously chocked full of pithy sayings and wise sayings. But what we're going to discover, Daniel, is that the Proverbs aren't just these catchy little sayings. This is a collection of sayings that together is like an embodiment of the wisdom that is in Christ Jesus. And so as enthralling as it is, we will be journeying towards a vision of Jesus all the way through this. And there's so much practical learning in the Proverbs. We call it Foolproof because when we walk in the wisdom of God, it keeps us from the ways of folly. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.